254 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/3 The Red Scroll of Westmarch”

1. When there’s a book that I want to reread, and that I know I own a copy of, I’m more likely to borrow it from the library than to read my own copy, because I’m more likely to be able to find it at the library.

2. Someone should send Correia a copy of A Modest Proposal, and watch him fisk it based on the inaccuracies about the nutritional value of Irish babies.

3. RedWombat on October 4, 2015 at 5:37 pm said:
   I leave for book tour tomorrow. Pray for Mojo.

   I know it’s work, but I hope it is also fun.
   Are there parts you are looking forward to?

4. “Most real men have whatever flooring their wife wanted when they built their house, because we don’t care, because we’re working all day so don’t get to stand on it much. Or they have whatever flooring came with the house when they moved in, and eventually when they can afford to they’ll put in whatever flooring their wife wants, because they don’t care.”

   Volumes. They were spoken. Not by design.

5. @Morris Keesan:

   Someone should send Correia a copy of A Modest Proposal, and watch him fisk it based on the inaccuracies about the nutritional value of Irish babies.

   *splutter*

   I’m glad I was reading this on my phone, else you’d owe me a new keyboard, good sir!

6. @Jim Henley: Cool, thanks. I think I just realized, the books probably aren’t about actual humans (or else there’s some hidden or alternate history going on?).

   @Morris Keesan: I’m more likely to be able to find it at the library. – LOL, wait, not everyone has OCD alphabetizing tendencies like me? I shouldn’t talk; I have books in multiple places based on read/unread, mass market/larger, recent purchases/older ones…I can find my books, but I doubt anyone else could.

7. @Kendall: Yeah, there is for some reason convergent evolution toward an Earth-human-compatible hominid form, also “genofixing” that enables different strains of humanoid to interbreed. It sounds crazy, but when you come down to it, it makes more sense than plucky Belters mining asteroids.

8. Rev. Bob on October 4, 2015 at 1:26 pm said:

   I think Scalzi and Correia made the same mistake in reading that article: they believe every item in the list applies to the same person. They either did not read or did not understand the title of the piece. It’s 27 “ways to be,” not “qualities of.”

   I don’t know about Correia (didn’t read his piece, don’t really care that much), but I see no particular evidence that Scalzi misinterpreted it the way you suggest (assuming you’re interpreting it correctly).

   In any case, a lot of people across the Internet have been making fun of this piece. If so many people actually misinterpreted it (rather than just thinking it was a silly, pointless list), then that’s a sign that the person who wrote it wasn’t very good at communicating. If the intent hangs on the interpretation of one ambiguous word in the title, then the author (presumably a professional, since he had his work published in the NYT) should have taken more care to ensure that the word was interpreted correctly.

   Honestly, I think you’re giving the author too much credit. Each item starts out “The modern man does this” or “the modern man is that.” If he really meant this as a pick-and-choose list, I’d expect to see something more like, “the modern man may do this” or “the modern man might be that.”

   But even if he was being poetic, or something, it’s still full of nonsense. Utterly pointless nonsense. As Scalzi succinctly put it, “It deserves nearly all of its mockery.”

   And now I’ve spent 10 times more time and effort discussing this list than it ever deserved. If you still disagree, I’m gonna letcha. 😉

9. Kendall: The Culture stories mostly just share a common background. There’s a character or two that pop up in supporting roles in books other than the ones they star in. Look To Windward deals with some of the consequences of the war that is fought in Consider Phlebas.

   I generally recommend people start with Player of Games. It’s a better novel than Phlebas. I also recommend people leave later works like Matter and Surface Detail until a bit later – they would both benefit from a better feel for what The Culture is and what it stands for (and against). If I had to pick an order I’d say Player, Phlebas and then Use of Weapons… then go crazy. If nothing hits the wall at the ending of Weapons everything should work for you. (Note opinions of the poster do not necessarily reflect consensus reality. Grains of salt available on request.)

   Gibson’s Extinction Game is new out in mass market paperback and reprinted from the trade paperback edition from last year.

10. @Xtifr:

    In any case, a lot of people across the Internet have been making fun of this piece. If so many people actually misinterpreted it (rather than just thinking it was a silly, pointless list), then that’s a sign that the person who wrote it wasn’t very good at communicating.

    This is where I stopped reading. Because no. It’s just a sign that the internet is big. It’s also a smug thing to say.

11. McJulie:

    I can’t believe Cedar actually mentions LOTR as a source for “dude you would want to marry” and doesn’t mention Samwise. He’s the perfect man. You know, smart, brave, loyal, funny, humble, moral… salt of the earth, but also sensitive to truth and beauty… a great cook… he’ll carry the heavy pack, carry you if necessary, never whine or complain, and, most importantly, kill the spider for you no matter how big it is.

    This is a terrific comment. Makes it all worthwhile.

12. @Jim Henley: Cool, thanks!

    @Mister Dalliard: Groovy, thanks for the additional info & recs, and clarifying re. Extinction Game. I need to stop confusing Amazon dates as being what I want them to be; it’s annoying they don’t list copyright dates as well. But also: Whoops, I was on Gibson’s site earlier; it says on his books page “COMING SEPTEMBER 2014”; I can’t read, I guess. (blush) 😉

13. RedWombat Book Tour: What, wait? You’re going to be right next door to my home town next week, and I won’t be there? Argh!!! Well, enjoy the Magic Tree Bookstore–they’re nice people. If you have time for any walking around (and the weather is decent), you’ll be down the block from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple (which is impressive, even if all you do is drive by it–looks like a medieval fortress) and not that far from his Home and Studio Museum . . .

14. Basically, just because an internet swarm forms doesn’t mean the target did something to cause it. Like dogs barking, internet swarming is a self-rewarding activity. Gamergate is basically several hundred man-babies misunderstanding what “‘Gamers’ are over” meant. Let’s not pretend that was the writers being unclear.

15. @Kendall: I don’t like to rely on Amazon dates for anything that isn’t comfortably in the past. They’re a bit better now but they used to list release dates in the very near future for unwritten books, presumably to attract pre-orders (A Dance With Dragons was about 6 months away for four years). If I had a dollar for every George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan fan I had to explain that to I wouldn’t have to sell books for a living.

    If you want release dates you could do worse than checking The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

16. @RedWombat

    Good luck. 🙂

17. @Kendall:

    @Cadbury Moose: Is that story about Breq? I didn’t read it, but can’t tell from a quick skim/search within the story, looking for references. Did I miss a hint, or did Leckie say this somewhere? My Radch books are hardcopies, so searching them for names from the story would be tough. I’m guessing it relates to gur vpba Oerd unf . . . ?

    I haven’t seen Cadbury Moose reply, but I can say that Breq definitely features in the story. She goes by the name Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail.

    “A woman’s voice, the accent old-fashioned-sounding, the words oddly precise. It made Her-Breath-Contains-The-Universe think of singers, though he didn’t think it was a singer’s voice.”

18. There are seven and twenty ways to be a modern man, and every single one of them is right.

19. @Lexica — I’d say pretty much all the reasons to be fussed about “man”, specifically, come from a bad place.

    It’s not like prescriptive norms can be factually accurate, irrespective of how they’re chosen.

20. @Xtifr:

    Honestly, I think you’re giving the author too much credit. Each item starts out “The modern man does this” or “the modern man is that.” If he really meant this as a pick-and-choose list, I’d expect to see something more like, “the modern man may do this” or “the modern man might be that.”

    But even if he was being poetic, or something, it’s still full of nonsense. Utterly pointless nonsense. As Scalzi succinctly put it, “It deserves nearly all of its mockery.”

    Balderdash. To swipe a phrase, I reject your monolithic model and replace it with my own. There is no One True Modern Man, no more than there is a One True Highway or Boat or Tree or anything else – and the same goes for Modern Woman, in case anyone needs me to be explicit about that.

    The article is only “contradictory” if one assumes it describes a monolithic ideal, which it quite obviously does not. Stereotypically masculine items like EAT ALL THE STEAK are juxtaposed with others that don’t fit, like PUT AWAY THE DISHES. Some modern men use melon ballers. Some modern men talk on the phone so long the battery dies. Some modern men commit the cardinal sin of failing to fetishize guns.

    None of those is “more man” (or, for that matter, “more modern”) than the others, which is exactly the point of the article. There are many ways to Man; here are some, find one that works for you. The modern man is a multifaceted concept, one that fits the inner-spoon guy with a melon baller just as well as it does the hardwood-floor guy who chews gristle. Some modern men are straight, some are gay, and some don’t even have a penis! None of these are “wrong men.”

    The Playboy man was almost exactly the opposite. Readers would write in to get advice on the proper way to handle arcane situations, and the magazine published answers that all contributed to a specific image. This is the way to Man; do as we say and you’ll be a success, for some version of “success” that probably involves wealth and the company of beautiful women who are impressed by how well you know your way around both a humidor and a liquor cabinet.

    Down with monoliths. Up with individuality. The modern man thinks for himself.

21. @Mister Dalliard: Good idea. I’ve been using the ISFDB here and there, usually for checking the list of stories in collections.

    @Dawn Incognito: Thanks! Adding links to the two-part story to my iPad to read soon. 🙂

22. Rev. Bob has the right of it.

    My earlier, vague snark at Correia’s idea of masculinity is that it carries so many signifiers of a specific idea of manhood: glorifying the “working man” (you’re a writer, dude, do you expect us to believe you’re doing this at a construction site? Okay, Glen Cook literally wrote three novels while working on an assembly line, but besides him, who does that?) who provides enough money for his wife to be able to play with the house, because that’s her toybox. How very 1955.

    The part about his size 15 work boots cracked me up. You know what they say about men with big feet? They have a devil of a time finding a decent looking pair of oxfords, that’s what. Them’s Ronald McDonald feet right there.

23. I wear size 15 shoes. Try to contain your envy.

24. My partner has gone shoe shopping with me. He knows better than to buy me shoes without me seeing them and trying them on. Our tastes in shoes are very different (his is more classic) and also my feet are delicate snowflakes that have a long, long list of shoe characteristics they won’t tolerate. Sometimes after a day of shoe shopping, it feels like that list could be condensed down to ‘is a shoe’.

25. Damn, Mike, lay it down hard on a guy, why don’t cha. 🙂

    My kids hate shoe shopping with me. I’m a picky one. I’m the one that takes hours and hours to decide, while my wife is the one that goes, “it fits? Done.”

    The part of the NYT article that got me was the part about having a daughter. Truer words were rarely spoken.

26. Good thing famous science fiction bloggers are jumping in on the modern man thing, otherwise their readers would definitely be trying to fulfill the list right now.

27. Mona, protagonist of Robert Jackson Bennett’s American Elsewhere, is never in any danger of getting romantically paired up at any point during that novel. She once was married, but is divorced, and is not looking for a new partner, nor is one on offer. There is no “leading man” in that sense.

    There is an interlude with a wanna-be cowboy who makes a lot of assumptions. It does not end well for the wanna-be cowboy.

    So there’s another gloriously un-romanced female protagonist for y’all.

28. As an ex once said: “You know what they say about men with big feet? Big feet, big shoes, big . . . disappointment.” 😉

    (with apologies to our host, Correia, and all the other big-footed folk)

29. Turning from the all-important subject of shoes for a moment, I wanted to know if anyone had ever checked out Far North, a fine borderline SF novel (and National Book Award finalist) by Marcel Theroux, which had a dynamite female protagonist (the fact that she is female is something of a rug-pull on the author’s part, as her gender isn’t revealed until the third chapter and he purposely lets you think it’s a man talking up until then). Sheriff Makepeace is a great character in a dying world – you learn it’s set in post-catastrophe Siberia, but with her distinctly American voice guiding you. A great example of a woman in no danger of being paired off, and in contrast to its nearest analogue, Peter Heller’s nearly as excellent The Dog Stars, whose male protagonist deeply desires exactly that.

30. I’m not awake. Rumors that I am are being spread by malicious gremlins.

31. Kendall: They come in handy when there’s a need to kick someone through the goalposts of life.

32. You know what they say about men with big feet? Finding shoes is hard man. Once you get over size 12 or 13 it’s just not easy to shop for shoes. You find a brand and you tend to be loyal. Or that’s how my previous husband/stepson/ex-boyfriend were. Which actually made shopping for their shoes easy.

33. So Larry just publicly admitted he’s poosy-whipped. Lets his wife spend his money on whatever she wants in his house, never questions anything! That there is a p-whipped gamma male…

    Except for the part where he’s never home with his wife and kids, which makes him a terrible husband and father. At least SJWs pride themselves on liking their spouse and kids rather than merely using them as tokens to signify their manly macho hetero bona-fides.

    Not to say that the article isn’t stupid, but it’s not deliberately so — and it is deliberately satirical and goofy, unlike Larry.

    @McJulie: Yes, Samwise is definitely the kind of man you marry. Steadfast, loyal, loving, determined, great at relationships — he’s the whole package of perfect husband!

    Frodo, let us not forget, FAILED. The Ring got a hold on him and he thought about keeping it. Sam was the only Ringbearer who was never tempted by it.

    And Aragorn’s pretty good too. Young lurkertype swooned over him mightily.

    @Morris Keesan: I, too, nearly lost a keyboard.

    Best of luck, dearest RedWombat!

34. @redheadedfemme

    Good heavens. If that happened to me, they would still be peeling me off the ceiling.

    re the tarantula. Let’s just say that sis and I had words about the incident. That wasn’t as bad as the cricket that she ‘lost’ and that kept me awake for several nights (she, of course, always slept like a log).

    My husband is an avid gardener but hates/is terrified of most bugs. It took me years to convince him not to poison everything with more than 4 legs and that there were ‘good’ bugs that would eat the ‘bad’ bugs. I still have to rescue him from the occasional ant colony or praying mantis ;^}

    Happily, I don’t have any big creepy-crawlie phobias, but claustrophobia is another thing. I couldn’t even pull a sleeping bag over my head when it was well below freezing out.

35. Other Tolkien characters rated as husbands —

    Saruman
    Pros: Ambitious, forward-thinking, owns his own business.
    Cons: Ecologically-conscious protestors will eventually destroy your home.

    Túrin Turambar
    Pros: Owned a sentient black blade before Elric made it “cool”. Will take care of that pesky dragon infestation.
    Cons: Is your brother.

    Gollum
    Pros: Focused, goal-driven, surprisingly knowledgable. Ultimately the person who saves everyone, therefore by definition the greatest hero.
    Cons: Runs kind of hot and cold towards you.

    King Finrod of Nargothrond
    Pros: Kills werewolves with his bare hands.
    Cons: Dies killing werewolves with his bare hands.

    Fëanor
    Pros: Mightiest and most talented of the elves. Knows a trade. Makes pretty things.
    Cons: Is a total jerk.

    Éowyn
    Pros: Brave, noble, stalwart, strong-minded, kind. A real winner all around.
    Additional Pro: What happens when you mention just after the wedding ceremony that your mother foretold you would never marry a living man.

36. Kyra-

    Wow
    This is what you do when you aren’t making brackets?

37. It took me years to convince him not to poison everything with more than 4 legs

    Using a collection of starfish to break him in gently?

38. Bravo Lima Poppa: I’m trying not to own too many books between budget and the prospect of moving next summer… I’d rather read books than own them I’ve discovered. Though there is a very short list of ones to get and hold onto.

    Years ago, my partner and I had to move cross-country. We were pretty much destitute at the time, and had to pack and move ourselves, and we had limited space in the truck. So all of my books — hundreds and hundreds of them — went to the used bookstore. They evaluated the contents, then offered me a price. “But that’s only 25c a book!” I exclaimed in distress. The reply was, “That’s what we can offer you — take it or leave it”. I took the meager check they offered, then went home and cried. We were looking at another move in 4 years, and not likely to be any more flush at that point, so I swore that after that, I would do library books only. (It’s not surprising that, for numerous reasons, including being partnered with a mundane, that’s when I rather lost my SFF soul).

    Years later, when I got divorced, I bought a Kindle and found my SFF heart again — and because I’ve chosen to live in a really big city (more than 1.5million people in the metro area), I have access to the books in dozens of branches within the library system, and when I request them online they all get delivered to my local branch for free. In addition, I don’t know who the Acquisitions Librarians are, but if I ever find out, they will be getting wine and chocolates from me: pretty much every SFF book I want to read, if it’s not in the library or already on order, they will order it (to the tune of several copies; the fact that I list the author’s awards in the Comments probably helps with that, and I suspect that they now recognize my name on requests and figure whatever I’m requesting is a winner).

    These days, 99% of my reading is library or e-books.
     

    Bravo Lima Poppa: Am I odd for storing my TBR list on a function of my local library’s website?

    I store mine at Worlds Without End. It’s a fan-run database website that’s grown into a fabulous resource over the years; it has “TBR” list and “Read” list functionality, along with ability to rank and post reviews and see what others have ranked and read their reviews, plus graphical statistical representations for the percentages of nominees and winners you’ve read for around 30 awards and all kinds of different “best of” lists. (The DB is chiefly limited to science fiction, fantasy, horror, and non-fiction books related to those genres, so if you read a lot more widely than that, it may not suit your purposes.)

39. Rev. Bob on October 4, 2015 at 9:32 pm said:

    Balderdash. To swipe a phrase, I reject your monolithic model and replace it with my own. There is no One True Modern Man[.]

    You’re arguing with a straw man (and preaching to the choir). First of all, I don’t have a “monolithic model”. I might suspect the author of the article did, but I don’t. And second of all even if I accept that the author had a more sensible view, like you and I do, it doesn’t save his article from being ridiculous.

    (Being ridiculous may even have been the point, but if so, it was far from obvious.)

    The article is only “contradictory” if one assumes it describes a monolithic ideal

    And never once did I claim it was contradictory. That word appears exactly zero times in the comment you were replying to. Nor are there any synonyms or anything resembling an accusation of contradictoriness. More men of straw.

    If you’re responding to Correia’s piece, well, I didn’t read it (and don’t plan to—his writing has no appeal to me). Don’t mistake his arguments for mine. I may be missing the context of this Playboy thing you keep going on about, but judging the piece on its own, I found it…alternately silly and annoying. And thoroughly mockworthy. As did Scalzi, and many other people. If you loved it, great. Tastes differ. But don’t try to persuade me that I should have liked it. Tastes differ.

40. @Kendall

    I read Extinction Game not long after it came out and enjoyed it. I’d previously read his Shoal sequence and Angel Station. I’d say EG is the one I liked best so far, it is also unconnected to any of the previous ones. IIRC there’s a sequel on the way but it is set sufficiently far in future of the timeline that it won’t share more than the general setting.

    As for Banks I’d concur with Player of Games being a good starting point, Matter in particular may put you off. Surface Detail would be helped by having a bit of background on the Culture in general and how they operate.

41. @Xtifr:

    We clearly have rather different visions of what constitutes “obvious.” For example, I found the “these things are blatantly contradictory, so there’s something else going on here” reading extremely obvious, whereas “he’s trying to describe one coherent ideal and failing at it in an extreme manner, because stomping on hardwood floors and eating gristle clash horribly with inner-spoon and melon baller” hits me as an obviously absurd and incorrect reading.

    I mean, which makes more sense? That an article published by a noteworthy source, presumably passing through at least one editor on its way to the web, is so incoherently written as to completely undermine something intended as a checklist for the One True Modern Manhood, even to the point of getting the headline wrong by talking about multiple “ways” – or that the article is saying that there are a multitude of ways to be “the” Modern Man, and the clashy bits are so close together because putting them there reinforces that message?

    To me, the answer is, well… obvious. I might even be persuaded to call those who argue for the “all of these are required” interpretation silly people, and worthy of mockery.

    It is true that you did not use the magic word “contradictory” – you didn’t need to; some of the list items clearly contradict others. I don’t see anyone saying otherwise. What I do see is you saying that because the list doesn’t use weasel words like “may” or “might,” it Can Only Be a checklist for a singular ideal. You further say that my reading gives the author too much credit, with zero support, and proceed not to give him any credit whatsoever. Shouldn’t the baseline be, at the very least, “don’t assume this person is a blithering idiot if there’s an alternative explanation”?

    Sure, it’s a lightweight piece. I do not, however, call it a silly one. I hardly think it could do as good a job of saying “look at all these ways modern men can behave, and see the monolithic Manly Man ideal exposed as silly by contrast” in many other ways.

    Perhaps this is your dinosaur story, and you are its puppy.

42. @James Moar

    “Using a collection of starfish to break him in gently?”

    He’s been known to side-eye starfish when at the beach, but he hasn’t yet attacked them with pesticides. It was ladybugs that I used to convinced him. ‘They’re so pretty, friendly and harmless looking! How could you kill them? And they eat aphids, too!’

43. Éowyn
    Pros: Brave, noble, stalwart, strong-minded, kind. A real winner all around.
    Additional Pro: What happens when you mention just after the wedding ceremony that your mother foretold you would never marry a living man.

    It’s fan fiction time!

44. junego: wait until the Evil Big Orange Ladybugs show up. They’re an import from somewhere in Asia. And they BITE. I felt so betrayed….

45. JJ on October 5, 2015 at 2:31 am said:

    Thanks for the tip. I’ve e-mailed myself the link and will check it out at home tonight.

46. Dammit Kyra, now my imagination is filled with Eowyn’s husky contralto whispering in the dark, “I am no man.”

47. @Cadbury Moose

    Thank you for the Leckie story link. Awesome short! She’s been on my to be read list but somehow I just haven’t gotten around to buying Ancillary. I obviously need to correct that.

48. lurkertype:

    Sam was the only Ringbearer who was never tempted by it.

    He was too, remember that business about “Samwise the Strong”? But he was the only one who didn’t give in to it. (Of course, it had very little time to try corrupting him.)

49. A bit late to be pointing this out, but the name of Dobby’s master in the Harry Potter books is spelled Lucius, not Lucious.

50. Forty * FIFTH.

    (I was asleep at the time.)

    The Leckie short explains about Breq’s icon, among other things.

    (Still 2015, they must have finally greased the time rotor.)

Comments are closed.