Pixel Scroll 3/31/18 It’s An Honor Just To Be Pixelated

(1) FAREWELL, PORNOKITSCH. Yesterday Anne Perry and Jared Shurin signed off their long-running sff blog: “Pornokitsch: The Exit Interview”. The existing content will remain online for some time to come.

Anne: …As you say above, Pornokitsch is what we wanted it to be: a home for thoughtful, fun (and funny) essays about… whatever. Back when it was just the two of us writing for the site, that’s what we did. And it’s been a pleasure to watch the site bloom with much, much more of that…

By and large, I’m happy to say that I think I wrote more or less exactly what I wanted to write for the site. There are a few reviews I would do differently now, if I could go back in time. But we  founded Pornokitsch as a way of talking about the pop culture we love with the humour and intelligence we wished to see in those conversations, and at the end of the day, I think we – and our many brilliant contributors over the years – have done just that.

Jared: On that note… We’ve mentioned our amazing contributors: words and art, regular and guest, past and present. We owe them a huge, huge thanks for all of their hard work and help and patience. Thank you all.

Anne: We owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks also to all the publishers – editors, marketers and publicists – who offered us books to review and put quotes from us on the actual books, zomg. And, finally, thanks also to our tolerant and very supportive families, enthusiastic friends and – most of all – our readers over the years.

For those arriving too late, they created a kind of postmortem FAQ on their “Bye!” page.

How can I check if you verbally flensed my favourite piece of pop culture? I need know whether or not I should hate you forever.

An index of features and reviews can be found here.

Is there some Pornokitsch memorabilia that I could cherish forever?

Nope. Buy one of our contributor’s books instead.

(2) PUPPY FREE. I like how this was the fifth point in John Scalzi’s “Thoughts On This Year’s Hugo Finalist Ballot” at Whatever.

  1. To get ahead of a question I know someone will ask, no, there’s not any “puppy” nonsense this year. It appears the changes in nominating finalists to reduce slating had their intended effect, and also, the various puppies appear to have lost interest slamming their heads into this particular wall. This makes sense as it provided no benefit to any of them, damaged the reputations and careers of several, and succeeded only in making their rank and file waste a lot of time and effort (and money). They’ve gone off to make their own awards and/or to bother other media, which is probably a better use of their time. There was an attempt by a cadre of second-wave wannabe types to replicate slating this year, but that unsurprisingly came to naught.

In its stead are excellent stories and people, all of which and whom got on to the ballot on the strength of their work. Which is as it should be.

(3) IT’S BEEN AWHILE. Piet Nel said on Facebook about Sarah Pinsker’s “Wind Will Rove” (from Asimov’s, September/October 2017), a Best Novelette Hugo finalist —

This is the first time since 2013 that a story from Asimov’s has made the final ballot of the Hugos.

(4) NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER. J.R.R. Tolkien on Elvish:

(5) GRIMOIRES. In the Horror Writers Association Newsletter, Lawrence Berry discusses a source of “Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them)”.

Do genuinely forbidden, occult treatises exist in the modern world?

Yes, definitely.

Who has them and how do I get a look?

The great libraries of the world, private antiquarian collectors, and the Vatican’s Secret Archives all house works on satanism and witchcraft. An interested party would need to earn scholar’s credentials or have someone very good at creating false identities counterfeit them. A wide and nimble knowledge of Olde English, Middle English, Latin, Arabic, ancient German and Italian, along with gifted insight into the science of cryptography would help—a person could be burned at the stake for the sin of heresy in more centuries than not and grimoires were often written in code. It would also be wise to attain a master’s knowledge of very old books themselves—the paper they were penned on, the material used to construct the covers, the ink used in the illuminated borders and illustrations, the quality and flow of period quills and brushes. Authentic editions, with provenance, sell for a great price, and forgeries are rampant. An equally lavish fee is charged for a single reading of the rarest, genuine, and powerful spell-books.

(6) SFF AUTHORS ON GENDER PANEL IN HONG KONG. In conjunction with the Melon Conference 2, the University of Hong Kong recently held a seminar on Gender in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Mlex interviewed an attendee about what the panelists had to say in “Hong Kong Science Fiction Scene – Gender in SFF” for Yunchtime.

To find out more about the Hong Kong Science Fiction and Fantasy scene, Yunchtime reached out to Dr. Christine Yi Lai Luk, at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Univeristy of Hong Kong, who attended the panel discussion….

YUNCHTIME: How did the seminar and panel discussion live up to the proposed topic?

LUK: There is plenty of room for improvement, I’d say. It is a panel of three women SF writers, but they did not explore “the world of women in SF” as advertised in the above description. It is more appropriate to call the seminar “women/gender and SF” because it is just three women talking about their SF work.

YUNCHTIME: How about the panelists, can you describe briefly some of their thoughts or comments?

LUK: I think Becky Chambers‘ views were the most relevant to the proposed topic. Chambers revealed how she was drawn into the world of SF from an early age onward. Raised in a space science-heavy family (her father is a rocket engineer and her mother an astrobiologist), she was introduced to SF and space fantasy movies as early as she could remember.

Her favorite SF novel of all time is “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula LeGuin (a lot of nods from the audience as the name was dropped). She said writing SF gives her confidence as she is an introvert.

I think her experience reflects a certain gender norm in the SF realm: Unlike the blondy sorority type of girls, girls who are into SF are perceived as shy and nerdy, and incapable of drawing the attention from the opposite sex (except maybe from Wookie-dressed superfans).

Tang Fei does not write in English, only in Chinese. Her Chinese works are translated into English and they draw attention in the English-speaking world partly because her works are banned in China. Actually, Tang Fei is a pen name.

Because the conference was being held entirely in English and due to the language barrier, Tang Fei’s sharing was not effective as we could have hoped. She only managed to say a few sentences in English (with a very soft voice). Then, during the Q&A, she was relying on the organizer, Nicole Huang, to act as her interpreter.

The main thing I caught from Tang Fei is that in the future, human beings will exist in disembodied form and thus the only “gender” issue for SF writers to engage in will be purely on the psychological aspect.

Zen Cho talked about her upbringing in Malaysia and her identity as an English-speaking Hokkien among mainstream Malays. She did not identify herself as a SF writer, but as a fantasy writer. I don’t think she has said anything remotely relevant to gender.

(7) STEELE AND SF IN HONG KONG. Mlex also covered “Hong Kong Science Fiction Scene – Allen Steele on the Melon Conference 2018” for Yunchtime.

YUNCHTIME: What is your impression of Fritz Demoupolis? Is he a big SFF fan? Demoupolis is a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist, do you think he sees a business opportunity for the SFF genre in Hong Kong and China?

STEELE: Fritz Demopoulos is an interesting fellow … a California-born ex-pat who came to Hong Kong about 20 years ago and has stayed to make his fortune. My brother-in-law did much the same thing, so I’m familiar with this sort of entrepreneurship. He’s most definitely a SF fan. He discovered the genre through finding his father’s beat-up copy of Asimov’s Foundation and has been reading SF ever since. He knows the field, is familiar with major authors both old and new, loves the same movies and TV shows the rest of us do, and overall is an example of a highly-successful businessman who also happens to be something of a geek.

Melon is Fritz’s brainchild — he’d have to explain to you why he gave it that name — and it’s unique among SF gatherings. As I said, it’s not a con in the conventional sense — yes, that’s a deliberate pun; stop groaning — but rather a symposium that’s sort of academic without being stuffy or pretentious. The people Fritz invited to be speakers were SF writers — a few Americans like myself, but mainly young Asian authors— scientists from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and a number of Hong Kong-based entrepreneurs working in both emerging technologies like AI and also mass media

(8) HAWKING OBSEQUIES. Henry Nicholls, in the Reuters story “Friends, Family, Public Flock To Funeral of Physicist Stephen Hawking,” says that Hawking’s coffin had white “Universe” lilies and white “Polar Star” roses and a “space music” composition called “Beyond The Night Sky” was played.

The 76-year-old scientist was mourned by his children Robert, Lucy and Timothy, joined by guests including playwright Alan Bennett, businessman Elon Musk and model Lily Cole.

Eddie Redmayne, the actor who played Professor Hawking in the 2014 film “The Theory of Everything” was one of the readers in the ceremony and Felicity Jones, who played his wife, Jane Hawking in the film also attended the service.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 31, 1840 — President Van Buren issued executive order establishing 10-hour workday for federal employees.
  • March 31, 1987 Max Headroom aired on TV.
  • March 31, 1995 Tank Girl debuted in theaters.
  • March 31, 1999 The Matrix premiered.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) WHICH COMES FIRST? THE PRESS RELEASE. In “The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens” the Washington Post says, “Their pampered birds wear diapers and have personal chefs — but lay the finest eggs tech money can buy.”

…In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock (spending as much as $20,000 for high-tech coops). By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own.

Like any successful start-up, broods aren’t built so much as reverse engineered. Decisions about breed selection are resolved by using engineering matrices and spreadsheets that capture “YoY growth.” Some chicken owners talk about their increasingly extravagant birds like software updates, referring to them as “Gen 1,” “Gen 2,” “Gen 3” and so on. They keep the chicken brokers of the region busy finding ever more novel birds.

“At Amazon, whenever we build anything we write the press release first and decide what we want the end to be and I bring the same mentality to the backyard chickens,” said Ken Price, the director of Amazon Go, who spent a decade in San Francisco before moving to Seattle. Price, 49, has had six chickens over the past eight years and is already “succession planning” for his next “refresh.”

(12) ENERGIES IMAGINED. In “Fuelling the Future” on Aeon, Aberstywyth University historian Iwan Rhys Morus analyzes Robert A. Heinlein’s 1940 story “Let There Be Light” in an analysis of how sf writers created stories about new power sources.

Heinlein needed the sunscreens to make his future work; that is, to answer the problem of how technological culture might flourish in a world of diminishing resources. This was not a new problem, even in 1940, and it is an increasingly pressing one now. The question of what is going to fuel the future has never been more urgent. Is it going to be wind or wave power? Will fuel cells, solar panels or even the holy grail of fusion be the answer to our problems? Or are we going to frack ourselves into oblivion? If we want to better understand how we speculate about future energy now, then we need to appreciate the extent to which those speculations have a history, and that their history (from the early Victorian period on) contains such fictions as Heinlein’s story as often as, and frequently mixed in with, highly technical debates about the characteristics and requirements of different modes of energy production and consumption.

(13) RUSS’ INFLUENCE. The Baffler’s Jessa Crispin, in “No Mothers, No Daughters”, an excerpt from her introduction to a new edition of Joanna Russ’s How to Supress Women’s Writing, says “I came at Russ sideways…seeing her name-checked by the punk rock chicks who created their own culture through zines an mix tapes when they failed to see themselves through thee wider culture.”

Reading Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, I wondered, what the hell is it going to take? For decades we have had these types of critiques. We have had books and lectures and personal essays and statistics and scientific studies about unconscious bias. And yet still we have critics like Jonathan Franzen speculating on whether Edith Wharton’s physical beauty (or lack of it, as is his assessment of her face and body) affected her writing, we have a literary culture that is still dominated by one small segment of the population, we have a sense that every significant contribution to the world of letters was made by the heterosexual white man—and that sense is reinforced in the education system, in the history books, and in the visible world.

This complaint wasn’t even exactly fresh territory when Russ wrote her book, which I do not say to diminish her accomplishment. It is always an act of bravery to stand up to say these things, to risk being thought of as ungrateful. Your small pile of crumbs can always get smaller.

But what is it going to take to break apart these rigidities? Russ’s book is a formidable attempt. It is angry without being self-righteous, it is thorough without being exhausting, and it is serious without being devoid of a sense of humor. But it was published over thirty years ago, in 1983, and there’s not an enormous difference between the world she describes and the one we currently inhabit.

(14) THE MARCHING GENIUSES: At Featured Futures, Jason’s prepared another list of bright literary lights in the Summation: March 2018

The fifteen noted stories (nine recommended) come from the 112 (of about 560,000 words) that I’ve read with a publication date between February 26 and March 31. The printzines were decent, with Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF and Interzone (the latter reviewed for Tangent) being represented by more than one story from their bi-monthly issues. On the web, Lightspeed has two from just this month while Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash
Fiction Online
, and Nature also make appearances.

(15) JDA SIGHTING. Kilroy was there.

Or as JDA put it in his press release (!) –

Today was a step forward for the cviil rights of conservative-libertarians in SF/F, as I attended the Hugo Award Nomination ceremony without harassment from the Worldcon 2018 staff. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am 1. not disruptive at Worldcon events — or any convention, as FogCon proved and 2. that the discrimination I face from them was for reasons other than my being a danger to any guests (since I am clearly not, and they clearly didn’t think I was here).

The Worldcon Staff was uninviting — a nearly all white group I might add — not seeming to want to have a Hispanic author in their presence. It is something we will have to overcome in fandom together in time.

(16) GRAND THEFT LUNCH. SFF cannot keep up with stories like this from the real world!!!! Begin here —

(17) IN CHARACTER. Jeff Goldblum in his Thor: Ragnarok character in a short film “Grandmaster Moves To Earth.” From 2017, but it’s news to me!

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Mlex, Chip Hitchcock, John  King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Jason, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

86 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/31/18 It’s An Honor Just To Be Pixelated

  1. Now JDA’s calling himself according to his user name above ‘The Leading Hispanic’ which poses a metaquestion as to leading Hispanic What? Pain in the Ass? One most likely to piss people off? And a second question comes to mind of how he came to be this? Self-nominated? Picked so by friends and lovers? It does make a difference as to how these questions are answered.

    I’m feeling snarky today as my head trauma decided not only gave a spike in my now nearly nine month old headache for most of the past eight hours but also decided I couldn’t hear anything in my left ear. And JDA acting like he’s important and deserves he be noticed cerataining deserves some of that snark

  2. @Mark (Kitteh): “I wonder if anyone will dip their toes into selling individual stories from back issues? I suspect that fear of eroding subscriber numbers will prevent anyone taking that step.”

    My hope and my fear.

    @Mark (Kitteh), part 2: Subscriptions are (nearly?) always cheaper for periodicals. Referring to it as a mark-up for single issues is a new one on me, though. I realize it may seem like “six of one, half a dozen of the other,” but it feels different to me, especially with cover price being on most periodicals. Anyway, not very important; I just mentally tripped over how you talked about the single issue pricing.

    You have me wondering #1 why Kindle single issues are a little cheaper than Weightless (no discount listed at Amazon; it’s just a different price) when the year subscription is the same at Weightless, and #2 how the actual print cover price compares to digital (a significant difference would make me go “WTH?!”).

    @Greg Hullender: Thanks, I’d forgotten about RSR’s info about obtaining single issues.

    Also, I need to remember libraries in the future for this; they may have a digital subscription or even print copies near me.

  3. Breaking news! There’s now a 24-hour streaming service that plays mechanical music: Player pianos, music boxes, orchestrions, street organs, and many more. Right now, I’m hearing a band organ play “My Way.”

    https://mechanicalmusicradio.weebly.com

    Those who hang upon my every word may have by now deduced that I’m interested in mechanical music and hang out at the Mechanical Music Digest bulletin board (mostly just reading quietly at home). If you think SF fandom is graying, well, maybe it is, but so is mechanical music fandom, where I keep seeing notices that some well-loved collector has passed on, and an another extensive collection is being sold for a song (ouch) by the family of the deceased. I’ve long believed that steampunks should find the field interesting, what with the anachronistic technology, the gears, belts, compressed air, and the music itself.

    I would love to see Paul Bellamy succeed with this. He’s working on crowdfunding this project (which went live this morning, in England) to the tune (sorry) of £2000/year. I’ve sent the link and a blurb to BoingBoing in hopes of a little publicity for this fellow I don’t even know.

  4. @Adam Rakunas: Thanks for the rec. I’ll probably have to sample the ebook to get a feel for the story. So is it two main characters, alternating points of view?

    Luke Daniels (the narrator in the sample) also narrated Rachel Aaron’s “The Legend of Eli Monpress” series, which I highly recommend! He’s very good and Aaron’s series (so far, 2 books in) is awesome. I trust his narration.

    I sampled Xe Sands (the other narrator) from some other random book she did. She sounded fine, but several reviews say her narration is mumbly/unclear at times. What did you think? She sounds familiar, but looking at the 60 SFF books she’s narrated, I don’t see anything I’ve heard. Maybe she just has “one of those voices” that seems familiar.

    (Odd Audible.com glitch: When not signed in, I see two versions, with different prices; when signed in, I only see the one-minute-longer version. Unimportant, just weird. I’ve seen double listings before, but never realized it could be connected to signed in/not signed in.)

  5. @Kendall: Even better: the two narrators do multiple characters, and sometimes they’ll take turns doing the same, depending on how the point of view has shifted. The characters’ voices and the narrators’ skill make the whole thing work beautifully.

    Also, I listen to audiobooks at 1.25x speed, which made Sands’s portions seem a little mumbled. It worked for me, but I’m also impatient.

  6. (6) I… just can’t figure out Lux in that interview – it’s all about what the talk isn’t, instead of what it is. Is the flaw in the seminar or Lux’s expectations?

  7. @Jon

    So you get to have “freedom of speech” without consequences, while simultaneously denying Worldcon and denying fandom freedom of association?

    I don’t effing think so.

  8. @Adam —

    I finished the audiobook of Kevin Hearne’s A PLAGUE OF GIANTS the other day. It was excellent. The twin narrators switched voices with ease and flow and brought the entire first-person narrative to brilliant life. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and get the audiobook.

    Thanks for that. I got tired of the Iron Druid books, but I did enjoy the first few, and I was hoping this new effort would be good.

    As for Luke Daniels — I like him for contemporary UF-type stuff, and he did fine with the Eli Montpress books. I haven’t been too impressed with him doing heavier or more demanding things — more flowery language, accents, more voices, whatever. I personally don’t think he’s flexible enough for that sort of thing. He also did The Three-Body Problem, for instance, which could have been better.

    As for Xe Sands — I **think** I’ve listened to something by her before, but I don’t remember what!

  9. Another thing F&SF has is free back issues on Kindle Unlimited.
    Which… I mean, I’m happy for that, and I point it out whenever I think it might help people find back-issues. But it seems… oddly specific, somehow? Particularly at such a price gap, FREE issues vs. $9.

    I don’t even know. I love F&SF, and the moment you have a subscription, you’re golden, but I don’t feel like they’re making it easy for people to say, “Ooooh, I should totally subscribe!”.

  10. (Well, no; I tell a lie. Two years now they’ve had sales, selling annual subscriptions for a song. Those… those are pretty good, and I can usually get a few friends onboard to subscribe then 🙂 )

  11. I discovered a few months ago that the New York Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library both have e-periodical subscriptions that cover F&SF and Astounding. I imagine lots of other public library systems do, too.

  12. The Leading Hispanic Voice in Sockpuppet Accounts: to this day no one even has told me what I “intended” on violating so I can’t even correct the record

    You are well aware that you were banned because of your year-long campaign on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, and by e-mail to incessantly harass numerous SFF authors and reviewers — in which you persisted, and still persist, despite having been asked repeatedly to leave them alone — and because you made it clear that you intended to go to Worldcon in San Jose and engage in more of the same.

     
    The Leading Hispanic Voice in Sockpuppet Accounts: I am on the record saying I never intended to violate any rules several times

    Yes, and you are also on the record harassing many people, many times over the last 15 months. What do you think Worldcon is going to believe — the evidence they’ve seen with their own eyes, or what you tell them they should believe?

     
    The Leading Hispanic Voice in Sockpuppet Accounts: I, like everyone else, just want to be able to attend a convention and celebrate science fiction as a professional and fan

    Well, you should have thought about that before embarking on your massive harassment campaign. A great many people do not want to be forced to endure your unbelievably obnoxious behavior (#15 in this scroll being just one more in a string of now hundreds of incidents). You forced Worldcon to choose between a whole bunch of authors and fans who’ve behaved well, and you, someone who has repeateadly behaved horribly to all of those authors and fans. Worldcon’s choice should come as no surprise.

  13. @Leading Hispanic Sock Puppet:

    “Commence Operation: Troll the Shit Out Of SJW Sci-Fi Authors On Twitter.”

    ‘Nuff said.

  14. “The Fifth time I didn’t File it, but this time I File it, and I can’t deny the fact that you Scroll me, you really Scroll me!”

  15. Swearing at me continuously is a bad look, Steve. Let’s stop with that kind of thing.

    And once again, Jon clutches his pearls and objects to the way the comment is phrased, rather than dealing with the point itself.

    Sounds about right.

  16. @ Kip W: Eggs came first, because reptiles lay eggs and birds split off from reptiles higher up the evolutionary tree.

    @ Adam R: Is the new Hearne any better than the Iron Druid stuff? I bounced hard off that after 3 chapters, but it’s been a while and I’m willing to think that his writing and characters might have improved since then.

  17. Doctor Science on April 1, 2018 at 10:19 am said:
    Wow. “Government … shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” That was the job of Thomas Jefferson and the other enslavers, apparently.

  18. @kendall: And I’m amazed no one called her out on it, or that HR didn’t discipline her regardless of what the employee said. What a jerk (her) and what a freaking mystery.

    Bear in mind we’re only seeing part of the story here. Since neither HR or the guy took action, I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation ranging from the guy did something to her earlier, to they had been a couple and broke up.

    11). My tolerance for Silicon Valley Techbros declines again. The upshot is probably chickens will escape or be let go, and Mountain View will end up with wandering flocks of feral chickens.

  19. @Doctor Science

    Try not attempting to judge a person of the 18th century by our shared 21st century standards.

    The objective was always “a more perfect union” rather than an idealist pipe-dream.

    ETA: @JdA – I heard some very positive comments about your recent book on a MilSF podcast recently. Thought about giving it a try. And now this. Your PR campaign is not as effective as it might otherwise be.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick. – John Wayne

  20. @Rose Embolism re @11: Terry Pratchett wrote a story (“Hollywood Chickens”) like that; ISTM that the traffic in Silicon Valley is heavy enough that similarly strange results could be anticipated.s

  21. Dann: not sure why the American people would want to lick so many things. I mean ice cream cones, yes, but metal posts in winter?

    😉

  22. @ Dann
    “Try not attempting to judge a person of the 18th century by our shared 21st century standards.”
    No need. Jefferson did it himself at the time: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

  23. @ Dann
    “Try not attempting to judge a person of the 18th century by our shared 21st century standards.”

    Good thing that what was being done was holding a person of the 18th century up to that person’s own self-proclaimed standards and ideals, and finding the person lacking. (“Lacking” is politer than “self-servingly hypocritical”, right?) No 21st century standards required!

  24. @Contrarius: I’d sure be happier about subscribing to F&SF electronically if they hadn’t cancelled my Fictionwise subscription, and won’t let Kindle subscribers read the magazine on a Kindle for PC app.

  25. @Lenora Rose

    IKR! Apparently someone added frogs to the list of things in need of licking at some point. SMH….

    [mildly edited – erg]

    @Msb

    The most frequent motivation that I encounter for Doctor Science’s type of response is to undermine Jefferson’s role in creating the United States rather than to just criticize Jefferson. You are correct in that Jefferson knew he was falling short of his own ideals. Doc-Sci’s suggestion that Jefferson lacked self-awareness on this issue is factually challenged.

    @Lexica

    The word “lacking” would enjoy the benefit of being accurate.

    —-

    In general, Jefferson’s personal failure to live up to his philosophical ideals does nothing to diminish the value of those ideals. IMHO.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Delay is preferable to error. – Thomas Jefferson

  26. @Bruce —

    won’t let Kindle subscribers read the magazine on a Kindle for PC app.

    That’s not something F&SF is doing in particular. I have a bunch of Kindle magazine subscriptions, and I don’t think any of them can be read on my Kindle for Mac app — I haven’t tried all of them, but I know the ones I’ve tried can’t.

  27. Bruce A: F&SF electronically… won’t let Kindle subscribers read the magazine on a Kindle for PC app.

    As Contrarius says, that’s a function of Amazon’s magazines, I think, rather than something dictated by the magazine.

    I use Calibre and Apprentice Alf to make my F&SF and Asimov’s subs readable on my tablet. It breaks the linked TOC functionality, but I’m not really fussed by that.

  28. Re: Kindle magazines, I found a work-around to get them on my Paperwhite. I’m not sure if it would work for other Kindle apps (I never had a problem getting them on my iPad Kindle app). If I add them to a collection then I can go into the collection and click to download them onto the device, and read them just fine. I thought for ages I just couldn’t access them but this works. Maybe worth a shot?

  29. Meredith: Re: Kindle magazines, I found a work-around to get them on my Paperwhite.

    Aren’t the magazines supposed to be readable on any Kindle, including the Paperwhite?

  30. @JJ

    You would think! And yet Codex (my Paperwhite) doesn’t even appear as a download option on Amazon’s website, and they were entirely hidden on the device until I added them to a Collection.

  31. Re: Magazines…

    The Intergalactic Medicine Show will send your copy to your Kindle account with a push of a button. It is readable via the Kindle iOS app.

    Regards,
    Dann
    When I was 14, I thought, ‘How wonderful to be a science fiction writer. I’d like to do that.’ I have never lost touch with that ambitious 14-year-old, and I can’t help chuckling and thinking, ‘You did it, and you did it right.’ – Robert Silverberg

  32. @Rose Embolism: “Bear in mind we’re only seeing part of the story here.” [theories]

    Oh, definitely, and I read a couple of those theories. But while that may be why he didn’t do anything, IMHO HR, seeing the evidence themselves, should’ve done something very basic like told her not to touch people’s food. Their history is irrelevant to HR’s awareness of her going into the community fridge and throwing out his food. I guess food stuff’s a minor thing there.

    I’ve seen enough inappropriate food/shared-fridge stuff that it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine. IMHO you have to shut that stuff down firmly, or people just think the fridge is a free-for-all. The office isn’t a place for passive aggressiveness or random weirdness.

    Personally, I wouldn’t trust her to pass the salt. 😛 Gah, it’s like seeing 2 minutes of a soap opera and then the TV breaks. Where’s the rewind and what happened next and what channel was that on? 😉 I’ll never know (and that’s probably best) since clearly it I’m way too interested. I should watch more TV. . . .

    NOTE: I am only receiving occasional comment e-mails. 🙁

Comments are closed.