(1) NO BUCKS, NO BUCK ROGERS. “Can you make a living writing short fiction?” is the question. Joe Vasicek’s in-depth answer, filled with back-of-the-envelope calculations, is as carefully assembled as any classic hard sf tale.
First of all, it’s worth pointing out that short stories are not like longer books. In my experience (and I am not a master of the short form by any stretch), short stories do not sell as well in ebook form as longer books. That’s been corroborated anecdotally by virtually every indie writer I’ve spoken with.
At the same time, they aren’t like longer form books in the traditional sense either. I have three deal breakers when it comes to traditional publishing: no non-compete clauses, no ambiguous rights reversion, and no payments based on net. Short story markets typically only buy first publication rights with a 6-12 month exclusivity period, and pay by the word. That means that there’s no reason (unless you want to self-publish immediately) not to sell your short stories to a traditional market first.
(2) PAT SAYS IT’S PERFECT. Patrick St-Denis, who reviews at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, just awarded a novel a rare (for him) 10/10 score.
People have often criticized me for being too demanding when I review a novel. They often complain about the fact that very few books ever get a score higher than my infamous 7.5/10. But the fact is that year in and year out, there are always a number of works ending up with an 8/10 or more.
When I announced on the Hotlist’s Facebook page last week that Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar would get a 10/10, some people were shocked. I received a couple of messages asking me if it was the first book to get a perfect score from me. I knew there were a few, but I actually had to go through my reviews to find out exactly how many of them had wowed me to perfection. Interestingly enough, in the eleven years I’ve been reviewing books, Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar will be the 11th novel to garner a perfect score. The 13th, if you throw the Mötley Crüe biography and GRRM’s The World of Ice and Fire into the mix.
(3) GOLDEN SOUNDS. Trisha Lynn on “Road to the Hugo Awards: Fight the Future for Best Fancast” at Geeking Out About….
What Works
There are many podcasts out there which are dedicated to reviewing books and movies from a critics’ perspective. However, I believe this is one of the first podcasts I’ve heard of which reviews the actual worlds in which the books or movies take place. Of all the episodes I’ve heard, there are very few instances in which I feel that either Dan or Paul or their guests know or care too much about the current science fiction/fantasy literary blogosphere’s opinions of the works, its creators, its production team, or the actors portraying the characters. They are just there to discuss the work and only the work. When they do bring in references to other works or the greater outside world, they do it either near the beginning or near the end so that the discussion of most of the episode is focused on just the world inside the movie or book. It’s both fan discussion and literary criticism in its purest form, where the only clues you have are the work itself, the world you currently inhabit, your personal experiences, and that’s it.
(4) A BRIDGE JOKE TOO FAR? The Guardian asks “Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?”
“Many humans are under the impression that the Cthulhu for America movement is a joke candidacy, like Vermin Supreme – a way for people disgusted by a political system that has long since perished to voice a vote for a greater evil to end the status quo and the world,” says [campaign manager] Eminence Waite, sighing in a way that makes you think she’s been asked this question many times before. “They have never been so wrong, yet so right. Cthulhu is no joke.”
(5) HOW MUCH IS YOUR HARRY WORTH? Old editions of Harry Potter books may be worth up to $55,000.
First up, hardcover first editions of the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone could fetch anywhere from $40,000 to $55,000. Only 500 were published, and 300 went to libraries, so if you have one, go ahead and treat yourself to a nice dinner. You can afford it.
This edition has a print line that reads “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1” and credits of “Joanne Rowling” rather than JK.
(6) BUD WEBSTER MEMORIAL. There will be a Memorial for Bud Webster on March 12, from noon til 5 p.m., at the Courtyard by Marriott Williamsburg, 470 Mclaws Cir, Williamsburg, VA 23185.
Hotel Rooms: $89.00 – Please ask for the Bud Webster Memorial Rate – Also mention Mary Horton or Butch Allen if there is some confusion while trying to book the room. We are not catering anything. Sodas and snacks are available at registration
(7) DON’T GET STUCK IN THE MIDDLE. Kameron Hurley (according to her blog, an “intellectual badass”), reveals how to “Finish your Sh*t: Secrets of an Evolving Writing Process”.
People often ask how I’m able to do all that work on top of having a day job, and the answer is, most days, I just don’t know. But one thing I have learned in the last three months is that I have a lot easier time completing a draft that has me stuck in the mucky middle if I just skip ahead and write the ending.
I tend to spend a lot of time on the openings of my novels and stories, and it shows. My latest short story for Patreon, “The Plague Givers,” is a good example of this. There’s a very polished beginning, as far as the prose goes, and then it veers off into simplier language for much of the middle, and returns a bit toward the end to the more polished language. I will most likely go back and polish out the other half of the story before finding a home for it elsewhere, but watching how I completed that story reminded me of how I’ve hacked my process the last few months to try and get work out the door just a little faster.
I’m a discovery writer, which means I like to be surprised by events that happen in a book just as a reader would be.
(8) LURKER QUEST ACHIEVED. In the February 8 Scroll (item 10) a lurker described a story and asked for help identifying it.
The answer is Kent Patterson’s “Barely Decent”, published in Analog in 1991. The literary estate holder was located with an assist from Kevin J Anderson, who had anthologized another Patterson story, and from Jerry Oltion. The rights holder has authorized a link to a free download of the PDF for the story.
(9) THE POWER OF LOVE. Barbara Barrett shows how mighty love is in the worlds of Robert E. Howard: “Discovering Robert E. Howard: ‘My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions’ (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)” at Black Gate. But this otherwise serious roundup begins with a leetle joke —
For those of you who searched for the right way to describe your feelings for that certain special someone on February 14, Robert E. Howard might have been be a good source. After all, he was a wizard with words. And he did have a novel approach when it came to romance. As Bob Howard explains to Novalyne Price Ellis in her book One Who Walked Alone:
[M]en made a terrible mistake when they called their best girls their rose or violet or names like that, because a man ought to call his girl something that was near his heart. What, he asked, was nearer a man’s heart than his stomach? Therefore he considered it to be an indication of his deep felt love and esteem to call me his cherished little bunch of onion tops, and judging from past experience, both of us had a highest regard for onions. (106)
(10) OSCARS. At the Academy Awards on Sunday night, sf favorites The Martian and Star Wars: The Force Awakens won nothing, but Mad Max: Fury Road, so often praised here in comments, won six Oscars (Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Make-up and Hair, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing), more than any other film.
Other sf/fantasy winners — Best Animated Feature Film: Inside Out and Best Visual Effects: Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington, and Sara Bennett for Ex Machina.
(11) FAST OUT OF THE GATE. R. S. Belcher, fresh from his GoH-ship at MystiCon, is ready to impart “Lessons Learned at a Writing Workshop”.
Lead strong, hook ’em, and keep ’em hooked: This advice given to several of the workshop participants made an amazing difference between draft one and draft two. The sooner you get the reader’s attention and begin to unwind the reason for your tale, the stronger the likelihood, your reader will keep reading to learn more. Novels can afford a little more leisurely pace…but only a little, and for short fiction, a strong, powerful hook is needed right out of the gate. You may only have a few sentences of an editor’s attention before they decide to keep reading or toss the Manuscript—make them count.
(12) MESSAGE FIRST. SFF World’s “Robert J. Sawyer Interview” offers this self-revelation.
What came first – the story or the characters?
Neither. I’m a thematically driven writer; I figure out what I want to say first and then devise a storyline and a cast of characters that will let me most effectively say it. For Quantum Night, the high-level concept is this: most human beings have no inner life, and the majority of those who do have no conscience. And the theme is: the most pernicious lie humanity has ever told itself is that you can’t change human nature. Once I had those tent poles in place, the rest was easy.
(13) A LITTLE LIST. David Brin asks, “Trumpopulists: what will be the priorities?” at Contrary Brin.
There is often a logic, beneath shrill jeremiads. For example, Ted Cruz has proclaimed that even one more liberal or moderate justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court might shift the reading of the Second Amendment (2A) — does it give private individuals an unlimited right to own guns, or reserve that right only to members of a militia? (Go read the amendment and come back. In Heller v. D.C. the court went with Red America’s wishes by one vote, one interpretative vote. Moreover, let me shudder and add that Cruz is probably right about this one thing. The swing between those two interpretations is very likely to teeter for our lifetimes and more. But in railing about the near-term, he and his followers ignore the long term implication — …
— that the Second Amendment, as currently worded, is by far the weakest in the entire Bill of Rights. If this court or the next one does not reverse Heller, then it will inevitably happen when some huge national tragedy strikes. That’s called the “Ratchet Effect” (see The Transparent Society), and you are behooved to plan, during good times, for what you’ll do at some future crisis, when the public is scared.
If today’s political rightwing were rational, it would be working right now to gather consensus for a new Constitutional Amendment that might protect weapon rights far more firmly than the ambiguous and inherently frail Second. I have elsewhere described just such an amendment, which could actually pass! Because it offers some needed compromises to liberals and moderates – some positive-sum win-wins – while protecting a core of gun rights more firmly than 2A.
(14) JUDGING LOVECRAFT AND OTHERS. Frequent readers of Jim C. Hines will find his Uncanny Magazine essay “Men of Their Times” not only deals with its topic in a significant way, it also outlines the analytical process he applies to history.
…This argument comes up so quickly and reliably in these conversations that it might as well be a Pavlovian response. Any mention of the word “racism” in association with names like Tolkien or Burroughs or Campbell or Lovecraft is a bell whose chimes will trigger an immediate response of “But historical context!”
Context does matter. Unfortunately, as with so many arguments, it all tends to get oversimplified into a false binary. On one side are the self–righteous haters who get off on tearing down the giants of our field with zero consideration of the time and culture in which they lived. On the other are those who sweep any and all sins, no matter how egregious, under the rug of “Historical Context.”
….In an ideal world, I think most of us would like to believe humanity is growing wiser and more compassionate as a species. (Whether or not that’s true is a debate best left for another article.) If we assume that to be true, we have to expect a greater amount of ignorance and intolerance from the past. We also have to recognize that humanity is not homogenous, and every time period has a wide range of opinion and belief.
When we talk about historical context, we have to look both deeper and broader. Were Lovecraft’s views truly typical of the time, or was his bigotry extreme even for the early 20th century? Did those views change over time, or did he double–down on his prejudices?
Recognizing that someone was a product of their time is one piece of understanding their attitudes and prejudices. It’s not carte blanche to ignore them.
(15) STORIES OF WHAT-IF. At Carribean Beat, Philip Sander talks to Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias Buckell, Karen Lord, and R.S.A. Garcia.
Caribbean Beat: How do you define speculative fiction?
Nalo Hopkinson: I generally only use the term “speculative fiction” in academic circles. Science fiction and fantasy are literatures that challenge the complacency of our received wisdoms about power, culture, experience, language, existence, social systems, systems of knowledge, and frameworks of understanding. They make us reconsider whose stories deserve to be told, whose narratives shape the future and our beliefs, and who has the “right” to make and remake the world.
Is there a distinctively Caribbean kind of spec-fic?
A bunch of Caribbean SF/F [science fiction/fantasy] writers will be gathering to discuss this in March at the University of California, Riverside, as part of a year of programming I’m co-organising on alternative futurisms. I suspect one of the things we’ll end up talking about is Caribbean relationships to the experience of resistance — how it’s shaped our histories and imaginations, and so how it must shape our imaginative narratives. For instance, when I watch The Lord of the Rings, I wonder what the orcs do to rebel against their forced existence as beings created to be foot soldiers and cannon fodder.
We’ll probably also talk about the unique impact of place and space on the Caribbean psyche. I recently wrote a short story for Drowned Worlds, a fiction anthology on the theme of the effects of rising sea levels worldwide. For me, coming from island nations whose economies are often dependent on bringing tourists to our beaches, and which are the guardians of so much of the world’s precious biodiversity, it was particularly painful and personal to write a story about what will become of our lands. The resulting piece is angry and spooky, and combines science with duppy conqueror in ways that are uniquely Caribbean.
On the panel, we might also talk about language. The multiple consciousness that Caribbean history gives us is reflected in our code-switching, code-sliding, code-tripping dancehall-rapso-dubwise approach to signifying simultaneously on multiple levels. Science fiction reaches for that in its use of neologisms. Caribbean people, like so many hybridised peoples the world over, live it. We are wordsmiths par excellence.
(16) PUPPY COLLATION. Kate Paulk shut off comments at Sad Puppies IV and says “I’ll be going through them and collating the results over the next 2 weeks”. The Hugo nominating deadline is March 31.
(17) TALKING TO THE CUSTOMERS. The Video Shop presents “400 Fourth Wall Breaking Films Supercut”. (Most of you already know that when somebody on stage acknowledges the audience, that’s called breaking the fourth wall.) (Via io9.)
Since you’re reading this let me give you a bit of background and a couple of provisos.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of fourth wall breaking films. There are shitloads. Definitely more than 400. But 400 seemed a tidy number to end on. It’s not an academic study and there’s no rhyme or reason behind the grouping of the clips other than what seemed to work. So while yes, there are highbrow French new wave films in there I’ve also had to include The Silence of the Hams and Rocky and Bullwinkle. But then I kind of like that.
And because it’s mine I give more screen time to my favourite serial offenders, just because I can. Take a bow John Landis, Woody Allen and Mike Myers.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Rob Thornton for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mart.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
RedWombat:
Sorry, but your mosquitoes are just chauffeurs. Mosquito bites are never fatal, it’s the malaria/yellow fever/encephalitis/Zika that does the damage. That’s not even getting into the competition from fleas (plague) and lice (typhus), microbes spread person-to-person, and the ever-popular water-bourne microbes.
@LunarG Tasha, I am so sorry that was your medical experience. Do you have any reasonable alternatives for care, who don’t suffer from selective double-x chromosome input impermeability and who will take steps to work with your heating disability? Because you should not have to endure that treatment.
I don’t think the double-x chromosome is as important as someone else confirming what I’m saying period. I’m not taken seriously because I have too many weird things wrong and my body doesn’t work normal. Plus doctors think patients exaggerate things (I’m only eating omelets once a day – doc thinks “yeah sure, she’s white middle class, it’s exaggeration to get me to do something”). My husband confirming I’m not eating, in constant pain, and rarely leaving the bed is harder to ignore as he’s not the overwrought sick person. Could have been my mother or a good friend. When I was healthier I went with friends to their appointments to be the calm interface who corroborated information without the emotional frustration and anger.
Doctors computers are frequently set up facing away from patients which makes reading notes and adding new ones difficult to do while facing patients who need to see your lips. There are rare doctors who understand and remember this throughout appointments. Today because I had my support system I solved part of the problem by sitting down on the floor at the doctors feet rather than staying in the patient chair. It’s hard to remember to be creative and not follow social norms for doctor patient behavior in the office.
lurkertype: < death by emoji > THANKS JJ!!
I have a feeling I’m going to be getting a lot of hate mail from a certain segment of Filers.
lurkertype: Back in the Seventies I was having an in-print set-to with someone and after we had each dropped our verbal nukes — “You’re full of bullshit” “No, YOU’RE full of bullshit” — the world kept on spinning but I was left with nothing more to say. That’s the true reason I try to avoid bad language in print, but I’m not above trying to use it for emphasis….
Your analysis of the women’s role in SP4 reminds me of something I recently observed. Kate Paulk and company began by naming their effort Sad Puppies Four: The Bitches are Back” with a lot of stuff about —
Yet only two weeks ago, when Christopher Chupik claimed File 770 had written something unflattering about her, Kate Paulk commented (on this post Hugo Categories Highlight – The Short Fiction Categories) —
Never mind there was nothing of the kind said or implied in the post Chupik claimed to be quoting, I was struck to discover Paulk felt that was now an image she needed to protect herself against. The takeaway is that Paulk thinks “bitch” is unflattering and you have to wonder who was the intended audience for the original rhetorical flourishes. The Puppy support base, I now conclude, not SP4 opponents.
@ Mr Dalliard.
I’m sorry that I keep getting V.E. Schwab’s forename wrong.
I hope she will forgive me, given the fact that I have been enthusiastically recommending her books to anyone who will listen. I’ve just finished the second book in the series, which proves that the writing in the first wasn’t just a flash in the pan*; she earned that starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and I shall be nominating A Darker Shade of Magic.
*Which gets us back to the gun stuff..
Personally, I think it’s less that then the awfully common “for me, but not for thee” mindset.
Then again, I haven’t seen anyone – notable or otherwise – who actually called her that. Again, I reckon this is just more of the whole hyper-aggressive self-victimisation that the Pups are so very keen on.
@RedWombat: oooh, I have a complicated relationship with RedWombat! squee!
I honestly had just come in from the yard and wanted to tell you what I’d done and the first comment I saw was JJ’s link to the emoji. So I put in the pictures instead of the words just to get it out of my system all at once. Also, them emoji correspond mightily to my backyard flora and indoor fauna. Promise not to go so wild again.
7 MINUTES until “Ask a Puppet about publishing”, Episode 2! Go to MRK’s Google Plus page, click on the link. Type your questions into the chat box on the right side.
@Mike: Either you own the word “bitch” or it owns you, as most women have discovered (And Elton John). You can’t proclaim yourself that and then get offended when someone (supposedly but not really) also refers to you that way, in the exact same context/milieu/role/discussion. But Puppies are always inconsistent.
Hey there, bouncing into the comments to say that I updated and revised my post about Fight the Future because I received a clarification from Dan Saunders which states that they are ending the podcast on March 29, not going on hiatus. This makes me doubly sad that it’s going away, but glad that because they produced five episodes this year, they are going to be eligible for next year’s Hugo Awards, too.
Also, I find it very odd that after thousands of years of the evolution of the written language, we have gone from pictograms to alphabets and back to pictograms again. Humans are very strange.
What’s funny is that these are the comments in question:
Christopher M. Chupik: And of course, the peanut gallery over at That Site:
“(12) ARE YOU SHOCKED? Sigh. Paulk spins a surface-logical fantasy that doesn’t hold water, IMHO.”
“(12) Don’t care what Kate Paulk thinks about Hugo categories or anything else.”
“It might also be a wee error for her to suppose she speaks for “the rest of fandom.”
and Kate Paulk’s response was:
That Straw Kate is quite the bitch, isn’t she? I’m glad I’ve never met her.
Because apparently Paulk’s reading comprehension is so extremely poor that she translates “doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about” to “bitch”.
Oh, I have to agree with RW about the mosquitoes. Even without any of the nasty diseases, they cause red bumpy itchies, which are unattractive and drive people nuts. If scratched, they can become infected, which is bad news for overall health, esp. if you don’t live in a time or place with antibiotics. So all on their own, they’ve taken out a few people and made many irritable. And irritated humans do Bad Things.
Is GigaNotoSaurus a semi prozine or fanzine? Do authors get paid? I wanna nominate it, but am not sure where.
@lurkertype I’m fairly sure it counts as a semiprozine
Dr. Science said,
Right, and guns don’t kill people, bullets do. The microbes that cause malaria don’t get into human bloodstreams without the mosquitoes to get them there.
Also, to the list of guns I would be interested in: one for shooting mosquitoes.
@Doctor Science: “water-bourne microbes”
Everybody seems to forget about those, but despite their lack of a popular identity, I find it hard to deny their supremacy.
😉
GigaNotoSaurus is a paying market; it’s a close second on my current “who takes novellas too long for MF&SF?” these days.
And yes, it seems to have a few pretty good stories.
Camestros Felapton: I think Kate Paulk set up SP4 in a clever way.
I think she set it up in a very poorly-planned, simplistic way — with too much room for ambiguity as to what is or is not a “vote”, the ability for the same person to post a vote for the same thing multiple times, and a real dearth of promotion to get people to participate. And under the circumstances, with such low participation, posting a “Top 10” for each category is a joke.
Mike
I am really sorry that you’re getting a lot of people trying to undermine and trivialise file 770.
I’m very confident that it’s a waste of their time, but unfortunately it wastes your time also, and that time could have been spent to do wonderful things!
@ Camestros
The wings of an adult male mosquito can fetch anything up to an eighth of a cent.
Mister Dalliard asked: “OK, but what requires dove hunting? Is that actually a thing?”
Never did the dove hunting thing myself, but my brother-in-law went fairly regularly. This Texas Monthly article, “How To Dove Hunt”, give the basics. A freshly seeded field can draw literally thousands of doves who see it as a buffet. So dove hunters can 1) thin the flocks, and 2) after a couple of days being hunted, the flocks figure it out and move on to other fields.
Some of the hunters harvest the breast meat, tho’ the return on investment of time and labor seems pretty meager to me. This recipe for Jalapeno Dove Poppers sounds fairly yummy, though. I don’t have a source for dove meat, but a local Mideastern grocery carries quail; I may try it with that.
Jim Henley wrote: ” If you’re a hunter you’ll want multiple rifles and shotguns in appropriate calibers and gauges for the different things you expect to hunt. If you’re a serious target shooter, you may want a number of different pistols because it’s your hobby.”
I suppose, if you hunt animals of widely varying size and weight. But almost all the hunters I’ve known only go out once a year for deer season. (A cousin’s husband was the exception. His den was filled with taxidermied trophies ranging from a small javelina to a elk’s head-&-shoulders that was about the size of a Smart Car. Being a responsible kind of guy, his guns were always kept in a safe at home, and I never thought to ask how many and what kind he had.)
Personally, since finishing my Army stint, my only experience with shooting has been some target plinking with an air pistol.
– – – – –
Mike Glyer wrote: “Back in the Seventies I was having an in-print set-to with someone and after we had each dropped our verbal nukes — “You’re full of bullshit” “No, YOU’RE full of bullshit” — the world kept on spinning”
Should I be blushing? Why am I blushing?!
Oh, man, those were… not… the Good Old Days.
@Lis
I don’t think I’m overlooking much. Just because we went from a weaker central government to a comparatively stronger one, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the trend towards an ever more powerful central government will produce a positive result. As with just about everything else in the world, too much of a good thing can have really bad results.
Taking a step back towards the type of government envisioned by the Constitution would be a step in the right direction, IMO.
@Hampus
The most significant reductions in poverty in the US came before the Great Society.
The most signfiicant reductions in poverty on a global basis came when India and China abandoned their respective planned economies in favor of free markets. Of course, in China they are still working on the “free minds” half of the equation.
@RedWombat
LOL….well played. Perhaps a better delimiter would be “the single greatest source of human induced death,” etc., etc.
@RDF
I’m not an anarchist. There are prudent levels of government that reduce the barriers for individuals to create wealth. We are a bit beyond that point, IMO.
—
On another note, I recently finished James A. Moore’s “Seven Forges” and I’m crunching merrily through the sequel “The Blasted Lands”. Great reading. The only problem is that Richard Knaak’s “Black City Saint” just dropped. His work on “The Legend of Huma” was so good that I have to give that a try.
Regards,
Dann
Taking a step back towards the type of government envisioned by the Constitution would be a step in the right direction, IMO.
One might note that talking about the type of government envisioned by the founders as the government envisioned by the Constitution is kind of moot. Leaving aside the fact that much of our understanding of that document has been shaped by Marshall, who was a staunch Federalist, the Constitution was radically changed by the Reconstruction amendments (and more so by later amendments), so what guys like Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe thought about the government is kind of irrelevant at this point.
Bruce Arthurs: Vermin control I can understand. They’re not that well known in these parts. That Texas Monthly article is all about the joy of hunting and eating the things and nothing about getting rid of vermin. It makes me wonder if the whole sport of dove hunting was invented by farmers, along with recipes, as a cheap way of outsourcing their dove removal work – like Tom Sawyer’s fence but with more firearms.
@dann665
I guess that is fair to limit it to human induced but you probably don’t want to count humans as disease vectors (e.g. flu) or life shortening behaviors such as smoking etc. I think what you are after is ORGANIZED killing. Of course we need also a broad meaning of ‘government’ but I think once we sort out that issue then I 100% agree that the greatest source of human organized killing of humans is caused by organized humans.
13) This has mostly been dealt with quite well, particularly by Aaron, but I thought I’d make a comment or two. Brin is dreaming if he thinks an amendment in any way touching on the Second Amendment would even make it through Congress at the moment. much less be ratified.
Heller basically affirms the right of individuals to own firearms for “traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home”. The majority opinion also makes it clear that the right is not unlimited. You can’t just carry any weapon anywhere you want for any purpose.
As Aaron said, the framers distrusted standing armies, preferring that the people serve as the first line of defense for the nation as a whole as well as locally. That’s why the president has the constitutional authority to call up militia units (which Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion). Shays’ Rebellion most likely was on the minds of the framers to some degree.
Brin is overly concerned, at least in my view.
The mosquito gun (leaving aside the already-referenced Monty Python sketch) is a reality. It’s a laser, and Jordin Kare (fan and filker) is involved in the project. But it doesn’t kill all mosquitoes — just the ladies, because they’re the ones that bite people. How does it tell? Wingbeats tell them the gender and variety of skeeter. IS NOT SCIENCE WONDERFUL?
@Bruce Arthurs:
Yeah, for rifles I figure at least a varmint/squirrel gun (.22 or .220) and a deer rifle (30/06 or .308 prob). If you do something crazy like hunt bear or bighorn sheep or something, well, I forget what you go to above a 30/06. And for shotguns, you probably want a 12- and a 20-gauge. (I don’t know what .410s are actually good for besides not killing your own shoulder with recoil.)
And that’s per hunter in your household. You get into serious numbers of long guns pretty quickly. Totally, completely agree on the need to lock those suckers up BTW.
Now I am thinking of the first Rick Brant Science Adventure book when Scotty interviews with Doctor Brant for the security job on Spindrift Island!
@JJ: Perhaps “someone who’s wrong” = “bitch” in Puppyspeak?
How one “wee error”, one “I think she’s wrong” and one “I don’t care” equals “bitch” is certainly Puppy Math. Were we insufficiently worshipful? I retract my small particle of sympathy from a couple pages ago. She got herself in, even if the boys suggested it.
(Chupik: also unable to stick the flounce.)
Not much meat on doves/pigeons (esp. when you have to dig out the pellets from the boomstick) and a lot of work, but they seem to have been eaten regularly throughout history, and even raised for the purpose. And people eat quail, which also are skinny little one-mouthful birds. Can we eat it? Yes, we can!
Danne665:
Actually, no. That is the most significant reduction in the last years, but there was an enormous reduction in poverty between the 50:s and 70:s on a global scale. You are also missing the heavy government involvement in trade agreements with China.
Roads, hospitals, railways, schools. All necessary for reduction of poverty, always a part of government programs. Government programs to reduce analphabetism. To build roads to smaller villages. To universities and cures against diseases. Event internet was government created.
One is actually a total idiot if one does not recognize the role of governments in reduction of poverty.
I’m not saying that free markets hasn’t got a role in the creation of wealth. It has and countries with no free markets will fall greatly behind. But reduction of poverty is more a matter of distribution of wealth.
And again – US is horrible at reduction of poverty. Abysmal pay for those with low income, gigantic unemployment, total lack of wellfare. People hardly surviving with two paying jobs.
It is a total catastrophe.
Adding, a lot of hunting weapons are examples of beautiful craftsmanship. You might want to buy one just because you like guns and this one’s gorgeous. One of the minor but real downsides of the epidemic of “tactical” fetishism in the US is that people buy so many more ugly guns.
dan665 wrote:
No.
_The Better Angels Of Our Nature_ by Steven Pinker. You really need to read this book so you have some idea what you are talking about. The first chapters are about how humans used to behave to each other; some of them are NOT for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, but you should have no problem.
The cliff notes are: Humans without government kill each other a lot. The chance of dying at the hands of another human has been going down over the millennia and the first reductions come from the formation of states (even repressive ones) that reserve violence to themselves. Because onesie-twosie raids and muggings and revenges add up to more deaths over time than a government causes to prevent them. We might like it to be different but it doesn’t seem to be. Once you have states, the larger they are, the less likely you are to die by violence, presumably because there are fewer entities to war with each other.
The next step appears to be twofold: people feeling confident that the state will keep them safe so they don’t need to appear too dangerous to cross (turns out that tracks closely with killing more people) and people learning to empathize with people very different from them. What startled me is that that growth of empathy appears and develops at the same time within and across countries as literacy and specifically fiction reading.
It’s a great book; I thoroughly recommend it.
But in the meantime I really don’t buy your argument. Yes repressive governments kill more of their citizens than democratic ones, but no, government is not the biggest human killer of humans, percentage wise. Yes, even with WWI and WWII.
@Kip W
Holy crap. If the estimates on the cost is even remotely reasonable (USD 50 per unit), that’s going to be an incredibly feasible, useful, and profitable product in much of Asia.
While poor civic governance leads to many places being *terrible* in terms of mitigation, electrical power tends to be quite reliable, and there is an existing booming business in pseudoscientific “ultrasonic mosquito repellants” that don’t actually work.
So, SP4 is turning into a damp squib due in large part to a seeming lack of enthusiasm on the part of its once bellicose standard bearers (for whom I have no sympathy — sorry, lurkertype, it’s an all-volunteer “insurgency”).
Meanwhile, RP2 looks like some sort of haphazard mess designed to produce “victory” somewhere — anywhere. The strung out announcements have produced…not much drama. Unlike SP4, though, it will eventually likely sludgify into a slate that some breeds of puppy may go lockstep on.
Meanwhile, I am trying to read as many short works as I can, remember the names of my favorite episodes, and so on. I may have to leave nomming novels mostly to others. 🙁
@Dann:
Look, man, the Cold War represented the triumph of mixed economies over command economies. China has a large state sector. Every NATO country was and is some flavor of welfare state. India did not clone the Lochner Court from DNA found in a mosquito trapped in resin. The great gains in human welfare over the last century and a half have come from the adoption of mixed economies. Sometimes, as in Europe and the US, this meant moving from laissez-faire toward a democratic welfare state. Sometimes, as in China and India, it meant moving from lots of central planning toward more role for profit motive. Sometimes it has included trimming and adjusting the exact contours of the mixed economy (Carter’s deregulation of trucking e.g.).
But it hasn’t ever meant going the Full Mises or embracing minarchism. And the one effort that came closest to it, the post-Soviet “shock treatment” reform effort, was a complete disaster that paved the way for Russia’s current gangster state.
Mixed economies rule.
@bloodstone75: I think we cross-posted so you missed my removal of sympathy. It were only ever female-mosquito-sized, so I zapped it with a laser.
sludgify into a slate is a great description.
lurkertype: I retract my small particle of sympathy from a couple pages ago. She got herself in, even if the boys suggested it.
She gets no sympathy from me. She took this on with full knowledge and malicious intent:
Kate Paulk: Even the Evil Legion of Evil has standards, you know. We’re completely against letting Sad Puppies stay sad. We want them to be happy).
There won’t be much action from Sad Puppies 4 for quite some time, but rest assured I will be lurking in the shadows looking for worthy candidates for the campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness. When the time is right, announcements will be made and campaigning will begin in earnest. In the meantime, I shall rub my hands together and practice my evil cackle.
sabrinachase: hehehehee. Oh, they are never going to know what hit them…
Kate Paulk: Not until after they pick what’s left of themselves up from the steamrollered ground, no.
I think that is a mosquito death ray rather than a gun but that only makes it more cool.
I assume ultrasonic jellyfish blaster is next on their development list.
I saw Pinker do a talk on his book and it was a steamroller built of reasoned argument.
_The Better Angels Of Our Nature_ by Steven Pinker. You really need to read this book so you have some idea what you are talking about.
One might also read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond gives a description of the high levels of violence among the inhabitants of the highlands of New Guinea, including a description of a single woman’s many husbands, most of whom were killed in raids.
Thanks for the Motorhead reference in the title of today’s article. More Motorhead is always welcome.
I’ve actually been part of an organization that helps to finance schools in India for the poorest people. Was there around 20 years ago to inspect the wella ans schools thad had been built by swedish money.
Anyone who thinks there has been a change regarding free markets in India that has created wealth has no idea what they are talking about. India has never had a large government, they let an enormous part of the population wallow in poverty with no schools at all and great analphabetism.
I’ll also recommend Ha-Joo Chang’s Bad Samaritans on how the west builts its wealth.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1905211376/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1456978818&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=bad+samaritans&dpPl=1&dpID=51De8otd88L&ref=plSrch
Adding, a lot of hunting weapons are examples of beautiful craftsmanship. You might want to buy one just because you like guns and this one’s gorgeous.
My father owned a genuine Kentucky rifle – it had belonged to his great-grandfather, and both were victims of Confederate raiders. The rifle was repaired, with a half-length curly-maple stock. It really is gorgeous (it’s in a museum now). Thing is muzzle-heavy though; I was impressed when I was told my grandfather fired it from the shoulder.
@JJ: Does it count as not knowing what hit us if we don’t notice because of the Pups’ ineptitude?
Aaron: Does it count as not knowing what hit us if we don’t notice because of the Pups’ ineptitude?
I’d like to be able to give Paulk credit as hopefully having learned something and grown up a bit during the last year — but her recent endorsement of that Festering Piece Of Pustulent Shit by Daniel Eness has pretty much put the kibosh on any idea she might have attained any wisdom in that time.
oooh, I have a complicated relationship with RedWombat!
*bell clangs, slightly muffled by dense fog* You now have a Complicated Relationship with RedWombat!
*shakes head sharply* I could have sworn I was reading File 770, not playing Sunless Sea. But maybe the terror of the zee has misled me…
(Incidentally, if games were eligible for the Hugos, Sunless Sea would seem to be perfectly suited — it’s got interesting storylines and varied characters and evocative settings— and yet there’s no way most jurors would spend the time necessary to get the full feel of it. At this point we’ve spent more than 15 hours playing, and it feels like we’ve barely
scratched the surfacegotten our toes wet.)I’ve just spent a marathon (3 hours) session putting together my Hugo nominations and entering them. Frustratingly, I still have 29 empty slots (across 10 categories, ca. 1/3 of the total available slots), mostly in areas where I just haven’t had much exposure. (For example, I haven’t followed any television-or-equivalent series in the past year, so my dramatic-shorts category is entirely empty.) I don’t know if I’ll fill in any more, unless I go on a targeted program of evaluating items in the relevant categories. (This is a good chance to recommend novelettes I might want to consider, for example.)
re: Pinker, Diamond: nooooooooooo. As far as Pinker’s book goes, his general thesis is correct (violence is and has been declining, with specific qualifiers [the decline in personal violence can be linked to stronger states, but so can the World Wars and Holocaust and the specter of nuclear annihilation]) but the ways he formulates his arguments are anathema to anyone familiar with the practice of history.
Diamond, well. His useful observations aren’t new (although to be fair, they’re new to the mass audience), and his new observations aren’t correct (and in the spirit of fairness, the mass audience is never going to separate the two). I’ve linked it before, but: here is a fairly thorough walk through of the many errors in just one chapter of GGS. However, it’s representative: the entire work has similar problems.
@Heather Rose Jones: Three hours is about how long it took me, too. More complicated than I thought. I’m pleased that I already have at least 3 nominees in all the categories that I plan to fill out (I’m not going to bother with dramatic presentations short or long, or fancasts, or long-form editors; they can take care of themselves) and have made all my short fiction choices. Was REALLY hard to narrow short stories down to 5 but I’m satisfied with what I chose.
Skipping four categories, only seven spaces left to fill in the remaining ones. I still need more related works, that’s going to be the big problem; fan artists and fanzines, too. Any suggestions?
As for suggestions from me, have you seen my list? I updated it a bit lately. There’s ten very fine novelettes on there; not as many as I’d like available online. What sort of stories does your taste run to?
Ebook deals! (nod to @Meredith & @JJ)
Touch by Clair North (someone jumps into/steals bodies, so, sorta like a serial killer?) and Tracer by Rob Boffard (space station SF with serial killer) are on sale for $2.99 each, from Orbit (DRM). The sequel to Tracer comes out this year.
Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker is on sale for 99 cents from Phoenix Pick (DRM-free at Smashwords & Kobo; probably elsewhere, though I’m not 100% sure). This SF novel is an oldie but IMHO a goodie, IMHO. I enjoyed re-reading the first few books via audiobook a while back (last year?), but I was bummed the last few weren’t available. (I’m talking about the first 5.)
PIXELS:
(2) PAT SAYS IT’S PERFECT. I remember a joke about Pat’s reviews being along the lines of “it was a horrible book, very flawed…6.75” and “great book, fantastic writing…7.25.” He seems to rate almost everything in small increments between 6 and 8.
(3) GOLDEN SOUNDS. That’s a groovy, unusual podcast concept.
SCROLLS:
@Camestros Felapton: The funny thing is, SFWA – since being “taken over” by “evil SJWs” – seems to be doing more and more author promotion stuff. They have some new initiatives that were announced recently, in fact.
@Petréa Mitchell: Well, the Puppies in general can take credit for the almost-4000 voters that showed up, but it’s a bad sort of credit. 😉
@Vasha: “The rule is “professional publications are works sold for more than a nominal amount”; did Apex pay for stories in 2014?”
Your Q was answered already, but I was confused by how you put it. You seemed to take the rule (publications sold for more than a nominal amount) and then ask something different (did Apex pay authors). Apologies if I’m just too tired to get it (or am misreading the Campbell rules), but these seem like different questions.
@Stevie: “wasn’t just a flash in the pan*”
Well played! (bows) 🙂 Also: I’m glad to hear the second book lives up to the first.