Pixel Scroll 3/2/16 A Scanner Barkly

(1) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY FUNDED. Arwen Curry e-mailed word to supporters of the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin documentary Kickstarter that they reached $200,000 in pledges today.

Now that we have raised our entire budget, our NEH grant will be released. That means we’ll be able to stop fundraising and start production right away….

That also means everyone will get Ursula’s list of What to Read in 2016! I can’t wait to see what’s on there.

With 48 hours left in the campaign, pledges are still trickling in. Rest assured, we’ll use every dime toward making the film more worthy of its subject. As we move forward over these next months, I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

(2) THE EAR DOCTOR. Big Finish will bring back David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the Tenth Doctor and his companion Donna Nobel in three forthcoming audio dramas reports Radio Times.

More details in “Everything we know about the new David Tennant and Catherine Tate Doctor Who Adventures”.

And there’s an audio excerpt at “Keep calm – but we’ve got the exclusive first clip of David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s return to Doctor Who”.

According to the Big Finish website, the stories will see the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble travel to a spaceport, discover a deadly weapon called the Time Reaver and find deadly iPads at the London Technology museum. In other words, some classic action from for the returning characters.

(3) INGENIOUS FELAPTON. Camestros Felapton asks: Can you identify the titles of these 2015 novels from a combination of emojis? (Repeated here for the benefit of anyone who didn’t see it in last night’s comments.) Note — there may be a problem with this transcription — it shows up okay in the draft, but the preview is all question marks. We’ll see….

1. 🐘 🌙
2. ⌚ 🐙
3. 🍎 🍏 🍎 🍏 🍎 🍏 🍎
4. 🌱 🌞 🍂 ❄ ❓
5. ⬆ √

(4) YOU WILL BELIEVE A BOOK CAN FLY. Rob Boffard thinks launching a book is a literal act. He celebrated his new book by sending a recording of himself doing a reading into suborbit — “Sci-Fi Novel ‘Zero-G’ Soars to Edge of Space”

A new sci-fi novel launched on a truly fitting mission last month, as documented in a new video: Rob Boffard’s “Zero-G” cruised to the upper stratosphere for a very unusual author reading at the edge of space.

The book ascended via weather balloon on Jan. 18 from the town of Ross on Wye in southern England. Once the rig got high up in the sky, an audio recording of Boffard reading the prologue and the first chapter began to play loudly. Boffard’s crew documented the process in an extended video, as well as through tweets as it all happened.

 

(5) ROWLING’S SECRET PAN PLAN. Emily Asher-Perrin makes her case for believing “Dumbledore’s Origin Story is the Predecessor to Peter Pan” at Tor.com.

When J.K. Rowling was writing The Tragic Tale of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, do you think she realized that she was actually writing a very scary version of Peter Pan? I had a minor brain explosion last week while rereading The Deathly Hallows, and the more I think about it, the more adamant I become…

…wanna go down a weird rabbit hole with me?

Sure, it’s not an exact parallel, but there are plenty of uncanny similarities that remind me of Peter Pan when I think of Albus Dumbledore’s youth. Before I go trying to explain my train of thought, let me first give you my cast of characters—

  • Grindelwald: Peter Pan
  • Albus: Wendy Darling
  • Aberforth: John Darling
  • Ariana: Michael Darling

Here’s the piece of Rowling’s text that put me in mind of Pan in the first place:

…and there on the window ledge sat perched, like a giant bird, a young man with golden hair. In the split second that the lantern’s light illuminated him, Harry saw the delight upon his handsome face, then the intruder shot a Stunning Spell from his wand and jumped neatly backward out of the window with a crow of laughter.

(6) GROSS INCOME. “Ask the Tax Czarina: Bartering ” at the SFWA Blog tries to dispel magical thinking about a common source of noncash income.

To sum up, here are some real world examples. My client provides editing and mentoring services for writers. I prepare and sign her tax return, which includes her writing business. I will have bartered tax return preparation income and a deduction for her editing services. My client has bartered editing income and a deduction for her tax return being prepared. While tax return preparation usually goes on Schedule A as an itemized deduction, it may be deducted directly against a business, if that’s the reason my client has her tax return prepared and signed by a paid preparer. The transaction offsets for both of us, it’s a wash. Assuming the amount is under $600, neither of us issues the other a Form 1099-MISC….

In summary, barter transactions are reportable. Transactions that wash are less of an issue than transactions that don’t. The above examples demonstrate that bartering might or might not result in net taxable income for either or both parties. Sometimes it’s clear how the transaction should be treated and sometimes it’s not.

(7) SPACE TO THINK. Tor.com has 10 of Kyle Cassidy’s photos of sf authors’ writing spaces. The lens used to shoot Samuel Delany’s work area makes it look like the International Space Station. Most of the others look like the comfortable living rooms of affluent people – no shots of people with laptops on borrowed tables at Starbucks – with the exception of Joe Haldeman who is writing in the dark by the light of a lantern.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 2, 1933 — The movie King Kong premiered in New York.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born March 2, 1949  — Gates McFadden. Cheryl Gates McFadden is an American actress and choreographer. She is best known for playing Dr. Beverly Crusher in the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series and in the four subsequent films.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born March 2, 1904 — “Dr. Seuss,” Theodor Geisel.

(11) A SERIES OF WORLDCONS REMEMBERED. Kevin Henney writes down his vivid impressions of Worldcons of decades gone by for asemantic.

Two years later, again with Josh, I visited Worldcon ’86 in Atlanta. For a teenager from North London, even cocooned within the convention hotels, this visit to the American South was an eye-opener…. the view from the front seat revealed a shifting cultural landscape you didn’t see on TV. Sidewalks were invisibly colour coded, black one side, white the other. Worldcon’s name that year, ConFederation, also shows how far we’ve come — you’d have to be a sad puppy to think that name was appropriate now.

I was there for the full five days. There were five of us saving money and shift-sleeping in a room for two, but I used that room for little more than storage and showering. I did the first three days on three hours sleep, giving myself the luxury of seven hours over the final two — a sleeping pattern I could get away with only as an adolescent (or, a few years later, as a new parent). Worldcon was big even back then. It was non-stop sessions, parties, caffeine, bumping into American gods like Frederick Pohl, faux phaser fights in hallways between Klingons and Starfleet (pick a side, go on pick a side…), talking to people you didn’t know, making friends that you did actually keep in touch with for a couple of years, even without cyberspace assistance of email and social media.

And some of whom I would meet again at Conspiracy in Brighton at the same Metropole hotel I’d visited in 1984. Tom and I were there for the weekend…

This Worldcon was smaller and less grand than the one in Atlanta, with a 1980s British seaside-town twist. But it still dwarfed 1984 Eastercon. There were writers I’d seen at SeaCon and in Atlanta, there were guests of honour (including Jim Burns), there were up-and-coming writers (a certain Iain Banks, with and without the M, comes to mind), there was Hawkwind (Tom’s kind of thing, but thanks I’ll pass), there were parties (in the hotel and on the beach) and more.

And then I took a break from cons and fandom. Quite a long break. A fairy-tale sleep whose spell was broken in part by Josh (yup, same one, after all these years) and BristolCon. And in good time for Loncon, Worldcon 2014….

(12) OF ALL THE NERVES. Soft tissues like this are rarely preserved — “Exquisitely detailed 520 million-year-old fossil shows individual nerves” in the Washington Post.

Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis wasn’t exactly a beautiful animal: The crustacean-like Cambrian creature had a long, segmented body and an unholy number of legs that it used to scuttle across the ocean floor. But scientists are oohing and ahhing over the ugly arthropod anyway, and for good reason. The nervous system of one 520 million-year-old specimen shows some of the best and most well-preserved nerves ever seen in an animal of that era.

According to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the fossil may be the oldest and most detailed example of a central nervous system yet identified, with even individual nerves — rarely preserved soft tissue — visible enough to study.

(13) CORMAN SUES CITCO. A 1996 Worldcon GoH, “Roger Corman Lawsuit Blames Citco for Losing $60 Million of Family’s Money”.

The famed filmmaker says he wasn’t told that his money was being managed by troubled hedge fund manager Buddy Fletcher.

Roger Corman and his wife Julie Corman, together responsible for hundreds of films and the mentoring of some of Hollywood’s biggest directors and actors, have filed a lawsuit that says they put money in an investment fund managed by George Soros before the money was moved and they ended up losing up to $60 million.

According to the complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, the administrator of the Soros fund was the Citco Group. The Cormans’ primary contact there was Ermanno Unternaehrer.

In 1996, Unternaehrer convinced the Cormans to put money in a fund managed by Citco, instead of with Soros, alleges the complaint. The Cormans say they were told that “the Citco fund was a safe, secure place to invest their moneys, and that Citco would administer and manage the fund to ensure continued high performance.”

For the next six years, things seemed fine. In 2002, Unternaehrer is said to have recommended that a vehicle named “Pasig, Ltd” be set up in the British Virgin Islands for tax reasons. Corman says he initially was a director of the newly incorporated company, but a few months later, upon advice, Corman says he resigned, becoming only a signatory on the account. By 2008, the lawsuit says that there was $73 million under Citco’s “complete control” and management fell to Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher.

(14) NOT ON YOUR AM DIAL. “Repeating fast radio bursts recorded for the first time” at Science News.

Fast radio bursts from deep space have never been seen to repeat — until now.

Ten blasts of radio waves recorded last May and June all come from the same direction, researchers report online March 2 in Nature. So did a signal detected in 2012, say Laura Spitler, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues. All 11 signals were detected at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, last a few milliseconds and, except for one, all appear to originate in other galaxies (SN: 8/9/14, p. 22). For the repeater, each of the signals encountered the same amount of intergalactic plasma, meaning they traveled the same distance. That shared feature makes an ironclad case for a common source, says Duncan Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University in Morgantown and co-discoverer of the first FRB, reported in 2007. The question now is what fraction of sources repeat, he says. There may be multiple classes of FRBs, with some recurring and some not, each triggered by something different.

(15) THE GUY WHO DIDN’T MAKE MILLIONS. “Russ Heath’s Comic About Being Ripped Off By Roy Lichtenstein Will Give You A New Appreciation For The Hero Initiative” at Comics Alliance.

If you’re not familiar with the Hero Initiative, they’re one of our favorite organizations here at ComicsAlliance — a nonprofit set up to create a “financial safety net” for comic book creators in need, helping with medical bills and living expenses. It’s one thing to know that they’re doing good things in the world, but Heath’s comic, showing both the help provided during his surgery and the simple pleasure of a bottle of wine, really shows just how much good they’re doing.

(16) THE BEAST WITH THREE BACKS. J.K. Rowling has the story:

J.K. Rowling just confirmed that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Harry Potter prequel currently in production with Warner Bros., won’t just be one movie. It will be THREE.

She made the announcement on Twitter, in response to a tweet from a fan who’d heard that the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, would also be a movie. It won’t. But that’s okay, because now we’ve got three prequels to look forward to

(17) SPACE AGE LEFTOVERS. Abandoned In Place: Preserving America’s Space History by Roland Miller, published on March 1, collects images of the now-discarded facilities that helped America reach outer space.

Stenciled on many of the deactivated facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the evocative phrase “abandoned in place” indicates the structures that have been deserted. Some structures, too solid for any known method of demolition, stand empty and unused in the wake of the early period of US space exploration. Now Roland Miller’s color photographs document the NASA, Air Force, and Army facilities across the nation that once played a crucial role in the space race.

Rapidly succumbing to the elements and demolition, most of the blockhouses, launch towers, tunnels, test stands, and control rooms featured in Abandoned in Place are located at secure military or NASA facilities with little or no public access. Some have been repurposed, but over half of the facilities photographed no longer exist. The haunting images collected here impart artistic insight while preserving an important period in history.

(18) A UK MARKET. Unsung Stories is an  independent publisher of “intelligent genre fiction – science fiction, fantasy, horror and importantly those works that blur the boundaries between genres.”

They have recently launched a new digital line of short works and novellas, Unsung Signals.

Unsung Signals features mid-length fiction, stories too long for magazines or journals but too short for traditional book-length publication. We believe stories should be as long as they need to be. We’re giving the writers the freedom to write the way they want without the need to pad or trim unnecessarily, to give a home to work that would otherwise be left unpublished, or altered to fit a format.

Here are a few details about their market for short stories —

How long is short?

We will consider stories up to 3000 words (preferred length is under 2000 words though).

Payment and Rights:

We pay £25 per story.  For this we get first electronic rights exclusive for three months, with non-exclusive archival rights. We’ll pay within 30 days of publication via PayPal.

(19) FINDING DORY TRAILER. Disney-Pixar has dropped the first full Finding Dory trailer.

The long-awaited sequel to the beloved 2003 hit Finding Nemo puts the focus this time on the forgetful fish Dory, voiced again by Ellen DeGeneres. Taking place six months after the original underwater adventure, the sequel sends Dory on a quest to find her long-lost family, with the help of Marlin (voiced again by Albert Brooks), Crush (voiced by returning director Andrew Stanton) and several other returning ocean creatures

 

[Thanks to JJ, and John King Tarpinian, Gregory N. Hullender, Gary Budden, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

160 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/2/16 A Scanner Barkly

  1. Tasha Turner on March 3, 2016 at 5:19 pm said:

    To be fair Valley Forge 2017 isn’t a Worldcon bid. It’s a bid for 2017 North American Science Fiction Convention. I’m not sure if North American actually means more than the USA or if it’s our usual overreacting. It’s competing against a bid for San Juan.

    NASFiC can be held anywhere in North America, including countries that are not the USA. Indeed, it could technically be held in France, if, say, a bid from Saint Pierre and Miquelon were to win.

  2. Tasha

    A good example would be

    Part of what we’re trying to push back against is the idea that all fans are white, straight, nondisabled cis men until they publicly declare otherwise.

    Mad, impetuous fool that I am, I thought that increasing diversity actually required one to take concrete steps to increase diversity. Lots of possibilities come to mind, all of which would require people to actually do something, but ‘trying to push back against [an idea]” is perfect for someone who is averse to actually doing something, but wants to look good.

    I was diagnosed with a severe and progressive lung disease many years ago; as you know I recently came out of hospital following treatment for that. I spend time in other hospitals as well, since unfortunately I have a collection of conditions, some of which also try and kill me every so often.

    This is not a complaint; I am vastly grateful for all the people who have saved my life, patched me up, and sent me out to rejoin the fray with never a medical bill in sight : thank you, NHS! But it is a very good reason for me to take diversity seriously, as a very practical thing.

    Because if the best thing you’ve got going for you is people who think that pushing back ideas about labels will actually do something to help, then you are in deep, deep shit. They clearly have no comprehension of the fact that disability and death are closely entwined, which leaves those of us walking the high wire to cheerfully keep on walking. It does not, however, require us to refrain from pointing out their general cluelessness.

    And it’s very late on this side of the pond, so thank you for your comments, but I must get some sleep.

  3. @JJ–

    The type of service animal that cat is, is a medical alert animal. A huge percentage of medical alert animals were Just Pets until they spontaneously started alerting to their person’s medical issue. But yes, cats can no longer be certified as service animals, which limits their usefulness even if they do start alerting for you. 🙁

  4. Kevin

    May I say that your comments always brighten my day, and, in this case, my night.

    I shall now drift off to sleep thinking of St Pierre and Miquelon, which is wonderful..

  5. In re: external distractions: this is one of the reasons I like, if I can, to assemble a soundtrack of instrumental stuff appropriate to the work (though not necessarily historically so–many of my action scenes I write to Bond opening music, and I had “Sharp Dressed Man” on one playlist when the novel was Victorian) and listen to it while I write. It helps me get in the right frame of mind, true, but more importantly it drowns out the shrieking child/gossiping twenty-somethings/guy from sales who talks really loudly and also does not believe, himself, in using headphones when he listens to stuff on his computer, NOT THAT I’M BITTER.

  6. As I understand it, the revisions to the ADA mean that businesses no longer have to let a person bring a service animal other than a dog or miniature horse onto the premises. That makes, say, a medical alert cat less useful than a dog with the same skills, but not useless: it can still alert its person in their own home, while visiting friends, or on the street.

    In the “I am really not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice” department: as far as I know there is no government agency (in the United States) that formally or officially certifies service animals. If someone wants to bring their dog into a business, the business owner and staff can ask “is that a service animal?” and, if the answer is yes, “what service is it trained to provide?” They can’t ask for/demand evidence that the animal really can (for example) alert to seizures.

  7. Let’s be very clear: it is far, far more important for an American con* to use language that is welcoming to people of color, women, disabled and queer fans than that it call out international fans. To the point that over-emphasis on international fans would undermine the sincerity of its commitment to welcome American POC, LGBT, disabled and female fans. It becomes another kind of derailing.

    ———————-
    *IOW, not a Worldcon or WFA.

  8. I’m with Marguerite here, no one should have to proclaim their race etc. unless they want to. If people make some incorrect assumptions that’s their problem. Hopefully they will react by being more flexible in their assumptions in the future, not by demanding that other people clearly label themselves so they don’t get confused.

  9. @Stevie

    Mad, impetuous fool that I am, I thought that increasing diversity actually required one to take concrete steps to increase diversity. Lots of possibilities come to mind, all of which would require people to actually do something, but ‘trying to push back against [an idea]” is perfect for someone who is averse to actually doing something, but wants to look good.

    I’m in full agreement on this. Colorblind doesn’t work (I think this is the point you were calling USspeek).

    We need to talk and seriously address the issues of race, gender, sexuality, disabilities, etc. changing language works when it’s used to help the marginalized not when it’s used to erase them.

    I think we believe in the same things. Its communications which got between us. We are both sick, in pain, and passionate about fandom cleaning up its act. Sometimes our wires get crossed.

    I’m sorry for being hasty and insulting tonight. I’ll try to do better in the future. Sleep well.

  10. @Dex

    Dave Cockrum also designed all the best Legion of Superheroes costumes.

    Re: Cat cafes

    Would a Maid cafe where they wear nekomimi count?

  11. @Jim Henley
    I can’t tell if you are talking to me. Did I start a conversation I shouldn’t have? Did I derail the conversation I started? Should I take a file770 time-out?

  12. @Tasha: No, not at all. I may have misread something. It seemed like Stevie was complaining that Valley Forge’s real sin was not talking more about welcoming international fans, which would be a ridiculous claim. If that was not what she meant, I apologize for the interpretation error.

  13. Johan P — I heard a story about one of the Impressionist painters, I forget which one, who would put on his suit in the morning, go out the front door, walk up the street, turn the corner, walk down the alley, enter his studio — which happened to be at the back of his house — and change from his suit to his smock. And in the evening, he’d change from smock to suit, walk up the alley, down the street and through his front door.

  14. The Book Thing of Baltimore had a fire last night, and suffered major damage to both its building and a lot of its stock. The website (first link) has a Donation button. If you have the resources and the inclination, please consider helping to rebuild a valuable community resource.

    7) Working spaces… it’s a little different when you work with physical objects instead of words. I have a workspace for my jewelry-making in half of the smallest bedroom (my partner has his computer workspace in the other half), and then I have organized the space around my computer into a configuration that allows me to do all the fiddly inventory- and website-maintenance stuff fairly easily. And there are some things that I do on the large work-table in the den, but I can’t leave things set up there because of cats.

    16) The Beast with Three Backs… please tell me whether Rowling is simply unfamiliar with a certain idiom, or is invoking it on purpose.

  15. @Vicki–

    That’s an essentially correct summary. I was lazy and sloppy earlier. There is for most purposes no certification, and no documentation that stores etc. are allowed to ask for.

    But if it winds up in a legal dispute, if your service animal is not a dog or a miniature horse, you will lose. There are real reasons they got more restrictive on that, but it has some unfortunate effects.

  16. Lee
    “The Beast with Three Backs” isn’t Rowling’s phrasing. Are you referring to something else that’s eluded my razor-sharp brain because I’m about to fall asleep?

  17. @Lee: LOL, @Mike Glyer comes up with the clever names (like “The Beast with Three Backs”), not J.K. Rowling. So yeah, he’s invoking it on purpose. 😀

    @Jim Henley: That’s how I read (some of) @Stevie’s comments, too – the parts I got, anyway.

  18. I hope I don’t have my threads confused….

    @Petréa Mitchell: Thanks. I wrote AFAIK, but d’oh, I’d forgotten about that little booklet, and the other one that came out then – Quidditch Through the Ages. I picked them up ‘cuz, you know, HARRY POTTER, but I never read them. (blush) I’m a bad Potter fan. It does sound from what you say like it’s more based around the book than literally a movie version of the book, though – or am I misunderstanding?

    Anyway, I’m an easy mark for fantasy movies connected to the Harry Potter books. I hope they’re better than the Hobbit movies.

    @Kathodus: Thanks, I didn’t realize the Bad Menagerie anthology was out already. (downloading) Hey, only 3.3 MB for the EPUB. They should probably compress the MOBI file for people to download, if it’s 12+ MB.

  19. Re the Campbell writers anthology: Whoah, the table of contents is boggling, and enticing (but I said I would stop reading stories from 2015 already…) At the very least I am going to dig in to some of the ones that weren’t previously available online. Speaking of that, it contains Charlotte Ashley’s “La Héron”, hurrah! (Formerly only in F&SF). Also the striking “Two-Year Man” by Kelly Robson from Asimov’s. What else, we’ll see.

  20. @Tasha Turner:

    Twice on the previous page, I saw you refer to the Valley Forge committee “looking white“. As Michael VanHelder is Chair of that committee, and is a PoC, you are literally telling a PoC that he “looks white”. (With italics!) That strikes me as very hurtful.

    (I note from the Valley Forge page that his bio states: “Recently, Mike was on the Detcon1 diversity advisory committee.” A Google shows me that the members of that committee were Muhammad A Ahmad, Anne Gray, Mark Oshiro, Kat Tanaka Okopnik, Mike VanHelder, Pablo Vazquez, and Sal Palland.)

    Thanks for listening.

  21. Nothing wrong with a North American convention — which has never expected anyone from outside the continent to attend — using North American terminology. Helsinki isn’t being pressured to issue all its communications in Greek and cater to their politics because a few Greeks might turn up. Eurocons don’t cater to Japanese manners. Same thing for NASFiC.

    Valley Forge and San Juan are both in the US and so of course that’s the terminology their attendees are most concerned about. Presumably St. Pierre et Miquelon will discuss things in French terms, Greenland (are they eligible?) discuss things of import to Kalaallit, Cancun about Mexican issues, Vancouver about Canadian ones, etc.

    I’ve no idea what race or orientation Valley Forge’s treasurer is thanks to his cartoon avatar. Michael VanHelder’s picture is pretty funky, but from that I’d guess he’s East Asian. His cat appears to be black and white. They both look kinda green in that picture, though.

  22. Free ebooks?! Crazy-talk, surely.

    “The Best of ‘Galaxy’s Edge’ 2013-14” is free from Phonix Pick (thanks to SF Signal for this info – instructions are there). I read so little short fiction, who knows when I’ll get to this, but I downloaded it.

    Annie Bellet’s Justice Calling is free right now; it’s the first in her “Twenty-Sided Sorceress” series. I picked up the omnibus of the first three books for a song a while ago, but haven’t read them yet (maybe after Hugo noms close…). Anyone read these?

  23. I really like Annie Bellet’s Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. There’s a structural idiosyncrasy that might bother even diehard UF fans, but I think they’re well written, with interesting characters.

    (17) SPACE AGE LEFTOVERS – I really want that book. There’s something about derelict or both buildings that always appeals to me.

  24. Cheryl S. on March 3, 2016 at 11:31 pm said:

    I really like Annie Bellet’s Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. There’s a structural idiosyncrasy that might bother even diehard UF fans, but I think they’re well written, with interesting characters.

    I started reading the first one, it didn’t catch me, I got distracted and didn’t go back to it…but I might give it another go 🙂

  25. Jim

    No; I wasn’t thinking at all in terms of Valley Forge welcoming international fans, and I’m sorry that my language was sloppy enough to enable that interpretation. It was an expression of despair.

  26. @Dawn Incognito: @Tasha Turner: Twice on the previous page, I saw you refer to the Valley Forge committee “looking white“. As Michael VanHelder is Chair of that committee, and is a PoC, you are literally telling a PoC that he “looks white”. (With italics!) That strikes me as very hurtful.

    The italics were to emphasis that the pictures and bios don’t match the facts which has caused me and others to fuck up when referring to the committee.

    I’m sorry. I can’t find the right words to discuss perception issues I see related to their bid. I’m sorry Mike for screwing up again. I think it’s time for me to step out of this discussion as I’m unable to discuss my various concerns without hurting someone.

  27. @Camestros Felapton – I started reading the first one, it didn’t catch me, I got distracted and didn’t go back to it…but I might give it another go 

    I thought the first book was the weakest of the bunch. I hesitate to recommend the series, because of the thing that might bother some readers, but I have derived a lot of pleasure from it. Seeing the writing get more fluid is a distinct bonus.

  28. Dave Cockrum also designed all the best Legion of Superheroes costumes.

    And at least one of the worst. Seriously, Saturn Girl’s pink bikini? And now that I think about it, Cosmic Boy’s basque.

    I really didn’t need to think about it.

  29. @Tasha Turner:

    Thank you for your reply. I do actually understand your points about perception of the default. I apologize in advance if I word this poorly; I’m not trying to argue or berate but I’d like to point out what I saw when I read through this thread last night.

    Mike VanHelder commented on #7, replied to someone, and dropped a link to the Valley Forge bid committee.
    You replied to Mike mentioning your concerns with the committee bios.
    Mike replied to OGH but did not address your comment.
    Marguerite from the VF bid committee replied to your comment.
    You replied to Marguerite.

    Now there are of course a million possible reasons why those things happened in that order. I’m not saying that your words necessarily were hurtful, just that they contained that possibility.

    The italics were to emphasis that the pictures and bios don’t match the facts which has caused me and others to fuck up when referring to the committee.

    …and here’s where I’m most afraid of fucking up. The most tactful way I can think of putting it is, if someone forced me to guess Mike’s background based on his bio picture on the bid site, none of my top 5 would be “white”. I then followed up on Detcon1 and their diversity committee. And I wondered if the site had been changed after all since that didn’t appear to mesh with your concerns.

    Or maybe we disagree. That’s okay too.

  30. nickpheas: And now that I think about it, Cosmic Boy’s basque.

    Kurt Busiek: If I understand what you mean by “basque,” that costume was a Mike Grell joint.

    Now that is special.

    Okay, that’s a fan version. Here’s a Grell version.

  31. @Stevie: FWIW, it would be better to avoid dismissive and disrespectful neologisms like “USspeek” if you want people to engage with what you’re saying instead of how you’re saying it. Speaking as somebody who by US standards gets classified as “flaming pinko commie liberal social justice warrior”, when you start talking about “USspeek” I tune out and scroll past what you’ve written.

    You want to lay out your problems with what you call “USspeek” so we can discuss it? Great! Lovely. Let’s talk about that.

    But bullshit back-handed slams like “USspeek” are, as said, bullshit. You got a problem, say it clearly like a responsible adult.

  32. @Stevie: Sorry for misinterpreting you re. Valley Forge…

    @Lexica: …although, yeah, a little of this, too.

    @Cheryl S.: Thanks for the feedback re. the “Twenty-Sided Sorceress” series.

  33. @Kendall, Cheryl S.: (Twenty-Sided Sorceress)

    You might want to take a look at Michael Underwood’s “Ree Reyes” series, starting with Geekomancy. I’ve read and liked the first two and a half, but haven’t reached book three yet.

  34. I read and enjoyed the entire Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. For me it was a fun UF with good worldbuilding, character growth, D&D for magic, friendships, difficult moral decisions, a diverse cast.

    Spoiler warning
    It does rely on many of the UF and romance tropes. You have a protagonist trying to protect friends instead of making best use of friends/teams skills. Romance has miscommunication causing many of their problems.

    ETA: it’s not on the same level as Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews or Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs

  35. @Tasha Turner – ETA: it’s not on the same level as Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews or Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs

    I really love the Kate Daniels books, but lost interest in the Mercy Thompson series early on and don’t know why. It’s an interesting world, competently written and meh for me. I tried the first Alpha and Omega and the same thing happened, so it may just be a bad fit between reader and writer.

    @Rev. Bob, I read Geekomancy and thought it was well done, but it didn’t quite work for me. My partner loved it though and has kept up with the series.

  36. @Rev. Bob: I heard Underwood read from one of his books at, IIRC, World Fantasy a couple of years ago, but I don’t remember much except his cute but silly hook of assigning classes and levels to everyone. 😉 I’ll check it out, thanks. I should admit I don’t read much UF, but periodically I feel like trying some.

    @Tasha Turner: Thanks for the comments on “Twenty-Sided Sorceress.” 🙂

  37. Tasha Turner on March 5, 2016 at 7:59 am said:
    I read and enjoyed the entire Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. For me it was a fun UF with good worldbuilding, character growth, D&D for magic, friendships, difficult moral decisions, a diverse cast.

    The totally worst thing happened with this series for me.
    I’d downloaded it all in, back in like maybe August, bunches and bunches of books.
    And I loved them, and I was tearing through the lot of them happily.
    I finished book five which ended in eeeeep! but that’s okay cos I have the next book right here.
    It’s only 1am, I’m good for more reading, everything is fine.

    But when I go to find book six it isn’t there.
    It isn’t out yet.
    The horror.
    I was positive I’d downloaded six books.
    I wasn’t ready to have to – shudder – wait to find out what happens next.
    PAIN.

  38. Lauowolf, I can do you one better. Years ago I picked up Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Moon. Good gripping fantasy, worldbuilding a perhaps a little bit too much D&D-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off but that didn’t bother me, really nice detail work on the nitty-gritty of mercenary life, heroine I really liked… so I picked up the sequel. And the sequel ends… where it ends.

    And I had to wait a WHOLE YEAR to find out what the hell happened next….

    (I warn people, now, to be sure to have ALL THREE books on hand when starting the first one.)

  39. Thanks for the info on service animal certification, all. The limiting of certifiable species to digs and miniature horses seems kind of… Unfair, maybe, to me? My encounter with the epilepsy-detecting cat was a few years ago, but after 2011, so he was likely grandfathered in, as he was wearing a service animal vest.

  40. Lauowolf, I can do you one better. Years ago I picked up Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Moon. […] And I had to wait a WHOLE YEAR to find out what the hell happened next….

    Well … back in 2001, I picked up the first book of a series called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. …

    And of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

  41. Johan P, heh, yes, I did the same thing. Some 80% of the way through the book, I starting thinking, “wow, he’s got a whole lot of plot lines to wrap up in not a lot of room….” (On my copy of the book, there was nothing to indicate it was the first book of a series.)

    When I reached the end of the book, I decided not to buy any more until the whole series was finished, so I could read it as a whole without having to re-read every year or two. I’d gotten burned, you see, with “The Wheel of Time”. Still only have the first book on my shelf…

  42. @Kendall
    UF differs greatly depending on what set of years it was written. It can also differ a fair amount depending on author. Pre-1980 UF I’d different from 1980-2000ish. 2000ish is what many of us talk and think about. It can be interesting to read from the different time periods and different genders and other intersections. Women UF authors are pushed to have more romance tropes. Men are allowed more leeway. By publishing houses and readers.

    @Lauowolf
    Ouch. At least Annie Bellet self-publishes and is a fairly quick author. Hopefully when she decides to end the series she’ll do so in a way which is satisfying even if it leaves the door open.

  43. I was so certain that I had one more book in hand.
    Then I go back to the files, and nope.
    CANNOT HAZ!
    Sort of like this guy:

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