On Resolutions

[faustus]

I am torn about New Year Resolutions, if only because I'm bad at carrying them out - and it feels like setting yourself up for the fail. My experience at work of life being increasingly determined by Intended Learning Outcomes and so forth mean that there is more focus on the one thing that you did not do rather than the nine hundred and ninety nine that you did. Why is your glass only half full?

I failed at completing the top hundred films, the Hitchcocks and the Colin Dexters, but I saw a lot of other films and read a number of books, and wrote a lot - see this:

Books Edited

With Mark Bould, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction London: Routledge, 2009.

Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction London: Routledge, 2010 [sic].

Chapters

"Psychoanalysis" The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, eds., London: Routledge, 2009.

"Iain M Banks" Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, eds., London: Routledge, 2010 [sic].

"Jean Baudrillard" Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, eds., London: Routledge, 2010 [sic].

"Philip K. Dick" Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, eds., London: Routledge, 2010 [sic].

"Medusa Laughs: Birds, Thieves, and Other Unruly Women" On Joanna Russ, Farah Mendlesohn, ed., Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press

Conference Papers

"Loving that which you can lose: Solaris, the Seventies and the Science Fiction Art Film", Nothing Happens, Canterbury Christ Church University, February 2009

"Peeling, Crashing, Crying and Electric Love: The Discovery of Male Homosexuality in 1970s Science Fiction" Queerying Paradigms, Canterbury Christ Church University, February 2009

"Saying the Words You Can't Say on Television on Television: Dysphemism and the Poetics of 'Bad' Language", Playing for Laughs, DeMontfort University, February 2009

"Machines Extraordinaires: Going Beyond the Gernsback–Campbell Continuum in Seventies Sf", Extraordinary Voyages: Jules Verne and Beyond, Eaton Science Fiction Conference May 2009, UC Riverside, USA.

"Unimportant Failures: The Fall and Rise of The Man Who Fell to Earth", Keynote paper, Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Submitted, Awaiting Publication

"Psychoanalysis and Fantasy", [nature of project withheld; I'm not sure what the book title will be and whether this is for public consumption].

"Postmodernism, Postmodernity and the Postmodern: Telling Local Stories at the End of Time" Teaching Science Fiction, Peter Wright and Andy Sawyer, eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Essays on The Andromeda Strain, Freejack, Impostor, Jumper, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Paycheck, When Worlds Collide: The Critical Companion to Science Fiction Film Adaptations, Peter Wright et al, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.

"Journeys Beyond Being: The Cyberpunk-Flavored Novels of Jeff Noon", Beyond the Reality Studio, Sherryl Vint and Graham Murphy, eds, forthcoming

I've had a To Do List to get me through December, and I think I did pretty well:

1. read and comment on article for journal
   
2. write and deliver six four three lectures
   
3. mark thirty-five two horror essays
   
4. second mark ten audiences essays
   
5. write and deliver seminar paper
   
6. write chapter on The Man Who Fell to Earth
   
7. write chapter proposal for book project
   
8. read book and watch two one films for adaptations project
   
9. write a chapter of seventies book
   
   
   
   3000 / 6000 words. 50% done!
   

The proposal is a sit down already and write the bugger deal, and I might be able to finish the chapter draft tonight.

So for 2010, my resolutions? Well, what am I committed to?

1. Probably another chapter on The Man Who Fell to Earth
   
2. A section for another guide to sf
   
3. An article on steampunk
   
4. A chapter based on the proposal
   
5. A 100,000 word book on seventies sf.
   

On that latter, I want to watch 100 films, read 300 books, and watch about three hundred episodes of television.

See what I mean about the fail? It's the fine for films, but it's three or four times as many books as I've read last year. Think of it as one a day until November.

On the other hand, a rolling to do list would have to include all the Hugo and Nebula novel winners of the 1970s, namely:

1. Larry Niven, Ringworld
   
2. Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes
   
3. Philip José Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
   
4. Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
   
5. Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
   
6. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
   
7. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
   
8. Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
   
9. Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
   
10. Frederik Pohl, Gateway
    
11. Vonda McIntyre, Dreamsnake
    
12. Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
    
13. Gregory Benford, Timescape
    
14. Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

The number ticked off mean I can probably add shortlists too (but what is it with the Nebulae in 1975?).

In other aspects of life - less pub follows, and I want to do more food preparation and preparation, so I have things to defrost rather than too much reliance on prepared food. No more crisps; tips on low fat savoury snacks for lunches welcome (there must be oaty stuff). More fruit.

I want to get to Nottingham, Chichester and Alfriston, in part for exhibitions, and maybe to Brighton. It's about time I went back to Hastings, and maybe a second visit to Lewis or Eastbourne.

I am going to see this comedy

I need to get a rhythm.

Over the last year I managed to redress the work and leisure balance - by going to the movies, by seeing comedy, by going to the pub. What I also need to do is doing nowt time - to catch my breath.

So, there's the plan, and as far as it is a resolution, bring on the fail...