(1) DYSTOPIAS SELL LIKE INFERNAL HOTCAKES. The Washington Post’s Ron Charles notes that sales of dystopian novels, including Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and The Handmaid’s Tale, are soaring under a Trump presidency. He interviews Orwell biographer Gordon Bowker about what 1984 (Amazon’s #1 bestseller) tells us about a Trump administration.
President Trump may not be a big reader, but he’s been a boon for sales of dystopian literature. Amid our thirst for adult coloring books and stories about missing girls and reincarnated puppies, some grim old classics are speaking to us with new urgency. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451 ,” Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World ” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale ” have all risen up the latest paperback bestseller list.
But by far the greatest beneficiary of our newly piqued national anxiety is George Orwell’s “1984.”
Soon after senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Sunday that the administration was issuing “alternative facts,” Orwell’s classic novel spiked to No. 1 on Amazon.
And if you prefer an autographed leatherbound copy of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, eBay has one on sale this week.
(2) MIND MELD. Ken Liu, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Helen Lowe, T. Frohock, Mur Lafferty, and Margo-Lea Hurwicz participate in “Mind Meld: Alternate Histories We Love” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
Alternate history can be a thrilling, but daunting, subgenre of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to dive into; there are seemingly endless possible “what-if,” timeline, and story combinations for readers to try. This month, Mind Meld asks writers:
What is your favorite alt-history novel?
What about the author’s treatment to the particular time period and story made you fall in love? What about the alt-history subgenre draws you in, as an author or a reader?
(3) STARS AND STRIPES. Jack Clemons tells the story of the late “Gene Cernan And The Last Flag On The Moon” at Amazing Stories.
Before Cernan and his fellow moonwalker Harrison Schmitt finished their final moonwalk, as a salute to the Apollo Program and a reminder to others of where we came from and how far we could go, Cernan positioned his camera so that Schmitt and the American Flag were framed in the black sky with the flag pointing to the distant blue Earth. Cernan’s own reflection can be seen in the visor of Schmitt’s helmet.
(4) WEREWOLF, THERE CASTLE. Here’s fan love for you – someone made Larry Correia a 50-pound “Bronze Statue of Earl Harbinger from MHI”. See photo at the link.
Pretty cool, huh?
That’s Earl Harbinger, mid transformation into werewolf (spoiler alert).
Devon Dorrity is a fantastic sculptor, He likes to listen to Audible while working, and had gone through the MHI series a couple of times. Alpha inspired him to create this.
(5) OVERFEASANCE. While we’re still flailing to catch up with last year’s award-worthy fiction, Jason has already evaluated this month’s new stories from semiprozines and other free sites in “Summation of Online Fiction: January 2017” at Featured Futures.
I tried forty-three stories of 176,695 words from thirteen January 2017 pro-rate webzines (Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Diabolical Plots, the final issue of the now-defunct Fantastic, Flash Fiction Online, Lightspeed, Nature, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Terraform, Tor.com, and Uncanny)….
(6) PRINCE OBIT. Sarah Prince, a longtime fan who started receiving File 770 in 1978, passed away at the beginning of the week. Exact details are not immediately available – she was found when a friend asked someone to check on her.
Prince was a talented artist and potter. She was a resident of Columbus, OH when I first had contact with her in the Seventies, but has lived for many years in New York state. Prince ran for TAFF in 1999. Her website is here.
Sarah Prince in 2015
(7) CLOVEN COSPLAY. Nerd & Tie’s Trae Dorn gets to the bottom of a new round of complaints in “Angry Goat Productions’s Cosplay Unplugged Los Angeles Is Setting Off Red Flags For Sailor Moon Fans”.
Are people getting scammed by Angry Goat Productions, or is this simply a case of Angry Goat Productions being really bad at this….
We can confirm that the photos posted to the event’s page are stolen. The examples come from an event held in Japan last year, and that in itself is a pretty big red flag. Taking an image from someone else’s business and misrepresenting it as your own is a big no no pretty much everywhere, but it’s considered an especially egregious sin in the cosplay and convention world.
I know quite a few people who would boycott an event just for that.
The warning also links to a Who Scammed You? page, which claims that organizer Ray Jelley isn’t a real person. Now, I’ve had some experience dealing with people pretending to be other people online, and while Mr. Jelley does occasionally use an Errol Flynn photo on social media, I can honestly say that he appears to be a real human being.
A real human being with an interesting history….
(8) COMIC SECTION. John King Tarpinian recommends this installment of Brevity, with a Star Wars twist.
(9) UNLISTED NUMBERS. ComicsBeat learned that graphic novels will no longer be part of the New York Times Bestseller list.
According to an email subscription version of February 5th’s NY Times Best Sellers List, “Beginning with the advance BSL edition that will be delivered today for February 5, 2017 there will be revisions to multiple categories in the publication. These changes will span weekly and monthly lists.” One of these changes appears to be the deletion of the hardcover graphic novels, softcover graphic novels, and manga Best Seller lists, as none of these sections are included in the document that we have reviewed.
ComicsBeat had further comment here and here, in which an unnamed spokesperson for the Times cites that “the discontinued lists did not reach or resonate with many readers.”
(10) MARCHING INTO PREHISTORY. If you’ve got six minutes, you can see how a vast number of dinosaur species compared in size to modern humans.
(11) REPEAL. The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America reports –
Assembly Bill 228 has been introduced by California State Assembly Members Gloria and Chiu. If passed, this bill will provide significant relief from the most troubling and onerous provisions of AB 1570, California’s new autograph law.
The full language of AB 228 is found HERE.
…The legislative process is long and complicated. Bills pass through policy committees in each house of the legislature and the process takes many months. What AB 228 needs to help ensure that it becomes law is your support. Right now, the best help you can provide is to:
Write a letter of support for AB 228 addressed to the bill’s primary author:
Assemblymember Todd Gloria
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0078
Make sure you have added your name and comments to the change.org petition.
(12) DON’T DRINK AND CRUNCH. All that and a bag of chips – they may have too much sodium, but otherwise a bag of Tostitos keeps you out of trouble.
Frito-Lay unveiled “Party Safe” Tostitos bag for the Super Bowl that detects whether its holder has been drinking and can even order an Uber.
The limited-edition “Party Safe” Tostitos bag, designed by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, contains a sensor connected to a microcontroller that detects trace amounts of alcohol on a person’s breath, turning the front of the bag red and showing an image of a steering wheel and the message, “Don’t Drink and Drive.”
The bag also flashes an Uber code and contains technology that allows the holder to tap their phone against it to order an Uber for $10 off during and after the Super Bowl Feb. 5.
“We’re proud to introduce to the world the first bag of chips that gets you home safe,” Roger Baran, a Goodby Silverstein & Partners creative director, told Adweek
(13) ULTIMATE SACRIFICE. Observing the 50th anniversary of the Apollo pad fire on January 22, 1967: “The fire that may have saved the Apollo programme”.
Fifty years ago, a fire broke out during a test of the rocket that would take men to the Moon. Three astronauts died on the launch pad – but their deaths were not in vain.
As countdown resumed, the air in the capsule was replaced with pure oxygen. The oxygen was maintained at higher pressure inside the capsule than outside. This simulated the increased pressure of the spacecraft in orbit and allowed the astronauts to breathe comfortably.
Both the single-man Mercury and two-man Gemini capsules had followed the same procedure without incident. It was so routine that the safety manual for testing the spacecraft made no reference to the hazards of strapping a crew into an experimental space capsule in a pressurised oxygen environment.
17:40, Apollo 1 spacecraft
There had been problems all day with communications between the ground and spacecraft, which was only a few hundred metres away from the control centre on the launch pad. As the countdown continued and more systems were switched across to Apollo 1, at times it was impossible to make out what the astronauts were saying. “I remember Gus Grissom got very exasperated,” recalls Griffin. “He was really mad.”
“Jesus Christ,” Grissom exclaimed. “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings?”…
(14) PEAKE PERFORMANCE. Soyuz capsule ridden by Tim Peake’s goes on exhibit in London’s Science Museum.
The museum says the Russian capsule is an important part of UK space history and hopes it will inspire the public.
The Soyuz TMA-19M has been refurbished, but is still slightly singed from re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Business Secretary Greg Clark has confirmed that Major Peake will make a second mission to the space station.
The timing will be decided by the European Space Agency (Esa).
(15) TECH HOT AIR. Hideo Kojima says games and films will merge together.
“In life people are very busy doing lots of things,” he explains through a translator.
“The time you have to choose what media or entertainment you experience is dwindling.
“More and more people are looking at types of media that combine elements together.”
“If we just make a game people are less likely to choose that as something to do.
“They would rather engage in something that combines different forms of entertainment together.
“That’s where we need to focus our efforts, on this convergence.”
(16) BOOKS BEYOND NUMBER. Hampus Eckerman calls it, “The roots of Mount Tsundoku.” The Guardian calls it “Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying”.
In the 19th century, book collecting became common among gentlemen, mostly in Britain, and grew into an obsession that one of its participants called “bibliomania”. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, an English cleric and bibliographer, wrote Bibliomania, or Book Madness: A Bibliographical Romance, which was a gentle satire of those he saw as afflicted with this “neurosis”. Dibdin medicalised the condition, going so far as to provide a list of symptoms manifested in the particular types of books that they obsessively sought: “First editions, true editions, black letter-printed books, large paper copies; uncut books with edges that are not sheared by binder’s tools; illustrated copies; unique copies with morocco binding or silk lining; and copies printed on vellum.”
(17) NO ALIEN SEQUEL. Alien Theory analyzes the fate of the series – “Alien 5 Cancelled: Where Does This Leave the Series? And Ripley?”
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Hampus Eckerman, Martin Morse Wooster, and Jason for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Shana really restricted that Mind Meld, boiled it down. I’d have found it difficult to just come up with one answer had she asked me this round. It was amusing that one participant (T. Frohock) chose another participant (Ian Tregillis)’s work. That always amused me when I ran Mind Meld myself.
second godstalk
Send new set of lungs?
Anyone?
[1] Roth’s The Plot Against America
And John Hurt just died. 🙁
And, less fannish, Barbara Hale, who played Perry Mason’s secretary Della Street.
12) Too much. I really have no words for how silly this is.
ticky
Well, dang. What a day.
Tick! Tick! No two-two-four!
On a lighter note, I dashed off a bit of seasonal cheer today, only six or seven weeks late:
http://kipwblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-swinging-holiday.html
Very sad, but we can take solace in the knowledge that he’ll be reborn as Christopher Eccleston.
(4) WEREWOLF, THERE CASTLE. That’s a wonderful statue and a very cool tribute.
(10) MARCHING INTO PREHISTORY. Funky! The front legs for those walking on four legs looked, in some cases, like someone walking on their hands or high-heeled shoes or something. Very weird/awkward looking.
SFListening: I finished the Tor.com Season 2 audiobook collection, which I found overall not as good as the first collection, though it had some standouts. I finally got back to listening to “The Emperor’s Railroad,” but a second try just cemented that it didn’t interest me, so I DNF it. But I finished “Pride’s Spell” this week and enjoyed it a lot! I look forward to Matt Wallace’s next couple of “Sin du Jour” novellas, coming later this year. I’m listening to “Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld); I forget if someone here mentioned it or I heard about it elsewhere, but so far I like it (sorta first contact + road trip).
SFReading: Schwab’s A Gathering of Shadows was great! I’m about to get myself back into Wagers’s After the Crown, which (after great anticipation) I got too distracted from (only read a few chapters, then switched to Schwab’s book).
[12] A spokesman for the Lawrence, KS police department summed up things pretty well on Twitter:
“If you have to blow into a Tostitos bag to know if you’re intoxicated, for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT DRIVE.”
Fair point – in fact given the dangers of litigation the snack manufacturer might face plus that point suggest a very simple technology.
I’ve applied that to develop my own patented test of cognitive impairment. Let’s say you are on the net and are thinking “is my judgement impaired?” then my handy application will tell you.
1. First breathe onto your computer, laptop or handheld device for 20 seconds while holding both hands over your head.
2. then click on this link for your results:
I can guarantee that the report will be accurate at least 90% of the time if you follow the procedure.
A few memories of Sarah Prince.
Future joke punchline: “That’s not a Tostitos bag, and yes, you’re drunk.”
12: well, they’re already talking about how vulnerable the “internet of things” is to hacking…hack that bag to give a false reading…or to run an ad for competing chips or….
1). I would suspect some of the purchases are from Republicans who are using those novels as guidebooks.
(2) The Armor of Light, where Shakespeare helps Philip Sidney, who didn’t die in 1588, and Christopher Marlowe, whom Sidney saves from being murdered in 1593, to save James VI from attack by a wizard and, as a byproduct, prevent the English Civil War and make peace between Protestants and Catholics. They do this by combining magic with theatre.
I just love this one.
(4) nice to think that both giver and receiver are happy about the gift.
I didn’t recall that John Hurt was the voice of Aragorn in the Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings. (Best not to recall too much about that movie.) I think my favorite role of his was The Storyteller. Really solid series usually with great casts.
(2) MIND MELD
I’m going to cheat and say the book I just finished, Empire Games by Charles Stross, because you get several alt-histories for the price of one!
It’s the start of a new series that is itself a sequel to his Merchant Princes series. I didn’t like his Merchant Princes stuff as much as The Laundry etc – although he did a valiant job trying to improve things in the new omnibus editions – mainly because the trick he tried to pull of starting with an apparent portal fantasy seguing into multiverse SF never quite worked for me. However, this is a semi-fresh start with a combination of new and old characters several years on, and I think this time he’s nailed it. You’ve got the fallout of “our” timeline (although diverging from us in the 90s) having run into other timelines with nukes and it All Going Badly Wrong, but much more interestingly Stross is using it to look at how civilizations evolve, both in terms of technology and social structure/politics, and how they can be manipulated. I’m intrigued to see where he goes in the later books.
(5) OVERFEASANCE
Welp, I haven’t even started on January shorts yet, with the exception of “The Dark Birds” by Red Wombat which Jason very wisely recommends.
(1)…and with a nod to Paul A……NOW the American left figures out that 1984 isn’t an instruction manual…
(9) Well that’s disappointing. Perhaps they need to get out more.
@ Dann: ITYM “the American right decides that it was supposed to be”. And that actually happened long enough ago that you’re demonstrating the results right now.
@Lis Carey: I hope things get better.
NOW the American left figures out that 1984 isn’t an instruction manual…
Didn’t need to before. People with power were mostly not treating it as if it were. (Likewise, we shouldn’t have to point out that Handmaid’s Tale isn’t an instruction manual – it’s a warning. But there are a lot of politicians who seem to want to go there.)
The left worked that out in the 1940s when a prominent member of the left WROTE 1984. What the left is still doing is trying to help the right be less so obviously clueless about George Orwell.
You might want to start with Animal Farm where the allegory with the Soviet Union is a bit clearer and then read through to the last chapter and think about specifically the ending. Then consider what the most damning criticism of the Soviet Union is in Animal Farm. Then maybe read 1984 again (assuming you read it prior).
I’d forgotten (or never realised) that Hurt was Aragorn in the Bakshi version.
My favourite episode of the Storyteller: The Soldier and Death. Bob Peck as the soldier, Anthony Minghella wrote the screenplay and of course, John Hurt tells the story.
@ Jack Lint and Camestros
Thanks for the reminder. I enjoyed the Bakshi version; even with its flaws, it was pretty much the best available option at the time.
Camestros, many thanks for the Storyteller epoisode. Bob Peck was a marvelous actor: three mesmerizing characters in Nicholas Nickleby, equally good as MacDuff and Macbeth, and shattering in Edge of Darkness. Gone too soon, but he did great work while he was here.
@ Dann
No, thanks, not interested in a whopper.
@ Lis Carey
I wish I had some spare lungs to send you. I hope you feel better soon.
I think my favorite episode of The Storyteller is Sapsorrow which includes French and Saunders as the bad sisters. There are also some really amazing moments in The Storyteller: Greek Myths, but that’s Michael Gabon instead of John Hurt.
Soothsayer by Mike Resnik is $.99 on Amazon today. It is an excellent book.
https://www.amazon.com/Soothsayer-Oracle-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B0124T3YO8?_bbid=2684149&tag=bookbubemailc-20
What is more scary than either Animal Farm or 1984 is Orwell’s account of his fighting in the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War “An Homage to Catalonia.”
Orwell survived being shot through the throat and only narrowly survived being shot by the communists after fighting Franco’s forces in Span for years.
The Armor of Light is a wonderful, wonderful book.
@Msb & Jeff Jones: Thank you. I understand the market in spare lungs is quite tight, these days…
It is well worth a read – although worth noting that Orwell didn’t fight in the Lincoln Brigade/International Brigade. He was with the POUM a Trotskyist group. [That’s not a nitpick, it was as a consequence of being part of a group not controlled by the Communist Party that Orwell witnessed earlier and more directly the actions of Stalinism against others fighting the fascists]
“It is well worth a read – although worth noting that Orwell didn’t fight in the Lincoln Brigade/International Brigade. He was with the POUM a Trotskyist group.”
I read it about 5 years ago when I was reading about the Spanish Civil War. Forgot that he was with POUM. Thanks for the reminder.
@airboy
Orwell survived being shot through the throat and only narrowly survived being shot by the communists
Orwell was only shot once, by a fascist sniper. Possibly you meant to express that he was in danger from the Stalinists due to his connection with the Trotskyite POUM, and left Spain ahead of a showtrial.
I think Sapsorrow is also my favourite, but I’m a sucker for Donkeyskin/Allerleirauh variants.
Our Leader probably already saw it, but the DUFF voting season has begun
http://ozfanfunds.com/?page_id=77
I would be delighted if you felt the urge to donate and vote for me.
@2: how could I have forgotten to raise The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford? Mechanically improbable in that it assumes the kings of England are as in our history despite Rome (well, Byzantium) hanging onto and even retrieving some of its continental territory a millennium before the Wars of the Roses — but a brilliant story in which a number of characters deal with accumulated personal histories, ending with Evpuneq VVV qbrf rirel fvatyr guvat gur anfgl yvggyr Ghqbe fpevooyref nfpevorq gb uvz naq va rirel pnfr vg’f gur evtug guvat gb qb (r.t., gur Cevaprf jrer inzcverf). Also a World Fantasy Award winner.
Also achieved today, I finally got round to watching Stranger Things, which goes straight onto my “why the heck hadn’t I watched it earlier” list. It’s funny how you don’t realise you needed a show that’s The Goonies meets Half Life until you find it.
John Hurt was a great actor (I totally forgot he was Caligula in “I Claudius”) and of course I loved him as the War Doctor in Doctor Who. But he chewed the scenery so much in “V for Vendetta” (which I sort of love, despite all its problems) that every time I watch it I expect bits of fabric to come spewing out of his mouth.
Still, RIP and kudos to a fine actor and human being.
Man, John Hurt was such a favorite of both Ann’s and mine. She probably saw him first in A Man for All Seasons; for me it was as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant. Then Caligula in I, Claudius. He had the best line in the whole series, when the ghost of Caligula said “You could have knocked me over with a feather” when he found out he wasn’t immortal. Also on Masterpiece Theatre, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punshment. (Haven’t seen the more recent movie where he plays Porfiry.)
So many great memories of watching him. Our favorites would have to include The Storyteller, as so many others here have mentioned. We bought the boxed set a couple years ago and watched the whole series again. And most recently, Only Lovers Left Alive, a vampire movie by Jim Jarmusch (we have become huge Jim Jarmusch fans, much to our surprise) — Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton star, but Hurt has a great supporting role as Christopher Marlowe, still undead after all these years.
Hopefully without starting a long debate or kvetch session about how everyone hates the category ;-), how do people figure out the editor for novels they like, for the Best Editor, Long Form category? I’ll probably be nominating 2-3 Orbit books; I’m wondering if they’re edited by the same person – if so, clearly that person should be on my BELF list. I found one in the acknowledgements, but not the other two. (One author thanked several people at Orbit, at least two of whom are editors.) Should I just e-mail the author to ask? I’ve done a little Googling, to no avail.
Scroll Title: The Importance of Scrolling Pixels – Oscar Wilde
@Kendall
I think the short answer is “it’s tricky!”
I’ve found a few names by spotting mentions by authors in acknowledgements or blog posts, plus some diligent googling, but it’s taken a long time.
I think your suggestion of just asking might be the best route.
Some authors mention their editors in eligibility posts, which is helpful and I wish more would do so.
To me, it never seemed like as much of a bait-and-switch as it was probably intended to be — the problem-solving SFnal presentation of the pseudo-medieval setting seems clear very early on.
@James Moar: I know other people who called the Stross fantasy after reading the first book — and there is SFnal problem-solving in fantasy; see (e.g.) the Harold Shea adventures (by de Camp and Pratt). (Let’s not talk about Rick Cook or Lyndon Hardy.) I admit I wasn’t sure of the clues myself, but in retrospect the fact that there is no magic aside from the portalling itself sets up the later exposition that it is SF.
In re The Merchant Princes: The “magic” is a fakeout, and Stross has written about that. It has to do with how the books originally got sold, which is why the books lose even that original portal fantasy patina pretty quickly in the series.
I should say that I began the series a fair while after it started being published (I think all six books might have been out before I picked up the first), so I had probably heard a thing or two to affect my reading of it.
Kendall: how do people figure out the editor for novels they like, for the Best Editor, Long Form category?
For a while now, I’ve been noting the cover artist, and where it was mentioned, the editor, on the books I read (and I’ve been including that info in my File770 mini-reviews).
Which books are you wondering about?
Quite a few are listed in the Hugo Nominations 2017 Wikia and Renay’s 2017 Hugo Nominations spreadsheet.
I have found that using Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, I can often discern the editor from the copyright page (especially on Tor/Macmillan books) or the Author’s Acknowledgements. Usually the acks, and sometimes the copyrights, are at the end of the Kindle Look Inside and can’t be seen — but will be visible for those books which have the HB or PB Look Inside from the actual book (sometimes the HB/PB Look Inside will just be the Kindle’s version). And I have even gotten info from the Amazon UK Look Inside.
The Orwell comments reminded me – anybody have any book recommendations re the history of Communism, particularly as relates to Trotsky vs. Stalin? I’m incredibly ignorant when it comes to that subject, always having thought of Communism as having two basic strains – Soviet and Maoist.
@Mark (Kitteh): I didn’t think about checking for eligibility posts, thanks. Googling didn’t work so well for me, but I’ll check blogs directly. (I can’t find a blog for M.R. Carey, nor a good web site; not sure if the one I found is even his.)
@JJ: Thanks for the links; the wiki only has 8 entries, but Renay’s spreadsheet filled in a gap for me – who edited The Obelisk Gate (Devi Pillai). I like how Tor lists the editor (and has for quite some time), and it’d nice if other editors did! And yeah, the Kindle “Look Inside” shows very little; it seems like more print books I click for previews on show me that Kindle excerpt, though.
I’m now looking for only two editors, both for Orbit books – Carey’s Fellside and Wagers’s Behind the Throne & After the Crown. If you or anyone else here happens to know, please let me know; otherwise, I’ll probably drop a line to the authors. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to squee at them how about how much I enjoyed their books. 😉
Uh, holy carp, I just looked at The Girl With All the Gifts in iBooks (where I own it). Sometimes I download updates iBooks says are pending, but I can never tell what’s different; there aren’t any release notes. I see they’ve retroactively added a preview for The Boy on the Bridge to my book! 😀 Thanks, Orbit! I guess I should just open up any updated books and check the beginning and end, in case the update is something obvious. (Sadly, no editor nod in the ack; I’d only checked Fellside‘s ack page before.)