January 11, 2010 | 8:21 pm

Raimi out, ‘Spider-Man 4’ no more

Posted by Adam Wills

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Sorry true believers, but “Spider-Man 4” is toast. Sam Raimi has pulled out of the project, saying he couldn’t make the 2011 release date, Deadline Hollywood reports. Sony plans to reboot Peter Parker back to high school with a new director and cast for summer 2012.

Script problems over which villains to use in the film led to clashes between Raimi and Sony, according to the Hollywood Reporter—Raimi wanted to use Vulture (John Malkovich?) while Sony was pushing to include Black Cat, possibly eyeing Anne Hathaway for the role.

From Deadline Hollywood:

The events that led to today’s shocking decision to scrap Spider-Man 4 can be traced to mid-December when I saw a December 11th email alerting the pic’s special effects crew that the fourquel would not be starting as planned “but Sam Raimi has story issues [that] need to be resolved before we are ready to shoot”. At that point, it wasn’t well known that the Spider-Man franchise director helming the 4th installment had huge problems with the script that has run through screenwriters Jamie Vanderbilt, David Lindsay-Abaire, and Gary Ross. I was told Sam Raimi had been very vocal inside Sony that he “hated” it. I broke this story on January 5th, and reported that Raimi and Sony were anxiously waiting for still another version from screenwriter Alvin Sargent, who wrote Spidey 2 & 3 and is married to Spidey franchise producer Laura Ziskind. “It is unlikely that May 11, 2011, date will be made,” a Sony insider told me that day.

According to a studio release, Sony is going ahead with a script by James Vanderbilt to be produced by Columbia, Marvel Studios and Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin. Sony co-chair and Amy Pascal and Raimi struck a conciliatory tone:

“A decade ago we set out on this journey with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and together we made three Spider-Man films that set a new bar for the genre. When we began, no one ever imagined that we would make history at the box-office and now we have a rare opportunity to make history once again with this franchise. Peter Parker as an ordinary young adult grappling with extraordinary powers has always been the foundation that has made this character so timeless and compelling for generations of fans. We’re very excited about the creative possibilities that come from returning to Peter’s roots and we look forward to working once again with Marvel Studios, Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin on this new beginning,” said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“Working on the Spider-Man movies was the experience of a lifetime for me. While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction, and I know they will do a terrific job,” said Sam Raimi.

Raimi is now free pursue his previously announced projects, including a “World of Warcraft” film or an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel “The Given Day.”

January 6, 2010 | 6:19 pm

How do you say ‘wormhole’ in Hebrew?

Posted by Adam Wills

Why is English the go-to language for science fiction, even when it isn’t the writer’s mother tongue?

Israeli-born sci-fi writer Lavie Tidhar skipped an opportunity for “shameless self-promotion” on World SF News to mull this phenomenon, citing as example French, Finnish and Dutch sci-fi authors who are choosing to write in English. Tidhar, author of the English-language novel “The Bookman”—due out in the UK and Australia tomorrow, summer/fall-ish in the United States—uses his editorial (which Charlie Jane Anders blogged at io9) to look at the English-centric world of science fiction through a Hebrew lens:

So… why English? I ask the question not for myself but because a common argument – across languages, in fact, since I’ve heard it expressed with regards to any non-English language, from Hebrew to French – is that English is the language of science fiction.

What do they mean by that? Why can’t science fiction be written in other languages?

My own view, of course, is that this is (to borrow a term from that great showman, P.T. Barnum) complete hokum. Yet it is so prevalent, and I see it repeated again and again. Partially it is the terminology of science fiction – anything from wormhole to ansible, from warp drive to FTL, from “plugged in” to BEM to the “science fiction” itself. In Hebrew, for instance, science fiction was initially called mada dimyoni, or “imaginary science”, before being replaced with mada bidyoni, or “fictional science”, then shorthanded conversationally to madab, the sort of acronym Hebrew likes so much. English is the language of science fiction! And there’s something in that – when you even have to argue about which word to use for the English “telephone” or “computer”…

But consider.

One of the nicest words Hebrew doesn’t use is “sach-rachok” (try pronouncing the ‘ch’ as that sort of deep-in-the-throat sound). It means something like “speak-distance” and was an early word proposed, by that most venerable institute, the Academy of the Hebrew Language, for “telephone”.

Of course, it also sounded a bit silly, and no one wanted to use it, and Hebrew ended up borrowing the word “telephone” and making quite nice use of it after all.

But see, that’s the beauty of language – any language. Not just the act of borrowing (what is also called ‘loan words’) – the way English borrowed “amen” or “cabal” or “sack” from the Hebrew, or borrowed “algebra” and “bazaar” from Arabic, or “chocolate” from Nahuatl…

Languages always evolve, and they do so by borrowing, and by modifying, and by adapting, and by making up new words (neologisms). English does a lot of it… and so does any other language. Being a speaker of Bislama (the pidgin English – and now, sometimes, creole – of the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu), I was delighted recently to come across a new verb – gugelem. Which means, of course, to google! (as in, bae mi gugelem – I’ll google it).

The argument about vocabulary really doesn’t hold. Indeed, it should be one of the most fun parts of writing science fiction in another language – coining new terms or transforming existing ones to create a new language of science fiction.

And yet…

Here I am, “guilty” just as much for writing in English.

The thing is, I do love English. And by writing in English I can assure myself not only more readers, but also – and this is rather crucial, alas – better pay for my work. But I continue, albeit rarely, to write in Hebrew for the pure joy of it – short stories such as “Shira” (later translated and published in English in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow), or “Chalomot Be’aspamia” (translated and published, as “Daydreams” in Apex Digest) – I even wrote an entire book in Hebrew, with Nir Yaniv, just for the hell of it – “Retzach Bidyoni”, or “A Fictional Murder” (itself a play-on-words on the Hebrew term for science fiction), a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery set in an Israeli SF convention, a la Bimbos of the Death Sun…

I’m even working on a book that incorporates at least segments of Bislama into the narrative – and would happily write an entire book in that language, if only there was someone to publish it…

For it is market forces that dictate the writing of science fiction, not “a limited vocabulary” or some mythical Campbellian (John, not Joseph) strictures; it is not lack of words but lack of finance that restrict, in many parts of the world, the writing of science fiction into the foolhardy act of a maddened lover. And yet there is a joy in it, a purity that can be captivating.

My love of Hebrew science fiction – however obscure the titles, however bad some of its early forms – remains alongside my love of English science fiction. And it shapes my own writing, whatever the language.

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