(1) SURREAL CEREAL. “When I just saw this, I did suddenly wonder, ‘Is nothing sacred?’” says James H. Burns.
(2) RED LIGHT AT MORNING. Bob Byrne’s “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: ‘Rudolph’s Performance Review’” at Black Gate continues his tradition of holiday humor.
You’d think the reindeer with the shiny red nose would have knocked his annual review out of the park after that foggy Christmas Eve, eh? Well, that Santa is one tough reviewer. Read on, and I wish you a safe, happy and blessed Merry Christmas….
(3) DON’T LINK. Jenneral Geek’s theory about Doctor Who’s most popular episode suggests “’Blink’ Might be Even More Timey-Wimey Than You Think”.
Now, you may also remember a flirtatious babe from the same episode named Billy Shipton. Billy is a detective investigating the disappearance of people in relation to Wester Drumlins. This is what brings us to the lovely meet-cute in which Billy Shipton and Sally Sparrow flirt in front of a dusty blue police box. Billy gets Sally’s number and when he asks for her full name she retorts, “Sally Shipton” without thinking, followed by her instant mortification and departure. Cut scene and fast forward – Billy gets Weeping Angel’d back to 1969 where he receives instructions from the Doctor not to contact Sally Sparrow until after their original encounter. Billy lives his life back to 2007 and calls Sally. They re-meet minutes later for Sally and 38 years later for Billy in his hospital room. An elderly Billy tells Sally Sparrow information that is relevant to the plot, BUT he also tells her that he married a woman coincidentally named Sally from the 70’s. He even shows a picture of his dearly beloved, Sally Shipton.
I know this is timey-wimey enough as is, but what if there is more? At this point of the episode I had to press pause because my mind was going through the time vortex. Hey, how cool would it be if Billy Shipton actually married Kathy Wainwright’s daughter? So, I couldn’t resist whipping out my handy dandy calculator and pretending like I don’t blow at math.
(4) RETROSPECTIVE. TCM Remembers 2015 honors actors, actresses and filmmakers who passed away this year, among them Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lee, Rod Taylor and Wes Craven.
(5) BSFA AWARDS. Nominations are open for the British Science Fiction Association Awards through December 31.
Who can nominate?
You may nominate a work if YOU:
- Are a member of the BSFA
AND
- Send or give your nominations to the Awards Administrator to arrive by the 31st December of each year.
See here for further details.
(6) SEE ME. Now I’m surprised John Scalzi didn’t drop in this morning to support Buckaroo Banzai in Hampus’ next set of brackets.
All these science fiction reboots and sequels and franchises AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY GODDAMN BUCKAROO BANZAI REMAKE PEOPLE
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 15, 2015
I swear to God. Someone give me the rights. I WILL MAKE IT MYSELF AND IT WILL BE PERFECT LIKE TOMMY
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 15, 2015
But John, do you mean Perfect like Perfect Tommy, or like Roger Daltrey’s Tommy?
(7) ACKERMANSION II. There’s a petition at change.org calling on the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission to “Declare Forrest Ackerman’s house a historic monument!” The Commission considered an application at its December 3 meeting – I don’t know what they decided.
Forrest Ackerman is considered “the father of science fiction.” He was a magazine editor, science fiction writer and literary agent who represented Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, J.P. Lovecraft and L. Ron Hubbard, among many others. His magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland, was an inspiration to writers and filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Stephen King, J.J. Abrams and Guillermo del Toro. Ackerman housed his extensive collection of sci-fi memorabilia in a private museum at 4513 Russell Ave. in Los Angeles and this home was dubbed the “Acker-Mini-Mansion.” The Smithsonian described Ackerman’s home as “one of the 10 best private museums in the country” open to visitors every Saturday since 1951 until Ackerman’s death in 2008. Please support designating Ackerman’s house a historic monument to prevent its demolition by developers who want to “put up a parking lot.”
I’m guessing “put up a parking lot” is a reference to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” rather than an immediate plan for the property.
(8) THE VOICE. Last summer Natalie Luhrs raised $5,125 from folks who wanted her to livetweet her experience reading a Theodore Beale novel, and unlock another major incentive. And now that incentive has arrived — “Bad Life Decisions: Mary Robinette Kowal Reads Theodore Beale. Sexily” — at Pretty Terrible.
As promised at the conclusion of the fundraiser, here is Mary Robinette Kowal reading snippets from Theodore Beale’s Eternal Warriors™: War In Heaven in a very, very sexy voice.
(9) OKORAFOR. Nnedi Okorafor has been named the winner of Brittle Paper’s African Literary Person of the Year Award.
Brittle Paper is a blog written by Duke Ph.D. student Ainehi Edoro.
The 2015 African literary person of the year goes to Nnedi Okorafor for the many ways in which Africa inspires innovation in her approach to storytelling.
The way she writes about Africa is refreshingly different. Take for example her 2014 novel titled Lagoon. The novel follows the near-apocalyptic chaos that takes over Lagos when aliens land on its shores. In the novel, she pushes us to imagine a futuristic but recognizable Lagos swarming with aliens and creatures. The novel is a mashup of cultural iconographies that range from alien spaceships and viral youtube videos to Igbo ancestral masquerades and folkloric archetypes to Karl Marx and Danfo buses. She tells a story about Lagos by situating the city, its fears and anxieties, its history and its landscape within a global network of literary traditions and philosophical concerns. A novel such as Lagoon brings to the conclusion that African life is so complex, so rich that to adequately give an account of it we have to draw inspiration from everywhere—from Nollywood but also from Star Wars, from Esu but also from American rappers, from Pentecostal churches but also from underground LGBT communities.
(10) Today In History
- Born December 14, 1900 – The quantum theory
Through physical experiments, Planck demonstrated that energy, in certain situations, can exhibit characteristics of physical matter. According to theories of classical physics, energy is solely a continuous wave-like phenomenon, independent of the characteristics of physical matter. Planck’s theory held that radiant energy is made up of particle-like components, known as “quantum.” The theory helped to resolve previously unexplained natural phenomena such as the behavior of heat in solids and the nature of light absorption on an atomic level. In 1918, Planck was rewarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on blackbody radiation.
(11) TOY AUCTION. An auction of over 600 Star Wars collectible toys on December 11 brought in more than $500,000.
The higher-end items in Nigo’s collection were either rare or still in the original packaging, making them desirable collectors’ items.
A rare Luke Skywalker figure — one of only 20 confirmed — was expected to sell for $12,000 to $18,000. It sold for $25,000.
The highest-selling lot, a seven-figure multi-pack sold exclusively in Canada in 1980, garnered $32,500 at the auction.
Among the items were two sets of “Star Wars” coins which were estimated to sell for between $25,000 and $35,000. They sold for $27,500.
(12) LITTLE TEENY EYES. Supervike is creating Monster Hunter International miniatures.
I paint and model little toy soldiers, and since there really aren’t any commercially available that represent the world of MHI, I’m trying to convert and paint existing miniatures to fit and represent the characters.
The scale of these miniatures is about 28mm. That just means the ‘average’ man of 6ft tall or so, is represented as 28mm tall. So, that’s a bit over an inch tall for us that never could figure out the metric system (thanks Jimmy Carter).
Some are fascinating, like the set in “It’s beginning to look a lot like Fishmen”.
Deep ones, those aquatic Lovecraftian fishmen, are only briefly mentioned in Monster Hunter International. They serve as the badguys in a mission previously mentioned with a SEaL team and a cruise ship.
Turns out that the Deep Ones aren’t just interested in mindlessly attacking humans, they also prefer to lay their eggs inside a human host. I’m assuming the outcome (other than the obvious madness) would be something like these guys. These are Deep One Hybrids, the spawns of such an unholy union.
(13) PATENT FENDING. The Washington Post’s Larry Downs names “The 4 worst patents of 2015” after this introduction:
This was another depressing year for patent law, which long ago lost sight of its constitutional moorings as a balanced and limited source of incentives for innovators. Though Congress, the courts and the Patent and Trademark Office each tried in their own way to rein in a system widely-regarded as out of control, in the end nobody made much progress.
On just one day in November, for example, over 200 new patent lawsuits were filed, as plaintiffs rushed to beat a change in federal procedure that could require more specific claims. Most were from companies that buy up patents of dubious quality and use them to extract nuisance settlements from actual innovators….
To give just a sense of just how out of touch the law has become, I asked Daniel Nazer, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to highlight the worst patents he’s come across this year. Nazer, who holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents (yes, really), had little trouble coming up with these four, culled from a monthly “Stupid Patent of the Month” post he writes for the EFF site. (The complete list is available here.) Each one highlights a different crisis in our badly-misaligned patent system…
(14) VASICEK. Joe Vasicek’s latest proposition is “Disagreement is not offensive”, at One Thousand And One Parsecs.
If you take offense whenever people disagree with you, chances are that you’ll never be able to cut it as a writer. In order to write well, you have to be able to see things from inside the heads of people who aren’t like you and probably don’t agree with you.
This is why I support Sad Puppies: because the SJW types in Science Fiction are usually the first to cry offense over anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow worldviews. This naturally makes them as vehemently opposed to intellectual diversity as they (falsely) claim that the Puppies are to racial, sexual, and cultural diversity. When you look at the books and stories that these people uphold as shining examples of the genre, their rigidly ideological worldview is as plain as the emperor’s new clothes.
Disagreement is not “offensive.” In fact, it’s a sign of respect. If your opponent thought that your opinion or argument wasn’t worth engaging with, then they simply would have ignored you. By saying “I don’t agree,” they are acknowledging your position in an intellectually honest way. When you willfully misrepresent your opponent’s views, or bully them into silence, it is a sign of disrespect that warrants taking offense. And who is most guilty of that? I’ll give you two chances, and the first one doesn’t count.
(15) THE MAX. Blunt is one way of describing Max Booth III’s “Sad Puppies and The Goosebumps Rap: The Best and Worst Things to Happen to Literature in 2015” at Lit Reactor.
Sad Puppies
The KKK Sad Puppies are a group of white supremacists science fiction writers set on fixing the Hugo Awards. They are very pathetic nerds who won’t be satisfied as long as people other than straight white males are represented in science fiction. Keep the genre pure, they say. Heil Hitler, they probably also say. Our penises are tiny and we need to make others feel miserable to satisfy ourselves, they almost definitely say. So, in 2015, they managed to get Puppy nominees in almost every category. Because of this clusterfuck, many categories were given “No Awards”.
World Fantasy Award
Hey, speaking of racists. This year also saw a very nice and welcome change: Lovecraft was removed as the model for the World Fantasy Award. Many non-terrible people celebrated this victory, and many other terrible people whined about it. Especially ST Joshi, whose recent blog posts are both hilarious and sad. It’s still unknown what will take Lovecraft’s place as the trophy model. I’ve already suggested myself, but have yet to hear back. I’ve also heard many people suggest a dragon, but dragons as we all know, are lame. Honestly, a giant dong might be the way to go.
(16) ONE STAR (WARS) RATING. Milo Yiannopolous argues ”Star Wars Is Garbage” at Breitbart.com.
With Star Wars, liberal Hollywood got it all wrong. They get everything wrong, of course, but this movie franchise really takes the biscuit. They turned the heroes into villains, and the villains into shining beacons of virtue. With a new film on the horizon, I feel duty-bound to warn you about the desperate shortcomings of this particular entertainment phenomenon.
If we’re honest with ourselves, the real wretched hive of scum and villainy is Skywalker Ranch, where George Lucas and his band of morally dissolute bastards created the Star Wars universe, a blight on western civilisation and culture.
This magisterial bit of trolling includes lines such as —
Jabba the Hutt was actually pretty progressive.
And –
Oh, and by the way, Darth Vader’s daughter was installed as the leader of the galaxy after he killed the rightful and democratically elected leader, Emperor Palpatine. I’m just saying.
(17) USE THE SOURCE. A “Google Chrome extension replaces all mentions of Donald Trump with Voldemort” reports the Telegraph.
The Trump2Voldemort extension for the web browser replaces any text referring to the Republican candidate with ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ or ‘Tom Riddle’
The source is here:
https://twitter.com/Sarah_X_Chen/status/675030881447358464
(18) ULTIMATE TIME SAVER. Michael McNulty’s YouTube video plays Star Wars I-VI simultaneously in six side-by-side windows!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Jerry Pournelle, and Brian Z. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day James H. Burns.]
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@McJulie, Amina, Stevie, et al
Since the Taliban topic isn’t SFF, we probably ought to stop, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that this is what a principled, rational, polite discussion is supposed to look like. I think this is typical of File770, and that’s a big part of what makes this place special.
@Vasha:
Well, there’s the Booker Prizewinning novel “The Famished Road” by Ben Okri.
(Or wait, that’s pretty old. You meant recent works, yes?)
To say that the talibans were created by Pakistan is to make it simple. US, in Operation Cyclone, sent aid to Pakistan for the sole purpose of forwarding to the mujahedin. This was part of the Reagan doctrine.
I got my copy this week from the Kickstarter. It’s gorgeous as well as full of fantastic stories. David Steffen did a great job.
I’m glad to see someone else (JJ) kind of got the almost Killgrave-y vibe of (14), and a lot of Sad Puppy stuff. They are the arbiters of what is and is not disagreement, the proper Hugos, fandom, etc. Anyone who disagrees with that is wrong, and shouted down, even if they have the scars to prove it.
Regarding Vascisek: Non-Puppies aren’t a group of course but speaking for myself, I don’t have a problem with the Puppies disagreeing with me. I have a problem with them being jerks about it. They have consistently been jerks to people they disagreed with all the way back to SP2. There’s nothing “respectful” about claiming that Hugo Voters nominate and vote on the basis of affirmative action instead of for the stories we like best. File that, along with Brad Torgersen changing other people’s comments, under “misrepresenting other people’s views” also. When it comes to narrow worldviews, Correia’s hysteria over “Beyond Binary Gender” and Brad’s apology for calling Scalzi gay pop to mind…
Oh never mind. The Puppies continue to demonstrate a glorious degree of projection and lack of self-awareness. They lead with contempt and are shocked with they don’t receive respect in return; they are so preoccupied with their wounded feelings they don’t even realize the level they’re failing on.
On the other hand I don’t agree with The Max either. Most of the Puppies aren’t deliberately racist / sexist / homo and transphobic, they just don’t want to take any steps to stop being *unconsciously* racist / sexist / homo and transphobic, or let anyone else mention taking such steps.
Hypnotosov –
I think it’s more that at the moment everything is Star Wars focused, even the trolls who live and die on attention probably can’t stand to see something else get it. I’m not going to give that site any additional views, but it doesn’t look like very good trolling. Should’ve thrown a spoiler in the middle and references to warp speed. I mean it’s not like fans haven’t joked about how an old hippie in the desert got Luke to blow up a government building in the past, he’s late to that joke.
@Cat
(14) and (15) are both trolling, just on opposites sides of the bridge 🙂
The political history discussion was interesting – I don’t know enough to be able to comment in detail but consequences of supporting repressive regimes or formenting unrest for ones own political purposes can be wide ranging and very hard to foresee.
16 — Star Wars — If Milo Yiannopolous doesn’t like Star Wars, goddess knows what he’ll make of SyFy’s Childhood’s End, the first of which I watched last night. The Overlords’ agenda for Earth includes food and water and education for everyone, and even — horrors! — gun control. I can’t disagree with any of this, but even I was a little weirded out by the Overlords’ high-handedness. I read the book a loooong time ago, and I can’t remember if Clarke made the Overlords like this or if that was the doing of the screenwriters. They’re almost everything people like Milo fear.
Greg
It helps if you try to keep the sequence of events in mind; it is generally accepted amongst scholars investigating terrorist funding that the money flowing from the U.S. to Afghanistan in the 1980s went via Pakistan, where much of it was creamed off, thus enabling fundamentalists on both sides of a very fluid border to arm themselves against those people foolish enough to provide the cash, ie ourselves, as well as their local opponents.
The influence of the proxy wars in the 1980s extended to the radicalisation of Arab volunteers who travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, again with money and weapons provided by the Reagan administration, thus spawning Al-Qaida. This too is common ground amongst scholars investigating terrorist funding; Osama Bin Laden was known to gloat over that particularly dramatic demonstration of shooting oneself in the foot. This is why the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq was so vehemently opposed by those who had studied the outcome of the 1980s proxy wars; they were ignored, and the entirely predictable results ensued.
Isis, on the other hand, isn’t now relying on external funding; the Financial Times today has an excellent special report on this. US, French and Russian air strikes on Syria’s oil economy are insufficient to grind it to a halt since it is so widespread. In addition to this the regime has a punitive array of taxation, extortion and confiscation, estimated to bring in at least as much money as the oil industry. Helpful suggestions along the lines of let’s carpet bomb Mosul still emerge from politicians who have failed to grasp that killing lots of civilians is not a good way to win friends and influence people; that’s how we got into this mess in the first place.
The FT special report is freely available on the web, at least in the UK, and probably elsewhere; journalists have spent months researching it, and I do recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts of what is happening there.
@Stevie
There’s no need to be condescending when we are all mostly agreeing on the big picture.
@Peace — Um, yeah, thanks for reminding me that I’ve become way too laser-focused on 2015. There’s been Wizard of the Crow and a buch of great books by Helen Oyeyemi and no doubt more.
The FT article, for those interested (thanks for the heads-up, stevie):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/aee89a00-9ff1-11e5-beba-5e33e2b79e46.html#axzz3uPobquTv
In the January 2016 Asimov’s, I really liked a number of stories, of which my favorite was Conscience, by Robert R. Chase. This is a military SF story about a pilot who delivers a mysterious, unspeaking soldier behind the lines for special missions.
In the same issue, White Dust, by Nathan Hillstrom was outstanding, albeit creepy. Given a technology to project copies of people to very distant places, the protagonist has to figure out why the copies don’t want to do their jobs once they arrive.
The January/February 2016 Analog is pretty good too. My two favorites were:
Wyatt Earp 2.0, by Wil McCarthy is a fun story in which a Martian mining town is so desperate to restore order that they bring back a version of the 19th-century lawman.
The Persistence of Memory, by Rachel L. Bowden, in which a school-boy’s adventure goes somewhere unexpected and disturbing.
These aren’t eligible for the Hugos until 2017 because the awards go by the date on the magazine, not the actual date of publication, but they’re definitely worth a read.
Echoing Tasha Turner,
Where to buy the (Hugo) Longlist Anthology from various places & in various formats (print, ebook, audio).
Out of all the torrents of Star Wars-related articles gushing through the intertubes today, this meditation on the career of Admiral Piett really stands out. In fact, I think it may have even persuaded me to go and see The Force Awakens in the theaters rather than waiting for the DVDs. Bringing back familiar actors is all very well and good, but the hype machine had failed to inform me that they were bringing back the writer from two of the the first three movies, which is a much bigger deal to me.
(1) SURREAL CEREAL
Been meaning to say:
Eh.
That’s not even 0.001 Star Wars Holiday Specials in terms of crass surreality, so far as I’m concerned.
That bar was set a long time ago, and things have to get way weirder and dumber than that to meet it.
Re Childhood’s End: The Overlords are Space Fabians.
@Lisa, IIRC the Overlords in the novel were pretty similar in spirit, but didn’t do quite as much direct political intervention. But they’re also operating over a shorter time frame in the show (in the book, the utopianization of Earth happens over half a century rather than 15 years) so I can see why they’d have a somewhat heavier hand.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that Milo Yiannopolous “fears” anything in particular, though. He’s more or less a full-time professional troll who happens to be employed by a right-wing publication, rather than someone with a coherent political ideology; given that he’s written screeds about how women should be content to be housewives and sex objects despite himself being gay, I think it’s safe to say that his writing has less to do with what he feels than what he imagines his audience feels.
(1) The Star Wars cereals. I bought some of the Honey Nut Cheerios cereal with the cereal’s bee mascot dressed as Darth Vader sans mask. Seemed an odd choice at the time.
The cereal came with a plastic decoder shaped like a droid. I wound up with three MSE-6 mouse droids from three separate boxes. I’m trying to remember a story where two celebrity types bonded because one of them made a mouse droid sound during a party and the other recognized it. Probably thinking of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
And when did they start packaging the toy outside of the cereal bag? Takes all the fun out of it.
@Petréa Mitchell
Thanks for the link to the Star Wars article, I enjoyed that. 🙂
Amina
I’m sorry that it came over in that way to you; it’s a great deal easier in a seminar to gauge response and to tweek one’s presentation in real time, so it’s better attuned to the people in that seminar. Doing it cold is an altogether different kettle of fish; they are rarely interested in how this came about, but we are obliged to try to help anyway…
Well deserved to Nnedi Okorafor.
Read and enjoyed this week:
Mothership Zeta – lots of good stuff in this. When they said it was going to contain fun they meant it. Thanks to everyone who recommended checking it out. My favorite story in it was Bargain by Sarah Gailey
Divinity Circuit by Chrysoula Tzavelas – 5th book in Senyaza series. Magic, Nephilim, Angels, intrigue, friendship, sisters, sliding evil/good, a nice addition to the series.
Magic Stars by Ilona Andrews – novella in the Kate Daniels world an UF. So I’m a total fan of this series and the author. This came out of the blue, I snatched it up, and read it as soon as I finished what I was reading. This focuses on two secondary characters Derek (shapeshifter) and Julie (magic user). I loved it, character growth, cool magic, weird evil mermaids, strange magical ravens, a family murder investigation, a funny ending.
Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs. This was a mostly reread of the spin-off series from Mercy Thompson. It’s a werewolves, vampires, witches UF. Content Note: Rape, serial killers, child abuse/murders. Surprisingly given the CN I find this series to be fun. It is very relationship focused – on the couple, on parents/children, on friends, on “co-workers”. It also spends a fair amount of time working out how the past affects one in the present and how characters move forward. This is done with humor and dark gritty mysteries. Patricia Briggs is one of my favorite authors. My husband picked up the 1st book in the series which I didn’t realize I hadn’t read. I had it and the short story prequel confused. I’d read short story and books 2-4 previously. Everything makes much more sense now. LOL
@Tasha ooooooo Derek and Julie story. Am huge fan of Ilona Andrews! Thanks. *zips off to get*
(1) Making the Trix rabbit curl his ears doesn’t budge the scale for me. Let’s face it a) there’s so much weird merchandising and b) they’ve been tormenting that rabbit for years. All he wants is a bowl of artificially flavored corn puffs and they won’t even give him that? (young lurkertype may have had Feelings on this issue).
(3) BLINK: I… still didn’t follow that. The math looked fine, but I guess it’s been too long since I’ve seen the episode.
(9) OKRAFOR: Well deserved, and huzzah for SF. I find that SFF by African/diaspora outwith US writers seems… more SFFy. It comes from a background that I am so unfamiliar with that it surprises my brain more. They may be using tropes that have been around since we all were Africans, but I don’t recognize them, and so I get novelty. Novelty is one of the big reasons to read SFF, of course. And yet the people are so recognizably human — we all love, hate, struggle — that I understand the characters perfectly. A fairy tale is recognizable as one whether it’s European, African, or Chinese.
(11) TOYS Young lurkertype! Never mind the Trix rabbit, don’t open the toys!
(14) Puppies, still masters of projection. Someone needs to do a filk about that to the tune of “Tradition” from Fiddler. Note all of them ran to (15) with the usual braying of set talking points, including their insistence that Portuguese people aren’t white. If prominent Puppies were Greek or Italian, I guess they’d do the same? Where do they draw the line? Are Slavs white to Puppies? Hungarians? Finns? Basques? Caucasians? (former USSR… but some of ’em are Muslim)
Wow, really well said. Thank you for putting my thoughts into words.
(8) THE VOICE
Thank you for mentioning this, Mike. That was great. Although truthfully, the portions Mary read would sound like porn if read straight.
Bah. [ticky]
Stevie: Amina: I’m sorry that it came over in that way to you; it’s a great deal easier in a seminar to gauge response and to tweek one’s presentation in real time, so it’s better attuned to the people in that seminar. Doing it cold is an altogether different kettle of fish; they are rarely interested in how this came about, but we are obliged to try to help anyway…
Point: Completely Missed.
Turning to book related news, I have reviewed Sex Criminals, Volume Two: Two Worlds, One Cop, which is eligible in the Graphic Story category for the 2016 Hugos. It was good. Not quite as good as the first volume, but a worthy successor. I’ll be picking up volume three when it comes out.
At this point, pretty much anything written by Matt Fraction or Kelly Sue DeConnick is an automatic purchase from me.
(4) Retrospective
Moving tribute.
(9) Okorafor
Gratz to Nnedi Okorafor!
(12) Little Teeny Eyes
I haven’t read the books, but those are a neat fan project. The standard of work looks decent.
(14) Vasicek
Adding my voice to the chorus of people pointing out that the problem is not and has never been respectful disagreement, and that I find the post unpersuasive without examples.
(15) The Max
I was feeling a bit irritable about someone saying things which are, to be honest, pretty jerkish… Then I went and looked at the comments and I feel slightly less bad. Still, I’d really rather people didn’t sink to the level of some of the Puppy rhetoric. More people being assholes doesn’t really improve things.
Good heavens, they haven’t put toys in cereal boxes at all for a generation at least.
Be glad of your toy. It’s a remarkable thing that it’s even there.
Pat Rothfuss reports that Worldbuilders has a surprised matching donation from Heifer International for 200,000, and so isn’t closing the fundraising yet.
http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2015/12/worldbuilders-traditions-opportunities-and-bilboing-up/
What, that little “Urr Burr Ticket” noise?
JJ on December 15, 2015 at 5:51 pm said: Point: Completely Missed.
Yup.
In other news, I just finished my second read of the Ancillary series. I wanted to see if I would be disappointed by the ending again. But I’m only disappointed that it ended. I want more!
Amina: I finished the first this morning and started the second now while waiting for the start of my daughter’s orchestra concert. In between dashing out to buy her a music stand. (Waiting for the rest of the storry on that one.)
The first is such a satisfying braiding of present an flashback, with carefully studied thought lives and relationships.
Random note, of possible especial interest to Meredith:
I made a thing!
@Lenora, that’s awesome! I love it.
@Lenora Rose super cool. Great job. Thanks for sharing. (I might be in Kickstarter supportive mode as I just checked in on all the projects I’m backing and I try to comment on every update).
I liked Wyatt Earp 2.0, but I felt the ending was meant to be the end of a chapter, and not the end of a novella. I expect that it will be part of a novel some day.
(18) ULTIMATE TIME SAVER. – Blocked by SME (who?!) and Lucasfilm on copyright grounds! Damn, that sounded amusing.
@tintinaus: I’d buy a Sherri Tepper “True Game” chess set! 😀
@Mike Glyer: Agreed re. the braiding of present and flashback (nice turn of phrase, BTW). Frequently this sort of thing bugs me, so Leckie really did it right.
@Lenora Rose: Wow, that’s pretty freaking cool! If you remember to, please post a link here when you’ve got more pix up.
ObSFReading: I finished City of Stairs a couple of nights ago and yup, I loved it! I read the excerpt from the second book at the end, I’m all like “okay where is it.” Now, in my ever-shifting mood, am reading Cold Iron by Stina Leicht – loved the sample and the ebook was priced to move. 🙂
In my experience, people rarely agree that other people sharing their own opinion are being disrespectful when arguing with people with an opposing position, but often find that their opponents are being disrespectful. In reality, there’s a lot of disrespect, disdain, and other forms of nastiness on both sides of an argument, and sometimes, some of it is justified. There is no doubt in my mind that as far as the Hugo awards slate nominations are concerned, there are people on both sides who should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, most of those people never will be.
Lenora Rose: That’s lovely!
Lenora Rose: I made a thing!
Lenora Rose, that is absolutely stunning. More photos, please!
Also, it would be lovely to see photos of your friend’s window too, if that’s a possibility (I hope that she’s feeling better soon).
Kendall: Thanks!
I just looked back at my comment to Anima and realized I omitted to say this will be my third time through Leckie’s series.
@ Stevie, JJ, Amina,
I didn’t think Stevie came across as condescending in the first place. I was interested in what she had to say. Doubtless people reading this are coming from many different levels of interest and knowledge of the topic, but that’s mine.
Thanks, Stevie.
@ Bruce
It’s quite true that it’s much harder to recognize when someone on your own side is being disrespectful. Call that the bailey. But I get the impression you are looking toward a “both sides are equally bad” motte and I don’t accept that. I think that even leaving aside the factually wrong issue, the Puppies were considerably more disrespectful from the beginning, and refer you to “Beyond Binary Gender” and Correia’s response as a reference.
Lenora Rose: That is beautiful! Well done!
Belated drive by congratulatory post:
Lenora Rose, that’s amazing!
Also thanks for the Voldemort and snake-people improvements. The present is suddenly more whimsical and less RUNAWAAAY.
Re “Wyatt Earp 2.0”: new Will McCarthy? Woo hoo! (Big fan of Wil’s from back when GEnie was at its peak.)
@Lenora Rose:
Wow, that’s beautiful!
So you used the temporary soap-paint people use for holiday window decorations? It looks great!