(1) IN OPINIONS YET TO COME. Brooke Bolander is the latest sff author to pen a futuristic op-ed for the New York Times.
As Tor.com puts it –
Asking “Who Should Live in Flooded Old New York?” Bolander imagines a time in which it’s illegal to live in the flooded remains of NYC, with the only residents being those who are too poor to move elsewhere. In this future, Mr. Rogers’ theme song has turned into an “old folk song,” and “draconian federal regulations” punish those remaining, while millionaires running illegal tourism schemes in the city get off scot-free.
(2) WHAT TOR LEARNED FROM LIBRARY SALES EMBARGO. Jason Sanford’s analysis, “Does library ebook lending hurt book sales? Tor Books experiment reveals answers, may lead to new ebook lending terms”, is a free post at his Patreon page.
Sanford interviewed Fritz Foy, president and publisher of Tom Doherty Associates, the unit of Macmillan that includes Tor, who shared “an unprecedented look at their embargo test….”
…To discover if library ebook lending was indeed hurting sales, Macmillan used their Minotaur imprint as a control group and Tor Books as an experimental group. The two groups have books which sold in similar patterns along with authors and book series which drove steady sales from year to year.
For the experiment Tor prohibited ebook sales to libraries until four months after a book’s release. After that date libraries could purchase the Tor ebooks. The control group Minotaur instituted no such restriction. (As a side-note, Foy said the there was never a plan to do a six-month embargo on ebook sales to libraries, as reported in that Good e-Reader article.)
Foy was surprised by the experiment’s stark results.
“All but one title we compared (in the Tor experiment group) had higher sales after the four month embargo on ebook sales to libraries,” he said. “And the only title where we didn’t see this happen had bad reviews. And when you looked at the control group, sales remained the same.”
(3) LOTR DIRECTOR. “‘The Lord Of The Rings’: J.A. Bayona To Direct Amazon Series” – Deadline has the story.
Amazon Studios’ high-profile The Lord of the Rings TV series has made a key hire. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona has been tapped to direct the first two episodes of the big-scope fantasy drama, following in the footsteps of Peter Jackson, who directed the feature adaptations of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novels.
…Bayona’s first feature film, critically acclaimed thriller The Orphanage, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and later won seven Goya Awards in Spain, including best new director.
Bayona most recently directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide last year. He also directed the features The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, and A Monster Calls, starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones, as well as the first two episodes of Showtime’s hit series Penny Dreadful.
(4) LOTR LOCATION. And where will the series be filmed? Probably where you’d have predicted it would if you never heard about the plan for Scotland. Yahoo! Movies reports “Scotland loses out on lucrative ‘Lord of the Rings’ shoot over ‘Brexit uncertainty’, claims new report”.
Amazon’s $1.5 billion (£1.19bn) Lord of the Rings series looks set to begin filming in New Zealand this month, after producers reportedly got cold feet about shooting in Scotland.
The NZ Herald reports that a “huge” part of the series, said to be the most expensive TV show ever made, will be produced in Auckland, specifically at the Kumeu Film Studios and Auckland Film Studios, with an official announcement coming this month. The report states that pre-production on the Amazon show has been based at the two studios for the last year.
Producers were also said to be considering Scotland as a production base, but New Zealand’s public-service radio broadcaster Radio New Zealand (Radio NZ), claims “the tumultuous Brexit situation hindered Scotland’s pitch”.
(5) RESNICK RETURNS TO FB. Mike Resnick gave Facebook readers a medical update about his frightening health news:
Sorry to be absent for a month. 4 weeks ago I was walking from one room to the next when I collapsed. Carol called the ambulance, and 2 days later I woke up in the hospital minus my large intestine. Just got home last night.
I don’t like growing old.
(6) TIDHAR PICKS BUNDLED. Storybundle announced the The 2019 World SF Bundle, curated by Lavie Tidhar:
For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.
- Afro SF V3 by Ivor W. Hartmann
- The Apex Book of World SF 5 by Cristina Jurado and Lavie Tidhar
- Nexhuman by Francesco Verso
- Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!
- Escape from Baghdad! by Saad Z. Hossain
- After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun
- The Thousand Year Beach by TOBI Hirotaka
- Slipping by Lauren Beukes
- Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson
- The Vanishing Kind by Lavie Tidhar
This bundle is available only for a limited time.
(7) JAMES WHITE AWARD. The judges for the 2019 James White Award will be Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott.
The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. The deadline for submissions was June 28. The winner will be announced in August.
(8) JUMANJI. The next sequel will be in theaters at Christmas.
In Jumanji: The Next Level, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored, from the arid deserts to the snowy mountains, in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- July 3, 1958 — Fiend Without A Face premiered.
- July 3, 1985 – Back to the Future was released.
- July 3, 1996 – Independence Day debuted in theaters.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born July 3, 1898 — E. Hoffmann Price. He’s most readily remembered as being a Weird Tales writer, one of a group that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. He did a few collaborations, one of which was with H. P. Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. Another work, “The Infidel’s Daughter”, a satire on the Ku Klux Klan, also angered many Southern readers. (Died 1998.)
- Born July 3, 1926 — William Rotsler. An artist, cartoonist, pornographer and SF author. Well, that is his bio. Rotsler was a four-time Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Artist and one-time Nebula Award nominee. He also won a “Retro-Hugo” for his work in 1946 and was runner-up for 1951. He responsible for giving Uhura her first name, created “Rotsler’s Rules for Costuming”, popularized the idea fans wore propeller beanies and well, being amazing sounding. (Died 1997.)
- Born July 3, 1927 — Tim O’Connor. He was Dr. Elias Huer in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century for much of its run. Other genre appearances were on The Six Million Dollar Man, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Wonder Woman, Knight Rider, Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Burning Zone. (Died 2018.)
- Born July 3, 1927 — Ken Russell. Altered States is his best known SF film but he’s also done The Devils, an historical horror film, and Alice in Russialand. Russell had a cameo in the film adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s novel Brothers of the Head by the directors of Lost in La Mancha. And, of course, he’s responsible for The Who’s Tommy. (Died 2012.)
- Born July 3, 1937 — Tom Stoppard, 82. Screenplay writer, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which is adjacent genre if not actually genre. Also scripted of course Brazil which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade final rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. And finally Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman.
- Born July 3, 1943 — Kurtwood Smith, 76. Clarence Boddicker in Robocop, Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and voiced Kanjar Ro in Green Lantern: First Flight. He’s got series appearances on Blue Thunder, The Terrible Thunderlizards, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Men in Black: The Series, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Judtice League, Batman Beyond, Green Lantern and Beware the Batman. His last role was as Vernon Masters as the superb Agent Carter.
- Born July 3, 1962 — Tom Cruise, 57. I’m reasonably sure his first genre role was as Jack in Legend. Next up was Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire followed by being Ethan Hunt in the first of many Mission Impossible films. Then he was John Anderton in the abysmal Minority Report followed by Ray Ferrier in the even far more abysmal War of The Worlds. I’ve not seen him as Maj. William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow so I’ve no idea how good he or the film is. Alas then Nick Morton in, oh god, The Mummy.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- Rhymes With Orange visits the old superheroes home.
(12) IT DON’T PAY TO BE IGNORANT. Not on Jeopardy! as Andrew Porter witnessed tonight:
In the category American Writers, the answer was, “In a story by this sci-fi master, ‘I Sing the Body Electric!’ is the title of a pamphlet for a robot grandmother.”
Wrong questions: “Who is Isaac Asimov?” and “Who is Robert Heinlein?”
(13) AURORA AWARDS. The 2019 Aurora Awards Voter Package is online, available to members of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association.
The purpose of the Aurora Awards Voter Package is simple. Before you vote for the Aurora Awards this year, we want you to be able to read as much of the nominated work as possible, so you can make and informed decision about what is the best of the year. Please note: the package is only available while voting is open. Remember voting ends September 14, 2019 at 11:59:59 EDT!
The electronic versions of these Aurora Award nominated works are made available to you through the generosity of the nominees and publishers. We are grateful for their participation and willingness to share with CSFFA members. If you like what you read, please support the creators by purchasing their works, which are available in bookstores and online.
(14) EN ROUTE. John Hertz, while packing for his journey to Spikecon, paused to quote from the classics:
Farewell my friends, farewell my foes;
To distant planets Freddy goes;
To face grave perils he intends.
Farewell my foes, goodbye my friends.
(15) MORE BOOKS I HAVEN’T READ. At Tor.com, Gabriella Tutino publicized a list compiled by Reddit User einsiboy, creator of the TopRedditBooks site: “Here are the 100 Most Discussed Fantasy Books on Reddit”. The Reddit link is here. I’ve only read 19 of these – what a disgrace!
(16) JDA REAPPLIES TO SFWA. Mary Robinette Kowal took office as SFWA’s new President at the start of the month. Jon Del Arroz says his latest application for membership is already in her inbox: “A New Dawn For SFWA!” [Internet Archive link].
Things are changing at SFWA as my friend Mary Robinette Kowal has been installed as president, after I endorsed her candidacy early on.
…As she has featured my books on her blog not once, but twice, I know that Ms. Kowal’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity is important to her, and she will be doing everything she can to change the perception that SFWA is a place where Conservatives and Christians are not welcome to be called professional authors.
As such, I have reapplied to SFWA as of yesterday, and let Ms. Kowal know, so we can begin the long journey of working together to ensure equality for Conservative and Christian authors. I’ve offered my services as an ambassador to the community, so she will directly be able to hear the grievances of such authors who have been treated as second class citizens — dare I say, 3/5ths of a professional author — for so long now within the science fiction community.
(17) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE INTERNET. Shades of Cryptonomicon. Futurism.com thinks that the “Russian Sub That Caught Fire Possibly Sent to Cut Internet Cables”.
Fire Down Below
On Monday, a Russian submarine caught fire during a mission, killing 14 sailors on board.
But the public didn’t find out about the incident until the next day, when Russia finally released a statement about the accident — though two days after the event, the nation still wouldn’t say exactly what kind of sub caught fire or whether it was nuclear-powered.
A possible reason for Russia’s caginess? Multiple sources are now claiming the sub was an AS-12 “Losharik,” a nuclear-powered submarine some speculate was designed to cut the undersea cables that deliver internet to the world.
(18) FOUR FOR THE FOURTH. For the holiday, James Davis Nicoll has lined up “4 SF Works Featuring a Far-Future U.S.A.” at Tor.com.
In Joe and Jack C. Haldeman’s There Is No Darkness, English is an obscure language, spoken only on backwater worlds and a few places on Earth. We don’t know exactly when the book takes place, as year zero has been set to the founding of the (future) Confederacion. We are told the year is A.C. 354.
What we see of a future Texas suggests that it’s still as recognizably American as Justinian’s Constantinople would have been recognizably Roman. While the region seems a bit down at heel, it’s also one of the more optimistic takes on a future America.
(19) SCALZI GIVEAWAY. Or maybe Christmas will come early and you can read this:
(20) IF IT E-QUACKS LIKE A DUCK. Thomas has found a place where “Robots Replace Ducks in Rice Paddy Fields”.
Aigamo is a Japanese farming method that uses ducks to keep unwanted plants and parasites out of rice paddy fields. This duck crossbreed is able to keep the paddy clear without the use of herbicides or pesticides, and the fowls’ waste actually works as a pretty good fertilizer.
The method was first introduced in the 16th century but soon fell out of favor. It wasn’t reintroduced as a natural farming method until 1985 and it quickly became popular across the country as well as in China, Iran, France, and other countries.
About 15 ducks can keep a 1,000-square-meter area clear of insects, worms, and weeds, and they even enrich the water with oxygen by constantly stirring up the soil. But as humans are prone to do, an engineer from Nissan Motor, needed to build a better mousetrap, although this one may not have too many beating down a path to his door.
Created as a side project, the Aigamo Robot looks less like its namesake and more like a white, floating Roomba with eyes. While the ducks can be trained to patrol specific areas, the robot employs Wi-Fi and GPS to help the robot stir up the soil and keep bugs at bay, though no word yet on how much ground it can cover in a single day.
(21) SPIDER TO THE FLIER. Have you seen “United–Fly Like a Superhero” on YouTube? The Spider-Man version of the United Airlines safety video? Too bad it’s not as much fun as the Air New Zealand hobbit videos.
(22) STRANGE VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “9 Ways To Draw A Person” on Vimeo, Sasha Svirsky offers a strange video that doesn’t actually tell you how to draw a person.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Jason Sanford, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Greg Hullender, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade.]
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(10) Perhaps Stoppard is responsible for an exchange I love to quote from Shakespeare in Love: The cast of Romeo and Juliet is at a tavern, drinking and wenching, and one wench asks the actor who plays the Nurse “What’s it about?” “Well,” says the actor, “There’s this nurse…”
(14) Ah, the works of F. Bean! I’ve seen a book of the wit and wisdom of that great personage, and I’ve seen some of his poems quoted in anthologies. Well chosen.
Tickmore Stalkless
(10)
I understand Rotsler is still eligible for Fan Artist – a lot of his drawings have never been printed.
(I also remember sitting in the consuite at one of the Loscons in Pasadena, listening to him explain how you can tell someone’s, um, orientation, by how they play with a drink. Doesn’t matter what kind of drink, as long as it’s cold.)
(I’d have sworn we already did “My God, It’s Full of Pixels!”–but I can’t find it in a search, or even find it being suggested, which frankly seems impossible because it just does.)
(10) Ken Russell also directed the adaptation of Lair of the White Worm, co-starring Peter Capaldi.
(To clarify concerning Tommy, for the benefit of future scholars of 20th-century culture, as it were: The 1990s stage musical, not the movie, was titled The Who’s Tommy.)
This just in: MAD is going to do two more issues, then reprints until all the subscriptions run out. Then it will shut down.
Stoppard also wrote the screenplay for the genre-adjacent “Empire Of The Sun,” based on the semi-autobiographical novel by J.G. Ballard.
(2) Jason Sanford seems to say that ebook sales went up after the embargo period, which would mean the embargo was a bad idea. Yet he seems to mean the opposite. Maybe he just can’t write coherently?
If it didn’t occur to them that contracts specifying a limited number of lends over the length of the contract would make ebooks substantially more expensive for small library systems than large ones, I can only conclude that they didn’t pause to think it through logically. At all.
The 26 lends per year provision reflects an assumption, which Hachette has stated explicitly, that print books fall apart and need to be replaced after 26 lends, and therefore ebooks need to essentially, do the same thing. Again, evidence that these decisions are being made by idiots who either never use libraries, or don’t look at what they’re seeing when they do. Print books have a lending life lot longer than 26 lends.
It just reinforces my impression that large publishers regret the error that libraries become firmly established, and that they hope to correct that error in the digital age.
16) I guess just sending an email turning him down for being creepy, manipulative and because everyone knows he’ll be a pain in the ass won’t work. But especially the creepy (“dare I say, 3/5ths”–seriously,you self-impressed cretin?) part.\
reading him is like reading a 5th-rate Trump speech.
Lis Carey said:”It just reinforces my impression that large publishers regret the error that libraries become firmly established, and that they hope to correct that error in the digital age.”
What effect would it be if libraries just didn’t buy e-books and told their patrons who complained that they were just too expensive?
How about a middle ground where publishers withhold e-books from libraries for a period of time to increase their sales and then make them available to libraries at a reduced price?
(16) JDA REAPPLIES TO SFWA.
Given that the installation of a new SFWA President doesn’t magically wipe out all of the harassment and abuse in which he previously engaged against SFWA members — including their President — I am sure that this request will receive much the same response as the first one did.
(16) so she will directly be able to hear the grievances of such authors who have been treated as second class citizens — dare I say, 3/5ths of a professional author
Jon makes this terrible comparison of real people judged to be part-human to his imagined oppression as a writer? For frak’s sake. Calling that tone-deaf is putting it mildly.
(15) 24 out of 100. Yeah, a great deal of that list is pretty surprising. Contarius ought to be happy to see Circe at the top though. 🙂
He was a bug-eyed, lizard-Gorn, filing purple pixel scroller.
JJ: JDA basically does everything to get attention. If they let him into SFWA it’s be an anticlimax. Aw, who am I kidding. It would take him less than 10 minutes on the inside, reading the Forum, to find his next target for acting out.
12) what book is that in?
Most of my library borrows are already paper books since the wait time for ebooks is too long.
15) 58/100, and it’d be higher if I’d read more Sanderson and Abercrombie. (Which I probably will do at some point.)
Ah, Bill Rotsler! We fanzine editors loved getting envelopes full of his cartoons. As P J Evans said, it wouldn’t surprise me if I found some unpublished ones tucked away somewhere here in my house.
Bill also was responsible for collecting the bits that went into the Nebula Award trophies, and I’ve always thought his were the best looking of them. Does anybody know: Is there a record of who assembled the trophies each year?
15) 42/100, but some of them I would classify as unremarkable, or even unreadable.
I do find it interesting that The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins still has such legs, 4 years after its release. I thought it was an amazing (if darker than dark) book, so I am glad to see that.
10) — I didn’t think Minority Report was all THAT bad … Cruise’s War of the Worlds, on the other hand, was hot garbage, and his Mummy was … well, the worst part was that I could see hints of an actual entertaining movie occasionally rising above the surface of the “Universal Monster Cinematic Universe” sludge they felt compelled to smother it with.
And I’m still not sure why the Egyptian mummy had been exiled to Iraq.
This probably doesn’t need to be said, but Jon Del Arroz’s extensive campaign of harassment on Twitter against Cat Rambo while she was SFWA president should permanently disqualify him from membership.
15) 49/100. Missed out on everything Sanderson.
@ Kip Williams
That’s a favorite of mine, too.
(16) well, that’s a unique combination of condescension, smarm and self-importance.
15) 54/100, with quite a few more on Mount TBR already. I guess it’s inevitable that the list is skewed towards big sellers – still, there’s plenty of food for thought there (which makes me think about some big sellers that didn’t make the list.)
Why all the hate for War Of The Worlds? I really enjoyed the parts I saw from behind the sofa.
10) All (like, a lot) respect due for Rotsler, but I’ve always associated the popularization* of propeller beanies with Ray Nelson.
“popularization” in this case being somewhat akin to using the word “sci-fi”, in that some percentage of people think it makes the genre and its fans look ridiculous.
Kurtwood Smith was also one of the leads in RESURRECTION, a very interesting series from 2014-2015, wherein people’s loved ones begin returning from the dead. Sadly cut short, with a lot unresolved, at the end of the second season.
Also, noting for a future scroll, Walter Brennan was born on July 25, 1894. Yes, he actually has genre connections, with bit parts in 1933’s THE INVISIBLE MAN and 1935’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
2) and @Lis Carey: I think what Sandford means is that in the four months before the Tor books were released to libraries, they had higher sales than the equivalents in the control group, though it’s not as clearly expressed as it could be.
An alternative reading is that when Tor books were made available in libraries, sales increased, but “Foy did not reveal how much of an increase in sales resulted from the embargo” suggests to me that the four-month embargo was considered a success.
16) Well, if his previous behaviour hadn’t already sunk his chances, the icky “3/5th of a professional author” thing should ensure that JDA’s mail is redirected to /dev/null for quite some time to come.
(16) Gotta do something while waiting to get his arse handed to him in court I suppose.
15) 74/100. I suspect I read a lot of fantasy.
41/100. There are some others I will certainly read.
(10) Edge of Tomorrow is well worth a look. I also recall enjoying Oblivion a lot more than I expected to.
I dare say a number of Christians in SFWA might object to JDA’s characterization, but it would require them paying attention to JDA and that seems like a lot of effort for minimal entertainment return these days.
Bolander’s Drowned New York article is—well, not “fun” exactly, but the emotion that would be fun if it weren’t eerily plausible.
26) 3/5ths. Because of COURSE JDA would make such an offensive allusion.
10) Not the smartest use of my money, after Continuum in 2017, adn with an afternoon free before I was set to start driving to my next Australian destination…I went to the theater to see Cruise’s Mummy movie.
I shoulda gone to a museum or something instead. Or went and bought another memory card for my camera.
18) I loved the aviation-obsessed US culture in Last and First Men.
rcade says
This probably doesn’t need to be said, but Jon Del Arroz’s extensive campaign of harassment on Twitter against Cat Rambo while she was SFWA president should permanently disqualify him from membership.
Quite so. And why would anyone trust him to actually behave himself now? He’s a would class ass and not likely to suddenly not be.
Godstalked on the Fifth of Scroll-ly
15) I’ve read 30 out of 100, and have a bunch more on my TBR list.
r/fantasy as a group trend towards Brandon Sanderson and Mark Lawrence. IIRC, they both participate there from time to time. There is also an appreciation for classics like LOTR.
FWIW, the r/fantasy 2019 Best Novel Survey results were released recently. The survey combined multiple volumes in a series into a single entry to prevent the series from dominating the results.
I’m appalled that Barbara Hambly didn’t make the list. And some others….
The poll structure is here:
And for those that are curious, this is a breakdown of results based on people that included female authors in their ballot submissions. Everyone got to list 10 books/series on their ballot.
16)….just….stop.
Regards,
Dann
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, – go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams
@15, I’ve read exactly 50. Four or five more are on Mt. Tsunduku. One or two that I didn’t count as read, I may have, but I’m not sure. (One is marked “coming out in October”, so I don’t feel bad about not reading that one!)
15) Hmm, 51. I am not as well read on some of the authors with multiple books on that list as others are.
@16: since we’re being poetic (maybe even specifically Burnsian) today:
(Especially amusing given the poem it comes from — I hadn’t known it was from so … low … an incident.)
@21: I wonder how much they paid for those very short uses of the character. Or is United now part of the Disney empire?
A side questions: Has any Filer yet been told in real life to put on a shoulder belt? (I haven’t been flying nearly as much as I used to.) It seems a plausible ~enhancement — only half a century after they were added to cars.
@Joe H: 15) 58/100, and it’d be higher if I’d read more Sanderson and Abercrombie. (Which I probably will do at some point.) 52/100 for me — and I’m done with Sanderson novels; the Mistborn trilogy had some interesting points, but it was complex, inhuman, and mechanical, and the excerpt I read of the sequel was worse. Oh well, everyone has the gout.
The list has some interesting spillovers, e.g. I suppose Fevre Dream got brought up because of GoT, and one Gaiman leads to another….
Staircase addition to my previous: last night I saw Echo in the Canyon, about the “California Sound” of 1965-67 and Jakob Dylan’s recreation thereof. It’s a decent film considering the limited scope of both the film and the participants (e.g., someone talks about the sound disappearing under longer songs and psychedelia as if those were new in 1968 rather than having happened concurrently in San Francisco, and several treat Laurel Canyon as a creation of the 1960’s, which many well-read SF fans know it wasn’t), and the shot of Michelle Phillips listening to a wonderful cover of one of her songs is beautiful, but I was especially struck by a late line from David Crosby (whose interview appears in many places throughout the movie): ~”People say I was thrown out of The Byrds because of “Triad”, but that’s not true; I was thrown out because I was an a**hole.”
16) I wonder if Mary Robinette would also characterize JDA as a friend? Being featured on a writer’s blog does not a friendship make, but I don’t know either one of the two of them. Also, even if they are friends, how fucking gross is it that he thinks he can get back in the group not by following the rules or being accountable for his actions but by friendship. He’s basically appealing to nepotism. Gross. (I have some faith in Mary Robinette’s professionalism even if they are friends, and I would be so pissed if a friend of mine put me in that position by posting stuff like that online. Like, come on, dude. Literally what are you expecting to happen here.)
@P J Evans: the news of Mad‘s demise is surprisingly widespread. (Quotes, and photo of a letter that looks like it would be interesting if it were legible.
(15) 24/100. Lots of stuff still to read…
Chip Hitchcock says P J Evans: the news of Mad‘s demise is surprisingly widespread. (Quotes, and photo of a letter that looks like it would be interesting if it were legible.
I find it to be perfectably legible in Safari on the iPad and can read the rather funny text by expanding it. Oddly enough Chrome on the iPad doesn’t handle it well at all.
4) I was hoping for the Azores, as a stand in for Numenor, but I expect that would be impractical for a host of reasons.
15) I get 33. A lot of that is either Hugo Award finalists, or Harry Potter. And counting both the individual volumes and the overall work for Lord of the Rings
becca wisely notes He’s basically appealing to nepotism. Gross. (I have some faith in Mary Robinette’s professionalism even if they are friends, and I would be so pissed if a friend of mine put me in that position by posting stuff like that online. Like, come on, dude. Literally what are you expecting to happen here.)
I really think he’s playing the victim game here and expecting not to get membership so that he proclaim widely and quite loudly that once again SFWA has discriminated against the leading Hispanic SF writer in the multiverse and see how unfair they are they are to those they don’t like. He’s a nasty piece of work, period.
Has anyone actually read his work? Just curious though not enough to do so myself.
Indeed, it’s too bad about MAD. I guess I can finally stop kidding myself that I’ll submit an outline for an article on Retrofitting the 21st Century for Baby Boomers, which would have been a variety of devices like:
* one that would make CDs more like LPs by simulating pops and scratches and including a big Fresnel lens to make the cover art bigger.
* one that fixes TV by making it warm up slowly, taking the color out, and fuzzing up the picture (with optional loss of horizontal and vertical hold!)
* filters for streaming music that crap up the sound with interference, lo-fi, and losing the station from time to time, in a case that makes your music player the size of an 8-transistor radio and a single cartoonishly large earphone
* clever filter for MAD readers complaining that it’s not like it used to be, which digitally inserts old catch phrases and words like “Furshlugginer!” “Blecch!” and “Potrzebie!” according to context, makes paper look like 1960s-grade pulp, and changes all song references to Robert Goulet’s greatest hits.
Only it would have been funny, of course. If I ever find my notes, you’ll see.
Alfred, we hardly Neuman.
15) 38/100. Am I the last person in the world who has never read any of the Harry Potter books? (Seen the movies.)
Isn’t JDA the puppy-adjacent who has several times claimed friendship or association with professionals in the field, all of whom eventually felt the need to point out that either their association was strictly professional and his claim of personal familiarity was over the line, or that they were friends, past tense, but had to cut ties with him because he was leaning too hard on their friendly association and expecting nepotistic return from it? After each of which he writes a foam-flecked diatribe about their personal betrayal.
I read his comments about MRK with that very much in mind.
Bill Rotsler wasn’t the one responsible for promoting the idea of fans wearing propellor beanies: that was Ray Nelson, whose many fanzine cartoons showing fans wearing them paved the way for their wider acceptance among all fans—currently, especially, F770 contributor John Hertz.
Bruce: My husband hasn’t read Harry Potter. (He has also seen the movies. Which for me answered the question whether they could make sense for anyone who hadn’t read along, though I remember a couple of questions about specific events along the way.)