(1) MOUNT TBR. Telluride, Colorado has a new cultural resource – the Clute Science Fiction Library. [Via Ansible Links.]
The library, a program of the Telluride Institute, contains over 11,000 volumes, many of them first editions. It is located on Colorado Avenue next to Ghost Town Grocer.
The Clute Science Fiction Library is intended to be a place of excellence for scholars, writers and researchers, according to Pamela Lifton-Zoline, vice president and founding trustee of the Telluride Institute, a nonprofit that works to enrich “the health of environments, cultures, and economies,” according to the organization’s website.
The volumes were a private collection belonging to John Clute, an award-winning author, essayist and editor of “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.” Clute contributed over 2 million words and thousands of entries to the encyclopedia.
Clute, who resides in England, has been a trustee of the Telluride Institute since its inception in 1985 — but he has been friends with Lifton-Zoline since high school, where she remembers meeting him in their French class.
“He came into this French class and he was just so exotic, (being) from Canada. We became really good friends,” Lifton-Zoline said. “(The library) is a work of friendship as much as it is a work of ownership.”
She added, “He has promised to bless the library with his visits, his presence, his connections and his whole community of wonderful writers.”
Clute has visited Telluride more times than he can count. He will return again in June 2017, this time to give an inaugural lecture at the Sheridan Opera House entitled: “Those Who Do Not Know Science Fiction are Condemned to Repeat it.”
(2) THE MUSIC INSIDE YOU. Articles that reference Diana Pavlac Glyer’s Inklings research in Bandersnatch don’t usually begin with a great big photo of Beyonce and a hook about the Grammys. The exception is Jeff Goins’ “Why You’ll Never Do Your Best Work Alone”.
When it was released on April 23, 2016, Lemonade credited 72 writers—and earned a swift public backlash as a result. One person on Twitter wrote, “Is this the time of year where we call Beyoncé a musical genius even though she has 50 [to] 100 writers and producers for each album[?]” Another said, “Beyoncé has FIFTEEN writers on one of her songs. But she’s a genius, they say.”
…Beyoncé’s detractors believe geniuses work alone, but history and modern research both suggest not….
…Diana Glyer has spent decades studying the Inklings, that famous literary group that birthed the careers of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. And as she sees it, the myth of the starving artist who works alone is not only wrong, it “robs writers and other creatives of the possibility of writing the way that writing or creating normally takes place, which is in a community.”
Embracing that reality, rather than resisting it, can actually encourage creativity itself by helping us find like-minded creatives to collaborate with. If anything, our success is contingent on our ability to work well with others—which may be just one reason why employers seem so desperate lately to hire people with high emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. Of course, we need to spend significant amounts of time alone with our craft. But we also need significant amounts of time with people who can guide us in doing better work.
Otherwise, creative output becomes a much slower, more grueling slog than it needs to be. As Glyer puts it, “the life of an artist, [or of] any kind of creator, is fraught with discouragement. You need people to correct your path.”
(3) SHARING THE SHIELD. In her article “My grandfather helped create Captain America for times like these”, Megan Margulies tells Washington Post readers about her grandfather, Captain America co-creator Joe Simon, and how Captain America “came to symbolize the immense love I had for my grandfather” but also Captain America’s shield is “again serving as a tool to fight all that threatens our Constitution and our national decency.”
Amid the masses of strangers gathered to protest at the Boston Women’s March, I spotted something familiar: that shield — red, white and blue — a simple design that holds the weight of so much conviction. Captain America’s iconic getup caught my eye, not only because of the principles it stands for but because he reminds me of another hero of mine. On Dec. 20, 1940, a year into World War II, my grandfather Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, both sons of Jewish immigrants, released the first issue of “Captain America.” The cover featured Cap slugging Adolf Hitler . Because the United States didn’t enter the war until late 1941, a full year later, Captain America seemed to embody the American spirit more than the actions of the American government.
As Cap socked the Führer, many rejoiced, but members of the German American Bund, an American pro-Nazi organization, were disgusted. Jack and my grandfather were soon inundated with hate mail and threatening phone calls, all with the same theme: “Death to the Jews.” As the threats continued, Timely Comics employees became nervous about leaving their building in New York. Then my grandfather took a call from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who promised to send police officers to protect them. “I was incredulous as I picked up the phone, but there was no mistaking the shrill voice,” my grandfather recalled in his book “The Comic Book Makers.” “’You boys over there are doing a good job,’ the voice squeaked, ‘The City of New York will see that no harm will come to you.’”
(4) BACK TO THE BEAR FLAG. David Klaus sent the following link with a comment: “I have been saying for twenty years that Heinlein accurately predicted an eventual balkanization of the U. S., particularly a ‘California Confederation’ made up of today’s California, Oregon, and Washington ad depicted in Friday — although Northern California is probably more likely to band with the two other states while Southern California will set apart on its own.” — “’California is a nation, not a state’: A fringe movement wants a break from the U.S.”, in the Washington Post.
About 15 people huddled in a luxury apartment building, munching on danishes as they plotted out their plan to have California secede from the United States.
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of an independent California,” Geoff Lewis said as he stood in a glass-walled conference room adorned with California’s grizzly-bear flag and a sign reading “California is a nation, not a state.”
Sweaty onlookers from the gym across the hall peered in curiously.
Bolstered by the election of President Trump, the group, Yes California, is collecting the 585,407 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Its goal is to have California become its own country, separate and apart from the United States.
(5) EXPANDING HORIZONS. The Everyone: Worlds Without Walls Kickstarter reached its minimum goal in the first five days. Since then editor Tony C. Smith has announced the addition of a story by Lavie Tidhar, and now a previously unpublished story by Ken Liu.
(6) WHEN THE EMPIRE STRUCK BACK. Washington Post columnist John Kelly continues his investigation of the Internet myth that the paper fired its film critic for giving Star Wars a bad review (“Would you believe that a Post critic was fired for hating ‘Star Wars’? Well, don’t”). He finds that, like most Internet myths, it’s a garbled version of the truth. Washington Star film critic Tom Dowling stopped writing film reviews (he continued to work for the newspaper) shortly after a May 1980 review where he called The Empire Strikes Back a “two-hour corporate logo explaining the future of the Star Wars industry.”
Several readers…wrote to say it was the Washington Star’s Tom Dowling who was canned for a pan — not of the first film, but its sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.” True?
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Dowling said when Answer Man rang the retired newspaperman up at his home in Northwest Washington. “The story is true as far as it goes. I don’t know how far it factually goes.”
…Never, he wrote, “had such unlimited resources, unparalleled good will and guaranteed formula of success been frittered away in such irreparable fashion.”
For most of its history, the Evening Star was the dominant newspaper in Washington, but by 1980 it had fallen behind The Post. It had been bought in 1978 by Time magazine, which that very week had put Darth Vader on the cover. The story inside noted: “In many ways the new film is a better film than ‘Star Wars,’ visually more exciting, more artful and meticulous in detail.”
Was it corporate embarrassment that got Dowling the ax? Hard to prove. Dowling said that years later, at a reunion of Star employees, a former editor sidled up and told him that Time magazine had a “secret interest” in the movie and executives were worried his pan would discourage people from going to see it.
“I have no idea if that was true,” Dowling said.
But the review had apparently irritated someone. Dowling filed a few more reviews — “The Gong Show Movie,” “Fame” — before Star editor Murray Gart moved him to a column called “Federal Cases” that poked fun at government bureaucracy. (“Actually, it was the most fun I’ve ever had in newspapers,” Dowling said.)
(7) ALDRIDGE OBIT. British artist, graphic designer and illustrator Alan Aldridge died February 17 at the age of 73. Best known as the creator of album covers for The Who (A Quick One) and Elton John (Captain Fantastic), he also worked as Penguin Books’ art director for a number of years. His SF cover artwork and design for Penguin Books is discussed at length here. Andrew Porter observes, “To say he was not popular with Penguin’s owners and the authors published would not be amiss.”
By 1967 Allen Lane was harbouring deep misgivings about the direction Tony Godwin was taking Penguin with regard to the marketing and distribution of fiction. Lane felt that the covers being designed by Alan Aldridge et al. were becoming too commercial and increasingly tasteless. To Lane such covers were undignified and not in keeping with Penguin’s reputation. Worse still, the use of images he regarded as titillating or even offensive was an insult to the books’ authors, some of whom were now making their own feelings known, with more than one threatening to move to another publisher.
Matters were made worse by Godwin’s desire to sell Penguin books in non-traditional outlets such as supermarkets. Lane disliked the idea and as booksellers joined authors to protest at the way Penguin was heading so the rift between the two men deepened. To Lane, Aldridge’s ‘vulgar covers’ and Godwin’s ‘gimmicky selling’ were a threat to over thirty years of Penguin tradition and brand identity. If left unchecked it would only be a matter of time before the books were being packaged and sold just like any other consumer product. The crisis came to a head in late April and early May, with a boardroom bust-up that resulted in Godwin’s departure and Lane’s barbed comment that ‘a book is not a tin of beans’.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 19, 1912 – Prizes are included with Cracker Jacks for the first time .
Thought to be introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair by brothers F.W. and Louis Rueckheim, legend has it the caramel-coated treat got its name three years later when a salesman — impressed by the process that kept the concoction from sticking together — exclaimed in delight: “That’s cracker jack!”
(9) A ROOM OF KIRK’S OWN. A Boca Raton mansion with Star Trek and other pop culture themed rooms is on the market for $30M.
The nine-bedroom home belongs to Marc Bell, whose portfolio has included Penthouse and Adult Friend Founder over the years. The entrepreneur equipped his one-of-a-kind estate with rooms modeled after the popular TV series/movie franchise, including the bridge from the Starship Enterprise, which serves as the home theater.
Designed by architect Randall Stofft, the Mediterranean villa also features a full-scale Borg model, a fictional alien race first appearing in the Star Trek television series. Other details include a Call-of-Duty-modeled video game room, retro arcade, 16 bathrooms, resort-style pool with waterfalls, wine room, gourmet kitchen, and a full basketball court.
The Star Trek-themed room shows up at the 1-minute mark of this sales video.
(10) HELP ME OBI-WAN. Your wallet may need rescuing after you’ve bought all these — “Hasbro 40th anniversary ‘Star War’ toys recreate classic movie scenes”.
Hasbro has unveiled a new line of retro-style Black Series toys for the 40th anniversary of Star Wars this spring. And they’re unveiling them with this series of photos featuring the playthings recreating memorable scenes from the film.
Although these new 6-inch toys are much larger than the Kenner originals that hit shelves in late 1977, they are displayed in similar bubble and card packaging — for an extra helping of nostalgia. (Hasbro acquired Kenner in 1991.) Each of the toys retails for $19.99 and will be available later this spring.
Above, you see the new Black Series Han, Leia, and Luke fleeing Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers in a scene aboard the Death Star.
(11) CAST A GIANT SHADOW. New posts at the Shadow Clarke site. Two more jurors introduce themselves, plus a “guess the shortlist and win the books” competition.
The Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Anglia Ruskin University is delighted to host a competition for readers to guess the short list.
The winner, thanks to the generosity of the Arthur C Clarke Award, will receive copies of all six of this year’s shortlisted novels.
To enter, post a comment in reply to this post with a list of six books (no more, no fewer), selected from the list of 86 eligible submissions, along with a rationale as to why you think that shortlist will be the ones which the judges have chosen. Pingbacks won’t be accepted as entries.
- Shadow juror Paul Kincaid writes about “The Clarke and Me”.
That is what makes the Clarke Award great. The fact that it doesn’t conform to genre stereotypes, the fact that it bucks the trend, the fact that it regards science fiction as the broadest of broad churches, and will look anywhere within that spectrum for the best. And that restless, wide-ranging aspect of the award is what gets people arguing about it. And that argument is good, not just for the award itself (though it does keep the award alive in people’s minds), but for science fiction as a whole. Because the more the Clarke Award challenges our expectations, the more it opens us up to an ever wider, ever changing sense of what science fiction is and can be.
Let’s face it, the biggest debate within science fiction at the moment is the debate surrounding the Sad and Rabid Puppies, and that debate is all about narrowing science fiction. The Puppies want to enclose and limit the genre, restrict it to a narrow spectrum that resembles the science fiction they remember from the 1950s: overwhelmingly masculine, almost entirely American, distinctly technophiliac, and ignoring the literary changes that have occurred within the genre over the last half century. This is science fiction that repeats what has gone before, that depends upon its familiarity; this is science fiction that is not going anywhere new. Okay, some work that fits within this spectrum can be interesting and important, but it cannot be, it should not be, the whole of science fiction. The best way to counter the Puppies’ argument is with the sort of expansionist, innovative, challenging argument about science fiction that has traditionally been associated with the Clarke Award.
- Megan AM introduces herself in the time-honored style of faannish punchbowl floaters.
I don’t particularly like SF, which is also to say that I am very particular about SF. My relationship to SF has been long, unbidden, unlabeled, and mostly uninformed, and I suspect this is the case for the majority of human beings who are not in fandom, but who have, at some point, been drawn to a kind of storytelling that presents the world in a way that’s different from our reality. Those same folks who are non-fans might not want to read books because they think books are boring (they often are), they don’t read SF because they think it’s dorky (it often is), and they’re not involved in fandom because there’s life to live (though perhaps not for very much longer). I completely get this. Even the term “SF” is relatively new to me: I doubt I’ve ever said “SF” in public, much less “SFnal”; in fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve never said “SFnal” out loud. SFnal. I said it. It echoed off the kitchen walls and it sounded unfamiliar and now I feel weird.
So you don’t have to tell me there’s a problem in SF. There are a number of problems, not the least of which are its fannish exclusiveness and its inability to properly recognize itself, its shortcomings, and its potential.
SPIELS ON WHEELS. Messy Chic has a cool gallery of old bookmobile photographs.
Long before Amazon was bringing books to your doorstep, there was the Bookmobile! A travelling library often used to provide books to villages and city suburbs that had no library buildings, the bookmobile went from a simple horse-drawn cart in the 19th century to large customised vehicles that became part of American culture and reached their height of popularity in the mid-twentieth century. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane with this forgotten four-wheeler…
[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, JJ, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer Sylvester.]
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One year my branch library in San Jose was a bookmobile. (They’d had an electrical fire that destroyed the interior of the building. Fortunately it was about two blocks from the fire station, and most of the books survived. Irony or something: the original branch was part fire station.) The branch was rebuilt on the old foundation.
[alternative first]
[godstalk]
4) Nice idea, but I live in San Diego where 40% of the economy is based on the military – so I’m voting no. At leas it’d stop my fed taxes going to all the takers in the red states.
Finished The Medusa Chronicles. Biggest strength is that it channels the age of SF when the original short was written, which is also the biggest weakness. Lots of attempted sensawunda but overall falls curiously flat. The central character is basically a rock in a river of time, with zero character development, and the main secondary character doesn’t seem to change over time. Nyfb, ab engvbany rkcynangvba vf bssrerq sbe gur Nvf qvfznagyvat rvgure Zrephel be gur rnegu, naq Nqnz fubjf ab fvta bs ribyhgvba va punenpgre bire 500 lrnef, juvpu fubhyq or na rcbpu sbe na NV, pbafvqrevat nyy gur nqinaprf gung ner fhccbfrq gb unir unccrarq va gur NV grpu. Basically, meh.
I’m not sure if Al Reynolds is going downhill, Slow Bullets didn’t hit the mark for me and this was a bit beige. Since the end of Revelation Space and House of Suns I’ve not been too impressed – Poseidon’s Children was OK, I guess, after the fairly dull first book. Any views on Revenger?
(3) SHARING THE SHIELD.
For me, it’s telling that Captain America’s weapon is a shield.
(7) Aldridge’s art looked familiar right off the bat, and I realized when I saw “Penguin” that it’s because of his pervasive work in the Penguin Book of Comics, a book I enjoy anyway. Quite possibly, I’m enjoying Aldridge’s work as art director, providing many reprints at a good size, in chunks big enough to be coherent and make me want to read more.
If scrolling you is bad, I don’t want to be good.
Chris S: Any views on Revenger?
This was in my last set of mini-reviews:
Synopsis: An ambitious, worldly 18-year-old drags her naïve, congenial year-younger sister out on an adventure to serve on a spaceship in a universe where salvage ships compete to plunder caches of ancient technology when their surrounding protective bubbles periodically open. These ships navigate with the aid of communications via the found skulls of an alien race which died out millions of years before, which can only be operated by psychic “bone-readers”. Adventure, danger, and tragedy ensue.
What I thought: Locus put this novel in the YA category of their annual poll, which really surprised me. Yes, the two main characters are 17 and 18 years old at the start of the book — but it’s a much darker, edgier version of A Long Way to a Slow, Angry Planet, and I would definitely not consider it a “Young Adult” book. I really, really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to a sequel. It’s on my Hugo longlist for now.
Well this is freaky – I really thought I had posted a review of Revenger and yet I find that I haven’t.
Anyway – good stuff. In enjoyed it. High adventure and low deeds.
Damn – and I didn’t write a review of Sorcerer of the Wildeeps either.
I have mixed feelings about California independence. It is a fact universally acknowledged that all Californians want the state to be split into two, but there is no agreement on where it should be divided because everyone wants to be in the northern part. Maybe we should split into ten states equally by assessed valuation. Ten states would have an average population each of about 3.9 million people, making them slightly above median size relative to other U.S. states. That seems very fair. We wouldn’t want to have disproportionate influence in the Senate and the Electoral College. It would be nice enough just to be average. But note that this is not about getting independence from the United States. It is about getting independence from other Californians.
The “Yes California”/CalExit group happens to be led by a guy who lives in Russia. This is traditional — California has a long history of disreputable outsiders (such as John C. Fremont) coming in and making trouble. But really, we don’t need anything from Russia. We have our own oil. Our economy is more than a trillion dollars larger. Russia has Putin but we have Jerry Brown. It just seems like advantage California across the board. Why can’t they find a local political nutcase to lead their group? It isn’t like we have a shortage.
There are some serious issues with the CalExit idea. Like Brexit is working out so well in the UK, the CalExit dudes decided to rename their organization to “Yes California”. Let’s see how long that lasts. And there’s what happened the last time states tried to leave the union. But the real deal-breaker for me is that they want to bring back the Bear Republic when there haven’t been any wild grizzlies in the state since 1926. They just see the California state flag and think it is really cool (which it is), without realizing that it is actually a flag of mourning. If the CalExit dudes would like to help reintroduce grizzlies into the state, I’d be happy to let them do it. I am sure many of them have spare rooms or at least a couch. It’s a good cause. But we don’t need any Russian grizzlies. Montana and Alaska have grizzlies to spare, and as American grizzlies they won’t need visas.
When Governor Brown gave his “We will build our own damn satellites” speech, I realized it’s time for a band to do another cover of “California, Über Alles”. It’s such a great song, but a lot has changed since 1984.
@Mike , SPIELS ON WHEELS is missing an item-number 🙂
Personal moment of great squee: I won a prize in the Strange Horizons subscription drive (SH is awesome, y’all), and picked Ada Palmer’s Too Like The Lightning. Which, ::cough cough cough::, y’all might remember I have some measure of fondness for 😛 I heard it on audiobook, and was planning to get a hardcopy anyway, so this was great.
Well. The package came yesterday. Palmer sent it herself, and I’d conveyed some of my enthusiasm in the interim. She added in a fantastic card, and an ARC of volume II. ::eyepop::
If you’ve read Too Like The Lightning, you know that it ends with basically everything up in the air. If you loved it as I did, you’ve been waiting for Seven Surrenders with bated breath. So, getting an ARC, almost a month early, from the author… It’s a pure moment of fannish glee 🙂
(Now my only issue is what this does to my Hugo reading…)
Speaking of which, the other thing in the mail yesterday was Andre M. Carrington’s Speculative Blackness, which has been high on my TBR list for a while now. Cabbages and Kings had a great string of readthrough tweets and observations; it looks like it covers some really intriguing material. Fingers crossed for this being an awesome Best Related Work nom 🙂
(2) This makes me think of Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing”, and the way that successful women have historically been depicted as lone anomalies by ignoring the communities they were part of. Which in turn makes me think we’re looking at yet another sexist double-bind: work on your own and you’re a rare freak exception, work with others and you’re not a “real” success.
(7) Before I could read fluently I liked to look at the covers of my mother’s collection of SF paperbacks. She had a lot of Penguin editions and I remember Aldridge’s designs fondly.
Mobile Libraries, we called them, and one came to my village every two weeks and it was like having Christmas once a fortnight. I wrote a story about it: http://www.shiftthezine.co.uk/?p=281
I was never able to find many photos of Irish mobile libraries though, certainly not of the type that used to come to my place, but thanks for posting these, they’re lovely.
Clicky
Nigel: Mobile Libraries, we called them, and one came to my village every two weeks and it was like having Christmas once a fortnight. I wrote a story about it
What a wonderful story. I got my love of reading from my mom, who was the main organizer of turning our hopeless small-town library — in one room of a decrepit building with some shelves full of ancient unread books — into a brand-new building full of wonderful books for people of all ages, and computers, and Overdrive e-book lending, and a childrens’ storytime room with a gorgeous hand-painted fantasy mural.
I’m going to send her the link. I think she would love your story as much as I did.
Mobile libraries were, and often still are, a common way of providing library services in the UK as a supplement to brick and mortar versions. Libraries are under massive funding pressure at the moment, and I think some areas have responded by cutting mobile services, but others have found it’s better to replace small branches with an expansion of their mobile service.
@Standback. Well done. Even though I had issues with the book’s division…still, jealous!
RE: Medusa Chronicles: I had a very favorable opinion of the novel, myself. Revenger is on Mount TBR.
I loved Revenger a lot.
I am currently reading a lot of “good-enough” books (some because I had some good memories of some of them (but nostalgia is very often untruthful),and some because I wanted to read all books by a “good-enough” author (case in point, for both, Simon R Green)), and Revenger just shown me I should be a lot more selective, and that a “really-good” book is far better than a “good-enough” book.
I hope there will be a sequel. Waiting for it, maybe I’m going to (re-)read all books by Reynolds. I have very good memories of Terminal World, which has some similarities with Revenger.
So that’s what happened after the Heat Death of the Universe
I have the same feelings about CA secession as I do when any state talks about leaving the union: revulsion, and contempt for people who don’t understand history, and don’t understand the legal impossibility under the framework of US law.
The short of it is, you can’t, unless you fight and win a war, or dissolve the constitution. That’s not going to happen unless you convince the whole country to stop being a country. So your best option is war. If you want secession, you want a war, and you will have to win to leave.
The California secession thing looks like another case of “everything here would be just wonderful if we didn’t have to pay attention to those grubby other people”… which is working out so well for us here in the UK….
Thank you, JJ, I’m glad you liked it.
Hmm, I just tried to add this to my Amazon wishlist but it doesn’t seem to be available in ebook format in the UK. That doesn’t make much sense.
And on further investigation, I can actually buy it in English on a Turkish website. I wonder why it hasn’t been picked up for the UK market?
(3) As a lifelong New Yorker, Fiorello LaGuardia was the greatest of our mayors. An icon. He had been railing against both Mussolini and Hitler for years because he knew.
@Paul A “When I make a mistake, its a beaut”. LaGuardia didn’t make a mistake on Mussolini and Hitler…
When Norway seceded from Sweden, there was a lot of sabre rattling. Our peace organization (the oldest one in the world) still have a sign left with the text “PEACE WITH NORWAY”. In the end, there was no war because people weren’t that stupid. Norway lefth the union and they are happy and we are happy.
If the mouse wants to roar, let it.
@Paul_A …AND he read the Sunday comics on the radio!
4): I want to know what their immigration policy will be before I endorse the movement. Here in NH, which has a better chance of secession (at least politically, small pop) I’ve signed on to the NH Independence movement (right before I moved to NH so I could claim I moved to the state in order to support the movement).
My plan is to seize control of the government and then turn the state into the first State of The Science Fiction Union. Mandates will include:
1. hosting a free (state funded) convention every weekend
2. mandatory SF reading classes in all schools
3. the addition of Masters in and Doctoral programs in Science Fiction to all universities and colleges
4. Science Fiction knowledge tests before granting a franchise to adult citizens
5. Franchise extended to minor citizens demonstrating sufficient knowledge
6. an independent space program
7. death penalty via launch into space
8. Brianna Wu permanent cabinet member
9. all policies based on “ideas” from SF novels
10. Budget to include at least 100 million in grants for SF related projects
11. More crazy stuff as I think it up
What would probably make people happiest is for the urban parts of the country to form one country and the rural parts another country, since that’s where the divide is. Unfortunately, non-geographically linked countries aren’t really practical, so perhaps more local control would help, shift more power to the county level. I don’t see anyone talking about that though, easier to support ideas that you know have no chance of success where you won’t be called upon to do any of the tedious work needed for implementation.
@Steve Wright
The California secession thing looks like another case of “everything here would be just wonderful if we didn’t have to pay attention to those grubby other people”
No doubt there is some of that at play.
At the same time, there has been low key disrespect of California for decades. There are quite a few non-Californians that view the state as not really American. They see it, only partially tongue in cheek, as a near communist dystopia of welfare recipients, illegals, and crime. A state whose refugee retirees carpet bag to other states driving up real estate costs while trying to impose their cultural hegemony on local laws and values.
Probably the culmination of this is the oft repeated statements that Trump won the popular vote if you exclude California. As if the most populous state (bigger than the 21 least populous States combined) should somehow not count.
Secession is a bad idea but, to at least some degree, these attitudes have helped goad it. Beat a dog long enough and it might just bite.
@rob_matic:
No idea what the issue is. This saddens me greatly :-/
Thanks JJ and Camestros – I’ll put it on my library list.
I wasn’t entirely serious with the Calexit support – however, the CA economy is as big as the 25 smallest states combined. The biggest issue is the lack of representation in the senate, which isn’t a bug but a feature, so there’s very little that can be done about it.
And even California has the coastal vs inland tension, with the larger inland bit being hardcore republican and the coast being democrat (in broad generalities).
A peaceful Calexit would probably mean the end of the US, though, and therefore it won’t happen.
The bit where you offer a free lunch just before the tests on Heinlein and Niven is a rather mean gotcha.
Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing” is surprisingly difficult to acquire in a timely matter. The copy I ordered for my niece came in after Xmas.
My plan is to seize control of the government and then turn the state into the first State of The Science Fiction Union. Mandates will include:
1. hosting a free (state funded) convention every weekend
2. mandatory SF reading classes in all schools
3. the addition of Masters in and Doctoral programs in Science Fiction to all universities and colleges
4. Science Fiction knowledge tests before granting a franchise to adult citizens
5. Franchise extended to minor citizens demonstrating sufficient knowledge
6. an independent space program
7. death penalty via launch into space
8. Brianna Wu permanent cabinet member
9. all policies based on “ideas” from SF novels
10. Budget to include at least 100 million in grants for SF related projects
11. More crazy stuff as I think it up
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
@Chris S.
And even California has the coastal vs inland tension, with the larger inland bit being hardcore republican and the coast being democrat (in broad generalities).
Don’t forget north-south tension too. There’s remnants of that anyways – e.g. my favorite NPR station: Jefferson Public Radio (named for a failed pre-WW2 attempt to break away Southern Oregon and Northern California into a new state named Jefferson).
@James Davis Nicoll
University of Texas Press claims to have a PoD edition – was that what you bought? The Amazon listings are a total mess, as you might expect.
ObSF: Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel Ecotopia, postulating a future in which northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States and formed a hippie republic.
Related to bookmobiles: WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION, where Argentine artist and eccentric Raul Lemesoff converts a 1979 Ford Falcon into a tank… armored with free books.
If the Science Fiction Union is a democracy, I would like to propose an opposition party, running on a platform of abolishing all pre-vote knowledge tests (ew) and instead instituting a mandatory “tell us something cool you read/watched/consumed” census to be conducted every month. Those who don’t fill out census are tasked with community service to collate the data and in the process get to learn about cool stuff in a boring but inspiring way.
Also, ban on private petrol-fuelled cars except for those with a disability which precludes use of other modes of transport. State funded research into really cool sfnal alternatives could be a priority.
Also you should get a cat to be foreign secretary. maybe a talking one if a suitable candidate comes forward (not Timothy).
@Arifel
Alas, a survey of the field shows it’s much more likely to be either an empire or a popular dictatorship led by the men (sic) of vision whose scientific knowledge saved us all.
But if we’re taking requests, I’ll go for the “safe society” where all human needs are provided for, just after the Libertarians leave by starship.
Will that be the starship that also carries the telephone sanitizers?
Ghost Bird: Yes sorry, I was indeed confusing “existence of a voting system” with democracy. Silly mistake, it’s rather late here.
Still, I’m happy to take my movement underground if that’s what it takes. I’ll just be here in the drain system, pushing soggy fan fiction pages through the gaps in the paving and plotting the downfall of unnecessary human suffering.
@Arifel : Of course it should be a dictatorship, where a logical, non-emotional, all-powerful AI is the leader. The AI should have GLaDOs voice.
“The pixel is a lie!”
If there is a Klingon in your hedgerow , dont be alarmed now. Its just the spring clean of the Gowron.
(In case you need an anthem, I would volunteer)
The Nebula Award Nominees are up!
The Curious Case of the Yog (-Sothoth) that did not B-Ark.
Nebulas: there’s a couple of things on there that I might wonder about once I’ve digested it a bit but overall it looks like a very good list (Ninefox! Vellit Boe!)
The Heat Death of the Universe? So that is what happened in Sweden last night.
@Hampus Eckerman
Oh thank Ghu. You’re safe! I had worried about you wandering the bleak wasteland Stockholm has become since the conspiracy to sap and impurify all of Sweden’s precious bodily fluids was exposed yesterday!
Ghost Bird, I ordered the POD via amazon and it took over a month to arrive.
And now I’m envisioning monks hunched over carrels in a scriptorium, laboriously copying out Russ’ manuscript.