Pixel Scroll 11/14/17 The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Scrollbar And The Pixels From Mars

(1) PRO TIP FROM SFWA. SFWA Director Kate Baker issued this word to the wise —

(2) WINDYCON APOLOGY. At Windycon.org, the Windycon 44 statement regarding the Tutti Frutti Literature panel title and description from convention chair Daniel Gunderson.

Now that the convention is over, we have had the opportunity to read through the many posts and comments on the subject. We have taken to heart the hurt and anger caused by the poor choice of wording used in the title and description of this panel.

We are very sorry we offended. While this was not our intention, it was the result, and for this we sincerely apologize.

We will be working to ensure this does not happen in the future. These are some specific steps we will take moving forward.

We will push back the programming timeline significantly. This will allow for more careful choice in wording for panel titles and descriptions. This will also allow more time for oversight and review of titles and descriptions.

We will work to keep titles and descriptions clear and unambiguous. Panel titles should be sufficiently clear that the entire intent of the programming item can be understood from the title alone. Descriptions will be used to provide additional information about the panel, but will not be relied on to supplement an insufficient title.

We will make sure to run titles and descriptions past a larger group of individuals who were not involved in the generation process. This will provide the opportunity to have outside individuals point out potentially problematic phrasing that programing may not have been aware of, or may have been blinded to by already understanding the original intent.

As of this posting, we have removed the programming item from our online programing list, so we do not continue to offend.

Again, we deeply apologize for any pain this may have caused.

(3) HELP NEEDED. Long-time LASFSian Mike Donahue has started a GoFundMe appeal — Help Mike Donahue keep his home. He gives the full explanation at the link. It begins:

I’m in imminent danger of a bank sale on my house, which is in foreclosure. No date has yet been set. I’ve been given a pay up date of Dec 5 2017. They can move before that, I don’t know. And they don’t tell you the info you need.   Or how long after that they force the sale on the house. I was in an auto accident in January, which greatly strained my cash resources….

(4) SUPERPEDESTRIAN. In the early Seventies, Margaret Atwood wrote Kanadian Kulchur Komics under a pseudonym. She tells what it was like in — “Margaret Atwood reflects on the significance of her This Magazine comic strip”.

Yes, it’s a blast from the past! Or if not a blast, maybe a small firecracker?

Whose past? My past, obviously: I was Bart Gerrard, one of my noms de plume—the name of a then-forgotten and probably now more-forgotten Canadian newspaper caricaturist of the turn of the century.

…The central joke of the Survivalwoman comics was this: in 1972 I’d published a book called Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, which had made waves of a sort, not all of them friendly. This book was an attempt to distinguish what people wrote in Canada from what they wrote in the United States and the United Kingdom, in riposte to what we were so often told: that there wasn’t any Canadian literature, or if there was, it was a pale echo of things written in large, cosmopolitan, important places. Survival against the odds—both natural and human—I took to be one of the leitmotifs of such Canadian writing as I could get my hands on then, in the dark ages before the Internet, print-on-demand, and Abe Books.

Pair that leitmotif with the fact that, in the world of comix, Canada did not have a superhero of its own—Nelvana of the Northern Lights and Johnny Canuck and their bros and sisses having vanished with the demise of the wartime “Canadian Whites” in approximately 1946. (King of the Royal Mounted did not count, being American. Anyway, King had no superhuman features, unlike the present-day Wolverine.)

So what more appropriate than Survivalwoman: a superheroine with no discernable powers, who had a cape but could not fly—hey, it was Kanada, always lesser—and came equipped with snowshoes? The visual design was based on me—curly hair, short—as was part of the personality—earnest and somewhat clueless.

(5) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. If any of you have good celebrity connections, David Brin could use a hand getting invitations out to people he’d like to have involved in his 20th anniversary screening of The Postman.

I’m putting out a call! If any of you know genius cinematographer Stephen F. Windon, or genius cinematic composer James Newton Howard, I’m hoping to invite them to a special, 20th anniversary screening of The Postman at UCSD’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Whatever its faults, the film is musically and visually one of the dozen or so most gorgeous films ever made. (With a small but growing cult following.)

I’d invite Kevin Costner – who certainly gets some credit for that beauty – and screenwriter Brian Helgeland too – (or any of the younger Costners in the film) because I think the flick had more heart that any other from that era. Alas, no method I’ve researched seems to penetrate the Hollywood protective barriers, not even for Mr. Windon. And Tom Petty is now beyond reach, alack.

(6) SPFBO FINALS. Mark Lawrence has set up a post to track the “Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off Finals”. At this stage, the 10 finalists will be chosen based on the scores of participating blogger-reviewers. They are: Bookworm Blues, Fantasy-Faction, Fantasy Book Critic, Lynn’s Books, The Qwillery, Pornokitsch, Ventureadlaxre, Fantasy Book Review, Booknest, and Kitty G video reviews.

There’s not much to see there yet, but it will become more interesting as the results are filled in.

Filers will be interested to know there are links to a large number of book reviews at the post for the first phase of the Blog-Off, in which 200 of the 300 works under consideration were eliminated.

(7) FRESH HORROR. Brett J. Talley, whose name has appeared in this blog before as a Bram Stoker nominee, is up for a federal court appointment. The Daily Beast has the story: “Before He Was Tapped By Donald Trump, Controversial Judicial Nominee Brett J. Talley Investigated Paranormal Activity”. There’s more at the link about his interest in Lovecraft.

Brett J. Talley, nominated by President Donald Trump to the Federal District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, has never tried a case, is married to a White House lawyer, and has been dubbed as unqualified by the American Bar Association.

… But ghost chasing wasn’t a quirky side-hobby. Indeed, before he became the embodiment of the Trump administration’s efforts to pack the courts with young, conservative, sometimes dubiously-credentialed judges, Halley wrote books about paranormal activities that earned him numerous plaudits. And not just within the horror fiction scene. Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, was a fan too.

“I find it hilarious that no one is writing about his horror writing. He has a cult following.” Stevens told The Daily Beast. “I have to say I wasn’t really aware he was a lawyer as my dealings with him were as a writer on campaign. He’s an interesting, smart guy. But so is Stephen King.”

(8) FIN DE CYCLE. James Davis Nicoll, in “Seasons Crying No Despair”, says it wasn’t easy, but David Axel Kurtz’ Northern Tier won him over.

Those reservations aside, I got drawn into Slip’s story, which is saying a lot when you consider how very much I dislike bicyclists as a group. Having been run over on numerous occasions by scofflaw bicyclists, I live for a future in which the use of bicycles is limited to the Marianas Trench, the Lunar farside, and the surface of the Sun, places I do not plan to visit any time soon. I am not the target market for thrilling tales of bicyclists and the increasingly vast armies who stalk them. Nevertheless, Slip won me over; she persisted.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 14, 1851 Moby Dick is published.
  • November 14, 1969 – Apollo 12 took off.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born November 14 – Cat Rambo
  • Born November 14 – Wolf Von Witting
  • Born November 14 — Moshe Feder
  • Born November 14 – Edd Vick
  • Born November 14 – Charles Mohapel

(11) FINAL FRONTIER. Fan-made Star Trek Continues released Part II of its last episode “To Boldly Go.” (Find Part I here.) Executive Producer Vic Mignogna (also the series’ “James T. Kirk”) told Facebook followers:

No vocabulary can express how much this production has meant to me. From the very beginning, all I knew was that I wanted to make one episode of Star Trek the way I remembered it. Would anyone like it? I didn’t know. Would I make another? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted to pay tribute to Bill, Leonard, Gene and everyone who made the show that meant so much to me when I was a boy. I would use all the skills that TOS inspired me to try for the first time to make the best episode I could. I never imagined so many amazing people would do so much, and I’m deeply humbled by their involvement. I will be forever grateful to the cast, crew & volunteers who selflessly gave so much to make Star Trek Continues a reality. And to you, the viewers and fans, for your support and enthusiasm. With bittersweet joy, we present our final episode. Hopefully, it will be a long lasting tribute and historic ending to the most iconic television series in history.

 

(12) COMING SOON ON AMAZON. People are having a lot of fun with the idea of a new Lord of the Rings series on Amazon. This idea beats Dynasty and Dallas to pieces.

(13) PRE-RINGS CIRCUS. Nathaniel Ingraham tries to figure out what the Amazon series will be like in “Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequel will need to forge its own identity”. One of his ideas comes from a video game:

Of course, Amazon new series won’t be the first new narrative set in Middle-earth. The most recent example is the 2014 video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (and its newly-released sequel). The game drew players in by using the familiar setting of Mordor, a familiar timeframe (between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), iconic characters like Gollum and crucial elements like the Rings of Power. But it also starred entirely new characters, expanded Tolkien’s mythology and told an entirely new story.

It wasn’t perfect (that ending!), but Shadow of Mordor overall did an admirable job at taking a familiar setting and writing a new story around it. It’s the kind of product that could serve as a blueprint for how Amazon can create a new property that will hook loads of viewers while still paying service to longtime fans. Simply being able to reference The Lord of the Rings will be enough to bring in many viewers — millions have seen Jackson’s films and won’t care if the series is telling stories Tolkien himself didn’t dream up. Add in the fact that Game of Thrones will wrap up in 2018 or 2019 and it’s easy to imagine those viewers getting their fantasy methadone from Amazon’s new series.

Ultimately, the enduring popularity of Tolkien’s work is what Amazon is banking on here. Yes, there will absolutely be a cadre of fans who hate what Amazon produces, but that group will almost certainly be outnumbered by people enjoyed The Lord of the Rings at some point in their life and decide to give Amazon’s series a shot — if the show is good.

(14) MORDANT OF THE RINGS. Adam Whitehead engages in less serious – well, frankly hilarious – speculation about “Ideas for the new LORD OF THE RINGS TV series” at The Wertzone.

This Ent-focused conservation programme, voiced over by David Attenborough, will fuse almost-thrilling episodes where the Ents discuss a problem for hours on end with notes on the shameful deforestation of Fangorn Forest and destruction of the surrounding ecosystem.

(15) DARK VADER. Mark Hepworth sent this photo with his brew review: “I thought a beer item might enliven the scroll. I came across this in a local-ish pub and obviously had to try it. It was much more drinkable than I’d expected from a Sith Lord!”

(16) MARTIANS AND SIGOURNEY WEAVER. Mark Swed reviews “‘War of the Worlds’: Delirious opera rises from the death and destruction of L.A.” in the Los Angeles Times.

So here’s what you need to know about the heavily hyped “War of the Worlds” that [Yuval] Sharon mounted at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday afternoon for the L.A. Phil, in collaboration with his own massively disruptive opera company, the Industry, and the nonprofit Now Art L.A. A new opera and new kind of opera by Annie Gosfield, it does everything an opera’s supposed to. It does a lot opera’s not supposed to do. That includes immersive opera, one of Sharon’s specialties as the mastermind of “Hopscotch,” the celebrated opera in autos two years ago.

…On the most basic level, this is a fairly straightforward operatic adaption and update of Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio broadcast, based on H.G. Wells’ science-fiction novel “The War of the Worlds.” At a time when radio broadcasts were beginning to be interrupted by news flashes, Welles treated the play as an ordinary dance-band radio program with increasingly frightening bulletins of an alien invasion.

The brilliantly theatrical night-before-Halloween prank caused panic among some gullible listeners, giving credence to Russian futurist Velimir Khlebnikov’s prediction that radio had the power to become the Great Sorcerer. Sharon sees the panic as an early-warning sign of the imposing threat of fake news.

Riffing on the radio show, this “War of the Worlds” begins as a symphony concert, albeit one with a celebrity host, Sigourney Weaver. The opera will eventually take over the concert, which is meant to include Gosfield’s new celestial orchestral cycle to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Holst’s “The Planets.”

…Weaver breaks in again and again on the first two movements with reports from outdoors, which are beamed into the hall (audio only, this is radio). Astronomy professor Pierson (actor Hugo Armstrong), standing on a parking lot, attempts to allay fear with his soothing British accent. Mrs. Martinez (mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán) offers a more feverish firsthand account of the scary machines and creatures somewhere on Main Street. Gen. Lansing (baritone Hadleigh Adams) haplessly leads the troops in attacking the aliens.

Before long the music creeps into the action. The Martians have an alien voice in soprano Hila Plitmann’s stratospherically supernatural coloratura (and she does look like she might have stepped out of an outtake of “Alien”), accompanied by theremin and otherworldly percussion. Sharon’s libretto follows Peter Koch’s original radio play fairly closely. L.A. doesn’t fare any better than New York City. Civic officials are of little help, although the mayor valiantly tries. There is political humor for all.

…Finally, there are those decommissioned sirens left over from the Second World War that still peek out from behind billboards and buildings around town, noticed primarily by history buffs. They’re the symbol of the production and were one of the motivating ideas for both Sharon and Gosfield, who was obsessed with them when she studied at CalArts in the 1980s.

In the end, they are about the least interesting thing visually, theatrically or sonically about the production. It is not that they aren’t marvelous in their mysteriously antiquated way; it is just that every other aspect of this opera and its sensational production and performance happens to be more marvelous.

(17) SECURE THE NOMINATION. Timothy the Talking Cat has picked up a new vice: “McEdifice Returns: Chapter Awards”.

“Ahem, here is what I was just writing:

Dear Mr or Mrs Pulitzer, Hello. As you may know I am one of the best writers in the world. You may have already read some parts of my latest book “McEdifice Returns” a psychological drama about one man’s struggles to come to terms with his past.

I guess you are probably thinking ‘We’d love to give Timothy one of our Pulitzer Prizes but people might think it is just a way of making our prize look more popular and relevant with the cool kids’. Fear not! That is exactly the right kind of move that will help the sadly faded and increasingly irrelevant Pulitzer Prize strike a chord with modern audiences who frankly a sick of all that liberal clap-trap and just want some good old fashioned entertainment.

So I hereby give you permission to award me a Pulitzer.

Yours,

Timothy the Talking Cat

PS This is like totally a nomination so you’ll understand that from now on I’ll be saying ‘The Pulitzer Prize nominated author Timothy the Talking Cat’. That’s great free publicity for your prize. No need to thank me – just trying to help you out.

“Hmmm, I see you have also written similar letters to ‘Mr Oscar and your friend Tony’ as well as ‘Ms or Mr Grammy'”

(18) MARVEL’S MULTIPLE AVENGERS. This cover art just jumps off the screen.

Avengers: Disassemble! The epic weekly takeover continues this February when Kim Jacinto takes the reigns to draw the second month of Marvel’s biggest team adventure, and Marvel is excited to reveal the covers for issues #679 – #682 of AVENGERS: NO SURRENDER by Mark Brooks.

“In month two of NO SURRENDER, the rubber hits the road as we learn what’s really going on and who is behind it,” says SVP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. “A couple different Avengers make the supreme sacrifice, the action grows ever more intense—and the stage is set for the return of a major player in the Marvel line-up of stars! Oh, and the origin of Voyager!”

Co-written by Mark Waid, Al Ewing and Jim Zub with art by Pepe Larraz, Kim Jacinto and Paco Medina, AVENGERS: NO SURRENDER unites the casts and creative teams of three titles into one weekly book of exciting action. It all starts with AVENGERS #675 this January, when the teams of THE AVENGERS, UNCANNY AVENGERS, and U.S. AVENGERS come together in a story as exciting and powerful as the Marvel Universe itself.

(19) FASHION JUSTICE. Ashley Boucher, in “‘Justice League’ Amazonian Bikinis Have Twitter in Uproar: ‘Men Ruin Everything’” in The Wrap, says that there are many tweets complaining that the Amazons in Justice League wear bikinis while those in Wonder Woman didn’t.

The costumes worn by the Amazon women are noticeably different than they were in “Wonder Woman,” and viewers are afire online with discussions about how the change represents differences in the male and female gaze.

In “Wonder Woman,” directed by Patty Jenkins, the costumes were designed by Lindy Hemming, and covered the Amazons’ torsos with armor. In “Justice League,” directed by Zach Snyder, the costumes were designed by Michael Wilkinson. And while Wilkinson’s outfits keep a similar Gladiator vibe, they feature small bra tops and bottoms that some say more closely resemble bikinis than what you’d want to wear into battle.

 

(20) HISTORIC HOOCH. Back when the Little Old Winemaker was young: “‘World’s oldest wine’ found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia”.

Scientists say 8,000-year-old pottery fragments have revealed the earliest evidence of grape wine-making.

The earthenware jars containing residual wine compounds were found in two sites south of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, researchers said.

Some of the jars bore images of grape clusters and a man dancing.

Previously, the earliest evidence of wine-making was from pottery dating from about 7,000 years ago found in north-western Iran.

(21) COST CUTTING. Darth Vader has been discounted: “Star Wars game in U-turn after player anger”.

Games publisher EA has changed a rule in its Star Wars Battlefront II video game after a huge backlash.

During the game, players have to obtain credits – either by buying them or through long hours of game play – to unlock popular characters including Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Many players said it was unfair as the gaming required worked out at around 40 hours per character, unless they paid.

EA says the number of credits required will now be reduced by 75%.

“Unlocking a hero is a great accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have fun earning,” said executive producer John Wasilczyk from the developer Dice, in a statement.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Dave Doering, David K.M.Klaus, Chip Hitchcock, rcade, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

38 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/14/17 The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Scrollbar And The Pixels From Mars

  1. (2) Sensible Windycon chair is sensible. Allowing more time for building the program is a good idea. They will get a better program. The main thing is having titles and descriptions reviewed by people who a) have some experience with convention programming and know the common pitfalls, b) are not massively sleep-deprived, and c) whose eyes are not glazed over from having looked at the same titles and descriptions a thousand times already.

  2. (1) PRO TIP FROM SFWA. Hahaha, nice. 🙂

    Oh, but wait, some rando in SFWA told whatshisface it was okay! ::eyeroll::

  3. (2) Good response, as far as I can tell. Personally, I wouldn’t have pulled the programme description from the online program. Any damage done is done now, all they’re doing is hurting the history.

    (13) & (14) While I do admire some of the creativity that goes into this, I also think that the Internet has made it far too easy for fun-among-friends or fun-for-a-limited-time items to become far too entrenched. Boaty McBoatface is just another expression of the same thing. Call it the clown face of the same thing that enables #MeToo.

    (19) What were they thinking?!? And I’m not thinking about the Wonder Woman costume designers.

  4. Dark Vader is OK, but not really all that exciting. Or indeed especially dark. I’d have kept the name for a porter.

    One of my friends co-owns a local brewery with one of his offerings being Luke Piehawker, which might or might not be a Star wars reference. Nice if a bit sweet for my taste.

  5. 20) Man does love his alcohol. I’ve heard it argued that Civilization is a method of man getting the economic and social capacity to make alcohol. I’ve heard worse theories…

  6. @NickPheas

    Yeah, it was a fairly ordinary red, quite drinkable but nothing special. I’m not a fan of the really black stuff and was that’s exactly what I was expecting with that name, so I was quite happy to be getting something I could drink even though it wasn’t really in theme.

  7. Greg Hullender on November 15, 2017 at 5:45 am said:

    “I am your lager, Luke.”

    Maybe not as dark as we thought . . .

    Well, he *did* end up on the light side by the end of the trilogy, so.

  8. @ Ingvar

    “Have you ever heard this catchy little ditty called Daisy Daisy? It goes a little like this….”

  9. 21) This is pretty significant. EA is notorious for ignoring fans and monetizing every last inch of every game they or their partners produce. Coming out before a new film installment and including characters from TFA and Rogue One, Battlefront 2 should be the top selling game of the year without any effort. I’ve dug around in a few communities and the word is that pre-order cancellations were immense, to the point that some EB Games stores were cutting their product orders in half or more for launch. Huge alarm bells involved…

  10. The more of the prequel ideas I see for LOTR on Amazon the more I’m disappointed that some of them aren’t real as I’d watch them.

    21 – Good on EA for making the change, but it’s a shame that they and other game companies are taking the feedback loop techniques of mobile games and forcing it into their full priced console releases. Even with this update there’s still the loot boxes that unlock content like randomized slot machines. Spend in game currency and maybe get something you want for your class, and if you don’t get it you can spend real life currency to keep trying.

  11. (I think I tried to edit for a typo and instead deleted the whole thing? I’ve reloaded a couple times, and it’s gone, so I’m reposting. Really sorry if it then shows up twice. I’m not having a technology morning.)

    1) I want to know how many votes he got. Strongly suspect one, cast by him.

    2) That’s a sincere apology with practical, doable steps. Well done, Windycon! I’d say they don’t completely need the titles to stand alone, if the descriptions were clear (I’ve seen lots of panels with silly titles and then long descriptions to say what it’s actually about). However, I guess there’s no harm in both.

    13) This is all getting rather silly. Can we just do the Silmarillion or something?

    19) Well, I mean I wasn’t going to see it anyway? (No theatre where I am, and not making a trip to town until spring.) But given that if I were seeing it, it’d be almost entirely for the Amazons, this is putting a major dent in my DVD enthusiasm.

    Anyone else reading The Bloodprint by Ausma Zehanat Khan? I’m most of the way through, and it’s a fun (if a little pulpy) sword and sorcery romp along the silk road. I’ll probably stick with this series.

  12. Maybe I’m blinded by sentimentality or something, but I’d rather not see Tolkien’s work screwed around with by the entertainment industry any more than it already has been. (I mainly liked Jackson’s trilogy of LOTR movies but not “The Hobbit”.) So I’m unlikely to watch any “prequels” or other Tolkien-based material that comes out in the future.

  13. Interesting re 12-14: Christopher Tolkien has resigned from the Tolkien Estate.
    Given that he wasn’t a fan of featuring his father’s work using new fangled technologies like film and TV, there’s an obvious connection with them now being prepared to sell TV rights and potentially allow control of the canon out of their hands.

  14. (15) “Dark Vader” is very close to Dark Vador, which since 1977 has been the name of the movie character in France – presumably to make pronunciation unambiguous. See http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/1216/Darth-Vader-or-Dark-Vador-France-gives-Star-Wars-a-Gallic-twist.

    Chip Hitchcock: The NPR list didn’t include what I think would be an obvious spin-off: A singer-songwriter competition show in which contestants are given, say, an hour to craft a song (with a melody – no raps) from at least three stanzas of any song in LOTR. Both individual and group brackets, single or double elimination. Extra credit for fanciful costumes while performing.

  15. (4) Ugh.

    (5) Does that film have a cult following or something? I remember it being a spectacular flop that was loved by neither critics nor audiences.

    (19) Such a bad decision, and especially given how much the Amazons in WW were lauded precisely for not being this.

    (21) EA is trash, and I’m glad they caved on this.

  16. I am not reading The Bloodprint. But based on that description, I think I probably should be.

  17. (19) Well, I don’t know if I was particularly keen on seeing Justice League anyway, so this may be the tipping point.

    Seriously, have these people never heard of the simple concept of established canon and continuity? Wonder Woman came first (as far as the Amazons are concerned) and their armor got quite a bit of praise. So why would Snyder et al want to go screwing around with it?

    (This is a rhetorical question obviously; I know the answer to that. But if I was Patty Jenkins and Lindy Hemmings, I would be pissed.)

  18. @Joe H, it does deal with some serious themes around oppression of women and imperialism, and the author could have filed the serial numbers off the real world a little harder, but for the most part I’m delighted at how it’s Warrior Mages Hunt McGuffin. The literature of my youth!

  19. The Postman cost about $80 million to produce and earned maybe $18 million domestically. Unless there’s a big audience for it somewhere else in the world, I can’t see it being anything but a huge flop.

    My rule of thumb used to be if it were readily available on DVD at a big box store then it might have some cult following. I can’t remember seeing it for sale in the recent years.

    People tweeting that Texans may now carry swords (or machetes) over 5.5 inches in public places. (A lot of restrictions apply.) I look forward to public duels of honor at dawn with accompanying seconds.

  20. Seriously, have these people never heard of the simple concept of established canon and continuity?

    Between comic reboots and Star Trek silliness, they’ve learned that continuity doesn’t matter to a majority of the viewing public.

  21. Karl-Johan Norén on November 14, 2017 at 11:44 pm said:

    (19) What were they thinking?!? And I’m not thinking about the Wonder Woman costume designers.

    If you have to ask that, you clearly don’t understand which “brain” was doing the “thinking”. Hint: it’s the lower one. 🙂

    (17) Timothy should note that becoming an actual “Pulitzer nominee” is exactly as hard as becoming a “Hugo nominee”. The price is even surprisingly comparable: $50 US.

    Becoming a “Nebula nominee” is a little harder, since you have to meet SFWA’s membership requirements first (at least one* work published in a qualifying market), but if you want to be able to call yourself a “nominee”, chances are good that you’re already at least partway to meeting that requirement.

    * Associate members, who only need one qualifying short work, are eligible to nominate–though not to vote. Full members need one novel or three short works, but we’re only discussing nominations here.

  22. Was just at Windycon and while I missed most of the panel stuff, my experience with them is the same as a lot of cons—good people, mean well, frequently frazzled. Glad they’re taking concrete steps here.

    The Nebula nominee Thing is…uh…yeah. In the immortal words of the King of All Cosmos, “My, the earth certainly is full of things!”

  23. @Jack Lint: another test of cult status is how much fanfic you can find. There’s only 3 entries on Ao3, but one is Russian and another is a podfic of the third.

  24. @Jamoche I hadn’t thought of fanfic just because that’s not my thing, but yeah that works.

    Other cult status tests:

    – Midnight screenings of movie (None that I recall.)
    – Popular gifs (Nope.)
    – Tumblr posts (Quick search says no.)
    – Selling for a lot on eBay. (Not really.)
    – Mentioned on The Simpsons (Yes, but not in a good way.)

  25. Not strictly genre-related, but my SJW credentials & I just finished watching Kedi, a documentary about street cats in Istanbul, which movie I highly recommend if you need to be reminded that not everything is terrible.

  26. @gottacook: judging a musical contest would be difficult; Swann wrote a song cycle a long time ago and I suspect there’s been work published since then, so they’d have to determine whether the music was original enough. And NPR was dealing entirely with fictions — but there’s probably a raft of “reality” possibilities as well.

    @19: The BBC notices — but at least one actress says the costumes are easier to work in. (Maybe somebody should have complained to the costume designer — chafing armor would be a problem for real warriors.)

  27. Joe H. on November 15, 2017 at 5:09 pm said:
    Not strictly genre-related, but my SJW credentials & I just finished watching Kedi, a documentary about street cats in Istanbul, which movie I highly recommend if you need to be reminded that not everything is terrible.

    It’s a great movie. I can confirm that it’s pretty accurate and we do have good relations with our feline overlords here.

Comments are closed.