Incoming in 2012

So there are three big projects (for me) landing in 2012. The first is 'News from Gardenia' a crowd sourced book that is to be written by Robert Llewellyn. First of all I love the idea for the story. A utopian SF story. Now there's a thing I want to read at the moment. We all have our own ideas about what would make things better on this issue or that issue. Robert is going to give us his vision of how society would be made better across the board. I'll be interested to see if his characters are idealised saintly types or real human beings with all of our failures of reason and our negative emotions. Because if everyone in his future is just 'nice' then that's just a cop out. The world would be perfect now if everyone was rational and kind all of the time. The other exciting aspect of the work is that it is crowd sourced; people have already paid for a copy before it has been written. I'll be interested to see how much interaction there is with the readership as the work is being prepared. And will there be an editor at the end of it to tidy things up?

Next up we have the first part of Alastair Reynolds 'Poseidon's Children' trilogy. 'Blue Remembered Earth' is a near future history set in a world where Africa dominates the world in terms of technology and economics. That's my first issue with the premise. I cannot think of any way that Africa will come to dominate the world. It would take an immense change in geopolitics for this to happen. I just can't see it. The second issue is that the main character is a reluctant hero who just wants 'to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin'. Erm. Is it just me or does that sound really naff. It's a bit Lion King. I hope Alastair doesn't fall into the trap of sacrificing plausibility for wishful thinking here.

The third and final exciting project is 'Prometheus' the Alien prequel. Directed by Ridley Scott, his first SF film in a long time. It has a nice budget, it has Idras Elba from The Wire. It could be great. I'm so excited that I'm bound to be disappointed. I just hope beyond hope that he goes for plot, mood, character and suspense over special effects and acting where people pout into the camera, sigh and say things that real people never say. The great strength of the first two films was the casting.