Pixel Scroll 2/2/16 A Spoonful Of Pixels Helps The Medicine Scroll Down

(1) ALTERNATIVE FUTURISM AT UCR. Despite everything else that’s happened to sf studies there, the sun still rose over Riverside this morning and the University of California Riverside announced new events in its continuing Alternative Futurisms Series. The series is funded by a $175,000 Sawyer Seminar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Authors Daniel José Older and Walter Mosley will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 3, followed on March 3 by a panel of award-winning authors discussing the expectations of science fiction and fantasy produced by Caribbean writers….

“Throughout 2015-2016, the Sawyer Seminar on Alternative Futurisms is helping to build bridges amongst the various zones of scholarship and creation in people-of-color futurisms and fantastical narratives,” said Nalo Hopkinson, co-organizer of the yearlong seminar, a professor of creative writing and an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. “Following a successful fall quarter, which included a conference, film screenings and panel discussions, the winter quarter is focusing on creators of people-of-color science fiction and fantasy.”

… “The Sawyer Seminar has brought together faculty, students and the larger community around the important question of imagining a diverse future,” said Milagros Peña, dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS). “I am proud of CHASS’s continuing commitment to science fiction studies.”

Events scheduled this month and in the spring include:

Thursday, March 3, 3:30 p.m. Interdisciplinary 1113 – Panel discussion on Caribbean science fiction and fantasy. Panelists are: with Karen Lord, an award-winning Barbadian author (“Redemption in Indigo,” “The Best of All Possible Worlds”) and research consultant; Karin Lowachee, an award-winning author (“Warchild,” “Cagebird”) who was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic; Nalo Hopkinson, award-winning author (“Midnight Robber,” “Falling in Love With Hominids”) who was born in Jamaica and teaches creative writing at UCR with a focus on the literatures of the fantastic such as science fiction, fantasy and magical realism; and Tobias Buckell, a best-selling author who grew up in Grenada and whose work (the “Xenowealth” series, “Hurricane Fever”) has been nominated for numerous awards.

Monday, April 11, 4 p.m. (location tbd) – Readings by Ted Chiang, whose work (“Tower of Babylon,” “Exhalation,” “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”) has won numerous awards; and Charles Yu, whose debut novel “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” was a runner-up for the Campbell Memorial Award.

(2) EARTHSEA OF GREEN. The Kickstarter appeal for Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin raised its target amount of $80,000 on the very first day. A total of $83,268 has been pledged by 1,164 backers as of this writing.

(3) RABID PUPPIES. Vox Day’s daily slate revelation was “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Fan Artist”, with picks Karezoid, rgus, Matthew Callahan, Disse86, and Darkcloud013.

(4) DAY VERSUS DAVIDSON. Vox Day also reacted to Steve Davidson’s attempt to get Andy Weir to repudiate slates: “SJW attempts to block Weir nomination”.

As for why I did not recommend Mr. Weir as Best New Writer last year, it was for a very simple and straightforward reason. I had not read his novel. Unlike so many of the SJWs, I do not recommend novels I have not read, writers whose books I have not read, or artists whose work I have not seen. Those who have not brought their works to my attention have only themselves, and their publishers to blame, if I remain unfamiliar with them. I am but a mere superintelligence, I am not omniscient.

It is perhaps worth noting, again, that I do not care in the least what a writer or an artist happens to think about being recommended; die Gedanken sind frei. People can recuse themselves, publicly repudiate, or virtue-signal, or perform interpretive dance to express the depth of their feelings about Rabid Puppies. It makes no difference to me.

That being said, it appears Marc Miller is not eligible for Best New Writer despite having published his debut novel in 2015. I shall have to revisit that category at a later date.

Although it really doesn’t have any implications for the current discussion, it’s an interesting bit of trivia that Bryan Thomas Schmidt, who was on both the Sad and Rabid slates last year as a short fiction editor, was the person who edited Weir’s novel The Martian.

(5) BIGGER ISSUE. David J. Peterson argues that Puppy drama is overshadowing a really important issue – the lack of a YA Hugo.

No, to my mind the real injustice in the Hugo Awards is the lack of a separate award for YA fiction. More than anywhere else, YA is drawing new readers to science-fiction and fantasy. Yes, right now HBO’s Game of Thrones is huge, and it’s based on a very adult series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, but beyond, what else is big—and I mean big big—in SFF? A few series come to mind: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments. I’m sure you can think of others (oh, duh, Twilight, whatever you think of it). All of these are very successful YA series (all by female authors, incidentally), and all of them have been made into movies that range from moderately successful, to wildly, outrageously successful. Generally, though, unless it’s world-shatteringly successful, YA novels don’t stand a chance of being nominated for a Hugo, let alone winning (of all the books listed above, only two were nominated for best novel—Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—with the latter winning)….

Writing YA fiction is a different endeavor than writing adult fiction. There are different rules in play; a different audience to consider. It’s a different approach altogether. Different. Not better. Not worse. But different. Think of your favorite YA novel and your favorite adult novel (two that jump to mind immediately for me are Matilda and The Great Gatsby). Can you rank one over the other? I can’t. It’s not because I can’t decide which one is better: It’s because they’re not even playing by the same rules….

And that’s my point with YA and the Hugos. YA is underrepresented, but it’s not because readers are ignoring it or anything like that: It’s because it’s competing in a category it shouldn’t be. Right now, enormous YA works are grabbing new readers by the truckload and essentially delivering them into SFF fandom, but they don’t have a seat at the table. This is an issue that has been raised before, but I think the whole Sad Puppy thing has really shoved it to the side, and that, to me, is a real shame.

(6) SEEKS LOVE. Meantime, James Troughton just cuts to the chase —

(7) FINDS LOVE. Congratulations Laura Resnick on the film option offered on one of your romance novels!

The deposit has cleared, which means it’s time to announce: I’ve been offered a film option deal for my romance novel, FALLEN FROM GRACE. This means I’ve licensed the right for a filmmaker to apply for development money from (of all things) the National Film Board in South Africa (where the story would be relocated and the movie made, if it’s made). It’s a multi-stage process and may never get beyond this point (or may never get beyond the next point, “development,” etc.), but I’m still excited. I’ve had an initial approach 2-3 times before about film adaptations (though not for this book), but no one has ever before pursued it beyond the initial “are these rights available?”

(8) BLUE TWO. The New Zealand Herald reports “First Avatar sequel to start shooting in NZ this April”.

The follow-up to the blockbuster hit Avatar will start production in New Zealand this year.

Director James Cameron is set to start filming the first of three Avatar sequels in April, which are scheduled to be released one year after the other.

The first sequel was supposed to come out in cinemas later this year, but delays have forced the release date to the end of 2017.

According to My Entertainment World, the film will start shooting in California’s Manhattan Beach and New Zealand.

The website also reveals the premise for the film, saying “Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) permanently transfers his consciousness to his Na’vi avatar and begins a new life with Princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) after they defeat the human colonisers.”

(9) DRAWERS IN A MANUSCRIPT. M. Harold Page recommends a book about period costumes at Black Gate: “Pulp-era Gumshoes and Queen Victoria’s Underwear: Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear by Lucy Addlington”.

It puts us in the shoes (and unmentionables) of the people we read about — the Pulp-era gumshoes and flappers, the Victorian Steam Punk inventors, the swashbuckling musketeers. They all feel a bit more real when we know how they dress in the morning, how they manage the call of nature, what fashion bloopers they worry about, how their clothes force them to walk or sit.

It also helps us decode some of the nuances. For example, men’s shirts were actually regarded as underwear until well past the Victorian period. If you took off your jacket, you’d immediately don a dressing gown. To be in your shirtsleeves was to be not entirely decent. The color of your shirt reflected your class and… and it’s a rabbit hole of nuance and snobbery. You just have to read it.

(10) X-FILES. If you’re in the market for a spoiler-filled recap of the latest X-Files episode, click Mashable’s “’The X-Files’ Episode 3 was a silly hour of TV that couldn’t have been better”.

(11) TOO MUCH LAVA. Open Culture today highlighted this eight-minute animation of the destruction of Pompeii from 2013. Well worth the eight minutes.

A good disaster story never fails to fascinate — and, given that it actually happened, the story of Pompeii especially so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has provided an object of great historical interest ever since its rediscovery in 1599. Baths, houses, tools and other possessions (including plenty of wine bottles), frescoes, graffiti, an ampitheater, an aqueduct, the “Villa of the Mysteries“: Pompeii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-century Roman life goes.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 commenter of the day IanP.]

280 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/2/16 A Spoonful Of Pixels Helps The Medicine Scroll Down

  1. [I blame the conversation in the previous Pixel Scroll]

    We’re no stranger to Hugos
    You know the drill and so do I
    Vote your favourite is what I’m thinking of
    You wouldn’t get this from the Puppy guy

    I just want to tell you how I’m voting
    Gotta make you understand

    [Chorus:]
    Never gonna slate you up, never gonna make you blue
    Never gonna say things you misconstrue
    Never gonna get a crew, with a different point of view
    Never gonna conspire and bull through

    We’ve known the genre for so long
    Nominate stuff that’s knocked our socks to orbit
    Not stuff unread or that which makes us yawn
    Know what we like and we’re gonna vote it

    I just want to tell you how I’m voting
    Gotta make you understand

    [Chorus:]
    Never gonna slate you up, never gonna make you blue
    Never gonna say things you misconstrue
    Never gonna get a crew, with a different point of view
    Never gonna conspire and bull through

    ———- with apologies to Stock, Aitken,and Waterman

  2. Soon Lee: Fantastic!

    And in an unrelated note — I caught one of my own typos for a change, so I will buy myself a drink….

  3. The problem I have with a YA Hugo is that it’s not about what’s written, as all the other awards are, it’s about who it’s written for.
    YA novels have won in the past (more often than GRRM’s have) so I don’t really see that there’s a missing category.
    A Campbell style parallel ‘not a Hugo’ award? Perhaps.

  4. (5) BIGGER ISSUE.
    I don’t have a problem with a YA Hugo at all, but from the discussions that have been ongoing for several years now, one problem is how you define the YA category without it also being eligible for the Best Novel Hugo. At the moment, a Campbell-like approach might just work, but we still need a definition* that’s good enough, and that’s non-trivial.

    *Not nearly as hard as defining Science Fiction, but it’s that class of problem.

  5. nickpheas,

    I agree. Some Hugos are awarded based on characteristics of the creator – fan/pro; some on characteristics of the creation – length, format, fiction/non-fiction. But I’m not aware of any previous Hugo awarded on the basis of the characteristics of the intended audience.

  6. @Soon Lee: Augh! I thought this comment section was safe! 😉

    (5): The most recent YA proposal was sent to committee at the last Business Meeting since there had to be time to cover 4/6 and EPH instead, and it felt like the right course of action. There are still a lot of things to be hashed out before bringing that particular proposal before the voters; IMO what they had for Sasquan wasn’t ready.

    Hmm, anybody have an estimate on when the WSFS Rules page will be updated? None of the Sasquan stuff is on there yet.

    (7): Congrats, Laura!!

    (8): The website also reveals the premise for the film, saying “Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) permanently transfers his consciousness to his Na’vi avatar and begins a new life with Princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) after they defeat the human colonisers.”

    Well, that sounds about as dull as Pocahontas II. But I have faith that Cameron will find some new and exciting source material to rip off.

  7. (3) Decent technical skill, though the stuff isn’t to my taste.

    (5) On the YA Hugo, I recommend taking a look at report C.3.2 to the Business Meeting at Sasquan, and to the minutes of the Business Meeting, pages 46pp.

  8. (4) DAY VERSUS DAVIDSON

    Well, no, the main reason VD ignored Weir is that for the most part he was working off Brad’s list, and Brad couldn’t be bothered to check who was eligible.

    The Campbell is one of the awards where the crowdsourcing strength of the Hugos really comes in to play – in a normal year, it doesn’t depend on everyone knowing exactly who is eligible, just that a proportion have discovered a new author. The wisdom of the crowds would have got Weir nominated last year, except Brad/VD/etc decided the wise crowds only deserved one nomination slot.

    (5) BIGGER ISSUE

    I believe the YA Hugo proposal is actively being worked on, and I seem to recall the report they came up with was very promising.

    (7) FINDS LOVE

    Congrats Laura Resnick.

  9. (4) VD False Statement of the Day: “SJW attempts to block Weir nomination”.

    Any guesses on how many minions bothered to go find out the truth? Bueller? Anyone?

  10. A few more scattered responses:
    (1) ALTERNATIVE FUTURISM AT UCR
    Oooh, Ted Chiang!

    (4) DAY VERSUS DAVIDSON
    As has been said before, one problem (there are others) with bloc voting of slates is that they can have unintended consequence. There is no denying that had it not been for the Sad & Rabid Puppies last, Weir would have been a Campbell finalist.

    (7) FINDS LOVE. Congratulations Laura Resnick!

  11. Heads-up for US fans of Seanan McGuire…

    The electronic version of her new-in-April novel, Every Heart a Doorway, is currently on preorder for $2.99 at Amazon, Kobo, and probably other places. It sounds rather close to Indexing turf to me, which is not a bad thing. Note that the dead-tree release is a hardback, so this is a significant discount from the previously-listed $9.99 ebook price.

    Oh, and since it’s from Macmillan/Tor.com, it should be DRM-free.

  12. Rev. Bob: The electronic version of [Seanan McGuire’s] new-in-April novel, Every Heart a Doorway, is currently on preorder for $2.99 at Amazon, Kobo, and probably other places. It sounds rather close to Indexing turf to me, which is not a bad thing. Note that the dead-tree release is a hardback, so this is a significant discount from the previously-listed $9.99 ebook price.

    It’s a novella (176 pages). That $9.99 e-book “regular” price seems awfully steep to me.

  13. @JJ/Rev Bob

    I’m not sure, but I think that “original” pricing was based incorrectly on the print price, but these Tor.com novellas always have that big differential in print v e-book. The current price e-book price is probably at or close to what it was always meant to be. I pre-ordered it a while ago, and the UK pricing has jumped all over the place in the meantime.
    (Or maybe it’s just someone at Amazon trying to make the discount look really good!)

  14. @Mark, JJ:

    Well, at any rate – say, 9.8 m/sec^2 – the listed price is now lower than what it originally was. Whether that’s a sale or a correction, I can’t say – but either way, it’s a price drop.

  15. Slightly madly at least one person (1) http://andrewhickey.info/2016/01/24/my-preliminary-picks-for-hugo-nominations/ ..has stated they think my al-hist, mash-up adventure, lit-crit, sf novel “Charles Dickens’ Martian Notes” is worth considering for a Hugo nomination. It’s self-published here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/simon-bucher-jones/charles-dickens-martian-notes/ebook/product-22392449.html £2.50, and its also ‘under consideration’ by Gollancz and Angry Robot respectively.

  16. die Gedanken sind frei. People can recuse themselves, publicly repudiate, or virtue-signal, or perform interpretive dance to express the depth of their feelings about Rabid Puppies. It makes no difference to me.

    It is true, who can guess the thoughts of those who express them publicly?

  17. Speaking of new Hugo categories, whatever happened to the Best Saga/Best Series proposal? Is that up again this year?

  18. 7)
    Congratulations Laura!

    I also saw last night that V.E. Schwab’s A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC has been optioned for a TV Series, the pilot to be written by Schwab herself.

    So, a good thing for such things for our community.

  19. Beale seems to have as much guile as my six year old.

    And congratulations to Laura Resnick.

  20. (3) RABID PUPPIES. – They’re all very derivative (not necessarily a bad thing). Of the lot, I do like Darkcloud013s stuff – it’s very reminiscent of stuff from Planescape: Torment.Matthew Callahan seems interesting, but I much prefer Malaysian photographer Zahir Batin‘s work with similar materials.
    FWiW, my current fan artist shortlist is:

    Xiao Ran
    Tran Nguyen
    Sam Burley
    Antonio Caparo
    Julie Dillon

    All very preliminary – if someone qualifies as both, I’m just gonna put them in Pro, I think it’s better if fan artist remains distinct. I know Dillon needs to be moved, not sure about any of the others/

    (4) DAY VERSUS DAVIDSON. – There’s a hell of a lot of things that Day seems to fail to read, from 3BP to The Martian to the Heinlein autobiography. He should really set aside some time from his busy schedule of Defending Western Culture. Or whatever he’s calling him being an absolute tit today.

    (5) BIGGER ISSUE. – Huh? I thought there was a proposal to do a Campbell-style Not-A-Hugo for YA? Did that not come up from the committee?

    (7) FINDS LOVE. – Congrats!

    (11) TOO MUCH LAVA. – Ok. That was well done. And freaky as all hell

  21. (4) It is nice of Beale to explain why slates are a bad idea, why he is completely unqualified to promulgate a slate, and demonstrate that he can’t help lying all in the space of a few short paragraphs.

  22. You are not the pixel scroller.
    You’re the pixel scroller’s clone.
    But you can scroll those pixels
    Until the scroller’s home.

    Pompeii. Lucky there were no people there! (Interesting place, really, but just so damn sad. Oh, the humanity, indeed.)

  23. One of the problems with slates even if they were conducted in good faith, and contained what the slate-makers honestly believed were quality works, is that slates lock other people’s suggestions off the ballot–including suggestions the slate-makers themselves would have liked better had they only known about them at the time they made the slates. You can tell this is true because Three Body Problem.

    The onus is not on all writers to come groveling to Beale’s shrine–good freaking grief–the onus is on the Puppies to quit grabbing for unfair advantage and let the wisdom of crowds operate.

  24. why he is completely unqualified to promulgate a slate,

    Worth remembering he’s not even pretending that literary merit is a significant factor in what he’s doing, as he admitted in a comment here last year. This is all part of an effort to get SJWs out of science fiction. Which is his victory condition, I guess. It’s no use nagging him about Weir being pushed off the ballot last year or giving out about his lack of current reading or his haphazard spread of picks or not giving a damn what the people he picks thinks – it’s all a master plan to get rid of the SJWs. Mind you when he claims victory, presumably that means the SJWs are all gone. Wonder if we’ll notice a difference?

    Oh, and congratulations Laura!

  25. A day late, but RE: Radiance – I loved it. This was the first Valente book I read and I think about it constantly, and I read it over 3-months ago. I read Radiance right after I read Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, so maybe my mind was already used to the prose, diction, and pacing that I found incredibly similar between Valente and Bradbury. I’ve never read a book like Radiance and, while it took me a while to get through due to the dense prose making it a slower read, I loved it. This one is on the top of my Hugo ballot.

  26. Wildcat on February 3, 2016 at 12:17 am said:

    Hmm, anybody have an estimate on when the WSFS Rules page will be updated? None of the Sasquan stuff is on there yet.

    The WSFS pages are “frozen” because we intend to migrate to a completely new host and redesign the WSFS, Worldcon, and NASFIC sites when our long-suffering webmaster has time to do it, but she’s busy all of February (and that’s on top of her Day Jobbe). The material you want is therefore hosted for now at the MidAmericon II WSFS page.

  27. Congratulations, Laura!

    As for the YA proposal, I think it’s wrongheaded, for reasons the article explains in itself:
    “And it’s very difficult for a YA novel to make it in, if the bulk of voters don’t read YA, because they’re not the target demographic, and also (and this, I think, is the real issue) if YA doesn’t get the same respect that adult fiction does. I think there is a real impression that if adult fiction is the major leagues, YA is the minor leagues.I also think that a work of YA fiction won’t be considered for best novel unless it’s also appealing to a large portion of adult readers.

    But here’s the thing: That’s not what YA is for!

    Writing YA fiction is a different endeavor than writing adult fiction. There are different rules in play; a different audience to consider. It’s a different approach altogether. Different. Not better. Not worse. But different. ”

    That’s all completely true, but if the Hugo voters don’t read “YA”, aren’t the target demographic, and the work he wants considering is work that isn’t “appealing to a large portion of adult readers”, then what exactly would be the point of the award? An award for books that the voters don’t read and aren’t the target audience for seems utterly bizarre to me.

  28. 3) & 4) Ah, Beale. Do you think he’s kicking it up a notch because SP4 is run by women? Considering what he’s said about the necessity of keeping strong women in line? Looks like his recommendation for fan art are Tits & The Grim, Dark, Manliness of Manly Men.

    I mean, he’s Sci-fi’s Trump. Yes, he’s an asshole, and yes, he’s (thank whomever) a minority’s totem, but no matter how we slice it, it’s a sobering reminder of the population in question that we’ve got a lot of unpleasant elements who will glom onto any would-be leader. And that the general public may have more excuse than we like to think to assume “science fiction/fantasy fan” is equivalent to “toxic man-child” until proven otherwise. It’s why I think we can’t ignore the Puppies, much as we might really, really like to. They’re a part of our fandom, and something we need to show we can contain.

    7) Congratulations! Here’s hoping it goes the distance!

  29. My main contact with South African SF is a somewhat obscure show called SF 68, which adapted published stories (mainly American). A number of the stories were by people you would never expect to sell rights to an Apartheid era South African company*, which makes me wonder if indeed they did.

    The archive on archive.org included ads that made it clear the target market for SF 68 was women. Specifically housewives.

    * I did dither at the time about whether I should bother with material from that time and place but then I realized I’d listened to Jim Crow era American shows. Difference in degree at best, not kind, I think. Plus I’d listened to Vanishing Point and Nightfall, and Apartheid was based in part on the Canadian system for managing First Nations. Or as Duncan Campbell Scott once referred to his part of the system, the “final solution to our Indian problem.”

  30. Die Abstimmung im Gleichschritt macht Frei. Riiiiight.

    Congrats to Soon Hee. Never apologize for a filk! 😛

  31. Regarding YA:

    I have a general problem with this proposal, because I am never sure whether they mean YA as it is defined by publishers, or the whole field of young people’s fiction, including Middle Grade/Older Children’s, which is often called ‘YA’ in fannish circles. The interim report of the YA not-Hugo committee seems undecided about this. If they mean the former, I am not happy with one age-band getting an award while others are either excluded or lumped in with the adults. If the latter, I think it should have a less confusing name.

    That said, I would be totally happy with a Youth Book award (which was the actual name of the award proposed in 2013); I think that enough Hugo voters are familiar enough with the field that some worthy candidates could be found. But it would be a particular perspective on the field, since that is not Hugo voters’ central interest. This is not a problem; the dramatic and graphic awards are particular perspectives on those fields as well. But one shouldn’t claim more for the award than it is capable of.

    Andrew Hickey:

    An award for books that the voters don’t read and aren’t the target audience for seems utterly bizarre to me.

    Presumably he is one of those who hold that the Hugo voters’ job is to represent the whole body of people interested in science fiction, and if they aren’t doing that effectively they are clearly the wrong body of voters and should be replaced. This is a view which the Puppy leaders have exploited, but it’s by no means exclusively Puppyish; I’ve seen people of all sorts of views expressing it. I think the very non-Puppyish Eric Flint thinks something similar. This leads to the thought that if only we introduced an award for X (YA/series fiction/tie-ins/whatever) we would get a million new voters and revitalise the awards.

    I think that one awards process can never effectively cover the whole of such a diverse field, and that we should accept that the Hugos give only one perspective on it, but it is a perspective worth having. I don’t expect to convince everyone of this, though.

  32. I’ve never read a book like Radiance and, while it took me a while to get through due to the dense prose making it a slower read, I loved it. This one is on the top of my Hugo ballot.

    Posts like these are what put the lie to the SP/RP narrative of SJWs voting in lockstep for works they don’t actually like. Clearly you loved this book. Others here who have read it were much less enthused. Some people read (for example) KSR’s Aurora and loved it. Others, not so much. The same holds true for many other books. And yet no one has called someone a wrongfan having wrongfun over these opinions. People have debated the merits of books to be sure, but the reactions people have had to others liking books they didn’t care for have mostly been “I guess we just have different tastes”.

  33. Kyra, I have a proposition for you. If you’re interested, could you email me at [email protected]? Please and thank you.

    James Nicoll,
    President of Vice, President of Partay.

    Which mostly consists of logistics and keeping people hydrated. I did manage to turn three boxes filled with a random assortment of supplies into three boxes each containing a specific subset of supplies [1]. And a pile of plastic spoons that came out of one of those boxes but won’t go back in. And a stack of salad bowls I forgot were in the dry rack. and two humbugs, origin and age unclear.

    1: So an issue I never considered could be an issue is people are so eager to help out I am accruing money and supplies faster than I use them. At one point my supply of Solo cups was growing at 28% an hour.

  34. Well, as long as we’re mangling rock songs today:

    I can’t get no Pixellation
    I can’t get no Scrollucation
    And I read, and I read, and I read, and I read

    When I’m scrollin’ round the Files
    And the Pup comes on my Populi
    He’s tellin’ me more and more
    About some useless Aristot-uli
    Supposed to smarten up my slate–oh my!

    I can’t get no, no no no
    Hey hey hey, that’s what I say

    I can’t get no Pixellation
    I can’t get no Scrollucation
    And I read, and I read, and I read, and I read

    When I’m watchin’ my rec lists
    And a pup comes on and tells me
    How dense my picks can be
    And he can’t be a fan cause he doesn’t read
    The same Campbell noms as me

    When I’m ridin’ round the Web
    And I’m watchin’ this and I’m mockin’ that
    And I’m tryin’ to block that Vox
    Who tells me baby come back maybe next week
    Cause you see he’s on a losin’ streak

    I can’t get no Pixellation
    I can’t get no Scrollucation
    And I read, and I read, and I read, and I read…

  35. @TheYoungPretender

    It’s why I think we can’t ignore the Puppies, much as we might really, really like to. They’re a part of our fandom, and something we need to show we can contain.

    Eric has been making this point to me lately as well. He observed that Beale didn’t publish his slate last year until after it was too late for anyone to register and still be able to nominate. That means all of his support came from people who were already WSFS members. This means that even the Rabid Puppies aren’t from some outside group like Gamergate. They’re all fans.

    I’m not sure “contain” is the right word either. Obviously it’s not possible to please everyone, but we should care a lot that several hundred people were disposed to listen to a bunch of crackpots. We see very clearly that the crackpots are talking crap, but what we need to figure out is why so many people were disposed to listen to them. I’m starting to think that the specific nonsense the leaders spout isn’t even important; we need to understand what the puppy rank and file are really upset about–which I think is rather different from what they complain about. Then we can at least talk about things that might let us make peace again.

    If we’re lucky, it’s just about people feeling that no one was nominating stories they liked. In that case, EPH ought to help. Or that nominations were so difficult that an inner cabal controlled them. That’s what RSR was meant to help with.

    I keep wondering whether there’s something else we’re just not seeing.

  36. contra Soon Lee, I think defining YA is more difficult than defining SF. Hard-case example: John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless, which one of my circle dismissed as “just a[nother?] YA”. Most of the screen time belongs to a bunch of bright ~13-year-olds, but I suspect your average Potter fan would find it indigestible; I’ll be interested to see what the committee (to which the YA proposal was referred) comes up with.

    OTOH, the rule could amount to a Borgesian “the works nominated by the readers are in this category”; that was one of the arguments about whether Apollo 13 was eligible (e.g., was it fiction and if not could it be SF?).

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