Top 10 Stories for October 2022

Two contributions by Jonathan Cowie have enjoyed numerous spikes of interest on social media since there were posted this month. The first was about his visit to the SF Museum Exhibition in Kensington, London. The second tells the saga of how a 2012 ESFS Award took 10 years to finally arrive in the hands of the SF2 Concatenation crew (despite having been in England almost the entire time.)

There also has been strong interest in sff author Sergei Lukianenko’s shocking and inhuman comments about Russia’s war against the Ukraine.

Here are the ten most-read posts of October 2022 according to Jetpack.

  1. SF Museum Exhibition
  2. How Long Does It Take an SF Award to Reach Its Recipients?
  3. During Lukianenko’s Appearance on Russia’s RT, Presenter Calls for Drowning Ukrainian Children
  4. Sergei Lukianenko Hails Attacks on Ukrainian Civilian Targets
  5. Pixel Scroll 10/20/22 Pixel Was A Scrollin’ Stone
  6. Pixel Scroll 10/17/22 And Now, The File Is Clear, And So I Scroll The Final Pixel
  7. Pixel Scroll 10/4/22 TANSTAFE! (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Elevenses)
  8. Pixel Scroll 10/22/22 In Dyson’s Sphere, Did Noonian Khan, A Scrolly Fuller Dome Decree
  9. Pixel Scroll 10/23/22 The Scrolls Of The Prophets Are Written In The Pixel Files
  10. Pixel Scroll 10/16/22 I Can Scroll Clearly Now The Pixel’s Come, I Can See All Comments Now In This Thread, Gone Are The Strange Trolls That Spoiled My View, It’s Going To Be Bright, Bright, Bright Pixelly Scroll

SCROLL-FREE TOP 11

  1. SF Museum Exhibition
  2. How Long Does It Take an SF Award to Reach Its Recipients?
  3. During Lukianenko’s Appearance on Russia’s RT, Presenter Calls for Drowning Ukrainian Children
  4. Sergei Lukianenko Hails Attacks on Ukrainian Civilian Targets
  5. Bob Madle (1920-2022)
  6. 2022 Saturn Awards Nominations
  7. Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine
  8. Lukyanenko Comments on RT Host Anton Krasovsky’s Controversial Remarks
  9. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #68: Two 2022 Hugo Award Finalists Walk Into a Bookstore…
  10. Remembering Frank Sinatra
  11. Robert Allen (Bob) Madle (June 2, 1920 — October 8, 2022)

Top 10 Stories for September 2022

The announcement of the Hugos winners ran true to form as the month’s most widely read post. However, several other Worldcon-related news stories also made the Top 10, beginning with the worrying news that death threats had been lodged against two Worldcon program participants who identified themselves in social media – Patrick Tomlinson and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekepeki.

Here are the ten most-read posts of September 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. 2022 Hugo Awards
  2. Chicon 8 Reveals Anonymous Death Threats Were Made Against Two Program Participants
  3. Guest Post: Standlee on the Future of Worldcon Governance
  4. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
  5. What Did We Learn About the Chengdu Worldcon During Chicon 8?
  6. Pixel Scroll 9/3/22 I Have Come To Praise Your Furries, Not To Scroll Them
  7. EPH Re-Ratified, Pro-Ukraine and Anti-Lukianenko Resolutions Passed by Chicon 8 Business Meeting
  8. 2022 Dragon Awards
  9. Pixel Scroll 9/9/22 The Risk of Repeating Scroll Titles is Real
  10. Pixel Scroll 9/6/22 All Of The Riverworld Ramblers Are Losing Their Grails

Scroll-Free Top 10

  1. 2022 Hugo Awards
  2. Chicon 8 Reveals Anonymous Death Threats Were Made Against Two Program Participants
  3. Guest Post: Standlee on the Future of Worldcon Governance
  4. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
  5. What Did We Learn About the Chengdu Worldcon During Chicon 8?
  6. EPH Re-Ratified, Pro-Ukraine and Anti-Lukianenko Resolutions Passed by Chicon 8 Business Meeting
  7. 2022 Dragon Awards
  8. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: Chicon 8 Special
  9. BSFS Reports Results of the Code of Conduct Investigation Concerning Balticon 56
  10. Tolkien: An Unexpected Sainthood
  11. Review: Extraordinary Attorney Woo

[Illustration by Teddy Harvia.]

Top 10 Stories for August 2022

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was at the top of the news all month long. Early in August some anonymous bloggers drew his ire for discounting his work as a reprint anthologist. Then, two weeks ago it looked like the Hugo finalist’s plans to attend Chicon 8 had been derailed by the lack of a visa. Yesterday he got a second chance – with help from a world of people including two U.S. Senators – and he has been greenlighted to go to Chicago.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of August 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. US Embassy in Nigeria Denies Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Visa Application; Won’t Get to Attend Worldcon
  2. Anonymous Blog’s Rankings Draw Protest By Hugo Finalist Short Fiction Editor
  3. Alexei Panshin (1940-2022)
  4. Pixel Scroll 8/16/22 Faraway Pixels With Strange-Sounding Scrolls
  5. Will E Pluribus Hugo Survive Re-Ratification?
  6. ASFF Award Name Announcement Raises Protests
  7. Whyte: Comments on the 2022 Hugo Awards Study Committee Report
  8. Pixel Scroll 8/19/22 One Sturgeon, One Spock, One Bierce
  9. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Granted Visa to Attend Chicon 8
  10. Pixel Scroll 8/22/22 This Is The Story Of A Scroll, Who Cried Tsundoku And Filed The Whole World

Top 10 Stories for July 2022

Widely respected author and editor Eric Flint died July 17 and his passing was mourned by many in the sff field, contributing to his obituary being the most-read post of July.

Two days later Worldcon members got a partial look at proposed rules changes and other issues that will come up at the Chicon 8 Business meeting when the first draft of the agenda was unveiled. This included a new motion from the Hugo Study Committee designed to head off the “Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal” introduced by Olav Rokne and many co-signers, the subject of another widely-read post.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of July 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. Eric Flint (1947-2022)
  2. Pixel Scroll 7/19/22 A Phlogiston Of Filers
  3. First Chicon 8 Business Meeting Agenda Posted
  4. Pixel Scroll 7/7/22 What We Scroll In The Pixels
  5. Pixel Scroll 7/13/22 Read The Scrolls That They May Teach You, Take The Pixels That They May Reach You
  6. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
  7. Pixel Scroll 7/18/22 Scroll With A Pixel Earring
  8. The Last Dangerous Visions Has Release Date
  9. Pixel Scroll 7/10/22 And In The Naked Light, I Saw Ten Thousand Pixels, Maybe More
  10. Pixel Scroll 7/26/22 Pixel 54, Where Are You?

SCROLL-FREE TOP 10

  1. Eric Flint (1947-2022)
  2. First Chicon 8 Business Meeting Agenda Posted
  3. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
  4. The Last Dangerous Visions Has Release Date
  5. Seth Macfarlane and “The Orville: New Horizons”
  6. Astra Publishing House Acquires DAW Books
  7. Samanda Jeude (1952-2022)
  8. Tor.com Suffers Unexplained Outages
  9. Robert Lichtman (1942-2022)
  10. A Photographic Memory

Top 10 Stories for June 2022

The handling of code of conduct issues at conventions produced some of the most-followed news stories of the month of June.

New information, commentary, and further apologies for Balticon’s treatment of Stephanie Burke were the theme of four of the top ten posts.  

Another widely read post concerned an assault allegation against author Faith Hunter made at JordanCon which was resolved with an apology, followed by Hunter’s decision to cancel her convention appearances for the rest of the year.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of June 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
  2. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #66
  3. Balticon Publishes Program Head’s Apology to Burke
  4. Assault Allegation Leads Faith Hunter to Apologize and Pull Out of Conventions For 2022
  5. Balticon 56 Chair Will Lead Investigaton of Events
  6. Pixel Scroll 6/4/22 Pixel Of Illusions
  7. Pixel Scroll 6/1/22 The Ones Who Scroll Away From Pixelas
  8. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
  9. Pixel Scroll 6/8/22 Goodness, Gracious, Great Scrolls Of Fur
  10. Jon Del Arroz’ Twitter Account Restored

SCROLL-FREE TOP 10

  1. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
  2. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #66
  3. Balticon Publishes Program Head’s Apology to Burke
  4. Assault Allegation Leads Faith Hunter to Apologize and Pull Out of Conventions For 2022
  5. Balticon 56 Chair Will Lead Investigaton of Events
  6. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
  7. Jon Del Arroz’ Twitter Account Restored
  8. 2022 Locus Awards Winners
  9. Loscon 45 Incident: What Happened, and the Committee’s Update
  10. CSFFA Names 2022 Hall of Fame Inductees

Top 10 Posts for May 2022

May was a month unexpectedly filled with sad and controversial news items. The most widely read story told how SFWA removed Mercedes Lackey from the annual Nebula Conference for a code of conduct violation the day after celebrating her as their latest Grand Master.

In the second most-read story, Balticon 56 Chair Yakira Heistand apologized for staff’s mistreatment of Stephanie Burke, an author taken off panels following a CoC complaint by what Heistand calls an “overzealous volunteer” who Burke says spoke to her “with much disrespect” and then “proceeded to yell at me.”

Thoroughly overshadowed was what started out to be the month’s top story. Jon Del Arroz’ attempt to join the Game Manufacturers Association was met with protest from members, resulting in his ouster. And shortly afterwards JDA also was bounced from Twitter (“JDA Out of GAMA, Suspended by Twitter”).

Here are the 10 most-read posts of May 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. Mercedes Lackey Removed from the Nebula Conference
  2. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
  3. Mercedes Lackey Publishes Apology
  4. SFWA Asks New Grand Master Mercedes Lackey to Clarify Past Statement on Writing Trans Characters
  5. Pixel Scroll 5/23/22 Cosplaying And Straying In Pixel Scroll Land, To The Sounds Of The Pixel Scroll Band
  6. Several GAMA Members Protest Addition of Jon Del Arroz to Organization
  7. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #65
  8. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
  9. SFWA Members-Only Directory Info Exposed
  10. SFWA Announces the 57th Nebula Award Winners

Top 10 Stories for April 2022

The Hugo Award finalists were the biggest story of the month, and that was good news, especially for Filers Chris Barkley and Cora Buhlert. However, there was some sad news on the other side of the ledger, with Chicon 8 GoH Charles de Lint needing to step down, and centenarian actor Nehemiah Persoff dying, which brought a lot of readers to Steve Vertlieb’s article about his 102nd birthday last August.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of April 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. 2022 Hugo Award Finalists
  2. Pixel Scroll 4/18/22 You Get A File, I’ll Get A Troll, We’ll Head Down To The Pixel Scroll, Honey, Enemy Mine
  3. Pixel Scroll 4/2/22 We Don’t Talk About Pixel (Scroll, Scroll, Scroll)
  4. Charles de Lint Steps Down as Chicon 8 GoH
  5. Celebrating The Wonderful Nehemiah Persoff At 102
  6. Pixel Scroll 4/1/22 This Title Contains A Non-Fungible Tribble
  7. Pixel Scroll 4/5/22 Now That’s A Pixel I’ve Not Scrolled In A Long Time. A Long Time
  8. Pixel Scroll 4/25/22 Mrs. File You’ve Got A Lovely Pixel, Scrolls As Sharp As Her Are Something Rare, But It’s Sad, She Doesn’t Read My Books, I’d Give Her Free Copies, But It’s No Good To Beg
  9. Pixel Scroll 4/26/22 I Don’t Want A Pixel. I Just Wanna Scroll On My Motorcycxel
  10. Pixel Scroll 4/4/22 Just A Pixel Boy, Lots Of Planets Have A South, He Took The Tardis Box Goin’ Anywhere

SCROLL-FREE TOP 11

  1. 2022 Hugo Award Finalists
  2. Charles de Lint Steps Down as Chicon 8 GoH
  3. Celebrating The Wonderful Nehemiah Persoff At 102
  4. 2022 Rondo Awards Nominees
  5. Chengdu Worldcon Publishes Q&As to Explain Their Membership and Admission Structure
  6. 2022 Philip K. Dick Award
  7. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
  8. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #64
  9. R.M.S. Titanic … “A Night To Remember”
  10. 2022 Recommended SF/F List
  11. What the Heinleins Told the 1950 Census

Special Characters Fixed at Last

For years the “special characters” that are common to some European languages have been rendered as question marks by my WordPress. And many times commenters have suggested what seemed like obvious solutions. Like, enter the HTML code for the character directly in the post (which would always look perfect in draft, then upon publication would become a question mark.) Or use a plugin — written by a Filer! — to insert the special character in the post. Followed by my looking none-too-bright as I explained I hadn’t been able to get these technically reasonable ideas to work. I have routinely had to use either of my two workarounds, substituting a Latin character and apologizing in an endnote, or creating a graphic of the name or title to be wedged into place that never looked like it belonged.

Adam Szedlak, a couple of months ago, planted the idea that it was a database problem. The database is not part of the WordPress program I can see, it’s not something I have dashboard controls to modify. I would have to enlist the help of my ISP’s customer support. So I procrastinated.

Then the Ignyte Awards finalists came out last week. Camestros Felapton got the news posted on his WordPress blog ahead of me, and I noticed one of the nominated magazines had multiple special characters in its title. His WordPress rendered the name correctly, whereas in my post with the same list that title was riddled with question marks. Even though we all know Camestros is a genius, I suspected he hadn’t had to do anything extra to produce the right result, the explanation was that his WordPress was set up correctly and something was wrong with mine. I finally set aside time to work with customer support.

At first, the biggest problem was convincing them I had a problem. I use workarounds, I don’t put up posts and let the question marks fall where they may. I needed to create an example for them to diagnose, which I did.

Then, while my ISP was casting about for a solution, they twice changed something and caused most of the apostrophes, quote marks, and hyphens to appear as black diamonds with a question mark in the middle. Bruce Arthurs commented when he saw that the other night.

But as of this morning they have fixed the problem by making the right modifications to a WordPress table and charset.  

So let’s celebrate! Here are examples of names and titles that I have had to work around this year which will now display correctly. Pour yourself your favorite beverage!


2022 Ignyte Awards Shortlist | File 770

Khōréō Magazine 

Candidates for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2022 (alma.se)

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bisera Alikadić, Author
Elmira Mekić, Author
Ranko Risojević, Author

2020 – 2022 – European Science Fiction Society (esfs.info)

Marta Ignerska “Świat Lema” (The world of Lem)

2022 Recommended SF/F List

By JJ: This thread is for posts about 2022-published works, which people have read and recommend to other Filers.

There will be no tallying of recommendations done in this thread; its purpose is to provide a source of recommendations for people who want to find something to read which will be eligible for the Hugos or other awards (Nebula, Locus, Asimov’s, etc.) next year.

If you’re recommending for an award other than / in addition to the Hugo Awards which has different categories than the Hugos (such as Locus Awards’ First Novel), then be sure to specify the award and category.

You don’t have to stop recommending works in Pixel Scrolls, please don’t! But it would be nice if you also post here, to capture the information for other readers.

The Suggested Format for posts is:

  • Title, Author, Published by / Published in (Anthology, Collection, Website, or Magazine + Issue)
  • Hugo or other Award Category: (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Graphic Novel, Lodestar, Astounding, etc)
  • link (if available to read/view online)
  • optional “Brief, spoiler-free description of story premise:”
  • “What I liked / didn’t like about it:”
  • (Please rot-13 any spoilers.)

There is a permalink to this thread in the blog header.

Top 10 Stories for March 2022

Two different groups of sff writers have banded together in separate public letters to lead readers in directions they think they should go. One wants to oust China as host of the 2023 Worldcon. Another encouraged the Russian army to “denazify and demilitarize the state of Ukraine.” Posts reporting on those two letters were the two most widely-read here in the month of March. And in a disturbing coincidence, the leading signer of the anti-Ukraine letter is a Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, Sergey Lukianenko.

File 770 also hosted a letter from an unnamed fan in Moscow, now disillusioned, who asked, “please don’t leave us on our own; fight with us for freedoms.”

And Ukranian fan Borys Sydiuk shared that SFWA rejected a call to boycott Russia. However, two weeks after the Authors Guild and Horror Writers Association had already done so, they did announce “SFWA Stands with Ukraine”.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of March 2022 according to Google Analytics.

  1. SFF Authors Release Open Letter Condemning China as Host of 2023 Worldcon
  2. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
  3. Pixel Scroll 3/17/22 If You Can’t Handle Me At My Pixel, You Don’t Deserve Me At My Scroll
  4. Note from a Fan in Moscow
  5. Pixel Scroll 3/11/22 Why Am I The Only Person Who Ever Has That Dream
  6. Patreon Bans Jon Del Arroz for Hate Speech Violation
  7. Pixel Scroll 3/22/22 Captain Pixel Versus The Winter Solstice
  8. Pixel Scroll 3/9/22 And A Scroll Will Never Need More Than 640K Pixels
  9. Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine
  10. Chengdu Worldcon Posts Membership Rates

SCROLL-FREE TOP 10

  1. SFF Authors Release Open Letter Condemning China as Host of 2023 Worldcon
  2. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
  3. Note from a Fan in Moscow
  4. Patreon Bans Jon Del Arroz for Hate Speech Violation
  5. Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine
  6. Chengdu Worldcon Posts Membership Rates
  7. SFWA Rejects Call to Join Boycott of Russia: A Guest Post by Borys Sydiuk
  8. Celebrating The Wonderful Nehemiah Persoff At 102
  9. SFWA Drops “America” From Name
  10. Priscilla Tolkien (1929-2022)