(1) THE PERFECT MATCH. Fathom Events is bringing Starship Troopers back to theaters – but only so the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 can give the movie everything it deserves.
The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000® are bringing The Best of RiffTrax Live back to select cinemas nationwide. On Thursday, January 14, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a re-broadcast of their hilarious take on Starship Troopers.
Originally riffed in August 2013, this fan favorite features the guys hurling their wisecracking humor at what has become the king of modern campy sci-fi epics.
(2) THREE BODY. President Barack Obama spent his holiday vacation in Hawaii reading these four books reports Newsweek.
His reading list includes: The Whites by Richard Price, Purity by Jonathan Franzen, The Wright Brothers by David Mccullough, and The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
(3) DEMENTO AND CRAZY-EX. Joe Blevins at Splitsider fills you in on everything from Dr. Demento to YouTube in “2015: The Year Comedy Music Broke”.
And then there are the vloggers and other YouTube stars, the ones who make their livelihoods from the site. It’s an under-reported phenomenon, but original comedic music has played a huge role in the success of many of them. Popular channels like Epic Rap Battles of History, Axis of Awesome, and Schmoyoho, all of which regularly rack up millions of views per video, are essentially delivery systems for new comedy music, even if few would think to lump them in with the acts getting airtime on The Dr. Demento Show. They’re all playing the same basic sport, though, just in different arenas. The comedy duo Smosh, long one of YouTube’s most-subscribed channels, mostly concern themselves with sketches, but they do enough songs to warrant inclusion here. Even vlogger Jenna Marbles occasionally does a musical number (usually about her doted-upon dogs) as part of her weekly video series. If there is a way to make money doing funny music in 2015, it is to partner with YouTube, nurture a subscriber base, and never really define yourself as a comedy or worse yet “novelty” music artist. Meanwhile, none of these people are getting much validation from traditional media, including pop radio. Whether that constitutes a problem is debatable.
(4) CHAOTIC NEUTRAL. Brandon Kempner has declared Chaos Horizon ineligible for the 2016 Hugos.
After careful thought, I’m declaring that Chaos Horizon (and myself) will not accept a Hugo nomination in 2016. Because Chaos Horizon reports so extensively on the numbers related to the Hugo process, I feel it would be a conflict of interest to be part of that process in any way.
Since I do reporting and analytical work here at Chaos Horizon, it’s important from me to maintain some journalistic distance from the awards. I couldn’t do that if I were nominated. This is consistent with my past practice; I haven’t voted in the Hugos since I began Chaos Horizon. Simply put, the scorekeeper can’t play the game.
(5) TANGENTIAL HISTORY. The “Tangent Online 2015 Recommended Reading List” says it contains 417 works: 355 short stories, 46 novelettes, and 16 novellas.
Its long, error-filled endorsement of Sad Puppies 4 begins with this generous rewriting of history —
Sad Puppies was the name given to a small group of fans four years ago who had become disgruntled after seeing many of the same names on the final Hugo ballot, year after year. It was spearheaded that first year by SF author Larry Correia, who decided to put forth a list of authors and works he believed were being overlooked. He recused himself from being recommended or being nominated.
The Sad Puppies name was given these campaigns by their creator, Larry Correia, who started them to stir support for his own Hugo prospects. He was successful enough to be nominated three times; it was only the third he declined. Nor did he recuse himself from Sad Puppies 3, but supported the SP3 slate with his novel on it, only at the end suprising his fans by taking himself off the ballot.
(6) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WEARY. The respected Lois Tilton begins “2015 Reviews in Review” at Locus Online with a sigh:
Lovers of SFF can only deplore the late year’s outbreak of divisiveness and animosity, with the hostile parties displaying a willingness to destroy the genre in order to deny it to the other. Calls for unity go unheard while the partisans make plans to continue the hostilities in the upcoming year. The only bright spot is that ordinary readers appear to have largely ignored the entire thing.
(6) FLICK ANALYSIS. Ethan Mills shares his picks “2015 Movies: The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre” at Examined Worlds.
I’ve been trying to decide between Fury Road and The Force Awakens as my favorite movie of the year. Both movies have ultra-competent female protagonists, although Fury Road could certainly have done better on the racial diversity front. While Fury Road gives us pulse-quickening action and a fully realized post-apocalyptic world, Star Wars gives us all the fun of a real Star Wars movie.
Click to see who wins.
(7) READY-TO-WEAR TBR PILE. And if you have a week free, Fantasy Faction will tell you about the Top 50 fantasy novels of 2015.
It’s getting harder and harder to be a well-read and up-to-date reviewer in Fantasy these days. It’s also getting incredibly difficult to order the best of the year lists. I know that complaining that too many good books are being released probably isn’t an argument I will get much support for, but wow oh wow were there too many damned good books published in 2015, right? RIGHT!?
It’s not just the quality of the books, but the diversity of the Fantasy genre worth applauding too. Take Empire Ascendant, The Grace of Kings, The Vagrant and Uprooted – these aren’t books being based on proven and familiar formulas
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born December 31, 1945 – Connie Willis
https://twitter.com/EdMcKayinFay/status/682559367087013888
(9) MURDER BY DEATH. “The Medieval Revenant: Restless, Dead, and Out for Revenge” by Matt Staggs at Suvudu. Interesting paragraph – perhaps the literati around here can tell whether it’s accurate.
Unlike us, medieval men and women didn’t make much of a distinction between various kinds of the living dead. There were revenants who fed on blood, and vampires who fed on anything but blood. Sometimes the restless dead took physical form, and other times they were immaterial spirits, like ghosts. (The zombies stayed down in Haiti, and those poor souls didn’t eat anyone.) Because of these reasons, classifying a story as one about a revenant rather than a ghost, vampire, or other restless dead thing can be difficult. That said, we can draw upon these tales for some ideas of what revenants did and why they rose from the dead in the first place.
(10) MISSING YOU. Journey Planet #27 takes as its theme “Fan History – To Absent Friends.” Download it here.
We look at the impact of those who have come before us, and what they meant to the evolution of Fandom, and of fans. Wonderful stories of legends like Bruce Pelz, Peggy Rae Sapienza, Jerry Jacks, Mikey Jelenski, Fred Duarte, Gary Louie, Robert Sacks, Poul Andersen, Mick O’Connor, Dave Stewart, James White, Ted Johnstone, Joe Mayhew, LeeH, Jay Haldeman, George Flynn, and many many more, help us understand the legacies that led us to where fandom is today.
It was lovely to learn more about so many people that we had heard of but sadly never met, and to learn about people new to us that, unfortunately, we will never have an opportunity to meet. Our experience as fans is enriched by knowledge, and we hope that you will all have a similar experience reading the issue. Produced by guest editors Helen Montgomery & Warren Buff, plus editors Chris Garcia & James Bacon.
(11) BOOKLESS. Is making these announcements a new trend? Greg Van Eekhout is another author explaining why he won’t have a new book out in 2016.
First of all, I won’t have a new novel out. That’s mostly because I didn’t complete one in time to have a novel out in 2016. From the time a novel is sold, a publisher usually needs at least nine months and often more than a year to get it ready for release. And by “ready” I mean not just editing and printing, but also positioning it with a marketing campaign and finding an advantageous slot for it in the release schedule. So, for me to have a book out in 2016, I would have had to finish writing it sometime in late 2014 or early 2015, so an editor could edit it, so I could revise it, so an art director and book designer and cover artist could make it pretty, and so on. Unfortunately, taking care of two elderly parents was more than a full-time job that didn’t leave much physical or emotional energy for new writing.
(12) EXPANSE RETURNING. Lizard Brain shares Syfy’s press release announcing that The Expanse has been renewed for a second season.
Currently airing on Syfy Tuesdays at 10PM ET/PT, THE EXPANSE has garnered strong multiplatform viewership since its December 14 debut, with 4.5 million viewers sampling the first episode on Syfy.com, On Demand and digital outlets prior to the series’ linear premiere, and an average of 1.6 million P2+ linear viewers (L3) in its first three episodes.
(13) MISTER LISTER. Black Gate’s John ONeill amusingly comments —
Fortunately, the tireless John DeNardo works much harder than me. He doesn’t go to Christmas parties, or watch movies. Ever. Or sleep, apparently. No, he read every single one of those Best SF & Fantasy of the Year lists. The ones that matter anyway…
— before guiding us to John DeNardo’s compilation of “The Best of the Best of 2015’s Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books” at Kirkus Reviews. There, De Nardo explains:
o I used 8 different sources to arrive at the aggregate, all of them specifically geared toward science-fiction and fantasy books: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and course Kirkus Reviews.
o I only included books that garnered three or more mentions. That yielded a list of seven books, which seems like a good size. That said, I also include below a list of “Honorable Mentions” that appeared on two lists.
(14) SNOPES CLEARS HARLAN. Snopes says a famous Harlan Ellison story never happened/
Claim: Writer Harlan Ellison was rebuffed after making a crude remark to a tall blonde woman at a party.
Status: False.
In Snopes’ example, Isaac Asimov spins out an entire anecdote, but the gist is —
…Harlan approached one of these giraffelike women, fixed her with his glittering eye, and said, “What would you say to a little fuck?” And she looked down at him and said, “I would say, ‘Hello, little fuck.'”
Snopes says this is nothing more than a riff off one of the jokes in Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke first published by Grove Press in 1968.
I remember hearing the joke whispered between fans in the early 1970s. It must have been freshly purloined from Legman at the time.
(15) HALLOWEEN STAMPS. Naturally, horror news blog Dread Central is more interested in the 2016 Jack O’Lantern stamps that will be issued for Halloween. I skipped over those to avoid spoiling the symmetry of the space and Star Trek theme in yesterday’s post. But they are lovely!
(16) TREK ACTORS CASH IN. “Star Trek Actor Salaries Just Beamed Up With Big Raises” at Celebrity Net Worth says Paramount will pay big to hang onto the cast of its franchise films.
…In order for the latest Star Trek film series to “live long and prosper,” Paramount needed to keep Pine and Quinto on board as Spock and Kirk…
Pine only made $600 thousand for 2009’s Star Trek, which grossed over $385 million. For 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness, Captain Kirk made $1.5 million of the $467 million gross. Before a new deal was struck, he was scheduled to make $3 million for the upcoming Star Trek Beyond. Thanks to a lucrative new deal, Pine will now make $6 million for the third Star Trek film, which is double what he was supposed to make, and will be 10 times what he made for the first film in the series!
The new deal features big raises and much better performance bonuses for the cast. Paramount only wanted to give the ship mates nominal raises, but ended up giving in for the better of the franchise. Thanks to last minute negotiations, the production house ended up adding somewhere between $10 and $15 million to the movie’s budget to pay the stars of the show. As part of the new deal, Pine and Quinto have been granted an option and will now be a part of the 4th film in the J.J. Abrams directed series.
(17) SKY TRASH. Almost 20,000 pieces of space debris are currently orbiting the Earth. This visualisation, created by Dr Stuart Grey, lecturer at University College London and part of the Space Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, shows how the amount of space debris increased from 1957 to 2015, using data on the precise location of each piece of junk. (Via Chaos Manor.)
(18) KEEP THE FAITH. James H. Burns writes:
For the end of the year, or really the start of the new, and in the spirit of the season, one of the greatest minutes ever in the history of filmed science fiction… Courtesy of J. Michael Straczynski, and the good folks at, and on, Babylon 5….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, James H. Burns, Brian Z., and Sean Wallace for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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@Dawn I’m uncomfortable with psychiatric diagnoses being made on the Internet and wish people would stop blaming bad behavior on mental illnesses. Many of us with mental illnesses are perfectly capable of behaving appropriately.
Rape jokes are never appropriate IMHO. I don’t wish on my worst enemies what’s been done to me. Rape jokes trivialize the real harm rape.
I think when ones argument is better made when one doesn’t go down to the level of the person the are criticizing.
Despite the occasionally poor choice of imagery, that Scott Lynch rant was stirring stuff. Good to finally hear from an eye witness.
@Robinreid
I’ve run into many of the type myself. It’s Wright’s peculiar obsession with it that is notable.
Stevie,
I can live with the disappointment of never winning an award I didn’t want and wasn’t in contention for!
Nicholas
It is interesting that your perfectly reasonable explanation of why Larrie wasn’t in the running for an award which is genuinely coveted was completely ignored by him; instead we have his conviction that reason has nothing to do with it.
I doubt that there is any way to deflect his gaze from his navel.
Except that it was not an eyewitness account but technically hearsay as Hines himself wasn’t present at the incident but was reporting accounts of those (including Laura Mixon) who were there.
@Soon Hee
Psst. That’s twice you’ve called Scott Lynch “Hines”.
robinreid wrote: “I will add I’m side-eyeing Bruce Arthurs’ description of the Lynch post as “bitch-slaps” as well.”
I will admit to being a little uncertain about the propriety of that particular word-choice myself. But it seemed the most -effective- choice for describing Lynch’s post, in the meaning of “delivering a stinging blow to someone in order to humiliate them”.
It was meant in a non-gendered way, but yeah, the term carries a lot of gendered baggage. (Though some sources suggest it was first used to mean a woman slapping a man.) I’m open to alternative suggestions.
@Vasha
Eric handles that part of the operation, not me. 🙂 But he claims there are stories that Sam says are going on his Hugo list (so we call those equivalent to our 5-star ratings) and others that he highly recommends (which we treat as four stars).
By the way, I want to brag that I wrote over 600 short-fiction reviews last year, covering all the short fiction published by Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com, as well as all the original fiction in nine anthologies. All since we got back from Sasquan.
http://www.rocketstackrank.com/search/label/Ratings
There’s no way to know if RSR is making a difference, but I’m hopeful we’ll see at least a few hundred more people making short-fiction nominations than last year. Maybe not enough to beat the slates, but enough to make EPH work come 2017.
@bloodstone75,
Oh crap! I did! *head*desk*
I apologise to both Scott Lynch & Jim Hines for mixing them up. I have no excuse.
(This wave of embarrassment, I hope it doesn’t take long to pass. It’s quite the way to start a New Year.)
@Soon Lee must be all that new year partying 😉
Vasha –
I also just read Quarter Days and really liked it. The magic system was great and I enjoyed the interactions between the characters. Thanks for recommending it.
I set a goal for myself at the beginning of December to read at least one novella a week until the deadline for Hugo nominations in March. This makes the seventh one I’ve read that’s eligible for the 2016 Hugos, which is great.
@Morris: perhaps West Coast fans whispered it b/c they were more likely to have to share space with Harlan. It wasn’t whispered by the time I heard it in the 80’s, although nobody told it in front of Harlan. And even if it isn’t true, it should be.
Scott Lynch: while ordinarily I would object to prison rape commentary, it is so appropriate here; it isn’t what Scott wants, it’s what JCW’s rantings come across as. Lynch isn’t really using it as a cheap joke.
Also, it sounds like Mrs. JCW was the one doing the assaulting! PNH said clearly that he did not wish to speak to her, and then moved away. At which point she followed him and continued to try to talk to him. The literal description of harassment! Patrick would have been well within his rights under the code of conduct to report her to security, though he opted not to. No means no, Jagi!
We can see who’s coming off as the better person here. And the better Christian. PNH turned the other cheek repeatedly.
Lynch points out how JCW contradicts himself in every other sentence, but neglected to mention how he contradicts himself in TWO WORDS of his favorite phrase:
“Christ-hating Crusaders”
An oxymoron of the finest order. Literally impossible.
I agree with Lurkertype about how the prison-rape reference is functioning here: it is an imputation of POV to JCW. I personally would’ve kept “bigger, meaner cellmate” but gone in a different direction for the rest. But the bigger issue is that Lynch’s story conforms with on-the-spot reports I’ve gotten, including one contemporaneous with the incident.
@Jim
I agree: things could have been done better but they pale into insignificance compared with what actually happened.
I do think the pharmaceutical reference is both insulting to people with mental illnesses, who nevertheless manage not to hate their fellow man with as much gusto as JCW does, PLUS it also does too much credit to JCW. JCW is (as far as we know) not suffering from any chemical imbalances. He’s an asshole all on his own, while being perfectly in his right mind. No mitigating circumstances for his bad behavior. And some mental problems cannot be helped with medication anyway, only therapy.
Now, if it were to turn out that he does suffer from one or more personality disorders that could benefit from medicine and/or therapy, that would be different. We could forgive his outbursts. But none of us are psychologists/psychatrists who have examined him, so we cannot at this time assert that narcissism, grandiosity, bi-polar, or any of the other array of ills to which brainflesh is heir causes him to behave like he does.
He might be just an asshole.
(I know several people with bipolar disorder who aren’t cruel even at their worst on either end. Ditto schizophrenia, major depression, anxiety. The ones who ARE jerks still are even when properly medicated. Untreated alcoholics are about the only ones I’ve met who are nice when sober and assholes when drunk, and that’s not fixable by meds either, just by stopping booze.)
Well put.
Two problems with ascribing JCW’s errors to illness or disability
1. it defames and stigmatizes others who don’t behave like him
2. it mischaracterizes what are failures of reasoning (both factual and ethical)
The second is important because it isn’t the physical state of JCW’s brain that is a problem but the dysfunctional qualities of his ideas, *which others then propagate and believe*.
Scott Lynch: Readers, anyone willing and able to provide documentation for Wright’s assertions is invited to mail me however many Big Chief tablets are required to contain their crayon scribblings on the subject.
*snort*
I read that whole pharmacology rant as hyperbole, myself, and not meant as a literal psychological profile; just a floridly extended version of “crazier than an outhouse rat”. A serious attempt at psychological diagnosis probably wouldn’t have made a comparison, unfavourable or otherwise, with a fictional character.
Re: PNH
It’s a difficult position as a partner to be in – I think the attempt was a genuine attempt to mend fences spurred by the sense that JCW was backing himself into a corner. Sometimes internal anxieties can blind one to external signalling. I would argue for compassion and not talks of violating the CoC here.
The problem is that a lot of cases of harassment come about because the harasser is anxious–often, anxious to be forgiven for previous harassment. Lamplighter may well have been feeling anxious that her husband was torpedoing his career; that still doesn’t make it okay for her to pursue someone who has made it plain he doesn’t want her company.
We can be compassionate over the difficult position Lamplighter found herself in and still acknowledge that what she was doing was harassment.
I would be more sympathetic to the attempts to talk to PNH at the party if:
1. She’d only tried once, twice at most and even then the second is pushing it.
2. She hadn’t been harassing him via email for some time beforehand and knew perfectly well that he Did Not Want to talk to her.
The second one, to me, says she should never have approached him at the party at all.
Scott Lynch: We’re not worthy. (With the caveats as listed above.)
However, anyone who isn’t a thrashing self-absorbed pee baby understands that the Hugos are a crap shoot born at the intersection of popular tastes and ever-shifting geographic adjustments to the pool of eligible voters.
I must admit, though, to wondering if he meant this to refer to John C Wright or Brad Torgersen.
Lurkertype,
I wouldn’t go that far: I think there’s a lot of scope for people to get out of town and teach the kids.
Though I suspect it won’t be very uplifting…
Shambles:
How about sympathy for the Nielsen Haydens as well? lurkertype didn’t say “PNH should have reported him for violating the code of conduct;” they pointed out that PNH could have, and refrained. What lurkertype pointed out is that PNH could have reported her, and refrained: that’s as much compassion as I think anyone can reasonably ask for.
Scott Lynch: anyone who isn’t a thrashing self-absorbed pee baby
redheadedfemme: I must admit, though, to wondering if he meant this to refer to John C Wright or Brad Torgersen.
Why is it an either-or?
Vicki Rosenzweig: What lurkertype pointed out is that PNH could have reported her, and refrained: that’s as much compassion as I think anyone can reasonably ask for.
PNH was far nicer than I would have been. If someone had e-mailed me numerous times, and I had chosen not to respond, thereby making it clear that I was not interested in interaction, and then they approached me repeatedly in person, I sure as hell would have been filing a harassment complaint with the concom.
The sort of arrogance demonstrated by Lamplighter, where someone assumes that they are entitled to attempt contact repeatedly regardless of the other person’s wishes, is pretty breathtaking, I think.
JJ: True. I guess, after reading Brad’s latest screed, that lovely phrase struck me as applying more to the latter than the former.
Reading recs: I ordered the March/April back issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction specifically to read Bao Shu’s novella, “What Has Passed Shall In Kinder Light Appear.” I’ve heard a lot about it, and wanted to check it out. I must say my reaction is rather “meh,” similar to the way I reacted to The Three-Body Problem (big on idea, extremely light on characterization), so I’m wondering if it’s just some peculiarity of Chinese SF.
Also: (spoilers) gur tvzzvpx bs guvf fgbel vf gung gur cebgntbavfg jnf obea ba gur avtug gur jbeyq jnf fhccbfrq gb raq: “fgenatr synfuvat yvtugf nccrnerq va gur fxl nyy bire gur tybor, nppbzcnavrq ol guhaqre naq yvtugavat.” Guvf vf arire rkcynvarq naq vf fbba qebccrq. Lrg gur nsgrerssrpgf ner gur ratvar bs gur fgbel, nf gur cebgntbavfg tebjf naq ntrf abeznyyl, va n jbeyq jurer gur gvzryvar bs uvfgbel vf abj ehaavat onpxjneqf. Rknzcyr: gur cebgnt jevgrf nobhg ybbxvat sbejneq gb frrvat Fgne Jnef VK nsgre gur svefg guerr zbivrf. Ur vf n fghqrag ng Gvnanazra Fdhner. Ur vf n zvqqyr-ntrq crefba qhevat gur Phygheny Eribyhgvba, naq tebjf byq nf gur Pbyq Jne ortvaf naq gur svefg juvfcrevatf ner urneq nobhg Uvgyre. Naq zl vapernfvatyl qvssvphyg fhfcrafvba bs qvforyvrs xrcg nfxvat gur dhrfgba: naq abobql abgvprq uvfgbel jnf erjvaqvat vgfrys? Abobql ortna gb cnavp, ernyvmvat gur ubeebef bs Jbeyq Jne VV jrer nobhg gb erivfvg gur jbeyq? Pbzr ba.
However, I did find a lovely little story by Brian Dolton, “This is the Way the Universe Ends: With a Bang.” This takes place uncounted eons in the future, close to the heat-death of the universe, involving entities that are about as far from human as you can get. Yet the author draws you in and makes you care about these entities.
I’ve decided to subscribe to both Asimov’s and Fantasy and Science Fiction for the coming year. Maybe they’re the old guard, but it still seems like a significant percentage of Hugo-listed (both long and short lists) stories are being drawn from them.
My take on the pharmaceutical bit of Lynch’s scree was that after already calling Wright a normal everyday liar about the Hugo “incident”, when Wright’s rhetoric dialed up to 13 there was nowhere else to go but delusional. Plus please note he put the words into the mouth of a man who is almost an archetype for those removed from reality to highlight the extremeness of Wright’s nuttery.
My favourite line of his was:
Re: PNH
Removing himself from the conversation was the best thing PNH could do; and he did have provocation to respond more negatively as others have pointed out. I am glad he did not.
Having just read a screed (and comments) by BT a bit ago, reading a follow-on one by SL left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s an impassioned defense of a friend and a razor-sharp takedown of JCW. But I tire of the negativity at this point no matter how well honed the phrase.
redheadedfemme: I’ve decided to subscribe to both Asimov’s and Fantasy and Science Fiction for the coming year. Maybe they’re the old guard, but it still seems like a significant percentage of Hugo-listed (both long and short lists) stories are being drawn from them.
Hey, I don’t care if something’s “old guard” or “new guard” or “avant garde”, if it’s quality, that’s all that matters. If I were retired with the time and money to read all the magazines, I’d have subscriptions to all of them — and read the free ones online as well.
As it is, I rely on the people who do extensive reading of the short fiction to point me to the good stuff, so that I can concentrate my short fic reading where I’ll get the biggest payback.
I look forward to reading your Asimov’s and F&SF recommendations. 🙂
There’s a particular reason I feel no inclination to cut Lamplighter any slack for good intentions, and it’s in what she said she was trying to tell Patrick. Her message, as she described it, was that her husband was willing to forgive Patrick. To put it mildly, this was not the highest priority Wright should have had with regard to anyone he’d been picking fights with. Certainly it is a message I’d have no time for, were it directed to me.
Does anyone have Lamplighter’s version of events?
Why do people keep calling Larry Correia a “SF writer” ? He writes fantasy.
Bruce Baugh: There’s a particular reason I feel no inclination to cut Lamplighter any slack for good intentions, and it’s in what she said she was trying to tell Patrick. Her message, as she described it, was that her husband was willing to forgive Patrick.
The other reasons I’m not feeling particularly inclined to cut her any slack: she’s never apologized publicly for harassing PNH, and her “correction” of JCW’s account of PNH’s so-called “assault” on her (item 3) was, to my view, rife with disingenuousness, and utterly lacking in any sort of acknowledgment of bad behavior on her own part.
@JJ: That too, certainly.
I don’t know that one should take JCW’S REPORT THAT Lamplighter was trying to “mend fences” at face value. His versions of events tend to be unusually self-serving.
@TheYoungPretender: I am an out queer woman living in rural Texas. Wright’s obsession does not seem all that extreme to me alas. Seems fairly typical of the type.
@redhededfemme, re: “What has passed” — Vg’f abg n er-eha orpnhfr crbcyr qba’g erzrzore gur shgher, vg’f whfg n irefvba bs uvfgbel va gur bccbfvgr beqre; V guvax gung gur cbvag vf fhccbfrq gb or gung beqre vf neovgenel naq gurer’f ernyyl ab fhpu guvat nf “cebterff”. N uvfgbevna jbhyq tb penml bs pbhefr gelvat gb svther bhg gur pnhfr-naq-rssrpg bs gur riragf ur yvfgf; gb gur aneengbe, gurl whfg cnff jvgubhg nccnerag pnhfr.
I have to say I don’t see why it’s so profound either. What about “La Héron” though, wasn’t that fun? I want more adventurws of those two clever characters!
July/August contains “The Body Pirate” which I had quite a discussion with Standback about, and we both agreed I deserved an award; and “Paradise and Trout”, which is similar to some of Mary Oliver’s poens concening the value of thinking of oneself as part of nature. Poetic is what I’d call it, not a wasted word.
Oh yeah, can somebody explain Alastair Reynolds’s “A Murmuration” to me? I get that gur fpvragvfg vf nyy nybar va n ehvarq jbeyq, qryhfvbanyyl erivrjvat ure bja cncre; ohg gurer zhfg or zber gb vg guna gung. Gur angher bs gur erfrnepu, qrfpevorq va fhpu qrgnvy, zhfg or eryrinag fbzrubj. Pyhr va gur cnentencu pbzcnevat gur frys-betnavmat fhoqbznvaf bs gur zhezhengvba gb uhzna zvaqf naq fbpvrgvrf? Fhccbfrq gb gryy hf fbzrguvat nobhg fbpvrgl, naq gur creirefvba bs gur rkcrevzrag fbzrguvat nobhg fbpvny pbyyncfr?
Lynch: Look, John C. Wright is, in all modesty, a tediously pious moralizer, one of the most tediously pious moralizers shitting indigestible paragraphs today.
::snicker::
Without trying to imply I think such a thing actually took place, knowing fans, one could imagine that somebody who had heard the joke sought out an opportunity to deliver the punchline, in the way life imitates art.
This is what I get for reading the comments chronologically backwards when I am trying to catch up….
RedWombat: I did a long post about the Truesdale petition when it was published in 2014, in case anyone is looking for background.
@Whoever rec’d Jack L. Chalker books in a recent Pixel Scroll, and anyone interested in checking out Chalker’s work: Phoenix Pick is having an ebook sale on various ebooks and series and set of series by Chalker, including name-your-own price. I enjoyed the first five (!) books of the “Well World” series back in the day, and listened to the first three on audiobook quite a while back and still enjoyed them; I hope they come out with #4 and #5 as audiobooks eventually.
http://www.phoenixpick.com/botm/Midnight.htm
I’m unclear whether Phoenix Pick uses DRM selling directly, but they sell at Smashwords without DRM, so that makes me think these direct deals don’t have DRM. But caveat emptor.
(17) SKY TRASH. Wow, that’s a lot of freaking space debris!
re: “bitch-slap”
Whether it refers to the slap a man delivers to a woman, or the slap a woman delivers to a man, the term still refers to the woman involved as a “bitch,” and not in any positive sense that I can see. I’d be happier if I encountered the phrase less in my daily life.
What’s wrong with “delivers a stinging blow” or “brings the smack-down”?
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: What’s wrong with “delivers a stinging blow” or “brings the smack-down”?
I prefer Trout slap.
@JJ:
Trout slaps are generally goofy indications of silliness. I would not consider that analagous to a “bitch slap.” “Smackdown” is closer.
What I took away from Scott Lynch is that we have a person with social phobia who struggled to post a text in defense of a friend and managed to do it, however long it took and regardless of how people would take it or the controversy it might start.
All the cudos to him.
“Smackdown”! Yes! That’s a word I could have used instead of “bitch-slap”, and avoided any gender issues altogether.. Dammit. Apologies for it not coming to mind when I wrote that comment.
There are times I could really use a time machine and a bottle of White-Out.