Pixel Scroll 2/3/18 As God Is My Witness, I Thought Pixels Could Scroll!

(1) QUEEN OF PULP. Twitter’s Pulp Librarian today did a retrospective of illustrator Margaret Brundage, “the Queen of Pulp,” with lots of her Weird Tales covers from the 1930s. Jump on the thread here —

(2) ELLEN KLAGES DONATES CLARION WEST INSTRUCTORSHIP. Clarion West announced Karen Lord is the recipient of “The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship 2018”.

The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship will be awarded in 2018 in memory of Sally Klages, with love from her sister Ellen Klages….

Ellen Klages’ tribute begins —

Sally was a writer. I never heard her say that she wanted to be one; she simply proclaimed, proudly, that she was. She wrote every day in tiny, cramped cursive: working on her autobiography, lectures to her Invisible Friends, instructions about how life ought to be led.

Like many of us, she owned dozens of notebooks and countless pens, and was never without them. She once packed a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of pens and markers into her carry-on bag for a two-hour flight, “in case one runs out.” Writing was her joy, her recreation, her solace.

Sally was born with Down Syndrome. As far as she was concerned, that wasn’t a handicap — it was what made her special. And she was. She was Valedictorian of her class at Northeast Training Center, and an employee at Columbus State University for 17 years. She was one of the founding members of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio (DSACO), she was on the board of the National Down Syndrome Conference, and was a featured speaker there in 1989. An active participant in the Special Olympics, she won more than three dozen medals in swimming, diving, track and field, bowling, and cross-country skiing….

[Via Locus Online.]

(3) PICACIO AT THE MIKE. In “Your 2018 Hugo Awards MC Is….” John Picacio tells why he is proud to be Worldcon 76’s choice.

Today, the 76th World Science Fiction Convention has announced me as the Master of Ceremonies for this year’s Hugo Awards in San Jose, CA, while also announcing that the Hugo Awards’ Nominations Period is now open! Having won two Hugos for Best Professional Artist, I know how much the Hugos mean to the sf/f field, and it’s a huge honor to serve this stage in front of my colleagues and heroes. Worldcon 76 asked me to be the 2018 Hugo MC last August so it’s been fun keeping that under wraps the last five months, even after being announced as this year’s Artist Guest of Honor.

There’s some history that comes along with this role.

  • I’m the first visual artist to ever be a Hugo Awards MC. I think this could perhaps be a harbinger of Hugo Ceremonies to come. Many of our best visual creators — such as Brom, Todd Lockwood, Ruth Sanderson, Gregory Manchess, and more — are becoming author / artist / storytellers, conjuring the words and pictures of their own bestselling books and media. Our next generation of illustrators are aspiring to tell their own stories, just as much as becoming hired guns. I suspect there will be more artists following through the Hugo MC door behind me, and they’ll likely come from this expanding universe of hybrid, contemporary artists.
  • I’m only the third Worldcon Guest of Honor to also serve as Hugo Awards MC at the same Worldcon. I believe Connie Willis and David Gerrold are the only others to do this in the con’s 76-year history. We must all be insane. ?.
  • I’m especially proud to be the first Mexicanx to ever serve as a Hugo Awards MC. I love being first, but the most important thing is that I’m not the last. With the daily assaults upon our DREAMers, villainizing of our culture by racists, and terroristic threats against our citizens, we’re living in an important moment for Mexicanx north and south of the border. I’m looking forward to sharing my spotlight with all of them.

(4) WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT. 2016 Clarke Award judge David Gullen discusses what the experience taught him about his own fiction writing: “Things I Learned Judging the Arthur C. Clarke Award” at Medium.

At some point during reading those 113 books it occurred to me what a difficult thing writers are trying to do and just how many different things each author is trying to get right. It’s not just character and plot and pace and tension, world-building, good dialogue, effective exposition, setting story questions and keeping story promises, it’s also trying to get that motivating vision in your head down onto the page. Even a pretty ordinary book takes a lot of effort. If you assume each of those books took 6 months to write?—?and many would have taken more?—?that is 57 years of effort, not far from the entire productive life of a single person.

(5) THE WRITER’S EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER. A tweet from Annie Bellet.

(6) READERCON PRUNES PROGRAM INVITE LIST. Several older, white male writers who have participated on Readercon’s program in previous years have posted to Facebook over the past month that they have been notified they won’t be on this year’s program, or simply haven’t received the expected invitation. There’s no reason they have to be happy about it, and understandable if it triggers a bit of insecurity and resentment. However, the whiff of controversy around this development is not completely unlike Jon Del Arroz’ certainty that politics were the real reason he was rotated off BayCon programming.

Allen Steele wrote on Facebook yesterday:

The other convention I’ve usually gone to in the past, but will no longer attend, is Readercon. I’ve been an invited guest since Readercon 2 (had to skip the first one because of a schedule conflict), and have attended most of the 36 previous conventions … and then last year, without any sort of notice or explanation, I wasn’t invited. I was recovering from last year’s pancreas operation, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to show up anyway, but I wondered why nonetheless.

This year, I have an explanation … just not a good one. It appears, in an effort to be fair to young new writers, Readercon has been sending out form email letters to older authors such as myself (everyone known to have received the letter is male and above age 50), telling them that they’ve been dropped from the program participant list and therefore will not be invited guests.

Oh, we’re still welcome to attend, if we pay the registration fee. In fact, because of our exalted former status, we’re entitled to a 25% discount … if we go to a private registration site and enter the password (get this) PASTPRO.

So not only have we been told that we’re not welcome to come as professionals, we’re also being told that we’re no longer professionals, period.

I haven’t received the letter … but neither have I been invited. As I said, I wasn’t invited last year either, nor was I ever offered a reason why. To their program chair, I sent a polite letter calmly explaining why the letter is demeaning, insulting, and for the convention disastrously short-sighted; the response I got was a “so sorry you feel that way” blow-off. This pretty much confirms that I’ve been cast into the outer darkness for being … well, let’s not go there. And even if I’m not on the “past pro” list, I won’t come to a convention that would treat my friends and colleagues this way.

I mention this because I usually see at Readercon quite a few people who follow this page. Sometimes they bring copies of my books so I can sign them, and they need to know in advance not to use valuable suitcase-space. Sorry, guys … this year, it’s Boskone and the Hong Kong SF Forum only. At least those conventions still have respect for senior authors.

A month ago Ian Randall Strock said he got the letter and named two others who’d received it:

It seems Readercon has begun their apparently new tradition of uninviting past guests. Last year, it was Darrell Schweitzer. Today, I got the letter, as did Warren Lapine.

Anyone else get the email (under the subject line “Thank you for your service to Readercon”) starting out “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll be straightforward: you won’t be receiving an invitation to participate in programming for Readercon 29.”?

Another thought occurs: are they only doing this to folks who are also dealers, thinking we’ll be there anyway? I’ll have to run the numbers to see if it’s worth attending.

Readercon 29 takes place July 12-15 in Quincy, MA.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 3, 1993 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in television syndication.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY SUBCREATOR

  • Born February January 3, 1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien [never mind….]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Mike Kennedy sends Pearls Before Swine with an observation that sounds just like the kind of dismal thing Kurt Vonnegut would come up with. So you’ll love it, right? (?)
  • John King Tarpinian discovered a horrific satirical cereal box in Off the Mark. (Was that a description or a pleonasm?)
  • JJ admires Grant Snider’s The Specter of Failure at Incidental Comics.
  • Via RedWombat –

(10) ARE YOU SURPRISED? Mental Floss tempts readers with “16 Surprising Facts About Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451”. Some are no more surprising than this —

  1. BRADBURY DID NOT WRITE FAHRENHEIT 451 IN NINE DAYS.

A popular apocryphal story is that Bradbury hammered out Fahrenheit 451 in just over a week. That story is wrong: It was the 25,000-word “The Fireman” that he wrote in that time period. The author would later refer to the short story as “the first version” of the eventual novel. But over the years, he would often speak about “The Fireman” and Fahrenheit 451 interchangeably, which has caused some confusion.

  1. HE WROTE HIS FIRST VERSION ON A RENTED TYPEWRITER IN A LIBRARY BASEMENT.

Bradbury and wife Marguerite McClure had two children in 1950 and 1951, and he was in need of a quiet place to write but had no money for renting an office. In a 2005 interview, Bradbury said:

“I was wandering around the UCLA library and discovered there was a typing room where you could rent a typewriter for 10 cents a half-hour. So I went and got a bag of dimes. The novel began that day, and nine days later it was finished. But my God, what a place to write that book! I ran up and down stairs and grabbed books off the shelf to find any kind of quote and ran back down and put it in the novel. The book wrote itself in nine days, because the library told me to do it.”

  1. HE SPENT $9.80 ON TYPEWRITER RENTAL.

Bradbury’s nine days in the library cost him, by his own estimate, just under $10. That means he spent about 49 hours writing “The Fireman.”

(11) NOT YOUR TYPICAL FLORIDA MAN STORY. From Futurism, “Florida Man Becomes First Person to Live With Advanced Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm”.

Prosthetics have advanced drastically in recent years. The technology’s potential has even inspired many, like Elon Musk, to ask whether we may be living as “cyborgs” in the not-too-far future. For Johnny Matheny of Port Richey, Florida, that future is now. Matheny, who lost his arm to cancer in 2005, has recently become the first person to live with an advanced mind-controlled robotic arm. He received the arm in December and will be spending the next year testing it out.

The arm was developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab as part of their program Revolutionizing Prosthetics. The aim of the program, which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to create prosthetics that are controlled by neural activity in the brain to restore motor function to where it feels entirely natural. The program is specifically working on prosthetics for upper-arm amputee patients. While this particular arm has been demoed before, Matheny will be the first person to actually live with the prosthesis. The program does hope to have more patients take the tech for a longterm test run, though.

(12) FROM SOMEWHERE BESIDES LAKE WOEBEGONE. Since the firing of Garrison Keillor A Prairie Home Companion has a new host and a new name – Cat Eldridge reviews “Live from Here, the show formerly known as APHC, hosted by Chris Thile” at Green Man Review.

… Where Kellior was the sedate, downbeat host who wanted you to be part of the Lake Woebegon community, Thile is more than a bit manic, bouncing around in delight apparently as he gets to interact with musicians and other folk who he obviously admires a lot. APHC put me to sleep, LFH is definitely designed to keep me actively listening.

Shovel & Rope, a really good Americana couple, is dok good a bluesy travel song as I listen this moment. (By now I’d usually have decided to turn Kellior off.) Some minutes later, Gabby Moreno is playing a very lively (I think) a Tex-Mex song. Need I say Thile is really excited like her being on Live from Here?

… I’m an hour in and still not even close to tuning out though the comedy riff just now was meh but I’m not a fan of most such comedy anyways. That segued into a very nice and quite tasty bit of jazzy music by Snarky Puppy which is enhanced by the production team cleverly positioning mics in the audience which is more than a bit raucous all show long which they really demonstrate when Chris musically deconstructs  ‘I’ll Be There’ in words and music….

(13) FAR SIDE OF THE KERFUFFLE. Most of the post is more abuse, so won’t be excerpted here, but Vox Day hastened to say Foz Meadows won’t be getting an apology from him: “I’ll take ‘things that will never happen’”. He adds —

Third, Dave Freer didn’t sic me on anyone about anything. I don’t recall having any communication with him in years. I just checked my email and I haven’t received even a single email from him since I set up my current machine in April 2016. Nor have I spoken to him.

(I’m not creating an Internet Archive page for this one so people can somehow feel okay about insisting on reading the insults.)

(14) COUGH IT UP. Add this contraption to the list of things science fiction never predicted: “When The Flu Hits Campus, The Gesundheit Machine Will Be Ready”.

Those sick enough will get sent around the corner to a room with a crazy-looking, Rube-Goldberg-like contraption known as the Gesundheit machine.

For half an hour, the student sits in the machine. As the student breathes, the machine collects whatever virus they’ve got from the droplets in their breath.

The researchers will then use the student’s contacts to try to figure out how infections spread from person to person: “roommates, study buddies, girlfriends and boyfriends,” Milton says. “We’re going to swab them every day for a week to see if they get infected.”

If the student’s contacts get infected, researchers will try to pin down whether they got the bug from the original subject or someone else.

“We’re going to deep sequence the genetic code of the agent to see if it was really exactly the same thing,” Milton explains. He’s aware that confirming that your roommate gave you a horrible flu could ruin some perfectly nice relationships, but it’s for science.

(15) MELTING, MELTING. BBC tells how “Space lasers to track Earth’s ice”.

Ice is the “climate canary”. The loss, and the rate of that loss, tell us something about how global warming is progressing.

In the Arctic, the most visible sign is the decline of sea-ice, which, measured at its minimum extent over the ocean in September, is reducing by about 14% per decade.

At the other pole, the marine floes look much the same as they did in the earliest satellite imagery from the 1960s, but land ice is in a negative phase.

Something on the order of 160 billion tonnes are being lost annually, with most of that mass going from the west of the White Continent.

(16) STAR WARS MEETS PETER RABBIT. Daisy Ridley is still a rebel. And a rabbit.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Bill, JJ, John King Tarpinian, John Picacio, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Mark Hepworth, Chris Garcia, Will R., Vox Day, StephenfromOttawa, Christopher Rowe, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jamoche.]

97 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/3/18 As God Is My Witness, I Thought Pixels Could Scroll!

  1. (6) Readercon never rotated program participants. I always thought that was a mistake, and said so, but who cared about what I said?

    That they would, eventually, start doing so, isn’t exactly a surprise. That it would come as an unpleasant surprise to people who’d been given every reason to believe they’d be guests forever is certainly not a surprise.

    That they would choose the easy to read badly password, “pastpro,” instead of the somewhat more tactful “pastguest,” or something else entirely, is, sadly, all too predictable. I’ll go so far as to predict the committee will, initially, insist that no reasonable person would have received that password badly.

    But I could be wrong on that. Let’s hope.

  2. Allen Steele: everyone known to have received the letter is male and above age 50

    I strongly suspect that the reason these are the only known people is that everyone else who received it said, “Huh. Seems fair.”, and didn’t bother making an outraged internet post about it.

  3. Let’s not be silly. Silence does not necessarily mean agreement. Or any other particular response. The only opinions we can be sure are ones someone chooses to share publicly.

  4. Cat Eldridge: First off, it’s Lake WOBEGON.

    Second, I believe Garrison Keillor has some intellectual property rights to “A Prairie Home Companion,” and the change of title has more complicated reasons than MPR sticking it to Keillor.

    As for Chris Thile, Keillor handed him the keys and it’s his show. He is a better musician than Keillor and not as good an actor. He also didn’t grow up with radio drama the way Keillor did. He’s also not interested in contemporary political commentary. That being said, the new voices in comedy work, and the music is as
    good as ever. The show has evolved, but I think the evolution works.

  5. Mike Glyer: Let’s not be silly.

    I don’t think that it’s at all silly to point this out.

    Readercon, for obvious reasons, is not going to release a list of pros who were sent this letter (neither did Baycon). So we’re never going to know about the ones who behaved like professionals and just got on with their work; we’re only going to hear about the ones who didn’t.

  6. @ JJ. Once Readercon announces the guest list for this year, you can compare it with previous years and see who was not invited back. For now though, it remains speculation.

  7. (6) Well, if ReaderCon is trying to make room for new, young writers on programming, and is therefore making less room for longtime, older writers on programming, it stands to reason that most of the former program participants being erased from the schedule would indeed be white males over 50. Because:

    (a) most longtime, older writers in sf/f are over 50 (what with being longtime and older)

    (b) more of the older writers in sf/f are male than female (ex. when Tor released my first fantasy novel 20 years ago, their marketing strategy–the official one they wrote down and disseminated to the sales force, distributors, and bookstores–was “the author is female in a male genre”)

    (c) The vast majority of sf/f writers over 50 are white

    Perhaps there is dubiety about whether “longtime writer who has been on programming a lot here” is the only (or the real) criterion for eliminating people from the program list. And I have no idea whether or not that doubt might be warranted. BUT I think it’s self-evident that if that explanation is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then it’s likely that most people being omitted from the program would be white males over 50 who’ve been frequent panelists there.

    I think that offering former speakers a 25% discount now that they’re being removed from program is a great gesture… But it does sound like other aspects of this could be handled more tactfully. (And although I assume the “pastpro” password stands for “past program,” it’s not surprising that writers who just been dismissed as panelists would interpret it as “past professional.” It would be a good idea to change that password.)

  8. (13) What I get from VD’s statement about not having heard from Freer—and from Freer’s statement about not having contacted VD—is that although they refused to believe Camestros when he said he’s not Toby Meadows, and they refused to believe Foz Meadows when she said that her husband Toby is not Camestros Felapton, and they refused to believe Foz and Camestros when they said they don’t know each other…. They nonetheless apparently expect to be believed when they say they have not communicated with each other.

    And my question is: Why would anyone believe anything that either of those men says?

  9. 1) I love Margaret Brundage’s work. BTW she is eligible for the 1943 retro Hugo.

    6) What always strikes me about the occasional “whatevercon didn’t invite me/didn’t put me on a panel/didn’t put me on the panel I wanted” is the entitlement behind it.
    When I filled out the program application form for WorldCon 75, I didn’t expect to be put on more than one panel at most, probably at an inconvenient time and on a strange topic. If I hadn’t been put on a panel at all, I wouldn’t have minded either – after all there were so many fascinating people there. And I would certainly have attended anyway.

  10. 12) Live from Here has definitely swung towards music and away from comedy, which is good because Keillor’s show was much funnier.

    What I like: Chris Thile’s host skillz, Song Of The Week, wider range of music, Tom Pappas’ weekly comedy monologues

    What I dislike: sketches are not as funny, most music for musicians’ birthdays are turned into soundbites, Instant Song bit doesn’t really work—it isn’t that great to hear musicians work out and play a half-baked version of a song. Maybe they could just take a request before the show instead.

  11. … how embarrassing to write a tick post and forget to tick. I don’t even have any currently reading info to offer beyond “still enjoying Foz Meadows’ Manifold Worlds”…

  12. There’s a book called The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage that, along with lots of her art, has some fascinating material on hobos (because her husband was one). Not all the text is great, but I definitely found that part interesting.

    And, man, does that Peter Rabbit movie look bad!

  13. @bookworm–

    @ JJ. Once Readercon announces the guest list for this year, you can compare it with previous years and see who was not invited back. For now though, it remains speculation.

    Except that there are always people who don’t come for their own reasons, and they dont necessarily make big, splashy announcements about it. So no, just comparing lists won’t tell you who wasn’t invited back.

    Also, what Laura said. If Readercon is accurately stating its reasons for the changes, of course most of the people getting the letter will be white males over 50.

  14. 1) There’s a lot of good things one could say about Margaret Bondage, sorry, Brundage. (She did have a bit of a tendency towards depicting helpless women in peril….)

    6) The “PASTPRO” thing could be seen as tactless, but otherwise… the programme is supposed to contain the same invited guests, year after year, decade after decade? No new blood? Only the Grim Reaper himself is allowed to revise the Readercon guest list?

    Or are some of these regular invitees thinking along the lines of “yeah, it’s high time they axed some of those other losers, but how dare they not invite MEEEEE?”…. Sometimes I wonder if I have a healthy enough ego to be a writer.

  15. (6) I fully support keeping convention programming fresh (and, I also hope that over time, the conventions do take care to keep at least some of their veteran participants in rotation).

    I’ll allow that using “PASTPRO” as the code is pretty thoughtless, though. I’m sure it wasn’t meant harshly, buuuut, well.

  16. 6) While I understand that you have to change the programs and can’t have the same people year after year, I also understand how it must feel to be invited again after having been for more than 30 years. With that long time, you start to think of it as a honoured tradition and expect others to think the same. A sign of respect for those that have been along all the time.

    Not sure how I would have taken it, but I’m sure I would have felt very sad, perhaps even betrayed, and I’m also sure that if I typed down my first reaction, it wouldn’t have been very understanding.

    Sometimes it is really hard to wait with writing down your feelings.

  17. (6) The Readercon concom surely didn’t do a good communications job here. But it reinforces my prior thoughts that having a long-ass guest list is antithetical to fan-run cons.

    And if a science fiction writer sees having a comped membership as a requisite to attend a fan-run sf con, then I wonder if the writer is a fan to begin with.

  18. (13) FAR SIDE OF THE KERFUFFLE

    VD is denying something that was never actually claimed. Meadows specifically says that she doesn’t think Freer emailed VD

    https://mobile.twitter.com/fozmeadows/status/959746539160666112

    VD clearly picked the original story up from Antonelli/Torgersen. Meadows is pointing out that Freer thinks it would have been an okay thing for him to do.
    I suspect that VD was horrified at the suggestion that someone might be able to manipulate him and then failed to read the rest properly.

  19. Martin Wooster says:

    Cat Eldridge: First off, it’s Lake WOBEGON.

    That’s OHG, not me as I spelled it correctly in my review. Mine you, I thought it had an ‘e’ as well.

    Second, I believe Garrison Keillor has some intellectual property rights to “A Prairie Home Companion,” and the change of title has more complicated reasons than MPR sticking it to Keillor.

    Correct but I’m expessing my opinion That they used his departure to overhaul the show really fast.

    As for Chris Thile, Keillor handed him the keys and it’s his show. He is a better musician than Keillor and not as good an actor. He also didn’t grow up with radio drama the way Keillor did. He’s also not interested in contemporary political commentary. That being said, the new voices in comedy work, and the music is as good as ever. The show has evolved, but I think the evolution works.

    Someday there’ll be a great book written on the show and the behind the scenes story of how it came to be and how it evolved over the years including just Tnile was picked and who picked him.

  20. 12) It definitely has a different feel than APHC, and has been moving in that direction since he took over the show and it was still called APHC. I don’t make a point of listening to it, but if I happen to be driving during its airtimes, I’ve generally not changed the station.

    I do wonder how and why Keillor originally picked him, since, as Cat observes upstream, Thile is a better musician but his acting isn’t as good, from my perception.

  21. Regarding Wobegone vs. Wobegon; the title of show (and the associated book) has the spelling Wobegon, but in-universe (as I recall), the town started with the name Wobegone, and changed back and forth between Wobegon and Wobegone several times before settling on Wobegon.

    Where all the Pixels are above Average…

  22. 12) I’d gotten really sick of Keillor and am very pleased with what Thile has done with the show. I hope he keeps at the skits, which are good (as I like radio comedy, I would say that) but not as good as when Keillor was in charge. Making room for everything else by jettisoning the monologue has opened up a lot of space.

    I enjoy hearing things like the Instant Song. I need a little randomness in my art. A show without any mistakes ever is dead.

    And speaking of mistakes: From IDIC to IDK?ICK!

  23. An observation of a technical nature: It looks like the photo for (10) is actually posted under (11)?

  24. (8) As someone who was born on February 3rd quite some years ago, I was surprised to learn that Tolkien shared my birthday. However, the internets seem to think that Tolkien was born on January 3rd, not February 3rd.

    (I’m also surprised that we’ve gotten this far into commenting and no-one else has pointed this out.)

  25. 12) From Cat Eldridge’s OP: “the increasingly lame Lake Woebegon framing”

    That’s true enough, but I think you’ve touched on something interesting there: APHC as a worldbuilding exercise. One of the most charming things about the show in earlier days was the density of the world. All the commercials for local businesses. It sounded like something real. As those touches went away, the world became less convincing.

    Thile’s show is literally “from Here“, which is where? In this case, it’s nowhere. It’s a show from nowhere. It’s got no sense of place. It’s not a world.

    I see why APHC drifted away from its world. It was becoming a less tenable match for reality as time went on, and nothing quite so cute as Bertha’s Kitty Boutique was emerging in the new world. You don’t see many proposals for remakes of “It’s A Wonderful Life”, either. What would that even look like today?

    I guess if you don’t have an answer for that question–and I’m not sure who does–you set your show in the indefinite Here, which is no place and nowhere.

  26. A Prairie Home Companion was funnier back in the early 1980s, and it wasn’t as good after Keillor took his ball and went to Denmark in 1987 and then came back in the early 1990s. Kind of like another shy Minnesotan, Charles Schultz, who did Peanuts for decades but after 1970 got tired. I started listening to PHC back in 1980 thanks to public radio stations in Iowa picking it up early on.

    Keillor’s retirement was a drawn out thing, and PHC did have a string of guest hosts (including Chris Thile) for the program while that was happening. Thile is a musician’s musician and now the newly renamed program is playing to that strength while retaining comic bits and skits to break up the music, versus back when music used to break up the comic bits.

    Regarding the story of A Prairie Home Companion, you could do worse than to see the movie by the same name directed by Robert Altman, no stranger to irony himself. It’s fictional of course, but then so was a lot of the actual show… 😉

  27. Andrew says helpfully to me that Regarding Wobegone vs. Wobegon; the title of show (and the associated book) has the spelling Wobegon, but in-universe (as I recall), the town started with the name Wobegone, and changed back and forth between Wobegon and Wobegone several times before settling on Wobegon.

    I’ve got so lousy a memory post-head trauma that I thought it was with an ‘e’ and damn that’s what my brain insisted upon. The GMR Editor that edited it, Robert Tilendis, corrected it. Glad to know the show wasn’t sure either.

    GK to my knowledgeowns exclsive rights to all of the LW elements but that didn’t stop Thile from using ‘powder milk busicuts’ as a throwaway pmmemt last night.

  28. DAVID W says Regarding the story of A Prairie Home Companion, you could do worse than to see the movie by the same name directed by Robert Altman, no stranger to irony himself. It’s fictional of course, but then so was a lot of the actual show… ?

    I saw the film and thought it did a great job of depicting the show.

    My understanding of how Thile ended up as host was APM decided which individuals would be asked if 5hey were interested in being Host after GK retired with the understanding that the APHC format would be phased out. The abohrent behaviour of GK just speeded up the transition.

    American Public Media was so pleased with the show and it’s impressive ratings that the second season has twenty six shows.

  29. Quick scroll-by Meredith Moment; I’ll be back to file later, fellow pixels.

    Carrie Patel’s The Buried Life is on sale (U.S., at least) for $0.99!

  30. John A Arkansawyer says I guess if you don’t have an answer for that question–and I’m not sure who does–you set your show in the indefinite Here, which is no place and nowhere.

    The difference and background of the founding Host APHC and the Host of the new LFH couldn’t be more stark in both their age and what they are. GK was very much into scripting everything which makes sense as a writer whereas CT sounds like he’s just a bit away from winging everything. He may be scripting it but the comments by artists who say they’re playing in town later that night and just stopped by sound as if they’re true.

    Taking away the LW framing somehow for me makes it sound more grounded, not less.

  31. A possible reason for Thile being picked is his wide musical range; APHC had musicians from way outside the area its model might have been heard in. Thile’s efforts weren’t all successful — his mandolin was inaudible with Ma and ? (bowed string-bassist) at a recent concert — but he had the interest (and maybe the connections) to look for interesting material. I’ve only heard bits of the show — the local station no longer repeats it at a time I’m near a radio — soI may need to find it on the web to see how a full show stands up.

  32. Regarding Readercon (and speaking as a 48-year-old white male who has been a guest there in the past), I must admit to some mystification as to why anyone would even want to be a panelist at the same convention year in and year out, having slightly different conversations with the same other guys down the years. I think refreshing and changing up the guest list—and hopefully the panel topics as well—is good for a convention and especially good for the “conversation” that Readercon helps perpetuate. Maybe this could have been handled better, but I think that the “pastpro” thing is at most indiciative of a tin ear, not a hard heart. I like hearing what Steele has to contribute about science fiction in person and in print, and don’t think I’ll want for opportuniities to continue to do so.

  33. The process of Keillor’s retirement from PHC began after he suffered a stroke several years ago, which had Keillor briefly considering quitting then as he felt somewhat mentally impaired. But he got better and elected to stay on, but of course the writing was on the wall about either replacing Keillor or replacing the show. Minnesota Public Radio did have a program waiting in the wings as a possible replacement for PHC, but Wits with John Moe didn’t take off although it did have promise but couldn’t seem to produce enough shows to generate a steady audience. Say what you will about Keillor, but he worked tirelessly on PHC for decades and that’s not easy to do.

    So with no prospect of replacing PHC in the offing, MPR decided to go with replacing Keillor with a new host. I think Thile was always their pick, but they knew the program would have to change, and they were initially careful to only commit to doing twelve new shows with Thile hosting initially. Thankfully many public radio stations have elected to keep paying for airing the program which led to Live From Here getting the green light to do more shows per season.

    During the transition MPR/APM did keep airing “classic” PHC shows, at least in some markets, which isn’t surprising given how long public radio stations kept on rebroadcasting old Car Talk shows. But now that’s all gone, after MPR/APM cut their business ties with Keillor. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, as there are plenty of aspiring radio shows out there looking for a break.

  34. Chip Hitchcock says A possible reason for Thile being picked is his wide musical range; APHC had musicians from way outside the area its model might have been heard in. Thile’s efforts weren’t all successful — his mandolin was inaudible with Ma and ? (bowed string-bassist) at a recent concert — but he had the interest (and maybe the connections) to look for interesting material. I’ve only heard bits of the show — the local station no longer repeats it at a time I’m near a radio — soI may need to find it on the web to see how a full show stands up.

    It is indeed uneven which again I suspect means a lot of it isn’t scripted. It stands up. Well for me in part because my head trauma means time doesn’t pass for me like it should, ie I can sit waiting from my PCP for an hour and not know it’s was not a few minutes. And that’s complicated by the isistance of my brain on thinking it’s a certain day of the week when it isn’t. The iPad is my short term memory now.

    The shows for this season are available in full at the Live from Here site but for legal reasons are a stream only.

  35. The “PASTPRO” thing could be seen as tactless, but otherwise…

    Well, that’s one that seems like an understandable oversight to me, assuming the con has been using the phrase as shorthand for something like “past programming” and just didn’t realize that the first phrase most sf/f writers would see (including me) is “past professional.” Now that the know some people are interpreting the password as an insult, just seems sensible to change it. I mean, changing a password takesa few seconds, whereas the fallout from a number of writers feeling insulted eats up more time and air.

    But a tactful handling of this might be to make sure they contact all regular program participants with a letter (Steele’s statement says he wasn’t contacted, for example, despite being on programming there for many years) that explains there aren’t enough available slots to make room for new, lesser-known writers who need a chance to shine, too, and the con is very grateful to longtime participants and looks forward to seeing them speak again at ReaderCon in future, etc.

    I think it’s appropriate to treat people who’ve been program participants for years as people who’ve contirbuted a lot to the con, and to let them know their contribution is appreciated–while informating them in a courteous and professional way that they will not be assigned program slots every year anymore, or this year.

    Some people my still be offended, some might complain–but then that’s on them. That’s just bad behavior (which is not an unusual thing in sf/f circles).

    But I think simply NOT HEARING from a committee after you’ve been speaking at their event for 30 years does seem inconsiderate IMO. And what’s the advantage in being inconsiderate to people who’ve helped build your event over the years?

  36. I looked for the Freer quote about contacting Vox Day, and found it in his article Bare is the brotherless back. I think it’s revealing.

    Or if for some bizarre reason you believe that the guy willing to take on all the big names in the Puppy kicking establishment that I was scared of this little fellow, that I would tell some arb guy I barely know? Surely logic says, IF it were my decision to do so I’d tell someone who would really hurt him? Larry, Brad, Sarah all have far bigger audiences. If I really wanted serious harm Vox Day would have been delighted to be told.

    I’m pretty sure “the guy willing to take on all the big names in the Puppy kicking establishment” is Freer himself, and I think “some arb guy I barely know” is Lou Antonelli. (I can’t guess what “arb” is supposed to mean–surely not “Arab.”) He’s saying he didn’t give Antonelli the (false) story about Camestros. But his next paragraphs imply that Larry Corriera, Brad Torgersen, Sarah Hoyt, and Vox Day are all people he does know well, and whom he thinks would have taken him seriously and been much more effective at spreading the message–Vox most of all. That might not be intentional, though; the whole message was clearly written in a hurry and posted without editing.

    I agree with Mark that the quoted bit of Vox Day’s response seems entirely intended to put Freer in his place.

    So, ironically, I conclude that Freer really doesn’t know Vox very well, if at all, or he’d have known better than to use his name in vain like that.

  37. David W. Notes During the transition MPR/APM did keep airing “classic” PHC shows, at least in some markets, which isn’t surprising given how long public radio stations kept on rebroadcasting old Car Talk shows. But now that’s all gone, after MPR/APM cut their business ties with Keillor. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, as there are plenty of aspiring radio shows out there looking for a break.

    Minnesota Public Radio on its news site has noted repeatedly that GK legally owned everything associated with APHC. As they very much had no intention of him profiting off the shows and related things for purchase, they cut their use of the show et al out. He also was fired from his poetry show which I note is now is a feature on Thile’s show.

    As an act of making him disappear from the public radio audioscape, it’s been a success save news coverage which is always negative about him.

  38. @ Mark

    I suspect that VD was horrified at the suggestion that someone might be able to manipulate him

    Which is funny, since he is pathetically easy to manipulate. All anyone has to do to set him off and ranting is mention him somewhere online. All John Scalzi has to do to drive him into more public hysterics is allude to him—or, indeed, ignore him. A typical 12 week old puppy who’s excited about meal time has more self-control than VD does when his name is mentioned online (or when Scalzi declines to notice him when he wants to be noticed).

  39. @Greg “arb” means “arbitrary.” Like calling someone a rando. Hopefully you’re reading is right, and they all eat each other. It would be entertaining, and save everyone else a good deal of time.

    @Cora thanks for mentioning the eligibility. I’m always somewhat baffled by what to nominate for the retro Hugos. I’ve read next to no ’40s SFF.

    11) We’re slightly closer to Misty Knight. All is well.

  40. Laura Resnick says Which is funny, since he is pathetically easy to manipulate. All anyone has to do to set him off and ranting is mention him somewhere online. All John Scalzi has to do to drive him into more public hysterics is allude to him—or, indeed, ignore him. A typical 12 week old puppy who’s excited about meal time has more self-control than

    VD does when his name is mentioned online (or when Scalzi declines to notice him when he wants to be noticed).

    A typical twelve week old puppy or kitten both know that certain actions will result in certain results in certifying behaviour.VD think his behaviour is the only correct worldview and that means he cannot learn anything. That makes the puppy much smarter than VD is.

  41. Hopefully the con sent a letter and Steele just didn’t see it. I understand their intentions there, but after ~30 years of invites it certainly could have been handled more smoothly.

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