Pixel Scroll 12/5 Old Man Zombie Song: “I’m scared of living, and I’m tired of dying”

(1) CLICHE KILLER. Charlie Stross has left the story! Or at least heaved the book across the room. He’s posted a rant about “Science-fictional shibboteths” with examples of “what makes me yell when I kick the tires on an SF/F novel these days.”

…Disbelief can be shattered easily by authorial mistakes—one of the commonest is to have a protagonist positioned as a sympathetic viewpoint character for the reader behave in a manner that is not only unsympathetic but inconsistent with the protagonist’s parameters. But there are plenty of other ways to do it….

But then we get to more specific matters: specific shibboleths of the science fictional or fantastic literary toolbox that give my book-holding hand that impossible-to-ignore twitch reflex.

(Caveat: I am talking about books here. I basically don’t do TV or film because my attention span is shot, my eyeballs can’t scan fast enough to keep up with jerkycam or pull in enough light to resolve twilight scenes, and my hand/eye coordination is too crap for computer games.)

Asteroidal gravel banging against the hull of a spaceship. Alternatively: spaceships shelting from detection behi nd an asteroid, or dodging asteroids, or pretty much anything else involving asteroids that don’t look like this….

(2) SILVER BELLS. A Krampus parade in Austria. The video (a public Facebook post) is highly entertaining. Jim Rittenhouse nicknamed the marchers “the 324th Krampus Brigade” but it’s a genuine local custom. (Well, I’m not sure about the giant silver bells on their buttcheeks….)

What is this…? An Austrian tradition!

The Krampus is an old tradition. It has its origins before Catholicism reached the mountains in Austria and Bavaria. In the past, were the winter was cold and strong, before the Krampus a so called Perchte should punch the winter away with a rod. When Catholicism reached the described areas, the Perchte was transformed into the Krampus, just like other profane rites. So the Krampus got the bad part of the Nikolaus-Krampus team. With the  Krampus scaring the kids. The good kids are rewarded by the Nicklaus whereas the bad kids are punished by the Krampus.

The Parade called “Krampuslauf” serves to present the masks . Many hundreds or thousands of people look at this ” Krampuslauf ” in different locations in Austria.

(3) Today In History

(4) Today’s Birthday Boys

  • Born December 5, 1890: Fritz Lang
  • Born December 5, 1901: Walt Disney

(5) MYTHIC FIGURES. Seen in Paris a couple of weeks ago —

vader COMP

(6) SORCERER TO THE CROWN. The Independent profiles author Zen Cho.

Perhaps somewhat unwittingly, Zen Cho has become something of a poster-girl for the growing chorus of voices clamouring for more diversity in science fiction and fantasy literature.

It seems a given that a genre that deals with the different, the new, and the unfamiliar as a matter of course should quite naturally embrace diversity and progressiveness in both its practitioners and its characters.

But the recent debacle over the genre’s Hugo Awards – to cut a very long story very short, the awards nominations were flooded by a concerted campaign from a couple of fandom factions who think SF should really be the preserve of straight white males, and a spaceship should be a spaceship and not a metaphor for anything else – shows that there are still clearly-delineated battle lines over this….

Zen Cho’s response has been more measured, and delivered in really the best way an author can – she’s written a novel that simultaneously manages to tackle questions of race, gender, and social justice while being a thumping good read.

Sorcerer to the Crown is a Regency fantasy that posits an alternative-history England where magic is practised openly, but where political shenanigans within the source of the magic, the Fairy Court, are limiting England’s power … and just when it needs it most as the Government ramps up its war with the French.

(7) AN UNEXPECTED LANCELOT. Sherwood Smith covers the history, then reviews the mystery, in “Arthurian Cycle with a New Twist” at Book View Café.

But after a lifetime of sampling all these various versions, I’ve never really taken to this storyline. It’s a doom and disaster tale that turns on adultery. Not my cuppa.

I did have to teach Malory back in my teaching days, getting puzzled kids through fifteenth century English mainly by teasing out stories that could relate to their lives now, and then painting a picture of life then. We read it in spite of the story, kind of, because personality was pretty sparse: the characters are all pretty much one thing, especially the women.

But there’s one Arthurian story I really like a whole lot, and that’s this one, by Carol Anne Douglas, the first half of which is entitled Lancelot: Her Story. I’ve been reading drafts over a number of years, as she slowly reworked and layered the story into what it is now.

She’s studied those earlier versions, and it shows in the episodic nature of the narrative, the easily accessible prose, and of course the famous people and incidents. But she added a twist: Lancelot is a woman. And Arthur and his Knights don’t know it.

(8) TOP 10 WARS. From Future War Stories, “FWS: Top Ten Most Interesting Wars of Military Science Fiction” Many good picks, and plenty of fodder for discussion since my own list wouldn’t overlap that much. What about yours?

  1. The Cylon Wars from BSG

The Cylon Wars have been a founding event in both BSG series, and neither have been seen in any length until the 2012 web-only miniseries Blood & Chrome. In the 2004-2009 Reimagined Series, the rebellion of the intelligence machines, known as Cylons, was about fifty two years before the Cylon Holocaust (BCH), and lasted for 12 years. This war united the 12 Colonies of Kobol under the Articles of Colonization, and saw the construction of the Battlestars that we know and love. This conflict transformed the 12 Colonies and paved the way for its destruction decades later and the rise of our society here on Earth. But, we saw very little of the actually, despite the Caprica series.

In the original 1978 series, the Cylons were actually an reptilian alien race that used robotic soldiers to wages their wars after their own population was nearly exhausted to maintain their empire.

The Cylons of the original series waged an 1,000 year war with the 12 Colonies of Man, until finally achieving victory, and destroying the 12 Colonies of Man. Of course, both Cylons had help in destroying the 12 Colonies in the form of the Baltar characters. After the end of the SyFy Channel reimagined series in 2009, it was believed that a new series would be created around the Cylon War and William Adama’s experiences in the war, along with the series Caprica. Again, the Galactica would be front-and-center. This would have allowed us to see the war that had been floating around science fiction since the 1970’s. That promised series was not delivered in the form that we fans expected. BSG: Blood & Chrome was downgraded to an online miniseries of a 10 episodes. The show we thought we were going to get was just okay, and the Cylon Wars remains an unseen war. What is interesting about the Cylon War mentioned in both series, is that creators took two very different ideas on the war and the Cylons.

(9) VIRTUAL CHERNOBYL. Preview the virtual tour of Chernobyl now being assembled for an April online debut.

Take a virtual tour of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone – without leaving your sofa

The town of Prypiat is not a place which is likely to feature on many travel-lovers’ bucket lists.

Almost three decades ago, its 350,000 residents’ lives changed forever when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster turned their home into a terrifying radioactive danger zone.

Prypiat might not be the sort of destination you’d fancy visiting in real life, but soon you will have the chance to take an amazing virtual tour of this abandoned Soviet ghost city.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next year, a Polish games developer called The Farm 51 is offering “anyone with access to virtual reality devices an unprecedented trip to the area without leaving the comfort of their homes”.

… “Virtual visitors will be free to explore and engage with places that have hitherto been off limits.”

The Farm 51 spent days filming the town’s eerie locations in unprecedented detail, digitising its spooky swimming pool, ferris wheel and bumper cars.

Anyone brave enough to take a virtual tour can do so starting from April 26 next year – the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

(10) GOOGLE BESTSELLERS. At The Digital Reader, “Google Play Reveals Its Best-Selling eBooks, Videos, and Games for 2015”. Depressingly, five of the 10 top books  are “Fifty Shades…” of something. But The Martian by Andy Weir and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs also sneaked in there.

After seeing Google’s list, I was better prepared to discover that science fiction is only the seventh among the top selling fiction categories at Smashwords — “2015 Smashwords Survey Reveals Insights to Help Authors Reach More Readers”.

[Last three of ten points.]

  1. Avoid $1.99.  For the fourth year in a row, $1.99 was a black hole in terms of overall earnings.  On a unit sales basis, although $1.99 books outperformed all books priced $5.00 and above, it dramatically underperformed on overall earnings, earning 73% less than the average of all other price points.  If you write full length fiction and you have books priced at $1.99, trying increasing the price to $2.99 or $3.99, and if your book performs as the aggregate does, you’ll probably sell more units.  Or if it’s short and $2.99+ is too high, try 99 cents instead because the data suggests you’ll earn more and reach about 65% more readers.  I’m not entirely certain why this is the case.  It’s not because our retailers pay lower levels for sub-$2.99 books.  They don’t.  Our retailers pay the same for $1.99 as they do for $9.99.  There’s something about the price point that readers don’t like.  Who knows, maybe readers see 99 cents as an enticing promotional price, $2.99 and up as a fair price, and $1.99 as the price for lesser quality books that couldn’t make the $2.99 grade.  Your theory is as good as mine.
  2. Bestselling authors and social media. Bestselling authors are more likely to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, and more likely to have a blog.  Not a huge surprise, though it’s worth noting there are plenty of successful authors who have minimal presence on social media.
  3. Top 10 Fiction categories during the one year period: 1.  Romance.  2.  Erotica.  3.  YA and teen fiction.  4.  Fantasy.  5.  Mystery & detective.   6.  Gay and lesbian fiction.  7.  Science fiction.  8.  Historical.  9.  Thriller & suspense.   10.  Adventure.

[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, Alan Baumler, Will R., John King Tarpinian, and Brian Z. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor  of the day Anna Nimmhaus .]

158 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/5 Old Man Zombie Song: “I’m scared of living, and I’m tired of dying”

  1. My take on Sorcerer to the Crown (which is expanded in more detail in my review) is that it presents some intriguing characters and chewy concepts…and then fumbles on executing them. If I had to sum up one particular thing that didn’t work for me, it was that the story seemed remarkably devoid of consequences for the dangers, risks, and oppressions that it carefully set up. We are repeatedly told (in some cases, over and over and over) about plot issues that either fail to materialize or turn out to be trivial.

    It was an enjoyable concept, and I don’t at all regret reading it, but I don’t quite understand all the over-the-top love it’s getting. (But then, that happens to me a lot.)

  2. (1) Cliche Killer There are some typos in Charlie’s rant. Amusingly I saw this sentence – because now the other shoe trops and we get to Annoying Trope #2. – and my mind read “and now we get to Annoying Shoe Trope #2”. Before realizing my error, I thought, “What’s Annoying Shoe Trope #1, then?”

    A woman expected to be able to run flat out while wearing high heels would be my #1. #2 would be men wearing tractionless dress shoes being able to rundown anyone.

    (2) Silver Bells Wookiees!!!!!! (with silver balls on their butts? The things you learn about alien reproduction – who knew?)

    @ Kyra ::Applause::

  3. Peace,

    Based on what you said you had got through the meat of the episode,leaving a nice dessert to go.

    To put you out of your misery I’ll rot13 the conclusion just in case you are not a purist(or especially desperate)

    Nsgre gur fprar va gur Gneqvf, vg phgf onpx gb gur HF qvare. Gur Qbpgbe vf pbashfrq nobhg jurer ur vf, guvaxvat ur unq orra gurer jvgu n pbzcnavba orsber erzrzorevat vg jnf Nal naq Ebel. Ur fnlf ur gubhtug gur qvare jnf ba gur bgure fvqr bs gur uvyy

    Ur erzrzoref uvf nqiragherf jvgu Pynen ol abguvat nobhg ure be gur ebyr fur cynlrq. Pynen fnlf fbzrguvat nybat gur yvarf bs gelvat gb ohvyq n cvpgher bs gur sbetbggra crefba ol gur tncf, perngvat n fgbel gb svg gurz.(V vzntvar guvf gb or yvxr znxvat n fgbel nebhaq fbzrguvat lbh xabj unccrarq gb lbh ohg lbh unir sbetbggra gur qrgnvyf bs. Gur fgbel orpbzrf lbhe zrzbel)

    Fur rkphfrf urefrys, tbvat guebhtu gur qbbe gb gur ybb, juvpu vf npghnyyl gur ragenapr gb gur Gneqvf pbageby ebbz. Zr vf gurer naq gurl gnyx nobhg ernqvat gur znahny naq ubj gurl pbhyqa’g svther bhg gur pnzryrba pvephvg. Gurl ner tbvat onpx gb Tnyvserl(gur ybat jnl nebhaq!).

    Gur Qbpgbe vf yrsg va gur qrfreg ynaqfpncr jvgu uvf Gneqvf cnvagrq jvgu n gevohgr gb Pynen. Ur tbrf vafvqr, ernqf Pynen’f svany zrffntr gb uvz ba uvf punyx-obneq. “Eha lbh pyrire obl. Naq or n Qbpgbe!”

    Gur Gneqvf qrzngrevnyvfrf, yrnivat gur cnvagrq cvpgher bs Pynen gurer. Vg synxrf naq snyyf gb gur tebhaq.

    Gur svany fprar vf gur cbyvpr obk naq gur qvare fcvaavat guebhtu fcnpr, rnpu tbvat gurve bja jnl.

  4. I enjoyed Sorceror to the Crown as light-hearted fun. Which it was, mostly, except where it wasn’t. (The Gentlewitches School, for example.) And parts of it seemed to have been written by Paarfi of Roundwood. I have also read several of Zen Cho’s short stories, and those have a quality which is much closer to my vague idea of hugoworthiness than her novel. So, I look forward to what she may do in future novels, which I definitely plan to read.

  5. The only time I ever came close to understanding cricket was after watching Lagaan, the 3 hour subtitled Bollywood musical about a cricket game between some Indian villagers and the local British.

    Love that film. But you Must have caught a specially cut down version. My DVD runs to four hours.

  6. Thanks to you all for your thoughts on Sorcerer. Interesting stuff (nice review, HRJ!), and I feel like less of a sore thumb now…

    It sounds to me like maybe I just came into the book with the wrong expectations. I’d come into it as “book I’ve heard a lot of Hugo-ish buzz about”, which definitely affects what I’m looking it and what I’m happy to let slide. My current reading patterns might be warping my reading experience somewhat… 😛

  7. Love that film. But you Must have caught a specially cut down version. My DVD runs to four hours.

    I’m probably misremembering the length, then. I think it was my first introduction to Bollywood films; also, as soon as it was finished I was on Amazon looking for the soundtrack CD.

  8. I can never read discussions of cricket without thinking of the lady in the Saki story, whose nerves were shattered after “her husband dropped dead suddenly at a county cricket match. Two and a half inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it was supposed that the excitement had killed him.”

    Or, to quote Lord Mansfield: “Cricket is a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented to give themselves some conception of eternity.”

  9. @standback

    I’ve been angsting a lot in the last couple years over how the expectations created by social media affect my reading experience. On the one hand, buzz has led me to books that I might not otherwise have expected to like (and that I liked). On the other hand, I have a hard time calibrating my expectations, especially when a lot of people whose taste generally aligns with mine consider a book to be mind-blowingly wonderful. Maybe my mind is simply a bit more blow-proof. I dunno. My regular complaint is that I’d been led to believe that a book was fabulous and I found it merely very enjoyable.

    Is that fair? Probably not. But it seems to be how the informal promotion-engine works these days. When book buzz is all hyperbole, saying that you found a book “very enjoyable” may not garner interest. It can make it difficult for a “very enjoyable” book to attract attention, if its fans are measured and honest in their reactions.

  10. Cricket is the only game in which God had to intervene in order to save the world, or at least that part of the world involving roads, moving vehicles and me driving them.

    It was my driving test, and after two previous failures things were going really, really well, right up the the point when the examiner said he was very sorry but he could not let me do the emergency stop with snow falling.

    The unanimous view of my friends and family was that only an idiot ignores Divine Intervention, and that a snowstorm in England in June is so obviously Divine Intervention that I should give up and stop ruining the cricket.

    So I did.

  11. I have wondered whether the planet called Cricket in The Long Way…. (albeit with reference to the insect, not the game) is a Hitch-Hiker’s reference.

    (I’m fairly sure there are Hitch-Hiker’s references in the Ancillary series: the first had a mention of something almost entirely unlike tea – not quite in those words, but it was very reminiscent – and the third has ‘Space is big’.)

  12. All genres have their shibboleths. In real life, private detectives don’t solve murders, and gunfighters didn’t have quick draw pistol duels in the middle of Main Street.

    Shibboleths are what make a genre book fun to read.

  13. @Heather: Yup, I’m constantly having that problem. :-/

    My own opinion is that people are very happy to tell you what they liked and what they didn’t, but they’re often fairly poor at explaining why. Now, most media works for some people and not for others. So the question “is this good,” which people love to answer, is useless; the worthwhile questions are “what was good about it?” and “what kind of reader will enjoy this.”

    So, I’ve learned not to trust unsubstantiated buzz; I’ve learned to lean on Kindle samples; I’ve learned to interrogate reviewers for books I’m on the fence about; and I’ve learned to live with the feeling that I’m surrounded by an ocean of undeniably inferior fools and philistines and honestly why don’t they just let me judge the Nebulas myself and have done with it. 😛

  14. Camestros

    With the obvious proviso of not whilst it’s snowing, we should explain that cricket matches are a great deal shorter than they used to be. In the heyday of the game you could have made a sizeable dent into War and Peace, or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, before a match arrived at anything which could, however loosely, be called a conclusion.

    And we had to cut the crusts off our cucumber sandwiches for ourselves.

  15. @DB

    The sfnal shibboleth that bothers me the most is wormholes, used to replace hyperspace in older sf as a method of quick interstellar travel. Especially in tv and movies, it’s used as if it were like the London Underground: you go in this station here and come out a few minutes later at that one there, with no idea of where you were in between. It’s a time-saver shuttle with no interference with anybody who happens to be going in the other direction.

    That’s fine as a story device; my annoyance comes from the fact that, unlike hyperspace which is pure handwaving, wormholes claim actual theoretical scientific plausibility. But used as a shuttle, it’s no more believable. An actual wormhole wouldn’t be that much faster than light, if at all, as it would take hundreds of years in exterior time to be absorbed by the black hole and who knows how much longer to come out, and who knows where that would be. Not to mention that you’d be pulverized into individual subatomic particles in the process.

    This is actually wrong on several counts. Kip Thorne constructed a hypothetical wormhole with transit times under 1 year (for traveler and external observers) and tidal forces under 1g. The complete derivation is here:

    http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TraversableLorenzianWormholes-Overview.pdf

    If you can’t do tensor calculus, skip to section 4 “Engineering considerations.”

  16. The other thing I really disliked about the book was that the entire English society seemed composed only of idiots and dandies. One protagonist is trying desperately to save English society; the other is trying desperately to join its upper echelons, and I’m mostly there scratching my head going “but why? All those people sound horrible.”

    Well, isn’t that every description of English upper-crust society? It’s like a version of Mean Girls with top hats and petticoats.

    I myself liked the book, though I thought it had some issues, and thought the problems ate you easily resolved. But I would definitely read an entire book about a finishing school for high-spirited young witches.

  17. @Peace: (Doctor Who season finale)

    I think I can best sum up my misgivings about that two-parter in one word: Adric. Or, to go into rot13’d detail…

    Bs nyy gur qrnguf gur Qbpgbe’f jvgarffrq, rira bs gubfr pybfr gb uvz, jung znxrf Pynen’f fb oybbql fcrpvny? Cyhf, ubj gur uryy qb lbh culfvpnyyl gryrcbeg fbzrbar vagb n pbasrffvba qvfx? Naq jul qbrfa’g gur horeqvnzbaq fghss erfrg yvxr nyy gur bgure ebbzf?

    Lrf, gur fgbel uvgf rkpryyrag rzbgvbany orngf, ohg vg purngrq gb trg gurer.

  18. ULTRAGOTHA:

    We still have that tea towel.
    ___

    Lagaan is an excellent and awesome movie, not something I would ever have expected to say of 4 hours of underdog sports movie about cricket interspersed with musical numbers and a love triangle romance, considering I don’t like sports movies or love triangles, find cricket tedious and barely comprehensible, and I am very hit-or-miss with musicals. The subtitle, IIRC, is Once Upon a Time In India which also gives a bit of a deceptive impression what it might be about…

  19. @Rose:

    Well, isn’t that every description of English upper-crust society? It’s like a version of Mean Girls with top hats and petticoats.

    Well. Not really, I think?

    I mean, the easiest comparison setting-wise is Strange and Norrell, where we get our fair share of backbiters and buffoons – but also genuinely respectable gentlemen, a fierce, indomitable Wellington, scholars of various stripes, and so on. Norrell can be horrible, but if there’s anything he isn’t, it’s incompetent. Even the ones who are utter louses have clear ability and talent – even Drawlight and Lascelles provide real service and are men to be reckoned with. Even the mad king is a tragic, noble figure, not a mere target of scorn.

    Conversely, Wodehouse does give us a full cast of buffoons. But there, the story goals are appropriately buffoonish.

    I’m probably forgetting a dozen popular representations of the class, and I’d be delighted for you to refresh my memory 🙂

  20. @Johan P

    I liked the story in “A long way to a small angry planet”, but it was big on these kind of errors.

    You read a novel set in a space ship equipped with a giant wormhole-making punch, and you were taken aback that it takes liberties with the laws of physics?

  21. @Rev. Bob

    (also rot13’d in case of unwelcome spoilerage)

    Jryy, chggvat ovt guvatf vafvqr fznyy guvatf vf xvaq bs glcvpny Gvzr Ybeq grpuabybtl… gur ovg nobhg gur zrgn-qvnzbaq abg erfrggvat, gung zvtug or rkcyvpnoyr va grezf bs Enffvyba’f cflpubybtl: vg jbhyq or irel yvxr uvz gb yrnir na rfpncr ebhgr gung jnf bayl (va uvf ivrj) gurbergvpnyyl hfnoyr. (Jr unira’g frra zhpu bs Enffvyba va gur fubj, ohg jung jr unir frra fhttrfgf irel fgebatyl gung ur’f n anfgl cvrpr bs jbex jvgu n gjvfgrq frafr bs uhzbhe.)

    Nf sbe gur Qbpgbe’f ernpgvba gb ybfvat Pynen… jryy, vg’f gur svefg gvzr jr’ir frra guvf Qbpgbe ybfr n pbzcnavba, naq rnpu vapneangvba unf qvssrerag rzbgvbany erfcbafrf. Orfvqrf, Pynen unf – ergebfcrpgviryl – orra cneg bs gur Qbpgbe’f *ragver* yvsr; vg frrzf ernfbanoyr, va gur pvephzfgnaprf, gung ur’q zvff ure.

  22. You read a novel set in a space ship equipped with a giant wormhole-making punch, and you were taken aback that it takes liberties with the laws of physics?

    Yes. Is that so odd? I am willing to accept some amount of unrealistic tech in my SF. The wormhole-making engine goes under that. But I prefer the rest of the story to stick to reality. Some of the descriptions we get of what the crew sees out of the fishbowl implies either that they’re living in a completely different galaxy than ours, or that they all have telescopes for eyes.

  23. @Johan

    I am willing to accept some amount of unrealistic tech in my SF. The wormhole-making engine goes under that. But I prefer the rest of the story to stick to reality.

    Asimov talked about this a long time ago: the idea that an SF story is entitled to one contrary-to-fact element to make the story go. The “what-if” can be a big whopper, as long as the story plays it straight from there on. The reader suspends disbelief and then enjoys the tale.

    But what a story cannot generally get away with is doing this over and over. (Especially in short fiction.) A magic trick that solves the hero’s problems at the last minute is really bad, whereas an appeal to the laws of physics would be okay, even though those laws hadn’t been mentioned earlier.

    I had trouble enjoying Niven’s “Known Space” stories because he seemed to introduce impossible technologies every few chapters, but lots of people loved those stories. Somehow Niven managed to break the rules and get away with it. I’m not quite sure how though.

  24. @emgrasso – I can totally see that happening. If I had just read something amazing, I probably would have had a somewhat different reaction.

  25. I think saying one contrary-to-fact element, is putting too much emphasis on number. The big distinction is between premises and blunders. A premise is something that the author knows isn’t really possible, but wants to use for the sake of the story. A blunder is something the author just got wrong, and nobody caught. There are a variety of well-established ways to signal “This is a premise, not a blunder”, and really it’s not difficult at all to tell the difference.

    I’ll swallow quite a few premises, but a blunder hurts my confidence in the author and the story. So saying “You accept [x], why not [y]?” when [x] is a premise and [y] is a blunder, neglects this vital distinction. (Casting spells by crafting and breaking mah jongg tiles, sure. The presence of a rain puddle in San José, California, in June, no way. And don’t try to tell me that the puddle was a byproduct of magic when the narrative treats it as completely mundane.)

  26. @Greg Hullender:

    Asimov talked about this a long time ago: the idea that an SF story is entitled to one contrary-to-fact element to make the story go. The “what-if” can be a big whopper, as long as the story plays it straight from there on. The reader suspends disbelief, and then enjoys the tale.

    But what a story cannot generally get away with is doing this over and over.

    Well, but Asimov is full of crap here. Take good old FTL. Is that one thing contrary to fact? By no means. It bundles in contrary-to-fact matters of materials science, energy manipulation, preservation of the structure of, oh, human bodies under conditions they are not meant to endure, very probably artificial gravity, and most likely stuff I’m missing. In for a penny, in for a pound, basically. I’d go so far as to say that failing to grapple with just how many changes you’re really making is a failure of imagination.

    Put it another way: if you want to call working FTL ships “one thing” and then you also give me “agricultural planets,” you’re already up to two things.

    Basically, Asimov’s dictum is an esthetic to comfort a reader with a particular kind of anxiety. But there are other readers.

  27. (2) SILVER BELLS – great Krampus parade! I sent that to a couple of friends, thanks.

    (8) TOP 10 WARS – even with Rev. Bob’s clarification, I’d swap out something for the war with the Buggers from Card’s Ender universe, methinks (based on my reading of the first 3 books and skimming the fourth). But a list of obscure or little-explored wars seems pretty silly…. It’s obscure to me if I haven’t read it.

    (10) GOOGLE BESTSELLERS – in fairness, Fantasy is #4 at Smashwords, so SFF has two categories (we’re sneaky like that). Plus, I bet some books sprinkled around other categoreies are really SFF. IMHO we should claim victory.

    @Peace Is My Middle Name: LOL at the book rec from Penguin/RH and your comparisons to how this would work in other situations. 😀

  28. @David Goldfarb

    I think saying one contrary-to-fact element, is putting too much emphasis on number. The big distinction is between premises and blunders.

    I’ve been thinking a lot along those lines too. (Something about reading and trying to rate 500 SF short stories in 3 months makes you think about this topic.) The rule I’ve been using is whether the author successfully puts all the contrary-to-fact elements into the what-if. Placing them early in the story helps, for sure. And, to be part of the what-if, they need to be important to the story. (You can’t say “what if dolphins were intelligent space aliens” and then put the story on a Kansas farm with no dolphins.)

    Some of what I see isn’t exactly blunders, per se. It’s authors who seemed to think an idea was cool (like the space dolphins) and just threw it into the story. It’s not a blunder in the sense that they didn’t really believe dolphins came from outer space. But it certainly drags the stories down.

  29. 1. That’s quite a whinge, Charlie. You’d think he was an aging Scot. I suppose he himself is going to write nothing but fantasy from here on out?

    I liked SttC as both a diverting light fiction on the surface, and then with the deeper issues of colonialism and sexism. When Z realizes what the “magic” school for ladies was actually doing to them, I was as horrified as he was. To think that’s a good thing to do to children?? I do hope there’s a sequel, which I shall devour. In contrast, I bounced HARD off JS&MN; the 7 deadly words kicked in early.

    The baseball diamonds in my town park are sometimes occupied by baseball, and sometimes by the local cricket league. They don’t have a problem with co-existing. As a result, both groups know a bit about the other sport, and some kids even play both. I once played shinty on the soccer field. Basically “It’s flat with grass on it, let’s sign up and whack a ball around!” ‘Merica. (Of course since you can’t take off from work and reserve the field for days on end, it isn’t proper boring cricket, but rather some sort where the game ends in no more than 3-4 hours.)

    Peace: You didn’t miss much. Luckily Mr. L had set the DVR to run long. My thoughts: V jnf ubcvat gung nsgre gurl chfurq gur ohggba, gur Qbpgbe jnf snxvat uvf flzcgbzf gb znxr Pynen srry orggre naq ubcvat fur’q snvag naq sbetrg.
    Orpnhfr vg’f arire tbbq va gur ybat eha sbe gur Qbpgbe gb sbetrg fghss.

    V ebyyrq zl rlrf jura Enffvyba’f frphevgl puvrs ertrarengrq jvgu rlr funqbj naq znfpnen ba. Zvtug unir n funirq urnq, ohg fur ZHFG unir znxrhc.

    It was a disappointment after Capaldi’s solo tour de force the previous week. I do wish he had better writing, as his take on the Doctor is wonderful.

  30. Argh, missed edit window due to cat. (The little bastids are still annoying here in 9998).

    I meant to add (8) WARS: goodness, he missed the entire point of “The Forever War”, didn’t he? Wonder if he ever bothered to read “Forever Free”.

  31. @Mark,

    The quad “/M” in the title is actually the exact piece of information I required before buying that book. (And thanks for mentioning it here so that I could snag it while it’s only $0.99!) I’d read the first in the series and found it competently written but nothing too exciting, mostly because I didn’t care about the omega character. But if the sequel involves a group sex dynamic rather than a harem within the incipient pack, then that’s perfect for me.

  32. I liked a lot of the points in Stross’ complaint, but thought to myself, “Bruce, this is why it’s fine to go ahead and think of a bunch of stuff as space fantasy and then resume enjoying it.” I find, for instance, that this works great with the Niven stories I’d like to re-read now and again. It certainly works with the Star Wars movies, books, and comics I want to enjoy. Even if the book (/etc.) doesn’t tell me that it’s space fantasy, I can tell it that it is.

  33. @Bruce Baugh —

    I do think Star Wars is unabashedly opera. (We could qualify that as “space opera” if you like…) The point is grand set pieces with glorious choreography and vast emotions beyond the regular run of mortals. It’s not supposed to make material sense. (And doesn’t.) It’s a gang of archetypes philosophizing by works.

  34. Was it just me, or does Stross have a quirky sense of punctuation? Pretty much every colon in that last paragraph I think should have been a semicolon.

    Krampus! Last night an entire Krampuslauf came by the tiki bar where my husband bartends (where they were also, due to calendar coincidence, observing Repeal Day).

    We saw a matinee of the Krampus movie this afternoon and enjoyed it immensely. I’m squeamish and don’t do gore; this movie was in the range I love where it’s scary and exciting but not gross or gruesome. I think they did a really nice job with the casting (all the actors made me care about their characters, even the lightly-sketched “annoying cousins”) and the character development (they’re all more nuanced than they seem when first presented). I wound up clutching the arms of my seat in tension repeatedly. And I loved the end. Gurer ner ab gnxronpxf jvgu Xenzchf. Gurer vf ab “bbcf, V fperjrq hc, yrg zr znxr vg orggre.” Fbzrgvzrf lbh pna’g svk vg. VZB, guvf vf n zbivr gung fubhyqa’g unir n unccl raqvat… naq vg qbrfa’g.

  35. Rev Bob said

    Lrf, gur fgbel uvgf rkpryyrag rzbgvbany orngf, ohg vg purngrq gb trg gurer.

    That does seem to be Moffet’s style, although a lot has happened to the Doctor since Adric, and loss has been a major theme running through all of New Who.

  36. @Graydon, “philosophizing by works” is a lovely turn of phrase. I agree, of course.

    It’s quite possible that some folks here may be able to help out John Holbo with a bit of low-keyed research. He seeks:

    Narrowing my request a bit more precisely: what books on the philosophy of mind – what bold speculations on mind and metaphysics, spirit and science – 1) have been bestsellers; 2) have been blurbed/talked up by respectable/influential scientists and thinkers; 3) have enjoyed currency outside of narrow academic and intellectual circles; only to 4) look cranky 25 years on; 5) be forgotten 50 years on.

    You can see the rest of his context at Crooked Timber.

  37. Bruce Baugh: I liked a lot of the points in Stross’ complaint, but thought to myself, “Bruce, this is why it’s fine to go ahead and think of a bunch of stuff as space fantasy and then resume enjoying it.”

    I’m in your camp. I’ll give Becky Chambers the wormhole-tunnelling, and happily go on to enjoy the book. And I’ll give Carolyn Ives Gilman the gryrcbegngvba. I’m an incredibly generous reader in terms of willing suspension of disbelief — until the author abuses that generosity repeatedly.

    And I gave Neal Stephenson the moon exploding… and the unlikely response of humanity. But when he kept asking me for more and more “gimmes” (zvyyvbaf bs qrfpraqnagf va 7 enprf, rnpu qrfpraqrq fbyryl sebz bar cnerag? Um, NO.), I lost patience with him. I think he’s overly relying on his past successes with wonderful books to allow him to get lazy now.

  38. @Jim Henley

    Personally, I have an aesthetic preference for a lack of FTL; a book needs to be quite good for me to be okay with FTL. But there is something slightly peculiar, me thinks, to hear talking about magic tech when his views on machine intelligence (dare I call it Singularity?) are themselves so… singular.

  39. @TheYoungPretender: Is Stross still hot on the Singularity? Because yeah, that would be silly.

    I like a lot of what he’s doing in that post, and in the other Posts of Doom, but from what may be a different perspective. That is, I think fans of “hard SF” and milSF tend to award themselves unearned prestige while not noticing that much of the stuff they’re allowing themselves is ridiculous and that they’ve arranged their own rules on what is and isn’t permissible to make their futures comfortable, reactionary and even revanchist.

    If people want to read it, that’s fine. It really is. I just want them to stop patting themselves on the back about it. Like, if you want to arrange your pretend physics just so to enable refighting Trafalgar In SPAAAAAACE!!! or pretend “jump troops” could ever be a thing, knock yourself out! But then don’t chortle about how gurlz can’t hack the effing math of your violent tea party.

  40. My favorite Arthurian version is still T.H. White’s Once and Future King.

    For all it’s many missteps and quirks – there are breathtaking moments like the last bit of The Ill Made Knight makes it hard to breathe while reading.

    In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. “And ever,” says Malory, “Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.”

    For all the versions before and after, not a single moment is as such an emotional crescendo as that one for me.

  41. robinareid, I’ve not read any Cherie Priest, but I’ve heard good things about her work. (And I enjoy steampunk. And even, sometimes, zombies. But not (usually) grimdark.) What book do you recommend as an introduction to her work?

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