(1) GOLDEN GLOBES. The Golden Globe nominees announced today include these items of genre interest. The entire list of nominees is available in the official press release.
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
- Deadpool
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama
- Amy Adams in Arrival
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
- Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
- Octavia Spencer in Hidden Figures
Best Original Song – Motion Picture
- “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana
- “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls
Best Original Score – Motion Picture
- Jóhann Jóhannsson for Arrival
- Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams, and Benjamin Wallfisch for Hidden Figures
Best Motion Picture – Animated
- Kubo and the Two Strings
- Moana
- My Life as a Zucchini
- Sing
- Zootopia
Best Television Series – Drama
- Game of Thrones
- Stranger Things
- Westworld
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama
- Rami Malek in Mr. Robot
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama
- Caitriona Balfe in Outlander
- Winona Rider in Stranger Things
- Evan Rachel Wood in Westworld
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
- Christian Slater in Mr. Robot
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
- Lena Headey in Game of Thrones
- Thandie Newton in Westworld
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
- Rachel Bloom in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
(2) INDIA’S NOT-SO-HIDDEN-FIGURES: Read about “The women scientists who took India into space” at the BBC.
Two years ago, as Indian scientists successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, a photograph that went viral showed women dressed in gorgeous saris with flowers in their hair celebrating at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) in the southern city of Bangalore.
It was reported that the ecstatic women were scientists and the photograph challenged the stereotype that rocket science in India was a male preserve.
Isro later clarified that the celebrating women were administrative staff, but it went on to add that there indeed were several women scientists who had worked on the mission and were in the control room at the time of the launch.
The BBC’s Geeta Pandey recently travelled to Bangalore to meet some of the women who have taken India into space.
(3) AS SEEN FROM EARTH. Great photos of stars: “Sparkling starscapes caught on camera”.
Chow says the first time he saw the Milky Way it was like seeing a special effect from a film.
“Being able to capture the real thing – the beauty of the night sky – is just amazing,” he says.
(4) NEWLY DISCOVERED KLINGONS. Variety reports Star Trek: Discovery has cast three actors as Klingons in the forthcoming series.
Chris Obi, Shazad Latif, and Mary Chieffo have joined the upcoming CBS All Access series, with all three set to play Klingons — members of the fan-favorite alien race that is fundamental to “Star Trek” lore. Obi will play T’Kuvma, a Klingon leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses. Latif will play Kol, commanding officer of the Klingons and protégé of T’Kuvma. Chieffo will play L’Rell, the battle deck commander of the Klingon ship.
(5) FOUNDING FATHER? Eric Flint uses the pronoun “we” when referring to the Dragon Award founders in his latest post “Literary Awards Are Not Competitions”. Did I know this? I don’t remember having that piece of information before.
The Dragon Award was not set up to compete with any of the existing awards. We didn’t launch this new award because we were dissatisfied or disgruntled with the existing awards, such as the Hugo or the Nebula or the World Fantasy Award.
Our attitude stems from a recognition of something that is all too often misunderstood about literary awards. And that is the notion that a literary (or any type of artistic) award in some way or another ratifies a competition. To put it another way, that an award establishes which story or author (or piece of art or artist, or song or singer) “won the competition” in the period of eligibility. According to this notion, what authors and other artists do is in some way analogous to what athletes do when they engage in sports competitions. And, thus, receiving a Hugo or a Nebula or a Dragon or any other award is equivalent to standing on a platform at the Olympics and being handed a gold medal, or being presented with the Stanley Cup.
This notion is wrong, to the point of being perverse. Writers—the same is true for all other artists—are not engaged in a competition in the first place. I will expand on this point as the blog progresses, but for the moment I will leave it at this:
No writer ever sat down to write a story in order to beat another story, or another writer. It’s enough to state the idea to realize how ludicrous it is.
(6) THE NEXT COURSE. Scott Edelman invites you to listen to Episode 24 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast and an interview with Sam J. Miller.
Sam J. Miller
Still have the meat sweats thanks to my recent run of episodes centered around Kansas City BBQ? Then you’ll probably welcome a break for Eating the Fantastic’s first vegetarian episode, recorded at Baltimore’s One World Cafe during the Baltimore Book Festival.
My guest who stole away from the Inner Harbor to join me this episode is Sam J. Miller, a writer who’s been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, and who won the Shirley Jackson Award for his short story “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides.” And who last shared a meal with me during the 2015 Nebula Awards weekend at Alinea, considered to be one of the Top 10 restaurants in the world. His debut novel, The Art of Starving, will appear from HarperCollins in 2017.
(7) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
The 1985 movie Back to the Future was banned in China because of its time travel and “disrespectful portrayal of history.” In fact, many of the movies on Mental Floss list of “10 Movies That Were Banned in China” are sf/f.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- December 12, 1972 – Orange soil discovered by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt during their second day of exploration on the lunar surface. Frank Zappa warned them not to eat it.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born December 12, 1893 – Edward G. Robinson, whose genre roles include Soylent Green.
(10) ROCK TO THE END OF THE WORLD. The Book Smugglers have the answer to a popular question — “N. K. Jemisin: ‘So what would you do if a Fifth Season happened for real?”.
A Runnysack Moment
I often get asked, “So what would you do if a Fifth Season happened for real?” …
This became sort of a double-edged thing with the other topic that I researched deeply for the Broken Earth, however, which was prepper communities. I needed to get into the mindset of people who literally believe that civilization is going to end at any given moment. So to that end, I watched some episodes of the TV show Doomsday Preppers, I bought a few issues of Offgrid Recoil Magazine, and visited some prepper forums online….
Now, I did end up meeting some people who live with the perpetual belief that civilization will end, and who have had rather more actual societal experience of Fifth Season-like events than most preppers. When I went to Hawaii’s Big Island a few years ago, I met both some native Hawaiians and more recent comers who happily talked to me about what it’s like to live on top of an actively erupting hotspot that could turn into an Extinction Level Event at any moment. Their philosophy was markedly different to that of the prepper communities I’d previously studied — much less stress and fear, a greater emphasis on preparing through skills and handed-down wisdom, and a general feeling of hey, if Pele’s pissed off, there’s really nothing you can do but deal with it in the moment. It’s foolish to try and anticipate a goddess, after all.
(11) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #14. The fourteenth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for an autographed book from Laura J. Mixon.
Today’s auction is for an autographed hardcover copy of the book UP AGAINST IT, by Laura J. Mixon, writing as M. J. Locke.
About the Book:
Jane Navio is the resource manager of Phoecea, an asteroid colony poised on the knife-edge of hard vacuum and unforgiving space. A mishap has dumped megatons of water and methane out the colony’s air lock, putting the entire human population at risk.
Jane discovers that the crisis may have been engineered by the Martian crime syndicate, as a means of executing a coup that will turn Phocaea into a client-state. And if that wasn’t bad enough, an AI that spawned during the emergency has gone rogue…and there’s a giant x-factor in the form of the transhumanist Viridian cult that lives in Phocaea’s bowels.
Jane’s in the prime of her career?she’s only a bit over a century old?but the conflict between politics and life-support is tearing her apart. To save her colony and her career, she’s going to have to solve several mysteries at once?a challenge that will put her up against all the difficulties, contradictions, and awkward compromises entailed in the human colonization of outer space.
From Publishers Weekly (starred review): “Compulsively readable…Most of all, this smart, satisfying hard SF adventure celebrates human resilience.”
(12) YOU BETTER WATCH OUT. At this time of year we should all be getting to bed on time (remember “He knows when you’ve been sleeping/He knows when you’re awake”) but if Santa is not one of your worries, then viewing the annual Geminid meteor shower could be a late-night treat.
The Geminid meteor shower occurs every year from about December 4 to 16. The shower’s “maximum,” or time when the most meteors per hour fall, is usually on December 13 and 14. Get more information on our Meteor Shower Calendar.
(Note: In 2016, the meteors are battling a Full Moon, so it will be a bit of a hunt, but our observatory friends at Slooh predict that it “should still be one of the best, and most active, celestial shows of the year.”)
(13) THE EAGLE HAS LANDED. Foz Meadows’ post has moved into at its new home at Amazing Stories — “Guest Post by Foz Meadows: Unempathic Bipeds of Failure: The Relationship Between Stories and Politics”.
Steve Davidson has included his comments at the end about the definition of “neo-Nazi” and related questions.
(14) DUTY. Alexandra Erin, commenting on the Black Gate/Foz Meadows story: “The Banality of Banality”.
It’s part of the alt-reich’s standard operating procedure: you play at legalism and reference or even invent rules to get the other side, the side that cares about consequences and fairness, to abide by them, even while you don’t. He used these tactics to get Black Gate’s editor to back down, to blink, and now the text which correctly and accurately labels a neo-Nazi as a neo-Nazi politely redirects to another venue, to which it has deferred that duty.
And I look at this, and I look at what’s happening in Washington (well, mostly in New York and Florida, as our President-Elect sees the presidency as more of a side gig) and the way our national news media is covering things, and, I have to say… it doesn’t look nearly as pointless.
As above, so below.
(15) REINDEER SCIENCE. We’ve all heard the stories about dog owners who didn’t realize their pets were female ’til the puppies came. I’m just going to assume Santa is better informed than that…. The Farmers Almanac poses the question, “Is Rudolph a Girl?.
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, both male and female reindeer grow antlers each summer. Male reindeer shed theirs from late November to mid-December, but females retain their antlers until after they give birth in the spring.
This is because the mating season occurs in the fall. Once the male reindeer have used their antlers to impress their mates, they no longer have use of them, and they shed them before Christmastime. This means that the image most of us have of Rudolph with his antlers at Christmastime is not scientifically accurate.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Hampus Eckerman, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
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This contributing editorship is dedicated to Harry Copland, who may have been the first to say (sometime before 1934) “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”
(1) GOLDEN GLOBES. – Deadpool is certainly a better comedy than the genre candidate in the same category last year….
I post fourth so you don’t have to.
[fifth-stalk]
Oh, bullshit.
I mean, have fun with it and it’d be nice if you built it into something where you don’t have to hide the vote totals. But camahn, bullshit.
Also, his nose lights up.
5)
The Dragon Award was not set up to compete with any of the existing awards. We didn’t launch this new award because we were dissatisfied or disgruntled with the existing awards, such as the Hugo or the Nebula or the World Fantasy Award.
Yeah, pull the other one, it has bells on.
12) Pity it IS up against a full moon.
3) That is some badass starscape photography.
(5) FOUNDING FATHER? “We didn’t launch this new award because we were dissatisfied or disgruntled with the existing awards, such as the Hugo or the Nebula or the World Fantasy Award.”
Translation: We launched this new award because we were dissatisfied and disgruntled. . . .
(14) DUTY. @Mike Glyer – shouldn’t those paragraphs be blockquote’d?
@Kurt Buisiek re. #15: “Also, his nose lights up.” ::snort::
Aye, indeed. The appertainment center is open!
SCROLLOL!
@15: puhleeze. They’re trying to define the secondary sexual characteristics of a species of which they have no specimens, i.e. flying reindeer? Then I say flying reindeer spend most of their time in the south (since they haven’t been used as live decoys like geese) and mate on a completely different schedule from Alaskan reindeer.
I’d say you have a promising future writing clickbait posts, except in your case it would be a cut in pay.
@Kendall
Yeah, it seems like splitting hairs. They felt the Hugos and Nebulas (among other awards) were not representative of what they like (ie, not very satisfying), so they started their own award. Other than that, the essay pretty much makes sense, though. I wish the Puppies were more Flint-like.
I think Flint’s article is excellent. As @kathodus says, I wish the Puppies thought that way too.
Oh…honey.
Inspiration knocks occasionally, genius rings the doorbell once or twice in a lifetime, but spite bangs on the door all year round, and if you think no writer ever sat down, rolled up their sleeves and said “I’ll show you!” then…well…hi, my name is Ursula, and let me talk to you about some of my prime motivations and the time I wrote 90K because I was pissed off at Neverwinter Nights 2…
…or that one story because I hated Pinnochio or that other one because Hans Christian Andersen was a serious weirdo or that other one because I was pissed at Disney or the current one because how dare CS Lewis have shot the Talking Horses! or…
…I’ll stop now. Still.
@ RedWombat: That’s one of the major motivations behind the entire category of fix-it fic! And I’ve got one NUMB3RS fic that’s pure-and-simple revenge-fic because I hated one of the side characters in an episode.
And then there are all the rewrites of fairy tales in which the characters who didn’t get agency or voices in the originals suddenly do. Like some of yours. 🙂
Frankenstein was the winning entry in a contest.
@Charon D.: Came to post about the competition between Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Byron and Polidori. We also got “The Vampyre” out of that little contest, as well as two minor bits from Percy and Byron.
Hell, in any given period there are writerly rivalries wherein they try to one-up and snipe at each other through poetry and prose. Byron wrote a lot of derisive stuff aimed at who he called “The Lake Poets” – among others.
(5) FOUNDING FATHER?
I see that though Flint says “Literary Awards Are Not Competitions”, he’s quite happy to throw his hat into the ring.
Thanks for two particular pieces of good news: arrival of Meadows fine article with useful comments by Steve Davidson and Alexandra Erin’s post. I’m glad to hear from her again.
Only half a SJW today as one of my credentials was put to sleep this morning. He was only nine years old, but he had a bad mouth infection and diabetes. Can’t stop crying, he was so sweet to the end.
@ Hampus: My condolences on your loss. It’s especially hard when you lose them before you expected to.
Oh, Hampus, I’m so sorry. I grieve with you.
No matter how many pets you’ve farewelled, no matter how long you’ve been preparing yourself, it never gets any easier when you lose a beloved companion. 😥
Very sorry to hear about your loss Hampus 🙁
So sorry for you Hampus.
Very sorry to hear it, Hampus.
I’m sorry, Hampus. 🙁
Much sympathy Hampus.
@Hampus, commiserations
(5) FOUNDING FATHER?
(Yes, we did know this, I think it was mentioned during the award ceremony or something?)
Good points by Flint, especially the idea that there’s a difference between saying that something is an outstanding piece of work as opposed to the winner.
It’s telling that he spends much of his first post on the Dragons emphasising that it’s not about competing with other awards. His problem is that there’s a constituency of people out there claiming just the opposite, so I suspect he’ll need to say this more than once, quite loudly.
(14) DUTY
My favourite bit of Alexandra Erin’s article is the end:
Always worth remembering, even if it’s difficult in the middle of reacting to the latest dumb thing they’ve said, is that the thing hateful people hate the most is being laughed at.
Hampus, my sympathy.
Mark
I think they actually hate not getting their way even more than being laughed at. It probably varies from one individual to another: Some have extremely thin skin, some are nigh oblivious to criticism and ridicule. I think more of them would rather get the loot or the power, though, even if someone’s laughing somewhere. As a long-time believer in the power of satire, I have to say it hasn’t really done the job lately, and I can’t say for sure whether it ever has been as useful as, say, voting or having money.
@Hampus: (((hugs)))
@Kip W: I have a friend who grew up in Communist Poland. She said satire and humor were essential to surviving. I don’t think Trump’s presidency will be nearly as bad as Communist Poland, but maybe satire and humor will have a similar role. They may not change anything directly, but they help one cope with day-to-day awfulness and recognize it’s not you who are messed up, it’s society.
(note: I hope I’m not horribly mangling what she said but my memory isn’t always the best)
@Kip W
Admittedly I may have overstated the case a bit! It’s not the only response, but it’s one that’s pretty effective at times. I often forget it myself, so Erin’s article was a good reminder.
Hampus, I’m so sorry. The only thing worse than loosing a furry family member would be never having one at all.
We’ve already seen some authors say that competition can motivate them to write, though I’m pretty sure they try to write good stories in order to do better than another writer.
I’ve also seen it said that one thing which motivates writers– even to start writing at all in some cases– is seeing a really bad published story. “I can do better than that!” is strong stuff.
Literary awards are in competition with each other for prestige. And I’ve definitely rooted for my preferred nominees to win Hugos.
I respect Flint’s mellow approach, and the world could use more of it. I also believe that if writing and awards aren’t mostly a search for excellence rather than winning, there’s going to be a lot less excellence.
@Hampus Eckerman
Much sympathies 🙁
Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit is currently 99p on Amazon.co.uk, which works out as 11p per fox tail.
I remember reading somewhere that Edgar Rice Burroughs started writing because he thought the published pulp stories were terrible and he could do a better job.
Revenge is a dish best served scrolled.
@Hampus Eckerman: I’m so, so sorry! ;-( Virtual hugs to ya, if you’d like. I know how much this wrecked my other half (twice), some years back.
@Hampus – awww I’m sorry for your loss, I’m sending warmth and bright thoughts your way!
(1) – I finally saw Deadpool the other day and I thought it was alright but didn’t feel the sort of intense “this movie is amazing!!!” feeling that a lot of my friends on Facebook, etc seemed to feel about it, which is interesting. I do think it’s a good example of a very specific type of humour and it just goes to show we all have our own preferred brand/type. Mine is more Monty Python-esque I think.
(2) – What a great feature, all those amazing ladies!! Way to go BBC!
(5) As RedWombat and others have pointed out, there is definitely a fine tradition of making art out of spite, I’ve definitely done it too lol I think it’s interesting how some people like to talk about making art the same way they talk about science, in that its an activity that’s somehow superior when all human element (like emotions) are removed from it and it’s not really the case, both things are human activities that reflect our interests and what we think are important, just from different angles and methodologies, regarding our understanding and interactions with the world around us. And it ties into this idea that art is something sullied by regular human concerns or feelings, much like how some people resent that some artists want to make art for money or to present a message (gasp, maybe even a political message) – oh no, we are ruining ~*art itself*~ how dare we!
But going back to the rest of Flint’s article, he’s not wrong in the sense that yes, awards don’t have to be about declaring something The Best Ever The End, but for recognizing outstanding material rather than trying to deciding what’s better than what. But it’s still subjective and limited by whatever rules the award-giving body decides (which may be chosen for a variety of reasons including random and nonsensical), there are still going to be people chosen and people not chosen, I feel like it’s a bit of a semantics play to suggest calling a work “outstanding” rather than “the best” will result in less hurt feelings or bitter rejections of the outcome from those who believe themselves to be cheated if they don’t win. I think it’s a shame to sometimes see people spending all their time grumbling about why didn’t they win instead of participating in a discussion about why the works awarded were chosen in the first place, like when people here talk about why they love this book or that movie. It’s an opportunity to maybe learn something to improve your own art craft that some people forgo so that they can focus on insulting their peers, which is a big fat shame for sure. There’s always going to be disagreement about awards but I’d like to think most of the time there are at least a few winners that we can go “Yeah I totally see why that won, it’s pretty great / they worked hard to accomplish something ambitious / etc” or at the very least support our peers in something positive rather than just viewing them as rivals or having no interest in what anyone else is doing when it doesn’t involve any benefit for yourself directly.
(8) – Zappa man, why you gotta be such a bummer? What is the point of going to space if we aren’t allowed to ingest strange dirt??
(14) – Alexandra Erin’s got it spot on, I’m tempted to say more but I think others have covered very well this particular topic of bigots trying to evoke legal limits to get their way.
(15) Flying reindeer not scientifically accurate you say? :X
@Hampus, I’m so sorry for your loss.
@Hampus I wish I knew something I could say that would make it better. (hug)
As I read Flint’s article, he isn’t saying that writers aren’t competitive. He’s saying that writing isn’t a competitive sport, and there’s an important difference: in sports, there can only be one victor; everyone else loses. But in writing, you can write an excellent story without causing anyone else to “lose.”
To make a mathematical analogy, the concepts of “greater than” and “less than” only exist in one dimension. As soon as you go to two or more dimensions, you can only do comparisons by mapping down to one dimension again. (E.g. you could measure how far different points are from the center, or only use the x-axis, or measure along some diagonal, etc.)
Sports is a one-dimensional activity. There’s a score, and the highest score wins. End of story.
Writing is a multi-dimensional activity. Any given award measures a work on just one axis, and so its not a surprise that different awards would honor very different works. Writing is so high-dimensional that it essentially isn’t competitive. A writer might well be motivated to “write a better story than that one,” but he or she certainly doesn’t expect to make “that one” lose</em!
I really think that's all Flint is trying to say.
Shao Ping
I agree that satire is an important coping mechanism, and without it I might have simply dissolved in my own stomach acids long ago. At the same time (holding conflicting opinions, as always), it sometimes seems like we’re the Folk Song Army in Tom Lehrer’s classic of the same name: “We had all the good songs!”
But it’s not like I’m not proud that my side is funny in a way the other side is merely thuggish. Sean Kelly once responded to P.J. O’Rourke, describing O’Rourke’s writing as a collection of variations, or just iterations, of the One Conservative Joke, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich/white/male/ablebodied?”
@Hampus
Massive condolences
If you trust the words of the song, I don’t think Rudolph’s nose does actually light up; it is just very shiny – i.e. it has a normal quality to an abnormal degree. You would even say it glows; that sounds like a poetic, though natural, way of speaking.
Nevertheless, it’s true that as the reindeer are flying (and, according to their first clear appearance in print, miniature), biological accuracy is not to be looked for. I’m fairly sure some of the original eight (Cupid, at least) were male as well.
So many good wishes to you, Hampus. I know how hard that is. Take good care of yourself today.
I don’t know if anyone should be alarmed and start consulting lawyers, but VD is already sending feelers out to the Dread Ick asking if anyone practices in New Hampshire and/or Australia.
Regarding Flint: I’m guessing that by ‘we’ he just means DragonCon, in which case he’s not claiming to be personally responsible for the awards; and I’m sure it’s true that the management of DragonCon, in authorising these awards, were not seeking to compete with other awards. What the individual or group who came up with the idea was thinking is another matter.
I’ve never been confident that the original impulse for the awards was Puppyish; certainly what was said in their support echoed some Puppy rhetoric, but it wasn’t exclusively Puppy rhetoric, but more widespread rhetoric that the Puppy groups were exploiting. Flint himself, and also Philip Sandifer, who are by no means Puppyish people, have made similar complaints about the Hugos in the past. It’s true that the Hugos don’t cover the whole field of science fiction or represent everyone interested in it. It’s not clear that they ought to (indeed, my own feeling is that it’s fairly clear no one awards process can), but a lot of people have got the impression that they claim to. Starting another award, not to replace but to complement them, makes perfect sense (and may actually help the Hugos, by relieving them of the burden of being The Definitive Awards).
@ Hampus
I’m so sorry — that’s always hard no matter what the circumstances.