Pixel Scroll 10/17/17 If I Have Scrolled Further Than Others, It Is Because I Stood On The Pixels Of Filers

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(1) NOW YOU KNOW. Ron Howard says the movie will be called Solo: A Star Wars Story.

(2) ATOMIC AGE LORE. Tony Rothman kicks off his American Scientist article “The Forgotten Mystery of Inertia” with – of all things – a Worldcon anecdote.

In days of yore, at a World Science Fiction Convention in Boston, a Harvard graduate student polished his reputation as a brilliant mad scientist by roaming the convention halls, brandishing what at first glance appeared to be a rather peculiar steel bowling ball. Portholes perforated its surface, providing a glimpse of electronic hardware inside; tangled wires sprouted from the same holes, and a gear train surrounded the mysterious object’s equator.

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“It’s the gyro platform for an intercontinental ballistic missile,” he replied. “If you put it on a Titan rocket, it will fly to Kiev.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s an inertial guidance system, stupid. It knows where Kiev is.”

“I know how inertial guidance systems work, but how do you know it knows where Kiev is?”

“Oh, that. It was stamped on the box.”

This sorcerer’s apprentice had discovered that for $900 you could buy a surplus intercontinental ballistic missile, 10 years before the electronics were declassified. His Titan was delivered on two railway cars, “Kiev Titan Missile” stamped on the crates. He junked the body, donated the engines to an art museum, and saved the electronics for his research. A tall tale? Sounds like one, but the gyro platform was there for all to see.

That is the question. At what, exactly, is the gyroscope pointed? According to the law of inertia, objects tend to continue doing what they’ve been doing: If at rest, they remain at rest; if moving, they continue moving at the same speed in the same direction. The gyroscope also bends to inertia’s will, but in confounding ways. Touch it, and the gyro opposes you by veering in unexpected directions. If it is spinning extremely rapidly, the gyroscope remains rigidly locked in the direction it has been set, its sights fixed on…Kiev—hence the term inertial guidance systems. If a rocket veers off the gyro’s fixed course, a sensor detects the error, and a servomechanism realigns the missile with the gyroscope axis.

Was that Russell Seitz? When I first got into fandom that was the story going around about him, of which the following is one version:

In the late 70’s, when most of our nuclear arsenal was converted from liquid to solid fuel, the U.S. Government auctioned off a number of obsolete missile silos and their contents. Mostly the silos got bought by local farmers who converted them for grain storage. I only know what happened to one of the missiles. It was offered at sealed bid auction and a friend of mine, Russell Seitz, bought it. When you bid on something like this, you have to send in a check for 10% of your bid as a deposit. He looked at his bank account, and figured he could spare about $300 that month, so that’s what he sent. When he discovered that he’d won the bid, he had to scrounge up the rest. Now the buyer must pick up the goods himself, but he can request that his purchase be delivered, at government expense, to the nearest military base. Being an undergraduate at M.I.T. at the time, he had the missile shipped to Hanscom Airforce Base, about 12 miles away. He then arranged for a truck, and donated the missile to a local modern art museum (I forget which one). Tax laws were a little different in those days, and if you donated something to an art museum, you could deduct not the just the purchase price, but the original value of the object, which was considerable. Income averaging allowed him to spread the “loss” out over a number of years so that he didn’t have to pay taxes for a long time! He was legendary at M.I.T. for quite a while, and acquired the nickname “Missile” Seitz.

(3) ED KRAMER BACK IN THE NEWS. Ed Kramer, Dragon Con founder and convicted sex offender, has sued the producers of The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, claiming they owe him for his work in creating and developing the program. The Huffington Post has the story: “Sex Offender Claims Responsibility For Natalee Holloway TV Series”.

Just when it seemed the Natalee Holloway case couldn’t get more peculiar, HuffPost has uncovered another twist in the teenager’s 2005 disappearance: A registered sex offender is claiming responsibility for a recent television series about the mystery.

Edward Kramer is suing producers of “The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway,” a TV series that began in August on the Oxygen Network, alleging he is “co-owner, developer and writer,” according to his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in California. Kramer wants unspecified “just compensation” for his work, plus punitive damages.

Kramer’s personal website claims:

Edward E. Kramer is the creator and developer of the six-part series, The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway for Brian Graden Media (BGM) and NBC Universal’s newly re-branded Oxygen Crime Network. This landmark series, featuring Dave Holloway and Private Investigators T. J. Ward, Kathy Wainscott, Trace Sargent and Eric Bryant, Detective Frank Karic and Forensic Scientist Jason Kolowski, which finally puts to rest the 2005 murder of Natalee Holloway.

The defendants in the lawsuit, Brian Graden Media and Lipstick Inc., filed an answer to the suit, denying they owe anything to Kramer.

He wasn’t “named as a writer, screenwriter, or co-creator,” they said, and was working as an “employee or agent of T.J. Ward,” a private investigator who appeared on the series with Holloway’s father, Dave Holloway.

Read a copy of the original lawsuit filing and the defendants’ answer here.

(4) MARVEL EXEC’S COMICS COLLECTION LOOTED. Marvel’s Joe Quesada is looking for help to recover or reacquire comics and other art stolen from his collection. He gives the background in a long public post on Facebook, leading up to recent discoveries of his artwork for sale, and the arrest of the culprit.

In early June I was contacted by a longtime friend, he was looking at some comic art auctions and was curious as to why I was auctioning a piece that he knew was part of my personal collection and something I would never, ever sell. He sent me a link where I discovered 24 pieces in total from my private collection up for auction including pieces I did long before I was a working professional. While at the moment I’m not at liberty to give the details, investigating this further it turns out that the artwork that was up for auction was all originally purchased from a Mr. Francesco Bove.

Further investigation uncovered that, since the time he was thrown out of my house, at least 185 more pieces of my stolen art were sold at auction and all of it originally purchased directly from Mr. Bove. That’s 185 pieces, sold and gone! How much more was sold privately is unknown at the moment but I’m not feeling optimistic.

So why is this news breaking now? As the case was being investigated the Detective in charge discovered Mr. Bove had left the country and had gone to Italy. Upon his return he was arrested which brings us to right now. From what I know so far it’s believed that Mr. Bove has sold portions of my art to comic shops, dealers and collectors in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, as well as parts of Long Island and New Jersey. It could be wider spread than that but I’m not at liberty to say.

And here’s the thing that keeps me up at night. These were pieces that I was never intending to sell, art that had deep personal meaning to every member of my family. There was an enormous collection of Archie art from various artists like Stan Goldberg, Harry Lucey, Sam Schwartz but the majority of it by Dan DeCarlo. There were also Laugh Comics pages by Bill Woggon, The Adventures Of Pipsqueak by Walt Lardner as well as Pat The Brat and Shrimpy by Joe Harold and a huge assortment of other artists from the 50s and 60s to today. I lost pages of my own professional art as well as art I purchased from dear and talented friends. But what stings the most is that Mr. Bove took artwork that I had discovered many years ago stored in my father’s home after he had passed away. Drawings and paintings I did in elementary school, high school and college. Practice sample pages I had done before ever seriously thinking I could be in comics. This was art I was leaving behind for my daughter just as my father had left it for me. It kills me to think that I’ll never get this stuff back now that it’s been scattered to the four winds perhaps bought and sold more times than I care to imagine… or possibly even destroyed. So yes, heartbreak after heartbreak. Not only was the thief someone who I trusted, allowed into my home and helped during rough times, but the items he stole in order to keep himself afloat once he realized he irreversibly burned his bridge with me were the ones most irreplaceable and of personal importance.

Now here’s the part where I could use your help.

While I’m hopeful that now in custody Mr. Bove may lead the Detectives to the people and locations where he sold the art, perhaps some of you reading this might be able to point the Sparta New Jersey Police Department in the right direction. If you’ve purchased any art from Mr. Francesco Bove and have it in your possession or know someone who does please contact

Det. Jeffrey McCarrick at (973) 726-4072

Or the Sparta New Jersey Police Department spartanj.org or on their FB page https://www.facebook.com/sparta.police/

You can also reach out to me here on FB as well. Please know that I understand completely that this was sold under false pretenses and I fault no one for not knowing that. All I want is to retrieve as much of the art as I possibly can especially the attached Dan DeCarlo cover for Archie #322 which means the world to me and my family. Unfortunately it has been sold at least twice over that I’m aware of but if you know where I can find it I will gladly purchase it back.

(5) BOOTS ON THE GROUND. The Planetary Society reports on the first meeting of the newly reconstituted National Space Council in “We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things”.

Returning to the Moon

The biggest news to come out of today’s meeting was [Vice President] Pence’s authoritative declaration that Americans will return to the lunar surface.

“We will return American astronauts to the Moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond,” Pence said.

This wasn’t unexpected, considering prior statements by Pence, other administration officials, and the backgrounds of space council executive secretary Scott Pace, and NASA administrator nominee Jim Bridenstine.

Very few details were given on how a return to the lunar surface would work, or when it would occur. Pence did not say whether the Americans on the surface would be government or commercially-employed astronauts. And the agency’s exploration goals already include a return to lunar space via the Deep Space Gateway, a small space station in lunar orbit, which would provide a test-bed for closed-loop life support, deep space maneuvering, and other technologies necessary for travel to Mars.

In a statement, NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot said the agency has “highlighted a number of initiatives underway in this important area (cislunar space), including a study of an orbital gateway or outpost that could support a sustained cadence of robotic and human missions.” That implies the Deep Space Gateway is still on the table, and could theoretically fit within the broad plans outlined by Pence.

The fate of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule have been a perennial point of discussion among space advocates, particularly during the transition to this new, business-friendly administration. Though it wasn’t stated explicitly, today’s discussions seemed to assume the continuation of SLS and Orion, at least for now. The programs have always had strong congressional support, and were intended to be destination-agnostic, both by design and congressional directive. NASA can thus shift its focus without a drastic restructuring of its major hardware programs.

(6) TAKE A SHOWER. Space.com tells you — “Orionid Meteor Shower 2017: When, Where & How to See It”.

One of the year’s best sky shows will peak between Oct. 20 and 22, when the Orionid meteor shower reaches its best viewing. The meteors that streak across the sky are some of the fastest and brightest among meteor showers, because the Earth is hitting a stream of particles almost head on.

The particles come from Comet 1P/Halley, better known as Halley’s Comet. This famous comet swings by Earth every 75 to 76 years, and as the icy comet makes its way around the sun, it leaves behind a trail of comet crumbs. At certain times of the year, Earth’s orbit around the sun crosses paths with the debris.

(7) NOTABLE SIGNATURES. Michael Burstein posted copies of some historic letters his grandfather received from Einstein, Teller and Isaac Asimov.

Among other things, my grandfather Rabbi Abraham Burstein was secretary of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences. One of his tasks was reaching out to various luminaries to see if they would be interested in joining the academy. Sometimes he reached out to people whom he knew were Jewish but who might not be very public about it; joining the academy was a way to express solidarity without becoming too public. From what I understand, the academy had annual meetings with speakers.

I do not know what was in the letters my grandfather sent out to these three recipients, but we can see what they said back.

The earliest letter is from Albert Einstein, dated June 7, 1936. The next letter is from Edward Teller, dated December 21, 1962. The last letter is from Isaac Asimov, dated October 21, 1965.

(8) HONOR AN AUSTRALIAN SFF CONTRIBUTOR. The A. Bertram Chandler Award is calling for nominations.

So why is a person awarded this honour?  It’s because the recipient has demonstrated over many years untiring commitment and selfless work within Australian fandom or the Aussie SF scene in general.  Work such as convention running, local club activities, publishing, writing of merit in the genre whether that be blogs, fanzines, short stories or novels, artistic endeavours such painting, graphics or other such forms.  The criteria is not limited to any one activity; but mostly it is for activities that are visible and evident to the Aussie SF community.

So, do you know someone who has made a significant contribution to Australian science fiction and/ or Australian fandom, not just over the last year, but year in, year out? Feel that they should be honoured / recognised for this work? Then why not nominate them for the A Bertram Chandler Award. It is really easy to do: just write to the ASFF and outline why you think that the person is deserving of the award.  No forms to fill out, no entrance fee, nothing but a simple few paragraphs outlining the person’s achievements.

For more information about the A Bertram Chandler Award and the Australian Science Fiction Foundation visit our website ( www.asff.org.au )

To nominate a worthy person, send to [email protected]

(9) EBOOK TIDE RECEDING? A Wall Street Journal blogger relates what publishers had to say at the Frankfurt Book Fair in “Book Publishers Go Back to Basics”.

Book publishers are giving an advance review of the industry’s future, and it looks a lot like the past. After a decade of technological upheaval and lackluster growth, executives at the top four U.S. consumer book publishers say they are done relying on newfangled formats to boost growth.

It has been nearly 10 years since Amazon.com Inc. introduced its Kindle e-book reader amid the financial crisis, destabilizing publishers and challenging their well-honed business models.

Now, e-book sales are on the decline, making up a fraction of publishers’ revenue, and traditional book sales are rising. The consumer books industry is enjoying steady growth in the U.S., with total revenue increasing about 5% from 2013 to 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Executives gathered in Frankfurt for the industry’s biggest trade fair said they are returning to fundamentals: buying and printing books that readers want to buy—and they are streamlining their businesses to get them out faster than ever before.

It is about “knowing what [readers] want,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Bertelsmann SE and Pearson PSO -1.91% PLC’s joint venture Penguin Random House, “to drive demand at scale.”

The shift is a surprise reversal for an industry that experts just a decade ago predicted was facing radical change, if not a slow death, because of digitization and changing reading habits. Instead, e-book sales in the U.S. were down about 17% last year, according to the AAP industry group, while printed book revenue rose 4.5%.

…Mr. Murray blamed flagging e-book sales on “screen fatigue,” and said HarperCollins was upping investment in printed books, “the value anchor” for the entire business. Printed books are “more beautiful now,” he said. “You’ll see endpapers [and] a lot more design sensibility going into the print editions because we recognized that they can’t be throwaway.”

(10) IT’S THE PRICE. Amanda S. Green’s opinion about the above news is that trad publishers constantly talk around the real obstacle to e-book sales, which she identifies in “The delusions continue” at Mad Genius Club.

…Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy claims that nothing “went wrong” with e-books. It seems she believes people have gotten tired of reading on their screens. Again, a complete disconnect from reality. People don’t want to pay as much — or more — for an e-book as they will for a print copy. But the laugh out loud moment comes further down in the article when Reidy says she firmly believes “a new version of the book based on digital delivery will come eventually, though she does not know what it might look like.”

Blink.

Blink. Blink.

Hmm, wouldn’t that be an e-book? The bells and whistles might be a bit different, but it if walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, isn’t it a duck?

And what about her argument that e-book sales have leveled off because we are tired of reading on our screens?

It constantly amazes me the way these folks continue to tie themselves into knots trying to explain how e-books are bad, or are a passing fad or a way for writers not good enough for traditional publishing to get their works into the hands of readers. All I know is that the real numbers, the numbers that look at more than the Big 5 titles, tell a different tale. As a reader, I know I find myself picking up more and more books from indie authors because they are writing stories I want to read and they are doing it at prices that allow me to read two or three or more books for the price of a single Big 5 title. When is the point going to come where an accountant who isn’t afraid of rocking the boat says they can actually sell more — and make more money — if they lower their prices to something reasonable?

(11) SPLATTERPUNK AWARD SEEKS NOMINATIONS. As announced recently on Episode 136 of The Horror Show with Brian Keene, the SplatterPunk awards are now taking nominations for works of horror.  The categories are:

  • BEST NOVEL (for works of more than 50,000 words)
  • BEST NOVELLA (for works from 15,000 to 50,000 words)
  • BEST SHORT STORY (for works from 500 to 14,000 words)
  • BEST COLLECTION (for single-author works over 50,000 words)
  • BEST ANTHOLOGY (for multiple-author collections over 50,000 words)

Anyone registered to attend next year’s KillerCon is eligible to nominate.  Early registration is $89.99 until the end of 2017.  Registration is capped at 250 attendees.

Dann sent the link along with an observation, “The nomination form is a little unusual in that there is only one space provided for a nomination.  The attendee is supposed to indicate the appropriate category in one box and the work being nominated in a second box.  It isn’t clear how an attendee is supposed to nominate works in more than one category.”

Guests of honor at next year’s Killer Con include Brian Keene, Edward Lee, and Lucy Taylor.  Special Guests include author Matt Shaw and freelance editor Monica J. O’Rourke.

The 2018 Splatterpunk Awards jurors are David J. Schow, Gerard Houarner, Monica J. O’Rourke, Mike Lombardo, and Tod Clark.

The Founders of the SplatterPunk Awards, Wrath James White and Brian Keene, will select the Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • October 17, 1937: Huey, Dewey, and Louie (Donald Duck’s nephews) first appeared in a comic strip.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born October 17, 1914 – Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman.
  • Born October 17 – Michael J. Walsh, publisher, Old Earth Books, and former Worldcon chair (1983)

(14) THE NEIGHBORS’ HALLOWEEN DISPLAY. That would be a two-story tall Star Wars Imperial Walker —  “‘The Force’ is strong in Parma as residents unveil towering Star Wars’ robot”.

Everyone wants to see Nick Meyer’s latest Halloween decoration.

“That is an imperial armored transporter from (‘Star Wars: Episode V – The) Empire Strikes Back,’” said Meyer.

Star Wars’ fans would know the official name for the towering rover: an AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport).

Seven years ago, Meyer and his family started the tradition of building a Halloween display in the front yard.

“I love it, I encourage it,” said Nick’s wife Becky Meyer.

It gets bigger every year.

“I liked the clowns we did one year. Last year we did ‘Friday the 13th’ cabin, that was one of my favorites,” Becky said. “Last year was pretty awesome, and he topped it,” said next door neighbor, Amber Johnson.

One would think some neighbors might not want to stare at a two-story Star Wars robot for a few weeks, you’d be wrong.

“No, this is our fourth year living next door to them, and we love it,” Johnson said.

(15) IN MEMORY YET GRAY. Lawrence Schoen asks the inevitable question of Vivian Shaw, author of Strange Practice, in “Eating Authors: Vivian Shaw”.

LMS: Welcome, Vivian. What’s your most memorable meal?

VS: If you’d asked me this two years ago, I would have had no difficulty whatsoever in coming up with the best meal I’d ever eaten. That was in 2004, in Chicago, the same day I met Scott McNeil and George Romero: I was at a Transformers convention and decided to take myself to an actual steakhouse for an actual steak, and I can still so clearly remember the gorgeous rich mineral taste of that first-ever filet mignon, the way it almost dissolved in my mouth. The vivid greenness of the two asparagus spears on the plate, the peppery kick of the Shiraz that accompanied it — even thirteen years later it’s incredibly easy to recall.

(The most memorable, however, was the time on British Airways in the 1990s where for reasons known only to themselves somebody had decided to add bits of squid to the fruit salad. Memorable doesn’t equal pleasant.)

(16) LECKIE’S PROVENANCE Camestros Felapton reviews the new novel Provenance by Ann Leckie.

The people of Hwae (or at least the high-ranking ones) obsess over social status in a way that the Radch obsesses over rank (and tea). Central to this cult-like obsession is the veneration of ‘vestiges’ – artifacts that demonstrate the age of a family and possible connections to historical events. Vestiges can be anything from physical objects to letters and postcards or ticket stubs.

When we first meet Ingray she is off planet, embroiled in a scheme that is within her cognitive capacity to execute but for which she is not temperamentally prepared. As events unfold, a prison break, stolen spaceships, a murder of foreign dignitary and an invasion plot unfold around Ingray in a story that has elements of a mad-cap caper along side space-opera and Leckie’s trademark examination of the potential variety of human culture.

Above all Ingray is an honest person caught in a story in which most people she meets (both the good and the bad) are liars. This is such a clever trick by Leckie, as she manages to encapsulate Ingray very quickly as a character very early in the book, while giving her a backstory that gives her reasons to attempt a devious scheme (returning a notorious exiled criminal/disgraced vestige keeper to Hwae to embarrass her parent’s political rival). Ingray’s basic niceness wins her some useful allies and her naturally bravery pushes her further into the events.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Andrew Finch tells the inspiration for his short film Others Will Follow.

But Why?

Thanks for watching, Others Will Follow was inspired by this speech written for President Nixon to deliver in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon. Fortunately they never used it, so I figured I would. NASA has parked its space ships in museums in the decades since the contingency speech was written. Most humans alive today didn’t exist the last time humanity left low earth orbit. I wanted to make something that would outline the importance of human space flight by imagining a brute-force mission to Mars in the early 2000s that, despite disastrous circumstances still manages to pass the torch of inspiration. I spent 4.5 years making this short and attempted to do every aspect of its creation myself, from pyrotechnics to music composition. Many of the disciplines were completely new to me like designing and building the space ship and constructing the space suit, others like VFX and cinematography I had a background in.

The lone survivor of the first mission to Mars uses his last moments to pass the torch of inspiration.

Making of: Others Will Follow

VFX Breakdowns and funny funny stuff from the set of Others Will Follow

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Dann, Michael J. Walsh, Steve Davidson, Cat Eldridge, Andrew, and Rose Mitchell for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brad J.]

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122 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/17/17 If I Have Scrolled Further Than Others, It Is Because I Stood On The Pixels Of Filers”

  2. (2) Russell Seitz was tuckerized in “Fallen Angels” by Niven, Pournelle and Flynn (as Ron Cole, the world’s “6th nuclear power”).

    “While We Scroll, let us Scroll” (“Dum scribble-mus scribble-mus”)

  3. I’m way behind in posting my book reviews, but here are a couple I’d like to specially mention:

    Novella:
    All Systems Red [Murderbot Diaries #1], by Martha Wells
    I’ll add my voice to everyone else raving about this story. Action, suspense, and adventure with a rogue military AI whose personality is displayed subtly and with a slight bit of delightful snark.

    This is real SF space opera, the way it should be done. And I was thrilled to discover that #2, Artificial Condition, comes out in May 2018, and #3, Rogue Protocol, will be released in August 2018. Now I’m just grumbling until I can get my next “fix”. 😉

  5. Campbell author:
    Peter Cawdron, author of Retrograde.

    This is an edge-of-the-seat murder mystery set within a cooperative international scientific mission on Mars, and is really well-researched Hard SF. [Trigger Warning for a high body count and some brutal scene descriptions.]

    Fortunately and unfortunately for the author, the book, like Weir’s The Martian and Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was originally self-published (in 2016) and then picked up by a major publisher in 2017… so no eligibility for Hugo Best Novel. However, Cawdron is definitely going on my Campbell ballot. And the gorgeous Elizabeth Leggett cover, printed on reflective holographic stock, is a stunner.

  6. Paper books have an advantage over e-books – they can, when needed, be thrown with great force. For reasons I cannot understand, you can’t permanently delete an e-book you’ve bought, you can only “hide” it. But it’s still lurking there, waiting for a software glitch to show up and remind you of the things you do to be a good Hugo voter.

  8. (17) VIDEO OF THE DAY.

    I love this video, and the icing on the cake is that he got Bruce Greenwood to play the President.

    I’m putting this on my Hugo ballot for Dramatic Presentation Short Form.

  9. Jamoche on October 17, 2017 at 7:22 pm said:
    I have deleted e-books from my reader and my collection. It isn’t necessarily easy – but I’ve done it. (I could get them back, as they’re still on my purchased-books list, but I have no intention of doing so. Author/book rec that didn’t work for me.)

  11. @2: Seitz has long been reported to have purchased a (non-functional?) ICBM; however, both stories are loose with hard facts, so I wonder about the corroborative detail. (There is an outdoor museum near Hanscom; I’ll have to ask if anyone there knows about this.) A LinkedIn profile with a plausible photo says he finished Harvard College in 1972 and was a grad student through 1974 (about what I would have recollected); this suggests he never studied at MIT and couldn’t have been a grad student at either Noreascon One (1971) or Two (1980). My guess is that the ICBM was picked up in the late 60’s or early 70’s, as he was already the MITSFS ~”Pro-tem VP in charge of nuclear retaliation” (according to their pathological TO) when I joined in early 1973.
    There was also the reported episode (possibly on the west coast — I recall reading Fuzzy Pink’s account of it) involving a champagne-cork duel with Larry Niven; have you heard of this?

    @3: it just keeps piling up….

  12. Chip Hitchcock: There was also the reported episode (possibly on the west coast — I recall reading Fuzzy Pink’s account of it) involving a champagne-cork duel with Larry Niven; have you heard of this?

    I wish I could say I witnessed it, but I was present when Larry Niven came inside immediately afterwards and started telling people his version of the duel. Doesn’t Larry tell it in N-Space (or another collection)?

  13. Bullcrap. First, this is NOT how inertial guidance works (it stays pointed at Kiev). The inertial platform is stabilized in inertial space by gyros, yes – which yields the attitude of the platform. The outputs of sensitive accelerometers attached to the platform are integrated once to give velocities and and again to yield change in position from the initial position – which always must be initialized for any INS to work – to give present position. From velocities and present position the guidance system can compute guidance commands to maintain the desired trajectory and strike the designated target. There is just no such damn thing as an inertial guidance system that is Kiev (or anyplace else) seeking. One of the problems with Inertial Nav is that the systems do drift (accumulate error) and must be corrected when the error becomes significant.

    Second, when the Titan force was taken off alert between 1983 and 1987, the majority of the missiles were used as orbital launch vehicles, although some were donated by the Air Force to museums. Nobody ever bought a “surplus” Titan. It’s possible that people may have acquired items having something to do with the Titan program, but a complete missile, no.

  16. I don’t know who Ruthanna Emrys is but free seems to be a reasonable price to pay for a new book by an unheard of author. It’s nice that this one appears to be worldwide too.

  20. @OGH

    I wish I could say I witnessed it, but I was present when Larry Niven came inside immediately afterwards and started telling people his version of the duel. Doesn’t Larry tell it in N-Space (or another collection)?

    Yes. Here’s a link to the page in “N-Space” that discusses it.

    Regarding e-books – I am _very_ reluctant to buy e-books with DRM, so if a book I really want isn’t available DRM-free, I’ll get it in paper.

  21. #9 & 10- I don’t agree with either. I have to read most of my books through the library (thanks budget) or e-reader (same reason, plus space). On the books I haven’t noticed them getting prettier. Forgive me, but cover art is cover art. It can be wonderful or crap. The e-books are usually give-a-ways, on sale or something I really want.

    As to the Indies, it had best be really good or something I’m interested in, because the editing on most is terrible. The sort of flaws that snap you out of a the experience. Also, the cover art tends to the terrible….

    So, I read trad publishing, but haven’t noticed the books improving and the Indies need real editors.

  22. @Paul Weimer/@JJ

    Another Murderbot fan here. Martha Wells hasn’t tended to get the attention she deserves (in my opinion) so I’m hoping these will do well.

    And I bought Winter Tide literally minutes before learning I could have got a copy for free, but I’m basically OK with that. I can afford it and authors need money.

  23. (Amanda Green in italics, mine not)

    They laughed at Jim Baen when he started offering e-book versions of the traditionally published books released by Baen. They told him the format was a fad and would die away.

    Many of those Baen electronic releases are amongst THE most pirated SF/F stories out there. For better or worse.

    Then along came Amazon. Approximately 9 years ago, Amazon did something no one expected. They opened up a platform that allowed authors to publish their books as e-books and sell them directly through the Amazon store. More importantly, Amazon created the Kindle e-book reader. Now reading the new format became easy. Better yet, readers could put dozens, no hundreds of books on their devices and carry them with them wherever they went. They could buy books directly from Amazon and the books would be delivered to their devices, making trips to bookstores unnecessary.

    Yes, Amazon used its leverage to build a near monopoly…suddenly, the distributor was dictating prices, market access and profits to everyone else.

    trips to the bookstore being unnecessary is now touted as a “good thing”?

    But more importantly, this paragraph emphasizes the “benefits” of ebooks and ereaders – convenience, no shelf space needed, reading can take place anywhere. Yet later on –

    All you have to do is look at the pricing of books from the Big 5 to know they are doing everything they can to cannibalize the digital market in order to prop up their beloved print books.

    so – readers don’t want to pay for the added convenience, the no shelf space needed and the ability to read everywhere/anywhere?

    How is paying more for a hardback than a paperback (larger format, more durable, some think more prestige) different from paying more for other consumer preferences? Heck, if you want to listen to that book instead of reading it, you’re going to have to pay even more!

    Some products loaded with consumer preferences that consumers don’t want and yet are being asked to pay a premium for get taken off the market. The name Edsel springs to mind.

    Convenience store prices are always higher than supermarket prices…because you are paying for the convenience.

  24. I’m a huge Martha Wells fan. In addition to the Murderbot and Raksura books, her older stuff is also definitely worth checking out — I’m very fond of the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.

  25. JJ, the books-for-classroom project is, as of now, fully funded. And I put in a plug for the Harriet-the-Invincible books, while I was at it. <grin>

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

  26. Book sales. I personally would be interested in sales numbers looking at units sold rather than dollars, though I understand why the publishers would focus on the dollars. My suspicion is that the increase in paper book sales is driven by higher prices rather than more sales.
    Back in the day, I used to buy 5-10 books a year, ones I really liked, and go the library for the rest of my reading. Now I buy 5-10 books a year full price, ones I really liked, and buy many others in 99c/$1.99 sales, and have mostly cut out the library. So essentially I am paying a dollar a book for the added convenience of ebooks – I love, love ebooks. I’m mystified by the people who say they prefer paper, why?
    I have read some pretty good independently published books, but most the books I read are trad published. Somehow, I just end up hearing about them, getting them recommended a lot more. It seems to me that publishers do really add marketing value

  27. Regarding e-books – I am _very_ reluctant to buy e-books with DRM, so if a book I really want isn’t available DRM-free, I’ll get it in paper.

    For fiction, DRM really doesn’t bother me. Sure, DRM might cut off access to a book sometime in the future, but paperbacks also had a limited life span in my collection. Overcrowding of my book shelves (and a limit to the weight-bearing capacity of the floor) means that I used to periodically sell old paperbacks to a used book shop. Occasionally, that meant I had to purchase a book again if I wanted to re-read it after selling it years before, so if I lose the occasional book to DRM problems it won’t be much different. So far, though, DRM hasn’t caused any access problems.

    I still purchase most non-fiction in paper, and e-fiction, DRM or not, gives me more space to store big, heavy horticulture books.

  28. I just finished Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys a couple of days ago. I enjoyed it. It’s another of the intelligent 21st century updated Lovecraft-based stories we’ve been seeing lately.

  29. 1 – Not sure why they feel the need to label the spin offs with the subtitle ‘A Star Wars Story’. I mean are we going to forget that the Han Solo movie is a Star Wars story and walk into it by mistake? I think A Solo Adventure would’ve been more fun as a title.

    9 – I thought eBook sales have been declining year over year for the last couple of years. I’ll have to find that article but this feels like deja vu. Which doesn’t spell doom for the print or eBook industries, the market can easily handle people enjoying multiple formats. My wife doesn’t like eBooks because she likes to read before bed and doesn’t want to look at a screen before sleeping. I like eBook impulse sales and purchases and some books (like Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard short novellas/novellettes) are only available that way, and I’m running out of space for physical books. But most of my books are still library check outs or physical purchases.

    This is just the market figuring itself out after a new format created a huge boom period. It was never going to be like CDs replacing cassette tapes.

    Retrograde sounds right up my alley JJ, thanks for adding another to the pile 🙂

  30. bookworm1398: “why, why, why?”

    A few possible reasons:

    1. Born during the Eisenhower administration…no sech thang as e-books. Magnetic tape and punched paper tape, sure thing. But you know, reading those dots punched in paper took forever…and lord help you if you dropped a stack of punch cards….

    2. reading paper books for….um, three decades before the other thing was even on the radar screen

    3. print is “real”, electrons are ephemeral

    4. collecting.

    5. do not like the idea of perpetually “leasing” books that are presented in a fashion that makes it appear I am “buying” them

    6. don’t dare read an ebook while in the bathtub

    7. I can make fire in a variety of different ways. I can’t “make” a charging point; when the batteries run out, I can still read by fire or candle light, if that’s what it takes.

    8. feel. a good book fills both hands. there’s a tactile element to reading that I don’t get from a screen. I can’t smell an ebook; if I want to look at the cover while reading, all it takes is one finger to mark my place and, viola, there it is. No paging touching or tapping needed

    9. Carting around thousands of physical books has never bothered me. It just never has. Going on a trip is an excuse to stand in my library, survey all that is mine and make interesting picks to take along.

    10. collecting. Doesn’t appeal to many, but for those who it does, pointing to a computer and saying “there’s my collection” doesn’t really cut it.

    Bonus answer: If Liebowitz’s shopping list had been a note on a smart phone, he’d NEVER have been elevated to Sainthood….

  31. I’m signed up for a number of daily discount-ebook-offer newsletters, and have no trouble finding more than enough low-priced reading material, even new “hot” books on special one-day sales. My buy-threshhold is usually $1.99 or below, though I occasionally splurge on a $2.99 ebook. I think the most I’ve spent on a single ebook is $4.99 (for THROUGH THE BAMBOO, the outstanding Vietnam-with-ghosts-and-spirits book I’ve recommended here before), and about $8 for an omnibus ebook (3 of Octavia Butler’s books).

    For physical copies (frequently for Hilde’s reading, since she’s unable to use an e-reader, but also for books I’m pretty sure I want undeletable copies of), I’m willing to pay more. (Just received a box with the new Bear, Czerneda, and Walter Jon Williams hardcovers, plus tpbs of THE STARLIT WOOD and Broaddus’ BUFFALO SOLDIERS.)

    At $1.99, or $0.99, or Free, I’m more willing to take a chance on indie authors who’ve given an interesting synopsis or premise for their book. (Decent covers help too.) In that vein, just ordered Ruth Nestvold’s YGERNA, a new Arthurian-prequel story. I’m familiar enough with Nestvold’s name to feel I’ll be getting a professionally written book. YGERNA is available for $0.99 until the end of October, after which it’ll be $2.99.

  32. > “I’m mystified by the people who say they prefer paper, why?”

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I finally, after much resistance, got a kindle (the >$20 difference in price between the softcover and e-book versions of The Ruin of Angels is what finally broke me.) As a means of reading, it has both pros and cons compared to paper — it is lighter, smaller, holds far more material than a book, and ebooks are often cheaper. On the other hand, it is more inconvenient if it gets damaged because it holds more material, I do not like that material in electronic format can be changed without my consent, I do not like that it needs charging, and certain things that are easy to do with a physical book are more cumbersome or impossible — giving away, reselling, flipping back ~90 pages to check something, etc. But honestly, all of that is almost beside the point.

    Physical books are my externalized memories.

    I do not have a great memory for events. I have a fantastic memory for words, and emotions associated with words. (In fact, many of my “memories” of life are basically verbal stories I told myself about them shortly after the fact.) When I see a book, I can remember not just what it was about, but the emotions I felt while reading it, the time of life I was in, associated life events, etc. They are to me what madeleines were for Proust. Bookshelves filled with books are an album of my life. I do not get that from glancing down a list on an e-reader. I just don’t.

    I suspect that this will, over time, make me as odd and out of date as my friends who have vast collections of vinyl records. That’s all right. And I’ve come around to getting a share of my books on the kindle. It’ll keep my shelves from overflowing quite as fast, and it’s definitely going to be a boon for traveling.

    But my bookshelves are my memory palace, and I do not plan to knock them down.

  34. Per Goodreads, so far this year I’ve read three physical books out of 52. eBooks are just so much more convenient that at this point, I only read physical books if they’re not available electronically or something along those lines. I love my Kindle Paperwhite with the backlighting.

    Well, and graphic novels &c. I still get in physical form.

    I don’t necessarily object to paying $12-$15 for an eBook if it’s the specific book I want to read right now; but I don’t tend to do as much just-in-case buying at that price point — impulse buys tend closer to the $0.99-$3.99 range, depending.

  35. Bruce Arthurs wrote: “At $1.99, or $0.99, or Free, I’m more willing to take a chance on indie authors”

    and see, have the exact opposite emotional response: that’s “bargain basement”, ‘remainders”, something being sold cheap…because it can’t sell at a “real” price.

    (Yes, I know there are many fine books offered at discount).

    But all of these book promotion bundles, introductory “free” reads & etc., all they remind me of is the “bruised fruit” display at the supermarket. Yeah it’s cheap, and if I needed to save money I’d buy some and cut out the bruised portions, but really, I’d much rather have a piece of unblemished fruit that can command a reasonable price.

    Not rational, but I’m not a Vulcan, nor was I raised by Vulcan parents alongside an unacknowledged half-brother….

  36. “People say ebooks are on the way out, but I like the comfort of seeing all my reading right there in the filesystem and the security of knowing I have backups. It’s a tactile experience, too: the weight of the screen in my hand and smooth scrolling with no page breaks. And there’s something special about text flow, too. Paper books just aren’t as fluid an experience. And of course paper’s useless in the dark. A lot of people forget that.”

    (Not quite sure where I was going with that, but no criticism intended of people who prefer paper. All reading is valid.)

  37. @ Steve Davidson
    1&2. You don’t have a problem with communicating through this blog, which is also a format that didn’t exist before. What makes books different?

    3. I don’t know what that even means. Electrons are the building blocks of all matter.

    4. I don’t really understand the mindset of collectors, but I acknowledge that such people exist.

    5. I guess? Functionally, I’ve never had a problem doing what I want with ebooks, but if you loan out books a lot that would be an issue.

    6. Just need a ziplock bag.

    7. I haven’t unexpectedly have the batteries die in 7 years of kindle. In the event of a long term blackout, I do have some small solar charging panels i use for camping. I don’t actually own any candles.

    8. The ‘tactile’ experience argument is the one that makes the least sense to me. I can care about the feel of clothes, or the smell of food, but books? Books are about the words.

    9. Why pick before the trip when you can pick during the trip?

    10. The non-visible nature of e-books is actually a big plus for me. I feel ebooks provide more day-to-day privacy. I’ve never enjoyed explaining my books to all the non-readers around me and hated receiving all the recommendations for popular books I knew I wouldn’t like. E-readers have cut all that out.

    Anyway, I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with liking physical books. If that’s what you want, that’s what you want. I just don’t understand that preference.

  38. The physical feel of a book is part of the experience for me. I want to smell it, feel it. I want to look at it when it rests by my bedside table. I want to see it when I’ve read it. I get comfort from being around books. I do buy eBooks sometimes, mostly because I do not have the patience to wait until I get to a bookstore, but then I will buy a physical copy afterwards.

    When backpacking, I have around 20 pounds of books in my backpack at the start of my trip. Not even then will I prefer eBooks.

  39. I think that it is more that ebooks are finding their niche as a long term format, when many people banked on them as a replacement as opposed to an alternative. I know I personally enjoy the physical experience of reading a book in print more than on-screen, but I love the convenience of carrying around a big chunk of my library in my bag and being able to delve into it at whim.

    That’s why my buying patterns have changed, but haven’t diminished. The kinds of ‘throwaway’ books I enjoy, which I used to buy as softcovers, now are purchased as ebooks. You know, that kind of book that you don’t care about being on your wall, tend to build up in piles at the edges of the bookcases, etc. Meanwhile, the tried and tested writers, the books that I’m sitting down to read as opposed to the ones that are mostly a pleasurable distraction during my commute; those are still physical copies.

    As for the cheap electronic additions, I treat them the same way I do browsing at the used book store. Mostly authors I don’t know, testing them out and if it doesn’t resonate with me, I’m only short a few bucks.

  40. I’m mystified by the people who say they prefer paper, why?

    There have been studies suggesting that retention is reduced when reading ebooks vs. paper, and that coincides with my own experience. I tried going ebook only for about a year and found it almost an entirely wasted year; I remember virtually nothing of what I read, and found the experience to be terrible (I absolutely loathe bad typography, for one thing, and I have rarely found an ebook that rises above the horrendously bad typographical standards of a ’70s mass market paperback). Reading a paperback with mediocre “build quality” remains a superior experience to reading an ebook with high “build quality” for many readers, and price sensitivity does not appear to be the primary motivator for a great many readers. I was speaking not fifteen minutes ago with a publisher who, though he built his business on e-publishing, has switched to reading entirely on paper for almost exactly the same reason. The experience has improved, but is still awful, and he finds he retains almost none of what he reads, and is always having to re-read many pages if he’s put a book down for longer than an hour or so.

    As for pricing, I’m sure I’ve brought this up before, but I did some diving (with the help of a non-fic writer who specializes in writing about the history of publishing in Canada) into the consumer price index a few years back and found that book prices, when adjusted for inflation, have remained stable for nearly a hundred years, across pretty much all formats, while the industry at large has been reporting that profit margins have fallen dramatically. So when facing decreasing profits, publishers have *not* responded by raising prices; they’ve found ways to cut internally instead (often, sadly, they’ve sliced up the author’s cut). All this continuous harping on about Big 5 price gouging is getting to be boring, because it has so little basis in reality.

    I’ve read a few decent indie/self-published books, and some have been pretty good (Ian Sales, David Forbes, and K.M. Alexander–not so much his first book, but the others–all come to mind) but every one of them has had editing problems, even those where the author was savvy enough to hire a freelance editor to help them out. There are stories there I want to read, sure, but I don’t want to feel like I’m being sold something that hasn’t had–or feels like it hasn’t had–care put into every stage of the process, either.

  41. The physical feel of a book is part of the experience for me. I want to smell it, feel it. I want to look at it when it rests by my bedside table. I want to see it when I’ve read it.

    Wow, get a room, you two.

  42. Although, much as I like reading on my Kindle, eBooks will never be able to replicate the experience of walking into, well, pretty much any room in my home, surveying the expanse of full-to-overflowing shelves, and sighing contentedly. Or of, e.g., seeing Dad’s copy of Red Planet on the shelf and remembering the day in the summer after second grade when I sat on the front porch and read it cover-to-cover in pretty much one sitting. And browsing through the Kindle to pick out something new to read is grossly inferior to running my fingers along the shelves.

  43. @Andrew: thanks for finding the reference; I own the book but wouldn’t have thought to look there for the story. The complete story confirms my recollection that the one from milk.com is way off. (I guess I’ll pass on asking the deCordova what they know.) The teller must have gotten that story Nth-hand (for some large value of N); I knew her as uninclined to add corroborative detail. She also mentions the MITSFS gavel, a wrench too large to open fire hydrants with, but IIRC Seitz in fact donated the gavel block — described as a 55# block of titanium. (Per long-ago memory, which also says the block wasn’t big enough to weigh that much of that metal — maybe I’ll bug them instead of the deCordova.) He later borrowed the block back as (IIRC) a demo of what USSR subs were using for hull plates. There are such fascinating fragments of stories wandering around fandom….

  44. One of the reasons I (mostly) read ebooks these days is that it is simply … lighter. The day-to-day weight isn’t a problem (two books, one is the currently-reading, one is the hot spare in case I finish the first), but the longer-distance travelling one really is a problem. Approximate book budget (that is “books packed”, not actual money) is 4-5 books for each trans-Atlantic flight, plus one book per day on the other end. This is actually under-budgeting and I have had to resort to bookshops in the past. It is a lot easier to take a single “sub kg” device (I have actually not weighed my e-reader, but it is definitely under a kg) with 100+ books on it. I really don’t miss having ~half my luggage being books…

    Things against is that it doesn’t get me the visceral book store experience. Serendipitous book discovery is simply easier in a physical store.

  45. Even professionally-published e-books have formatting problems and typos – I suspect those are books that were scanned from dead-tree and not checked for needed corrections. (I’ve seen some egregious problems.)

  46. What @August said; the studies seem to bear out for me that I also find books I read in e-book format to be less memorable somehow. Currently I only use it when I want to read something in a hurry that I know will be an enjoyable but ephemeral read. For authors I like, for books I’ll want to reread, I want paper.

  47. And on a tangentially-related note, apparently I just got $11.60 in Amazon credit as a result of something to do with Apple settling an antitrust suit?

  48. And yet another Meredith Moment: Robert Jackson Bennett’s American Elsewhere (which I quite enjoyed, and which gave me a distinct Night Vale vibe, although the book & the podcast both appeared at about the same time, so I assume it’s coincidence) is $2.99 on Amazon

  49. @ Steve Davidson
    1&2. You don’t have a problem with communicating through this blog, which is also a format that didn’t exist before. What makes books different?

    In many respects, this is work. And there’s little difference but the time factor between writing here and typing on a stencil, mimeographing and mailing, then waiting for the return LOCs. Yes, the net is faster – but even that is not necessarily, or always, a good thing.

    3. I don’t know what that even means. Electrons are the building blocks of all matter. OK. the storage format(s) for electronic files degrade a lot faster than print on paper; there was a huge ruckus several years back when data storage facilities discovered that, say data CDs degraded much more quickly than they’d anticipated. Not print, but…those old films on nitrocellulose film stock are still being restored 100 years later, while my copy of Guardians of the Galaxy DVD has almost worn out. A book recovered from a lake (or even the bathtub) will get crinkly and bloated, but is still readable, useable, etc.

    4. I don’t really understand the mindset of collectors, but I acknowledge that such people exist. We have a deeper attachment to certain things; for example, if I need to replace a worn out book, any old copy will not do – it has to be the same edition, same printing, for me to be happy with it.

    5. I guess? Functionally, I’ve never had a problem doing what I want with ebooks, but if you loan out books a lot that would be an issue.

    When I purchase something, it is mine to do with as I please. When I lease, not. I may rent a car on a trip, but I would never lease a vehicle. It’s more than just “oh, they can change my copy/delete my copy”…to me, it feels like the owner is sitting and watching, waiting for me to do something outside the lease agreement…

    6. Just need a ziplock bag. too much condensation…and besides, not the same thing

    7. I haven’t unexpectedly have the batteries die in 7 years of kindle. In the event of a long term blackout, I do have some small solar charging panels i use for camping. I don’t actually own any candles. Living on the edge, hmmm?

    8. The ‘tactile’ experience argument is the one that makes the least sense to me. I can care about the feel of clothes, or the smell of food, but books? Books are about the words.

    There are many book designers who I am sure would disagree with that statement. Weigh, feel, sound, smell, they all play into the reading experience.

    9. Why pick before the trip when you can pick during the trip? Oh, I ALWAYS come home with more books than I went with

    10. The non-visible nature of e-books is actually a big plus for me. I feel ebooks provide more day-to-day privacy. I’ve never enjoyed explaining my books to all the non-readers around me and hated receiving all the recommendations for popular books I knew I wouldn’t like. E-readers have cut all that out.

    Heh. I’m the opposite. “Wanna see the library? Oh, you don’t really read a lot? Let me show you the other ahem, library

  50. The comments about The Winter Tide reminded me to pick up the phone and press “buy”. Ever since “The Litany of the Earth” my opinion has been that any discussion of neo-Lovecraftiana that doesn’t give Emrys a prominent place isn’t worth paying attention to. (And I have seen discussions of neo-Lovecraftiana that somehow fail to mention her at all, which I find utterly baffling.)

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