(1) A sweet new image for science fiction loving dogs!
Cool Corgi Dresses Up As All 13 Doctors From ‘Doctor Who’ —
(2) What brand of cigarettes did Godzilla smoke? I never wondered before. See behind-the-scenes photos from the Japanese movie productions, including the fellow who wore the monster suit taking a smoke break. At Dangerous Minds.
Actor Haruo Nakajima (pictured above) spent nearly 25 years inside the rubber Godzilla suit that he gleefully trampled over mini-Tokyo in for various Godzilla or monster-themed films from the early 50s through the 1970s.
(3) James Lileks’ satire for National Review, “The Twitterverse Strikes Back against the Phantom Menace of Anti-Star Wars Racists!”, begins –
According to my Twitter feed, gullible people are complaining –
I should just stop right there and wrap it up, right? After breaking news like that, where could I possibly go?
…Anyway. If Luke comes out in the new film wearing the Leia slave bikini; if Chewie marries Groot; if Han makes a big speech about how the end of the Empire means they can rebuild the galaxy along the lines of, say, Denmark; if the main villain is named Ben-Ghazi — then you might complain that you’re being Force-fed some political drivel. Even then it wouldn’t matter.
(4) A pretty fancy bookmark. A map of Middle-Earth annotated by J.R.R. Tolkien for illustrator Pauline Baynes is being sold by Blackwell’s for 60,000 reports the Guardian.
A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.
The map was found loose in a copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own colour Map of Middle-earth for Tolkien, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970. Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.
Blackwell’s, which is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for £60,000, called it “an important document, and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least”.
It shows what Blackwell’s called “the exacting nature” of Tolkien’s creative vision: he corrects place names, provides extra ones, and gives Baynes a host of suggestions about the map’s various flora and fauna. Hobbiton, he notes, “ is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford”; Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.
David Doering argues, “I feel that such artifacts need to be in public, not private, hands. This is a critical piece of our cultural history and is of immense value. It should not allowed to disappear into private hands.”
(Fifth 4) John C. Wright explains how “My Elves are Different; Or, Erlkoenig and Appendix N”.
When calculating how to portray the elves in my current writing project (tentatively titled Moths and Cobwebs) I was thinking about Erlkoenig and Appendix N, and (of course!) about GK Chesterton. There is a connected train of thought here, but it meanders through some ox-bows and digressions, so I hope the patient reader enjoys the scenic route of thought.
First, Erlkoenig. I had noticed for some time that there was many a younger reader whose mental picture of the elves (those inhabitants of the Perilous Realm, the Otherworld, whose ways are not our ways) was formed entirely by JRR Tolkien and his imitators. They are basically prelapsarian men: like us in stature and passions, but nobler, older, and not suffering our post-Edenic divorce from the natural world. This is not alien to the older themes and material on which Tolkien drew, but there is alongside this an older and darker version.
(5) Nancy Fulda outlines “What To Expect When You Start An Internet Kerfuffle” for the SFWA Blog.
And so you write a blog post.
It is the most difficult and most magnificent thing you’ve ever written, pure words of truth sucked directly out of your soul. You feel triumphant. Liberated. (Terrified, too, but that doesn’t matter now.) You have said the Thing That Must Be Said, and you have done so with courage and clarity. You click a button, and send your words winging toward humanity.
And then, of course, the internet does what the internet does best.
It starts kerfluffling….
Day 2: Negative feedback.
Your post has reached people with opposing viewpoints. Many of them. Blog posts pop up across the internet, criticizing and often misrepresenting your stance. Angry comments multiply like weeds. Email conversations ensue. You become embroiled in a number of difficult and confrontational exchanges, often with people who seem incapable of understanding what you’re trying to say.
You may get hate mail. Depending on what you’ve said and who you’ve said it to, the content of those emails may be very, very ugly indeed. Your hands are trembling by the time you click the delete button.
By the end of the day, you’re afraid to check your email. Comments are still rolling in, and somehow, even the positive messages only make you more aware of the bad ones. You wonder whether this was all a mistake. At the same time, you can’t stop refreshing your screen. The rest of your life has ground to a screeching halt; deadlines missed, meals skipped, loved ones neglected. Even when you’re not online, your thoughts are spiraling around what’s happened there.
And people are still retweeting your post.
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy
- October 23, 1942 – Michael Crichton
(7) Last weekend the Iron Hill brewery chain in Pennsylvania offered Harry Potter-themed fare reports Philly.com.
The pub will serve Dumbledore’s Dubbel, a sweet Belgian ale; and Voldermort’s Wrath, a West-Coast style IPA with an intense bitter hop flavor. In addition to the limited brews, a Harry Potter-themed menu will be served for those hungry wizards. Items include:
- Aunt Petunia’s Mulligatawny Soup
- Slytherin Smoky Pumpkin Salad
- Ron’s Corned Beef Toasts
- Hogwart’s Express Pumpkin Pastry
- Dumbledore’s Cauldron Beef Stew
- Butterbeer-Braised Pork Loin
- Pan-Seared Chinese Fireball (salmon)
- Mrs. Weasley’s English Toffee Crumble
For the non-beer drinker: Butterbeer and autumn-themed mixed drinks will be available.
(9) Details about J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter play are online. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will pick up 19 years after the seventh book, and it will focus on Harry and his youngest son, Albus. Here’s a brief about the plot play’s website:
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.
While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
(10) Here’s some artwork from the forthcoming production.
(11) The pilot and second episode of Amazon’s original series The Man In The High Castle can be viewed for no-charge here through 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, October 25 in the U.S. and UK.
The season launch of all episodes will be November 20.
(12) Andrew Liptak recalls the history of science fiction in Playboy magazine at Kirkus Reviews.
(13) Alastair Reynolds covers his trip to Russia on Approaching Pavonis Mons.
My wife and I are big on art, and we’d long wanted to visit the Hermitage. I can safely say that it was everything we’d hoped it would be, times about ten, and although we went back for a second day, you could cheerfully spend a month in the place and not see enough.
(14) Zombie George R.R. Martin will soon be on the air:
For all you Z NATION fans out there, and those who aren’t (yet) too, my long-anticipated guest starring role as a rotting corpse is scheduled for the October 30 episode, “The Collector.”
(15) At Teleread Chris Meadows pays tribute to prolific Amazon reviewer Harriet Klausner, who was an important part of the growth of online book sales via Amazon.
Harriet Klausner, at one time one of the most recognizable names on Amazon, passed away on October 15, at the age of 63. Klausner was a speed-reader who was one of the most prolific customer reviewers on Amazon, with over 31,000 reviews to her credit at the time of her death. According to a 2006 Time profile of her, she read an average of 4 to 6 books per day. Although the details of her death were not disclosed, it must have happened fairly quickly—the last review on her Amazon.com reviewer page is dated October 12.
(16) Jonathan R. Eller speaks about Fahrenheit 451 at Wisconsin Lutheran College on October 26.
(17) The wisdom of the Fred!
https://twitter.com/FredKiesche/status/657600422794915841
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Robotech Master, Phil Nichols, Steven H Silver, David Doering, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day the indefatigable Will R.]
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@Anna
Much as I liked AJ I couldn’t call it groundbreakingly good, IMHO of course. I nearly bounced off it due to pacing issues in the early part personally but went back to it and found it picked up not long after I had stopped. Ask me again after I’ve read the other two, but again although they’re in the “to be acquired and read soon” list I’m happy to wade through some other stuff off the TBR pile first.
@lydy Even when I was 10, I used to wonder how that show got on the air. And yet…I know it too.
Arthur Machen is also good for very creepy elder races.
Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens both liked to vacation at Key West, and sometimes they were there together. And one of those times, at the beach, Stevens turned to Frost and said:
“Robert, your trouble is your poems are full of subjects.”
Frost was stung, and replied, “Well, your poems are full of bric-a-brac.”
Frost and Stevens are probably my two favorite poets. What I’m saying is, I am pretty blasé about literary feuds, and I am aware that of making many manifestos there is no end. Some people gotta propound doctrine to do their own work.
But JCW shouldn’t be misled by survivor bias. Some of our greatest creators have been into the theory and anathema game. But so have some of our greatest mediocrities and biggest bores. It is worth keeping that in mind when one feels minded to pronounce.
Adding, by Rule 34, there must be Old-Man Slash about Frost and Stevens in Key West. I think I will go not look for it on the internet.
Indeed, and in the event of facts conflicting with his beliefs then it is axiomatic that the ‘facts’ must be wrong.
I’m not qualified to say whether Ancillary Justice is the greatest SF novel of the 21st Century so far. I am qualified to say it made me, personally, excited about reading science fiction again for the first time in a couple decades. If that sort of praise sickens someone, they can just go be sick.
Speaking of weird specificity, I am now apparently reading my second book in a row about a werewolf couple who protect humanity from the forces of evil while living in the Rocky Mountain region and they want to have a baby but can’t.
Two different authors, total coincidence as far as I know. Go figure.
@Kyra: I’m not sure how much you’re into the minutiae of comic-book history, so this story may be old to you. But in the very early 1970s, Marvel released a book about a swamp-monster called Man-Thing, created by Gerry Conway and Mike Ploog, at basically the same time DC released a book about a swamp-monster called Swamp Thing created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Conway and Wein swear that neither of them knew that the other was creating a new swamp-monster comic. At the time this was happening, they were roommates.
Brian Z: Well, I went and looked and didn’t see a criticism of Leckie per se, and it had nothing to do with elves.
So, the passage that Oneiros cut and pasted higher in the thread wasn’t from Wright? Because he certainly seemed to be criticizing Leckie for “rehashing” Le Guin in that paragraph, to me. (That sounds snide, but I’m really just asking for clarification; I’m not enough interested in the Wright post to read the whole thing, I’m afraid.)
There’s another stream of books people could talk about. My flagging interest in sf was revved up again by David Brin’s Startide Rising when it came out in 1983.
@Silly But True
If JCW’s post has introduced at least one person to the wonders of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s Erlkönig, it has done the world a good thing. I’m particularly fond of Elisabeth Söderstrom’s recording, which I believe is done with a period fortepiano:
Trying to take this Lied as fast as the pianist can play the triplets is a fine sport. For comparison, here’s a recording of Loewe’s earlier setting of the same text:
(The song in question begins at 5:01 of the video, for the Loewe)
Mary Frances:
This is my opinion: the word “stealing” is being misunderstood. You are supposed to steal. Our genre, which has produced greatness for well nigh a century, is built on stealing, and will collapse without it – but steal responsibly and for the greater good. Which I believe (in my opinion) JCW thinks Leckie was doing, in perfectly good faith.
What he objected to was the “sickening degree of applause” – and before you condemn him for that choice of words, remember in which row the recipient of the greatest number of nominations in Hugo history was sitting on a certain Saturday in August. I’m inclined to forgive him for the lousy choice of words given the circumstances. But that’s me.
JCW’s larger point – that Jeffro Johnson has successfully highlighted the importance of reading the classics to inform one’s reading of today’s SFF – is well taken.
Can we start a new thread? That’s lovely.
Mary Francis: When interacting with Brian Z, always remember that he’s the schmuck who went on and on and bloody on about how the E Pluribus Hugo protocol “rewards” (his word) slates by “guaranteeing” (also his word) slates at least one spot on the final ballot. Brian Z has long since proven that he is not to be regarded as either reliable or accurate.
Brian Z: This is my opinion: the word “stealing” is being misunderstood. You are supposed to steal. Our genre, which has produced greatness for well nigh a century, is built on stealing, and will collapse without it – but steal responsibly and for the greater good. Which I believe (in my opinion) JCW thinks Leckie was doing, in perfectly good faith.
I wasn’t commenting on the “stealing,” though that is a somewhat charged term if Wright wasn’t actually criticizing Leckie; I was pointing to the “rehash of an idea used much more adroitly” bit. That would seem to me to strongly imply that Leckie was not only not being original, she wasn’t doing a very good job of stealing from (or being inspired by, which is how I would have framed the act more positively) Le Guin, and well-read readers of sf should have noticed and down-valued Leckie’s work accordingly. You disagree. Okay. Still doesn’t inspire me to enough interest to read Wright’s post, frankly, since he still seems to me (in that passage, at least) to be kind of missing the point of both books, and of reading and being inspired by the “classics” in general. So it goes.
It seemed pretty obvious to me that – former AIs aside – the Radch were not universally sexless in thought *or* speech, they merely used a single pronoun. As do speakers of Finnish and Marain, and … wow, #lucky10K outdid itself this time: 57% of languages do not have gendered pronouns.
Even if this were some universal attribute of Leckie fans – so what? Since neither of those are novels of the 21st century, the logic is fail here – there’s no indication they haven’t read the others, and they may well think those two are the greatest novels of the 20th century *and* that Leckie’s is the greatest of this one.
Cubist: hate to break this to you, but as things stand EPH is going to reward slates (by which you mean a large subset of Hugo voters either having common interests or being disgruntled enough to vote in lockstep) with a lot more than one slot.
Keith “Kilo” Watts has speculated that the only answer may be a website which concentrates voters’ interest on a shorter list, which he acknowledged is basically the same thing as Sad Puppies 4. If you want to make EPH work, either go to sadpuppies4.org and argue passionately for your choices, or do that elsewhere and encourage others to link it. We just aren’t licking stamps and sending our LoCs along with our Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes any more.
BrianZ
No. Once again you are trying to force people to behave as badly as Puppidum has, and once again it’s blindingly obvious what you are doing.
Frankly, I cannot comprehend a life so devoid of interest that you are reduced to this, but that is your problem, not mine…
Little Valkyrie on October 24, 2015 at 1:39 pm said:
@Silly But True
If JCW’s post has introduced at least one person to the wonders of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s Erlkönig, it has done the world a good thing.
One of my fondest memories of my sadly quite mad late oldest sister was of her spending an evening with ten-year-old me, working though German text, translation, and a recording from the library.
It may have been her homework, but it was lovely for me.
Heh.
Heh-heh.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
“We gamed ourselves the respect-signifiers! Why did the respect not come with them?!”
I think that even the wise and wizened Mike Glyer has stated an intention to make this very site a forum for accepting and publicizing Hugo recs. (But if he corrects me that he either didn’t say that or he’s reconsidered, never mind.)
I’ve sort of stalled 3/4 of the way through Ancillary Justice, not because of the gender stuff, and to me it comes across as part of the worldbuilding in viewing the world through the eyes of a genderless AI which has downloaded part of itself to a cybogised human body. Thus communication difficulties ensue because the AI isn’t so familiar with all the human cultural gender cues, which are still to some extent there even with the culture itself not really being gender oriented, rather its hierarchical first and foremost.
Unlurking because I absolutely must weigh in on Ancillary Justice –
I’m a middle aged woman who reads widely and almost indiscriminately. I read mysteries, sci-fi, histories, how-to’s, biographies, politics, you-name-it. But Ancillary Justice was the first book I’ve read since the early 70s that actually gave me that little blinking, shift-in-perspective that we used to call the “click” moment. Perhaps other readers here can read a description of a crowd and immediately assume half of it is female and half of it is male. But the default for most of us is, unless described otherwise, male. Ancillary Justice turned that default around AND was a fine story as well. And even though she points out again and again, that specific characters are male, her use of the feminine pronoun over and over made me pay attention to the details of her world building in a way I hadn’t bothered to in years. I found the challenges to my own assumptions to be incredibly refreshing. It was also immeasurably cool to find myself assuming that everyone was female unless otherwise indicated. Women tavern keepers, women thugs, women pilots, women soldiers, but as the default instead of as an oddity. The male objections to this continue to strike me as small-minded, butt-hurtedness. Ancillary Justice is probably not the novel of the century, but it’s definitely one of my favorites of the century, so far.
Incidentally, I think the recipient of the greatest number of nominations in Hugo history is David Hartwell, right?
Greatest number of nominations in a single year is a record set by Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant in 2013, and while that number was matched in 2015, it was not outdone.
“Greatest number of nominations in Hugo history”!
Heh.
What? He had a record six nominations in a single year, in large part due to his fans organizing on the internet. (McGuire’s fans had also organized on the internet, so this was not a game changer.) He considered turning some down to make room for others. He changed his mind after seeing how upset his fans – his fans – were about that EW article. One of the nominations was disqualified on a technicality. He went with his wife to a convention they hadn’t planned to attend, and sat up front, and the most charitable description of the treatment they received for their efforts is “appalling.” You want to defend that? Be my guest.
John C. Wright clearly remains, in all modesty, one of the finest autoproctologists wheezing today.
They were treated perfectly appropriately and professionally at all times and they know it.
Brian Z, I think that even the wise and wizened Mike Glyer has stated an intention to make this very site a forum for accepting and publicizing Hugo recs. (But if he corrects me that he either didn’t say that or he’s reconsidered, never mind.)
What the heck do you think has been happening here for the last eight or nine months? Have you not been paying attention? People are saying “I just read this thing that I love…”
HUNDREDS of works have been recommended.
What hasn’t happened here, and I’m pretty sure won’t happen, is a curated slate.
WRT to JCW’s nominations — having three of them in a single category guaranteed that he could NOT receive 5 Hugos. Even without the pushback against slates demonstrated by ‘No Award’, ISTR that Hugo voters in the past have not reacted well to multiple noms in a single year, tending to vote splitting and thus causing the nominee to miss out, where they might have taken the rocket home if all their fans had been able to coalesce around a single work…
I have said in the past and I repeat it here: Teddy Boy set JCW up for cruel disappointment, knowing exactly what was going to happen, and NOT CARING. That alone exposes our 12-dimensional genius as a total piece of sorry ass human being, worthy only of contempt.
Oh my God. That was beautiful. Just beautiful. I particularly liked the italics for his fans. His fans.
If EPH doesn’t work, one possibility would be to create a committee that had the power to designate particular nominees as “unfairly boosted by campaigns.” They wouldn’t remove such works from the list, but for each “boosted” work, they’d extend the size of the nominations list by one. We might end up with ten or so nominations, but that would be okay. We’ve already proven that the general membership is capable of rejecting the works that didn’t belong on the ballot.
With luck, that would discourage the slaters enough that the committee would almost never need to actually exercise its power.
A nomination that gets disqualified is not a nomination any more.
Not even with an asterisk, like the others.
Radch not actually being sexless…
Reading AJ I concluded that Breq was essentially brain damaged, and had a mental deficiency that prevented her from racing gender queues.
In AS we had the culture that assumed that because they’re been conquered by the Radch they would all be literally emasculated. Which implies that it’s a general supposition.
I have not read AM yet.
I didn’t mean the treatment by Sasquan staff. (I even think the asterisk originated as a well-meaning idea that went horribly awry.) I just meant the raucous applause for No Award which made me, thousands of miles away and with no personal stake in the proceedings, queasy. Others may differ. But I understand their dismay.
In addition, I also won’t be hosting lists that count the frequency that works have been recommended for Hugos here. And I think it would be nice if no one “helpfully” creates such a list on another site.
Dreadful idea. You think the recent Hugo stink was bad? Just set up a committee with the power to override the published rules until they’ve ensured that the things they think should have been nominated are on the list.
You mean his fans weren’t upset by the EW article? You mean he doesn’t have fans? I’m missing your point.
All EPH is expected to do is keep representation on the final ballot proportionate to the support for a nominee among voters as a whole. It is not a rule that prevents slated works from becoming finalists.
I don’t see anything like a jury in the Hugo’s future. That’s alien to the basic character of the award. Also consider (and I’m speaking as one who voted for EPH) that dozens of fans at the Sasquan business meeting said they didn’t feel the 2015 results were enough of a problem, or proven to be a chronic problem, that any change should be made to the voting rules. While I expect EPH to be ratified, it’s still a democratic voting process — it doesn’t override or modify the results as a jury would.
Really? With your ability to yoink points out of together out of… well… assorted words and sundries?
I for one will be cheering from half a world away if* EPH gets ratified next year.
*And by ‘if’, I’m hoping ‘when’.
@nickpheas
It took noticing hairy arms to realise the person in a picture I was looking at recently was a guy. So it can be tricky sometimes. In fairness the future Canadian premier did have really good hair at the time and the tank top and lighting confused the issue…
This. It might not have been a massively important point in the story, but for me it was massively important, and refreshing, and astonishing, in how it managed to gently correct my assumptions at every single pronoun, and did it while telling a wonderful, thoight provoking, very touching story too.
It made me start reading again, too. I am licky that I have found several other really good books immediately afterwards – must be something in the water.
Nigel, you can either say what you mean or rest your case with some ad hominem attacks on Brian Z. Your call.
And I don’t mean to dismiss your reaction to the story – I just felt myself, decades after reading Le Guin, that I wasn’t particularly moved by scenes like the one where somebody was holding a gun on her and she was subjecting us to a monologue on how she couldn’t tell what gender pronoun to use. My take from the novel was that Leckie is a relatively new writer who needs a few years to refine her craft, at which point I’ll be delighted to nominate her for a Hugo, because it was an ambitious and in many ways successful book.
And why all this love for Le Guin, anyway? She is the original unadulterated SJW, after all.
She’s also still around and capable of mighty smackdowns, but she’s too classy to notice The Modestly Finest Writer Of Our Generation.
Mike
Exactly so. EPH doesn’t change the nature of the Hugos; it is designed to fairly represent the nominations so that a small group acting in concert cannot overrun the much larger group of individuals nominating works they believe to be worthy.
If 20% of those nominating think a particular work is Hugo worthy then it should get 20% of the shortlist that people vote on; that is the entire point of EPH…
No Award was cheered because the plurality of people in the audience voted for No Award. Just like almost every winner, almost every year.
But JCW raises a good point. SF’s lifeblood is stealing ideas. That’s what it’s about and that’s why it works. If you don’t read what came before, it stops working.
Maybe it’s because I need a nap but that sounds like SF only works when you steal an idea you’ve read somewhere.
Feel free to, it’s a free blog. And besides,
Is of absolutely no interest to me.