Read Online The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gardner Dozois
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with science even weaker and more dubious than that in Avatar , but still SF, nevertheless – hey, it’s got robots in it, doesn’t it?). SF also shows up in seventh place with Star Trek , the movie that not only rebooted the franchise but resurrected it from its grave by delivering $385,494,555 worldwide, and being enough of a success financially (and even, grudgingly, critically to some extent) that a sequel is already in production. Star Trek is a fast-paced movie with a high bit rate and lots of jump cuts, as almost all movies that sell successfully to post-MTV generations are, lots of CGI spectacle splashed across the screen, a plot that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense on most levels, and the requisite dubious technobabble science. It does contain the year’s most audacious film moment, however, when they wipe out fifty years of series history in a stroke, consigning the six previous movies and the five previous TV series to the black hole of things that never happened, leaving themselves a blank slate upon which they can write anything they’d like, the freedom to do whatever they want with subsequent movies, safe to ignore the constraints of the previously existing canon.
The rest of the year’s SF movies didn’t do quite as well financially. Neither Terminator Salvation , finishing in twenty-third place, or Angels & Demons , finishing in twenty-second, were quite the blowout blockbusters that their producers probably hoped they’d be, both losing money domestically, although making up for it with foreign revenues. District 9 placed a respectable twenty-seventh on the top-grossing list, pretty good considering that it only cost $30 million to make, cheap by today’s standards, but earned $204,837,324 worldwide. It was also one of the most critically respected genre movies of the year, being nominated along with Avatar for the Best Picture Oscar, although a few reviewers complained that it was too much like the old movie Alien Nation , or that the way the refugee aliens were treated in the film was too obviously a metaphor for apartheid (unlike any other genre movie I can think of, District 9 takes place in South Africa). Another critically well-reviewed movie was Moon , a psychological drama taking place on a mining station on the Moon, although almost nobody went to see it; it slipped through town almost subliminally, in a limited release, and didn’t place at all on the extended list of the 150 top-earning movies of the year. For what it’s worth, both District 9 and Moon are a lot closer to being valid SF than junk SF with bad science like Transformers or Avatar.
The bleak after-the-holocaust movie The Road also got a pretty fair amount of critical respect, but just managed to squeeze onto the top-sellers list in 148th place, which must have been disappointing to the producers considering how massive their advertising/publicity push was. People generally don’t want bleak, hopeless, and depressing during a major recession, although the disaster movie 2012 did pretty well at the box office, placing fifteenth on the list – although it had the advantage of lots of spectacular special-effects shots of skyscrapers collapsing and tsunamis swamping the Himalayas, which The Road did not. The Time-Traveler’s Wife , finishing at only fifty-fourth place may also have been a disappointment, considering that the novel had been a major bestseller.
Fantasy didn’t do quite as well on the list as it has in years past, but was represented in third place by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , in fourth place by romantic vampire soap opera The Twilight Saga: New Moon (which I’m arbitrarily consigning to fantasy rather than horror, because it wasn’t particularly scary), and later on down the list by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Where the Wild Things Are, Race to Witch Mountain, The Lovely Bones (making a disappointing showing for the new Peter Jackson movie in seventy-sixth
The rest of the year’s SF movies didn’t do quite as well financially. Neither Terminator Salvation , finishing in twenty-third place, or Angels & Demons , finishing in twenty-second, were quite the blowout blockbusters that their producers probably hoped they’d be, both losing money domestically, although making up for it with foreign revenues. District 9 placed a respectable twenty-seventh on the top-grossing list, pretty good considering that it only cost $30 million to make, cheap by today’s standards, but earned $204,837,324 worldwide. It was also one of the most critically respected genre movies of the year, being nominated along with Avatar for the Best Picture Oscar, although a few reviewers complained that it was too much like the old movie Alien Nation , or that the way the refugee aliens were treated in the film was too obviously a metaphor for apartheid (unlike any other genre movie I can think of, District 9 takes place in South Africa). Another critically well-reviewed movie was Moon , a psychological drama taking place on a mining station on the Moon, although almost nobody went to see it; it slipped through town almost subliminally, in a limited release, and didn’t place at all on the extended list of the 150 top-earning movies of the year. For what it’s worth, both District 9 and Moon are a lot closer to being valid SF than junk SF with bad science like Transformers or Avatar.
The bleak after-the-holocaust movie The Road also got a pretty fair amount of critical respect, but just managed to squeeze onto the top-sellers list in 148th place, which must have been disappointing to the producers considering how massive their advertising/publicity push was. People generally don’t want bleak, hopeless, and depressing during a major recession, although the disaster movie 2012 did pretty well at the box office, placing fifteenth on the list – although it had the advantage of lots of spectacular special-effects shots of skyscrapers collapsing and tsunamis swamping the Himalayas, which The Road did not. The Time-Traveler’s Wife , finishing at only fifty-fourth place may also have been a disappointment, considering that the novel had been a major bestseller.
Fantasy didn’t do quite as well on the list as it has in years past, but was represented in third place by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , in fourth place by romantic vampire soap opera The Twilight Saga: New Moon (which I’m arbitrarily consigning to fantasy rather than horror, because it wasn’t particularly scary), and later on down the list by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Where the Wild Things Are, Race to Witch Mountain, The Lovely Bones (making a disappointing showing for the new Peter Jackson movie in seventy-sixth
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