79 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/21/16 And Did Those Scrolls In Ancient Times Walk Upon England’s Pixels Green”

1. First?? I really should have been in bed ages ago …

   ETA: ticky *yawn*

2. This scroll is brought to you by the bad folks at Dark Satanic Mills, unrepentant makers of Gloomy-Os and Screechies! They’re a regrettable part of this otherwise good, nutritious breakfast.

3. secondthirdish.

4. Thanks Mike. And Marc. After the south bashing of a few days ago, I appreciate the shout out to something local.

5. FIFTH

   [clicky]

6. It appears that long term friend of the blog JCW needs some help making ends meet while waiting for that mad Dragon Award money to roll in:

   http://www.scifiwright.com/2016/10/starving-artist-open-to-suggestion/

7. (1) Leckie’s point that “transparent writing” is not necessarily “transparent” to everyone reminds me of the reaction I often have to MilSF written by active/former military personnel: Generally that subgenre aims for fairly “transparent” writing, yet it is often so littered with acronyms and jargon that it is fairly hard for civilians (or even veterans of different armies, as in my case) to follow.

8. Do we have to stand in a trunk when we read this title?

   (1) Very good essay. Even the comments (at least the first 3) are good. I have enjoyed and voted for Ann Leckie’s work often, but gosh. I may even like her more as a person than a writer.

   (3) That’s… a lot of money for copies of autographs; despite what the blurb says, I think the Morojo and 4E connection makes it worth more.

   (5,6) Happy birthday to a national, nay, world treasure. And to the guy in the Flintstone shirt too.

   (7) Genuinely amusing. I see a familiar name at the end.

   (9) Kinda surprised this didn’t happen earlier.

   @microtherion: we discussed that ad nauseam last week. He got the moneys.

9. @lurkertype (and rest of readers) my apologies. I missed a few scrolls due to illness and checked only the last two before posting.

10. 1) POLLY WANNA SYLLABLE

    Great post. Touches a little bit on one of the reasons I think it’s difficult for some to read the other and really enjoy it

    7) BOGUS BOOK REPORTS

    These were fun to read today in various news articles. I was afraid I’d never get out if I checked out Twitter itself

11. (9) WELL ENDOWED.

    Do not sit in the Stephen King Chair of Literature! Unspeakable things will happen…

    Crap forgot an actual story rec: “A Glass Kiss for the Little Prince of Pain” by Martin Cahill.

12. @lurkertype
    (3) That’s… a lot of money for copies of autographs; despite what the blurb says, I think the Morojo and 4E connection makes it worth more.

    Isn’t the value for the actual autographs, and not the facsimiles?

    Jerry Siegel, Julie Schwartz, and Mort Weisinger. I realize they are all SF, but that’s a heck of a lot of what made DC comics right there.

13. @Dawn Incognito

    Do not sit in the Stephen King Chair of Literature! Unspeakable things will happen

    Would that make it the irony throne?

    I’ll get my coat…

14. Re: Leckie. Indeed. Calling prose “pretentious” or “Transprent” is a marker of the reader and their background much more than the author or the author’s work.

15. 1 & @microtherion: Glossary of military acronyms – even officers in the army have to refer to this occasionally (I’ve also got a 1980s book of approximately the same title: a LOT of them depend on context as air force, army, navy, marines, coastguard frequently use the same acronym for different things. And don’t get me started on unofficial names attached to designations for foreign military eqpt: how in the hell you get “backfire bomber” from Tupolev Tu-22M is beyond me….and what we do to our own – the “M1” could be a rifle, OR a tank….

16. “As your lawyer, I’ll offer one last piece of advice. If they do give you the Stephen King Chair, don’t sit down.”

17. Also going on in Huntsville (today and tomorrow) is Nerdcon.

18. Steve Davidson: The US designated all Soviet bombers with a name beginning with B for bomber. Why Backfire I don’t know…

19. Just saw that comedian Kevin Meaney has passed away. He had some genre-ish credits in animated voiceover work, but mainly he was just a really funny guy.

20. @steve davidson

    In case you want to know, “Backfire” is a NATO reporting name for the type. Bombers are all coded with a name starting with B: Bear, Bison, Blackjack. Fighters get a name starting with F: Foxbat, Flogger, Fulcrum. Easier for people to remember and unambiguous.

    I used to enjoy cold war thrillers.

    British stuff normally gets names rather than codes. The RAF used to go for alliteration: Hawker Hurricane, Blackburn Buccaneer. But could also then follow a theme, so Hawker Typhoon and Tempest followed Hurricane.

    I quite enjoy that sort of detail myself, if it suits the setting. One of the things I enjoy about Stross’s Laundry books is the very British Intelligence Service trappings in things like the operational codes like BLOODY BARON.

    ETA: checking Wikipedia the names are pretty random but chosen to be unlikely to come up randomly in conversation. Two syllables in the name are also indicative of it being a jet whereas Bear is a propeller driven aircraft. Apparently.

21. The Soviet fighter (F) designations are better: Fargo, Farmer, Fishbed, Flogger and Foxbat. Foxbat has a special place in the hearts of anyone who played Champions.

22. In “crossing media franchises” news, Constable Reginald from Inspector Spacetime has been cast to play young Lando Calrissian.

23. Bring Me my Cup of Leckie Tea;
    Bring me the Puppies I can rile:
    Bring me my Fifth: No make it three!
    Bring me my Articles to file!

24. Today’s interesting links:
    ESA has a picture of the Schiaparelli crash site and hopes they have enough data to prevent a repeat on their next try.
    Details on that anthology on Iraq in 2116; I note that at least one story matches a comment here in suggesting that the current country will have been divided.
    And if you need some relief from the news, finalists in this year’s comedy wildlife photo contest. The rules prohibit domestic animals and digital alterations, so a lot of people have been some combination of patient and lucky. Click through for semifinalists, including a rhinoceritic pushmi-pullyu.

25. A seconding of yesterday’s recommendation of Everything that Isn’t Winter. The future setting of New Ruritania is plausible, the situation engaging, and the theme well explored in both conflict and character.

26. Some time during World War II, the British came across some information about a German radar project called Wotan, which they thought about for a while – and they decided, “Aha! Wotan is famous for only having one eye, and therefore this must be some sort of single-beam system!” – and they were right, and they decided from then on that their own code names would be deliberately meaningless, so nobody could pull a stunt like that on them.

    The MoD used to use what were called “Rainbow Codes” for quite a while – projects were referred to as (random colour) plus (random noun), so nobody could tell what they actually were. So, if Disaffected Scientist rings up Klaus the Generic Spy one day and says, “hey, I can get you a sample of Violet Mist if you’re interested,” Klaus the Generic Spy doesn’t know if he needs a bottle, or a briefcase, or a three-ton truck to take it away.

    The “reasonably meaningless unless you actually know the codes” NATO reporting designations, like Backfire and Fulcrum and so on, seem to be much the same sort of thing.

27. All SF is filled with jargon–it is just that some of the terms have grown familiar enough to be “transparent” to a well-versed genre reader, while others are even familiar to mainstream, non-reading media consumers.

    I sometimes play out mental experiments related to this. One is “if you were dropped in time period x, could you sufficiently explain technology y so that an educated audience wouldn’t believe it was magic.” (For instance, if you understand at least the basics of how the components of a digital camera works, it would be fairly easy to explain to Einstein, a bit more difficult but still possible with Darwin, quite a challenge with Newton, and a very long project with Archimedes.)

    Another is “if a copy of book x fell into the hands of historical person y, how well could they understand it?” As I see it, there are 3 categories of technologies used in fiction 1.) Things that exist in the real world at the time the book was written and the writer assumes that the reader will be familiar with them, and thus doesn’t explain them. 2.) Things that do not exist in the real world but are well established enough in the history of the genre that the writer feels no need to explain them. 2.) Things that do not exist in the real world that the writer cooks up for themselves, and thus has the need to explain, or that already exist as a convention in the genre, but the writer feels are obscure enough to need explanation. (I suppose you could add a new category or sub-category for things that actually exist in the real world, but are obscure enough to merit some explanation.)

    So, you drop a modern SF novel in the hands of, let’s say, Hugo Gernsback. He would have no problem understanding casual mention of fake technologies already familiar by the 1960s (laser weapons, time machines, faster-than-light travel) and little problem getting up to speed on new fake technologies introduced in the book and explained by the author, but the stumbling point would be real technologies invented after the 1960s but taken utterly for granted today (nobody writing today is going to say “Bob removed his cellular telephone–a portable radio-frequency transceiver made possible by large-scale integration of transistors and a widespread network of radio towers controlled by powerful digital computers–from his pocket and touched areas of the flat display screen, causing changes in the conductivity across a grid of embedded microscopic wires, triggering the device to send a signal to the nearest radio tower connecting a voice call between Bob and Alice.”) and on fictional technologies well enough established as to not need explanation (such as perhaps nanotech and virtual reality.) The further you send the book back in time, the more things stop making sense–computers, televisions, electric lights, photography, trains, printing presses, etc.

    (Of course, this works for all genres–for example there will be a time when you can take the concept of vampires for granted but have to explain why they are sparkly, then before that a time when you must explain what a “vampire” is. In a medical drama, there is a time that you can take for granted that people know that the brain is the seat of intelligence, but before that a time you would have to explain that it isn’t just for cooling/aerating the blood. There would be a time when you wouldn’t have to explain what WWII stood for, preceded by a time you wouldn’t have to explain “the Great War”, preceded by a time you would have to explain how a world-wide war could happen. And so on.)

28. (1) POLLY WANNA SYLLABLE?
    I don’t know … there’s some good points there, but I think Leckie exaggerates the subjectivity of text difficulty. Yes, how easy something is to read depends on the reader’s background – but if you ask 100 readers to grade the complexity of different texts (or tested their understanding of it) the answers will almost certainly show clear trends like “everyone thinks this text is easy to understand” and “this text is hard”.

    I think I also disagree with this:

    I’m also kind of side-eyeing the idea that first off, plot can somehow manifest in a written work in any other way than the actual words on the page. I mean, no words, no story. Arrange the words differently, and the story is changed. There’s no separation there, words and story are the same thing. A story told plainly and a story told in dense, elaborate, poetic prose are very different experiences. There is not some Platonic form of the story that elaborate prose is concealing, that exists beyond the sentences, that if only we could free it we would have the Pure Essence of Story stunning us with its perfection. The sentences are the story.

    Or perhaps not so much disagree, but I’m side-eyeing the change from “plot” in the first sentence to “story” in the rest of the paragraph. Yes, plain prose and elaborate prose make for different reading experiences. But a reader of the plain text will generally be left with a clearer impression of the plot – the external events described in the text – than a reader of the elaborate text – who will be left with other impressions.

    ***

    On the intersection between Stephen King and the twitter comments in (7), King recently tweeted this:

    My newest horror story: Once upon a time there was a man named Donald Trump, and he ran for president. Some people wanted him to win.

29. @Steve Wright

    Some time during World War II, the British came across some information about a German radar project called Wotan, which they thought about for a while – and they decided, “Aha! Wotan is famous for only having one eye, and therefore this must be some sort of single-beam system!” – and they were right, and they decided from then on that their own code names would be deliberately meaningless, so nobody could pull a stunt like that on them.

    At some point, even the Germans seem to have gotten at least an inkling of this idea, given that they renamed their 200 ton tank project from Mammoth to Mouse.

30. Can anyone explain, in rot-13, perhaps, because this strip puts the “No!” into NSFW, the joke in “Memory”, today’s Oglaf, which I mention but to which I do not link, because it is typically so NSFW that it isn’t really safe to think about silently in some locations, even though this one is just very NSFW.

    (It seems as though that shouldn’t end with a question mark, question or not.)

31. Can anyone explain, in rot-13, perhaps, because this strip puts the “No!” into NSFW, the joke in “Memory”, today’s Oglaf

    I’ve studied it, and a few previous strips, I believe that it signifies that the comic artist has insufficient ventilation in the room where he paints his miniatures.

32. @Daren Garrison: It’s a very odd vision of the world! But it usually makes narrative sense.

    This one, though–it’s like two separate strips stacked one upon another. The first makes sense as a little conversational slice. The second is almost as sensible as a narrative fragment. The same two characters are apparently in both strips. But I don’t get any other connection between the halves.

    I’m usually good at reading a comic, but I need help here!

33. What, did so.eine say Leckue’so prose was not transparent?

    The One True Holder of the Stephen King Chair in Literature will be the person who can sit down in it–and then read to his or her research assistants, ungarbled by terror.

34. @Lis Carey: I think it’s only right the Chair’s assisitants be terror-garbled. It’s easier than an NDA and cheaper than a lawsuit.

35. The strip’s title, and the, err, costuming, implies that their “scenario” involves the musical “Cats”, and the one in the bed has been a little over-zealous with her “real fancy makeup”. I think. Dunno if that helps any. (I don’t think this is one of the better Oglafs, to be honest.)

36. @John A Arkansawyer:

    This one puzzled me, too. Gur xrl vf gur “unve naq znxr-hc” yvar va gur svefg unys; V thrff gung’f n jbzna’f cneg bs urgrebfrkhny frk(?). “Vg orggre or ernyyl snapl znxr-hc,” gur qnex-unverq punenpgre vf gbyq. Fur fur tbrf nyy-bhg Pngf (gur zhfvpny) sbe gurz, fvatvat naq nyy. Not the funniest Oglaf I’ve read.

    ETA: aaaaand ninja’d by Steve Wright on all counts.

37. Oh, Cats! I remember learning about that in Jersey Girl. Now I understand. It makes sense. It just wasn’t terribly funny.

    (Except the hairball part. That was hilarious, whether I understood it or not.)

    Steve, Dawn, thank you both.

38. Va guvaxvat nobhg guvf shegure, gur frpbaq yvar bs gur fgevc vf cebonoyl pbvghf vagreehcghf ol jnl bs unveonyy qhr gb gur qnex-unverq jbzna’f hfvat she *nurz* rireljurer. Evtugl-b.

39. Apparently Steve Dillon has died http://www.cbr.com/preacher-co-creator-steve-dillon-passes-away/

40. @Dawn Incognito: Naq fhqqrayl V haqrefgnaq gur ynfg yvar bs gur fgevc naq gur ybbx ba unveonyy ynql’f snpr, juvpu vf abg qvfthfgrq. Talk about your authenticity porn!

41. Apparently UofM has opened voting for the official Stephen E. King chair. Choices are:

    A

    B

    C

    D

42. Can anyone explain, in rot-13, perhaps, because this strip puts the “No!” into NSFW, the joke in “Memory”, today’s Oglaf

    I’ve studied it, and a few previous strips, I believe that it signifies that the comic artist has insufficient ventilation in the room where he paints his miniatures.

    Trudy Peterson is not (as far as I know) usually described as “he”. 🙂

    I admit that, while I think Oglaf is the funniest utterly filthy SFnal comic since Phil Foglio’s XXXenophile, last week’s episode did leave me scratching my head. (Though the concept of two women going off to privately have “hetero girl-on-girl” did make me chuckle.) It’s possible it will become more clear when the new strip comes out tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee.

43. eta: …and I just realized that all the rot13 chatter was discussing the Oglaf strip as well, and provides more information. Ah well. :/

44. Lis Carey: Leckie herself said the springboard of the post was someone saying that *someone else’s prose* was dense compared to Ancillary Justice’s light and transparent.

45. In honor of 1) & 5), I’ll quote the birthday girl on the hackneyed use of the word “ichor”:
    You know ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, and beslimes tessellated pavements, and bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.

46. The Stephen King chair, let’s face it, should be a bucket seat from a late-70s sports car, worn, scarred and spattered with blood.

47. Not from a late-70s sports car. No, a 1958 Plymouth Fury.

48. That makes it specific to one book, though. But maybe a 50s model, since the Buick 8was a ’53 (or appeared to be). But cars run through King’s fiction in many shapes…

49. Very few people make ends meet by writing, even very good writers. I am honestly sorry that JCW is not one of these people, mainly for the sake of his children. I understand he might be too sick to work?
    Me, I would really like to be able to give up my decently paid job and write full time. Open to suggestions as well.

50. Anna Feruglio del Dan, I sponsor a dozen or so SFF authors on their Patreon accounts for a buck or two every month. If you had one, I’d sponsor you, too.

    It gives me no end of pleasure to know that a pittance from me and a couple hundred (or more) people like me makes it possible for SFF writers whose writing has given me enjoyment to practice their craft without worrying quite so much each month how they will pay for rent or food. 🙂

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