(1) PRIVACY. David Brin’s Chasing Shadows, a collection of short stories and essays by other science fiction luminaries, was released today.
As we debate Internet privacy, revenge porn, the NSA, and Edward Snowden, cameras get smaller, faster, and more numerous. Has Orwell’s Big Brother finally come to pass? Or have we become a global society of thousands of Little Brothers–watching, judging, and reporting on one another?
Partnering with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and inspired by Brin’s nonfiction book The Transparent Society, noted author and futurist David Brin and scholar Stephen Potts (UC San Diego) have compiled essays and short stories from writers such as Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Robert J. Sawyer, Aliette de Bodard, James Morrow, Ramez Naam, William Gibson, Vernor Vinge and many others to examine the benefits and pitfalls of technologic transparency in all its permutations.
Read the introduction by James Gunn and a story by Vylar Kaftan here [Tor.com].
(2) JEANETTE EPPS: She was one of MidAmeriCon II’s special NASA guests:
@NASA's Janette Epps (an actual astronaut) posing with my Hugo award for Binti. ?????????????? #HugoAwards pic.twitter.com/m5KGb2zsBH
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD????? (@Nnedi) August 21, 2016
Next year she’ll be crewing the International Space Station:
NASA is assigning veteran astronaut Andrew Feustel and first-flight astronaut Jeanette Epps to missions aboard the International Space Station in 2018.
Feustel will launch in March 2018 for his first long-duration mission, serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 55, and later as commander of Expedition 56. Epps will become the first African American space station crew member when she launches on her first spaceflight in May 2018. She’ll join Feustel as a flight engineer on Expedition 56, and remain on board for Expedition 57.
Culmination of a great week of training in Star City. pic.twitter.com/gUU1y319fM
— Jeanette J. Epps, PhD (@Astro_Jeanette) December 10, 2016
(3) LIVE FREE. The UC San Diego Library is hosting a live event, Short Tales from the Mothership, on Thursday, January 19 from 7:30-8:30 p.m.in the Geisel Library’s Seuss Room. Want to participate? Send in your entry by January 17.
If you enjoy creative writing or hearing original short stories, you won’t want to miss this Flash-Fantasy-Sci-Fiction open mic event. Taken from the sci-fi aesthetics of UC San Diego’s iconic Geisel Library building, the UC San Diego Library is hosting a written/spoken word event for the campus and San Diego communities…
Writers should send fantasy or science fiction pieces of no more than 250 words to student leader Amber Gallant, at [email protected], prior to the live reading. Early entries are due by Tuesday, January 17. At the event you will have the opportunity to read your entry or have it read aloud for you. All are welcome to come listen to these short stories from beyond!
…Otherworldly libations from our refreshment laboratory will be served along with live theremin & synthesizer musical interludes.
This event, hosted by the UC San Diego Library in partnership with The Writing + Critical Expression Hub at the Teaching + Learning Commons, is free and open to the public.
(4) HOLDING THE FUTURE AT BAY. Although a popular image of science fiction writers is people who predict the future, Connie Willis is distraught to find one of her predictions has happened. She learned the news from this Cory Doctorow article on BoingBoing.
Two employees at the East Lake County Library created a fictional patron called Chuck Finley — entering fake driver’s license and address details into the library system — and then used the account to check out 2,361 books over nine months in 2016, in order to trick the system into believing that the books they loved were being circulated to the library’s patrons, thus rescuing the books from automated purges of low-popularity titles
Willis had a character with the same motivation in her short novel Bellwether:
[My] heroine Sandra made a practice of checking out her favorite books and the classics to keep them from being summarily discarded by the public library. I did that because I’d had a terrible experience with my own library, who I caught throwing out their entire set of Beany Malone books.
“What are you doing?” I said, horrified. “Those are by Lenora Mattingly Weber, one of Colorado’s best writers. A whole generation of girls grew up on the Beany Malone books. They’re classics.” “Nobody checked them out,” the librarian explained. “If a book hasn’t been checked out in a year, it gets discarded and put in the library book sale.”
Where if it doesn’t sell, it gets taken to the landfill, she should have added. And it doesn’t matter if the book’s a bestseller or a classic of literature. (If you don’t believe me, go to your local library and try looking for MOBY DICK. Or Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN. Or THREE MEN IN A BOAT.
Or a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES, with the original photos taken of the Cottingley fairies (or some fairy paper dolls) by the little girls. My library got rid of that, too, even though it sells for upwards of eight hundred dollars on AbeBooks. “Nobody wanted to read it,” the librarian explained…..
(5) JEMISIN GOES INTO ORBIT. Good news for her readers: “Orbit Acquires Three Books by Hugo Award-Winning Author N.K. Jemisin”.
Orbit has acquired three new novels by Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin. All three will be published by Orbit in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and as audio editions by Hachette Audio.
Acquiring editor Brit Hvide said, “N. K. Jemisin is one of the most creative, incisive, and important writers working in fantasy today, and her recent Hugo win only underlines that fact. We at Orbit are proud to continue publishing Jemisin’s work and to amplify her remarkable voice.”
…The first newly-acquired book, currently untitled, will be Jemisin’s first set in our world, and is a contemporary fantasy dealing with themes of race and power in New York City. It has a projected publication date of April 2019.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born January 10, 1904 – Ray Bolger
(7) COMICS AUTHOR CHARGED. Comics/comics history writer Gerard Jones has been arrested, suspected of putting child porn on YouTube.
An accomplished San Francisco comic book and nonfiction author, who has been published in Marvel and a slew of other publications, was arrested on suspicion of possessing more than 600 child pornography files and uploading the graphic videos to YouTube, police said Friday.
Gerard Jones, 59, was arrested after a police investigation and ensuing search warrant at his residence in the 600 block of Long Bridge Street in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood turned up a host of electronic devices storing more than 600 images and videos depicting child pornography, police said.
The longtime author has written screenplays for Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, served as a writing teacher for the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto, and put together graphic novels for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics, according to his official website.
His works include Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangster, and the Birth of the Comic Book.
(8) CREEP FACTOR. Nerd & Tie has a well-researched post about a convention acting on its conduct policy, “Artist Scott Windorski Banned From Evercon For Harassment, Smears Event Organizer”.
Artist Scott Windorski, who vends under the name “Knotty Cobbler,” was ostensibly there to sell his wares, but began to make the rounds a few hours into the first day of the con, January 6th. As he did so, Windorski apparently began to interact with the other (mostly women) artists. For some, like Bal Flanagan, Windorski was at their booth to not only push his own wares aggressively, but made unwelcome comments that “made everyone uncomfortable.”
For others, the line was crossed even further.
Windorski approached artist Brittany Smith (who previously vended as part of PinStripes Studio and currently sells as AcuteCastle). Smith had sold art to Windorski at a previous event and he was, initially very complimentary of her work and asking for a picture with her. However, as Smith posted to the Artist Alley Network International Facebook group, Windorski followed up questions about the artist’s eczema by telling her “I would love to see you naked.”
Smith immediately put Windorski in his place, telling him that she was uncomfortable and asked him to leave…
Unfortunately, that was only the beginning.
(9) GASLIGHT LOSES SPARK. Conrunner Anastasia Hunter announces she has left the board of the group that runs San Diego’s Gaslight Gathering.
Due to irreconcilable and escalating differences between myself and members of the Board of Directors of CAASM, Inc. (Non-profit corporation that owns and oversees Gaslight Gathering), I have made the decision to resign as Chair and withdraw myself completely from their organization. A formal letter was mailed to CAASM late last week.
However, the Steampunk party we enjoy here in San Diego is far from over. I will be announcing a new project next week for those of you interested in future steampunk shenanigans!
To everyone on the Gaslight Gathering committee, thank you so very much for volunteering with me these past six years! You are the very best crew of Steampunks and con runners in town!
(10) PACKER OBIT. SF Site News reports Australian fanartist John Packer has died.
Australian fan artist John Packer died the weekend of January 7. Packer was a two-time Ditmar Award winner in 1983 and 1984. In 1983, he also won the Golden Caterpillar Award for services to “triffids” and for redefining the word “vermin.” His cartoon appeared in numerous Australian fanzines. In 1984, he stood for DUFF.
(11) DEEP TWEET. While enjoying his latest Twitter brawl, John Scalzi cut loose with a multi-level bit of snark.
OH MY GOD IS SOMEONE FORCING YOU TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW THAT IS HORRIBLE BLINK TWICE FOR YES I'M SENDING HELP NOW BE STRONG
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) January 10, 2017
At least I counted it as multi-level, coming from the author of Lock In.
(12) ART ON THE CORNER. For several years a project of the city of Glendale, CA’s arts commission has been having artists paint murals on streetside utility boxes. At the website you can see photos of them all. Many have fantasy, sf, or dinosaur imagery.
There’s a parallel effort in Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar’s district. For example, this one’s at Fletcher Avenue and San Fernando Road, photographed the other day by Tony Gleeson.
Councilman Huizar’s website also has a gallery of utility box murals. (Incidentally, Councilman Huizar’s district encompasses Ray Bradbury Square — he attended the dedication in 2012.)
(13) MIMEO MANIACS. Moshe Feder reports Fanac.org has put online the video from “a fannishly famous fanzine panel from 1976’s Big MAC (MidAmericon 1) featuring moderator Linda Bushyager and panelists Victoria Vayne, Taral Wayne, Jon Singer, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Gary Farber, and yours truly… Thanks to the late Scott Imes for recording this and David Dyer-Bennet for his restoration work.”
This panel discusses what used to be the commonplace wisdom of mimeography, but today is an esoteric look at the fanzine production practices of 20th century fandom. Includes a wonderful segment early on where Jon imitates a mimeo, and a novel use for the New York Times. There is about a 20 minute period where the video is damaged, but the audio remains clear throughout.
[Thanks to Moshe Feder, Arnie Fenner, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
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First?!1111!!
(4) HOLDING THE FUTURE AT BAY.
I frequently check out one of my old SFF favorites when I’m checking out a bunch of the books I haven’t yet read, and I can neither confirm nor deny that I got the idea to do this from Bellwether.
As far as libraries getting rid of old books goes, I wonder if it would be worth their while to organize themselves to offer them for sale on Amazon as used books. Maybe get local volunteers to help with the data entry. So if a book hadn’t been checked out for a year, they could offer it for sale. If after a further year it hadn’t sold nor had it been checked out, then they could pulp it.
That would at least catch cases where a book worth $800 got pulped because no one checked it out and no one at the library book sale noticed what it was.
(5) Just gonna throw in my congratulations for Jemisin’s three book deal with Orbit and say how happy I am that we get at least another three books from her. Plus once the Broken Earth trilogy is done and dusted I’m going to treat myself to some of her backlist while we all wait for the new book(s)!
Bah, one away from 5th.
Used-book dealers will buy books that libraries pull from the shelves; I have several that went through that process. (The ones library book sales hate are Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. No one buys them. The library in west Texas where I hung out sent their unsold books to the local prison.)
4) I have an ex-library copy of Edward Eager’s Seven Day Magic, purchased for a quarter from the library I went to in Massachusetts, and purged to make much-needed shelf room for more series fiction about farting ghosts.
Friends of mine in Colorado found a gold mine of art books in the dumpster at my old home town library. In fact, the books went out on a weekly or monthly schedule until said friends made it an issue and the library stopped doing it, or at least stopped using that dumpster.
7) Gerard Jones. Sheesh. I used to enjoy his title The Trouble With Girls (lead character’s surname was Girls). I was thinking about it the other day, because the Elvis movie of the same name was on Turner.
13) I still have a mimeo machine in the garage. I remember when we got a computer around 1985, figuring out how to punch stencils on an Epson printer. In fact, I was throwing out papers here the other day and found some of my very own results from that project. Sic semper Gestetner. (Though I believe the one I have is an A.B. Dick, but that doesn’t scan good.)
Eppure scorre.
(11): I’m always aloud my opinion. Frequently very aloud.
On Short Story Squee & Snark, we’re discussing Aliya Whiteley’s “Brushwork” – a novella about opting out, privilege, and growing melons. Come share your thoughts 🙂
(7) COMICS AUTHOR CHARGED. His lawyer, Seth Chazin, said his client denies all of the allegations and emphasized that the 59-year-old had no prior criminal record (aka “had never been caught committing any sort of pedophilia until now”). “It’s important to differentiate between violent sex offenders (and) these kinds of cases, because there’s a big difference,” Chazin said. “We tend to lump them all together.”
We lump them together because people who are willing to pay for photographic evidence of violent sex offenses directly drive an increase in those offenses.
This makes me ill. I worry about how many children might have been baited into things by this guy, using his comic books, or his celebrity from them, as attractors. 🙁
Mr Dr Science has just finished “The Race” by Nina Allan, and asks if any of you have read it and could explain it to him. Specifically, he ended up *completely* unsure what, if any, elements in the book are supposed to be “real” or not. He’s not sure if the genre is SFF, magic realism, or lit fic with someone imagining things.
He said he’d like me to read it and see what I think, but frankly I’m in the middle of The Winged Histories right now and that’s about as much literary complexity as I can cope with at the moment. Indeed, Some Might Say I’m fleeing back into comfort re-reads of favorite fanfic. Or hmmmm, maybe Middlemarch — Max Gladstone has been tweeting about reading it, and it’s always good for a re-read.
(1) PRIVACY.
Is it an all reprint anthology? Neal Stephenson’s “Spew” is from 1994.
(2) JEANETTE EPPS
Neat!
(4) HOLDING THE FUTURE AT BAY.
I only know Chuck Finley as the name Sam Axe from Burn Notice gives when he doesn’t want to use his real name.
Title credit? Woohoo!
Soon Lee: (1) PRIVACY. Is it an all reprint anthology?
Not including Gunn’s intro, 18 are from 2017, another is a 2017 revised version of an older piece, and 9 are reprints. So about 1/3rd reprints.
But I am unable to discern which pieces are fiction and which are non-fiction.
@JJ,
Thank you.
Doctor Science: Mr Dr Science has just finished “The Race” by Nina Allan, and asks if any of you have read it and could explain it to him.
I haven’t gotten to read it yet, but the Strange Horizons review might offer some enlightenment.
#5 (which I had just read about via Orbit’s blog) and #12 – thanks, @Mike Glyer! Some upbeat stuff (not the only ones, of course) to go with the downers in today’s Pixel Scroll. I scrolled through a lot of the pix from #12, and so far I like the image you used the best. But there are some very cool surreal ones at the link, too, and I like surreal.
Anyone who wants a preview of Jemisin’s upcoming contemporary fantasy should look at her story “The City Born Great” on tor.com. She’s said on her Patreon that it was the “proof of concept” story for that one, just as “The Stone Hunger” on Clarkesworld was for The Broken Earth.
Here’s a direct link to Jemisin’s “The City Born Great” at Tor.com.
Beany Malone is not great literature, honest. I think it’s good that there are SOME libraries that keep copies, but it’s just silly for every library to do so. Anyway, they’re in print and available for Kindle.
(4) HOLDING THE FUTURE AT BAY. Although a popular image of science fiction writers is people who predict the future, Connie Willis is distraught to find one of her predictions has happened.
I will point out at the time Bellwether was written, just as she described in the book, libraries de-accessioned books by the same algorithm; it was just performed manually. This wasn’t a prediction which has only now become true.
Willis says, “The librarian who created the fake reader needs to be defended. And people need to complain to their local libraries and demand they use a reasonable standard for culling books. Plus, they need to go check out their favorite books to make sure they’re there for the next reader.”
(13) That is an interesting video. A glimpse into a world before my time, DIY before that term was widely known (or even coined?)
“The City Born Great” is also part of Some of the Best of Tor.com 2016 Edition, currently available as a free ebook download for newsletter subscribers. (Someone’s already posted that link, right?)
[tickety]
HelenS on January 10, 2017 at 10:42 pm said:
Beany Malone is not great literature, honest. I think it’s good that there are SOME libraries that keep copies, but it’s just silly for every library to do so. Anyway, they’re in print and available for Kindle.
The problem is that libraries aren’t coordinating their discards.
If something is still in print, that’s one thing, but a lot of what is being removed is older, rarer, and irreplaceable.
When they are all weeding according to the same criteria, eventually no one will have the rare stuff to loan around.
Okay, this is pretty good:
@Rev. Bob,
Yes.
@Standback
Can you check your spam for a comment from me from yesterday? Either that or my PC ate it.
5) The Jemisin news is exciting, indeed.
@ Doctor Science: I bounced off much of The Race, myself.
https://skiffyandfanty.com/2016/05/05/book-review-the-race-by-nina-allan/
[godstalk]
@Mark: Oooh, thanks for the heads-up.
I’ve got the site set not to screen comments, but it’s not being entirely obedient about that :-/ I haven’t even found any solution just to make trapped comments more visible.
13: oh my…many of the folks I used to hang with back in the days of yore…if you can catch it during the “make Jon a mimeo machine” scene, Gary Farber is doing his due diligence for the next year’s Worldcon by wearing his Suncon t-shirt…
3&4: in yet another example of SF’s predictive powers, the cover illustration for Amazing Stories’ Special Edition (soon to be an ebook!), Duncan Long’s astronaut bears an uncanny resemblance to astronaut Jeanette Epps…
13: more propheticness:
From the Neo-Fan’s Guide:
“Certain rabid elements in fandom seem to believe they can attain Bnf status by inciting a feud but the resultant sound and fury usually resembles the yapping of dogs quarrelling over a bone.”
2017 reading: I’m starting the year with Fearsome Magics, a 2014 anthology from Jonathan Strahan. It’s all been quite good; my favorite story was probably the one by Garth Nix, one of his series about Sir Hereward & Mr. Fitz, a knight and an enchanted living puppet. Also memorable: K.J. Parker, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman (whom I don’t think I’ve read since the 1990s). The one irritating thing: The Kindle edition doesn’t seem to have any kind of table of contents or chapter breaks — it’s just one, long file, which makes it difficult to check the contents without opening the sample on Amazon.
After I finish that (this evening, I assume), it’ll probably be time to dive into some 2016 novellas.
(2) Yippee! I just finished reading Hidden Figures (not Fences), as the movie hasn’t opened here yet. I bet Katharine Johnson et al. are smiling over this.
(11) hee, hee, hee.
A site devoted mainly to romance novels is leading with two posts about LeGuin. Not that anybody here needs an introduction to her, but I didn’t know she has a new book out.
* Rushes off to read Jemison story and get new UKL book*
@JJ: Heh, nice short, thanks.
Ebook sales: There’s a multi-author 99 cent book sale from some urban fantasy and paranormal romance authors, including @Cora (I think that’s the same Cora), plus a book that was on my list years ago (Heretic by Joe Nassise – anyone read this?) and Diana Pharaoh Francis’s Trace of Magic. The book lengths (some are shorter works, not novels) and ebookstores the sales are in (Nassise’s is only at Amazon) vary from book to book, FYI.
ETA: I have no idea if the various sales are U.S.-only, or some are and some aren’t, etc. Again, things seem to vary by book.
Ha! I kept telling people there was a Gaslight Gathering in San Diego but they all said I was just crazy!
John Seavey
“Youse win!” chorused the urchins. “The dorg’s yours!”
(Punch line to an ancient joke. Invoked to indicate head-shaking approval.)
The Ghost of Pixel-yet-to-come
Its Pixels all the way down
Scroll once for “Pixel” and twice for “File”.
(Im pretty sure at least 2/3 of these have been done before. Im just hedging my bets here)
13) Mimeo panel.
Wow, what a nostalgia rush from my young adult, mimeo-publishing years: both for the people and the technology. I wasn’t at MidAmericon I — I hadn’t started going to conventions yet, except for being a daytripper at Discon II — but I knew all the panelists from fanzines and I would get to know them in person from conventions over the subsequent 2-3 years. Linda Bushyager used to cut electrostencil illos for me when I was in high school, and later she would introduce me to my wife.
I still have a Gestetner in the basement and I am really going to have to haul it to the drop-off center sometime. It’s been 30 years since I turned a crank handle.
Re harassment and (8): If the Nerd and Tie article is correct, it sounds like the right policy was in place with the right enforcement and understanding at hand. It takes a lot to get (in effect) three strikes and escorted out by the police in a matter of hours. As such, kudos to all – especially the attendees who stood up and reported it, and to the bystanders who corroborated.
@lauowolf If something is still in print, that’s one thing, but a lot of what is being removed is older, rarer, and irreplaceable.
When they are all weeding according to the same criteria, eventually no one will have the rare stuff to loan around.
If it’s truly rare, it shouldn’t be loaned around. It should be online to be read. This is a change in copyright law I would like to see — for works that are no longer in print and physically unavailable to purchase, some sort of reasonable license and royalty to put it online.
@Ken Josenhans: where are you located…I might be interested in acquiring that gestetner…
@Peer Sylvester
I have a Google query I use to search File770 for likely-sounding scroll titles. You can see that “It’s pixels all the way down” has been proposed a few times but never yet used. The other two haven’t even been proposed before.
Modify it to taste, if you like.
The Norwegian National Library have a project to scan and publish as much as possible of their catalog. This includes acquiring licenses to publish works that are not yet public domain. I think their current agreements with rights holders allow them to publish almost everything older than 1999 – although access is limited to Norwegian IP addresses. Works that are out of copyright can also be downloaded as pdfs or (with a little fiddling) as high-resolution images.
It’s a very nice service, I have been able to use it to reread several books from my childhood. I suppose we have an advantage with being a relatively small language – the limited market for makes re-releases so unlikely that rights holders don’t loose out by allowing them to be put online.
(Also, I admit that I have been thinking of checking out books I like from the library to generate demand. Not just to keep those particular books on the shelves, but also to encourage the library to purchase more of the same author/genre. My local library have a fairly decent selection of (English) SFF, and I think it would be a shame if they stop keeping that up just because many SFF-fans start buying e-books directly from Amazon.)
***
We All Live in a Yellow Pixel Scroll
My own copy of a novel by a fairy obscure Scottish children’s writer is literally the only copy I have ever seen of that particular book, even though I first borrowed it from a University library; it showed up on their sales tables about 5-6 years later. I felt exceedingly grateful to have chanced to be there that day, considering that, not only does it appear that a thousand dollars Canadian is a plausible rate, but the author created both play and novel versions, and not every seller is clear which one they have..
But at least the university culls and has those sales less frequently (and via different criteria because they have more obligation to preserve oddities). The public library culls often, partly because they need a reason to get rid of 15 of the 20 copies they got of a bestseller the year before or the 2014 edition of a computer manual. Which also means 90% of their culls are things common enough not to be sorely missed — but it’s harder to find and salvage the last 10% because it’s so easy to miss the exact annual sale where the expensive rarity vanishes.
The Stone Cage
Joe H.: Fearsome Magics, a 2014 anthology from Jonathan Strahan… The Kindle edition doesn’t seem to have any kind of table of contents or chapter breaks — it’s just one, long file, which makes it difficult to check the contents without opening the sample on Amazon.
That’s bizarre — the “Look Inside” of the Kindle version shows a hyperlinked contents list. Maybe you have an older version of the book? You could try deleting it from your Kindle and re-sending it, to see if you get an updated version with the hyperlinked contents.
JJ:
Yeah, I wonder if something goofy happened — I don’t think it’s an older version, because I just purchased it a couple of weeks ago; but once I’m finished I’ll try deleting & resending to see if that helps.
(And what 2016 novellas, preferably standalones from Amazon, would folks recommend? I have Every Heart a Doorway queued up, and the second Paul Cornell Lychford, and a few others, but would welcome suggestions.)
Joe H.: And what 2016 novellas, preferably standalones from Amazon, would folks recommend? I have Every Heart a Doorway queued up, and the second Paul Cornell Lychford, and a few others, but would welcome suggestions.
I’m so glad you asked. 😉
JJ:
I am so very, very clearly in the right place … 🙂
@Joe H. – if you go to the “manage your devices and content” (or something like that) on Amazon, and look at the list of books you’ve purchased, some will say “Updated version available” (or something like that) on the right side of the screen, I believe. I think you can redeliver those.
@Joe H
Along with JJ’s mega list, I’d particularly recommend The Cowards Option that JJ links in comments there – because it’s both good and free and you can’t say better than that. You already mention the McGuire and Cornell, so I’ll add that the other Tor novella that has really stayed with me is The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe.
If you liked last year’s Penric story then this year’s sequel is a must (the third in the series is also great but is novel length).