Far From the Barking Crowd 6/24

aka Canine of Gore

Today’s roundup brings you Vox Day, Peter Grant, John C. Wright, Cat Valente, Lis Carey, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Scott Kennedy, Camestros Felapton, Spacefaring Kitten, Mark Dennehy, and Fred Kiesche. (Title credit is due to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jane Dark and Rev. Bob.)

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Stage 2: snail mail” – June 24

Since Macmillan has yet to respond to any of the many emails it has received from hundreds of people, it’s now time to take things to Stage 2 of the Tor Books boycott. Mail a handwritten postcard or index card to each of the following three individuals informing them that as long as Irene Gallo is employed by Tor Books or Tor.com, you will not be purchasing any books published by Tor Books…..

It’s interesting, is it not, to contrast the way in which Walmart, Amazon, and Ebay were so quick to respond to totally nonexistent pressure to stop selling Confederate flag-related material with Macmillan’s non-response to receiving thousands of emails. This is the difference that SJW entryism makes. I’ve seen the BBC “react” and change its policies due to “outrage” that was later reported to be a grand total of 17 complaints.

 

Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man

“The latest development in the Tor boycott” – June 24

I’d be very grateful if those of my readers who support my position would please send letters requesting the above to the addressees Vox has listed on his blog.  That’ll add the weight of our numbers, and our more moderate requests, to those supporting his position.  The SJW’s are lumping all of us together, whether we agree with that or not – they’re equal-opportunity blamers – so why not use our combined strength in numbers?

 

John C. Wright

“Tor and the Volunteer Thought Police Department” – June 24

Whatever the solution, I am confident my loyal readers who do not want my sale numbers to fall, so that the accountants continue to regard my work as a legitimate source of revenue, so that I can continue to write books for you. Hence I am sure you would like to see a speedy resolution to this matter.

In that spirit, and without expressing my private opinion about the right and wrong in this matter, I urge my readers to write to Tor and Macmillan to express your gratitude for their many fine publications you have purchased over the years, and your disappointment in the events that seem to be hindering that comfortable relationship, and eroding buyer loyalty.

…. The spirit of compromise would suggest that if I become half-honest, Tor’s upper management could tell half as many lies with half as much vitriol and bigotry.

It is in that spirit of half-honesty that I am pretending to be neutral in this matter. In truth, I am not willing to compromise on the question of having readers who like my work. Indeed, I would like more readers who like my work even more.

Which means I would like to get back to my job.

To get back to my job requires Tor’s editors, Mr Feder, Miss Gallo, and Mr Nielsen Hayden, to get back to the their job of editing books, and cease moonlighting as the racial conformity officers, Christ-hating crusaders for Sodom, defenders of fainting feminist damsels in distress, public scolds, soapbox preachers, cheerleaders for the Two Minute Hate, riotmongers, and volunteer thought police department for the science fiction genre.

Or so I might say were I to express an opinion, which I will not. You, however, my beloved readers, patrons, and employers, whom I live to serve with fearless pen, I invite to express your opinion to the addresses given above.

 

Scott Kennedy in a comment to Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 24

If You Were a Dinosaur My Love is the #Benghazi! of the Sad Puppies

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“An interesting admission and EPH analysis” – June 24

One of the more amusing aspects of File 770 is the way that the commenters there are both a) absolutely obsessed with me and b) hell-bent on denying that I am of any import whatsoever. So they repeatedly claim that they just want to talk about books while mostly talking about the Puppies; in the meantime, nary a link in the round-up has anything to do with anything that isn’t related to me, the Puppies, or the Torlings dutifully doing exactly what I assumed they would do from the start, which is destroy the village in the name of saving it.

I find the EPH proposal to be very promising in this regard, as it is designed by the Torlings at Making Light to permit Tor Books to avoid being shut out in the future and ensure it at least one nomination per category every year. Of course, it will hand the Puppies the same fixed claim on the Hugos, which will gradually turn the award into a five-faction competition, perhaps four if we continue to build our numbers to the point where we can reliably lay claim to two nominations per category. It’s a very parliamentarian proposal.

It means that DAW and some of the other smaller publishers had better decide quickly whether they are better off fighting amongst themselves for the 2-3 open slots or fight the proposal, because if EPH passes, some of them will never see another Hugo nomination after 2017… unless the TORlings are willing to give up one of their own seats on what will effectively be the Hugo Security Council.

It’s telling that the Torlings would rather hand us the equivalent of a permanent nomination slot than compete directly with us. It demonstrates that for all of the bluster and splashing about of the small fry, the bigger fish in the little SF pond realize that the Puppies are a serious force with which they must expect to reckon indefinitely.

I am neither endorsing nor opposing EPH or any other rules changes this year. The reason is that when those rules changes implode the awards as I anticipate, I want all responsibility for the changes to be credited to those who proposed and voted for them.

 

nerds of a feather, flock together

“Assessing the Hugo Reform Proposals” – June 24

There are currently three proposals for Hugo reform that will be discussed at the Sasquan business meeting. None are in the ballpark of the comprehensive reforms I’ve suggested, but are at least attempts to rationalize and/or streamline areas of the Hugo process that are either inefficient, inexplicable or path dependent to older models of the SF/F field. Here I assess their merits…..

 

Metafilter

Discussion thread: “Saga of the Sagas”

This years proposed Worldcon rule changes included one introducing a new Hugo Award, for Best Saga: A work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in multiple volumes and consisting of at least 400,000 words of which the latest part was published in the previous calendar year. Initially the new award was coupled with the removal of an old one: Best Novellete. This raised some objections and that part of the proposal was removed.

 

 

Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog

“Hugo Reviewing – Fan Artist” – June 24

[Reviews all five nominees.]

In the end it’s a toss-up between Leggett and Schoenhuth for me. I like them both a lot, but I’m not sure how to decide between them. I’ll have to sleep on it. The other three are distantly behind, but none of them are so bad they don’t deserve an award. I think Aalto is on the bottom of my ballot, but the order of the other two is also up in the air for me.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Strange Horizons, Niall Harrison, editor-in-chief” – June 24

Strange Horizons is a 2015 Best Semiprozine Hugo nominee.

Strange Horizons publishes speculative fiction, poetry, reviews, interviews, and essays. It’s possible, though not easy or obvious, to get to 2014 material. Unfortunately, I bounced off every piece of fiction I tried to read in it. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily excellent fiction; it means only that I bounced off it. My only further comment is that it doesn’t have the visual attractiveness of some of the other nominees.

 

Camestros Felapton

“Let’s talk about puppy poo” – June 25

… Early on I ranked this as the worst overall of the Puppy Nominees but aside from that I haven’t  reviewed it here for two reasons.

  1. Initially I was cross that such obvious  rubbish had been nominated and I didn’t see much worth in an angry review.
  2. I decided not to spend my energies being mean to authors – even the weakest of writers us doing a brave thing by putting their writing out there. Additionally I thought Kary English made some good points here: http://karyenglish.com/2015/04/on-anger-power-and-displacement-in-the-hugos-part-one-of-possibly-several/

A couple if things have made me reconsider this. Firstly Wisdom from My Internet really us so genuinely  awful that it is important in considering  the legitimacy  of the Sad Puppy campaign. Secondly Michael Z Williamson’s recent social media ‘jokes’ on the Charleston murders indicate that  I needn’t be too concerned  about hurting anybody’s feelings. Having said that, this isn’t a revenge review – the issue us the work not the author and the author clearly must have a sufficiently  thick skin for me not to be too worried about inadvertently  offending him.

 

 

 

Bunglespleen and the Leg Sleeves

<http://bunglespleen.tumblr.com/tagged/ayn-rand/chrono>

We’re a post-new-wave punkabilly rock zydeco blog. And right now, we’re reading Hugo Award-winning novels.

“In retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake to turn Ayn Rand’s reanimated corpse into the galactic empress.”

—   Hyperion Shivered, Hugo winner 1973

#fake first lines#ayn rand#she leads them to glorious victory over the Slug Collective#but then her support of a completely unrestrained market leads to societal collapse and a lack of train service#capitalism

 

 

[Voodoo? Who do?]

778 thoughts on “Far From the Barking Crowd 6/24

  1. Brian Z

    …was a reference to the John C. Wright post titled “The Volunteer Thought Police Department,”…

    That wasn’t the title of his post Brian. The actual title is visible in the round-up.

    Also, we have been talking about books, as Gabriel has pointed out. There’s been a few in this thread alone – favourite YA book, and Favourite Zelazny. What’re yours?

  2. Gabriel F., Vox Day just mocked you for pretending that you are only talking about books when you mostly talk about him. Like others, I appreciate the conversation about books and I join in it, and the more we do that, the less of a point he will have. But if you complain that I’m out of line for simply replying to what other people have said recently, you aren’t helping your own case.

  3. @ Brian Z – Good to see you caught yourself before we-ing everywhere. Keep it up!

  4. @JJ I recommend to your attention John Kessel’s excellent essay “Creating the Innocent Killer”, now up on his website, if you haven’t read it, about _Ender’s Game_.

    For years that book bothered me; Kessel explained why, and it’s why I now view it, and Speaker for the Dead, as corrupt and dishonest books.

  5. snowcrash, what’s your point about the title? I’m not seeing it.

    Funny how instead of engaging with me about arguing for a YA category or discussing themes in Ender’s Game you choose to misrepresent my comment by pretending I said you aren’t talking about books and acting like I’m not interested in talking about them.

    RedWombat, you too, want to explain yourself?

  6. You noted in a comment on the last page that you’d said “we” and apologized for it. I’m praising you for catching it yourself and apologizing. Positive reinforcement is important!

    I’ve got a clicker around here somewhere…

  7. @Brian Z

    Vox Day just mocked you for pretending that you are only talking about books when you mostly talk about him.

    As one of the worst offenders in the “This one’s still got candy in!” skirmishes with Tank Marmot, I can tell you that, just skimming through this, we are not “mostly” talking about Vox Mustela or his ilk.

    We’ve been talking a lot about Sagas, a lot about EPH (thanks to you), and a lot about the books we love.*

    Indeed, I suspect (though I would have to count) that the loquacious Mr. Wright has gotten more column-inches this time around. Of course, he’s also the one over on Everyjoe who is trying to define “Leftist” and “Literature” in such a way as to make the following sentence true:

    “Leftist literature is literature only insofar as it is impure, that is, unleftist.”

    (Where he also presents the POV that confirms what we long suspected — any fiction with *subtexts* he views as coming from the Left is inherently message fiction, allowing us to dismiss once and for all any complaints of his about the subject.)

    * (WHich reminds me: Creatures of Light and Darkness for me, for Zelazny; I once got to play the part of Madrak in a reader’s theatre presentation.)

    ObSF: OK. We’ve talked about books. But, as has been frequently pointed out, short stories get short shrift. Five short stories that have stuck with people, or that they want to bring everyone else’s attention to.

    And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill’s Side, James Tiptree Jr, available online
    The Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule, Lucius Shepard
    Dogfight, Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
    Seventy-Two Letters, Ted Chiang, available online
    Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones, Samuel R. Delany

  8. “Reasons To Be Cheerful”, Greg Egan
    “Story Of Your Life”, Ted Chiang
    “The Screwfly Solution”, Raccoona Sheldon
    Going After Bobo“, Susan Palwick
    “The Martyr”, Poul Anderson

  9. Stevie on June 25, 2015 at 4:13 pm said:

    Nicole

    You really need to hang on to your senseofwande…

    *snrk* I think Hampus’s tunnel troll stole it. (Hi Hampus! 😀 )

    -~*~-

    Stevie on June 25, 2015 at 7:51 pm said:

    Be reasonable; if all you’ve got is a leg bone then that’s you use …

    You were LUCKY to have a leg bone. What wouldn’t we have given for a leg bone! All we got was a stick! And we had to wait for the tree it was on to grow first. And when we finally got it, it was soggy.

  10. Steven: Short stories that matter to me? Hmm….

    “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”, by Cordwainer Smith, for the sense of deep time and for the sense of cosmic-scale redemption. Much later, I started reading Teilhard de Chardin, and was delighted to find I had context for it.

    “The Call of Cthulhu”, by H.P. Lovecraft. Someday I’m going to do a non-racist overhaul of this. The framework, of unfolding illumination and horror, remains solid as a rock.

    “The Women Men Don’t See”, by James Tiptree Jr. One of the most powerful stories ever about a viewpoint that isn’t the author’s, and a gripping, sorrowful story about desperation.

    More as I think of them. (And I hope others will talk about what it is in their entries motivated them to include them.)

  11. Steve Schwartz,

    I endorse a YA category preferably chosen by YAs, but one Best Saga every 17 years is enough. I appreciate that you appreciate that I brought some EPH discussion over to File 770, and I’ve posted a couple questions about it that I’m still waiting for responses on (and waiting to hear about P J Evans’s slate of filkers hidden in the 1984 data!).

    Looking at your excellent list of five stories, I am reminded that while in the old days everybody could read The Hugo Winners, at this point the sheer volume of our shortfictional heritage is too great to demand newer readers find and devour it.

    I’m afraid my faith our ability to reach consensus on short stories took a hit in 2011 when Scalzi wrote “some might ask why I’m promoting my 1,000 word story about the day the yogurt took over for a Hugo, and the reason is because it has kind of grown on me, no pun intended” and it got 16 votes.

    But we should try. Perhaps the Jo Walton approach? Year by year, look at the actual Hugo Winners and create an ideal The Hugo Winners alongside it? It will be a lot of work!

  12. Brian Z on June 25, 2015 at 7:47 pm said:

    Of course he is one of the best. JJ didn’t say he deserves a Hugo for his other work. JJ said if he can make JCW’s writing readable he deserves flowers and a Hugo, so I wondered if he deserves it for his perspicacity or simply for roaming the land polishing bad prose like an editorial Robin Hood. Perhaps we’ll never know.

    Ah, so you’re just intentionally twisting words to mean things they don’t say again.

    David Hartwell is one of the best editors in the field. Tor pays him to do that work–and one of the authors they pay him to do it with is John C. Wright. Being an editorial Robin Hood is an idea you made up inside your own head, in your determination to mock and ridicule any and every piece of evidence that the Puppy worldview is simply not grounded in reality.

  13. Brian Z snowcrash, what’s your point about the title? I’m not seeing it. .

    Merely what was the actual title of Wright’s post vs what did you say the title of his post was.

    Funny how instead of engaging with me about arguing for a YA category or discussing themes in Ender’s Game you choose to misrepresent my comment by pretending I said you aren’t talking about books and acting like I’m not interested in talking about them

    Well, those (the YA category and Enders Game) are discussions that I have very limited interest in currently.

    Finally Brian, like I (and many others!) have said, you perpetually mininterpret and misattribute comments and points that others have made. You’re doing it again with regards to my comment. Go back up, read it, and ( if you choose to, and if they are topics that interest you) respond to what it said. Don’t give me more of your misleading interpretations of other peoples comments.

  14. Short stories!

    Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight by Ursula K. LeGuin has stuck with me for years.

    Anything from The Door In The Hedge collection by Robin Mckinley, though I particularly loved her Frog Prince and the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

    Pratchett’s short about the witches, The Sea And Little Fishes was a delight.

    For sheer fun, one of the Catfantastic collections contained a great little story called It Must Be Someplace and there was another stranger one about cats with color vision seeing weird spirits. It was very muddled and not exactly good, but it was so close to awesomely cool that I still remember it as a glorious failure.

    China Mieville did Familiar and one bizarre one about feral streets that appear and disappear and breed with each other that I loved. Think those were in LOOKING FOR JAKE.

  15. Lis Carey,

    JJ said something I thought was foolish so I said that I thought so. David Hartwell is simultaneously one of the best editors in the field and John C. Wright’s editor. In the interests of concluding this conversation, though, I’ll agree with you that Hartwell has neither shrewd insight into authorial talent nor a generous desire to give succor to the unredeemable, and simply punches the clock each morning to edit the manuscripts that the Torlings have placed on his desk.

  16. @Gabriel F —

    Several pages back, you referred to Bambi (the novel) as an American misery-fest. Though we do indulge, and perhaps overindulge, we’re not the ones who launched it on the world; it’s originally Austrian.

  17. @Bruce Baugh

    “(And I hope others will talk about what it is in their entries motivated them to include them.)”

    I will do this in the new roundup thread, since it will get more eyeballs there, and hopefully spark more discussion. 🙂

  18. snowcrash, if you say “why don’t you tell us about your favorite books?” and I say “for crying out loud, I just told you about the reasons why I like Ender’s Game like five minutes ago” and you say “but I’m not interested in Ender’s Game, and don’t give me any more of your misleading interpretations, so now, why don’t you tell us about your favorite books?” I don’t see any obvious reply. Sorry.

  19. Brian Z on June 25, 2015 at 9:55 pm said:
    Lis Carey,

    JJ said something I thought was foolish so I said that I thought so. David Hartwell is simultaneously one of the best editors in the field and John C. Wright’s editor. In the interests of concluding this conversation, though, I’ll agree with you that Hartwell has neither shrewd insight into authorial talent nor a generous desire to give succor to the unredeemable, and simply punches the clock each morning to edit the manuscripts that the Torlings have placed on his desk.

    Are you capable of leaving off playing the fool for even five seconds?

    You are not “agreeing” with anything I said, and I don’t believe you are so idiotic as to deserve the assumption that you don’t know it. You are, once again, resorting to your favorite tactic when you have no substantive response: pretending the other person said things they didn’t.

    David Hartwell is an exceptionally fine editor. Without insight into authorial talent, he wouldn’t be. Like most accomplished professionals, he gets paid for what he does, but is doing it for reasons beyond just the money. And only a person with a good deal of patience and generosity of spirit could keep working with someone who spews so much hate at normal, decent values shared by David and his colleagues.

    This makes him unlike Beale, who shares JCW’s hate-based values.

  20. Brian, you’re really bad at reading comments. First of all:

    snowcrash, if you say “why don’t you tell us about your favorite books?”

    I didn’t say that. Really. Go back and check.

    I say “for crying out loud, I just told you about the reasons why I like Ender’s Game like five minutes ago”

    You didn’t say that either. There was one post where you said it was a good book, and wondered about it’s themes and the authors experience.

    Stop misattributing what other people say. Stop misattributing what you say as well.

    So on this I guess I can take that Enders is your favourite YA. Favourite Zelazny?

  21. Lis Carey,

    Let me just say that yes, David Hartwell is an exceptionally fine editor, and in addition to his utter lack of perspicacity, his Scrooge-like stinginess with his editing skills, and his grueling exertion under the watchful eyes of the big bosses, I also agree that there is absolutely no chance in hell that he does it all for the money.

  22. @msb: “You mean there’s a 3rd fforde Draglonslayer book and I didn’t know about it?”

    That would be The Eye of Zoltar.

    @Jane_Dark:

    Hey, I mentioned The School for Good & Evil! #harrumph

    @Oneiros: “Thanks Matt. Now imagining a bored teenager queueing up behind Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, outside a door marked “Hugo Complaints Department””

    Heresy. This is a job for Shub-Niggurath!

    @zakur: (YA vs. NA)

    As a very general rule of thumb, I see the boundary between YA and NA as surprisingly sharp: graduation from high school. New Adult is more about college-age and twenty-something problems: sex, yes, but also alcohol, coping with roommates or housemates, getting a Real Job, and basically learning to handle adult responsibilities.

    Young Adult tends not to deal with any of that. I typically see a theme in YA that the protagonists are minors in a world run by adults, and while those adults may be obstacles, they also serve as a backstop if things get really out of control. The trope of Convincing The Adult is powerful; it shows the protagonist developing in maturity and being recognized as “growing up” to some degree.

    YA is about the journey to adulthood. NA is about learning how to handle adulthood once you’ve got it. They’re two very different kinds of stories. NA’s a lot more than “take a YA book and add sex.”

    As a worked example, consider Giles and Joyce in BtVS. I would argue that the show transitioned from YA to NA during or with the beginning of Season Four, despite the appearance of sexual complications before then. “The Body” really finalizes that transition; Joyce is no longer there to take care of The Mundane Things, and that’s Buffy’s job now. Adults have to cope with different challenges, to look beyond schoolwork and teen drama so they can get the bills paid.

  23. Lord of Light.

    That’s what I thought! It’s because of The Pun right? At least it must have contributed!

  24. “We mostly talk about books and Hugo things that aren’t Puppy-related” is not at all the same thing as “we never talk about the Puppies anymore” – therefore holding up a comment which mentions Puppy things as evidence that the first statement isn’t true is… Well. Not a great argument.

  25. Been lurking here since shortly after this year’s iteration of the puppy kerfuffle started. Last year I was jolted awake with the realization that a right-wing columnist with maxed out trolling skills, who I hadn’t thought about in years, was in the running for a Hugo, but this year… it really is an interesting year for the Hugos. I’ve been following this debacle since April or so. I read a lot of SFF but haven’t been active in any other way in fandom.

    That by way of intro… somehow the first subject that I felt the need to respond to is the quality (or lack thereof) of The Kingkiller Chronicles.

    The plotting is very fast-paced, the prose works without being too stilted (but then, I’ve read a lot more of JCW lately than I’d prefer, so maybe I’m giving Rothfuss too much credit). I initially read the first book and liked it up to a point. Was the first one the one with the fairy sex scene? If so, that’s when I almost bounced off the series, but I continued. Kvothe’s amazing awesomeness gets grating, definitely, but there seem to be some hints in book two that he’s maybe not so amazing as he (and everybody else, it seems) remembers. I’m not sure, though. Then, for some reason, I decided to read both books again. The second time through I started feeling Kvothe is almost certainly an unreliable narrator. Not sure why, though (this was several months back and my memory is terrible), and as another point of reference, I’d just finished re-reading “The Book of the New Sun”, so I may have been loading the Rothfuss’ text with my thoughts about Wolfe’s. I’m not sure I can recommend it to those who don’t like the sound of it, or who didn’t like their initial reading. That will be determined entirely by the ending, moreso than any series I can recall other than HP.

    Also, weirdly, the series reads like YA to me. Or more accurately, like something I would have loved when I was 12. When I was still waiting to find out I was some sort of Super Messiah, or maybe an orphan with dead Ninja parents who had passed me on to my current family before their death, or… something kind of like Kvothe.

    Lastly, it’s amazing the low amount of flaming on this site, even in the face of obvious trollery. I’ve never seen such patience on the Internet.

  26. BethZ – Clearly I need to re-read the McKinley books. I remember a sexualized encounter with the vampire but no actual sex in Sunshine. I don’t remember any sex at all in Hero and the Crown.

  27. Stevie:

    “I gather Scandinavians were a very important example of people who would cease to provide money if they went ahead. Hampus would be the person who knows about this, so I’ll hand over to him, if he wishes to comment.”

    Best policy in sweden have always been to give money by way of NGO:s, working with local organizations. Never given directly to governments. But yes, when Uganda created antigay laws in 2014, both Sweden, Norway and Denmark stopped sending aid.

  28. I thought I’d round up the YA recs I got yesterday. If I’d been smart I’d have kept track of who said what or something, but I didn’t, so I’ll just have to give a heartfelt generic Thank You to everyone.

    Stuff I actually bought until my credit card gave out warning smoke:
    Song of the Lioness and First Test – Tamora Pierce (Lots of love for Tamora Pierce, I’ve also noted Magic in the Weaving as a possible)
    Wave Runners – Meyer, Kai (Pirates! Magic!)
    Savvy – Law, Ingrid (Quite a few recs for this)
    First Frost – Jennifer Estep
    UnEnchanted – Chanda Hahn
    The Wee Free Men Terry Pratchett (I never really got into Tiffany Aching, as the later Witches books were less-favourites of mine, but we’ll see)
    Law of the Wolf Tower – Tanith Lee (Lots of Tanith Lee if she likes this)
    Emilie and the Hollow World – Martha Wells (I’d love this, so let’s hope she does)
    So You Want to Be a Wizard – Diane Duane (She didn’t fancy a different Duane I’d tried on her, but this may go better)
    Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase – Jonathan Stroud (If she doesn’t like this, I’m having it!)

    Stuff that’s gone on the to get list:
    Mars Evacuees – Sophia McDougall
    Planesrunner – Ian McDonald
    The Girl Who Circumnavigate’d Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making – Catherynne M. Valente
    Bloody Jack – L. A Meyer
    Thirteenth Child – Patricia C. Wrede
    Dragonhaven – Robin Mckinley
    The Amulet Of Samarkand – Jonathan Stroud
    Gregor the Overlander -Suzanne Collins
    Well Wished – Franny Billingsley
    Into the Wild – Sarah Beth Durst
    A Great and Terrible Beauty – Libba Bray
    A School for Sorcery – E. Rose Sabin (Technically this is so on the nose for her that I ought to get it straight away, but I think my credit card had collapsed by the time it was recommended)
    Plain Kate – Erin Bow
    Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog – Ysabeau S Wilce (Worth it for the title alone)
    Hex Hall – Rachel Hawkins (the description suggests excessive romance, but we’ll see)
    Obernewtyn – Isobelle Carmody
    The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks – E. Lockhart (Not SF, but got several recs)

    Stuff that was such a good recommendation that I’d already bought them:
    Saving Mars – Cidney Swanson
    Graceling – Kristin Cashore
    Sabriel – Garth Nix

    Plus ones mentioned in the original post:
    Turlingham Academy Series – Ellie Boswell
    Finishing School Series – Gail Carriger
    Throne of Glass – Sarah J Maas
    Schooled in Magic – Christopher Nuttal

    There were many other good recs, and thank you for those as well. Reasons for not taking them may have included me thinking they broke her aversion to excessive romance, or just that they showed as difficult to get hold of compared to others. I hope they found someone else that liked them though!

  29. Brian Z.: JJ didn’t say he deserves a Hugo for his other work. JJ said if he can make JCW’s writing readable he deserves flowers and a Hugo, so I wondered if he deserves it for his perspicacity or simply for roaming the land polishing bad prose like an editorial Robin Hood. Perhaps we’ll never know.

    Well, if you had actually read my post instead of just Making Shit Up (MSU™), you would already know.

    JJ on June 25, 2015 at 12:44 am said:
    I don’t care what Hartwell’s personal view are. I’ve read many of his anthologies, and I think he does a fantastic job.

    And if he can make JCW’s writing readable (something at which VD has clearly epically failed), then he deserves roses, chocolates, and a Hugo.

    And also, as Kurt Busiek said, probably a pony, too.

  30. Brian “Bad Faith” Z:

    “I’ll agree with you that Hartwell has neither shrewd insight into authorial talent nor a generous desire to give succor to the unredeemable, and simply punches the clock each morning to edit the manuscripts that the Torlings have placed on his desk.”

    No, you don’t “agree”. You are just being your ordinary passive aggresive self that likes to put words into other peoples mouths. Dishonest as usual.

  31. @Nate Harada: “Implying — or even depicting — teenagers being interested in SEX will cause hysterical pearl-clutching denunciations of immorality and attempted book-banning nine times out of ten,”

    It’s even worse than that.

    In the finally-finished manuscript I’m editing (an NA erotic romance), there is a scene where a trans character recounts the event that first led her to examine her gender identification. It’s an innocent thing that happened when he* was maybe eight or nine; his* slightly younger sister talked him* into wearing one of her dresses to “play princesses” with her. No big deal, right?

    Wrong. One of the biggest self-publishing companies in existence informed us** that they forbid works listed as erotica from depicting any characters under the age of 18 in any context whatsoever. By a strict reading of those communicated rules, a sexually explicit story that involves a married couple having completely vanilla sex in their own bedroom, shades drawn and the door locked, crosses the line as soon as you add an epilogue where they get up and take their kids to school. The princess scene is therefore a no-go, as are key parts of other characters’ backstories that involve things that happened in high school.

    I’ve advised the author to dodge the bigger issue by tweaking the setting so that the characters graduate high school at nineteen instead of eighteen. That way, they’re “of age” for their senior year, making those details okay. Otherwise, the whole damn story becomes unpublishable… because of, as you put it, hysterical pearl-clutching.

    As for the aforementioned princess scene… how the hell do you tell an authentic coming-out story if you can’t even allude to that pivotal moment when the character first knew that Something Isn’t Right?

    Yes, “graduate at 19” is a transparent hack to get around an overly-broad rule. What other option is there, though?

    * Not an error; she identified as male at the time.
    ** Curiously, their published Terms of Service are not this strict. That document merely forbids erotica from depicting characters under 18 in sexual situations or having sexual thoughts… and the princess scene doesn’t involve any of that. Questioning your gender is not an erotic thought!

  32. JJ, you just reposted the comment where you said exactly that. If you meant that Hartwell deserves another Hugo for his overall editing work, great! me too!

    Hampus, if you couldn’t catch the drift that I am in possession of a wellspring of limitless respect and admiration for David Hartwell in all his varied capacities as Senior Editor, Fan and all-around human being, you have sadly missed the point.

  33. @Rev. Bob

    Yes, the lines about kids in erotica are utterly confusing and unpredictable. I’ve seen everything from unambiguously onscreen kids (e.g. in a Dad-themed anthology) to revising away details that just happen to confirm the existence of an unnamed totally offscreen kid (or kids, it was that ambiguous).

  34. Brian Z.: JJ, you just reposted the comment where you said exactly that. If you meant that Hartwell deserves another Hugo for his overall editing work, great! me too!

    I meant exactly what I said. Please refrain from attempting to change my words (for the fourth time on this one).

    If you seriously have this much difficulty with reading comprehension, your local community college will have courses that can help you improve that deficiency.

  35. Brian Z:

    “Hampus, if you couldn’t catch the drift that I am in possession of a wellspring of limitless respect and admiration for David Hartwell in all his varied capacities as Senior Editor, Fan and all-around human being, you have sadly missed the point.”

    Still doesn’t make it ok for you to put your own words in other peoples mouths in the passive aggressive way of yours.

    And as a tip: You always complain about being sadly misunderstood. If you stop wrightalizing your comments, you might have an easier time.

  36. Kathodus on June 25, 2015 at 11:02 pm said:

    Also, weirdly, the series reads like YA to me. Or more accurately, like something I would have loved when I was 12. When I was still waiting to find out I was some sort of Super Messiah, or maybe an orphan with dead Ninja parents who had passed me on to my current family before their death, or… something kind of like Kvothe.

    I know what you mean. When I read the The Name Of The Wind, it felt like ‘grown-up’ YA to me. I mean, it has a lot of YA tropes but overall it’s probably intended to be a bit more ambitious.

  37. Hampus, “tip”: if you want people to be sympathetic to you having a hard time understanding their fifty cent words, try not calling them a liar and a disgusting troll! 😀

  38. Brian Z:

    A tip: Skip behaving like a dishonest troll. Skip trying to put words in other peoples mouths. Skip using weasel words. Skip your passive aggression. Skip trying to deflect every argument against you by pretending you meant something else.

    Right now no one cares if you are sympathetic to them or not. Mostly because those you seem to be most sympathetic to are homophobes like Wright and neonazis like Beale.

  39. Rev. Bob: Hey, I mentioned The School for Good & Evil! #harrumph

    Then we both have good taste? 🙂

  40. > “I remember a sexualized encounter with the vampire but no actual sex in Sunshine.”

    You are correct about that encounter, it wasn’t actual sex. It does, however, contain some very memorable sentences that score fairly high on the explicitness scale (I’m thinking of the one that ended “… ached like a bruise,” in particular).

  41. I just had to say that last night I read some of the comments about Jondalar and his magic, glitter- and sparkle-covered schlong to my partner (who has previously been married to a man). Thank you all for those comments! They provoked great merriment, and laughter is always a good thing.

  42. Mostly because those you seem to be most sympathetic to are homophobes like Wright and neonazis like Beale.

    That’s not true, Hampus, but in the spirit of reciprocity I’ll give you one last “tip”: next time you start to suspect someone seems to be more sympathetic to homophobes or even neo-nazis than they are to you, look in the mirror.

  43. JJ didn’t say he deserves a Hugo for his other work.

    The joke is dead Brian. You killed it. Now you’re doing… things to the corpse. Stop, Brian.

    Oops, did I just say “we” again? Sorry.

    Stuck the landing.

    I’m on about the 24-hour comment cycle where you can always be sure of hearing someone make another remark about how terrible (stupid, etc.) “the Puppies” are.

    And they’re so nice about us. They made us a cake. They have our picture stuck up in their locker and when they’re lonely and afraid they touch it to draw strength and solace. They get on great with our parents, who can’t understand why we get so standoffish when we come home and find them chatting in the kitchen.

  44. Vox Day just mocked you for pretending that you are only talking about books when you mostly talk about him.

    Vox mocks, you say? I’m sure your j’accuse will amuse him. Shall we rent out space to Beale in our heads or just game the nominations for Head Beagle?

  45. Nigel,

    Stop, Brian.

    Maybe you, Lis Carey. Hampus and so forth shouldn’t keep jumping in to give me lessons in what a bad person I am.

    And they’re so nice about us. They made us a cake.

    Do you see any problem with that using that logic to justify the constant opprobrious (pupprobrious?) comments emanating from this website aimed at those who sympathize with puppy groups?

  46. Shall we rent out space to Beale in our heads or just game the nominations for Head Beagle?

    There’s nothing about Vox that is particularly hard to figure out, and the best strategy is just to leave him be and get on with other things (about this, I agree with Gabriel F.).

    But I care a lot about you guys, which is why I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to talk to you.

  47. Hampus and so forth shouldn’t keep jumping in to give me lessons in what a bad person I am.

    You’re not a bad person Brian. Your attempts at humour are starting to sound like nails on a blackboard. Sorry.

    Do you see any problem with that using that logic

    It wasn’t logic, Brian, it was an observation. Luckily, those unsympathetic to Puppies get to see the antipupprobium emanating from Puppy sites, too. And I have yet to see any commentary merely sympathetic to Puppies that doesn’t originate from someone engaging in the culture war rather than being genuinely concerned about the Hugos.

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