Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same

(1) THE TENTACLE RECONCILIATION. This just in — “Cthulhu Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize”.

OSLO, NORWAY — Dread Lord, and presidential candidate, Cthulhu has more to savor this week on the campaign trail than the vulture-picked carcasses of the campaigns of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Martin O’Malley and others. Cthulhu has been officially nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, according to Henriette Berg Aasen, Nobel watcher and director of the Peace Research Cooperative of Oslo….

Aasen told the Kingsport Star Herald that Cthulhu has been nominated, as He is yearly, by the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (known also as CTHU). Cthulhu joins a long list of historical luminaries nominated for the coveted prize like Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Rush Limbaugh, Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin.

Aasen says CTHU selected the independent candidate and demon god because “when He rises from the Deep, humanity will finally know peace and understanding. Our conflicts will disperse. Our prejudices will fade. The Truth of existence will fill us. And those of us left will join as one in praise of Pax Cthulhia.”

(2) TORT SOLO. The BBC reports “Star Wars prosecuted over Harrison Ford injury”.

The production company behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens is being prosecuted over the incident in which Harrison Ford broke his leg.

The actor was struck by a hydraulic metal door on the Pinewood set of the Millennium Falcon in June 2014.

The Health And Safety Executive has brought four criminal charges against Foodles Production (UK) Ltd – a subsidiary of Disney.

Foodles Production said it was “disappointed” by the HSE’s decision.

Following the incident, Ford was airlifted to hospital for surgery.

Following an investigation, the HSE said it believed there was sufficient evidence about the incident which left Ford with serious injuries, to bring four charges relating to alleged health and safety breaches.

(3) PUT TO THE QUESTION. The characters in Redshirts are out of jeopardy, but not out of Jeopardy!

(4) MORE RECOMMENDATIONS. Black Gate’s John ONeill points out “Gypsies, Paupers, Demons and Swans: Rich Horton’s Hugo Recs”:

I cover a lot of short fiction magazines and novels, but I never feel adequately prepared for the Hugo ballot. But that’s okay, because I know people who read every single short story published in English, and can point me in the right direction.

Well, one person. Rich Horton. Seriously, he reads them all. No, really. All of them. When he modestly claims he doesn’t, he’s lying. He’s read some of ’em twice.

(5) HORTON’S RECS. The recommendations originated at Rich Horton’s blog Strange at Ecbatan.

For the past few years I have avoided the sorts of posts I used to routinely make, listing my favorite stories of the year and making suggestions for Hugo nominations. There are several reasons – one is simply that I thought my Best of the Year Table of Contents served such a purpose by default, more or less, another is time. And a third, of course, is a feeling of skittishness about the controversy that has arisen, from several directions, on the appropriateness of nomination lists, or, Lord preserve us, “slates”.

But hang it all, almost all I’ve been about for my time writing about SF is promoting the reading of good stories. Why should I stop? Why should anyone? I don’t want people to nominate based on my recommendations – I want people to read the stories I recommend – and lots of other stories – and nominate the stories they like best. I don’t want to promote an agenda. I don’t want to nudge the field towards any set of themes or styles. (Except by accident – I don’t deny that I have conscious and unconscious preferences.) In fact, I’d rather be surprised – by new ideas, by new writers, by controversial positions, by new forms, by revitalization of old forms.

This is, indeed, mostly the contents of my Best of the Year collection, with a few added that I couldn’t use for one reason or another (length, contractual issues, etc.). And let’s add the obvious — I miss things! Even things I read. There have definitely been cases where a story I didn’t pick seemed to me on further reflection to be clearly award-worthy.

I recently made a post on potential Hugo nominees in which I briefly discussed potential Best Editor nominations. I mentioned John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Trevor Quachri, C. C. Finlay, Sheila Williams, Andy Cox, Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, Scott H. Andrews and Brian Thomas Schmidt. And in all honesty, I think any of those people would be wholly worthy nominees. They have all done first-rate recent work. But that said, let’s be honest, I was being a bit timid. Who would I really vote for? I wanted to be a bit more forthright, and plump for a few folks I am really rooting for….

(6) DEFERRED GRATIFICATION. “20 Year Overnight Successes: Writing Advice” is a set of Storified tweets from Maria Dahvana Headley about writing.

Mark-kitteh sent along the link with a modest disclaimer: “Obviously I have no way of knowing if they’re good advice or not, but as Neil Gaiman commented on then approvingly I’m assuming they’re good…”

She begins:

Gaiman’s comment:

(7) RANDOMNESS. Don’t know what this actually relates to, just found the stand-alone comment amusing.

(8) IAN WATSON. At SF Signal, Rachel Cordasco’s “Eurocon 2016: An Interview with Ian Watson”

RC: This Eurocon is taking place in Barcelona- what is the state of Spanish scifi today?

IW: Spanish SF (including, as I said, Fantasy and Horror) is thriving, but not nearly enough gets translated into English nor is published visibly enough. Félix Palma’s Map of… trilogy is certainly a best-seller in English (as the New York Times says) but consider a genre-bending author such as veteran Rodolfo Martínez, a major award winner in Spain: you can get a Kindle ebook of his novel

The Queen’s Adept in an English translation so good, of a book so good, that it reads like an original novel by Gene Wolfe, but you’ll find it in no bookshop in the USA or UK. (While on the subject of actual books, devour The Shape of Murder and Zig-Zag by José Carlos Somoza.)

Recent professional labour-of-love productions include The Best of Spanish Steampunk (big, edited and translated by James and Marian Womack, whose Nevsky press is based in Madrid), the crowdfunded Castles in Spain put together by Mariano Villarreal, and (in progress) the likewise crowdfunded competition-winners anthology Spanish Women of Wonder edited by Cristina Jurado, title courtesy of Pamela Sargent. Mariano Villarreal is also responsible for an admired series of original anthologies entitled Terra Nova, published by Rodolfo Martínez’s own Sportula press, of which one is in English translation: Terra Nova: An Anthology of Spanish Science Fiction. Ebooks only, these last three.

On the whole, things are humming.

(9) ALBERT FANDOM. Einstein is not only on a bubblegum card, he’s on a Star Wars gif too –

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born February 12, 1915 — Lorne Greene, who played Commander Adama.

(11) MEET THE RABIDS. Vox Day adds to his slate: “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Graphic Story”.

(12) WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. The L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers & Illustrators of the Future Annual Awards Ceremony invitation was extended to LASFS members on Facebook. Information about the ceremony is here. The event is April 10, 2016 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Doors open at 5:30 pm – Event starts at 6:30 pm. Party and book signing immediately follow. Black tie optional or Steampunk Formal. RSVP HERE

Past winners of the Writers of the Future Contest have gone on to publish well over 700 novels and 3000 short stories; they have become international bestsellers and have won the most prestigious accolades in the field—the Hugo, the Nebula, the John W. Campbell, the Bram Stoker, and the Locus Award—and even mainstream literary awards such as the National Book Award, the Newbery and the Pushcart Prize. The Illustrators of the Future winners have gone on to publish millions of illustrations in the field.

 

(13) CHARACTERIZATION. At All Over The Map, Juliet McKenna has some interesting advice concerning “The importance of thinking about ‘local values’ when you’re writing”.

On the other hand, you can turn this issue of local values to your writerly advantage, in the right place, for the right character. When I said minus three degrees or minus thirteen a few paragraphs back, I meant Celsius, because my local weather values are centigrade. When I come across temperatures given in Farenheit in US crime fiction, I always have to pause and do a quick mental conversion calculation. It disrupts the flow of my reading, so as far as I am concerned, that’s a bad thing.

But if I was a character in a book? If the author wanted to convey someone feeling unsettled and out of their usual place? Sure, that author could tell us ‘She felt unsettled by the unfamiliar numbers in the weather forecast’ but you could do so much more, and far more subtly, as a writer by showing the character’s incomprehension, having her look up how to do the conversion online, maybe being surprised by the result. It gets how cold in Minnesota in the winter?

(14) ALPHA HOUSE. To better organize the presidential candidates competing in the New Hampshire primary, Mic sorted each candidate into Hogwarts houses from Harry Potter. Still funny, even if the primary’s over.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mark-kitteh, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jenora Feuer.]

195 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same

  1. Nobody’s mentioned Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics Anthology? There’s nothing in it that I personally would call award-worthy, but it’s definitely worth reading.

  2. I think one of my choices for Graphic Novel will be the concluding volume of “The Unwritten” by Mike Carey. I know it’s unlikely to get anywhere since it is the eleventh volume in the series, but I really thought it was the best comic book in the last years.

  3. This ain’t no pixel, this ain’t no web log,
    This ain’t no scrolling around
    No time for posting, or science fiction,
    I ain’t got time for that now

  4. @Corwin: You could nominate the whole series since it was completed last year. Not that many people will join you, but it at least makes more sense than nominating one volume that doesn’t stand on its own.

  5. Jack Lint on February 13, 2016 at 1:25 pm said:

    This ain’t no pixel, this ain’t no web log,
    This ain’t no scrolling around
    No time for posting, or science fiction,
    I ain’t got time for that now

    May I suggest more lines to Life During Scroll Time by Pixelling Heads?

    Worldcon in Spokane, Worldcon in Finland
    Worldcon in Kansas City M O

  6. @Vasha: Thank you. Yes, I think I will go with the whole series then. Makes more sense and in my mind the series was remarkable as a complete run.

  7. I was under the impression that individual chapters/stories/volumes/arcs of a webcomic were eligible. The thing as a continuing whole, probably not.

    Thus Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 was nominated last year, individual issues of a comic could be nominated, but you couldn’t say “Like, ALL of Batman last year!!”

    We’ve done “Into the Pixels of Scroll Rode the 770”, right? We are a pretty light brigade.

    @Camestros, let’s get the ghost of Olivier to read that. Failing necromancy, call Branagh.

  8. Pixels fall apart; the center cannot scroll.

    The pixels lack all conviction, while the scrolls are full of passionate intensity.

    What rough pixel, its hour scrolled round at last, slouches toward Kansas City to be born?

  9. Schlock Mercenary was disqualified in 2014 because it hadn’t completed a ‘volume’ during the relevant year. What they would do with things that have no ‘volumes’ but just go on and on, I cannot say; I don’t suppose they intend to exclude these things entirely. Certainly a printed volume is not required.

    What is Gunnerkrigg Court like? Everything Mr Day has listed so far, I think, (even File 770) has had some colourable Puppyish justification; is there any in this case?

    Also, could someone clarify the nature of The Thrilling Adventures…? I’ve seen some descriptions of it which make it sound more like a related work than a graphic story.

  10. The Unwritten is not a web comic; it was published by DC’s Vertigo imprint.

    Personally, I’ve found the when/what is eligible in Graphic Story to be a mess since the category started. For example, take All-Star Superman. A 12 issue (planned that way from the start) series, it had a definite overall story arc. It also had complete stories over an issue or two. The first six issues were collected, then the second six, then all twelve. What’s eligible, and what potentially blocks other eligibility? (I don’t recall the calendar year distribution of the original issues, but say issues 1 and 2 were a story and appeared in 1234. They make the final ballot. Then the 12th issue comes out in 1235, finishing the overall story. Can that overall story now be nominated due 1&2 being nominated the previous year?)

  11. We don’t need no information / We don’t need no pixel scroll.

    Cat, thanks much, and for your longer comment at the web-log. (Will do, and if you have more to say, I’ll listen.)

  12. nickpheas on February 13, 2016 at 12:38 pm said:

    @Greg
    A printed release is not essential. The issue with webcomics is that eligibility is based on when the story finished, and many webcomics aren’t finished yet.

    The Vorkosigan saga wasn’t “finished” when the novels from that series won.

    I think it’s a little more tricky that you suggest. In 2016, only the 2015 strips of a webcomic (or a subset of those strips, if published in an alternate form) should be eligible. The whole series won’t be eligible, but that quite mean that there’s no way the work can be considered.

    In the case of Gunnerkrigg Court, which, like several other webcomics, gets published in book form on a regular basis, the most sensible thing to nominate would be Volume 5.

    In the case of Oglaf, the most recent book, as far as I can tell, was published in 2014, so it would have to be nominated some other way, if it can actually be nominated at all. Honestly, I’m not sure how that would work…but it’s possible that it might.

  13. Round the rugged rock, the ragged pixels scrolled…

    If some stray scroller picked a pair of pickled pixels, where’s the pair of pickled pixels some stray scroller picked?

    If we’re talking Talking Heads… “Pixel Scroller, qu’est-ce que c’est?” comes to mind.

    This part works just fine with the impala and friends…

    You start a conversation you can’t even finish it.
    You’re talkin’ a lot, but you’re not sayin’ anything.
    When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
    Say something once, why say it again?

    I was tempted to “run run run run run away” from someone who rhymes with “way” but I declined to send up the signal flare his name seems to be.

  14. Soylent Scroll is Pixels!

    Also, I read Gunnerkrigg Court and enjoy it quite a lot.

  15. @Corwin: Thanks, by the way, for drawing my attention to that. I am delighted to find that my local library has all the volumes.

  16. @alexvdl: “In the novel IT by Stephen King, one of the character repeatedly says “He thrusts his fists against the posts, and still insists he sees the ghosts.” I think it has something to do with speech impediments”

    Yes, but more. “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough is taught the phrase by his speech therapist, and there are a couple of lines in the 1958 text about him saying it to himself a lot in that role, but he also uses it in the way described at the link to Donovan’s Brain – to focus his mind and resist outside influence at a critical point.

  17. My pappy said, “Hon, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop clicking that pixel scroll linkin’.”

    [awesome bluegrass guitar riff]

    Have you heard the story about the pixel scroll, that it’s a place frequented by heroes and trolls
    That story is true, I’m here to say, ‘cause I’ve been clickin’ most every day

    There’s an aggregate listing of the science fiction news with accompanying links you can click if you choose
    Birthdays are covered and tragedies too, as well as puppy updates, and they all have links too

    The comments section is usually smokin’ with the fifths and the tickies and the godstalk and the jokin’
    Regulars have their blog links, plus they ain’t chicken about linking stuff you haven’t seen yet, so you’d best get a’clickin’

    Just before bedtime one weekday night I clicked on the link for the File 770 site
    I was scrolling through the comments and I heard about a book, so I opened up a new tab so I could take a look

    [awesome bluegrass guitar riff]

    That book took me straight to a list of several more, complete with links directly to the online store
    Somehow I wound up lost in Goodreads reading other peoples’ lists of fifty-seven novels that can’t possibly be missed

    Brought up my email by accident, my inbox full of emails that Amazon sent
    Thanking me for buying all those books that I clicked, and recommending more that I haven’t clicked yet

    My tabs have arguments and cartoons, videos and rants, impassioned editorials and Boba Fett pants
    I had so many browser tabs they were too small to read, then my clicking finger blister burst excruciatingly

    [awesome bluegrass guitar riff]

    My eyeballs were twitching with nystagmus and fatigue, the “page error” popup was difficult to read
    I tried to avoid making eye contact with clocks as I brought up system manager and shut down Firefox

    I woke up my pappy as I was crawling into bed, he pointed at the alarm clock and shook his head
    And then he said, “Hon, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop clicking that pixel scroll linkin’.”

  18. Andrew M on February 13, 2016 at 1:48 pm said:

    What is Gunnerkrigg Court like? Everything Mr Day has listed so far, I think, (even File 770) has had some colourable Puppyish justification; is there any in this case?

    If there is, I’ll be damned if I can see it. It’s full of paganism, strong female characters (including the protagonist, Annie), people of color, people of varying sexual orientation, and passes the Bechdel test on a regular basis. (And would pass it a lot more often if it weren’t for the fact that the ancient fox demon inhabiting Annie’s stuffed toy is technically a male fox.)

    Honestly, I’m surprised he isn’t condemning it as yet more evidence of how those horrible SJWs are ruining everything. But whatever…if he were remotely sane, he wouldn’t be doing the things he does, and there’s no accounting for the actions of the insane! 🙂

  19. When you scroll,
    You shall have
    All the pretty little pixels

    Hugos and shows,
    Puppies and pros,
    All the pretty little pixels

  20. I read the first couple years of Gunnerkrigg Court and thought it had promise; but all webcomics have the same problem for me, that I only check in on them every couple years, and lose track of where I was and what was going on the last time I looked. I can’t stand to read them at a glacial one-page-at-time pace.

  21. Greg on February 13, 2016 at 12:19 pm said:

    What’s the rule on webcomic eligibility? Is it correct that they also need to have had a book published in 2015 to remain eligible, or does the webcomic alone qualify?

    Electronic publication is exactly the same as printed paper publication:

    3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

    There is nothing in the WSFS Constitution that says a work has to be printed in paper form or on celluloid or broadcast over television. Electronic publication is no different than publication in any other medium.

    Webcomics are typically serial works (one page at at time), and each story is eligible for the year in which the final part was published:

    3.2.4: Works appearing in a series are eligible as individual works, but the series as a whole is not eligible. However, a work appearing in a number of parts shall be eligible for the year of the final part.

    You have to be careful about this. If the paper version comes out in 2015 but the original online serialized work finished in 2014, the printed paper work is not eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards; it had its shot the previous year.

    If this seems unfair, understand that it’s exactly the same as the rule regarding novels serialized in issues of a magazine. If the final part of the novel is published in 2014, and then the novel appears on its own in 2015, it’s not eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards because it already had a shot the previous year.

    This is indeed problematic for serial works that have no clear beginning or end. But it’s a version of the same problem facing people who want there to be a “Best Television Series” category. There really are no neat-and-tidy solutions. It’s a “toothpaste-tube” problem: squeezing harder just makes it messier.

    Note that works published electronically have always been eligible. There was nothing prohibiting electronic publication, although apparently some people have thought that publishing works electronically was so different from printing pieces of paper that it somehow didn’t count. We explicitly try to debunk this The Hugo Awards web site:

    Works published electronically rather than on paper have always been accepted as nominees. A decision of the 2009 WSFS Business Meeting formally acknowledged this by ratifying a Constitutional Amendment that added the words “or the equivalent in other media” to various category definitions. There is no requirement that a work be published on paper (for written/graphic fiction and non fiction), on film or video tape (for dramatic presentations), or that it be distributed through any traditional methods such as bookstores, movie theatres, etc. In other words, publishing and distributing your work on a web site is exactly the same as having copies of your book in a bookstore or your movie shown in a movie theatre. Aside from the fundamental distinctions between written, graphic, and dramatic works, medium of distribution has nothing to do with a work’s eligibility.

  22. @ Charon D.

    Awesome! *claps*

    @ Camestros Felapton

    Huzzah! I particularly like the “Glyer and gamble on the page” part

    Beware the Puppyslate, my son
    The hearts that spite, the claws that clutch
    A-prancing in the noonday sun,
    And soiling all they touch.

  23. @Charon D.:
    What fun! Thanks!

    “awesome bluegrass guitar riff” reminded me of the “lead guitarist” in one band I was in. I brought in a song to work on with the majority of it written out (lyrics, harmonies, chord sequences, etc.), but on the musical bridge I had just written “Guitar solo” for his part, since every other lead guitarist I’d ever worked with would have been offended if I (Not A Guitarist tm) had infringed on their Awesomeness. But this one insisted that I (NAG) write out his solo for him . . .

  24. I’m guessing this one’s already been done, but was reading some journal articles about the linguistic patterns of “snowclones” and this leapt to mind:

    In File 770, pixels scroll YOU.

  25. @Charon – Nice!

    @Jonathan Edelstein – I’m inclined to think it should be “The blogs lack all conviction while the comments are full of passionate intensity” *grin*

  26. @RedWombat:

    The blogs lack all conviction while the comments are full of passionate intensity

    All too cruelly accurate for a certain blog that is much discussed here

  27. It’s no go the latest debate, it’s no go the talk show,
    All we want is a sound bite and a GIF that plays in slo-mo.
    Their speeches promise eternal growth, their platforms lower taxes,
    They vow to keep the strangers out and dump terrorists on their asses.

    Marco Rubio bought new shoes, thought they made him taller,
    Polished a line and repeated it thrice, but the magic made him smaller.
    It’s no go your three laws, it’s no go your robots,
    We automate our statesmen so they’ll harm those who don’t charm us.

    It’s no go your Jeff Probst, it’s no go Gordon Ramsey,
    All we want is a pre-built camp, and a microwave that’s fancy.

    Brother Jeb went to war, found WMDs in the toupee,
    Claimed orange skin hid yellow heart, but never made the replay.
    It’s no go your blue blood, it’s no go public service,
    All we want is free grazing land, and booze when we get nervous.

    Donald Trump spent Valentine’s day numbering up the jobless,
    Counted to forty on his fingers and his toes, but found the digits endless.
    Ms. Fiorina had her say, claimed harvest after expulsion,
    Said the evidence was here before, but cut in post-production.

    It’s no go the public poll, it’s no go the comments,
    All we want is an echo chamber with mirrors in the casements.

    It’s no go the editor, it’s no go the writing,
    It’s no go the characters that matter more than fighting,
    It’s no go the dinosaurs, its no go Nielsen-Haydens,
    Sit with your friends and moan for years and scheme to get yourselves in.

    It’s no go my gamer love, it’s no go my puppy;
    Scheme and plot your life away, but mantel still is empty.
    The rockets are handed out year by year, the rockets scroll forever,
    But if you steal the rocket it won’t lift your name one feather.

  28. @Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy:

    “awesome bluegrass guitar riff” reminded me of the “lead guitarist” in one band I was in. I brought in a song to work on with the majority of it written out (lyrics, harmonies, chord sequences, etc.), but on the musical bridge I had just written “Guitar solo” for his part, since every other lead guitarist I’d ever worked with would have been offended if I (Not A Guitarist tm) had infringed on their Awesomeness. But this one insisted that I (NAG) write out his solo for him . . .

    Honestly, that’s when you rip off his mask and find out it’s Old Man Smithers underneath, pretending to be a lead guitarist.

    If you felt you needed more evidence first, you could hand him something in a flat-side key and when he doesn’t whine, you’ve got him. Fake guitarist!

  29. > “Also, could someone clarify the nature of The Thrilling Adventures…? I’ve seen some descriptions of it which make it sound more like a related work than a graphic story.”

    It’s a set of fictional or fictionalized graphic stories with a *LOT* of nonfictional footnotes.

    The heavy nonfiction content means it’s probably eligible for either, but I consider it more a graphic story than a related work so I’m nominating it as such.

  30. @RedWombat:

    @Jonathan Edelstein – I’m inclined to think it should be “The blogs lack all conviction while the comments are full of passionate intensity” *grin*

    “while the tweets are full of passionate intensity.”

    Kind of a stickler about scansion…

  31. If I pick something published only on the web for Graphic Story, what do I put for the publisher on the Hugo nominating ballot? The URL?

    Just asking for a friend…

  32. Xtifer wrote

    The Vorkosigan saga wasn’t “finished” when the novels from that series won.

    I may have misunderstood this, and if I have doubtless Kevin Standlee can explain, but I think comics match the same pattern as prose fiction.
    If a work it’s being published in serial form, as most comics are and a set of novels with a single story arc could be seen as being, then they are eligible when the story ends. That the story might have taken five years to be told is not a factor.
    If the story can be broken down into sections then it might be that individual sections get nominated. If this occurs, and they make the shortlist then it it’s no longer possible to nominate the story as a whole.
    Thus, because the individual Vorkosigan books got shortlisted, and some won, the Vorkosigan saga cannot be assessed as a whole. Because the various parts of Robert Jordan’s magnum Opus never troubled the shortlist, it was possible to nominate the entire Wheel Of Time in 2014.
    I don’t think comics are inherently different, save that there could be even more tiers of nomination: one could imagine the entire 75 issue series of Sandman getting a nod, or the individual story A Dream Of A Thousand Cats, or the collection which included that story. But as soon as one of the sub units gets nominated then the overall series (which was not then known to be a 75 issue miniseries) would be ruled out.

    Webcomics often lack the clear boundaries of story that printed comics have. Think of Order Of The Stick: is the Durkon as a vampire a story, or an element in several story arcs? Perhaps the Tarquin arc that ends in Durkon being turned is one story, and the Cleric Council story currently being told is a distinct story. We probably don’t know that until the stories get into collected editions, which might happen after their nomination window has closed. Which is a bit of a problem, but not one I immediately know how to fix.

  33. @Jim Henley
    Perfect–“I woulda got away with it if not for those meddling keyboard players!”

    Your extra test is especially damning if the guitarist just pulls out a capo.

  34. Dammit, I just found out that Genevieve Cogman is not eligible for the Campbell because of a 2004 short story published at Strange Horizons.

    The Invisible Library and The Masked City are absolutely fantastic.

  35. To some extent it is a judgement call on the part of the nominators and voters what constitutes a single story. On my part, I think the Vorkosigan novels are each single stories, but the volumes of the Song of Ice and Fire are just parts of one big, so-far-unfinished, story. Many Hugo nominators disagree with me on the latter.

  36. Well, Glyer went down to Pixel,
    he was lookin’ for stuff to file
    He was in a bind, he was way behind,
    lookin’ at his reading pile

    When he came across this net troll
    Harpin’ on a blog and playin’ the clown
    And Glyer took out a pen on behalf of the fen,
    And said “Boy, gonna write that down.”

    (Without meaning, in any way shape or form, to imply that OGH resembles any particular aliens in Childhood’s End. I just like the song. Particularly the Primus version.)

  37. @Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy: I once brought my then-piano teacher a new song I’d written in the six-accidentals key, which I notated as Gb. Her immediate reaction: “Change it to F#, Jim, or you’ll scare the guitarists.”

    ETA: Oh WordPress, you work and play poorly with HTML notation symbols!

  38. @Peace

    Really? Holy crap.

    Condolences to his family, of course; but if the President can get a moderate-liberal justice appointed, some of the damage the Supremes have done the last few years (*cough*Citizens United*cough*) might be mitigated.

  39. @RedWombat: you need a couple more verses before you get to awesome fiddle solo. Great start, though.

    Someday we need “The File 770 Filk Album”. And then we can argue about which Hugo category it fits into.

  40. perhaps a naive question: how do people tell whether a story is a short story or a novelette, when considering nominations? Does everyone do a word count? Some stories are labeled “novelette” or short story if they appear in a magazine, but many aren’t.

  41. @stephen from ottawa: Online stories you can cut and paste into wordcounter.net or similar utilities. As for anthologies, most of them are listed on ISFDB which tells you the story lengths; it often lists magazine issues too.

  42. @rhf: It’s true. Confirmed by everyone. I admit to a moment of schadenfreude. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. Would have preferred he resigned instead of died, though — I didn’t want him off the court THAT bad, as to wish someone’s death. I do love that despite politics, he was bestest chums with Ginsberg. That speaks well of both of them.

    I wonder, if asked, if li’l Teddy would explain why he picked Gunnerkrigg Court? It’s chock full o’ things he hates. I’m sure it’s part of his XanaD’OH gambit to pick something SJWs like, and thinking that his cooties will make them not nominate it. I bet he wouldn’t admit that in public, but he can’t very well actually approve of the women, pagans, PoC, lesbians, etc. Too bad non-elk are busy listing things they really love without caring what he says.

    @BigelowT: yes, put the URL. And the starting and ending dates of the arc, and the arc title if it has one. Like
    www. myfavcomix. com, Chapter 5, “The Scroll of the Pixel”.
    In the box for Writer/Artist, put “Mark-kitteh, Camestros”.

    @stephenfromottawa: Besides what Vasha said, a lot of the online magazines put the word count at the beginning or end nowadays. Clarkesworld does.

  43. lurkertype said:

    I was under the impression that individual chapters/stories/volumes/arcs of a webcomic were eligible. The thing as a continuing whole, probably not.

    Not if it’s continuing, no. If no individual chapter/story/volume/arc of a webcomic has been a finalist, then you could conceivably nominate the series as a whole when it ends.

    Thus Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 was nominated last year, individual issues of a comic could be nominated, but you couldn’t say “Like, ALL of Batman last year!!”

    You could, actually. It’s up to the voters to decide what the appropriate nominatable unit is. It just has to end in the correct year. You’d just need to be a little more specific and say something like “Batman, issues X through Y”.

  44. @Camestros

    I saw what you did there. Since we have a mutual non-disclosure pact vis a vis certain aspects of the costumer’s art, prima facie due to us both being wimps who don’t want to die, I think I’ll just stick with being a wimp, whilst salving my dignity by pointing out I saw what you did there.

    @JJ I entirely agree with you about Genevive Cogman; I really don’t understand why she’s not getting the recognition she deserves, unless it simply reflects, as has been suggested, that it’s to do with her not being primarily published in the US. She is streets ahead of a lot of books getting far more attention; perhaps if we asked Kevin Standlee he could enlighten us on this in terms of when novels may be nominated.

    And, frankly, people who think that robotic octopuses are cute need to get out there and watch kittens, preferably John Scalzi’s; what do they think the internet is for? Here in 2096 kittens are still going strong, which is more than can be said of the the robotic octopus, due to the advent of the Giant Squids.

  45. I wonder, if asked, if li’l Teddy would explain why he picked Gunnerkrigg Court?

    Because, unsurprisingly, he knows little-to-nothing about it. The comments had several elks pretty much going “O RLY? But badthink haz teh gays” and him quickly backpedaling with “Oh wait these are just my initial stuff, I’ll probably polish the turd later on”.

    I again remain fascinated by just how little Day has read – not only in terms of stuff he fails to consider, but even among the stuff he *has* listed.

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