(1) DAMN THE SPOILERS, FULL SPEED AHEAD. Scott Timberg writes for Salon on “The art of ‘Archer’: ‘The arc of the character of Archer is really interesting’”. I’m told there are spoilers – but I rarely watch Archer so I read the profile anyway….
Oh, yeah, Archer’s favorite movie is what again?
He loves “Gator” and also “Smokey and the Bandit.” And there are references to “Deliverance” and “Hooper,” all of them.
I took this show originally as a kind of guilty pleasure for other retro straight guys who like single-malt scotch and ’50s Playboy and “Man Men.” But I’ve found gay men and left-leaning feminist women who love “Archer,” too.
It makes me wonder: Is this a show that heroizes Sterling Archer as the coolest cat ever or is it somehow a critique of toxic masculinity? Is he a sleek, Bond-like hero or a cross between a frat boy, a hedge fund asshole and a lacrosse bro?
I think it’s all of that. But I also think it’s up to each individual viewer; I would never tell anybody what to think about it. What I personally love about it is that it shows all sides of Archer, this character. On one hand, he definitely fits the image of the lacrosse bro. And then he has a moment where he says, “Pam, I think you’re my best friend.” There’s a real heart to this person.
He’s not a flat character at all. He definitely has blind spots, you know? And he definitely pretends to have blind spots. There’s a description of him as “willfully obtuse,” which I think is quite apt.
(2) PARALLAX VIEWS OF THE NEWS. “Cassini sends back intriguing pictures of Saturn from new ring-grazing orbit” says the Los Angeles Times.
Cassini’s cameras captured the latest images of the giant hexagon on Dec. 2 and 3, a few days after the spacecraft first began its new orbit on Nov. 30. Each side of that six-sided figure is about as wide as Earth. At the center, a giant storm swirls on the north pole. It’s a surprising structure, surrounded by Saturn’s smoother rings, and scientists have long wondered how it maintains its shape. (Saturn’s larger cousin, Jupiter, has no such shape at its northern pole.)
“Forget the Great Red Spot – Saturn has a hexagonal storm” reports the BBC. (Both articles have the same newly-released photos.)
The destructive ending being planned for Cassini is a result of the spacecraft having nearly exhausted its fuel.
But Nasa is also concerned about the small, yet important possibility that the probe will crash into one of Saturn’s moons at some point in the future.
Given that some of these bodies, such as Enceladus, are potential targets in the search for extra-terrestrial life, it has the potential to contaminate these bodies with terrestrial microbes borne on Cassini.
Starting from April, Cassini will begin its grand finale, in which it will make the first of 22 dives through the 2,400km gap between the planet and its innermost ring.
The spacecraft will make its final plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn on 15 September.
(3) FUND APPEAL. Katherine Kerr needs to rebuild her career so she can afford her husband’s care. More details on her Patreon site.
Yes, my author photo there looks a little grim. Here’s why. Six years ago, my much-loved husband developed early-onset Alzheimer’s dementia. As you can probably guess, this turned our lives upside-down. My writing career first faltered, then ground to a halt while I desperately tried to take care of him myself. Didn’t work — we now have a full-time live-in caregiver while I try to get my writing back on track. Our primary caregiver, VJ, is wonderful but he isn’t cheap, just worth every penny….
What I want to do is get my writing career back on track. I have a contract for a new book in the Deverry universe. I also want to write more short fiction. In the meantime, however, those bills make it hard to concentrate. I spend about $300 a week on food, basics, and utilities, plus even more on medical expenses. My current income falls short. Any help I can get is very very welcome. And thank you all very much.
(4) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #11. The eleventh of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for a flash fiction story from Stephanie Burgis, written specifically for the auction winner.
Today’s auction is for a brand new flash-fiction story written for you. That’s right, author Stephanie Burgis will write a story for the winner of the auction about any of the characters from her published novels – the winner gets to choose! You’ll let her know which character should be the protagonist, and Burgis will write it within a month of getting the commission. You can find all of her published works on her website.
Burgis reserves the right to share it with other readers later, but it will belong to the winner alone for the first month after she sends it to you.
(5) SWEDISH SF ARTIST LAUNCHES KICKSTARTER. There’s a new Kickstarter campaign for an RPG based on Simon Stålenhag’s art, “Tales from the Loop: Roleplaying in the 80s that never was”.
In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop.
Acclaimed scifi artist Simon Stålenhag’s paintings of Swedish 1980s suburbia, populated by fantastic machines and strange beasts, have spread like wildfire on the Internet. Stålenhag’s portrayal of a childhood against a backdrop of old Volvo cars and coveralls, combined with strange and mystical machines, creates a unique atmosphere that is both instantly recognizable and utterly alien.
Now, for the first time, YOU will get the chance to step into the amazing world of the Loop. With your help, we will be able to create a beautiful printed RPG book about the Tales from the Loop.
This game is our third international RPG, after the critically acclaimed Mutant: Year Zero and Coriolis – The Third Horizon. The lead writer is the seasoned Swedish game writer Nils Hintze, backed up by the entire Free League team who handle project management, editing, and graphic design.
(6) REPURPOSED HISTORY. The election of Donald Trump has made some people revise the history of the Puppy Wars of 2015 – can no one accurately remember what happened only last year? – to furnish a heroic example for the current resistance narrative. See — “Patrick S. Tomlinson Wants YOU To Fight The Power”.
Eventually, the intractable nature of the invaders became clear and a new strategy of opposition and containment emerged. To countermand the exploitation of the nomination rules slate voting represented, the equally devious, yet totally legitimate under the same rules, voting for “No Award” became the marching orders for the faithful.
And it worked. With a clear plan in place, our superior numbers and organizational skills kicked in and slapped the puppies’ poisoned pills out of five categories, doubling the number of times No Award had been given in the Hugo’s entire seventy-three-year history up to that point. I was sitting in the audience for the ceremony. It was electric.
And despite their whining in the aftermath about “burning down our own awards” the attack had been largely turned back. The very next year, puppy influence over the nominations had already begun to ebb, with fewer categories subject to full slating takeovers and fewer No Awards handed out as a result. More women and POC won major awards. And by next year, changes to the rules will see the threat recede even further in the future.
That is how in two short years we beat back the puppies, and that is the model we have to use now that the same sickness has metastasized onto our society, indeed all of Western Civilization. It’s easy to forget now, but the facts are the forces of fascism and intolerance are exactly like the hordes of GamerGate and the Puppies. They are loud, angry, aggressive, shameless, and without scruples.
But they are also a clear minority. As of this writing, more than two point three million more Americans had voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. More Americans voted for Democratic Senators. More Americans voted for Democratic Representatives in the House. It is only through exploitation of the rules in violation of the spirit of American democratic ideals that the forces of intolerance and bigotry maintain their majorities. This has been true for more than a decade. This makes them vulnerable to our superior numbers should we have the foresight and resolve to set aside our petty bickering and unify in an organized fashion and agree to a coherent plan of counterattack.
(7) POLISH FANZINE. For Eurocon this year the publishers of the Polish fanzine Smokopolitan produced an English-language edition, which includes two articles about fandom. You can download a .mobi or .pdf version here.
We proudly present our special English issue, created for Eurocon 2016 in Barcelona. Inside you will find short stories by, among others, Pawe? Majka, Andrzej Pilipiuk and Micha? Cholewa, as well as essays about many branches of speculative fiction in Poland
(8) GLENN IN HOSPITAL. Former astronaut and U.S. senator John Glenn reportedly has been hospitalized for the past week.
Hank Wilson with Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs said Wednesday that the 95-year-old Glenn is at the James Cancer Hospital, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has cancer.
Wilson said he didn’t have other information about Glenn’s condition, illness or prognosis.
Glenn apologized for his poor eyesight this year at the renaming of Columbus’ airport after him. He said then he’d lost some of his eyesight because of macular degeneration and a small stroke. Glenn had a heart valve replacement in 2014.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- December 7, 1925 – Future five-time Olympic gold medalist and movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in 150-yard free-style swimming.
- December 7, 1945 – House of Dracula shown for the first time. The film features four different actors in the role of Frankenstein’s Monster: Glenn Strange, Boris Karloff (via footage from The Bride of Frankenstein), Lon Chaney Jr. and his stunt double, Eddie Parker (via footage from The Ghost of Frankenstein).
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born December 7, 1915 — Leigh Brackett, a famed sf/f creator in her own right, as well as mentor and sometime collaborator/co-author for Ray Bradbury.
(11) ANOTHER BEST OF THE YEAR LIST. The list of 44 books in “NPR’s Best SFF of 2016” has “Something to outrage (or at least annoy) almost everyone, I expect….,” promises Chip Hitchcock.
(12) AMAZING STORIES, THE MAGAZINE. Today Amazing Stories highlights “’The Great Milo’ by David Gerrold”, one of the stories by established pros included in its issue along with winning stories from its Gernsback Writing Contest. The tag from Gerrold’s story is —
Never piss off a man who buys ink by the barrel.
(13) COMING TO A TBR PILE NEAR YOU. Nancy Palmer and Bertie MacAvoy agree – they loved Craig Russell’s Fragment.
Nancy Palmer reviewed it at her website.
…I ended up reading the whole thing, compulsively. It’s a slender volume. The story, however, is a big one.
Sometimes what’s scary about a thriller is its plausibility. One of the things speculative fiction writers do best is tell the truth sideways. And there’s a lot of truth here. Craig Russell’s near future ecological and political world are a little too easy to imagine as reality. It was a compelling, but uncomfortable read: I found myself reading faster as the story progressed, hoping there might be some way to avert disaster. Maybe something in the way of hope, that might be carried past the pages of the book and into the outer world. The hubris and political manipulation in Fragment: yes, there are real-world analogs. Seeing the potential outcome as spelled out in this novel? Dread inducing. But I couldn’t look away.
And Bertie MacAvoy praises it, too:
I just loved Craig Russell’s first novel, Black Bottle Man, and told him so, although I didn’t know the man at all. It was an old-fashioned sort of novel, very much in control, and I found it fantastically well written. May others have agreed, if you look at the number of awards it received for a debut novelist. I awaited his second novel eagerly.
Not only is it just as good, or better, but it is wildly unconventional, even for these most unconventional S.F. days, and it caught me so firmly I wasn’t even aware of the tricks he was playing on the reader until the book was 65% read. I love being tricked, when it is done well. (Done poorly, however, of course, I just feel let down.)
It strides the border between intricate Science Fiction and an almost Kafka-esque style. And doesn’t break the rules of either. That is the ultimate trick.
So I advise all and sundry to read ‘fragment’. You will be the better for it. And, it’s quite a thrill-ride.
(14) CLIPPING SERVICE. “How The Internet Unleashed a Burst of Cartooning Creativity” is a piece on Medium.com that was originally published in The Economist in 2012 (so it’s not behind the Economist paywall). Randall Munroe is prominently featured, but Kate Beaton and Zach Weiner are also interviewed. Also of interest is the section on Arab cartoonists who would be censored if they were restricted to newspapers but are freer to express themselves on the Net.
Triumph of the nerds
The decline of newspapers and the rise of the internet have broken that system. Newspapers no longer have the money to pay big bucks to cartoonists, and the web means anybody can get published. Cartoonists who want to make their name no longer send sketches to syndicates or approach newspapers: they simply set up websites and spread the word on Twitter and Facebook. Randall Munroe, the creator of “XKCD”, left a job at NASA to write his stick men strip, full of science and technology jokes (see above and below). Kate Beaton, a Canadian artist who draws “Hark, A Vagrant”, sketched her cartoons between shifts while working in a museum. Matthew Inman created his comic “The Oatmeal” by accident while trying to promote a dating website he built to escape his job as a computer coder.
The typical format for a web comic was established a decade or more ago, says Zach Weiner, the writer of “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”, or “SMBC” (below). It has not changed much since. Most cartoonists update on a regular basis?—?daily, or every other day?—?and run in sequence. “I think that’s purely because that’s what the old newspapers used to do,” says Mr Weiner. But whereas many newspaper comics tried to appeal to as many people as possible, often with lame, fairly universal jokes, online cartoonists are free to be experimental, in both content and form.
(15) SFFSFF. The annual Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival (SFFSFF) at Seattle’s MoPOP has announced its program selections for the January 28, 2017 event. From Seattle Seahawks battling giant monsters through the city’s streets to a mind-altering cell phone app with unintended consequences, this year’s lineup of 23 films is presented in two packages with a 30-minute intermission between sessions and concludes with an awards ceremony. Ticket information and further details at the linked site.
(16) SCOUTING REPORT. This Inverse article – “11 Science Fiction Books That Will Define 2017” includes the official title and cover for book #3 in Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy.
Science fiction books have always looked toward the future through both creative speculation and adventurous escapism. After the 2016 Presidential Election, science fiction authors are poised to be more influential than ever before.
Luckily for readers, sci-fi authors are known to churn out their books like rabbits, creating a never-ending stream of great works. In 2017, we’ll see the continuation of several acclaimed book series, but will also have plenty of impressive standalone science fiction, too. Below is a list of eleven books that are slated for release in 2017 that will define science fiction in the upcoming year. Keep in mind these dates can be finicky, and that they can change at warp speed. But, otherwise, happy reading to your future self!
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, James Davis Nicoll, John King Tarpinian, Dawn “No Middle Name” Incognito, J(“No Middle Initial”)J, Hampus Eckerman, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anthony.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
I may only be able to cope emotionally with this version:
And then Essun woke up and it had all just been a horrible dream. As she ate breakfast with her family (who were all alive and had neither been murdered or murdered anybody) some people dropped by to say hi and to say they too had niether been murdered or had murdered anybody. “Phew!” Said Essun.
Just then a government official also dropped by to say all orogenes were free and that everyone would be nice to them from now on.
And then evil father earth appeared and said “what the heck was I thinking with all this tectonic activity and shit! I was just a messed up angry old planet and from now on I’m going to calm down and take up gardening.”
“I know” said Essun “lets make pancakes!” And whatdoyouknow all those freaky orogenic powers had become pancake powers!
And they all lived happily ever after.
Apollo 11 astronaut John Glenn just died.
The BBC is reporting the death of John Glenn.
2016. Gah.
That sucks, but he wasn’t in Apollo. He flew in Mercury and the Space Shuttle.
…also they could use pancake powers to make other baked goods but they went too far! Hence the title “The Scone Sky”
(11) ANOTHER BEST OF THE YEAR LIST.
I’ve read 7 of the 44, and thought 1 was great, 3 were good, 1 was meh, and 2 were really awful.
4 of the other books are on my TBR list (and several others are on my “not a chance in hell” list).
@JJ: “my “not a chance in hell” list”
Heh, I should make a list like that. Occasionally I decide something’s not for me, remove it from my “consider” list, and . . . forget I’ve done this! Then I run into it later and think “hey this sounds interesting!” D’oh.
Darren Garrison <headdesk> I knew that. I somehow conflated him with Aldrin. Profuse apologies.
@camestros – I like your alternative reality, how do I sign up?
The way things are going in Broken Earth, anything better than extinction for the squishies I’ll take as a win.
Also I missed the scroll title first time – groan 🙂
So I wrote that post about all the non-fiction I’ve written online this year.
Grand total:
62 essays (most on topics relating to writing and publication)
39 presentations of historic research (those some of the 39 have lots of sub-parts, so really it’s more)
53 reviews (books, movies, audio, theater)
I dunno, maybe I should slow down a little.
@ Andrew M
As to graphic novels, I’d read anything by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
@Andrew M: Would they be worth checking out for Best Graphic Story?
Of the comics on that list, the only ones I’ve read are Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Patience, and Demon.
Black Panther is really interestingly written and gorgeously drawn, but it’s clearly the setup for a larger arc – I would recommend the series but can’t really see this as a stand-alone best story.
Patience is great. I know Clowes has said he didn’t take the SF aspect of it very seriously, but compared to what? Here’s my brief review.
Demon is another one that I can’t see winning as a stand-alone, since I’ve read the whole series and know that the first volume barely hints at the scale of what’s in store… and also, “it’s not for everyone” would be an understatement. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who likes 1. simple fantasy premises with huge and disturbing implications, 2. elaborate logic puzzles, and 3. amoral gross-out humor of the kind that a basically good-hearted brain trust of giggling 12-year-old Z-movie fans might come up with. That last part will be the deal-breaker for many readers: despite Shiga’s playful style, it makes the Deadpool movie look like Merchant-Ivory (in terms of bad taste and mayhem, that is, not intelligence; this is a very smart guy indulging his inner doofus). You can read the first chapter on his website, and that’s the most wholesome part by far.
Also I see the second book of Pretty, Deadly is on there, which I haven’t read yet, but if it’s anything like the first one I imagine it’s very interesting and very incoherent.
“I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet”
“Bad Moon Rising”
Okay, I’ll stop.
I too loved The Story of Kao Yu. I think the only complaint you could make about it is that it’s not really Chinese Fantasy–it’s fantasy with Chinese characteristics. 🙂
Crap crap crap. Something is gone wonky at my blog and that last post is giving “access denied”. (Didn’t notice before I plastered the link everywhere because it looked fine from my admin account.) I thought about waiting to see if anyone would notice and say something, but instead I’ll just give you the link to my Live Journal version of the post.
Eli: Black Panther is really interestingly written and gorgeously drawn, but it’s clearly the setup for a larger arc – I would recommend the series but can’t really see this as a stand-alone best story.
That makes sense, but given that the world of comics is so series-oriented, I wonder if it’s a policy we can consistently follow: something similar could be said of Ms Marvel, which did win the graphic story Hugo.
Some books what I’ve been reading lately:
Above the Snowline, by Steph Swainston. Secondary World Fantasy. Jant, the only person who can fly, is assigned a task that puts him face to face with his own heritage. Set earlier than the other books in her Castle series, this one looks at an incident in the life of the immortal Jant when he was a mere 90 or so, before his drug addiction. I quite liked this; Swainston often goes to unexpected places in her plotting, which I appreciate. Her focus is on emotion, which frees her from some of the constraints of genre tropes. Thumbs up.
The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly. Portal Fantasy. After the death of his mother, a boy is tricked into entering a fairy-tale fantasy realm where a strange being wants to enmesh him in dangerous plots. I can’t deny that this was well-written in many ways, but … I was really turned off by the book’s treatment of its female characters. In the fantasy realm, every single one is evil, monstrous, dead, or all three. Bleah.
Pivot Point, by Kasie West. YA Science Fiction (Earth, present day, psychic powers). A teenager from a community of paranormal people uses clairvoyance to explore two possible futures. So … about a year back, I got myself a stack of books with time travel themes. Most of them turned out to be awful. I put this one off until last because it looked like the worst of the lot. Shows what I know; it turned out to be the best of them. Engaging characters and a very clever twist on something that has become a standard YA trope. Really, quite a pleasant surprise. Thumbs up.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t know, I haven’t really followed the graphic story Hugos enough to know if there’s any consensus about that, or if it just comes down to whatever has a slightly bigger fan base than the rest. I wasn’t recommending a policy, just sharing my vague impressions.
And I haven’t read that Ms. Marvel book so this may be completely off base, but my secondhand impression was that it was pitched and written as a little bit more of a new-reader-friendly, “you can have fun with this even if you only have the vaguest idea of what any Marvel Universe stuff is about” type thing… compared to Black Panther where Coates is stepping into a pretty dense continuity. But I don’t read a ton of Marvel/DC, so the continuity in those books almost always seems super-dense to me.
@Mark:
::POUNCES::
I read my first Margaret Atwood book today, The Heart Goes Last, and daaaaaamn that author pulls no punches. Now off to try and read everything else by her.
[godstalk]
I am chortling with glee as I start reading “Babylon’s Ashes”, one of the rare books that I’ll buy hot off the physical presses. Though I’m kind of worried for everyone, because I’m pretty sure gur obzoneqzrag qrfpevorq va gur ynfg obbx jvyy pnhfr n arne-Crezvna rkgvapgvba rirag. Ng orfg. So either everyone will die, or I’ll be unhappy at how it gevivnyvmrf rpbpvqr.
Anyway, can someone point me to a list of Expanse universe characters? Because it’s gotten kind of long, and I’m really bad at storing names in long-term memory.
@Doctor Science: The Expanse site on wikia.com seems to cover a lot of them, you just have to keep an eye out for the occasional TV-show-specific page.
Doctor Science: can someone point me to a list of Expanse universe characters?
This may suit.
Chuck Tingle expands the scope of his satire to encompass the “alt-right” with his new website, Buttbart. 😀
Chuck Tingle’s heroism knows no bounds.
Mark on December 8, 2016 at 2:11 am said:
And pre-ordered. Assuming we’ll still be around then.
Some books I’m reading.
Chris Roberson”s Firewalk. Interesting mix of A riff of the Criminal Minds series mixed with low key supernatural element. Nicely written with fully imagine West Coast city.
Charles Stross’ The Nightmare Stacks. Not loving this as I did of the Mo narrated previous volume which I thought was the best in the series so.
James Stoddard’s Evenmere. The final I olumn of his trilogy of Evenmere, the house that keeps the cosmos running, and its inhabitants.
Ellen Kushner and various other writers’ Tremontaine: Season One, more stories in her Riverside series which is a Good Thing Indeed. Now this is something I’m loving. Originally publishing in Riverside series. Previously published on Serial Box, it’s now available as an ebook. Second season is underway now.
Simone Zelitch’s Judenstaat. What if Israel never exist but a homeland for the Jewish survivors were carved out a region along the German-Polish border? Similar in tone to Len Deighton’s SS-GB.
Mike Pitts’ Digging for Richard III: How Archaeology Found the King. Good look at both the archeology behind finding his bones and and an unbiased look at a much maligned King.
@Cat Eldridge
The Nightmare Stacks – Alex is no Mo, it’s true, but the plot builds up to something quite spectacular.
@Mark: thanks for reassurance on The Nightmare Stacks. Usually Stross is something I read in one go, but this didn’t quite work. I’ll go back to it soon.
I’m looking forward to his expansion of the Merchant Princes series as it was a series that got better as it went along.
Alex is no mo? Spoiler tags, please! Poor Alex.
Darren Garrison notes Alex is no mo? Spoiler tags, please! Poor Alex.
No need for spoiler tags as those comments gives nothing away. The DJ copy on both books says more that veiled statement did. Alex just doesn’t work for me as a believable character in the way Mo does.
@Cat Eldridge
I think Darren was making a bad pun combined with disturbing cat videos.
The Stone Sky….OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Will have to send link to my students (a number of whom chose TFS for their final project, two of whom have already bought/planned to buy the sequel, and we’re all wondering when the third will be released). TFS is the clear favorite in the class.
Science fiction/fanfantasy or what? The final project for class is a genre based one (involving Afrofuturism as a genre) (the question for TFS people is can a postapocalyptic novel be an Afrofuturistic one). So the science fiction vs. fantasy has come up.
Rot13ed for spoilers
V unir orra ernqvat vg nf “fpvrapr svpgvba” be fpvrapr snagnfl va gur fnzr frafr bs gur “cflpuvp cbjref ner angheny” bs rneyvre fs: gur vaunovgnagf bs gur Fgvyyarff nyy unir frffncvanr (betnaf va gurve oenvafgrzf gung pna frafr zbirzragf bs gur rnegu); gur bebtrarf unir fhcre cbjrerq betnaf. Gurersber, gurve cbjref ner angheny (ovbybtvpny?) abg tenagrq ol n fhcreangheny ntrag bs fbzr fbeg. Gurer vf nyfb gur urnil trbybtvpny ryrzrag bs gur jbeyqohvyqvat, naq gur snpg (zragvbarq ol bar bs zl fghqragf; V unqa’g gubhtug gb purpx, gung bebtral vf va snpg n trbybtvpny grez eryngvat gb sbeprf va gur rnegu pnhfvat zbirzrag bs gur grpgbavp cyngrf. Guvf gurbel qrcraqf ba gur Fgvyyarff orvat ba n qvssrerag cynarg, jvgu gur qvssrevat ribyhgvba bs gur uhzvabvqf, naq gur Fgbar Rngref orvat n qviretrag sbez bs nyvra yvsr–znlor rira nyvra gb guvf cynarg. Ohg vg’f gehr gung Wrzvfva fnlf vg’f snagnfl va gur nsgrejbeq! V guvax vg’f ba gur obhaqnel orgjrra traerf va ubj gur bebtravp cbjref ner pbafgehpgrq–zl traer gurbel pbhyq fyvc rvgure jnl (uru) qrcraqvat ba gur guveq abiry. (V’ir bayl unq gvzr gb ernq GBT bapr, nygubhtu abguvat va gung svefg ernqvat yrq zr gb punatr zl zvaq ertneqvat ubj gur cbjref jbex). V nyfb guvax gur “tevggvarff” bs gur jbeyqohvyqvat, gur fgehttyrf bs gur bebtrarf jvgu n flfgrz gung rafynirf gurz, vapyhqvat sbeprq oerrqvat naq erzbiny bs puvyqera sebz cneragf. Gung’f abg glcvpny va gur snagnfl V xabj bs (gurer znl or bgure nhgubef jubfr jbex V qba’g xabj va snagnfl jub unir fvzvyne fbpvny flfgrzf). Bar guvat V yvxr nobhg Oneonen Unzoyl’f fgbelirefrf, jvmneqf ner abg na ryvgr tebhc be pnfgr, ner bsgra qrpynerq urergvpf ol gur Puhepu, bsgra fhccerffrq naq ng evfx sbe qrngu fvapr va na njshy ybg bs snagnfl jvmneqf ner snveyl uvtu fgnghf. Naq jung Wrzvfva’f jbex rkcyberf gung irel yvggyr rcvp be uvtu snagnfl rkcyberf vf flfgrzvp bccerffvba.
Fb……V pbhyq frr jul fbzr ernqref frr vg nf zber fpvrapr svpgvba guna snagnfl naq jul bguref frr vg nf zber snagnfl, naq V’ir gbyq zl fghqragf gung. (Vg qbrfa’g nssrpg gur Nsebshghevfgvp dhrfgvba fvapr bhe gurbevfg–Lgnfun Jbznpx–nethrf gung Nsebshghevfgvp neg pna znxr hfr bs fpvrapr svpgvba, snagnfl, naq zntvpny ernyvfz naq rira fheernyvfg pbairagvbaf.)
Cat: that was an attempt at humor. “No mo” being a dialectic pronunciation of “no more.” I was implying that “Alex is no Mo” is a statement that Alex died in the book.
(Meanwhile, for me Mo is no Bob. I loved the earlier books, but it took me 3 or 4 (or maybe even 5) tries before I could finish The Annihilation Score. I’ve read only the first chapter of The Nightmare Stacks so far and have put it on the back burner.)
JJ, Eli: Thank you!
Now I’m subscribed, and the post in my mailbox claims to have arrived ten hours ago. Well, maybe it did. Anyway, we can close that ticket.
robinareid: So the science fiction vs. fantasy has come up.
For me, a diagnosis of “science fiction” is that there is special technology underpinning the plot. So to me, the orogeny is a psychic power, which makes it fantasy. Now, if it later turns out that the sessapinae are the result of implants or genetic engineering, that tips it more toward SF for me. (And the artifacts certainly make it lean toward SF, as well.)
It’s one of those timey-wimey seven-seventy things….
Gah. Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, has died.
Buttbart: Ha ha ha, that is classic. If you scroll down to the bottom, there are links for donating to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and the Billings Public Library Foundation.
The ebook of Connie Willis’s Miracle and Other Christmas Stories is $1.99 at various US etailers.
Nightmare Stacks devolves into weapons pr0n towards the end. Pretty well done but the series seems to be losing it’s oomph for me – I wasn’t that impressed with the Annihilation Score either, it had a transparently obvious plot. Or Rhesus Chart for that matter. Bob was getting super-powered by the end of his narrative run so Charlie had to change things up, I guess? Nyfb, Puneyvr qvqa’g frrz gb tb gb gur boivbhf pbapyhfvba ng gur raq nsgre gur fheeraqre naq unir gur Ynhaqel rkgrezvangr gur ryirf – gbb qnatrebhf gb yrg yvir. Ng yrnfg gur zntvp qernz cvkvr tvey jnf n erny zntvp qernz rys tvey va guvf obbx
Never got into Merchant Princes, read the first one and it felt too much a low-rent Amber knock-off to me. Maybe it’s the Princes in the title that did it.
As others have said, Broken Earth is more SF than F to me, more so in TFS and thenTOG went both ways but I’ll defer to the authors own comments. Maybe any rigorously structured magical system is indistinguishable from super-advanced technology? 😉
As I think I’ve said before, the psychic powers in The Broken Earth have a very Campbellian SF quality to me, I don’t make the “psychic means fantasy” connection *at all*. That goes triple when there’s an actual brain structure involved. In my mind, the series is far-future SF set on Earth — an Earth that’s been through a LOT, obviously.
Speaking of “psychic powers” and SF/F, I’ve always had the impression that for a good long time, psychic powers were treated as an unknown form of technology that was on the verge of being discovered. For example, I believe that Lord of Light by Zelazny had them.
@ JJ: Technology as sf marker.
Well, that seems to limit the genre of sf quite a bit — there is a lot of sf in which technology is used without any major impact on plot (a lot of that sf would be more specifically space opera in which spaceships are just like cars and trains today, used to move people around, but not the major focus). I might understand better if you would list a title or two. “Hard” science fiction in the purest sense is supposed to be based on extrapolation from the current science (a bunch of Arthur C. Clarke comes to mind) but that pretty much limits sf to the people with training in the sciences.
Do you consider Ursula K. LeGuin’s _Left Hand of Darkness_ to be science fiction? I do–but more what might be called anthropological sf–as most of her work is) where technology does exist, but it’s not the major focus/plot driver. I may be overly sensitive to this, but I remember a lot of years of men mansplaining that what the wimmin were writing wasn’t true sf due to not being sciency/techy enough.
@Doctor Science and Rob Thornton: Exactly!
Edward James argues that Bujold’s _Sharing Knife_ series is sf in that same way–and that it fits the 1940s/50s (Bujold’s formative years for reading sf) sf that reflected theories of the time that psychic powers might be unstudied/unknown natural abilities. So the sf which extrapolates psychic powers are innate and can be developed is speculating on that possibility.
@Rob: I haven’t read Zelazny for a while, but I think you’re right in how LoL treated the powers.
@Doctor Science: a student and I discussed whether or not The Stillness was meant to be a far future iteration of Africa or not. I think it might be a far future Earth (though if I think of the sessapinae as something that evolved, it’s a heck of a far future), or it might be an alternate planet where two different species of sentient life evolved. Hopefully the third will provide more evidence or resolution (AUGUST 15 YAY). In my background lecture, I said either/or (far future or alternate).
robinareid: Technology as sf marker. Well, that seems to limit the genre of sf quite a bit
Not for me it doesn’t. Are there spaceships? It’s SF. Androids, robots, genetic engineering? SF. Artificial intelligences, advanced computers (such as Information in Infomocracy)? SF. Technological devices (such as the artifacts in The Fifth Season)? SF.
Vampires, werewolves, assorted monsters and mutants? Fantasy. (As far as I’m concerned, zombies are fantasy, too, but Seanan McGuire at least had the chops to make them SF.) Faeries, gods, witches, magic, swords and/or sorcerers? Fantasy. And I’ve always considered psychic powers to be magic, so to me they’re Fantasy — unless, as I said, they’re due to genetic engineering or technology implants.
Of course, The Left Hand of Darkness is SF. It has space travel. And the gender morphing is an evolutionary trait — also SF.
I’m not terribly fussed about trying to decide if something is hard or soft SF. What matters to me is whether I enjoy it — and whether it’s good enough to make me just accept whatever technology exists in the book.
While I have a scientific background, and I find the technological basis for hard SF books of interest, I regard disputes over whether something is hard or soft science fiction as wankery of the sort which does not interest me.
Le Guin is one of the very few hard SF writers with a significant body of work that treats the theory of relativity with any respect. De Camp was another.
I’ve read 7 of the NPR list, quit Jerusalem after one chapter (thanks to Wikipedia’s observation that one chapter is written in the style of Joyce), have 2 on TBR, and will probably add some others; right now I don’t have time to read the details. This would have been high for me — like Peer Sylvester, I used to read very few books on release — but I’ve abandoned a lot of the books that have been on my TBR forever.
@Joshua K: cite on the House balance, please; I’ve read in several places that the Democrats lead in 2014 by ~1.5 million.
@Chris S: Never got into Merchant Princes, read the first one and it felt too much a low-rent Amber knock-off to me. That’s an … interesting … read, considering that the primary viewpoint character is doing her best to get off the ride rather than taking it over.
Robin:
The Stillness is *very* large, much larger than Africa. It’s about the right size for a supercontinent, in fact. My assumption is that it’s not 50My in the future (or more), but that it was formed by a hyper-sped-up plate tectonic event a couple of tens of thousands of years before the story begins.
“The spacecraft slowly descended, pleased to be drinking sweet atmosphere once more, furling her petals just so to catch the last rays of the sun. The wizard-pilot patted her central stalk. ‘Good Premble,’ she said. ‘Good Premble.’ Premble twitched and cooed in delight. She had been raised from a sprout by Aar, her pilot, raised on a diet of solar magic and ensorcelled fertilizer, bonded by magic and trained by generation-spell to match the reflexes and speed of the finest rosecraft of the past.
“‘Scramble bee-chariots,’ said Aar into the thing. ‘And I want a full thorn-array covering their launch.”
“Premble bristled. This was serious, then.”