(0) I HAVE NO ISP AND I MUST SCREAM. File 770’s ISP, Bluehost, was down over 12 hours yesterday, affecting this site and thousands of other clients. But now that we’re back online – let the good times Scroll!
(1) MANY A TRUTH. At sashayed’s Tumblr, an excerpt from a story draft is followed by this humorous but heartfelt plea:
…. We cannot keep spending our energy being mad at mediocre men for writing mediocre books that inexplicably win awards and that people tell us to read, for some fucking godawful who knows reason.
So men. My guys. My dudes. My bros. My writers. I am begging you to help me here. When you have this man in your workshop, you must turn to him. You must take his clammy hands in yours. You must look deep into his eyes, his man eyes, with your man eyes, and you must say to him, “Peter, I am a man, and you are a man, so let us talk to each other like men. Peter, look at the way you have written about the only four women in this book.” And Peter will say, trying to free his hands, “What? These are sexy, dynamic, interesting women.” And you must grip his hands even tighter and you must say to him, “ARE THEY, PETER? Why are they interesting? What are their hobbies? What are their private habits? What are their strange dreams? What choices are they making, Peter? They are not making choices. They are not interesting. What they are is sexy, and you have those things confused, and not in the good way where someone’s interestingness makes them become sexy, like Steve Buscemi or Pauline Viardot. Why must women be sexy to be interesting to you? The women you don’t find sexy are where, Peter? They are invisible? They are all dead?” He is trying to escape! Tighten your grasp. “Peter, look at this. I mean, where to begin. ‘She could have been any age between eighteen and thirty-five?’ There are no other ages, I guess? Do you know what eighteen-year-olds really look like, in life? Do you know what forty-year-olds look like? And not that this is even the point, but why are these sexy, dynamic, interesting women BOTHERING with your boring garbage ‘on the skinny side of average’ protagonist? Why did you write it like this, Peter?”
(2) PODS AGAINST HUMANITY. Authors Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Wesley Chu and Mary Anne Mohanraj were at the Cards Against Humanity offices yesterday, using their sound studio to record 2017’s Writing Excuses podcasts.
(3) ACTOR IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Rupert Evans, who plays Frank Frink, promises “Man In The High Castle Season 2 ‘is going to shock people’” in an interview at SciFiNow.
Where is Frank when we first see him at the start of Season 2? Rupert Evans: He’s kind of weirdly back where he was at the beginning of Season 1. He finds himself in the hands of Inspector Kido (Joel de la Fuente) and the Kempeitai, having given himself up in the hope that he will be able to save his friend Ed, so having tried to hide from the Kempeitai throughout the whole season, he has to then make a huge life decision towards the end of Season 1, and walks into a police station and gives himself up.
So at the beginning of Season 2, we see the repurcussions of that, and there’s a big meeting with him and Kido.
Frank goes from someone from someone who basically wants to keep his head down to effectively becoming radicalised. How has that been to play? It’s been great, because it’s so lovely to see a change in a person, do you know what I mean, genuinely a change. In Season 2 he becomes very different – it’s like a completely different show for him really. He joins a group of people who really want to effect change in a very different way to how he thought he would himself, and he does, he becomes radicalised and joins a resistance cell, as it were, and that’s really the arc for Season 2 for Frank: his journey with them.
(4) FREQUENT BUYER. In 2017, Prime Books will be publishing Clarkesworld Magazine: A 10th Anniversary Anthology. Neil Clarke shared Julie Dillon’s cover art in a public post on Facebook and commented, “So glad to have her on-board for this project. Her art has been on 18 of our covers since 2010.”
(5) ANTISOCIAL MEDIA. Fantasy-Faction asks, not entirely seriously, “Does Patrick Rothfuss hate his fans?” Apparently the story is that (1) some internet users are jerks, and (2) some, in particular, are being jerks about Rothfuss getting his next book finished.
Not too long ago, Patrick Rothfuss wrote this:
Just when I was growing fairly certain my readers were clever people who actually have the ability to read and comprehend text, a brave contingent of souls rush boldly forward with comments, eager to prove me wrong….
The vast majority of you: Thanks for being a delightfully non-representative sample of what the internet has to offer. I love you with great love.
The others: I understand if the above sentences were too long for you to make it to the end. It must be hard to read an entire 70 words in a row, with that painful repetitive stress injury caused by your knees endlessly jerking in response to half-glimpsed imaginary insults.
I am sympathetic to your condition. So here’s the tl;dr…
I am disappoint.
Is that short enough, or do I have to slather it across a kitten picture for you?
The post includes long quotes from Brandon Sanderson explaining what he thinks is happening here.
(6) THE MEMORABLE ASTRONAUT. Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys, pays tribute to “The Otherworldly Spirit of John Glenn” in the Washington Post.
Ironically, John Glenn, the Mercury astronaut most Americans can still name, was the quiet one. He was strong and steady and never in any manner outlandish. He touched us in a different way. There was something about that balding, red-headed Marine with his lopsided smile that just made people love him. It seemed to those of us following the space race back then that everything Glenn did, his Midwestern, “aw shucks” manner of speech, his obvious love for and dedication to his wife, Annie, even his daily jogs along the Cape Canaveral beach, was pure and wholesomely American. The Kennedy administration instantly picked up on his popularity and made him and Annie regulars at the White House and Hyannis Port, where Jack and Jackie treated them like old friends.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born December 9, 1916 – Kirk Douglas, best known as Spartacus, has featured in genre films 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Saturn 3. He was also the last recipient of the Ray Bradbury Creativity Award, which was presented to him by Bo Derek. More trivia: Once upon a time, Kirk and Ray did a Japanese coffee commercial together.
(8) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #13. The thirteenth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for an autographed book by John Scalzi.
Today’s auction comes from Hugo award-winner and New York Times bestseller John Scalzi, who’s offering an autographed hardcover copy of his novel LOCK IN.
About the Book:
Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent – and nearly five million souls in the United States alone – the disease causes “Lock In”: Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.
A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what’s now known as “Haden’s syndrome,” rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an “integrator” – someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.
But “complicated” doesn’t begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery – and the real crime – is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It’s nothing you could have expected
(9) DON’T GO COMMANDO. Hot Toys has an 18-photo gallery of its Star Wars Rogue One Jyn Erso action figure. Out of all the toys in all the world, why are we featuring this one?
JJ explains, “One of the things that impressed me is how much this actually looks like Felicity Jones. My biggest beef with action figures is how they almost never really look like the person they’re supposed to represent.”
Get the deluxe version for the low, low price of $249.99…
Sideshow and Hot Toys are very excited to officially introduce a Deluxe Version of the widely anticipated sixth scale Jyn Erso collectible figure! Meticulously crafted based on the appearance of Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso in the film, the highly life-like collectible figure features a newly developed head sculpt, sophisticatedly tailored costume with multiple layers, detailed weapons and accessories including a blaster pistol, fighting baton, E-11 blaster rifle, and figure stand.
This Deluxe Version will exclusively feature an additional costume including a poncho with bandolier, a breathing mask, hat with goggles, quadnoculars, and additional blaster parts for Jyn’s unique blaster that can be combined into multiple modes.
(10) THIRSTY MARTIANS. Fantasies of Possibility has a good retrospective on H. G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds.
Wells creates a vivid and disturbing picture of millions of refugees fleeing in panic from London and other towns, turning on each other as they desperately seek some kind of safety. This is not a picture of heroic resistance, but of a society breaking down.
The narrator is trapped in a ruined house by the fifth cylinder crashing to earth. Hidden a few feet from the invaders, he discovers a dreadful secret, that the Martians are collecting humans in order to drink their blood for food. He sees this happen, but fortunately Wells spares us the details. Escaping from the house, the narrator makes his way to London, a city now almost empty of people.
(11) PERSISTENCE OF VISION. Uncanny’s Michi Trota is interviewed in the Chicago Reader.
All of the work that I do is somehow connected to fostering inclusive communities. It’s important to understand what makes them welcoming and what can be barriers to participation. Things that have spurred me to do the work I do include being pissed off and wanting to succeed out of sheer stubborn spite. You want me to go away because “Women don’t do x”? Or “A Filipina person doesn’t do x”? Don’t get me wrong, I’m also motivated by joy. Part of the reason I got into geek culture, part of the reason I fire spin, is that there’s nothing that makes me happier than bringing people together
(12) ASSOCIATIONAL ITEM. A novel for sale on eBay from the inventory of Mystery and Imagination Bookshop has the director’s autograph on a bookplate created by John King Tarpinian — “Guillermo Del Toro DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK First Edition SIGNED Bookplate”.
(13) HOW BIZARRE. SuperMansion “War On Christmas”:
Original | Not Rated | 23 min | Released: 12/08/2016 Audio: English | CC/Subtitles: English
Why It Crackles: Wanna see Santa lose his $#@!? Jim Parsons joins Keegan-Michael Key and Bryan Cranston for a very SuperMansion Christmas.
Episode Description: The League of Freedom must band together to save Christmas when an interstellar imp, Mr. Skibumpers (Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory), unleashes a real-life Santa Claus (Gary Anthony Williams, The Boondocks), who experiences an existential crisis and runs amok.
(14) AND HAVE A SPRIG OF HOLLY DRIVEN THROUGH THEIR HEART. Buzzfeed’s Adam Ellis lists “14 Christmas Horror Movies To Watch This Holiday Season”.
- Sint
What it’s about: A Dutch reimagining of Sinterklaas as a ghost who murders people whenever the holiday coincides with a full moon.
Why it’s a perfect holiday movie: Since the film is from the Netherlands, it has subtitles, which means you get to feel cultured and sophisticated while watching people die.
Moment that will fill you with holiday cheer: Any time Sinterklaas uses his razor-edged pastoral staff as a deadly weapon.
(15) HOLIDAY PSA.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mark-kitteh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributor of the day John King Tarpinian.]
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Welcome back, codger!
Yay, we’re back. :waves tiny flag:
The news about the CIA’s assessment of Russia influencing the US Presidential election, though, makes any joy extremely muted.
7) Hunh. That IS weird. Never heard of the commercial.
3)Watching Man in the High Castle is going to be a bit odd, now, for me.
#9: “My biggest beef with action figures is how they almost never really look like the person they’re supposed to represent.” I remember a Parade interview with Keira Knightley grumbling about the … enhancements … to her Pirates of the Caribbean action figure. She didn’t \quite/ use the words “infantile American fascination with bosoms”, but they were just under the surface.
@Paul: worse is the threat from McConnell to denounce any pre-election publication of this info as politics. He’s gotten his payoff: his wife is to be transportation secretary.
Glad you’re back..
15) Millions of grade-schoolers disagree.
(5) ANTISOCIAL MEDIA.
I used to get irritated at GRRM for never finishing his series (before that it was Robert Jordan). Now I get that he most likely is more frustrated than me on not being finished. 😛
After Jordan and GRRM, I made my own little pledge to never start reading an unfinished series again. Reading for the Hugos have forced me to read first books in trilogies (or even longer series) again which irritates me. So I’m thinking of skipping out on the Best Novel category in the future. We’ll see what happens.
@Chip. Yup. I said on twitter that Trump could put Asmodeus in his cabinet and McConnell would accept it, because of that lovely cabinet post his wife is going to get.
(14) AND HAVE A SPRIG OF HOLLY DRIVEN THROUGH THEIR HEART.
Absolutely see the top movie on the list: Rare Exports. It is a fantastic movie. To get a feel for it, start with The Official Safety Instructions.
(15) HOLIDAY PSA.
Made me remember this one.
15) Why so serious?
(9) DON’T GO COMMANDO
JJ’s not wrong, I had to do a double take to check if that was a still!
(Also, I’m feeling rather enthused for Rogue One. I hope I’m not wrong.)
(5) ANTISOCIAL MEDIA
As well as being annoyingly entitled, this business of bothering authors because they’re supposedly not producing is just dumb: writing (and other creative work) isn’t just a matter of x hours produces y widgets.
(1) MANY A TRUTH
Oh, well played.
(4) FREQUENT BUYER
That Julie Dillon piece is gorgeous, of course.
Hail, Pixels!
(5) I agree with Mark. No creative process is 100% controlable. Adding pressure often is just slowing things down. And professional artists certainly dont slack, because they do want to earn money…
I heard some Trumpets are upset about the upcoming Star Wars movie? Is it just because the lead is female and we cant have that on a classic franchise or is it because Darth Vader makes Trump look bad? Just asking out of curiosity (but Im not curious enough to dig through hate posts/comments via google. So its more idle curioisity. If there is such thing. Ah, Where am I going with this?
“For when they saw the pixel, they scrolled exceedingly with great joy.”
@Hampus Eckerman
They’ll do whatever it takes to ensure another silent night:
The Xmas Files
Though there are alternate theories, which say St. Nick is bound against any human interaction:
Nicholas Was
@Peer Sylvester
Something to do with tweets from the creative team equating the Empire with Trump and racism or some other gwana, gwana.
Adeste, Pixelis!
[9] The line about action figures resembling the actors reminds me that in the late 70s, I would have considered shelling out for a James T. Kirk action figure, because he had such a facial resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald that all I’d have needed was a light overcoat and a tiny Mannlicher-Carcano and I’d have been well on my way to a really unforgettable tableau in a small book depository.
Chris notes #9: “My biggest beef with action figures is how they almost never really look like the person they’re supposed to represent.” I remember a Parade interview with Keira Knightley grumbling about the … enhancements … to her Pirates of the Caribbean action figure. She didn’t \quite/ use the words “infantile American fascination with bosoms”, but they were just under the surface.
There’s only two culture that really are fascinated with action figures — USA and Japan. If you think the former sexualises female action figures, it’s nothing compared to the latter where there’s myriad figures that are really, really sexual in nature.
What Kiera doesn’t know is that almost all action figures use a limited number of bodies for their figures, so her body is one of the standard one for female AFs which is why she and character like Wonder Woman each have oversized breasts and usually small hips.
Same thing applies to male AFs which is why (for example DC figures) a wave (a set of figures) released together, there’ll a Batman figure and a Superman figure that will have the same body. You can see this especially in the figures based on animated series.
Another ‘new normal’ night here in Istanbul tonight. We were having friends around and heard the sound of two explosions – bombs outside the Besiktas stadium a mile and a half away, targeting the riot police in attendance at the game. Not yet clear whether it was ISIS or Kurdish nationalist Marxists.
(3)
Not your mistake, but the repeated “from someone” caught my eye.
I am here. I am tired. I have a dog on my lap who will shortly remind me to take my meds.
Kirk Douglas was also in “The Final Countdown”, in which the USS Nimitz goes back in time and meets elements of the Japanese Fleet just before Pearl Harbor, and in “The Fury”, in which Steven Spielberg’s future wife stares at people until her nose bleeds, and shoots mind bullets at them.
If not SF, they both are at least SF-ish.
Also, Sarah Hoyt seems to be getting better.
Visited Comet Ping-Pong today with a friend to support them as they deal with Pizzagate. The Smoky (smoked mushrooms, smoked mozzerella, bacon, garlic) was excellent but the appetizers (garlic knots and spaghetti squash) were seriously meh.
While we were waiting for our table, we visited Politics & Prose (an independent bookstore that is allegedly connected to Comet by a mythical “underground tunnel”). While I was there, I bought Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X Trilogy (all-in-one hardback for a relatively good price) and on the way home I scooped up Kameron Hurley’s Mirror Empire (paperback) at my nearby B&N.
[godstalk]
Bah, Rothfuss and GRMM fans don’t know what waiting is like. Jack Vance fans had to wait twelve years for the fourth book in the Demon Princes series, which was planned as a five-book series from day one. 🙂
Xtifr: Jack Vance fans had to wait twelve years for the fourth book in the Demon Princes series, which was planned as a five-book series from day one.
Fans of David Gerrold’s War Against the Chtorr series have been waiting since 1992 (24 years) for the next installment. He still gets harassed about it.
Yeah! I remember buying that paperback quick as I could, too.
Kingsbury’s The Finger Pointing Solward has been hanging fire since the NINETEEN GODDAMN FIFTIES.
Glad to see that File 770 is back. I’ve been missing this place.
5) It seems a lot of people have problems grasping that writers are real human beings with day jobs, families, hobbies, health issues, etc… and not writing robots existing surely for readers’ pleasure.
Meanwhile, I realised yesterday that I’m sharing a TOC with Nick Cole of “Wah, I’m being censored” fame. It’s been a long time since I sent in my submission to the anthology in question and I didn’t remember Cole was in it until I looked at my contributor’s copy yesteday.
Cora: I realised yesterday that I’m sharing a TOC with Nick Cole of “Wah, I’m being censored” fame. It’s been a long time since I sent in my submission to the anthology in question and I didn’t remember Cole was in it until I looked at my contributor’s copy yesteday.
Oh hai, Cora. 😀
@Hampus Eckerman: I made my own little pledge to never start reading an unfinished series again
I know other people who have made such a pledge, and… I just don’t understand that at all.
I read the first five books of A Song of Ice and Fire over a period of eight or nine years, and the first five books of The Expanse in a year or two (not having gotten into either of those series when they first started)… and, sure, I’m in suspense for the next books and I’ll be sad if I never get to read them. But why on earth would I want to have passed up the enjoyment I got from all that reading so far? To me, that’s like saying I refuse to consider getting into any kind of relationship that isn’t guaranteed to lead to a happy marriage till death do us part.
Eli: I know other people who have made such a pledge, and… I just don’t understand that at all.
I can sympathize, because here I am doing a re-read of the first two of Cogman’s Invisible Library books now that The Burning Page is out, and a re-read of Sanderson’s The Alloy of Law before taking on the two books published this year and last.
But I’m with you, I wouldn’t want to pass up so many wonderful books just because the series hasn’t been finished yet. And I’ve found that most of the time, I don’t need to re-read the earlier books first; I just do it if it’s been a long time, or if they were especially good the first time.
And if I’d had that rule, I would have missed out on not only those, but on:
K.B. Wagers’ Behind The Throne
Emma Newman’s Planetfall
Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs
Marie Brennan’s Cold-Forged Flame
Bradley P. Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai
Melinda Snodgrass’ The High Ground
Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford
James E. Gunn’s Transcendental books
Dave Hutchinson’s first two Europe books
James S.A. Corey’s Expanse books
Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books
Charles Stross’ Laundry Files books
Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books
… all of which are some of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years.
And if I hadn’t read them, I wouldn’t have been in a position to nominate them for Best Novel, Novella, or Series.
Welcome back ticky.
@JJ: I’m with you. I have a shelf for books that are really N-logies rather than series (e.g., I won’t read a Foreigner book until I have the set), but in many cases there’s enough separation between books, or enough mass to each book, that they’re worth reading as they come. And then there are the ones that are laying such obvious hooks that I won’t bother with them; I read the first Alex Verus because it was up for discussion by a local book group and have no desire to read more.
And some of us are wondering whether we’ll ever see books built around the other two of Bujold’s Five Gods….
But to be fair — is a series better if it’s sufficiently plotted from the first that the books just flow out (as Rowling ~claimed, although IIRC she changed her mind about a character death), or if the author expects to find out as they work where the series is going a couple of books down the line? Or, wrt the Vance, did Berkley Medallion get caught in the buyer’s death spiral, leaving outlines (or even manuscripts) waiting for DAW to realize the series still had a market?
OTOH, some series leave room for really hard snark, like this from an acquaintance’s LJ some years ago. They were offered
and answered
(But I understand that spread was partly Hartwell’s fault — Jordan had five books in mind but was encouraged to expand when they took off. Jordan certainly kept his sense of proportion; at Mike Ford’s memorial he started
)
Even though I mostly lurk, I really miss you when you’re gone!
Welcome back, Your scrolls were our pixel out.
@IanP Thanks! So the usual “People in the entertainment industry should keep out of politics”-argument so common within the voters of the host of a reality show.
rob_matic: Another ‘new normal’ night here in Istanbul tonight
I’m very glad that you and your loved ones are okay. 29 dead (27 of whom were police officers) and 166 injured; I grieve for the people who’ve been so needlessly hurt and killed. 😥
99p on Amazon UK…
Chip Hitchcock on December 10, 2016 at 8:29 pm said:
Read the first three Foreigner books – the series is built in three-book arcs – because they’re very much worth it. (You can wait for the rest, but those three set up the entire thing.)
@rob_matic
Glad to hear that you and your loved ones are okay. News here in Germany are reporting that a splinter group of the PKK (i.e. radical leftwing Kurdish party) took responsibility for the Istanbul bombing.
Thanks JJ and Anthony.
It’s 99 cent or equivalent everywhere, plus the royalties are donated to Equality Now.
There are different kinds of series. Obviously it would be silly to refuse to read the ‘same world’ or ‘adventures of’ kind of series until it was finished, since there’s no particular reason it should ever be finished. And there are series which have arcs, but the books are sufficiently self-contained that they can be satisfying on their own. I take it Hampus is referring to the serially told story, of which Jordan, Martin and Rothfuss are all examples (though Jordan takes it to extremes, as his later volumes have no closure at all). Reading just half of that is resonably seen as an unsatisfying experience.
By the way, I hope people realise (as I did not till I looked) that JJ’s eligible series thread is still being updated. Several works in notable series have appeared recently, so it’s worth checking.
It’s very hard for me to read “I don’t read until a series is complete” arguments. In the end, a reader who takes that position is relying on the vast majority of other readers of the series being willing to take the change and read as it comes out. Sure, an established author might be able to contract for a complete series as a whole and have all the books published even it people hold off on buying the first book until the last it out. But by the time that last book is out, they need to have been working on the next (unrelated) books–the ones that they may not have been offered a contract for because of awful sales numbers for the series. A newer author is more likely to have a series cancelled if the initial entries don’t sell well enough. And ever if you way, “Well, I’ll buy the books, but just wait to read them…” it still won’t matter how much you like the series eventually, because you won’t have been part of helping to build up interest in it from the beginning, so people who might have tried it on the basis of your response, may instead never have heard of it.
I’m going to rant a bit here, though it may seem strange to divert book-buying habits into a socio-political rant.
One of the most massive failures of our current society (and I don’t mean just the USA) is a refusal to consider the long-term cumulative consequences of the actions we take for our own personal immediate gain or satisfaction. It’s buying cheap goods from centralized middlemen because we save a few dollars and minutes without considering the consequences of monopoly. It’s handing over the context of out social connections to corporations, then complaining when they act to eliminate diverse alternatives and decide our communities and friendships are of no consequence compared to their profit. It’s worshipping efficiency over structural resilience. It’s voting against strong public transit because we prefer the efficiency of driving personal vehicles (and then griping about highway gridlock). And, yes, it’s saying, “I want to enjoy my own version of the perfect reader experience, but I’m not willing to inconvenience myself in order to support the intellectual ecosystem that produces it.”
If you want to be able to enjoy reading a book series, then damnit you have to actually buy the books when they come out and let other readers know that they’re worth reading.
Cora on December 11, 2016 at 9:27 am said:
@rob_matic
Glad to hear that you and your loved ones are okay. News here in Germany are reporting that a splinter group of the PKK (i.e. radical leftwing Kurdish party) took responsibility for the Istanbul bombing.
Oh hai, Cora. ?
99p on Amazon UK…
Thanks JJ and Anthony.
It’s 99 cent or equivalent everywhere, plus the royalties are donated to Equality Now.
Amazon demands a title, halp?
@Heather Rose Jones
Good rant 🙂
ETA @lauowolf For Whom the Bell Trolls (trolls not a typo!)
Or do not feel series where every book ends in the middle are necessary.
I have no problem reading books like Assassin’s Apprentice as every book in that series was more or less self-contained. Also, haven’t got a problem with buying books from authors with known productivity where I can expect the series to be finished in 3-4 years (well, I do have some problems and will try to avoid it).
But I’m not interested in books that is a story that always ends on a cliffhanger and where it can take 5-6 years before they are finished. I have lost my interest before then, even though the anger of not getting to read the ending stays. I remember when I saw all the rave reviews for the Game of Thrones-books and thought: “I’m not stupid enough to fall into the Jordan-trap again.”
Then my father bought the first book for me as a christmas present. :/
An author has no obligation to finish their series or to have an output of a book per year. I as a reader have no obligation to read the books. There are lots of alternatives nowadays.
There are people who can manage to keep their interest for years and years. Hurra for them. I’m not one of those persons and less so every year. I need everything now and at once. Too long wait and I will do something totally different.
And I do not enjoy being the scapegoat for all faults of society because of my reading habits.
Sorry, was linked in JJ’s post, US, UK
Andrew M: JJ’s eligible series thread is still being updated. Several works in notable series have appeared recently, so it’s worth checking.
And it can be gotten to via the handy “2016 Recommended SF/F Page” permalink at the top of all File770 pages. 😀
Myself, I’m still hoping Michael Reaves will write a third Shattered World novel.
And I remember waiting rather long times (or what seemed like same) for Glen Cook to continue with The Black Company (after Dreams of Steel) and The Dread Empire (after Ill Fate Marshalling, although there were extenuating circumstances in that case).
I’m still kind of hoping for one more in the Glen Cook Instrumentalities… series. Don’t know if there is one planned or if we will both last that long if one is planned. 🙂
I think there’s a new Instrumentalities book in the works; fingers crossed. I haven’t read the previous four, not because the series is unfinished, but just because my queue is infinitely extensible. Someday, though.
@PJ Evans: I know that; that’s why I said “set”, not “series”. (I have been reading each set as it finished, even if that meant dragging large-format books to Aussiecon.)
It must have been a good rant because it had massive numbers of typos. Sorry.
No one has any obligation to read any particular book or any particular series. But taking the position “I won’t read a series until all the books are published” has consequences. Own those consequences. In the aggregate, those consequences include shaping what books, from what authors will be available to read at all.
Be mindful. In reading choices as in everything else.
I’ve been dubious about unfinished series since Farmer’s Riverworld.
He published two books, then waited several years. OK. Volume 3, when it came along, ended with a serious cliffhanger (middle of a battle).
Volume 4, some years later, picked up elsewhere, and there is no mention of that battle anywhere within it, not even in the offhand way that someone in 2016 might refer to the Battle of Gettysburg.
Several books about the same characters, fine. But when someone stops in mid-story like that, they ought to at least try to pick it up again. By “try” I mean that writer’s block happens; a publisher refusing to buy the next volume happens; and novelists are mortal. But there’s a difference between “I can’t/don’t want to write this specific narrative” (or can’t sell it) and what feels like thumbing one’s nose at everyone who is looking for something like a continuing story.