Pixel Scroll 12/1/16 Is This A Tickbox Which I Scroll Before Me, The Pixel Toward My Hand?

(1) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD SPACEMEN. NBC News reports “Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Medically Evacuated From South Pole”.

Aldrin, 86, is in stable condition after “his condition deteriorated” while visiting Antarctica, according to White Desert, which organizes luxury tourism trips to the icy continent. The group said Aldrin was evacuated on the first available flight out of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast under the care of a doctor with the U.S. Antarctic Program.

He then was flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, and arrived at about 4:25 a.m. local time Friday (10:25 a.m. Thursday ET), according to the National Science Foundation, which provided the flight for Aldrin.

 

(2) FIRST FANS OF STAR WARS. Skywalking to Neverland’s latest podcast features Craig Miller:

Craig Miller, former head of fan relations at Lucasfilm and ancillary producer, is back to give more insider info on The Star Wars Holiday Special. He tells us about how the small production kept growing to promote the stars of CBS and other fun-facts. We also talk about the 1976 MidAmeriCon WorldCon where Star Wars had its first panel and exhibit featuring the first actual props and costumes from STAR WARS. Cut to: 40 years later and the staff that organized that presentation is back to replicate that same panel.

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(3) MENACE APPRECIATION. James Davis Nicoll selected Heinlein’s “The Menace From Earth” to be the latest test for the panel at Young People Read Old SF.

Of all the authors name-checked in the post that inspired this project, the one I figured would be least appealing to younger readers would be Robert A. Heinlein. He’s one of the grand old men of the field: winner of multiple Hugos, architect of the Future History, over-user of the word “spung.” He may have been a giant in his day, long long ago, but time has not been kind to his books….

These old stories generally don’t get a warm reception, but some of the panelists actually liked this one:

So, how did this story stack up? Good. It shows that women are capable of balancing their career ambitions with their romantic relationships, and that there is often a conflict between the two… especially for women. So that’s pretty cool.

(4) TIPTREE SYMPOSIUM. The 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium runs December 2-3 at the University of Oregon in Eugene. This year’s theme is “A Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin”. View the full schedule of events and speakers.

We are very pleased to learn that Ursula Le Guin, honoree of this year’s Tiptree Symposium, is planning to attend the events on Friday, December 2. However, due to recent health issues causing limited mobility and stamina, she will not be able to sign books. Thank you for your understanding.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ) is a remarkable poet, essayist, critic, translator, and storyteller. In all these forms, she never ceases to challenge our expectations about “words, women, places,” as the subtitle to her essay collection Dancing at the Edge of the World puts it. Her many awards testify to her literary skill and deep humanity, and her work has inspired a generation of writers by showing how the unreal can comment on (and incorporate) the real, and how the future can serve as a powerful metaphor for the present. Her writing combines perspectives from anthropology, feminism, science, history, utopian thought, and Taoist philosophy, all wrapped up in convincing and compelling narratives of exploration and self-discovery.

(5) IT’S A WRAP. Birth. Movies. Death. harshes the squee about a forthcoming reboot: The Mummy Gets A Poster, A Brief Teaser And A Stolen Tagline”.

As you can see, The Mummy stars Tom Cruise as a guy who has to stop The Enchantress from Suicide Squad. Good luck to him, she’s p tough.

The biggest curiosity is robbing The Bride of Frankenstein of its “Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters” line. I suppose it’s not outright theft since it evokes the larger universe at play here, but it still seems weird. Is it a clue that we might see a little Frankenstein in this? Or his monster? That should be very exciting for those who haven’t seen Penny Dreadful!

 

(6) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #6. The sixth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions offers some of the author’s own stuff – the complete audio book set of the Goblin trilogy.

The audio books are full-cast recordings from Graphic Audio, and the trilogy retails for $60. Each book comes as six CDs, with a runtime of approximately six hours apiece. They’re new and shrink-wrapped, but I’ll be happy to open them up and autograph them to you before mailing them, if you’d like.

About book one:

Jig the goblin was the runtiest member of an admittedly puny race. Jig was scrawny, so nearsighted as to be almost blind, and had such a poor self-image that when he chose a god to worship it was one of the forgotten ones – after all, what other sort of god would have him as worshiper? He also had a cowardly fire-spider for a pet, a creature that was likely to set your hair on fire if it got into a panic. Made to stand tunnel watch by the goblin bullies who’d been assigned the job, it was just Jig’s luck to be taken captive by a group of adventurers – with the usual complement of a dwarf warrior, a prince out to prove himself, his mad wizard brother, and an elfin thief. Forced to guide this ill-fated party on their search for the Rod of Creation – though Jig had no more idea how to find it than they did – he soon had them stumbling into every peril anyone had ever faced in the fantasy realms. And they hadn’t even found the Necromancer or the Dragon yet!

Listen to an excerpt online.

(7) BANDERSNATCH. Goodreads hosts a page of Bandersnatch quotes, I just discovered.

“As Tolkien points out, the name is “a pleasantly ingenious pun,” referring to those who “dabble in ink.” It also suggests people “with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.” ? Diana Pavlac Glyer, Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings

(8) FANTASY DESTROYED. Lightspeed’s  “People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy” issue is available.  

fantasy_issue_60_december_2016-683x1024

Funded as a stretch goal of LIGHTSPEED’s People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign, we’re happy to present a special one-off issue of our otherwise discontinued sister-magazine, FANTASY (which was merged into LIGHTSPEED in 2012), called People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy!: an all-fantasy extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by POC creators. The People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! special issue exists to relieve a brokenness in the genre that’s been enabled time and time again by favoring certain voices and portrayals of particular characters. Here we bring together a team of POC writers and editors from around the globe to present fantasy that explores the nuances of culture, race, and history. This is fantasy for our present time, but also—most of all—for our future. People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! is 100% written and edited by people of color, and is lead by guest editor Daniel José Older, with editorial contributions from Amal El-Mohtar, Tobias S. Buckell, Arley Sorg, and others. It features four original, never-before-published short stories, from N.K. Jemisin, P. Djèlí Clark, Darcie Little Badger, and Thoraiya Dyer. Plus, there’s four classic reprints by Shweta Narayan, Leanne Simpson, Celeste Rita Baker, and Sofia Samatar. On top of all that, we also have an array of nonfiction articles and interviews, from Justina Ireland, Ibi Zoboi, Erin Roberts, Karen Lord, John Chu, Chinelo Onwualu, and Brandon O’Brien, as well as original illustrations by Reimena Yee, Emily Osborne, and Ana Bracic.

(9) LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. What John Scalzi has to say to those who complain when he writes about politics is pretty much what every fanzine editor thinks, whether the gripe is about politics or another favorite topic, but not all of us are as bold about saying so out loud as Mr. Scalzi.

  1. The Short Points About Me Writing On Politics

If you tell me you’re tired of me talking about politics, or tell me to shut up about them, I’ll tell you to kiss my ass. I’ll write about what I want, when I want, where I want, which in this case happens to be about politics, now, here.

(10) HI-TECH PRACTICAL JOKE. I’m speechless. But they’re not.

(11) CALLING FLINT FANS. Eric Flint asked readers of his blog to nominate his novel for a Dragon Award. I looked up Flint at the Science Fiction Awards Database and was shocked to discover that in a long and distinguished career he’s never won any of the multitude of awards tracked on that site. Maybe this will be his year.

I would like to ask for a personal favor. The Dragon awards are now open for nominations and I would appreciate it if as many of you as are so inclined would nominate THE SPAN OF EMPIRE, by Eric Flint and David Carrico, in the category of “Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.” I will stress that you should only do so if you actually liked the novel, but most of the people I know who’ve read the novel liked it a lot.

Flint received two nominations in the first year of the Dragon Awards, both in the Best Alternate History category which was won by Naomi Novik’s League of Dragons.

(While fact-checking, I discovered the Dragon Awards website still has Novik’s name misspelled as “Novak”.)

(12) CLARKE CENTER PODCAST. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination’s new podcast, Into the Impossible, has released is second episode — “Becoming a Galactic Wonder”.

On this month’s episode of Into the Impossible – a podcast of stories, ideas, and speculations from the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination – we’re looking at wonder and imagination. We’ll get there through the plays of Herbert Siguenza (playwright, actor, and director; founding member of Culture Clash) that take us from Pablo Picasso in 1957 to a post-apocalyptic California, and the art (and green thumb) of Jon Lomberg (astronomical artist), who worked with Carl Sagan on the original Cosmos and has created a garden that can help us imagine our place in the universe. Both ask, as Herbert does in the persona of Picasso himself, “How can we make the world worthy of its children?”

(13) MIGHTY BURGER. The creator of the Big Mac has died and Hogu fans everywhere mourn…. Michael “Jim” Delligatti was 98.

The menu was pretty simple back in those early days — hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and shakes. But Delligatti saw that his customers wanted something bigger, so in 1967 at his restaurant in Uniontown, Pa., he put together two hamburger patties, topped it with cheese, lettuce, onions and pickles, and he developed a special sauce for the burger. He called it the Big Mac.

The early Big Macs were marketed with a paper collar around them. Pop culture scholar Dave Feldman said that sent customers the message that a Big Mac was  “A sandwich so mighty it needs a harness to restrain it!”

(14) BACK TO THE BREW-TURE. Of greater concern to our cousin fans across the Pond: when and how did Brits first brew?

Meanwhile, large pots and evidence of heat-cracked stones have been found at Skara Brae, a 5,000-year-old settlement in the Orkney islands just north-east of Scotland.

Local archaeologist Merryn Dineley believes that bits of the pottery were once used for heating malt – the germinated and heated cereal grains that ferment to produce alcohol. Dineley has experimented with Neolithic-style equipment and argues that malting of grains could have occurred in this period.

(15) CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Entertainment Weekly invites you to “Watch these exclusive Star Trek: The Original Series clips from The Roddenberry Vault”.

If there’s a Star Trek obsessive in your family, their Christmas present will be released on Dec. 13. That’s when Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault, a massive new Blu-ray treasure trove of footage left on the cutting room floor, goes on sale. The Roddenberry Vault draws directly from film cans stored for decades by the Gene Roddenberry estate, and includes deleted scenes, alternate takes, and other behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series that launched the Trek franchise 50 years ago.

EW is excited to share two exclusive clips from The Roddenberry Vault, one of them focused on the making of the maddeningly cute Tribbles, the other a short and mesmerizing clip of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner filming the “Transporter” effect.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Stoic Cynic for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

100 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/1/16 Is This A Tickbox Which I Scroll Before Me, The Pixel Toward My Hand?

  1. Russ
    I’m guessing that there may be a tradition of holding the Hogu Ranquet in an appropriately prestigious eatery.

  2. [1] I shook his hand, you know. Actually, he shook mine. He was signing his book, and he signed mine, and stood and reached right across the table. He got my vote right then and there, though he didn’t follow through by actually running for something.

    That reminds me, my art teacher Maureen was talking about how weird people in her native Wisconsin are, and I mentioned Ed Gein. “Ed Gein!” she said, and related how Gein had a parole hearing, and she was hired on as courtroom artist, and at the end of the hearing, he thanked her and shook her hand. “Can I shake your hand?” I immediately asked, and did.

    So. Ed and Buzz, connected just like that. And of course, each one just a step away from Jon Singer (and possibly closer, for all I know).

    [13] again. It occurs to me that I possess some brain cells who, for decades, have been hanging onto the phrase, “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.” What the hell use is this? What worthwhile thing could these cells have been remembering all this time? How about the cells that remember all the cigarette ad jingles? The ones that recall “I am an acne pimple, as lonely as can be” “Don’t cry, pimple, I’ll keep you company.” “Say, fellow pimples, would three be a crowd?” “All together, pimples, sing Real Loud!” “AAAAAAA…!” (And it still isn’t available on YouTube, inexplicably enough.)? How about all the ad jingles that weren’t even in use during my lifetime, which I learned from tapes of old-time radio shows?

    Well, clearly, I deserve a break today.

    “CALLLL… FARRR… PIXELLL… SCROLLLL!”

  3. James Davis Nicoll’s “Young People Read Old SF” is a very interesting and worthwhile project, but I wonder about his test group. A while back, I remember noticing how one of his readers described herself as an English major who despised hard science fiction.

  4. @ Kip W & Michael J. Walsh

    Thank you both! I normally google before asking about something, but googling Hogu wasn’t… helpful. Hogu Ranquet was much more informative.

  5. @9 – John write about anything you wish on your blog unread by me.

    @11 – I own 20?, 30? Eric Flint authored or edited books. I like his alt-history best. My backlog of unread space opera books by authors I prefer in this genre that I doubt that I’ll read it before the deadline.

    I should be getting 1636: The Ottoman Onslaught in January with the Baen bundle and I’ll consider that one in alt-history.

    I’m not surprised that Mr. Flint has never won an award. Awards typically go to stand-alone works. Mr. Flint mostly writes popular series. Most of his series are still in print and new books come out in hardback multiple times a year where he is a sole author, co-author, or editor.

  6. 3) I’m with Mikayla here, and have been for at least the last 25 years. While it’s far from unusual to see a female protagonist given such a lack of agency in stories of that period, this one is unusually ham-handed about it — and under the guise of “progressiveness” yet! It’s effectively a Nurse Marcy with SF trappings.

    13) Who else can still remember and recite the Big Mac jingle? “Gjb nyy orrs cnggvrf, fcrpvny fnhpr, yrgghpr, purrfr, cvpxyrf, bavbaf, ba n frfnzr frrq oha!” (hmph) and Kip not only beat me to it, but didn’t ROT-13 it either.

    @ Kip: Have you ever played Encore? It’s a board game, played with 2 teams, in which people have to remember and sing snippets of lyrics. Mostly it’s lyrics containing the word given on the card, but some of the cards have categories instead of single words, and one of the categories is “Commercial Jingles”.

    This game is an absolute hoot to play with a bunch of filkers! The only thing is that you’ll need a house rule to the effect that a word can be declared “too easy” and discarded, and a new card drawn.

  7. (While fact-checking, I discovered the Dragon Awards website still has Novik’s name misspelled as “Novak”.)

    We should be patient. After all, it’s only been months. We give them a proper opportunity to fix that typo.

  8. (13) I read the story at SFGate, which said he also originated the breakfasts at McD’s – he was dealing with steelworkers getting off night shifts. And he was still remarkably young-looking at 90.

  9. (1) Aw, and Buzz was so excited about the trip too.

    (10) “Have your gadget call my gadget.”

    (11) Hey, someone besides us remembers that these exist! I guess Flint’s ready to take any award, even a meaningless one easily obtainable by voter fraud. Wasn’t he even nominated last year? I wonder if Ms. Novik’s actual award had her name spelled correctly?

    (13) I still have the jingle engraved on my brainmeats as well. I went to a Hogu Ranquet in the early 80’s… probably Baltimore.

    (14) I’ve had modern heather ale. It’s tasty. Hops is nasty.

  10. @airboy: Awards typically go to stand-alone works. The sun came up today…. Practically every Vorkosigan universe entry has been nominated. (Recent ones haven’t won — IMO a reflection on the increasing depth of the field as much as on Bujold’s work.) Consider also the two Hugos each for Brin’s Uplift universe, Card’s Ender books, Cherryh’s Alliance/Union sector, and Robinson’s Mars, and the awards for framing novels by Haldeman and (V) Vinge. And all this info is neatly summarized in Wikipedia if you don’t want to wade through the frame data and all categories together at the official year-by-year pages. “The fault, dear Eric, lies not in the stars, but in the books, that they are underlings.” Badly-written competence porn just doesn’t make it these days.

  11. #3: I find the variation in comments fascinating; Mikayla sees Holly as crushed into a mold (does M even know who Meitner was?) while others see her keeping to a career. (Perhaps M should read “Delilah and the Space Rigger”, and rethink her interpretation; or maybe she’s just a Humbug.) Mel’s misunderstanding of what seemed possible 7 decades ago (powerful handheld computers, vs star travel) is just amusing; do kids these days just not understand how much faster computers evolved than any device built mostly of moving parts?

    #13: the fascinating thing about this story is the fact that Mac Central was so stuck on its central-control model, just a decade after Kroc took over, that it couldn’t conceive of something locally invented being worthwhile. I wonder what kind of brain opening it took for them to be able to vary the menu enough to avoid crashing and burning when they tried to spread outside the US.

  12. (3) MENACE APPRECIATION. Some of the stories are pretty dated, but I still like that whole collection (not just the title story).

    (5) IT’S A WRAP. ::groans at Mike’s title:: I really don’t need Yet Another Mummy; I loved the Brendan Fraser one. 🙂

    (10) HI-TECH PRACTICAL JOKE. LOL, so mean, tricking those poor AIs.

    (13) MIGHTY BURGER. I forgot about that paper collar (and never knew the “reason” for it).

    Happy Friday (where allowed by law)!

  13. @Aaron: Also in nominees, Mira Grant’s first, second and third zombie books, all of Leckie’s “Ancillary”, GRRM’s fifth “Ice and Fire”, McCaffrey’s Nth Pern novels…

    @Chip: I don’t think they do; the more of these I read, the more I think these particular kids aren’t terribly intellectually curious/imaginative and don’t know history.

  14. @Lurkertype: The third and fourth ones, too. And the chapters pulled from the first one and published separately actually won.

  15. @KBK, I’ve said this before, but… I think four readers is a ridiculously small sample size for any project that purports to be a cross-section of SF readership in any generation. There are just way more kinds of readers than that.

    (Also, as far as I can tell, they’re only “younger” readers from a certain point of view; some of them clearly have professional careers under way, and most of them have been reading SF for many years and have clearly defined tastes already. I was probably literally half their age when I read most of this stuff.)

  16. @Aaron: Also in nominees, Mira Grant’s first, second and third zombie books, all of Leckie’s “Ancillary”, GRRM’s fifth “Ice and Fire”, McCaffrey’s Nth Pern novels…

    Umm, what?

  17. @ Kip W – There is so much useless crap stored in my head. But if aliens ever land and demand to know minutiae about early Dragonlance, alphabetic monsters in the Epyx release of Rogue for the Amiga 500, Sierra or Lucasfilm games, or every minor character from Watership Down, I’m willing to be humanity’s representative.

  18. To be fair to airboy, while series books get nominated, for the Hugo at least, it’s a long time since one actually one.
    Rainbows End in 2006? Not read it, but I think it’s a sequel to A Darkness in The Sky.
    If I’m wrong about that it’s Goblet of Fire in 2001.
    It is very hard to imagine volume 37 of Flint’s series getting enough attention to be legitimately nominated. I lost track about thirty books back.

  19. @Nickpheas There’s also Paladin of Souls in 2004, and Blackout/All Clear in the “ambiguous sequels” pile from 2011.

  20. Since 1980, 20 novels that were not stand-alones have been Hugo winners. About half of them were the first book in their series or trilogy or whatever, but in some cases it was already known that they would have sequels. (That includes this year’s winner, The Fifth Season.)

  21. (5) IT’S A WRAP

    Wait, did I just watch a teaser trailer for a teaser trailer?

    That’s a bit too meta for me.

  22. Paladin of Souls, my mistake.
    There does seem to be a sea change in what actually wins coming in about 2000.

  23. Early one morning
    with time to kill
    i borrowed chekhov’s rifle
    and sat on a hill
    i saw a lone pixel
    crossing the plain
    i godstalks him
    to practice my aim
    Chekhov’s rifle
    went off in my hand
    a shot rang out
    across the land
    the scroll, kept filing
    the pixel was dead
    i hung my head
    i hung my head

  24. Whilst it is true that series sometimes get nominated, and the first volume can win there are other factors working against Flint. The main one is that I don’t think his books are the kind of books typically loved by enough of the people that vote for the Hugo (or even Locus Awards). Sure he has fans who really really love his books, although many maybe do not participate in those awards. But for me, and I can only presume many others, that love isn’t shared.

    So which book do those who like Flint think should have been nominated?

  25. 13) The paper collar helps reinforce my private theory that the design of the big mac was inspired by the club sandwich. I’ve been told I am wrong because there is such a thing as Hamburger club sandwiches, but McDonalds sure didn’t have such an item when the Big mac was invented.

  26. 14) The Orkneys still produce some nice beer too. The Orkney Brewery’s Dark Island and Skullsplitter are both very nice heavies. Though the latter had a run in with anti-drink campaigners over its name.

    The nearer to me Williams Brothers brewery in Alloa does a nice Heather Ale called Fraoch, along with a number of fruit beers using local Tayberries, Elderberries and Gooseberies. Having just had a glance at their site they currently have one on there called Profanity Stout which I must now find and try just for the name.

    ETA: one other beer I tried for the name was a banana bread rye ale called So Hipster it Hurts which at least is truth in advertising. It was also quite good, though one was enough.

  27. To those criticizing the details of James Davis Nicoll’s reading project: I look forward to the reports of the vastly improved projects which you will be organizing.

  28. 13) Who else can still remember and recite the Big Mac jingle?

    Twenty-mumph years ago when I was in college one of the singing groups used to sing the classic 1970s McJingle (“You deserve a break today! / So get up and get away! / To McDonald’s!”) in multiple-part harmony. Legend has it that they started singing it to drive-through workers from the tour bus when the group would stop at McD’s for lunch and eventually added it to their regular set.

  29. @Lee

    13) Who else can still remember and recite the Big Mac jingle?

    I even remember the terribly convoluted punny joke of the jingle from public school.

  30. (3) MENACE APPRECIATION – I still remember reading this collection back in the mists of time when I hadn’t quite come to grips with the idea of “single-author collection of independent stories” as opposed to “novel with titled chapters” and was vastly disappointed that none of the rest of the book included Holly and flying. (I recall the same experience with some Theodore Sturgeon collection. Not quite sure when I was reading these, but probably early teens.)

    (14) BACK TO THE BREW-TURE – When reading articles like this, it’s useful to go through and highlight all the hedges like “could have,” “may have,” “possibly.” I’m not saying that I think Neolithic people didn’t brew beer (whether deliberately or accidentally), but identifying a “pot, about a litre in volume…that…had contained some kind of ‘cereal based mixture’,” and proposing it as strong evidence for brewing (as opposed to porridge, or…) needs to be recognized as speculation, not science. Just because a set of archaeological finds could be used for a process that we’re familiar with today, is not direct evidence that the people associated with those finds would have used them that way. Textile historians run into these issues all the time. “Look, a long hooked stick! They must have done crocheting!” “Look! A cow’s nasal bone! You can use that as a lucet, so they must have made lucet-cord!” “Look! A slightly curved seam! They must have sewn form-fitting supportive garments!” Speculation is important in archaeology, but I prefer mine to be more clearly labeled as speculation and hedged about with alternative hypotheses and context.

    (Is this a soapbox I see before me? Its microphone towards my mouth?)

  31. While works in series win Hugos frequently (including the last three Best Novel winners), they are generally either the first book in the series, or the ‘same world’ kind of series where each book has a degree of independence. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the only exception to that this century. The ‘ninety-first episode in the adventures of…’ kind of series tends not to do well.

    This is perfectly understandable; if a work requires one to have read ninety previous books to either understand or care about what is happening, it won’t do well in an awards process where the practice is to consider and compare the various candidates. It doesn’t imply either prejudice, or that the books are of a low quality.

  32. OK, I get that the Brendon-Fraser-movie was a remake and the To Cruise-Movie will be a remake of the same movie from 1932 (and probably closer to the original), but still I find it funny, that this would be like a movie from 17 years ago, but the new lead actor is older than Fraser. Egypt seems to be a country for old men 😉

    @Rob: Ah, scrolling the line as well…
    When I hear the pixel scrolling, I hang my head and file.

  33. I do not think that Flint’s 1632 universe books will be nominated for “major awards” outside of the alt-history category. He has developed a very complex and nuanced alt-history. I’m not sure how it would be taken by someone who was largely unfamiliar with his world.

    Probably the same for S.M. Stirling’s work which I think is better done. And also for books in Modesitt’s series after book 1 or 2 in any of them.

    Flint has the popularity that matters. He has a ton of readers, his works are in print, and he is probably making good money at it.

  34. @andyl: To repeat something mentioned here more than once over the months, just because someone loves a book or series doesn’t mean that person feels it’s award-worthy. It also doesn’t mean they didn’t like something better that year. I’m sure most authors feel they should be nominated/win, but (shrug) personally I’m very unsympathetic to this, as I’m still waiting for my pony, which I feel I should have been given years ago. 😉

    @Nancy Sauer: “To those criticizing the details of James Davis Nicoll’s reading project: I look forward to the reports of the vastly improved projects which you will be organizing.”

    What a bizarre comment, as if one can’t/shouldn’t notice or comment on flaws unless one duplicates the work. (I have no comments on his project’s flaws, since I know little about it.)

  35. One problem with “The Menace from Earth” is that Holly’s guide job wouldn’t exist because people’s handhelds would pick routes for them. Failure to predict the wireless, digital future is probably the biggest single miss in older SF.

    One of my favorite stories as a kid was Poul Anderson’s Brake, about the hijacking of a Earth-to-Jupiter spaceship, the Thunderbolt. Unfortunately, a key plot point is that the ship is out of radio range of Earth, Mars, or Jupiter for most of its journey. Anderson didn’t foresee the invention of dish antennas allowing reliable long-distance communications.

  36. Regarding MacDonalds Big Mac Jingle…

    Not only can I recite the original ‘two all beef patties’ line… I can recite it backwards. (There was one commercial back in the 70s that consisted of four or five people all saying the line, and one of the people said ‘bun seed sesame a on onions pickles cheese lettuce sauce special patties beef all two’ instead.)

    Why am I wasting brain cells on this again?

  37. @Peer and Greg,

    You can scroll along for a long time
    But soon the pixels gonna take you down!

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