Pixel Scroll 10/7/16 You Keep Using That Pixel. I Do Not Thing It Scrolls How You Think It Does

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.(1) NEW YORK COMIC CON. Tor.com’s Leah Schnelbach says fans packed the room to hear “You Can be Mythic!” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Steven Orlando, and Tee ‘Vixen’ Franklin Discuss Race, Sexuality, and Representation in Comics.

Gray kicked off by asking Coates about the reception of the Midnight Angels—Aneka and Ayo, two Dora Milaje warriors who have left their traditional roles and become fugitives together. While the crowd cheered at their mention, Coates self-deprecatingly joked, “If you see people on the internet who love it, you can’t tell if it’s the same 20 people.”

On why he was drawn to these characters, Coates said: “Many of the male figures in T’challa’s life had been killed. So the only people who were left in his life were women, like the Dora Milaje, and their story was told through his eyes. I was interested in what the perspective might be of a person who’d given up their entire life to protect one man—I mean, they address that man as “Beloved.” What about their love for themselves? What about their love for each other? Now that the social contract in Wakanda is fraying, what will happen to those feelings?” Coates further talked about Ayo and Aneka becoming lovers, and said “I think if you check yourself, you can open yourself to everybody’s worldview. You don’t have insert Black people, you don’t have to insert queer people, insert women—they’re already all around you.”

(2) TURNOVER AT WORLDCON 75. Dave Weingart is no longer running Music programming for Worldcon 75 for reasons he discusses at length at his LiveJournal.

(3) NORSTRILIAN VOICE. Walter Jon Williams expresses appreciation for “The What-He-Did: The Poetic Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith” at Tor.com.

She got the which of the what-she-did,
Hid the bell with a blot, she did,
But she fell in love with a hominid.
Where is the which of the what-she-did?

This cryptic verse opens “The Ballad of Lost C’mell,” by Cordwainer Smith, and may serve as emblematic both of some of the author’s persistent themes and his own rich and distinct strangeness. Smith was one of the Great Peculiars of science fiction, producing strong, intricate, highly-wrought, highly weird stories that will never be mistaken for the works of anyone else. No one else had a mind like Smith.

(4) BBC4 ART CONTEST. Get your crayons ready — “Competition – Draw Neil Gaiman’s Stardust for Radio 4”.

BBC4 will be coming out with a radio adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust in December. In conjunction with that, there’s a drawing contest open to 1) 16-and-unders, and 2) 17-and-olders. Winning images will be used as episode images. Deadline October 26th. More details here: Stardust – Competition – Draw Neil Gaiman’s Stardust for Radio 4 – BBC Radio 4

(5) NBA SHORTLIST. The finalists for the National Book Awards have been announced. One of them is one genre interest – Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railway. The winners will be announced November 16.

(6) IT GETS VERSE. Yesterday was National Poetry Day, prompting ULTRAGOTHA to revisit January’s epic post “Filers Destroy Poetry”.

(7) LAST HURRAH FOR PROF. X? CinemaBlend thinks this is the end, my friend – “New Wolverine 3 Image Reveals A Shocking Look At Professor X”.

Ever since it was announced that Patrick Stewart would be part of the last Wolverine film we’ve wondered exactly what his role would be. While the image doesn’t give us any hints toward answering that question, it does make us wonder if Hugh Jackman won’t be the only one saying goodbye to his famous role when the movie is over. With the Professor X role apparently in the capable hands of James McAvoy within the current X-Men timeline, there’s no specific need for Patrick Stewart going forward, and if Professor X were to pass away by the end of this movie, we wouldn’t be shocked.

(8) AUTHOR DISAVOWS GHOSTS IN POPULAR CULTURE. Richard Bleiler says to take his name off —

Some time ago I contributed essays to a work entitled “Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend,” ed. by June Pulliam and Anthony J. Fonseca (ABC-Clio, 2016).

When I received my copy I discovered that my encyclopedic contributions were rewritten, egregiously so. Paragraphs and sentences were rearranged and dropped, continuity was disrupted and destroyed, and — worst of all — sentences that I did not write were added without attribution. At no time was I asked if these changes were acceptable. Likewise, at no time was I given any indication that there were any issues with my contributions or asked if I could revise them.

I do not believe that I am being overly sensitive. I am used to being edited, but what was done to my contributions to Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend is beyond the pale. It is completely unacceptable.

I am therefore taking the (for me) unique step of disavowing the contributions in Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend that were published under my name. They do not represent my scholarship; they should not have my name attached to them. I have thus asked ABC-Clio:

1. Not to use my name in any advertisements for Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend;

2. To remove my name from any additional printings of Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend;

3. To remove my name from all electronic editions of Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend.

(9) THE MIGHTY KIRK. Matt Melia answers the question “Just How Heroic Is Star Trek’s ‘I Don’t Like to Lose’ James T. Kirk?” for PopMatters.

For this writer, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, has always been the most iconic and quintessential of television heroes and furthermore, possibly the most recognisable and identifiable as such. From a casual perspective, Jim Kirk embodies the most normative of heroic values: bravery, romance, adventure, leadership, nobility, instinctiveness as well as a penchant for recklessness (in the Season 1 episode “The Corbomite Maneuvre” he is also shown to be something of a gambler, bluffing of the alien, Balok, that the Enterprise is loaded with the non-existent substance Corbomite). But how may we further understand and define “heroism” and unpack it in televisual terms? How does Star Trek, as a cultural text, frame and interrogate the problematic and often contradictory concept of heroism, filtering its inquisitions through the character of Captain Kirk?

(10) FANTASTIC FICTION AT KGB. At the next installment of the New York-based reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present: Jack Ketchum & Caitlín R. Kiernan, October 19th. Starts 7 p.m. at the KGB Bar.

(11) WEEPING DEVILS. Joch McArthur delivers a rant about SF and “being political”.

… Or to clarify, to all the straight white cis dudes bitching and moaning about the blackness of Luke Cage or the PTSD discussion in Jessica Jones or Evan Rachel Wood talking about feminist aspects of Westworld or Wonder Woman’s queerness or any of the other white tears hot topics of the year that are constantly blowing up my social media feed (“why do they have to make everything political!!! It’s just a tv show!!!!!!!” *straight white cis male tears here*)

(12) HISTORIC COMICS APA SIGNING OFF. Capa-alpha, the oldest comics-fandom APA, started in October 1964, will close with its December mailing, #626. Fred Patten has the details.

CAPA-alpha, known as K-a for short, was one of the influences behind the startup of comics fandom in the early 1960s.  It’s been going for 52 years.  Some of the leading names in the comics industry began as comics fans in K-a.

Paper APAs are considered dinosaurs today, but the immediate cause of the APA’s cancellation is its long-running Central Mailer, Douglas Jones, having a foot amputated due to advancing diabetes.  Jones cannot continue as Central Mailer, and none of the current members (23, with a waiting list of 7) feel that they can replace him.

(13) STICK YOUR FOOT IN IT. Dangerous Minds knows where you can find Cthulhu Approved High-Heeled Tentacle Shoes.

chtulhu-high-heel

Totally insane-looking—and probably not practicable footwear—tentacle high-heeled shoes made by fashion designer, costume designer and shoe designer Kermit Tesoro. I can’t imagine walking in these. Hell, I can’t even walk in heels to begin with!

I just checked out Kermit Tesoro’s Facebook page to see if he had any other equally freaky high-heeled designs and it looks like he’s also got a Venus flytrap shoe.

[Thanks to Elusis, Fred Patten, Andrew Porter, Bruce D. Arthurs, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jameson Quinn.]

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115 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/7/16 You Keep Using That Pixel. I Do Not Thing It Scrolls How You Think It Does”

  1. Re: NYCC

    As the most geeky person in the office I work at, one of my co workers came up excitedly to show me how his son, at NYCC, was cosplaying as Star Lord, and his girlfriend as Daenerys.

    One of these days I will brave a NYCC or SDCC. Not this year, alas, visited NYC a little too soon to do it.

  5. Currently Reading: Against A Dark Background (Iain M. Banks)
    On Break From: Seeker’s Mask (Godstalk III – P.C. Hodgell)

    I picked up Player Of Games for a comfort reread and caught the Culture bug, so I plucked one of the unread Culture books off of Mount TBR and gave it a whirl.

    [GCV Stalking Is Quite Hard To Do, Really]

  6. ULTRAGOTHA: Mike, if you don’t have a Twitter account, how do you FIND these obscure tweets?

    A tweet containing “File 770” is not an obscure tweet, when you’ve got a Twitter search for that term (a Twitter account is not required in order to be able to view the results of a Twitter search).

  9. #5 – Also of genre interest is Grace Lin’s When The Sea Turned To Silver, which is on the shortlist for the Young People’s Literature Award. It is the third of a set of companion books, all of which are highly acclaimed.

  10. Mike Glyer: There go my claims to omniscience…

    *snort*

    You usually respond to my e-mails quite promptly, but based on my observations, I’ve always figured that if I need to talk to you ASAP, I can get your attention tout suite by posting a tweet which contains “File 770”. 😉

  12. (11) WEEPING DEVILS. You know, I was on-side with that Joch McArthur fellow taking it to the fragile white men complaining about social issues in science fiction and comic books, and then he goes and drops the c-bomb in his righteous penultimate paragraph. Ow, my face.

    (13) STICK YOUR FOOT IN IT. That’s a lovely work of art, that is. I’m not so sure about it being a functional shoe.

  13. @Dawn Incognito

    I suspect Joch McArthur might be British, where the c-word is more of an all-purpose insult (and often applied to men) rather than a specifically misogynist slur. And from the context, it seems he used the c-word in the British sense. Though it’s still a very loaded term to use, especially on the internet where the audience is international.

  14. I found the World Wide Web very hard to socially navigate for quite awhile due to my Britishness. Culturally, there’s a tendency to switch from comic overstatement to comic understatement at the drop of a hat and the habit of often not saying what we precisely mean. And, of course, the language. The C-bomb is often used as an ironic term of endearment, especially in UK working class culture. The global village, understandably, can be, er, taken aback by these island ways.

  15. Using a word that means “women’s genitals” as an insult is an inherently misogynist thing to do, no matter whom or what you’re insulting. It’s really not that difficult. Sure, you can make the use of the c-word more misogynist by using it as an insult specifically for women, or by making it The Worst Word in the World, but even at its matiest and mildest, it simply doesn’t work without misogyny.

  16. Argh, I didn’t even mean to turn this to a discussion of international usage of That Word (I read it as British usage as well) and the inherent misogyny thereof; it’s one of those words that always makes me flinch. It did so here in an post that I otherwise agreed with so I thought that should be noted.

  17. I finished “Making Money” by Pratchett. It is a shame he was never given a Hugo. But he recused himself for “Going Postal” which is my favorite of the 10 or so books I’ve read in the series.

    Reread “Tinker” by Wen Spencer. Unfortunately had to repurchase because my 13 year old paperback made my allergies explode. Good, but too much romance for me. I then deleted “Wood Sprites” that I was half way through because it has not been as good as Tinker

    @(11) Boo Hoo! Another person mad on the internet about people not enjoying the same thing he does for the same reasons.

  18. airboy: 11) Boo Hoo! Another person mad on the internet about people not enjoying the same thing he does for the same reasons.

    That’s not what it’s about. You might try reading (and understanding) the whole piece instead of making an uninformed comment on it.

  19. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. Absolutely not. Not at this present stage of civilisation with all its patriarchy etc anyway.

  20. 8) He can be mad, of course, but I wonder what the contract says? I’m guessing the contract allows the publisher to make all the changes and he can’t ask for his name to be removed.

  21. bookworm1398: 8) He can be mad, of course, but I wonder what the contract says? I’m guessing the contract allows the publisher to make all the changes and he can’t ask for his name to be removed.

    He can still ask, even if the contract doesn’t give him the right to demand it.

    Sometimes it’s in a publisher’s best interests to comply with a request like his even when the contract does not require it — rather than see the work bad-mouthed all over the internet when they refuse.

  22. (2) That is an extremely screwed-up situation. If he was so anathema to them, they should have just said “nope” in the first place, rather than trying to make him do all the work of a division head/concom member without allowing him to talk to the rest of the staff. That’s ridiculous and it doesn’t work! They should at least refund his membership.

    Note that I do not take sides as to whether he did A Bad Thing or whether he or Ms. Redacted or both are in the wrong here. That’s not the point. The concom are idiots for trying to run things that way. Between not communicating about the hotel situation and now this… what the hell is going on there?

    (6) That was fun to read again.

    (11) I agree with Dawn Incognito — that was an extremely righteous rant until he nullified/undid it all in the last paragraph. Calling these insecure white boys “dicks” would have been appropriate, because that’s what they’re thinking with. But since they’re full of shit, a nice ungendered reference to the anal sphincter would do.

  25. On #8, File 770, (File770.com) from the entry for Oct 7, 2016:
    ““(8) AUTHOR DISAVOWS GHOSTS IN POPULAR CULTURE. Richard Bleiler says to take his name off —
    Some time ago I contributed essays to a work entitled “Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend,” ed. by June Pulliam and Anthony J. Fonseca (ABC-Clio, 2016).””

    I’ve worked with this publisher in the past. I co-authored/co-edited books for them. My fellow editor and I both received electronic files of the edited manuscript from a company that does the editing for ABC-Clio. There were extensive notes and questions. The publisher assumed that my co-editor and I would work with our chapter authors as needed. Obviously in the case that Bleiler describes, I’ve no way of knowing whether Pulliam and/of Fonseca received edited proofs. After we reviewed our proofs, we returned the files to the company. After that time, they stated that almost no changes would be made unless they were cases of obvious errors.
    So, obviously, Bleiler never saw the preliminary edited proofs/version. Impossible to guess whether ABC-Clio sent it only to the two editors, and if so, to know why those the editors of the book weren’t working closely with their contributors, or at least not with Bleiler. I feel sorry for all concerned, including ABC-Clio in this! ABC-Clio is a relatively small, independent publisher, struggling to survive in the dynamic world of non-fiction publishing.

  28. At Gaylaxicon. Hoping everyone’s having a good time, wherever they are. Agree with @lurkertype re. (2); good freaking grief!

    Also: Did @Mike Glyer link to @ULTRAGOTHA’s tweet? Don’t see it; slightly confused. Never did ‘get’ this twit thing. 😛

    ObSFReading: Staying up late reading Fluency, bought a while ago on @JJ’s rec & the sample, but only read the first few chapters till now – too many books! – but back reading it (in an SF craze) and it’s very good! At chapter-ending “she saw something moving nearby” or some such – eek, run! Gur fyht vf pbzvat sebz vafvqr gur fcnprfuvc! ::picking up iPad gingerly:: 😀

    Lost first person pronouns somewhere; please send any extras you have, soonest, kthxbye.

  29. Sorry to hear of Capa-Alpha folding. I was a member through the mid-80s, and virtually met a number of folk through it.

  32. 2) I’ve known Dave for almost 40 years: I will vouch for and stand behind him.
    As Lurkertype points out “The concom are idiots for trying to run things that way.”
    The ConCom is taking the easy way out in it’s enforcement of a CoC in an Absolutist – Zero Tolerance mode. Unfortunately, Con-Running and human interactions are rarely that simple or easy. They have lost the services of a highly experienced Smof based on nothing more than hearsay and coincidence.

    As a commenter noted on FilkerDave’s LJ:
    But the problem, at its core, is what happens when policies which say “Believe the victim at all times, no matter what.” cross paths with victims who are making statements which bear — whether willfully or unknowingly — very little resemblance to reality.

  33. Last night I dreamed I read “Mother of Souls” by Heather Rose Jones, in its entirety. (I think, however, I can say without fear of being wrong that the plot of the book in my dream bore no resemblance to the plot of the book that will be published next month.)

    I am not sure what this means.

  34. “The ConCom is taking the easy way out in it’s enforcement of a CoC in an Absolutist – Zero Tolerance mode.”

    The problem derives from that they didn’t take the easy way out. Instead they tried to accommodate both persons in a regulated scheme that was doomed to fail. The easy way would have been to politely say that they had no need for his services.

  35. Linda notes ABC-Clio is a relatively small, independent publisher, struggling to survive in the dynamic world of non-fiction publishing.

    Errr no. They’re actually one of the major publishers for these sort of works with a number of imprints aimed clearly at libraries, both public and academic. I have no idea what happened in this situation but I know that it’s rare to find even the most minor of mistakes in one of their works.

  38. (2) Dave Weingart has a followup post asking Internet psychoanalysts to please stop trying to come up with a diagnosis that makes everything Name Redacted’s fault, and keep the focus instead on the organizational problem.

  39. After reading Worldcon 75’s response, I’m left wondering if Weingart could even attend the event, as his very presence there could cause the aggrieved to feel stalked. When W75 does get around to issuing their CoC, I’m wondering how this decision will hold up to it.

  40. The ConCom is taking the easy way out in it’s enforcement of a CoC in an Absolutist – Zero Tolerance mode.

    As far as I can see, they’re not doing that at all. They did not not uphold a complaint: they ruled that Weingart should not be allowed to contact someone after she had requested that he not contact her, which seems totally reasonable, quite independently of what he had done to give rise to that request.

    The odd bit is:
    a. deciding that posting to an all-staff forum, without addressing the person who made the request, constitutes contact, and
    b. supposing that this restriction was compatible with his continuing to function as head of music programming.

  41. Having read Dave’s statement, it’s pretty obvious to me what happened. I’ve read very similar statements in the past and it’s not hard to read between the lines.

    There are zero doubts in my mind that Dave knew exactly what he was doing when he posted that video, and it’s the same thing he was doing when he sent a page long letter to someone who asked him not to contact her.

  42. (2)

    Bluntly, as someone who lacks any personal tie to the individual whose post I just read, something seems a touch off. I see some of our usuals are enlisting him as another victim of PC gone mad; but one does notice the circumlocutions used to avoid the word “stalking”, one wonders.

  44. “The odd bit is:
    a. deciding that posting to an all-staff forum, without addressing the person who made the request, constitutes contact, and
    b. supposing that this restriction was compatible with his continuing to function as head of music programming.”

    I was once hosting a munch. We had the whole cellar of the pub to ourselves, three rooms in total.

    Before the munch, we were contacted by a woman who wanted to come, but said at a man she used to be stalker by also was shown as those that would come. She asked us hosts to make sure that he wouldn’t come near. She had friends with her that would take all places beside her.

    So. She came with her friends. They had a great time. Then the man came. Ordered a beer, and sat down in the same room. Just one table from her. Never said anything to her, but continuously throwing glances at her and only her. He continued to do that, even when his friends came (he was a known profile). Not that often, but regular.

    He never tried to approach her directly.

    This is the problems with stalkers. Often they stay right outside the set limits, just pushing against them. Testing.

    I’m not saying that this is what Weingart did. Only why it could appear so. And why it would make Name Redacted nervous. And why it is not that easy to make an assumption of good faith, when the visible behaviour seems to fit a well known pattern.

  45. I think it worth noting that we’ve seen this exact same kind of behavior recently. Does the ‘Zoe post’ ring any bells?

    And now it’s coming to light it wasn’t just one post in the group chat, but multiple before and after he was asked to stop, and belligerent emails.

    @hampus

    That sorta story is depressingly familiar. In my experience it’s very easy for someone to set up coincidence and harmless behavior so that if caught they have an excuse made up.

  46. The text of Worldcon 75’s statement.

    David Weingart was recently dismissed from Worldcon 75 Staff for failing to abide by an agreement he had made to not interact with another staff member who reported feeling stalked by him in the past. The agreement had allowed both valued staff members to work on Worldcon 75 for several months. Once broken, David refused to recommit to a course of action intended to prevent problematic interactions from happening again, and refused to accept responsibility for his actions or impact. The situation, unfortunately, was at an impasse.
    The decision to dismiss David was not easy to make, but it was the decision that the co-chairs and Staff Services came to, after much discussion. Both staffers have every right to feel upset and hurt about this situation. Worldcon 75 is something both cared about and worked hard for. That does not excuse David’s behaviour or his actions, nor does it negate his impact; we stand by our decision to dismiss him. We wish David only the best in his future volunteering.
    We would like to unequivocally apologise to the other staffer in this situation. Without a finalised Code of Conduct, they did not have any idea how this would turn out, and are now being publicly and privately harassed by people who do not know the details of what transpired other than David’s perspective…..

    And a bit more in a comment:

    We are not calling a post in the staff chat harassment. We are saying that when David agreed last spring not to interact online or in person with the other staffer, that included the staff chat. He posted five times in one day to the staff chat conversation that the other staffer had begun. When this was brought up with him, he was asked to stop posting in the staff chat. He not only refused, he posted there another nine times before his access was revoked, and he wrote belligerent emails delivering ultimatums about it to our Staff Services division.

    What was clear about this was that it was no longer going to work to have both staffers on the convention. We let David go.

  48. @TYP

    (2) Bluntly, as someone who lacks any personal tie to the individual whose post I just read, something seems a touch off.

    My thought exactly. And then I read the statement from WorldCon75, that his post in a staff forum was on a thread she initiated and that he posted there nine times after being asked to stop. This is so much at odds with his original post (and makes so much more sense than his post does) that I’m not disposed to believe anything else that he posted.

    I do believe it’s possible for someone to pretend to be a victim and abuse the system, but it doesn’t look like that’s what happened this time.

  49. “We are not calling a post in the staff chat harassment. We are saying that when David agreed last spring not to interact online or in person with the other staffer, that included the staff chat. He posted five times in one day to the staff chat conversation that the other staffer had begun. When this was brought up with him, he was asked to stop posting in the staff chat. He not only refused, he posted there another nine times before his access was revoked, and he wrote belligerent emails delivering ultimatums about it to our Staff Services division.”

    And this is why it is always problematic to vouch for someone, purely based on friendship and their own version.

  50. And to make the situation complete, David has waded into the Facebook post to argue with people and gaslight his victim.

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