(1) “The Phantom Fame: ‘Space Ghost Coast to Coast,’ Secretly TV’s Most Influential Show”. Shea Serrano explains his theory on Grantland.
Repurposing existing Space Ghost images from the original cartoons, Lazzo created the first animated late-night talk show in 1994. Operated in tandem with Keith Crofford, a fellow Southerner with whom Lazzo shared an office as well as seemingly a brain, the show boasted a premise that was somehow both simple and endlessly, mutably ridiculous. Now retired from the business of fighting intergalactic evil, Space Ghost (real name: Tad Ghostal) and a support staff consisting of his imprisoned enemies Zorak (anthropomorphic mantis/bandleader) and Moltar (gravel-voiced lava man/director) flies face-first into show business, interviewing pop-culture luminaries through a monitor screen lowered into the chair where a guest would normally sit. Interviews with the celebrities involved were filmed separately, in largely improvisational fashion, then combined with the cartoon characters’ dialogue — often producing results diametrically opposed to the context of the original questions.
(2) Christopher Martin says “Everybody’s Invited To My All-Male, All-White Literary Panel” on McSweeneys Internet Tendency.
Dear Writers,
Congratulations on having a short story accepted for publication in the anthology Rusted, Lusted, Busted: Contemporary Southern Fiction, edited by myself and my good buddy Richard Head!
Richard and I, both of us straight cisgender nominally Christian white males, have put a shit-ton of work into this anthology, mostly over beers and hot wings at the local Tilted Kilt while our wives assumed 100% of the burden of watching our kids. Now this baby we’ve labored over is out and it’s time to party!
That’s why we’re hosting an all-male, all-white panel tomorrow at Lily White Books in Mansfield, SC, to celebrate the anthology’s release and your contributions to it. We’d love it if some of you could come be part of the panel!
Given the twelve-hour notice, however, along with our inability to compensate you in any way, and our unwillingness to compensate you even if we could, I completely understand that most of you — including all our woefully underrepresented contributors who do not identify as heterosexual white men — will not be able to participate in this seminal event, except perhaps as late-arriving, paying audience members ($5 at the door).
(3) SF Signal’s latest Mind Meld, curated by Paul Weimer, taps the contributors’ autobiographies.
For each one of us, there is a book, or a series, that hooked us on genre fiction. Maybe it was the first SF book you read, maybe you had to read a couple before you hit the one that hooked you.
Tell me what book got you to become a fan of SFF, and why?
Answering the question are Gail Carriger, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Yoon Ha Lee, Rachel Swirsky, Beth Cato, Tehani Wessely, Alan Baxter, Sarah Hendrix, Olivia Waite, Anthony R. Cardno, Ann VanderMeer, Sarah Williams, Pamela Sargent, Jaye Wells, Mike Glyer, Sabrina Vourvoulias, , Kerry Schafer, Jim Henley, Melanie R. Meadors, M L Brennan, Meghan B., and Jon Courtenay Grimwood.
(4) The author explains it all to you in “The Big Idea: Ann Leckie” on Whatever.
So instead of going over the AJ stuff again–what is a person? Who is anybody anyway?–I instead give you the Ancillary FAQ. These are all questions I’ve actually gotten (or oveheard) at one time or another.
Q: How can you possibly wrap the story up in one more volume? There’s too much going on; I don’t see how you could manage it.
A: The easiest way for me to answer that is to actually do it. Which I have, and you can see the answer for yourself wherever fine books are sold. Or at a library near you. I love libraries. They’re awesome.
Q: Will there be more books after this one?
A: There will be more books, and certainly more books in this universe, but not books about Breq. Nothing against her, I’ve had a lovely time these past three books, but it will be nice to do something different.
(5) Brian Fung’s article for the Washington Post, “’The Martian,’ NASA and the rise of a science-entertainment complex”, looks at the extensive cooperation between NASA and the producers of The Martian, and notes that NASA hopes to get more out of this film than other projects with which it has extensively cooperated (like the Transformers movies).
When Navy flyboy Tom Cruise got too close for missiles and switched to guns in the spring of 1986, what seemed like an entire nation got up to follow him. Military recruitment booths popped up in theaters, eager to attract young Americans who’d just seen Maverick tell Charlie about the inverted dive he’d done at four Gs against a MiG-28.
To say “Top Gun” was a boon for recruitment would be an understatement. That year, the Navy signed up 16,000 more people than it did the entire year before, according to the author Richard Parker, writing for Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine. Other estimates suggest that among naval aviators alone, this spike in registrations amounted to growth rates of 500 percent….
With “The Martian,” NASA has the same opportunity defense officials had in the 1980s, only now with additional social media superpowers. By highlighting everything from the real-world technologies depicted in “The Martian” to explaining the science behind Martian dust storms to calling on young women to take after the fictional Ares III mission commander, Melissa Lewis, NASA’s hoping to turn moviegoers into the nation’s next generation of scientists, technologists and the other all-around bad-ass eggheads celebrated in the film. In the run-up to the movie’s release, NASA even made a major announcement about the discovery of liquid water on Mars that some believed was simply too conveniently timed to be a coincidence.
(6) The Motherboard’s Jason Koebler eschews any idea of a jolly NASA/media alliance from the very first words in his post “NASA Wants Astronauts to Use Mars’s Natural Resources to Survive”.
Humans have thoroughly wrecked Earth’s environment, now it’s time to move on to using the natural resources of another planet.
Fresh off the discovery of flowing, liquid water on Mars, NASA said Wednesday it wants ideas for how to best exploit the natural resources of the Red Planet for human survival…. NASA plans on giving away modest $10,000 and $2,500 prizes to people who can come up with potentially viable ideas for Mars resource use.
(7) Todd VanDerWerff asked the editors of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 to name “10 of the best science fiction and fantasy short stories ever” for Vox.
Because some of the most exciting American writing is happening in the fields of science fiction and fantasy right now, I hopped on the phone with the book’s two editors, Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams, to hear their picks for the 10 best science fiction and fantasy stories ever written.
They included stories from Malamud, Tiptree, LeGuin, Keyes, Harlan Ellison, Link, Bradbury, Borges, and others.
(8) Today In History –
- October 7, 1849 – Edgar Allan Poe succumbs to a mysterious condition, days after having been found delirious in the streets of Baltimore. Tragically, only seven people attended his funeral. Quoth the Raven: Nevermore.
- October 7, 1960 — CBS broadcasts the premiere episode of “Route 66.” Why do we care? Because Episode #79, “A Gift for a Warrior” was based on a story by Harlan Ellison.
(9) “Superman’s Getting a Brand New Secret Identity” and io9 has the name. Spolier warning!
Spoilers ahead for today’s Action Comics #45!
Now that Superman (and Clark) are taking the heat for Lois’ story leaking his alter-ego, Kal-El has had to go into hiding and lay low. Fired from the Daily Planet when his co-workers discover they’d been in grave danger simply by being in Clark’s vicinity all the time, and facing persecution from the Government, Superman has vanished… and replaced himself with a mild-mannered trucker.
Yes, Clark Kent is now Archie Clayton! It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
(10) The Today show reunited the Rocky Horror cast for an interview, including Susan Sarandon, Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf.
(11) Unlike many other original Ghostbusters cast members, Rick Moranis turned down the offer to appear in the reboot.
When the new all-female Ghostbusters reboot arrives in theaters next summer, nearly all the living actors from the original 1980s films — Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, et al. — will be doing cameos. But not Rick Moranis, who was offered the chance to appear in a walk-on role but turned it down. “I wish them well,” says the 62-year-old comedic legend, who’s so stunned by the outcry over his absence in the film that he decided to grant a rare interview with THR. “I hope it’s terrific. But it just makes no sense to me. Why would I do just one day of shooting on something I did 30 years ago?”
(12) In a follow-up to his “Fisking the New York Times’ Modern Man”, Larry Correia’s “Update! Modern Manhood ACHIEVED!” shares photos of his important new acquisition —
Yes! That is a melon baller! Despite my never buying shoes for her, my wife purchased this for me when she saw it in a store. Because Modern Manhood ACHIEVED!
Now all I need is some Kenneth Cole oxfords and a crying pillow, and I’m set.
(13) Coin World discusses a silver coin commemorating exploration of the space-time continuum.
A four-dimensional concept is now presented in a three-dimensional format.
A 2015 $2 coin in the name of Cook Islands visibly explains the relationship between space and time, as created by scientist Hermann Minkowski. Building on Albert Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity, Minkowski suspected the existence of a fourth dimension (time, in addition to height, width and length), in which space and time are connected geometrically, and he created a diagram illustrating the connection.
The Prooflike half-ounce .999 fine silver $2 Space–Time Continuum coin was issued by Coin Invest Trust. It was struck by B. H. Mayer‘s Kunstprägeanstalt Mint in Munich, Germany.
The reverse of the coin depicts the Minkowski diagram, a geometric illustration of the formula of special relativity, which is engraved in one of the diagram’s columns together with the inscription SPACE–TIME CONTINUUM. The center of the high-relief coin is marked with a magnetic sphere, which can be removed.
The obverse, whose shape is a mirror or inversion of the reverse, displays the Ian Rank-Broadley portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the issuing nation and the face value.
Einstein incorporated Minkowski’s ideas into his general theory of relativity in 1915, six years after Minkowski died.
(14) A black eye for Myke Cole?
A pupil is a hole, it can't have a color. The iris conveys the color of the eye.
You win this round, copyeditor.
— Myke Cole (@MykeCole) October 8, 2015
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Rob Thornton and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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Fifth!
last!
Firstish*
10 – I remember the SNL episode that had both Tim Curry and Meatloaf. Much more fun than a Today Show appearance.
*Margin of error +/-5
Fifth (for sufficiently broad definitions thereof)
The square Space-Time Continuum “coin” looks pretty cool.
Also, Fifth again!
re #7 …. Where the writer at Vox comments: “Adams is one of the genre’s most accomplished editors, having curated numerous anthologies ”
I hates this use of curated. He edited, selected. Curate?? They do that in museums.
Feh. Harrumph. And Nero Wolfe “Phui.”
I had a teacher who’d been in the Vietnam war. He once told us how he’d learned to kill a person with a spoon. I believe it was theoretical not something he’d done but none of us asked. It was a bit freaky. Don’t mess with a teacher who has such skills – scarier than guns I tell ya. Homework is turned in on time. It got us thinking about how everyday objects can be used in multiple ways which was the point he was making.
You’d think LC could figure out how to use his melon baller for self-defense. Also he should give melons a chance. Melon ballers are good for all sorts of stuff – great for making small meatballs, rice balls, etc.
For the record, I didn’t spend the bulk of my Mind Meld piece implicitly rebuking Brad Torgersen. No way did I do that.
Unless your retina reflects light back out of your eye, in which case the pupil will appear to have a color and as there doesn’t seem to be any difference between ‘appearing to have a color’ and ‘having a color’, I’m going to go with a pupil CAN have a color.
If the Sea and Sky can have colours I see no reason to say a pupil can’t have a colour. You don’t say the sea as liquid is in a big hole is reflecting a nice shade of blue today.
Anyone else mentally jump from the Melon baller to the picture of the coin and wonder how the spoon was supposed to work in that picture.
That many people really know what book hooked them on SF? I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading SF and fantasy, except during those few years when I couldn’t yet read. There was no one book; there were always all of them.
There is no spoon.
Okay, everyone. We’re having a vote on what additions should go into the second round of the Rory Root Memorial Comics Bracket. The list is in this comment. Everyone who’s interested go look at those 13 items and then post saying which of them you’d be willing to see go into round 2. You can vote for as many as you want; the top 4 will move forward. (This is known as “approval voting”, unless I’m greatly mistaken.)
Please do not post your votes here in this scroll, post them there in that one. Only ones in that thread will be counted. Voting will last for 24 hours, cutting off at 1:00 AM CDT on Friday October 9.
(3) This was a great piece. What was interesting to me was that while there were the obvious mentions for The Hobbit, Narnia, Dune, and so on, an unscientific survey gave me 5 mentions for McCaffrey and 3 each for David Eddings and Tamora Pierce. I never read any Pierce as a child, bu both McCaffrey and Eddings were re-read into the ground.
(4) What I found interesting in this and other publicity work by Leckie in the last week is how much she cites Cherryh as an influence. e.g. from her AMA “…What books have most influenced you as a writer? In fiction, probably C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books, and everything by Andre Norton….”
Reading Mercy in the light of knowing that influence was rather fascinating, and not just as an explanation for the tea.
Via Black Gate, a childrens* book quite reasonably titled A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness. Check out the panel with the giant penguins!
I won’t have the cash to pick up Ancilary Mercy for another week and a bit. I’m insanely jealous.
(tick the box, Nagle)
Unless it miraculously appears in one of the chain bookstores around here I won’t be picking up Ancillary Mercy until maybe December time. There aren’t even any used copies of Justice or Sword floating around in any of the awesome second hand shops here…
Judging by the comments here, I’m in for a real treat when I do finally get to read it, though.
In the meantime, I’m concentrating my efforts on getting a copy of Emperor of Thorns, The Scar (the UK edition – the cover has to match my copy of Perdido Street Station, after all) and all of Lauren Beukes’ books that aren’t Moxyland.
So all of you know, I am preparing two separate brackets for Science Fiction and Fantasy movies. So no one else starts to work on the same. But please wait with recommendations until Davids comics bracket is finished.
Apropos of nothing in particular, my recent reads. For some reason, it’s all been early, not-quite-all-the-way-there-yet books by brilliant writers:
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee (not SFF). Half of this is a brilliant novel, and then it falls apart at the end. Can see both why it made her genius evident and why the editor asked for a different book. However, arguably an important book because of the sharp and unflattering light it casts on the characters of To Kill A Mockingbird — not just Atticus, but Scout herself.
The Moonbane Mage, Laurie J. Marks. Definitely not as strong as her amazing later work on the Elemental Logic series. Nonetheless, still a good read, and you can see the ideas and themes developing which will figure strongly in her eventual masterpiece. I will get the third book in this trilogy, Ara’s Field, which some have said is where her writing really started to get powerful.
Last Night in Montreal, Emily St. John Mandel (only very, very light SFF elements). Once again, it’s possible to see the skill that will show up in later work. Vivid characterization and description, and the freewheeling jumps that seem almost random until the fundamental interconnectedness is revealed. But she doesn’t stick the landing on this one, and the end feels lackluster compared to what’s led up to it.
Currently reading Starbreak by Phoebe North, breaking the pattern. Enjoying it thus far. And I’ll be doing a big book order later today …
Clicked
For the curious:
I kinda was inspired a bit by an old old Mind Meld with a similar topic, and all the brackets and talk here about books, to come up with the Mind Meld.
Which is why, since I had their email addresses already, I invited both Mike and Jim. This Mind Meld may also set a personal record for percentage of respondents giving me an answer. Usually I invite that many people and get a quarter of them actually responding. This time, nearly everyone turned in an answer.
[ticky]
“I could kill you with this spoon.
I just have to convince you to swallow it…”
Regarding spoons as deadly weapons.
You can kill someone with virtually anything, if you’re sufficiently ingenious and/or motivated.
I mean, I can see some old A. E. van Vogt paperbacks from here, and I can think of at least three ways they could be fatal. I could:
– drop one very precisely onto someone’s head from a very great height (like in that old Biggles story where someone’s killed by a box of chocolates dropped from a plane)
– disguise one as something irresistibly delicious so that my victim chokes to death trying to eat it.
– trick someone into reading one, and then force them to try and explain the plot.
When Moonbeast is outlawed, only outlaws will have Moonbeast.
“with a spoon”
There’s a whole trope for this over on TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutHisHeartOutWithASpoon
One of my favorites is from Farscape:
“A whole platoon of big, hairy guys with really cool tats and more guns than you can count. They come down here and find us dead, they’re going to slit you from crotch to eyeball with a dull deer antler”
Regarding the melon baller ….
“Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”
– – the first sentence of The Forever War
Went to see The Martian last night, excellent. Would love to see it in Imax…
Kyra: Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee (not SFF). Half of this is a brilliant novel, and then it falls apart at the end. Can see both why it made her genius evident and why the editor asked for a different book. However, arguably an important book because of the sharp and unflattering light it casts on the characters of To Kill A Mockingbird — not just Atticus, but Scout herself.
I read an interesting review of it which basically says it’s not set in the same universe as Mockingbird, and that people should not think of the characters in the two books as being the same “people”. Lee originally did one thing with the characters and then decided to write them differently.
I can see why she was adamant about it not ever being published — and I think it’s a damn shame that she has apparently been victimized by someone she trusted, used as a way to rake in money from which Lee herself will likely not benefit.
I just struck me that part of the plot of Ancillary Sword is Cebcre Grn Vf Gursg. Which reveals Ann Leckie as a Marxist, just as the Puppies have always suspected…
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: LOL!
I picked up on that plot element straight away. Which perhaps goes to show that a lifetime’s addiction to puns can look like actually being quick on the uptake.
Anna:
I thought that that was Proudhon, not Marx, which would make it anarchist, not Marxist.
Cebcre Grn Vf Gursg untranslated looks like the name of a German industrial corporation.
[God Stalk]
Clicky.
Anyone in need of an SJW credential?
My mother’s cat is not finding my sister’s home acceptable. She demands a single-human household. No other cats. Cat-friendly dogs okay. Will be adoptable in the New England area through the Greater Derry Humane Society. Email me.
Not kidding.
“At night the young people stalked the streets, chalking Cebcre Gursg lives! on the walls”
Pet peeve #182: calling a “round” a “coin”.
http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Differentiate-Between-Coins-and-Rounds-/10000000177631725/g.html
[ticky]
Ancillary Mercy arrived, as did the second half of Outlander Season 1, but I’m still chugging through The Traitor Baru Cormorant. The latter may well end up on my Hugo list (right now, Uprooted and The Fifth Season are the top two), but man, it is bleak and depressing.
I’m also planning on finishing The Traitor [Baru Cormorant] (I have the two-word UK edition) before tackling Ancillary Mercy…. While I’m on this topic, what is it with oppressive dystopias in current SFF? The Masquerade in Traitor, Leckie’s Imperial Radch… recently, I’ve read about the Saypuri military occupation and rigidly-enforced Worldly Regulations in City of Stairs, and the culture of The Fifth Season is based on relentless disaster-prepping and oppression of minorities…. Is there nowhere nice I can visit in contemporary SF and fantasy?
The ones that I had read, of Hill and Adams’ recommendations, I think are quite good. Maybe not the best, but that is a good list to start working from for anyone.
That McSweeny’s piece was incredibly on the nose.
Joe Hill makes a very good point in that Vox article (No. 7 above), referring to the Kerpupple:
None of these stories we’ve talked about, with the exception of Kelly Link’s, are recent fiction. These are all tentpoles of the genre, beloved, well-known stories that have stood the test of time. All of them are packed with daring ideas about environmental change, about the social contract, about gender, about the way technology can deform the human soul. I don’t know why anyone who could have those things would want less.
Indeed, why would you?
Or possibly a Traveller megacorp.
Burned through Ancillary Mercy fast. There is one word on my mind still.
Three-peat.
Re: #3
1) One does wonder what the Alexa rankings of McSweeny’s vs. MGC, Vox Populi, et al. … Never mind, just checked. Looking forward to the “nobody real reads McSweeny’s” from La Hoyt, Correia, and the rest.
2) Speaking of La Hoyt, Paulk – the one flaw of the McSweeny’s piece. There’s no scrappy female, simultaneously being more vicious than the others while totally missing how she’s being condescended to as The Plucky Sidekick. Cue cries of who the “real sexists” are…
Re: 7
That was an excellent article.
Fish sauce! The goldfish (and the darling child)! The thousand fish song!
Breq crying…
Finished Mercy last night and have found my first book of 2015 that I love. Up until now I’ve really liked some (Uprooted), been really disappointed in others (Seveneves).
I started The Traitor Baru Cormorant on the commute into work this morning, and so far it’s really gripping me, so I may be on a roll – but I’m a little daunted by the bleak comments up above.
Another dystopic story: I finished Erin Bow’s The Scorpion Rules over the weekend. Social collapse and wars due to climate change, snarky and funny – but brutal – evil overlord who steps in to solve things, young people held hostage to prevent further wars… Gripping and unexpected – it does not go where you think it will – but a bit more brutal than I was entirely comfortable with (and it’s YA!).
Finished Mercy as well. And I stand by my previous filk.
Welp, just ordered a whole bunch of books, my first big book purchase since June. I may have to skip a lot of comments here until my copy of Ancillary Mercy arrives. Also getting The Mystic Marriage — the only reason I don’t already have this is because my last book order included my first Heather Rose Jones book, so having this previously would have had to involve time travel (don’t think I didn’t consider it.)
In addition to those, also getting The Just City, The Buried Life, Bird Box, The Traitor, Lair of Dreams, We Are All Completely Fine, Serpentine, Stranger, Railhead, Last First Snow, The Fifth Season, Archivist Wasp, The Sculptor, Saga Volume 5, Dear Committee Members, Half A War, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and Kitty Saves the World (don’t judge me.)
On the advice of a trustworthy seeming file770er, I’m picking up The White Darkness; and on the advice of a number of file770ers who put them in the brackets, I’m getting Maplecroft and The Bone Doll’s Twin, neither of which I’d read and both of which sound awesome.
Also getting not-new but new-to-me books by Diana Wynne Jones, Laurie J. Marks, Frances Hardinge, Jeff Noon, David Levithan, Justine Larbalestier, Ysabeau Wilce, Sarah Beth Durst, Nick Harkaway, Naomi Clark, Mur Lafferty, and Robert Jackson Bennett, among others.
At the top of my list for “next time around” are The Scorpion Rules, The Heart Goes Last, Uprooted, Updraft, and Razorhurst.
My cats think that’s great.
I’m not going to tell them that Kitty’s not a cat.
@Anna: That’s beautiful. I feel like I should be embroidering it on a cozy!
@James: Haven’t you read your Hoyt? It’s Marxists all the way down.
@Eve: Does the Erin Bow contain any insta-love? I ask because Sorrow’s Knot was kind of ruined for me by the tacking on of sudden unearned romance.