Pixel Scroll 12/29 ’Twas Pixel, And The Slithy Scrolls Did Gyre And Gimble In The Wabe

(1) LEMMY WAS A FAN. Lemmy of Motörhead fame died last night. But did you know about his love for Science Fiction and Fantasy? See “Parting Shots: Lemmy” reposted from a spring 2011 issue of Relix.

I recently bought a complete set of the Elric of Melniboné fantasy books by Michael Moorcock. One of them is dedicated to you. Are you still friends with him?

Yeah, I haven’t spoken to him in years, though. He’s in Texas someplace. I did want to get in touch with him actually. Somebody was gonna text me his number but they didn’t do it. I must get ahold of him.

In addition to working with Moorcock in Hawkwind, you were in the 1990 movie Hardware. Are you a big science fiction fan?

Yeah, I always liked a bit of sci-fi. My favorite sci-fi author’s someone you’ve probably never heard of – Jack L. Chalker. Try him, he’s good.”

(2) JEMISIN BRANCHES OUT. N. K. Jemisin talks about the debut of her New York Times Book Review column “Otherworldly” in “My New Side Gig”.  (The first installment is already online.)

I’m an eclectic reader, so the new column will obviously feature science fiction, fantasy, horror, some YA, some graphic novels, some anthologies, and even some nonfiction where it impacts the genre. I’ve got no problem with self-published or small-press books, although I believe the NYT has a policy forbidding selfpubs if they can’t be found in “general interest” bookstores, whatever that means. I like books that feature complex characters, period, but stereotypes piss me off and stuff I’ve seen too often bores the shit out of me. I don’t “believe in” the Campbellian Hero’s Journey, for pretty much the same reasons as Laurie Penny. Obviously I’ve got a thing for worldbuilding and secondary world or offworld stuff. I believe wholeheartedly in the idea that we all should get to dream, and I look for books that let me.

(3) FUTURE OF WHO. ScienceFiction.com gives a rundown on the major players signed for the next season of Doctor Who.

Leaving is a constant theme on ‘Doctor Who’ as even the role of the title character regularly shifts to new actors.  This past season saw the departure of the longest running companion in the show’s history, Clara Oswald played by Jenna Coleman.  And recently, the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi has hinted that he wants to exit in order to focus on directing.  But like Moffat, he is signed on for at least one more season.

Moffat wrote the latest Christmas Special as though it might be his last reports Digital Spy.

Steven Moffat hadn’t signed for a 10th series of Doctor Who when he wrote this year’s Christmas special.

The showrunner told press including Digital Spy that he thought the festive episode could be his last ever for the show.

“I hadn’t signed for next year at that point,” he confirmed. “I have now – unless they fire me, which would be quite sensible!

“I thought it might be the last one, so to get River (Alex Kingston) in – that was bringing me full-circle…”

(4) JANUARY FRIGHT SALE. Cthulhu bedding from Needful Things priced to go at $112.98.

Cozy up with Nyarlathotep on those long, dreary nights with this Cthulhu bedding by Melissa Christie. Set includes one Queen-sized duvet cover (86″x86″) and two pillowcases (20″x30″) printed on 100 percent cotton with eco-friendly inks. Available on white, blue or weirdo purple fabric.

 

Cthulhu bedding

(5) POLAR PUN. James H. Burns writes: “Our friends in Alaska and other areas up North have also long been familiar with ‘The Force.’

“They use their Inuition.”

(6) GROTTA OBIT. Daniel Grotta of Newfoundland passed away December 13 in Philadelphia. He was known for his 1976 biography J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, in print for more than 30 years.

(7) BUSINESS SECTION. John Scalzi’s new comment on “Very Important News About my 2016 Novel Release and Other Fiction Plans” also applies to arguments under discussion here.

I understand that one of my constant detractors is asserting that the reason the first book of my new contract comes out in 2017 and not 2016 is because I turned in a manuscript and it was terrible and now Tor is trying to salvage things. This is the same person, if memory serves, who asserted that Lock In was a failure and Tor was planning to dump me, shortly before Tor, in fact, handed me a multi-million dollar contract, which included a sequel to Lock In.

Now, as then, his head is up his ass and he’s speaking on things he knows nothing about. I haven’t turned in a manuscript; there’s no manuscript to turn in. They (remember I’m working on two) haven’t been written yet. To be clear, the only thing I’ve turned in to Tor since submitting my manuscript for The End of All Things is my contract for the next set of books. That was accepted without any additional revision, I would note.

For the avoidance of doubt, you should assume that any speculation about me or my career coming from that quarter is based on equal parts of ignorance, craven maliciousness, and pathetic longing for my attention, and almost certainly false. Anything said by that person about me is likely to be incorrect, down to and including indefinite articles.

(8) LOVE IN THE RUINS. Earlier in the day Scalzi scoffed at another rant in “I Ruin Everything But Mostly Science Fiction”

Here’s the thing: If I ruin the genre of science fiction for you, or if the presence in the genre of people whose politics and positions you don’t like ruins the genre for you — the whole genre, in which hundreds of traditionally published works and thousands of self-and-micro-pubbed works are produced annually — then, one, oh well, and two, you pretty much deserve to have the genre ruined for you. It doesn’t have to be ruined, mind you, because chances are pretty good that within those thousands of works published annually, you’ll find something that rings your bell. And if you do, why should you care about the rest of it? It’s literally not your problem. Find the work you’ll love and then love it, and support the authors who make it, hopefully with money.

(9) ANALYZING HUGO PARTICIPATION. Kevin Standlee is gathering data to help answer whether Hugo voter participation is expanding at the same rate as the eligible voter base.

The figures do show that, broadly speaking, nominating participation for 1971-2008 was generally static in a range of about 400-700 people per year. 2009 was the first year we see a significant up-tick in nominating participation from the previous few years.

What is unclear (and even now still is unclear) is whether the percentage of eligible members is actually increasing. WSFS has been steadily increasing the nominating franchise, bringing in first the previous year’s members and then the following year’s members, so that the eligible nominating electorate is he union of three years of Worldcon members as of January 31 each year, a group that could be more than 20,000 people at times, compared to the fewer than 5,000 previously eligible prior to the expansion of the franchise. It’s actually possible that the percentage of eligible members participating has gone down even as the absolute number of nominations has gone up.

(10) GRRM’S PRO ARTIST RECS. George R.R. Martin recommends four creators for the Best Pro Artist Hugo in “More Hugo Suggestions”.

First: JOHN PICACIO http://www.johnpicacio.com/ Yes, John is a past winner. Truth be told, he is one of the current crop of Usual Suspects. He was nominated for the first time in 2005, and lost. Thereafter he was nominated every year from 2006 to 2011, losing every year and winning a place of honor in the Hugo Losers party… until he finally broke through and won in 2012. He won again in 2013, lost to Julie Dillon in 2014, and was squeezed off the ballot by the Puppies last year.

(11) KEEP THOSE REVIEWS COMING. Another review of “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers” by Federhirn at Bastian’s Book Reviews

It’s a well-written book. The prose flows pleasantly, there is a sense of fun and joyfulness about it, and the story plods along from one feel-good scene to the next. Unfortunately, there isn’t really much of an overarching plot. The story is episodic, with almost every chapter telling a different episode of their journey. It’s a cheerful road movie in space.

One thing which is very obvious is that the story was inspired by Firefly and seemingly created from a wish list of themes and ideas that the people derogatorily called ‘Social Justice Warriors’ might have come up with. (Social Justice Warriors are people who want a more equal world, with opportunities for all, and a more diverse, multicultural, multiracial, multisexual representation of life in fiction)….

(12) PUPPY CENSUS. Brandon Kempner at Chaos Horizons ends the year by “Checking in with Sad Puppies IV”. His count shows John C. Wright’s novel Somewhither currently has 12 recommendations, more than any other.

(13) EMPIRE BEAUTY PAGEANT. Jeff Somers at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog nominates “The 6 Most Fascinating Galactic Empires Outside of Star Wars”.

Invariably, when the topic of galactic empires comes up, someone will reference Star Wars—the muddy details of the Empire’s economy and structure, maybe a few pointed jokes about trade disputes. Yet as cool as some of the principal officials of the Empire’s vast bureaucracy are (do we ever find out Darth Vader’s official title? Does he get a pension?), the Empire is actually only the eighth or ninth most interesting galactic empire in science fiction. Which ones are more exciting? Glad you asked: Here are the six most interesting empires stretching across time and space in SF lit.

(14) CLASSIC TREK. A 16mm print of the second Star Trek pilot preserves an experiment with a radically different style of introduction. The smiling Spock in the first scene is even more unexpected.

The original print from Star Trek’s 2nd pilot was never aired in this format. Had different opening narration, credits, had acts 1 thru 4 like an old quinn martin show and had scenes cut from aired version and different end credits and music. The original 16mm print is now stored in the Smithsonian oddly enough the soundtrack for this version was released with the cage.

 

[Thanks to Jim Meadows, Andrew Porter, Hampus Eckerman, John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA. ]

186 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/29 ’Twas Pixel, And The Slithy Scrolls Did Gyre And Gimble In The Wabe

  1. Tasha, best wishes for a speedy and successful recovery.

    Rev. Bob, do you have an efficient way to find good books via Viggle? I can’t find any way to sort the store by any useful metric. I mean, I can click “ebooks” and then “science fiction and fantasy”, and then I can page through endless results (which appear to be in no particular order and include many, many repetitions) until I run out of patience, or I can shotgun authors’ names into the search bar and see what comes up. Neither method would have found me The Goblin Emperor, as it didn’t show up by page 35 and I wouldn’t have thought to look for Addison there.

    There appears to be no way to search or sort by publisher. Or to just browse an author list. Now, this at the vigglestore.com website, mind you – I can’t seem to get the viggle app’s Rewards interface to work beyond selling me sweepstakes entries, and wouldn’t want to download purchases to Bluestacks anyway.

    (I have way fewer points than you to use up, though I’ve had good results with the website you suggested. Since they retired Viggle Football, my biggest points-earning activity is Viggle Live trivia. But I’ve only managed to max out once, and that was on a 10x HGTV day that also had a 100 pts/question trivia quiz.)

  2. (12) So, if they are actually accepting recommendations from anyone, if something all full of SJW/LGBT/POC/lit’rary cooties got recommended the most, would they be Sad Puppies of their word and put it at the top of their list? I doubt it.

    If “Traitor Baru Cormorant”, “Watchmaker of Filigree Street”, “The Fifth Season”, “Radiance”, or “Ancillary 3” got more votes from people than JCW’s latest screed, would they eagerly support it, or would it be “curated” out? What if more people recommended Alexandra Erin’s parodies than the things she was parodying, or that Sandifer essay?

    (And how could they best blame it on Scalzi and GRRM?)

  3. Thanks for all the good wishes.

    As to Switching to reading 2016 stuff: I’ve read a couple 2016 books already. Netgalley is great if you read and review books and have any kind of following on FB, Twitter, Goodreads, do a lot of Amazon reviews. I’ve also pre-ordered a number of books. As was pointed out up thread or on another recent thread magazines published but which have Jan 2016 dates count as next year.

    SP4 & things to keep in mind:
    1. Some authors have already stated they will never agree to be on a slate – if they show up on SP4/RP2 don’t be surprised to see more of such announcements. In which case we can ignore that they are on the slate unless you hold hostages responsible for their kidnapping.

    2. Some puppy leaders, if I recall correctly, have talked about putting SJW favorites on the slate because we wouldn’t know what to do then. See point #1 for what I expect most/all of those authors to do if put on a SP4/RP2 slate. Since we’ve been told their evil plan we can ignore such a slate and vote for our favorite books because we have brains and are capable of thought – we aren’t stuck with only one option – we aren’t robots programmed to behave in a specific way.

    I’d like to say I was ignoring the puppy leaders but I talk about them here so clearly I’ve not got ignoring down yet.

  4. lurkertype: If “Traitor Baru Cormorant”, “Watchmaker of Filigree Street”, “The Fifth Season”, “Radiance”, or “Ancillary 3” got more votes from people than JCW’s latest screed, would they eagerly support it, or would it be “curated” out?

    I strongly suspect that if anything remotely considered as “SJW” is in the Top Ten as slate-posting time approaches, a large number of nominations for PAW (Puppy-Approved Works) from mysterious new commenters will appear to take care of that.

    I am watching interestedly to see whether this is exactly what happens.

  5. Tasha Turner: Some puppy leaders, if I recall correctly, have talked about putting SJW favorites on the slate because we wouldn’t know what to do then… Since we’ve been told their evil plan we can ignore such a slate

    I don’t think most people need to have been told of their “evil plan” to do exactly that, regardless. I certainly didn’t.

    Their canard that all non-Puppies will automatically put everything on their Sad Puppy 4 Slate below No Award is just that — a canard. They refuse to accept that non-Puppies voted on quality, rather than politics, this year — which is why they simply cannot imagine that non-Puppies would put anything which appears on a slate higher than No Award.

    People who slavishly follow their political beliefs, like sheep cutting off their own noses to spite their own faces, are incapable of imagining that other people simply don’t operate that way.

  6. @Nicole: “Rev. Bob, do you have an efficient way to find good books via Viggle?”

    Frighteningly so: I use Amazon. 🙂

    Seriously, I use an array of Amazon wish lists to keep track of what’s coming out when. I put the Kindle versions on the list and when they’re released, if they’re listed as being sold by Macmillan or HarperCollins, I check Viggle by searching on whatever works best – sometimes author, sometimes title. If it’s there, I’ll either snatch it up or move it to a special “Viggle has this” Amazon list for future reference.

    There are a few secondary publishers on Viggle, but those are the only two from the Big Five. When in doubt, I just try a search and see if it’s there. It also helps to remember that Orbit is HarperCollins and Tor is Macmillan, so most of their stuff is there. I wish the Random Penguin (Ace, Star Wars) would join the party, though…

    Oh, as for browsing an author list – once you find one book by an author, there’s a link near the bottom of its page that lets you see all of them.

    Tips on maxing out: The cap is 12K points/day. I usually try to capture about a minute of audio from the beginning of four HGTV shows during the week: Monday and Wednesday, 8pm and 9pm. I can check into the Monday samples from Tuesday through Thursday, and use the Wednesday samples during the rest of the week. (You only NEED one from each day, but two gives you a backup.) Since you can check into 12 programming hours a day and HGTV’s 4x, that’s 2880 points.

    Twenty songs a day gets you 2000 more, but once you “burn” a song that way, it’ll never give you points again – so I use the music channels of genres I never listen to. Likewise, Wetpaint.com videos are 50 points each for up to 10 viewings – not the worst way to get a quick 500 points. You know about the trivia, of course, and the ads are 20 points each but getting thin on the ground for me lately. (I used to be able to check into a song and get a fat stream of ads, but not now.) The good thing about movie trivia is that you can frequently find the answer list online ahead of time; I was hopping between all three of Wednesday’s games and only had to shift time zones for a couple of odd questions.

    So, it takes thought and timing, but it’s not the hardest thing in the world. I use an iPad, and I store my answer key in a Notes file that I can swipe in from the right to check without leaving Viggle. If two competing questions are too close for me to answer both, I answer the oldest one and mark the time for the other, so I can catch it on Mountain or Pacific time.

  7. @JJ Technically I’m anti-slate and leave anything on a slate off the ballot once I’ve voted no award. I might or might not read the work but it’s left off the ballot. It’s been my stance for 3 years after researching how No Award came about and was used in the past. I spent a fair amount of time online during SP1 & SP2 making sure I understood how the voting worked since I was fairly new to the Hugos. Got to know how helpful Kevin Standlee can be & how the wording on the Hugo site was confusing me when it came to No Award. But I’m not a stupid sheep who can be played.

  8. @Kendall

    Moving on to 2016, for me, primarily means the shorts because there’s no way to stop the relentless arrival of the magazines I’ve accidentally ended up subscribed to. There’s always another 2015 story on another site I’ve never seen before, another anthology, etc etc… I think the guillotine is the only way.
    I get my novels the commercial way, so the pipeline is a bit slower, and people who get ARCs earn my jealousy.

    Hmm, what novels are coming in 2016 that I should be excited about? The new Powers was mentioned. New Meiville and Bujold, of course. Kowal is starting a new series, so I’m excited to see how she does something completely different.

  9. Found the paperback of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet at Gatwick. Huzzah!

    See you all on the flipside, when I get to Zion for a cold high desert weekend before the madness that is CES.

  10. @tnh @paul I have The Big Bowl Of Trilobites on the mantelpiece that looks like an outtake from Babylon 5.

  11. I really need a macro lens to take some good pictures of my fossils and other things in my collection.

  12. JJ on December 30, 2015 at 11:07 pm said:

    I strongly suspect that if anything remotely considered as “SJW” is in the Top Ten as slate-posting time approaches, a large number of nominations for PAW (Puppy-Approved Works) from mysterious new commenters will appear to take care of that.

    But that doesn’t have to be anything sinister. That’s normal voting behavior for this sort of cumulative popularity contest, especially where emotional investment is high.

  13. @Tasha Turner

    Well, I hope it doesn’t take them too long to schedule it so you’re not hanging about for months and months with daily pain of that level, and that it all goes well and doesn’t get worse in the mean time.

    @JJ

    Eh, considering how much mileage the Puppies get out of File770 being the Root Of All Evil I’m not sure GRRM talking about this stuff is any worse than us, um, existing. I’m not inclined to blame him for the effort they put into misrepresenting everything he says.

    I prefer his Hugo recommendation posts, though. More interesting and less victim-complex-fueling (although I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try to claim he made a slate).

  14. Meredith: Eh, considering how much mileage the Puppies get out of File770 being the Root Of All Evil I’m not sure GRRM talking about this stuff is any worse than us, um, existing. I’m not inclined to blame him for the effort they put into misrepresenting everything he says.

    I’m not blaming him for them doing what they’re clearly determined to do, regardless. But I wish he’d be more articulate about discussing what determines a Fan versus a fan.

    So, two years from now, if EPH has passed, and the Puppies are no longer able to rig the nomination ballot and get any of their slate entries on it, will you still be buying memberships and attending Worldcons?

    If the answer is “yes”, congratulations: You’re a Worldcon Fan. Go have fun.

    If the answer is “no”, congratulations: You’re an SFF fan and / or political reactionary trying to take something wonderful away from the people who created it and nurtured it for six decades, because you’re not willing to take the time and effort to build your own wonderful thing instead.

    It’s really not any more complicated than that.

  15. @JJ

    Since the base of the Puppy complaint is that ‘Fan’ has a capital ‘f’ and therefore (for reasons) GRRM and other Fans/Trufen are just trying to make themselves sound more importat than little-f fans I’m not sure that explanation would make any more of a dent in their victim complex than GRRM’s. 🙂

  16. Meredith: Since the base of the Puppy complaint is that ‘Fan’ has a capital ‘f’ and therefore (for reasons) GRRM and other Fans/Trufen are just trying to make themselves sound more importat than little-f fans I’m not sure that explanation would make any more of a dent in their victim complex than GRRM’s.

    Actually, I think that the base of the Puppy complaint is that the Hugo belongs to them as much as anyone — that it belongs to all SFF fans. This is why they keep insisting that everyone should be allowed to vote on it without having to pay a [sic] “poll tax”.

    Which just isn’t true. The Hugo belongs to Worldcon fans. There’s no fee to nominate or vote. Nominating and voting are privileges which come with supporting and participating in Worldcon — which is something the Puppies have very clearly stated that they have no interest in doing.

    As BT says, “your club is not just broken, but in love with its own brokenness”. Okay, if that’s the case, BT, then why the hell are you trying to take away “our club”‘s award? If you don’t like “the club” and are not interested in being part of it, why don’t you just go off and make your own awards program?

  17. As BT says, “your club is not just broken, but in love with its own brokenness”. Okay, if that’s the case, BT, then why the hell are you trying to take away “our club”‘s award? If you don’t like “the club” and are not interested in being part of it, why don’t you just go off and make your own awards program?

    I’d like to be able to vote on the decisions of the Mormon church. I don’t want to be Mormon, or participate in any of their activities, but I want a say in how they operate. Does anyone think BT would be okay with that?

  18. If the answer is “no”

    You may be someone who is happy the latest crisis is past but wants to devote your time, energy and money towards your local SF community.

  19. I think the base of the Puppy complaint is they wanted the awards and they didn’t get them.

    Everything else is slippery. Their stated reasons keep shifting, their arguments don’t hold together logically, their justifications shift with the wind.

    No counterargument or laying out of facts or attempts at reaching out in fellow-fandom ever seems to sway them, so much so that it begins to appear that it is because none of that actually matters to them.

    They simply appear to want the awards, these awards. They do not seem willing to do the work to try to earn the awards honestly, and if they cannot get the Hugo Awards they have declared they want to smash them to pieces so no one else can either.

    If they have any other intention, it is not reflected in their actions or statements.

  20. @Scott Frazer: I didn’t look closely and doubt I’d understand it, but the solar system as subway map is groovy! 🙂 (Uh-oh, I hope I’m putting this comment in the correct thread; I sometimes save my comments to post at the end of reading comments and get…lost.)

    @Tasha & @Mark: Thanks – doesn’t sound like I’m missing much, except forgetting how much short fictions some folks read compared to me. (I should read more short fiction! Too easily distracted.)

  21. I think the base of the Puppy complaint is not that the Hugos “belong to them as much as anyone” but that the Hugos should belong to them and them alone, to hand out as party favors to their friends and mentors.

    That is what it looks like from the outside, anyway.

  22. @Tasha, best wishes for a quick procedure and recovery. Daily pain is a drag.

    @Tintinaus, so Red Queen suffers instead from what I used to think of as the King problem. People are looking forward to the book so much that the publisher hardly bothers to run spellcheck on it, let alone any substantial editing process before publishing. Too bad! I’ll look for the other books and maybe I’ll appreciate this volume more. Thanks very much for the info!

  23. Sorry, I should have been clearer – I meant the base of the Puppy complaint about the word Fan-with-a-big-f specifically, not the more general campaign. Since the big sticking point seems to be that it is capitalised no possible explanation of why it is capitalised is ever going to satisfy them, because they see it as a claim to a higher status.

  24. Best wishes, Tasha.

    Ottawa was seabed for quite a long time, and the local sedimentary rocks were used for retaining walls in our neighborhood park, so we’ve actually done some successful fossil-hunting on visits to the playground.

  25. @Meredith:

    I don’t think it’s even that. It’s that they see a higher status club that they’re not in. It’s simple jealousy. They don’t care about the club itself. Whether the club lets them in or the club goes away, the important thing is that they can feel like the… erm, top dogs. At least, until they find another club that looks like it has higher status than them.

  26. RedWombat: Rogue innards…. I hope Tasha recovers and can stop dealing with those as soon as possible.

    But in a poetic sense, “rogue innards” is an awfully funny turn of phrase.

  27. I like it rogue innards unfortunately to deal wit th all of those I’d need a brand new body. Getting rid of the current urgent rogue innard is taking more work than expected. Currently I have a consultation with a surgeon on March 10th. I’m hoping she will get my scan early next week and decide the admin staff didn’t take me seriously enough.

    I tried a few other avenues today and they were all dead ends. I think I was 8 or 9 when I first wished for my brain to be implanted into a robot or a healthy clone or just some other healthy body. Those wishes have increased with age. I think part of my attraction to SFF is the scientific possibilities that would fix me.

  28. I’m copying over a comment I left on Hlavaty’s supergee, re the Lemmy/Chalker connection:

    Chalker wrote a lot about physical and mental transformation and identity in his books. Sometimes this made reading too much of his work in too short a period feel repetitive. I’ve thought about producing a list of “The Essential Jack Chalker”; these are the books I’d probably include:

    MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS — the first book works fine as a standalone; reading further books in the series started to drag for me, and I never finished the complete set.

    DANCERS IN THE AFTERGLOW — Planetary invasion story inspired by the Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot takeover of Cambodia; some pretty disturbing stuff included.

    THE DEVIL’S VOYAGE — historical novel about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in the last days of WWII, and the clusterfuck that led to hundreds of sailors left in shark-infested waters for days without rescue.

    I’ve heard people express high regard for WEB OF THE CHOZEN, but that’s one of the Chalker books I haven’t read.

    Chalker also wrote occasional humourous fantasy in the UNKNOWN vein: AND THE DEVIL WILL DRAG YOU UNDER and THE RIVER OF DANCING GODS; the latter book takes place in a fantasy universe where the world’s elementary rules are based on the IRS tax code. (As with the Well of Souls series, the sequels weren’t as enjoyable.)

    In non-fiction, Chalker’s best known for his AN INFORMAL BIOGRAPHY OF SCROOGE MCDUCK.

    Rick Lynch, in a follow-up comment, reminded me Chalker’s short story “Dance Band On The Titanic” was a Hugo-nominee.

  29. Rev. Bob – thanks for the tips! I’m not an Amazon user, but I’ve begun just keeping the Viggle Store open in another tab so I can search for authors/works as I stumble across recommendations and mentions, then bookmark or otherwise make note of any resulting useful purchase pages. Just discovered Ursula’s “Nurk” is in their ebooks and “Castle Hangnail” in audio. Squee! And a WHOLE bunch of books that have been getting mentioned here, like “The Mechanical” and “Afterparty” and “The Slow Regard of Silent Things.” And etc.

    An imprint called Star Books seems to be pushing a lot of classic short fiction. Getting caught up on my Lord Dunsany, and finally discovering Leigh Brackett for myself. And there’s a few in there from Book View Cafe, like Alma Alexander’s “AbductiCon” and more, and… (searches) …yes, a whole bunch of Ursula LeGuin’s and Vonda McIntyre’s works. I am very fond of all things Book View Cafe.

    Managed to max out today, partially because it was 10x day for HGTV, but more thanks to a 100pt ad for Supergirl that kept coming up between trivia questions.

    Anyway, this has been a tremendous resource. Thank you for introducing me to it!

  30. @Nicole:

    Glad to be of service. I ran into a snag with a couple of the HGTV 10x shows, not getting the bonus points from them, but I checked into ’em before 8am EST via audio samples and got a nice jump on today’s tally. (The six 100-point CBS ads didn’t hurt, either!) I’ve got about 3000 points banked so far today, and I’ve already got the answers for tonight’s trivia set up; that’s another 4800. That leaves 4200 to account for in order to max out, and I’m confident some more of those CBS ads will pop back up around prime time. If nothing else, I can usually get an ad with each music check-in, and 20 of those combos comes out to 2400 points. That would leave 1800 to score through other means, which really isn’t that much. Three hours of primetime HGTV takes care of a big chunk of it. If I get really desperate, I can hit Wetpaint and see if they have any new 50-point clips; you can play those ten times each for a relatively quick 500 points.

    The real trick is juggling the trivia. Of tonight’s three movies, one starts early and will mostly end before the other two start – so that’s easy. At 9pm Eastern, though, I’ll be bouncing between three movies for about half an hour (when the first movie ends), when I can drop down to an easier two. I keep the answer keys on a text note on my iPad, so I just slide it out from the right-hand side as I need it. If two questions are so close together that I can’t answer one, I note the timestamp next to it and come back to it on Mountain or Pacific time. (That’ll definitely happen with the first 9pm questions, as they start simultaneously.) I delete each answer from the list as I score it, so the cheat sheet gets shorter and easier to navigate as the night goes on. Once you get the rhythm, it’s kind of fun to surf the timing…

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