Pixel Scroll 2/14/16 Imagine All The Pixels, Living In A World That’s Scrolled

(1) BELIEVE YOUR EYES. “Apparently TARDIS-es are manufactured in NYC’s Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said an incredulous Andrew Porter after seeing this photo in NY Curbed.

Photo by Max Touhey for Curbed

Photo by Max Touhey for Curbed

Capsys, the building manufacturer responsible for modular projects like Carmel Place and the Nehemiah Spring Creek development in East New York, recently announced that it would vacate its factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and shutter operations entirely.

(2) JPL GALLERY. The Pasadena Star-News has photo coverage of last week’s NASA event at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

JPL is hosted a “State of NASA” Social in conjunction with NASA’s federal budget rollout on Tuesday. The tour includes a visit to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s clean room, where the heat shield for Mars 2020 is, as well as the testing of some hardware used on the Juno mission, which arrives at Jupiter on the Fourth of July. (Photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News)

(3) WHO ROMANCE? “The Doctor will see you now: Jenna Coleman and Matt Smith put on a cosy display as they reunite at pre-BAFTA party” in Daily Mail.

They played on-screen partners in crime for one series

But after Jenna Coleman and Matt Smith both quit Doctor Who to pursue other projects, their friendship was put on the back burner as they were tied up in their various career commitments.

Therefore it was little wonder the former co-stars were so thrilled to be reunited as they attended a pre-BAFTA party in London on Friday evening.

Jenna, 29, and Matt, 33, put on a sweet display as they cosied up to each other while attending Harvey Weinstein’s dinner which was held in partnership with Burberry and Grey Goose at Little House in Mayfair.

The ex Clara Oswald actress gently rested her head on the former Doctor’s chest as they posed inside the venue which was filled with some of the film industry’s biggest talents.

The former BBC One stars couldn’t contain their happiness to be back in each other’s company once again as lapped up the pre-award-ceremony celebration.

(4) READING WHAT YOUR TEA LEAVES. John King Tarpinian found this message inside the cap on his bottle of ice tea —Atwood Cap

 

(5) SCHINDLER OBIT. SF Site News reports Southern California costumer Robin Schindler died January 24.

Schindler led two of the earliest anime tours to Japan. She was an active costumer, presenting her work at many Worldcon masquerades and worked on the early Costume Cons.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born February 14, 1920 — Dave Kyle
  • Born February 14, 1970 – Simon Pegg

(7) DEADPOOL’S B.O. Deadpool made some money in its opening weekend reports Deadline.

Fox’s Deadpool is bigger than anyone thought possible. Yes, it has scored the top opening for a February release with $135M over FSS and $150M-$153M over FSSM, beating Fifty Shades of Grey‘s first weekend figures last year.  But, Deadpool also flogged Matrix Reloaded‘s $91.8M opening record to become the highest R-rated debut of all-time, not to mention it’s the biggest opening Fox executives have ever seen, surpassing Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (FSS $108.4M).

(8) BRITISH BASEBALL. I just learned there is minor league baseball in Britain, and one of the teams is called the Bolton Robots of Doom. They play in the British Baseball Federation’s (BBF) AA North division.

Bolton Robots patch

(9) ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MY DEAR WATSON. President Obama was quizzed on TV by an elementary school student. The next generation of conspiracy theorists is on the way.

Obama was questioned during Thursday night’s taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show by 6-year-old “presidential expert” Macey Hensley, and she asked the president about the legendary “Book of Secrets.”

“That’s a secret,” the president quipped.

Hensley theorized the “secrets” in the book could include an answer to whether “aliens are real.”

“We haven’t actually made direct contact with aliens yet,” Obama said. “When we do, I’ll let you know.”

The president did not clarify whether indirect contact had been made with aliens through some type of intermediary.

(10) SPIRITUAL WISDOM. Amanda Slaybaugh, in “They’re Already Balloting for the Freakin’ Hugo Awards!”, doesn’t want to read “SEVEN MONTHS OF BITCHING AND MEWLING” and offers her advice:

My advice is this: Don’t be this guy. Remember him, staring into the mystical power and majesty of the ark of the covenant…but then having the whole face melt-y thing happen? This is what happens when you engage in this Hugo nonsense. The Hugos are neither mystical, nor magical, but their bullshit will melt your face clean off.

melting Nazi

Do this instead: Be Indy with his fave alcoholic, adventurous gal pal and look away! Withstand the mighty bullshit storm of bizarre political arguments surrounding a rocket-shaped literary award.  You respect the market power of SF/F, but you choose the wise course and LOOK AWAY!

(11) THUNDERBIRDS. ScienceFiction.com has good news: “Amazon Orders ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ Starring Rosamund Pike For The U.S.”

‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ for the U.S. thanks to Amazon.  The streaming service has ordered four 13-episode seasons of the series, which combine CGI animation with live action models.  The first two seasons (26 episodes) have already aired on ITV in the UK, where the first series from the 1960s originated.  The third and fourth seasons are expected to air on ITV later this year and will be available to stream on Prime Video after the episodes become available in the U.S.

‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ is an update of ‘Thunderbirds’ a TV series that launched in the UK in 1965, from the minds of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.  This show combined marionettes and vehicular models in a completely unique form of entertainment.  The series followed the adventures of the Tracy family, with most of the action revolving around the five brothers Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan, who each piloted their own high tech vehicle.

(12) ABOUT EDITORS. Brad R. Torgersen, in “Editors: the good, the bad, and the ugly” at Mad Genius Club, uses Nick Coles’ well-publicized grievances as the point of departure for a wide-spectrum look at his own experiences with editors.

In my experience, a good editor is not trying to evaluate your story on ideological grounds, nor is a good editor trying to get you to write the story their way. A good editor spots how you yourself are already trying to tell the story, and (s)he will simply make suggestions about how to do that job even more effectively than you’re already doing it. That’s the difference between, “You’re doing it wrong,” and, “You’re doing it right, but here are a few suggestions that should help you do it even better.” Most of the editors I’ve worked with (so far) have edited in this manner. And while some of them have barely touched my manuscripts, others have been so heavily involved in revision, they’re practically co-authors at the end of it. But again, their focus has always been: this story is hitting singles and doubles, let’s change a few things, and get this story hitting triples, or even a home run.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

184 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/14/16 Imagine All The Pixels, Living In A World That’s Scrolled

  1. lurkertype: I agree with BGHilton, it’d have been better all around to tell the guy “this is a stupid plot twist” because, hoo-boy, it is.

    Well, if the editor had done that, Cole would have just insisted they were lying, and that he was really being asked to change his plot for political reasons.

  2. Re. the un-publishing of Nick Cole’s Ctrl Alt Revolt!: I don’t see how invoking the “free market” is an argument: The editor made a choice, the senior editor backed her up, and we the potential customers are criticizing the decision. No compulsion here: we’re neither demanding HarperVoyager bake Mr Cole a cake nor publish his book.

    But, as Larry Correia points out in Left Wing Bias in Publishing: Your Wrongthink Will Be Punished!, “remember, all of those allegations about ideological bias against conservative and libertarians was just in [us] Wrongfans’ imagination.” We are going to continue to point out that Ms. —— and Mr. —— of HarperVoyager are attempting (thankfully with less success than their actions would have had only a few years ago) to shut dissenting voices out of the field, that they are in violation of what Scott Alexander called “the spirit of the First Amendment”, and that the shareholders of HarperVoyager might want to ensure such decisions do not have an adverse impact on the publisher’s profits.

  3. J.C. Salomon
    Books published by profit-making publishers are not a public forum. The attempt to make it seem such is the spirit of nonsense.

  4. I had a Mattel Thingmaker when I was a kid. Instead of a 3D printer, it was a set of molds (or moulds) that you filled with Plastigoop™ and then heated in a little oven. After the Plastigoop cured, you tossed the molds in a water bath. When it had sufficiently cooled, you removed a rubbery thing from the mold. I believe Creepy Crawlers (rubbery bugs) were the most successful of the Thingmaker toys, but there were a variety of different sets with different molds. Sadly, back then girls were only supposed to want to play with the set that made rubbery jewelry.

    Mainly they were just good for children learning how burning yourself on hot metal hurts your fingers.

  5. and we the potential customers are criticizing the decision

    We are? I thought we were saying, Yeah, I can see their point, but hey, Amazon makes self publishing easy, so everyone wins.
    But I am a fluffy liberal who doesn’t really see the need for confrontation everywhere.

  6. @J.C. Saloman
    As part of the free market you may decide not to buy or submit books to HarperVoyager. I don’t think anyone here will disagree with your right to do so. You may be mocked* as your understanding of how traditional publishing appears weak to us. But we certainly hold your right to do so as part of how the free market works.

    However if you use words like free speech, censorship, and banned, we will continue to point out the flaws in your premise until we get bored. At which point we’ll ignore. You can make up new definitions for words and concepts all you want. We don’t have to buy into them when they make no objectively logical sense.

    *geez I’m using that word a lot lately.

  7. The editor made a choice, the senior editor backed her up, and we the potential customers are criticizing the decision.

    A handful of potential customers are criticizing the decision. That’s not sufficient information to make any claim about what the market for the book would be. The editor, who is paid to make such assessments, allegedly said that would damage the book’s sales. You’re going to have to come up with more than “Salomon and Phantom would buy this book” to have any kind of argument that would counter that assessment.

    But, as Larry Correia points out

    Actually, a more accurate statement would be “as Correia hyperventilates foolishly about”. First off, anecdotes aren’t data. Second, a private corporation isn’t in violation of the “spirit of the First Amendment” no matter what it does, since the First Amendment only applies to government action. Third, no one has suppressed Cole’s work, as evidenced by the fact that it is available for purchase right at this very minute.

    It is “conservatives” pretending you are oppressed and shrieking about this sort of normal business practice that makes everyone else stop taking you seriously.

  8. and that the shareholders of HarperVoyager might want to ensure such decisions do not have an adverse impact on the publisher’s profits.

    Oh, don’t be coy now. Do go on.

  9. Re: Nick Cole

    Part of the job of an editor is to reject works that may not succeed in the marketplace in their opinion.

    Is this special pleading that books by conservative authors should not be rejected for their writing but published because of their politics ?

  10. Shambles: Apparently they are special snowflakes who need to be published/nominated for awards strictly on their political and ideological stances. Quality and market success come second. This is the impression they’ve given everyone the past few years.

    I mean, what’s the world come to when giant multinational for-profit corporations get to do business like they want? People who object to that are probably feeling the Bern.

    We all know what a rabid Commie the owner of HarperCollins is. Obviously he’s all about the dreaded liberal agenda.

  11. lurkertype: I agree with BGHilton, it’d have been better all around to tell the guy “this is a stupid plot twist” because, hoo-boy, it is.

    JJ:Well, if the editor had done that, Cole would have just insisted they were lying, and that he was really being asked to change his plot for political reasons.

    Yeah, that’s pretty much my take as well. AFAIK, it’s only been Cole stating that this is so – has he actually evidenced this in anyway (correspondence etc?)

    Given how quickly, and confusedly, Cole is to jump at the “I’m being oppressed” whine, I’m not interested in taking his word at what happened – he strikes me as the kind of thin-skinned primadonna who, when someone says:

    “That’s clumsily done, and throws people out of the narrative”

    hears

    “We’re banning you because what you write challenges my pre-conceptions”

  12. I’ll just say that, as someone who has chaired a committee to review materials that community members wanted removed from our public library (because they found them offensive for reasons), these people really don’t understand how censorship works. They are using these words (banned and censorship), but I don’t think they mean what they think they mean.

    A corporation deciding to not publish a novel or other work is not censorship. Censorship is a government action. A public school or library removing items simply because a complaintant found the item offensive is censoring an item. A corporation choosing to not publish an item is not. Find another publisher or self-publish. Nobody is entitled to a big name publishing house for their writing – if one won’t publish your work, you’re not being censored.

  13. J. C. Salomon on February 15, 2016 at 3:03 pm said:

    Re. the un-publishing of Nick Cole’s Ctrl Alt Revolt!: I don’t see how invoking the “free market” is an argument: The editor made a choice, the senior editor backed her up, and we the potential customers are criticizing the decision. No compulsion here: we’re neither demanding HarperVoyager bake Mr Cole a cake nor publish his book.

    But, as Larry Correia points out in Left Wing Bias in Publishing: Your Wrongthink Will Be Punished!, “remember, all of those allegations about ideological bias against conservative and libertarians was just in [us] Wrongfans’ imagination.” We are going to continue to point out that Ms. —— and Mr. —— of HarperVoyager are attempting (thankfully with less success than their actions would have had only a few years ago) to shut dissenting voices out of the field, that they are in violation of what Scott Alexander called “the spirit of the First Amendment”, and that the shareholders of HarperVoyager might want to ensure such decisions do not have an adverse impact on the publisher’s profits.

    I have some sympathy for that argument but only some.
    The problem with it is that it requires re-thinking what is meant by free speech and bias in the context of a capitalist economy. I am very sympathetic to that kind of re-thinking but there in lies the problem. I’m sympathetic because I’m a socialist and hence yes, I can agree that the cumulative effect of local economic decisions by people in positions of moderate authority in corporations can, unwittingly, add up to a wide scale inadvertent censorship of ideas or discrimination against certain groups or an overall social bias. What I can’t do is reconcile THAT view point with Mr Correia’s or Mr Cole’s politics or indeed see any kind of remedy to the problem (if we were to accept that there was a problem) that would not entail increased government interference in private businesses – a remedy that Mr Cole or Mr Correia would be unlikely to accept and which would probably have the opposite effect anyway.

    In short, people can’t have their socialist cake and consume it in a capitalist manner.

  14. Piping in real quick-like to say I am happy to see some conservative/puppy types commenting here in actual discussion mode (as opposed to Phantom’s cringeworthy histrionics). Thanks particularly to Dann665, who seems to fall far to the right of must of us here, but doesn’t just debate politics, instead participating in fannish discussions.

    It’s very difficult for most of us, right or left, to stay civil. Watching Phantom whaling on windmills reminds me how pointless that kind of sparring is.

  15. @J.C. Saloman
    I went and read LC’s blog post and it looked more like his ranting off the cuff. On File770 actual authors with real names have shared their stories. LC as usual provides no sources, no names, no links, nothing to back up his statements. It’s just the usual SJW conspiracy in publishing theory with no substance.

    I then went and read your 2nd link. I don’t believe it supports your assertions on what the author is talking about regarding free speech theory. The article is clearly talking about mobs going after someone on the internet in order to silence them. It’s talking about how doxxing and lesser harassment are wrong and shouldn’t be done.

    My answer to the “Doctrine Of The Preferred First Speaker” ought to be clear by now. The conflict isn’t always just between first speaker and second speaker, it can also be between someone who’s trying to debate versus someone who’s trying to silence.

    Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Does not get doxxing. Does not get harassment. Does not get fired from job. Gets counterargument. Should not be hard.

    In the case we are discussing an editor, paid to do their job, did it. There is no third party. No one was trying to debate. No one is trying to silence. I’m not aware of anyone harassing Nick Cole unless you are stretching harassment to be “any criticism on the net” after the event when he’d self-published the book.

    Neither his agent nor his editor has weighed in and probably won’t as its unprofessional. We have one side out of three on his story. It’s his perception. I’m sure his agent and editor, if they’ve read the blog post, don’t recognize it as how things happened. My husband and I rarely agree on what we are fighting about or what led to the last fight. Eyewitnesses all give different descriptions of what they saw varying widely.

    You are looking for something to confirm your bias and finding it. But the evidence doesn’t hold up to scrutiny using your own backup sources.

  16. @Lis Carey, @redheadedfemme

    Re “Dixie”: Civil War era filkers agreed with you. Both Union and Confederate sides produced an astonishing number of parodies during the war. One of my favorites is “Union Dixie”:

    “Away down South in the land of traitors,
    Rattlesnakes and alligators,
    Right away, come away
    Right away, come away.

    Where cotton’s king and men are chattels,
    Union boys will win the battles,
    Right away, come away,
    Right away, come away.

    Then we’ll all go down to Dixie,
    Away, away,
    Each Dixie boy must understand
    That he must mind his Uncle Sam”
    and so on

    But all versions are assuredly amenable to updating!

  17. In response to @Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy–where’d he go?

    Heh. Well, in that case:

    “Pixel Dixie”

    Oh I wish I was in the land of scrollin’
    All these trolls are not forgotten,
    Look away, look away, look away, Voxy Land.

    Way out there in the land of slaters,
    Puppies, “CHORFS” and instigators,
    Look away, look away, look away, Voxy Land.

    Where nugget’s king and pronouns chattel,
    SJ types will win the battle,
    Look away, look away, look away, Voxy Land.

    We’ll all vote on the Hugos,
    Hooray! Hooray!
    Each Puppy Peep must understand
    That crap won’t win that rocket, man,

    Oh hey, oy vey, we’ll all go Pixel Dixie,
    Oh hey, oy vey, we’ll all go Pixel Dixie!

  18. While it’s not a first amendment issue, not all censorship is (if only because the first amendment is US-specific). At some point, if a single corporation (or other non-governmental group, say the Bavarian Illuminati or the Great Old Ones*) controls a large enough part of the market, their refusal to produce or distribute a work might be de facto censorship. That doesn’t come close to applying here: as we have all seen, the book has been produced, is being offered for sale, and is being discussed.

    The leaders of small insular groups, religious or otherwise, who aren’t going to let this book into their libraries don’t care that it’s self-published, and wouldn’t admit it if it was being sold by a Big Five publisher either: they’ll turn it away for being in English, or because the author isn’t a member in good standing of their religious group, or because it’s fiction. That’s a problem, but the victims are (would-be) readers within those communities, not writers outside.

    *pick your own baddies here; those are placeholders in the hope that nobody is going to yell at me for slandering Cthulhu.

  19. @redheadedfemme

    Bravissimo!

    An excellent marching song for the battles to come.

  20. @bbz – Wow, that post by Correia is 100% data free

    Truthiness. In the feels, theny know it must be so.

  21. According to reviewers on Amazon, it seems to be a bit more than only the abortion question:

    “Then, the narrator goes on at great length about social justice and other topics near and dear to the hearts of men’s rights advocates – using the same sort of phrases and talking points. Poe’s Law applies, as I can’t tell whether the author intends to mock or support the views of MRAs.”

    And:

    “There are failings, as you’d expect; the tone is homophobic, misogynistic and generally fearful of anything that could remotely be termed ‘progressive’ – but that’s fine; the cliched whines are just so much filler these days, we’ve heard them so many times.”

    I guess HarperCollins didn’t see a profit in message fiction.

  22. Here’s the thing that puzzles me about the Pups and their “OMG conservatives are pariahs because SJW’s boohoo”:

    1) 31 states in the USA are totally controlled politically by the GOP. And immediately upon taking power, they began to reform those states according to the Gospel of Ronald Reagan and the Laffer curve, destroying the economy and the middle class in the process. See Kansas and Brownback.

    2) Both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP

    3) Until Friday, the Supreme Court was 5-4 conservative.

    4) Fox News

    5) The Koch Brothers and the rest of their plutocratic billionaire buddies.

    6) The imposition of Christianist dogma on the rest of us through anti-abortion laws and restrictions on contraception.

    Tell me again how conservatives are an endangered species?

  23. Kathodus on February 15, 2016 at 4:10 pm said: “Piping in real quick-like to say I am happy to see some conservative/puppy types commenting here in actual discussion mode (as opposed to Phantom’s cringeworthy histrionics).”

    And yet, the actual content of the comments you praise closely resembles what I said last night. How interesting.

  24. If the Puppies want to spend their money propping up an MRA writer who couldn’t make it on his own merits, they can do that. It’s a free country.

  25. @TechGrrl1972

    Tell me again how conservatives are an endangered species?

    On social media people criticize stuff = oppression/marginalization/reverse discrimination

    Now that we can voice our opinion they think they’ve been overrun even though all figures (facts) show they are still the power majority

    Look at the sites like LC, BT, VD, MGC – all rarely link, cite sources, have any data to back up assertions – they feel so it’s real

  26. @TechGrrl1972

    That’s not really the point they (well, some of them anyway) are making. There is a belief that conservatives are the majority, or at least the plurality in America, but that there is an elite of $feminists $homosexuals $colouredpeople $elites * that are silencing them and are destroying America As We Know It.

    It’s quite an idea actually. It let’s them claim victimhood while never giving up their majority status.

    * = among the even-more-fringe lot, this expands to $joooos

  27. Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether conservatives are 99% of the population or 5%–this still isn’t censorship and banning against a conservative author. Even if everything is exactly, 100% the way he said it was, he handle it badly, and were I Harper Collins, I wouldn’t work with him again unless he sold apocalyptically well.

    (Also, LOL at the person who was trying to determine sales via number of Amazon reviews and claiming he must have sold better than Lock In. That is not how that works…)

  28. @redheadedfemme

    My post about “Dixie” and my PLAUDIT for you suddenly disappeared into moderation–not sure why.

  29. @RedWombat Also, LOL at the person who was trying to determine sales via number of Amazon reviews and claiming he must have sold better than Lock In. That is not how that works…

    Stop confusing me with all these facts. Next you’ll tell me 1 star reviews aren’t the end of the world and most bestseller books which have stayed in the top lists for 50-100 years have 1 star reviews.

  30. @Tasha Turner – I shall do nothing of the sort…but I’ll admit a deep relief when a book got its first 1-Star because then it felt like a real book to me…

  31. Jumping back in to say that I’m the one who “took offense” that Nick Cole was using the word “ban” to refer to the publisher refusing to publish a prequel in his series because it wasn’t to the head editor’s taste. And the reason that I took such offense is that for someone who writes for a living, he used words so incorrectly and so poorly that it had the completely different result of showing him to be terrible writer instead of just a wronged one.

  32. @RedWombat
    Did you celebrate? I always recommend celebrating having hit the big time.

    I’m leary of books which only have 5 star or 1 & 5 star reviews if they have over 50 reviews. By that point they should have a variety of reviews although it is possible an author is really good at targeting their market with the occasional major misstep.

  33. One thing I find interesting is his agent didn’t then pitch the book to another publisher based on the likely sales of his previous book.

    A handful of potential reasons:

    1. They did and no one bit, so he didn’t mention it in his marketing screed.

    2. Publishers generally aren’t interested in a series unless they can have all of it (or if it’s a really big success), and the agent knew it was unlikely to go over.

    3. The agent thought it was bad, too, and shopping it around would make it harder to start an ongoing relationship with a publisher that could be started with something new and better.

    I have no idea if it was one of these or something else, but they’re all well within the norm for publishing.

  34. lurkertype:

    I agree with BGHilton, it’d have been better all around to tell the guy “this is a stupid plot twist” because, hoo-boy, it is.

    JJ:

    Well, if the editor had done that, Cole would have just insisted they were lying, and that he was really being asked to change his plot for political reasons.

    Given the level of misunderstanding of publishing functions and the high level of umbrage in his screed, it’s possible the editor did just that. Or tried to couch it diplomatically, sending the author off in a rage.

    But I don’t think that was an objective, dispassionate account of the proceedings.

    JC:

    We are going to continue to point out that Ms. —— and Mr. —— of HarperVoyager are attempting (thankfully with less success than their actions would have had only a few years ago) to shut dissenting voices out of the field, that they are in violation of what Scott Alexander called “the spirit of the First Amendment”, and that the shareholders of HarperVoyager might want to ensure such decisions do not have an adverse impact on the publisher’s profits.

    The wow.

    A publisher rejecting a book is not attempting to force the author out of the field. The publisher is declining to publish the book.

  35. @J. C. Salomen – We are going to continue to point out that Ms. —— and Mr. —— of HarperVoyager are attempting (thankfully with less success than their actions would have had only a few years ago) to shut dissenting voices out of the field, that they are in violation of what Scott Alexander called “the spirit of the First Amendment”, and that the shareholders of HarperVoyager might want to ensure such decisions do not have an adverse impact on the publisher’s profits.

    When Scott Alexander maundered on about “the spirit of the First Amendment,” he also liked to a Popehat post by Ken White. I’m not entirely certain of White’s place on the political spectrum, but I’m almost certain he’s not a liberal. I read him regularly anyway, because of his strict adherence to the actual First Amendment instead of the weird construction whiny people put on it when they discover there are consequences to being asshats in public. Here’s what White had to say about that whole spirit of thingy in the link Mr. Alexander so kindly provided:

    2. The phrase “the spirit of the First Amendment” often signals approaching nonsense. So, regrettably, does the phrase “free speech” when uncoupled from constitutional free speech principles. These terms often smuggle unprincipled and internally inconsistent concepts — like the doctrine of the Preferred+ First Speaker. The doctrine of the Preferred First Speaker holds that when Person A speaks, listeners B, C, and D should refrain from their full range of constitutionally protected expression to preserve the ability of Person A to speak without fear of non-governmental consequences that Person A doesn’t like. The doctrine of the Preferred First Speaker applies different levels of scrutiny and judgment to the first person who speaks and the second person who reacts to them; it asks “why was it necessary for you to say that” or “what was your motive in saying that” or “did you consider how that would impact someone” to the second person and not the first. It’s ultimately incoherent as a theory of freedom of expression.

    Emphasis added by me, because I didn’t want you to miss such a cogent criticism.

    ETA-Harper Voyager does not have shareholders. Its parent corporation does, though. That’s News Corp, run by that pillar of liberal thought, Rupert Murdoch.

  36. Ursula K. LeGuin’s collection The Birthday of the World (6 novelettes and 2 novellas, 384 pages) is on sale at Amazon US for $1.99. (I don’t know whether the price drop has been echoed on Amazon UK, Nook, or Kobo)

  37. I would’ve put this in the earlier thread but that seems to have been completely de-railed with meta-commentary.

    I recently finished The Fifth Season and goddamnit I want to read the second one now!

    I also finished The Mirror Empire about a week ago and umm, err, what? I need the second book of this too if only to fill in some details from the end there.

    At some point when I’m feeling a little more cromulent I may attempt to order my thoughts on these into something a little more substantial.

    ETA: Current read is The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle. I’m currently feeling a little bit meh about it. Set in Elizabethan England with creatures from legend (Skraylings) who arrived from the New World, presumably via the original Viking legends. Only about a fifth of the way through though so it may or may not pick up. For me. YMMV.

  38. I recently finished The Fifth Season and goddamnit I want to read the second one now!

    Yes – but the end of The Fifth Season was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  39. Oneiros: I also finished The Mirror Empire about a week ago and umm, err, what? I need the second book of this too if only to fill in some details from the end there.

    There is a huge amount of complexity in the first book to get one’s head around, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to need to re-read it before tackling the second in the series. I’m still undecided on my opinion of the first book.

  40. Oneiros: I also finished The Mirror Empire about a week ago and umm, err, what? I need the second book of this too if only to fill in some details from the end there.

    I have both but her writing tends to be dark and violent so I keep putting off reading them. I’ve read too many dark/brutal books over the past 14 months.

  41. Just finished An Inheritance of Ashes, by Leah Bobet. Canadian, and YA, and so under many peoples’ radar, but I was vastly impressed, even compared to her perfectly acceptable first book, Above. As in, possible Hugo nominee impressed.

    It’s set in our future, after something broke the world in the protagonist Hallie’s great-grandparents’ day — but that detail is almost entirely backdrop irrelevant to the main story, which is about a recent war against a horrible, possibly godly being (and the weird burning creatures it spawns, and its human followers), and how that war affects Hallie, her pregnant sister (whose husband has not yet come home from the war), and the small farm they are trying to keep going against all odds. Things get especially complicated when Hallie hires a returning soldier to finish readying the farm for winter, and when the now-dead God’s creatures start showing up again. There’s some lovely side characters — I particularly like the Chandlers, a commune of scientifically minded explorers of the ruins — and even the ones that feel like near caricatures at first, like the greedy town mayor who wants their farm, prove to have their own lives and motives beyond what Hallie imagines.

    Mostly, it’s about how people don’t talk, sometimes because they understand each other well enough they don’t need to, and sometimes for the exact opposite reason. It’s about trying to be the person you want to be, and calling out your friends on their BS. I was expecting a good read, but not this level.

    Also partway through the Fifth Season, and yeah, what everyone keeps saying. It’s amazing.

  42. were I Harper Collins, I wouldn’t work with him again

    Isn’t publishing a pretty small pond? Like, all the editors know each other and trade gossip? He better hope he sells apocalyptically well in self-publishing, because the Big 5 aren’t going to touch him after all this blabbing and dissing of his former editor and publisher.

  43. Isn’t publishing a pretty small pond? Like, all the editors know each other and trade gossip? He better hope he sells apocalyptically well in self-publishing, because the Big 5 aren’t going to touch him after all this blabbing and dissing of his former editor and publisher.

    In my experience, if he writes a marketable book, someone will want it. Maybe even someone at his old publisher.

    Despite the dramatic dramas painted online, publishers like money more than they like resentment and feuds. Working with “difficult” authors is worth it if the sales are good, less so if they’re not.

  44. @Cheryl S.

    Ken White’s sort of the ringleader of the Popehat gang, and also one of the more liberal members of the group. He’s friends with Scalzi, while another of the main Popehat contributors is friends with Vox Day. I imagine this creates some bizarre tension in the group, but they seem to manage to get along ok despite their political differences (which are probably not as great as the ones between Scalzi and Day). The fact that the site hangs together as well as it does is probably a useful reminder for all the rest of us, liberal or conservative: disagreeing on politics doesn’t mean you can’t find common ground for entertaining discussion on other topics! And maybe even find a way to work together to support some of the things you do agree on.

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