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. @JimHenley

    I will be stealing that last sentence in the future, but I will attribute it.

  2. 1) This confirms my suspicion that Charles Stross has very different ideas of what makes for good SF than me. Cause I’m pretty willing to suspend disbelief about all sorts of scientific nonsense (FTL, wormhole punching spaceships, grimspace, lightsabres, slaves shovelling radium into the atomic furnace) as long as the story is internally consistent and the characters and their interactions are believable.

    Perhaps this is why I’ve always bounced hard off any Charles Stross novel I’ve tried to read. And yes, I started with the Eschaton novels which he has apparently sort of disowned, but I had the same issues with his novella and novel which were nominated for the Hugo two years ago.

    2) Krampusses are very cool. Sadly, we don’t have them here in North Germany, though we do have kids trick or treating for St. Nicholas Day. Since the weather was nice, I got a lot of trick or treaters tonight and handed out 22 Kinder Surprise Eggs.

  3. @Cassy B: I recommend starting with Boneshaker, first of her Clockwork Century books. If you like it, you are likely to like her other stuff as well.

  4. Re: Doctor Who: and Rev. Bob’s ROT13’d comment: (No spoilers for any current season stuff.)

    But but but … Clara is the Specialest of special people ever anywhere! We’ve been told that a hundred or more times, clearly it must be true! Everything about her is the biggest, the best, the most important.

    Yeah, I’m not convinced either. Partly because we’re told it, not really shown it. Partly because her life revolves around the Doctor to an unhealthy degree. Companions who have spent all but their introductory episodes hanging out with him in the TARDIS have had more actual home life and other relationships that doesn’t revolve around HIM than she has (Even Danny Pink was still a romance that seemed to end up being all about “But how does this change things with the-Doctor-and-Clara?” not “So now Clara has an outside interest.”), and companions passionately in love with him, requited and not, have been less devoted to focusing their world on HIM. Being all about him doesn’t actually make HER more special.

    Heck, compare to Osgood, who started with wearing his freaking scarf and fangirling all over him, and in three appearances has developed about five more dimensions than Clara and a whole lot of outside interest.

  5. I don’t often notice errors in physics, and even when I do I’m likely to just shrug at them, but egregious disregard for biology can make me indignant — for instance, if an author postulates that humans, but not the rest of the biosphere, were placed on this planet by aliens, ignoring the rich evidence of our evolutionary history on Earth. It’s especially irksome if an author brags about the accurate hardness of their physics while not thinking it necessary to learn about biology (Larry Niven, I still haven’t forgiven you).

  6. Looking on his blog, I found this Charlie Stoss article about the Singularity: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/reality-check-1.html

    Essentially he doesn’t think it’s a realistic idea, for a variety of excellent reasons. More recently he let my former coworker Ramez Naam write a guest post that make further arguments against it: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/the-singularity-is-further-tha.html

    So what are Stoss’s odd ideas about it?

  7. @Lenora

    Clara life revolves around the doctor… more than Pond’s? Or Rose’s? Or even Martha Jones? We did have one companion before who didn’t have the Edward-and-Bella vibe between the Doctor and the Companion… and that one had her memories scrubbed of the whole thing.

    I didn’t particularly like Clara’s Matt Smith Season, but I’d say that from Capaldi on, the fact that we see her life and concerns outside of the TARDIS made her a more interesting companion than some of the last few. I like the Doctor and the Companion have a more textured relationship, as opposed to the sort of torid high school love triangle of Smith’s Doctor; or even some of Tennant’s.

  8. @Greg.

    His position has evolved on it. Which is not a problem at all. He’s still a Strong AI person, which is a bit cutting edge. (Saturn/Neptune Books). Mostly its that he seems to think that life support will never ever get better, or habitat technology, or human genetic engineering, or all sorts of things that might be more likely than strong AI.

    There’s also the “anarcho-libertarian wonderland” aspect of a lot of his future societies that seem a bit dubious when you’ve seen actual libertarians in action. Honestly, I enjoy Stross’ prose but I am always struck that if you are a current type of hip technophile, you’d never run into a single concept in his books that would challenge your world view. I’ve always kind of viewed Stross as as sort of mirror Peter Hamilton for the nice, enlightened, white boys who are secular tech-y liberals (as opposed Hamilton as Stross for nice enlightened white boys who are secular conservatives). Good prose, good plot, nothing to challenge the world view.

    It’s weird, because in his interviews, he seems to be a much more nuanced thinker, and will make all sorts of jokes about libertarians, and say that there does seem to be a need for some kind of state. But in his books… I can’t blame the man for knowing his niche, I guess.

  9. @tintinaus: “loss has been a major theme running through all of New Who.”

    Which is a big reason why I was confused by these episodes’ treatment of it as a new phenomenon.

  10. Vasha

    I don’t mind if SF just jumps up and down about things like FTL, even if we don’t believe it.

    I do mind if fandom mostly doesn’t realise that the tropes which dominate Seveneves are both grievously wrong, and incapable of being written by anybody has any skill sets in genetics at all.

    In other words, it’s a Creationist world; it’s author nay have not intended it that way, but the only way his plot can work at all is if we are products of a wider and very loud explosion and the ships come down. and for that they had to have fuel. I’m not hugely worried about obtaining it but I did.

  11. It’s not that it is a new phenomenon, it is just that Clara is one more on top of all the other losses he has suffered. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. The Doctor has never coped well with goodbyes of any sort, his traditional modus operandi being to run away. His actions here I would put on a par with the end of Waters of Mars(except a lot more understandable), and he needs to be schooled on what he should and shouldn’t do.

  12. (5)
    It was a bit surprising to see the little tanuki with his sake bottle and account book (as I understand it, the pre-modern equivalent of a charge card; you get your bottle refilled and the store marks it in your book and theirs, and at the end of the year you pay off the account) up there with Hercules and Darth Vader as a mythic being. But I suppose a shapeshifting trickster animal that likes his booze does kind of fall between those two—not divine, but folkloric rather than fictional. I wonder whether the exhibit mentions the magic expandable scrotum??

    (2)
    The Krampus parade gave me a pleasurable shiver because the costumes look so very, very prehistoric—like something off of a cave wall. I do wonder just how long something along those lines has been going on.

    Recent reading: Eric Flint, 1632 (published in 2000). A West Virginia town, conveniently including a coal mine and a very well-equipped regional high school, is uprooted and dumped into the middle of the Thirty Years War. I enjoyed the book, and I think that most Americans will like it, if perhaps in a guilty-pleasure kind of way. Other people will probably find it irritating because of all the U.S. flagwaving—unless you happen to be a fan of Gustavus Adolphus, who the author clearly likes a lot; he devotes 30 pages (!) to an account of the Battle of Breitenfeld in which the time-travelling Americans do not figure at all.

    For me, the biggest flaw of the book was the fact that not one of the Americans is really evil. The most villainous person among them says some obnoxious things but never actually does anything seriously bad. It’s a striking contrast to S.M. Stirling’s Nantucket trilogy—first published 1998 to 2000—in which the worst people the time-travelling Americans have to deal with (after the island of Nantucket is transported to the Bronze Age) come from within their own ranks.

  13. Junego

    She said she could not come to the huge Red Cross thing in the Guildhall because she would be away; I think we needn’t worry too much.

    Having said that, I have Galaxy class qualifications worrying for my daughter; she doesn’t look very big, probably because she isn’t, but I still worry about her when she’s trying to resuscitate someone. She has to wipe out all her self defence skills in the A&E since all the martial arts anyone have been created to cripple or kill; she has exemplary skill in fighting not to kill the person she’s fighting with. Unfortunately the Universe doesn’t work like that; lower your defences and hallo! trilobites…

  14. I’ve just realized that “Heaven Sent” has one other flaw that cannot be handwaved away. The entire concept is based on something that, in my experience, has never been true about the Doctor. In fact, I would say that until now, it has always been explicitly false.

    He is completely, utterably, infallibly predictable.

    Let’s be overwhelmingly conservative and suppose that each iteration takes one year to complete. The interval is most likely shorter, but this at least makes the math go away. That means that given the same initial circumstances, he did exactly the same thing in every single one of 4.5 billion trials. The timing may have varied slightly, but his approach was identical every time. He never even thought to hit the wall with the shovel instead of his bare fist. Clockwork isn’t that reliable.

    And yet, those who created the predicament and observed his actions treat him as a wildcard and are surprised by him at every turn.

  15. Rev. Bob on December 6, 2015 at 10:30 pm said:
    I’ve just realized that “Heaven Sent” has one other flaw that cannot be handwaved away. The entire concept is based on something that, in my experience, has never been true about the Doctor. In fact, I would say that until now, it has always been explicitly false.

    He is completely, utterably, infallibly predictable.

    Exactly! They’d never see that coming!

  16. How did my fellow 770’s like Sorcerer to the Crown?

    I loved it and have placed it on my Hugo novel list for now. I’m a sucker for regency novels. I liked that it acknowledged many elements which are usually whitewashed.
    I think it had enough Heyer like elements/humor to tickle my fancy. It struck me in many ways like The Goblin Emperor.

    I seem to suspend disbelief a lot easier than Charlie Stross.

    After suspending belief that arrogant white male lacking in knowledge and skill teenagers will save the world for years of fantasy reading I find suspending belief for SF easier. /snark

  17. Estee:

    Yes, for a swede, 1632 is really fun to read. At least to see how other people see our monarchs. I thought the book to naive regarding how people tend to behave in wars where they themselves have technological superiority. Usually they are total assholes. And I had problems with the american flagwaving.

    It was not goog enough for me to buy the rest. But good enough for me to buy the first one for my father. If I can find it in a copy with large enough letters.

  18. Hampus Eckeman: Yes, for a swede, 1632 is really fun to read. At least to see how other people see our monarchs. I thought the book too naive regarding how people tend to behave in wars where they themselves have technological superiority. Usually they are total assholes. And I had problems with the american flagwaving. It was not good enough for me to buy the rest.

    I found 1632 interesting enough, though disliked the same aspects that you did. I started 1633, but only got about halfway through because it was just more of the same. I was given a free copy of 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies, and I actually enjoyed that a little more, because it was more of a seafaring adventure with naval strategy and quite different from the European 1632 books.

    For those of you who are interested, 1632 is always available for free from Baen in mobi, epub or rtf, as a teaser to get you into the series.

  19. In contrast, I bounced HARD off JS&MN; the 7 deadly words kicked in early.

    Seven Deadly Words? I thought Dorothy Heydt came up with EIGHT Deadly Words: “I don’t care what happens to these people.”

    Are we dealing with cutbacks due to the bad economy?

    I find, for instance, that this works great with the Niven stories I’d like to re-read now and again.

    Niven has manly men doing manly things in space, so it really counts as hard SF. ;’)

  20. Re. Eric Flint’s 1632.

    I read it, and it was enjoyable, but I wasn’t engaged enough to continue with the series. Partly because I’m not American, and partly because I found myself comparing it to S.M. Stirling, and I prefer his work. The only problem is that Stirling’s stuff is a harder for me to actually get hold of – I’m stalled partway through both his Nantucket and Change series.

  21. @Rob Me too. I’ve preferred Stirling over Flint in terms of AH/Time Travel stuff, and have for a long while. Funny, years and years ago, I sent emails back and forth to Steve about his books, in the early days of the internet but that dropped off. Years later, I rediscovered contacting him on the internet, and he had remembered our correspondence, which gratified me.

  22. lurkertype on December 6, 2015 at 4:59 pm said:

    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.

    Yeah. I can understand the need to telegraph things quickly on television, but seriously? If it wasn’t clear enough from her face or then her voice, the other characters’ reactions would have clued us in.

  23. First off, HAI! Long time reader of File 770 and its cadre of smart commenters.

    I always feel sad reading articles on what people “hate” and “can’t read.” While Stross may be bang on in all his facts (something I can’t verify as I am not an astrophysicist), the fact remains holding genre fiction to such a high level of realism–assuming one can hold a genre that specializes in currently impossible technology, no matter how close it sticks to currently accepted theories–simply ruins one’s own ability to enjoy many fun stories.

    Authors are just that, authors. Not scientists (unless they are, of course). While we should all strive to avoid the more trope-ish stuff like asteroid fields, if only because they’ve been done to death, this whole thing about one technology being impossible because yadda yadda fuel yadda yadda isotope is pure bunk.

    I bet some folks put down Twenty Thousand Legues Under the Sea for the same intellectually insular reasons before submarines became a thing.

    “Why would we go under the sea? Due to Newton’s 69th law of hydrolic sphincter clenching, one would never expend the energy to go below the waves when one could just as easily float atop…”

    Tropes: bad

    Interesting, odd, possibly improbable (but maybe not) technology rooted in the world as we see it today–which is the only way we could understand it without a Ph.D.: good

    And to finally let’s take a moment to think on the human animal for a tic… A s&@t ton of these types of posts rely on humans being 100% rational. We would–of course!–choose this propulsion tech because of these wonderful, rational reasons, or this fuel being rare while another molecule is so abundant…

    Hmm. Let me think. Is there a precedent for humans choosing one dirty, dangerous, hard to come by fuel to propel their vehicles even as a dozen better and safer alternatives are technologically feasible at that very moment?

    Good sf is about people. And people are rarely rational, especially in large numbers. Why would that magically change as we go into space? 😉

  24. Hmm. Let me think. Is there a precedent for humans choosing one dirty, dangerous, hard to come by fuel to propel their vehicles even as a dozen better and safer alternatives are technologically feasible at that very moment?

    Obviously we’d choose the better, safer alternative which is why our cars run on… Oh noes our cars run on gasoline and every attempt to change that is met with Nononoo Unless its electricity which is gotten from gas/oil/coal/nuclear and a little bit of safer/better alternatives.

    But, but, but there really aren’t any better or safer alternatives. Anyone claiming so is just wrong Because. 😉

  25. Re: Sorcerer to the Crown

    I was a little baffled at some of the characters’ priorities – barely anyone seemed to be doing anything to resolve the magic issue. And then, when Zacharias had an answer as to why it was occurring, he didn’t communicate it to anyone.

    But my main problem was with the ending.

    SPOILERS

    Am I the only one who thinks Prunilla will make a terrible Sorcerer Royale? She’s impulsive, not particularly loyal to England, dismissive of her studies, dismissive of the other sorcerers and their society, quick to jump to conclusions, bluffs when she doesn’t know what she’s doing, doesn’t think through consequences, and uninterested in the boring bits which, I assume, would include writing and reading reports.

    I wanted the position to go to Damerell.

  26. @Tasha: So, I’m definitely going to sound churlish with this question, but I swear I’m not; I’m really curious to hear more:

    Could you tell me a little about why, to you, the story is beyond “something you enjoyed” and into the territory of “Hugo-worthy”? (If any; I know not everybody leans to self-analyses on this sort of thing. 😛 )

    Possibly related: In the Independent piece, Cho describes the book as “post-colonial fluff for book nerds.” Do you agree with that? Is there any tension, in your view, between being “Hugo-worthy” and being “post-colonial fluff”?

    I know I’ve gone on record upthread disliking the book, but I’m not looking for an argument here. If you’d like to address my questions, I’m not going to argue or criticize. I just see what seems like a popular opinion, and I feel like I don’t understand it, so I’m accosting strangers on the internet looking for people who might shed some light and speak to these particular question, if it so please you 🙂

  27. @Standback
    I’ve read it twice now and both times it was amazing in different ways. I enjoyed and hated different things in the 2 reads. I’d gotten a review copy and it was a good 9+ months between the two readings.

    It spoke to me in a similar way The Goblin Emperor did. Part of it was not whitewashing Europe at the time of Naopleon. Part of it was the way it merged magic and regency so nicely. Partly because it showed human flaws and no one was painted perfectly good or totally evil. The prose was wonderful. Flowed so well. First and secondary characters are fleshed out. Great worldbuilding. Loved the variety of ways magic worked & how classism, sexism, and racism was built into the magic system made so much sense for the time period (or today). I don’t know that I can put into words why I liked it so much.

    I’m much better at telling people what’s wrong with my favorite books. My husband is frequently baffled as to my liking a book when I’m done talking about it as I start out positive but then I sound really negative and I end with “it’s a fantastic book, I gave it 5 stars, you should read it”. He’s like but you said negative a, b, c, X, y, z. I’m like yeah but your forgetting about the rest of the alphabet which was super cool…

    ETA: you don’t sound churlish

  28. @Tasha: Thanks so much! 🙂 Appreciated.

    (Glad I don’t sound churlish. I felt like it’d be easy to interpret it as a “I didn’t like that book, defend its worthiness unto me, IF YOU CAN” type of thing. And those can be particularly galling when a fair chunk of the Puppy debacle conversations went kind of like that.)

  29. @Standback we’re filers. We try to understand others and see what someone else sees in something. We’ve helped each other look at things differently even if we still disagree. I figured your question was more of “please share what you love” and not “prove that book is good” because I know you and it matches your personality better.

    We all have different taste and I find it fascinating reading the mini-reviews and stated reasons for someone adding/not-adding a book/story to their Hugo list. It’s helped me decide which things to move up and down my TBR and rethink my Hugo criteria.

    Can a fun/easy to read book be Hugo worthy? Or must if be deep thinking or dark and gritty? I realized I was excluding a lot of books written by women because they were fun/easy to read. PNR/UF is mostly excluded unless it’s gritty and dark. But writing fun, humorous, non-violence based books are just as hard to write and they can make me think just as much as dark and gritty and don’t trigger me as much. Sometimes they are so subtle it won’t strike me for a week or more that my mind is mulling over points.

  30. @Tasha: Now I want an official Filer badge.
    In fact I just realized I have always wanted a Filer badge and never known it up to this minute.

    And, this is a little funny, but it’s really nice suddenly realizing to what extent us Filers are getting to know each other as individuals. My participation here is somewhat sporadic, but hearing, “Oh, I understood what you meant, I know you” is warm and friendly and lovely. Thank you 🙂

  31. @Tasha:

    We all have different taste and I find it fascinating reading the mini-reviews and stated reasons for someone adding/not-adding a book/story to their Hugo list. It’s helped me decide which things to move up and down my TBR and rethink my Hugo criteria.

    Definitely. Hearing people explain what they appreciate about a book often gives me new things to appreciate. Or often I understand I don’t appreciate the same things, but I gain understanding and respect for other styles – it’s much nicer to be able to go “I’m not enjoying this, but I can see why other people do” than “Why is this drivel so popular, those FOOLS“. 🙂

    I’m big into meta-discussion, and I think my first introduction to the Hugos was through various posts and essays about what the Hugos are really about, what makes a piece Hugo-worthy. (These essays are often very grumpy, and I love them.) I love the Hugos for prompting those kinds of conversations; no judged competition would be able to get that kind of public attention to its underlying premises.

    Can a fun/easy to read book be Hugo worthy? Or must if be deep thinking or dark and gritty? I realized I was excluding a lot of books written by women because they were fun/easy to read. PNR/UF is mostly excluded unless it’s gritty and dark. But writing fun, humorous, non-violence based books are just as hard to write and they can make me think just as much as dark and gritty and don’t trigger me as much.

    The best definition I’ve been able to come up with is: I want Hugo nominees to be exceptional in some way.
    I have very little stake in what that way should be. Quite the opposite; exceptional pieces are very often exceptional in ways I wouldn’t predict or look for.
    Sometimes it’s something that’s exceptional on sheer craftsmanship – doing something others have done, but exceptionally well. Sometimes it’s exceptional innovation – doing something new, unfamiliar, and doing so successfully. I feel like works like that are opening up new veins in the genre 🙂 And sometimes it’s other things – like perfectly capturing something that rarely receives attention.

    I feel like a lot of PNR/UF, when taken stereotypically, tends to hew close to standard tropes and templates; innovation is less central there than building characters and plot arcs and establishing a fairly familiar atmosphere. I’m sure any individual PNR/UF fan will find exceptional work, but in large numbers, they might have trouble agreeing on which pieces are the exceptional ones, or why. A lot of subgenres have this issue – by fitting into a well-established template, individual works are less differentiated from one another.
    Similarly, “light entertainment” and “fun” pieces usually don’t explicitly emphasize things we recognize as “important”, while “gritty” and “dark” pieces at least claim to tackle Big Problems head-on. Finding the exceptional pieces is, in some ways, harder – “heavy” pieces declare their own importance, and the reader need only evaluate to what extent they’re successful; “light” pieces don’t do that, so it can be harder to single out the exceptional ones from the many which aren’t really aspiring to be exceptional to begin with.

    That’s how I see it, anyway 😛

  32. Standback: Hearing people explain what they appreciate about a book often gives me new things to appreciate. Or often I understand I don’t appreciate the same things, but I gain understanding and respect for other styles – it’s much nicer to be able to go “I’m not enjoying this, but I can see why other people do” than “Why is this drivel so popular, those FOOLS”.

    This expresses how I feel very well. I may not like books such as Lord of Light or The Traitor Baru Cormorant or The Three-Body Problem or My Real Children or Lagoon any better after hearing why others like them, but what others have said has made me think some more about those books, and think about the aspects others saw in them that I didn’t see.

    That’s kind of a wonderful thing.

  33. And, this is a little funny, but it’s really nice suddenly realizing to what extent us Filers are getting to know each other as individuals. My participation here is somewhat sporadic, but hearing, “Oh, I understood what you meant, I know you” is warm and friendly and lovely. Thank you

    Your welcome. It took months for me to comment here. Partly because I was concerned about the puppies. But also because I wasn’t sure my geek cred was good enough as I’m a nobody in the publishing and fan world. That gave me time to get to know filers. Especially ones who 1. Commented a lot, 2. Have unusual names/recognized as authors/fan/SMOFs, 3. Have interesting Gravatars. I felt immediately welcomed and am pleased I could return the favor.

    The best definition I’ve been able to come up with is: I want Hugo nominees to be exceptional in some way.
    I have very little stake in what that way should be. Quite the opposite; exceptional pieces are very often exceptional in ways I wouldn’t predict or look for.
    Sometimes it’s something that’s exceptional on sheer craftsmanship – doing something others have done, but exceptionally well. Sometimes it’s exceptional innovation – doing something new, unfamiliar, and doing so successfully. I feel like works like that are opening up new veins in the genre 🙂 And sometimes it’s other things – like perfectly capturing something that rarely receives attention.

    I agree with this and books/stories I put on my Hugo list meet this. I think Sorcerer to the Crown met exceptional craftsmanship combined with well done twist combining magic, post-colonialism, and regency tropes while highlighting sexism, racism, and classism in unusual ways.

    Hearing people explain what they appreciate about a book often gives me new things to appreciate. Or often I understand I don’t appreciate the same things, but I gain understanding and respect for other styles – it’s much nicer to be able to go “I’m not enjoying this, but I can see why other people do” than “Why is this drivel so popular, those FOOLS”.

    This so very much.

  34. @Standback

    Similarly, “light entertainment” and “fun” pieces usually don’t explicitly emphasize things we recognize as “important”,

    You know, come to think of it, this is why Ancillary Mercy worked so well for me. Because there is a lot of comedy in it. Sphene and Zeiat are hilarious, and the entire climax is almost a comedy of errors. And yet there are so many serious threads running through the book, things you might not even see until later, as you’re teasing out the various themes in your mind–the right to self-determination, the rights of nonhuman beings to declare themselves persons and not property, the importance of finding your ground and making a stand. Leckie takes the two previous books, both so different in plot and tone, and braids all three of them together to perfection. Mercy made me laugh, and then it made me think.

    @Tasha Oops, kind of repeated what you just said. Oh well. Great minds think alike.

  35. [F]un, humorous, non-violence based books are just as hard to write and they can make me think just as much as dark and gritty and don’t trigger me as much. Sometimes they are so subtle it won’t strike me for a week or more that my mind is mulling over points.

    Good point. Looking back over the 25 stories I’ve so far rated 5 stars, I find that a majority tend to darkness and many have at best ambiguously happy endings. Perhaps I am depending too much on troubling effect as a marker of standout nature, and should look back over the happier stories and see if any of them remain memorable in other ways. For instance, I am thinking of upgrading “Summer at Grandma’s House” to five stars; though it was a month ago I read it, it remains vivid in my mind.

    I realized I was excluding a lot of books written by women because they were fun/easy to read.

    Gender doesn’t seem to have that sort of effect on my list. 15 (60%) of the stories, including all the darkest ones, are by women. (“Summer at Grandma’s House” makes that 16/26.)

  36. My own list so far is fairly short (god, I’m picky), but I’m fairly pleased that it’s not shaping up as a huge festival of grimdark and angst.

    One of my favorite stories, again on my “does something exceptional” criteria, is Scott Alexander’s …And I Show You How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes . It’s a humor piece. It’s a creative, surprising, unusual humor piece. And it’s just incredibly fun.

    I think I can make the following distinction: light entertainment is often fun. But the really excellent stuff tends to leave me not just amused, but outright joyous.

  37. Really good humor (as opposed to slapstick and fart jokes and even snarky conversations) is probably harder than grimdark.

    One of the criteria for my idea of “Hugo-worthy” is “I am delighted by this, I must read it again, I must make everyone I know read it, even if they aren’t into SF. I must EVANGELIZE this story.”

    Which is why “Cat Pictures, Please” by Naomi Kritzer was the first thing on my list this year.

  38. Standback: I agree totally with the idea that Hugo nominees should be exceptional. This often means that they should have a Big Idea, but not always; the exceptionalness of The Goblin Emperor was all in the details.

    I agree, too, with what you say about PNR/UF, but I think something similar is true of other subgenres as well, e.g. epic fantasy or MilSF; and indeed the core works of those genres tend not to get Hugos. The works which are most successful are those of which you can’t say much beyond ‘it’s science fiction’ or ‘it’s fantasy’, or even just ‘it’s speculative’. When people complain that a particular subgenre is not properly represented, I think they are often missing this.

  39. @Andrew M:

    I agree entirely; that was exactly what I meant with “A lot of subgenres have this issue – by fitting into a well-established template, individual works are less differentiated from one another.”

    There’s also, I think, a tendency for the winners to be the most accessible, non-niche pieces – a subgenre will often get a nominee, but very rarely a win. (I think? I might be talking nonsense here.) MilSF and epic fantasy are great examples here.

    @Lurkertype: ::going to read “Cat Pictures, Please”” right this very instant::

  40. The Young Pretender:

    Clara life revolves around the doctor… more than Pond’s? Or Rose’s? Or even Martha Jones? We did have one companion before who didn’t have the Edward-and-Bella vibe between the Doctor and the Companion… and that one had her memories scrubbed of the whole thing.

    Yes, actually. Or more accurately, the people in luurve with the Doctor weren’t as subsumed in the relationship. I agree that I mostly didn’t like the romantic vibes with earlier companions (Martha dealt with hers the most sensibly even before getting out), but removing the veneer of romance with Clara and the Capaldi Doctor has in some ways highlighted that her relationship with him has a girl Friday aspect that’s unhealthy. And codependant in the worst ways, for all he’s the one who has primacy. They redeemed it a bit va gur frnfba svanyr ol fraqvat ure bss gb nqiragher jvgu Nfuvyqe/Zr, ohg bayl nsgre zrybqenzngvfvat ure ybff vagb Gur Ovttrfg Rire (naq nyfb, lrg ntnva, rfgnoyvfuvat n ehyr gung fbhaqf nofbyhgr gura ivbyngvat vg ba gur zbfg gevivny bs rkphfrf.)

    About which:

    @tintinaus:

    loss has been a major theme running through all of New Who.

    Except that in the whole of Moffat’s run, a major major counter theme has been saying, “this horrible thing (usually a loss) is absolutely, definitely, unavoidably, inflexibly going to happen, there is no escape…” except there almost always is. He’s gotten a little better about it since gur sngr bs gur Cbaqf, ohg rira nsgre gung, Pynen’f vagebqhpgvba ivn qlvat gjvpr ghearq bhg gb abg ernyyl or ure npghny frys, naq rira gur 50gu naavirefnel, naq gur sbyybj-hc ertrarengvba, jrer uhtr ergpbaf bs varfpncnoyr naq hanibvqnoyr riragf gung unir orra rfgnoyvfurq sbe lrnef gb qrpnqrf (naq, jryy, gnxr Xvyy gur Zbba). Fb, nsgre n yvsr shyy bs rfpncvat naq purngvat ercrngrqyl, ubj zvtug ur ernpg gb n sngr ur guvaxf ur pna’g purng?

    Now if only I believed Clara was worth it.

  41. @ Standback

    Thank you for the “…Rabbit Hole…” link. LOL IRL!! It ended up going somewhere I totally didn’t expect, which is part of what makes it so much fun.

  42. @junego , @Lenora: So glad you liked! It’s a really fun one 🙂

    @Lurkertype: “Cat Pictures” was really fun! Thanks for pointing me to it 🙂

  43. @Standback: “Rabbit Hole” is not only fun, but well-constructed. I like it a lot. But I already have tooo many nominees in Short Story! (about a dozen) Glad you liked “Cat Pictures, Please”.

    @Lenora Rose: Now if only I believed Clara was worth it.

    DONNA was worth it. There’s a retcon that needs to be done; let 12 give her back her memory now that he knows how horrible it is (Also, Donna and Capaldi snarking at each other in a one-off would be superb. “Oi! Not such a pretty boy now, are you!”).

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