(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.
(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. ]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@Meredith
I think it’s based on this
As a passage it doesn’t work very well without his earlier discussion of what he thinks a big-F Fan is:
Mauser talking bobbins again.
Oooh, having an arguement with GRRM, he’s wearing big boys pants now.
And that’s the thing – there’s nothing wrong with Martin’s terminology except that there small f fan and capital F Fan in there that the Puppies can be willfully obtuse about.
I don’t go to SF conventions very often, I talk about comics and TV and movies and books online, but I play no real part in the organised Irish SF fandom. By Martin’s standards I’m a “reader” or a “fan”. So what? I have my interests, hobbies and extracurricular activities that take up my free time (such as being involved in the Irish tabletop gaming scene, including running events at cons). I choose what my level of interaction is.
Just like with Irene Gallo’s comments, the Puppies are assuming a hostile intent that’s clearly not there to further their “us vs them” mentality. I discovered a great term to describe this the other week: Martyrbation.
@Lorcan Nargle
Absolutely. The only problem with what he says it that it’s too easy to misrepresent.
@Lorcan Nagle
The whole comment is here, and certainly sounds like the commenter went to look in person, but as I said: I can’t see anything that looks like that so I’m either missing something obvious or Eric is, hm, wearing Puppy-tinted glasses.
The thread in which GRRM discusses the meaning of Fan is here. The closest I can find is where a Puppy says:
GRRM says:
Which… Does not explicitly says that people who primarily use libraries can’t be fans, let alone very explicitly, and only in the most negative, paranoid perspective possible could assume that he even implicitly meant library users aren’t fans. Especially since you’d have to ignore the next sentence, which says this:
Which, to me, quite explicitly says that reading in general is not required to be a Fan, so why would visiting the library rather than purchasing make you ineligible?
Sometimes Puppy logic and negative assumptions about people who oppose slating make me want to scream.
ETA: Ha! Ninja’d by Mark. 🙂
I misread your original post, I thought you were saying Torgersen had said that based on something a commenter had said.
A question about Hugos eligibility: Some magazines such as F&SF have an issue cover dated January 2016 that came out in December. Are those issues eligible in the cover date year or the preceding one?
@rcade:
I’m pretty sure it’s listed date of publication.
I have nothing to contribute right now except Rest in Peace Lemmy.
Also that I really love the scroll title today. I’ve been fascinated (some may say obsessed) with Alice for basically my entire life, so any callout to the Alice stories or Lewis Carroll is generally a good thing.
The WSFS constitution says:
Yeah, everything saying January on the cover is going in my “2016 to read” folder. It’s a pity there’s still so much in the 2015 one.
With the exception of some novels I still want to get to, I may have to be pragmatic and just guillotine the 2015 tbr on Jan 1st. I’ve read plenty of 2015 short works, but the problem is that there’s always more.
(The chances of me sticking to that given the power of F770 recs are about the same as me sticking to any New Years resolutions involving chocolate, but hey)
@Rev. Bob: I bought that bundle for Lumberjanes (people keep talking about how great it is… it’s not entirely my cuppa but it’s a nice, fun read) and also because I saw a comic adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep hiding in there too.
I shall check out Irredeemable soon – perhaps as my first 2016 read.
I liked Jemisin’s reviews. The short-roundup form seems tough to pull off.
For those who liked Fritz Leiber’s “Our Lady of Darkness” (1977), he published a slightly earlier short story reworking some of his materials in the Halloween 1976 edition of the San Francisco alt-weekly The Berkeley Barb. This recent digitisation will probably be the first time this 1300 word kinda-prequel has been available to read – “Stonehenge 94101” has never been reprinted, since it was obviously superseded by his novel and it isn’t even featured in most of Leiber’s bibliographies and checklists:
http://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=d&d=BFBJFGD19761029.1.11&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN—————1
For those interested in the Young People Read Old SF project, thus far the four stories I have sent out were “Who Goes There?”, “A Martian Odyssey”, “Vintage Season” and “Nightfall”.
(4) JANUARY FRIGHT SALE. – I don’t want the bedding, but I kind of want a Hawaiian shirt made out of that pattern.
(7) BUSINESS SECTION – Surprised he felt the need to correct comments made by his weirdo stalker. If anything all it probably did was make that guy feel excited that the object of his bizarre affection noticed him. In anime nerd meme terms his senpai noticed him!
@Matt Y:
I would not dream of second-guessing the strategies used by the very stable and sensible Scalzi to deal with his stalker.
Nor do I think the stalker’s feelings in the matter, pro or con, should in any way be a consideration in what Scalzi chooses to do.
So Vox Day is guest-starring at one of my favorite blogs. Comment section should get interesting.
@James: Looking forward to responses on those!
@Peace: Not only is Ken Hite a very talented writer, he’s a good human being, generous, encouraging, helpful, the whole deal. I keep getting fresh reasons to be glad we know each other.
He once delivered what’s still one of my favorite nerd jokes. I’d posted to LiveJournal about the welcome end of a run of insomnia with a good night’s sleep. His response: “Word on the street is that it knits up the raveled brow of care.” I wanted to live on that street.
Peace Is My Middle Name –
Not second guessing or attempting to state what he should or shouldn’t do, just was surprised such nonsense even elicited a response. Don’t see what was unclear about that in what I said? His clarifications on the matter were fun to read though and I look forward to him continuing to destroy SFF for years to come.
Matt Y: Not second guessing or attempting to state what he should or shouldn’t do, just was surprised such nonsense even elicited a response.
Eh. Not disagreeing with you, really, but it started on Twitter, and I think that Scalzi rather enjoys pointing and laughing at people on Twitter. That it escalated to a Whatever post is probably due as much to other people responding as anything else–and/or just a bit of holiday fun for him. Scalzi wasn’t actually “correcting” anyone, it seems to me, so much as saying something like “geeze, what a stupid comment.”
@Matt Y:
I’m sorry. That came off more snappish than I intended.
Just finished reading The girl with all the gifts. Zombies aren’t usually my thing but this was pretty good. Though it didn’t resolve my big problem with zombies—what will they live on once they’ve eaten everybody?
I found a trove of old Year’s Best Science Fiction volume at the used bookstore. Decided not to just buy them all ay once and instead ration myself to one at a time. So when I finish the volume I bought, I can go back for another!
For any filers lucky enough to be close to Dorset, England right now, opportunity knocks:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/12072425/Fossil-hunters-flock-to-Jurassic-coast-after-cliff-fall.html
@Amina
I recently finished The Girl with All the Gifts too. I thought the middle kind of dragged but the ending was excellent.
Other recent reads:
The Red Queen I didn’t care for this. I found the main character to be incomprehensible. Early in the book, she is willing to risk her life to help her loved ones and a few chapters later, she is able to provide real help to them and all she does is complain. Of course, she’s a teenager so this may be realistic but I found it tiresome. YMMV
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street Really enjoyed this but agree with @Phil regarding some of the story elements, particularly around the female lead.
House of Shattered Wings Great world building but didn’t really care about the characters. Wonderful descriptions. Not sure if I will read the next one or not.
Peace Is My Middle Name –
No worries, sorry if my initial post came off as saying what he should be doing.
Mary Frances –
Ah, that makes sense. I follow him on Twitter but have mostly just paid attention to when there’s a kitten picture. Priorities!
Is jealous.
At least Scalzi has a good sense of humor about it.
Finished Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong. It was OK. The characters were a bit more than cardboard (I’d say 2.5 D instead of 2 D), but all in all, it just wasn’t that great. More than a bit heavy handed even if it had a message I liked.
Tea With Black Dragon by R.A. McAvoy I finished last night and I had to tell my wife what a delightful little book. Partly because it was published when I was in my teens and it did a fairly good job of capturing the feel of the times. And the world. Mostly because Mayland Long and Martha MacNamara are so alive.
Thanks to all the Filers that suggested it!
Now off to Howl’s Moving Castle which I’m reading and trying to decide if I need to buy a copy for my 9 year old girl.
@Darren – He’s The Voxxinator. He will voxxinate you… against science! And immigrants!
Orac on Vox on vax? Priceless – [grabs popcorn]
@Rev. Bob: Congrats on the book haul via Viggle! 😀 I always like hearing about book acquisitions. I’m trying to remind myself that getting 9 books for Xmas – 8 from my list! -means I should spend my book-obsession time reading them, not reading reviews/checking prices/etc. We’ll see how long that lasts. 😉
Anyway, I hope you enjoy The Goblin Emperor; I did. Regarding Lumley, I believe I got a couple of his books free somewhere (World Fantasy book bag? SubPress box o’ random books?), but I’m not into horror, so they’ve languished on a shelf. So I know basically nothing about his work.
@Kyra: Yay, great to read your mini-review of Afterparty. I haven’t gotten to it yet. (blush)
@Meredith: Interesting Dr. Who “longest running companion” info, thanks!
Submission for tomorrow (or Friday’s) title: Let scrolled acquaintance be forgot…
Doh! I mean Should scrolled acquaintance be forgot!
Matthew Johnson: I like it!
But haven’t I used it before, out of season?
Very sad about Lemmy passing away.
I have a small Lemmy story that comes to mind because of the Moorcock comment. About twenty years ago my cousin , a song writer, invited me to go to a party with him because he was expecting to need to be poured into a container and carried home and I do not drink. As soon as we walked in I saw Lemmy was there and I thought of going over and gushing a bit but there were a lot of people around him. However as the night wore on it turned out my cousin was right and there were less and less people upright.
So I took a chance to walk over and say hello to him. I told him how much I liked Motorhead and Hawkwing and he pushed a guy out of the seat beside him onto the floor and told me to sit down. So after I ran down I thought to ask if he kept in touch with Moorcock at which point he started cursing at some length. The different answers might have been because he was less drunk during the interview.
We talked for almost three hours mainly because we were the only two people capable of speech left. Lemmy said that he had barely managed to drink enough to take the edge off and I was drinking orange juice. Surprisingly he talked about horses most of the time.
Thanks for the story, Magewolf.
My reading lately: The novellas within the Expanse universe. Currently midway or so through the last (The Vital Abyss). May take a break from that universe before continuing with “Abaddon’s Gate”. But then again, maybe I won’t.
Headline: “Vox Vexes Kitten King”
(I was trying to come up with one where each word had an X but couldn’t; if there was a Fujita Scale for colds mine would be at least a 3 and I’m not very creative.)
Sorry, folks, it’s the year 3632 and we still haven’t cured the common cold!
@Pogonip:
Nice try anyway. Hope you feel better.
Are you newish? I don’t recall seeing you around. In which case, welcome to the community.
I only ask because I’m an old-time “Pogo” fan and your screen name attracted my notice.
@darren If only I wasn’t flying to the US tomorrow for what promises to be a very busy month (yes, it’s CES time again). Still the weather should be doing good things for my favourite ammonite beach in Somerset, where you can find mother-of-pearl ammonites by the armful…
In books I finally finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Such a dark book, the political equivalent of Grimdark. Straight onto my personal Hugo Shortlist.
Now for something lighter I am reading James S A Corey’s Han Solo novel. It’s a wonderful romp through the Star Wars universe just after the Battle of Yavin. It’s got the same joy of exploring a storytelling space that I remember from Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. Fun.
Recent reading: The Fifth Season. Hadn’t read a Jemisin book but really enjoyed this one. Interesting world, creative set up, cool magic system that feels really tied to the world and society it’s in. Gonna check out her other work now.
The Library At Mount Char. Really liked it, just when I thought I had it figured out it switched on me again. Brutal and bleak in parts, but the end message was a nice one.
Reading the Nightvale book, have out the sequel to The Mechanical, and next month features the next Alloy of Law book, Mieville book, City of Blades(!) and a brand new TIM POWERS book(!!). Scalzi’s going to have to work faster to kill SFF because I want to just get caught up on all the good stuff someday.
My friend Dave Chalker was especially chuffed about the first news item in today’s roundup.
Gee, only mothe-of-pearl? You poor, opalized-ammonite deprived person!
https://www.google.com/search?q=ammolite&biw=911&bih=413&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiW4d7WtYTKAhVC9WMKHekYAeEQ_AUIBygC
(Okay, I’m not where I can find any type, unless you count Ebay.)
One could go with the straightforward Scrolled Lang Syne?
(I’ll put in a hope for Three Scrolls Day on the 6th…or maybe Epixelphany…)
Its nice to find fellow Ammonite fans, here. 🙂
Or The Night They Scrolled Old Pixel Down.
Which… is in no sense a seasonal song. Or even Scottish.
Thank you, Peace…Name. I leave remarks occasionally. I don’t know a lot about science fiction but read File 770 every day in the (so far futile) hope that Mike will be able to announce that George RR Martin will finally finish his damn series. That thing’s lasted longer than some countries’ names.
Well, I got in my time machine and jumped ahead to the year 7410 and there’s still no cure.
The old scroll now away is fled, the new scroll, it is pixelled.
With the exception of some novels I still want to get to, I may have to be pragmatic and just guillotine the 2015 tbr on Jan 1st.
That’s the approach I’m taking. I want to feel like I’m ahead in 2016, not woefully behind in 2015. I’ll save the rest of my 2015 reading for Hugo nominees.