(1) THE PUPPET’S INSIDE STORY. Mary Robinette Kowal livestreamed “Ask a puppet about publishing” today. The answer to the old standby “Where do you get your ideas?” got perhaps the truest answer that has ever been given to this question.
(2) GREG KETTER MAKES NEWS. The legendary Minneapolis bookstore is featured in Twin Cities Geek — “From the Stands: DreamHaven Books Is Still Standing”.
A later memory I have of the store is hearing Neil Gaiman read his book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish there upon the book’s rerelease in 2004. I remember maybe 35 or 40 people in the store, which can’t be correct—there must have been more than that to see Neil Gaiman—though I’m certain it was a number far smaller than you’d expect to see today, in the age of expanded cons, fandom, and the Internet social-media grapevine. Except for running into Gaiman a few weeks later at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival (and a few other places, actually—that was a weird summer), I wouldn’t see him again in the flesh until an MPR Wits show last year, crammed into the Fitzgerald Theater with over 1,000 other fans. That show was a little closer to what one would expect of a Gaiman sighting, where Neil is a smudge, his pale face and customary black clothes treating us to an impromptu and sparsely populated Mummenschanz show against the stage’s dark backdrop, not at all the mild, T-shirted man with the roiling mind, reading to us about the best deal you could get in a trade for your dad.
… Last April, DreamHaven returned to normal store hours with the help of Alice Bentley, a former business partner of Ketter’s. The two co-founded the Chicago bookstore The Stars Our Destination in 1998, which Bentley ran by herself from 1994 until 2004, when she closed the store, moved to Seattle, and got out of the book business. Says Ketter of Bentley, “She had been out of books for a while, and she really wanted to get back in. So, she moved to [Minneapolis] from Seattle and she’s partnering with me . . . She’s very knowledgeable; in the last 11 or 12 years since she left, things have changed a great deal [but] she’s been very happily relearning the book business.” The two now run the business as partners, with Ketter as the “go-to guy for questions” and Bentley employing her “love of spreadsheets” to keep the business on track.
(3) SPURNING PASSION. Andrew Porter recalls, “I wanted to reprint a Tolkien poem first published in the 1940s, and Tolkien refused me permission — and then he refused a whole bunch of other people including Ballantine Books, and it’s still not been ‘officially’ published. But some people got tired of waiting for “official” publication, and here it is, on the web: “The lay of Aotrou and Itroun” (1945).
A witch there was, who webs could weave
to snare the heart and wits to reave,
who span dark spells with spider-craft,
and as she span she softly laughed;
a drink she brewed of strength and dread
to bind the quick and stir the dead;
In a cave she housed where winging bats
their harbour sought, and owls and cats
from hunting came with mournful cries,
night-stalking near with needle-eyes.
(4) TELL ME IF YOU’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. At MeTV, “7 reused props on television that will make you do a double-take”.
Neosaurus Disguise:
Lost in Space’s creator Irwin Allen liked to recycle props, but one of his most notable ones was reused by another iconic ’60s TV show. The neosaurus disguise first appeared in Lost in Space:
(5) NEW SAWYER NOVEL. Robert J. Sawyer’s 23rd novel Quantum Night will be released March 1 in hardcover, ebook (all formats), and as an audiobook from Audible.
What if the person next to you was a psychopath? And that person over there? And your boss? Your spouse? That’s the chilling possibility brought forth in bestselling author Robert J. Sawyer‘s new novel Quantum Night. Psychopaths aren’t just murdering monsters: anyone devoid of empathy and conscience fits the bill, and Sawyer’s new science-fiction thriller suggests that there are as many as two billion psychopaths worldwide.
A far-out notion? Not at all. As Oxford Professor Kevin Dutton, the bestselling author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths, says, “Sawyer has certainly done his homework about psychopaths and he understands well that, far from being just the occasional headline-grabbing serial killer, they’re everywhere.”
Sawyer says: “Reviewers often call me an optimistic writer — one of the few positive voices left in a science-fiction field that has grown increasingly dystopian. I like to view my optimism as a rational position rather than just naïveté, and so I felt it was necessary to devote a novel to confronting the question of evil head on: what causes it, why it flourishes, why there seems to be more and more of it — and what we can do about it. The theme is simple: the worst lie humanity has ever told itself is, ‘You can’t change human nature.’”
Click to read the opening chapters. Details of the Canadian and U.S. stops on Sawyer’s book tour can be found here.
(6) OSHIRO STORY CONTINUES. Here are links to new posts dealing with Mark Oshiro’s published harassment complaint.
The Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, Inc. (KaCSFFS) is the sponsor of ConQuesT, the oldest convention in the central states region. The KaCSFFS Board of Directors oversees ConQuesT, but the day-to-day operations of the convention are done by the volunteer chairs and convention committee, who change from year to year.
In light of recent issues we feel that more oversight of the convention committee as a whole is necessary by the KaCSFFS Board of Directors. This is being addressed by the current Board of Directors as we speak.
KaCSFFS is profoundly sorry that these issues arose, and the policies in place were not followed through to completion. We are taking steps to ensure that future complaints are addressed appropriately and in compliance with current policies and procedures in place.
Posted by Jan Gephardt
The KaCSFFS Board of Directors is: Margene Bahm, President, Earline “Cricket” Beebe, Treasurer, Kristina Hiner, Secretary, Jan Gephardt, Communications Officer, Keri O’Brien, ConQuesT Chairperson for 2016, and Diana Bailey, Registered Agent.
- M. C. Hana: “Mark Oshiro Speaks Out”.
From SFF and romance convention attendees alike. To the point that I’ve applied some probably unfair stereotyping of my own, in deciding that media and writers’ conventions in Those Four States (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri) are probably off limits to me. If I won a lottery tomorrow and travel costs were not an issue…I probably wouldn’t change my decision.
I get told, rightfully so: ‘That’s unfair. We have lovely, diverse people at X convention or Y festival! By not attending, you are letting the bad people win!”
True. I know some good people in those places. I’d love to visit them. There is a large romance convention in Texas and an even bigger SFF gathering in Kansas City that I *should* attend for career reasons. (Except that the romance con has a dismal record respecting M/M romance authors, and I’m not sure I’m at the professional level to go to the SFF con yet.)
By not attending, I’m not validating some indefensible behavior from con committees who keep getting away with this shit, and use fans and sane staffers as their human shields. I’m not paying into the tax coffers of hotels, cities, and corrupt hypocritical legislatures who still seem to be stuck in Pre-Civil Rights America. By myself, I’m a nobody, and I only have power over what I personally spend and buy.
- E.P. Beaumont: “In support of Mark Oshiro: my shit experience at CONQuesT 2013”.
I was unlucky enough to get tapped for a self-pub panel at CONQuest (Kansas City 2013) that consisted of me and two gatekeepers who bloviated the entire time, talking over anything I had to say. Lawrence M. Schoen was the moderator who opened his introductory email to me with a declaration that nobody should self publish unless they’d already been vetted by the publishing industry. He also used the term “politically correct” which prompted the following response from me:
“Please do not use the term ‘politically correct’ in my presence. My colleagues and mentors include survivors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Soviet GULag. Current American usage of this term trivializes these mass atrocities in the service of defending lazy-minded reflexive bigotry.”
In response, he doubled down on his insistence on right to say anything he liked.
On the panel, Silena Rosen was particularly notable for her crude, hostile manner as well as rant about how self-pub was shit, fanfic was public masturbation, yadda yadda yadda. Schoen wasn’t so much a moderator as a partner in the pile-on. I had quality assurance experience from multiple industry jobs, and a whole list of suggestions for editorial collectives and the like. They talked right over me as loudly as they could. None of that stuff even got said.
I felt the whole time as if I were fighting with both hands tied behind my back. I was there to give the audience new ideas and perspectives and to present myself with courtesy and professionalism; they were there to beat me up in public.
- Larry Correia made this Oshiro-related comment in his R.I.P. Twitter post.
I don’t know anything about the Oshiro thing. Is that the one where the guy was the GoH at a con and didn’t get treated well? I’ve seen that in passing is all. I can only assume that if File 770 is upset over it, they’re either on the wrong side, or just plain stupid.
A bunch of comments from File 770 are reproduced in that same thread. Which is great, because it proves how many of Larry’s fans find this blog despite his refusing to allow pingbacks from my posts, and how they force the rest to read the material anyway.
(7) REASONS WHY DOING NOTHING IS WORSE. Jim C. Hines reviews the recent history of convention antiharassment policy enforcement in “The Importance of Having and ENFORCING Harassment Policies at Cons”
I get it. It’s one thing to write up policies on harassment and appropriate behavior for a convention. It’s another to find yourself in the midst of a mess where you have to enforce them.
Emotions are running high. The person accused of violating the policy isn’t a mustache-twirling villain, but someone who’s been attending your con for years. They’ve got a lot of friends at the con — possibly including you. If you enforce the consequences spelled out in your policies, someone’s going to be upset. Someone’s going to be angry. Someone’s going to feel hurt. It feels like a no-win situation.
And it is, in a way. There’s nothing you can do to make everyone happy. But we’ve seen again and again that there’s a clear losing strategy, and that is to do nothing. To try to ignore your harassment policy and hope the problem goes away on its own.
It won’t. As unpleasant as it is to be dealing with a report of harassment, doing nothing will make it worse. Here are just a few examples from recent years.
(8) THE F IN SF IS NOT FILLET. Seeing a comment on File 770 about all the fiction with “bone” in the title, Fred Coppersmith recommended:
https://twitter.com/unrealfred/status/702285447217745920
(9) HENCEFORTH THEY WILL BE CALLED FUCHSIA HOLES. Gazing at black holes – “What does a black hole actually look like?” at Vox.
Impossibly dense, deep, and powerful, black holes reveal the limits of physics. Nothing can escape one, not even light.
But even though black holes excite the imagination like few other concepts in science, the truth is that no astronomer has actually seen one….
We do have indirect images of black holes, however
Some of the best indirect images of black holes come from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, where Edmonds works. “The friction and the high velocities of material forming out of a black hole naturally produces X-rays,” he says. And Chandra is a space telescope specially designed to see those X-rays.
For example, the Chandra observatory documented these X-ray “burps” emanating from the merger of two galaxies around 26 million light-years away. The astrophysicists suspect that these burps came from a massive black hole: …
Similarly, the fuchsia blobs on this image are regions of intense X-ray radiation, thought to be black holes that formed when two galaxies (the blue and pink rings) collided: …
Be sure to check out the fuzzy but fascinating video showing the proper motion of stars around an apparent black hole.
(10) YES THERE IS A DRAGON. Pete’s Dragon official teaser trailer.
(11) FARTHER BACK TO THE FUTURE. TechnoBuffalo declares “This fan-made Back to the Future prequel trailer is amazing”.
There’s never going to be a Back to the Future sequel or reboot—at least as long as director Robert Zemeckis is alive. With that in mind, what if there was a prequel? Didn’t think of that, did you? I sure didn’t, but after seeing the trailer above, I’d totally be on board.
If you’ve never seen BTTF (what’s wrong with you?), it begins with Doc Brown revealing to Marty that the only way to produce the 1.21 Gigawatts necessary to time travel is to use plutonium. The prequel would be a story about how Doc Brown gets hands on the plutonium, which he only mentions in passing in the original film.
The prequel trailer was brilliantly edited together by Tyler Hopkins, who used footage from various movies featuring Christopher Lloyd (the actor who played Dr. Emmett Brown).
(12) HE’S A MARVEL. “Stan Lee Makes a Cameo During Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns 30th Anniversary Panel”. (Check out the photo at the post — Stan looks younger than Frank!)
In Los Angeles to celebrate the 30th Anniversary Edition of the book’s release, Miller sat down with IGN to talk about The Dark Knight Returns’ enduring legacy, what makes Batman relevant, and why he keeps coming back to the character. He then took the stage for a Q&A moderated by DC Co-Publisher Dan DiDio, where he discussed his initial apprehension at reinventing such an established character, the impact he’s had on future creators, and who would win in a fight between Batman and Captain America.
The evening took an unexpected turn right out the gate as Miller’s panel was interrupted by an audience heckler. That heckler turned out to be none other than Marvel Comics legend/cameo king Stan Lee, who was on hand to celebrate pal Miller’s accomplishments. Lee of course demanded to know who would win in a showdown between publisher mainstays Batman and Captain America, to which Miller slyly responded “Robin.”
(13) THE ICON’S IMAGE. Abraham Riesman profiles the icon in “It’s Stan Lee’s Universe” at Vulture.
A comic-book Methuselah, Lee is also, to a great degree, the single most significant author of the pop-culture universe in which we all now live. This is a guy who, in a manic burst of imagination a half-century ago, helped bring into being The Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, and the dozens of other Marvel titles he so famously and consequentially penned at Marvel Comics in his axial epoch of 1961 to 1972. That world-shaking run revolutionized entertainment and the then-dying superhero-comics industry by introducing flawed, multidimensional, and relatably human heroes — many of whom have enjoyed cultural staying power beyond anything in contemporary fiction, to rival the most enduring icons of the movies (an industry they’ve since proceeded to almost entirely remake in their own image). And in revitalizing the comics business, Lee also reinvented its language: His rhythmic, vernacular approach to dialogue transformed superhero storytelling from a litany of bland declarations to a sensational symphony of jittery word-jazz — a language that spoke directly and fluidly to comics readers, enfolding them in a common ecstatic idiom that became the bedrock of what we think of now as “fan culture.” Perhaps most important for today’s Hollywood, he crafted the concept of an intricate, interlinked “shared universe,” in which characters from individually important franchises interact with and affect one another to form an immersive fictional tapestry — a blueprint from which Marvel built its cinematic empire, driving nearly every other studio to feverishly do the same. And which enabled comics to ascend from something like cultural bankruptcy to the coarse-sacred status they enjoy now, as American kitsch myth.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Moshe Feder, Paul Weimer, Andrew Porter, and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Wow, I know way more about old Westerns than I thought.
@JJ: Yeah, Sawyer is uneven. When he’s good, he’s very very etc. His premises are always interesting, but the execution… you never know how well that will go. I’m not impressed with what I read of this one.
sous le pont, Internet dum de dum dum, dum de dum dum. There’s a French troll song in there somewhere.
@Jack Lint Which raises the question, will anyone stay dead in the Marvel TV universe? I mean comics, no, but maybe when you’re working around casting then death is slightly more permanent on TV.
I guess you weren’t a daytime soap opera follower huh? My husband used to get a kick out of some of the plots in bringing people back from the dead for series based on today and today’s technology.
General Hospital and Bold and the Beautiful had to have some of the craziest back from the dead plots I’ve ever watched or read for any genre.
I used to imagine that they had conversations like this at the Marvel offices:
Roy: Uh, Stan? In this story, we’ve had the villain shot, blown up, decapitated, dismembered, melted with acid, then dissected into his component electrons and protons, which then had their charges neutralized, and they were sent individually into different universes, which were then destroyed. And also we went back in time and sterilized his great-grandparents.
Stan: Yes! I see you’re leading up to something…
Roy: So, I was wondering if this means we were planning to kill him off.
Stan: Hmm. Naw, let’s just leave it ambiguous.
Loved the Doctor Doolittle filk.
@John Seavey
I remember that! I was shocked they let that through, because it was so completely true.
The aspect of Mal that bothered me most in Firefly was that he was supposed to be hard-assed but he never once threw anyone out of the airlock. The episodes are fuzzy in my head now, but I seem to recall that there were often problems caused by his being too soft.
As far as Inara, I do recall being surprised that what I assumed was supposed to be a sex-positive element of the show, a vision of a less Puritcan-influenced future, ended up being presented in such a classically stupid and puritanical way.
@Tasha: Are you old enough to have watched GH when Elizabeth Taylor was on and there was the dastardly weather-changing machine? It was real Dr. Doom stuff.
@Jack Lint: The death I mentioned in SHIELD was indeed because the actor/ess got a job elsewhere. So it might stick, unless the other job ends and the actor/ess wants to come back. Looked pretty final, almost as much as Kip W’s idea.
Oh yeah, currently reading…
I decided to check out Correia’s Son of the Black Sword, because I’ve only read a little bit by him, earlier stuff, and didn’t like it at all, but thought I’d give his new stuff a try. Unfortunately, I got about two paragraphs in and, through no fault of Correia’s, except for the book’s title and that it features a protagonist who wields a menacingly-named sword, I ended up buying the first Elric of Melnibone volume (in the six-part series that’s pretty much the only comp-type release I could find, ebook-wise) and starting in on a long-overdue re-read, instead. It’s been well over 20 years since I’ve re-read the Elric stories, and I’m in the perfect mood for them right now. Definitely not responsible reading, inasmuch as it’s Hugo nomination season, but I’m not all that responsible a person, so it’s internally consistent.
Yes he did (or close enough) – this just popped up on previously.tv a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPRlHwwVIug
Current reading: just finished Vermillion by Molly Tanzer. Weird western with gender-queer female POC protagonist and interesting worldbuilding. The conclusion included more graphic violence than I prefer but no Queer Tragedy ™. Recommended as long as you aren’t too squeamish on the graphic violence front. I’ll be doing a full review on my blog next Friday. (Already have something lined up for this week’s review.)
@Jamoche – Right, I’d forgotten about that.
Lee the Puppet will be sharing more writing and publishing thoughts with us today LIVE in 20 minutes! Tune in to his Google Plus chat by going here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MaryRobinetteKowal/posts
and clicking on the video link titled “Ask a puppet — Episode 2”
NSFW. Lee is a very candid puppet speaking to adults. You can ask him questions by typing them into the chat window on the right.
(It’ll be on YouTube if you miss it.)
@kathodus: That’s an excellent way to describe it.
Rewatching a lot of JW shows, especially the Buffy/Angel/Firefly era, there’s a very clear undercurrent of Good People Don’t Want Casual Sex, and it bugs. (Parker was an ass in many ways, but I am kind of sympathetic to some of his perspectives–you’re not a bad person for going to bed with another adult without giving them the “this is not a Relationship” disclaimer.) Firefly was a little better about it w/r/t Kaylee’s backstory, but still not great.
I would like to thank everyone for the discussions today, particularly the Whedonverse stuff. The weather is really crappy today and I was feeling lousy earlier. I could have just gone back to bed and pulled the covers over my head and felt sorry for myself. Instead I not only had some lovely conversation, but I got some chores done at the same time.
Cheers to Mike Glyer for hosting this common area. Thank you 🙂
@lurkertype
I was watching around the middle of the first of the Luke and Laura arcs. I switched to private school before the Wedding and Elizabeth Taylor. As a pre-/early teen I watched the shows on the channel General Hospital was on. When I started watching soaps in my 30s I switched to Young & the Restless and Bold & Beautiful. My husband and I were into Passions which was a supernatural soap opera and possibly the weirdest series I’ve ever watched.
I wonder if The Phantom and his hehehehe stuff crowing about vanquishing his foes and whatever was an attempt to get more people to his blog. Remember how somebody was cranky about The Phantom writing under a pseudonym when he was at the same time calling Mark Oshiro a coward for sending a supposedly “secret” complaint text? The Phantom’s response was that he’d had a blog for ten years under his Phantom name and he wasn’t anonymous because… Well, I don’t exactly know how that relates to anything, but that was what he said. At any rate, I was curious about what the blog of a Phantom would look like, so I took him up on the invite to look at it. I saw he had a post called “Why I’m a Sad Puppy” with nothing to it except a link back here and maybe a WITCH HUNT!! because, you know, that’s how The Phantom rolls. And in this hotbed of Puppy thought, there were a total of three comments on this post, one that was unintelligible to me but may have meant more to a fellow tail-wagger, one by The Phantom himself, and one by someone who began by saying that it did sound like harassment by some (I believe he said) “psycho” he termed a “drunken frat tranny.” It went off the rails after that, but let’s just say there wasn’t any sort of mass approval for The Phantom’s WITCH HUNT!!!111!!!! mantra or Puppy villagers taking up their pitchforks to storm the File770 castle to defend The Phantom and his WITCH HUNT!!!!!111!! outrage.
ETA too late:
General Hospital! I watched that show for several years. I had a huge crush on Casey the Space Alien. (And, in retrospect, also on Anna Devane. But I wouldn’t have admitted that to myself at the time…)
@Dawn Incognito
We can be misery friends if you want. 🙂 I’ve had food poisoning for the past few days, then I got I think what is the rudest rejection letter I have received since ever. Like, I think this person was mad because they had to read my story…
But mostly it just made me laugh because it was full of typos and grammar mistakes. Mmmmm…Editorial quality…Still, I think perhaps I should not send anything there again.
(1) Lee the Puppet will return next week. Power outages at Lee’s house tonight.
I’m nomming my way slowly through the categories. My top pick for graphic story is Apocalyptigirl. I like the artwork–especially the flat outlines and primary colours–and the story is sweet: a woman and her cat.
Thank you, though I suspect the cheers might subside after my latest comments.
Hi kids, is the witches crispy enough yet?
Mr. Glyer, you’re linking -comments- from Larry Correia now? That’s the kind of thing one expects from the likes of clamps.
Why didn’t you link what his comment was in response to? Which was:
The Phantom: Have you been following the Oshiro witch hunt over there? I have never seen a member of a protected group under-bussed faster and harder than that poor woman Selina Rosen. What a pack of rabid dogs, holy Toledo.
None of them seem to have the self-awareness to realize the lone Sad Puppy gun nut racist/bigot/homphobe (me) is the one sticking up for the witch they want to burn.
I’m happy to let them rage on, after all The Phantom exists only on the Interwebz, they can’t get at me in real life. I don’t know how Larry and Brad put up with it.
And I really don’t know how they do it. Therefore I’m not going to do it. But feel free to keep confirming my opinion that only an idiot would use his/her/its real name on the interwebz.
6&7) I see the destruction of Selina Rosen’s reputation by hearsay continues. Anonymity is a really wonderful thing sometimes, eh? Bet she wishes she had some right now. Thanks to several of you, I’m really enjoying mine I must say.
Now, as regards Twitter and their ‘Trust and Safety Council’. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to any of you that you’re doing to Selina Rosen exactly what the Trust and Safety Council is supposed to -stop-. (Or so they say, anyway.)
Meaning if y’all get your way, you’ll be shut down the next morning.
If you don’t mind me saying, I believe you may not have thought this thing all the way through.
The Phantom: So what is Larry Correia doing to stick up for “the witch they want to burn” besides badmouthing File 770 in his comment section, after reading long extracts of quotes from File 770’s comment section that you folks copy there? Or is that all he’s doing?
I blame Twitter management!
I’ve blogged
I’ve pubbed my ish
I’ve answered LOCs
Wise and confusing
And now
The cheers subside,
I find it all
As fun as boozing.
To think
I filed all that
And may I say,
In quite a hive way
Despite the trolls
I rolled the scrolls
And did it
Mike’s way.
.@Pantom
I see the destruction of Selina Rosen’s reputation by hearsay continues.
So you’re basically calling Mark Oshiro and E.P. Beaumont liars?
The phantom thinks that s/he is brave, it seems.
It is easy to be “brave,” hidden behind seven proxies and a fake name, with nothing to lose, taking orders from a d-list internet celebrity.
The anon legions of Gators and Puppies et al think they are brave as well, swarming in lockstep at the beckon of their masters, taking a stand because someone told them to do it.
I would not call that bravery.
…Would you speak your mind so freely if you were trapped in a crowded elevator beside the object of your discontent?
Ah, soap operas. My grandmother watched a couple of them pretty religiously. This was a long time back: hers were Edge of Night and As the World Turns. (She may have watched General Hospital also.) So I got how they used to work: Monday recapped the previous week, then you got about 15 minutes of new action each day, on half-hour shows. (Watching on Monday was all you needed to keep up.)
Redheadedfemme
There’s nothing basic about it. They are calling Mark Oshiro and E. P. Beaumont liars.
I see the destruction of Selina Rosen’s reputation by hearsay continues.
I see that you don’t know the meaning of the word hearsay. When Oshiro reports what happened to him with respect to Rosen, that’s not hearsay, that’s direct testimony. If Oshiro told everyone that he heard from someone else that Rosen engaged in inappropriate conduct, that would be hearsay. But that’s not what happened. Oshiro witnessed Rosen’s conduct, and then reported what he saw.
As usual, you are wrong. Does it bother you that you are wrong about everything you try to opine about? Do you think that it might be a good idea to educate yourself before continuing to blather like a fool?
@lurkertype Yeah, saw that. Pity, I had plenty more questions for Lee.
Don’t feed the troll.
@Mike Glyer Thank you, though I suspect the cheers might subside after my latest comments.
Did you see the apology I made on the Valley Forge post? I might be more unpopular than you soon. Shall we drink to world peace
@Kip W
Fantastic but I’m not sure in an hour I’ll be thanking you for the ear worm
@P J Evans
Oh yes I forgot about As the World Turns. Soaps were funny you either needed to watch them every day or for a few days every 3-6 months. But a 1-2 days a week and you missed too much. Day to day mattered a lot. But months only took a couple days to get caught up. It was a weird paradox.
If someone takes his/her cloths off at a con and I go put your cloths back on you disgusting pig… Could I get banned for harrassment?
(1) The SJWs at Twitter are trying to silence the voices of puppets! By causing high winds in the neighborhood. Probably with the weather machine from GH.
@Tasha: Passions embraced its weird early on.
Aaaaand now I have fallen into the GH wiki.
I’m — “glad” isn’t the right word — to hear that some of the members of the audience were made uncomfortable by the depantsing, deshirting, and a panel member yelling at the audience that they were “rats” for objecting to this off-putting behavior.
I don’t know if any of the audience could see the sexual harassment; nobody’s mentioned if they could or not. Sometimes tables have those drapes around them so you can’t see the panelists below the waist. Unless they make a point of regularly and proudly showing everyone their undies, of course…
@Kip W.
Enjoyed both the old (Dr. Doolittle) and the new (Ol’ Blue Eyes) ditties!
Pfaugh. You can’t get rid of our respect for you that easily.
@Tasha: Passions embraced its weird early on.
I remember my then-wife was very into Passions. I also remember there was a period on the show when it seemed like everyone was planning on going to the Lobster Shack that evening for a period that lasted about six months.
For your abusement, the newly-revised reading list for my Modern SF course this fall:
SF Hall of Fame, Vol. 1 (short stories)
Dune, Herbert
The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin
Neuromancer, Gibson
Watchmen, Moore
Kindred, Butler
The City and the City, Mieville
The Martian, Weir
Station Eleven, Mandel
Thanks to several of y’all for your suggestions of texts or trends to consider.
Yes we should. And someday I will grow up to be the boy I intend to be!
Yes, but you’d probably be hearing about it from your bail bondsman.
@Hal’s Buddy: That’s a good list! Wide variety, and some stuff that should blow their minds.
@PJ Evans: “Thee EDGE… of Night”. I liked the mystery aspect, that made it different from all the other shows.
We remember that even here in 9536.
Well, since Königsberg has been renamed Kaliningrad for seventy years now, I guess it’s only appropriate that someone else take over the vacant name.
@Lurkertype I don’t know if any of the audience could see the sexual harassment; nobody’s mentioned if they could or not. Sometimes tables have those drapes around them so you can’t see the panelists below the waist. Unless they make a point of regularly and proudly showing everyone their undies, of course…
In Mark Oshiro’s post today he states that the audience could Not see the harassment as the table linen covered from top to floor. I’m sure everyone will see the link on the next pixel scroll and can read it themselves.
It’s Kaliningrad , not Königsberg!
Why did Königsberg get the works? That’s nobodies business but the…Prussians?
Hey, Phantom, since you’re here, are you ever gonna answer the question about these people are supposedly deciding what you do and don’t get to read? You were really upset about them a few pixel scrolls ago…
@Guess: if you call somebody “you disgusting pig”, then yeah, you quite likely should be banned for harassment.
It’s telling how some people seem to be unable to distinguish between “it’s only appropriate to disrobe if I find you attractive” and “it’s only appropriate to disrobe if all people present have consented”.
@lurkertype: I think Mark Oshiro has posted (in the followup post, maybe) that there was the standard hotel-conference-center table-to-floor drape, and so he wasn’t surprised that nobody in the audience could see what was happening.
RedWombat: Hey, Phantom, since you’re here, are you ever gonna answer the question about these people are supposedly deciding what you do and don’t get to read? You were really upset about them a few pixel scrolls ago…
I wouldn’t expect a response. Those nasty censors aren’t letting him read your posts, either.
@ Guess: WHY would you say “you disgusting pig?” Why would you consider it necessary or in any way a relevant comment?
“Put you clothes back on,” “this is unprofessional and inappropriate,” “I’m calling security,” “please leave” etc. are all relevant things to say if someone suddenly strips to undies or naked torso in, for example, a discussion panel before a paying audience at a conference.
But “you disgusting pig?” How do you imagine that name-calling is professional and adult behavior for YOU to exercise?
I just want to know what it is The Phantom wants to read so we can help them find the books. They need more book reading time so they can be happy again.
(5) I’ve got a line of hardwired code in my brain that says “if you can’t say anything nice, AND if you are on the internet, THEN STFU.” But I looked this guy Sawyer up, and he’s a very fancy and accomplished writer, with awards and an impeccable website, so as I am a total noob and nobody, I feel comfortable snapping at his heels, since it’s not likely to cause him to miss a rent payment. Notwithstanding, that was absolutely the least credible expert witness testimony scene I have ever encountered in any movie, book, play or puppet show ever.
A further objection, the whole empathy=good; no-empathy=evil scenario bugs me deeply. There are a lot of reasons people might be low on empathy, such as depression or chronic pain or being on the autistic spectrum or just being wired that way, and the vast majority of them wouldn’t hurt a fly. There are low-empathy people driving ambulances, and handling forensic evidence, and prosecuting pedophiles, and performing dental surgery, and giving vaccinations to little kids, and performing other societal functions that would severely upset the very empathetic. Meanwhile, a lot of sadists seem to take extreme interest in other peoples’ feelings.
I could also say a few less than nice things about the appalling behavior toward Mr. Oshiro and his partner, but that subject seems to be pretty well covered and I haven’t got anything to add except generally being supportive.
@Laura Resnick
When was the last time you saw Guess comment anywhere on the Internet in an appropriate adult manner? Their last post on file770 was to insult us old folks for not talking about books enough.