Pixel Scroll 3/6/17 Holy Pixels, Scrollman!

(1) FAME AND FORTUNE. Mark Lawrence, who contends there is a close correlation between the number of Goodreads reviews a book has and sales, has created a series of graphs that illustrate the number of GR reviews received by various segments of top-selling fantasy books.

The level to which A Game of Thrones outsells the rest of the field is quite staggering, particularly when the publication date means this difference will *increase* significantly when converting figures to a sales estimate.

But when we widen the field of that fantasy lens still further to include urban fantasy, paranormal romance fantasy, YA fantasy, literary fantasy and fantasy written for children… even the mighty GRRM is dwarfed.

(2) BAD NEIGHBORS. In The Australian, James Bradley reviews Stephen Baxter’s Massacre of Mankind, where H.G. Wells’s Martians come again.

As before, the attack begins in England. This time the Martians arrive in greater numbers, establishing a beachhead and overwhelming Britain’s armed forces. But this is only the first phase. With England secured, a second wave arrives, attacking cities around the world with ruthless and terrifying efficiency.

At his best Baxter produces big-picture Clarkean science fiction of a very high order. And while he could never be accused of being a high stylist, novels such as his Xeelee sequence or his recent Flood/Ark and Proxima/Ultima duologies are exhilaratingly accomplished exercises in hard science fiction. The Massacre of Mankind is a more intimate creation, and perhaps because of that takes obvious pleasure not just in pastiching Wells’s style, but the science and technology of the original novel’s setting.

Baxter has huge fun imagining a solar system informed by the theories of the “discoverer” of the Martian canals, Percival Lowell, and others about planetary evolution.

The narrative structure of the original, in particular the extended prelude to the actual attack, lends it a gorgeous elegiac power. While the decision to reproduce that here makes The Massacre of Mankind overlong, the intertextuality is frequently surprisingly entertaining. This is most evident in flourishes such as the complaints of several characters about the inaccuracy of Walter’s original account (and the almost-cameos by the “man of the future”, Wells himself), but it has its serious side as well.

(3) REBOOT. Dean Wesley Smith says Pulphouse Fiction Magazine is coming back.

As you can see from the pictures, we are doing an Issue Zero again this time that will be limited and part of a Kickstarter later in the summer. First issue comes out in January 2018 and the magazine will be quarterly, with about 70,000 words of short fiction every issue. It will be the size and shape of Smith’s Monthly.

I will be mixing some of the stories from the old Pulphouse days along with brand new fiction. I figured most of those older stories have long been forgotten and they need a new life. For each story we will push the author information and be clear to the reader if the story is new or if a reprint, where the story was originally published.

The magazine will have an attitude, as did the first run. No genre limitations, but high quality writing and strangeness.

(3) THE BOOK IS CLOSED. I reported yesterday that three actors are leading the wagering as favorites to become the next Doctor Who. Now Den of Geek says one has become such a popular choice that one UK bookmaker has stopped taking bets on him.

Peter Capaldi is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the year, and incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall is the man tasked with finding his replacement in the TARDIS.

As ever, it’s tough to put much stock in what bookies say on the matter. But, nonetheless, the latest story to emerge from Ladbrokes is an interesting one: they’ve stopped taking bets on Kris Marshall landing the gig.

The My Family, BT adverts and Death In Paradise star, who recently left his role in the latter, has become such a favourite with punters that Ladbrokes have decided to pull the plug and stop accepting bets.

“A surge of punters have backed Marshall so we’ve had no choice but to close the book,” Ladbrokes’ Alex Donohue told the – sigh – Daily Mail. (You really don’t have to click that link and show them any support.)

“If he does get the gig,” Donohue added, “the bookies will be exterminated first.”

…The bets-being-suspended-on-Kris-Marshall story in no way confirms that he, or anyone, has got the part.

(4) DATLOW BOUND FOR ANTIPODES. Every year Canberra-based SFF fans “get together to celebrate everything creepy, geeky and fantastical” at Conflux, and the lucky International Guest of Honour at Conflux 13 will be Ellen Datlow.

We have to keep pinching ourselves to make sure this is real, but (deep breath) Conflux 13 is bringing none other than Ellen Datlow to Australia!!!

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty-five years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited more than ninety science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Fearful Symmetries, The Doll Collection, The Monstrous, Children of Lovecraft, Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, and Black Feathers.  Forthcoming are, Hallows’ Eve (with Lisa Morton), and Mad Hatters and March Hares (stories inspired by Alice’s Adventures in in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There).

Conflux 13 will be held September 29-Ocober 2 in Canberra.

(5) FIGHT TO THE FINISH. Unbound Worlds brings back Cage Match. Mark-kitteh comments: “SF character cage matches. I think the Dune sandworm is a bit of a ringer though – how would they even get it in the cage?”

What the hell is Cage Match?

Great question. A long time ago, on an internet far, far away, there was a website called Suvudu, which had been founded by some editors at Del Rey as a place to nerd out about sci-fi and fantasy. In the barely remembered year 2010, those editors decided it’d be a real kick to pit their favorite SF/F characters against each other in a fight to the death, and it’d be even MORE of a kick if they brought in some authors to write short scenes illustrating how they thought those fights might play out. And on top of that, they invited users to come vote on the outcome of those fights.

And apparently you all liked it, because we’re still doing it seven years later.

(6) OSBORNE OBIT. TCM’s Robert Osborne is mourned by Steve Vertlieb:

Robert Osborne passed away this morning at age 84. He’d been in ill health for some time. Robert was the face of Turner Classic Movies since its inception, and was a wonderful fountain of enthusiasm, sincerity, and palpable adoration of classic cinema. Those of us who watched the cable movie channel these countless years came to look upon Robert as a friend, a tireless champion of the arts, and as the very definition of integrity. We all knew that he’d been ill, but were afraid to ask about his telling absence of late from the network. A true motion picture historian, Osborne’s warmth and passion for films and their creators will be sorely missed by movie lovers everywhere. Rest In Peace, Robert. Your own star shall shine ever brightly among a luminescent galaxy of stars.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan

(8) CREATED IN 7 DAYS. Skyboat Media wants to raise $7,000 via Kickstarter to create an 11-hour audiobook of Queers Destroy Science Fiction.

With your help, if we can fund in 7 days, Skyboat will be able to produce an 11 hour digital audiobook for you of the short story and flash fiction portions of Lightspeed Magazine‘s QUEERS DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION! It will be a glorious vocal celebration of inclusivity, diversity and all things science fiction-y!

KICKSTARTER’S ALL in 1: We are doing this for only one week. Our project is aligned with Kickstarter’s theme of 1s and 0s; this means we are offering only digital rewards.

The book was published by Hugo winning anthologist John Joseph Adams and guest edited by Seanan McGuire.

So far they have raised $1,263 of the $7,000 goal.

(9) CASTING CLASH. At ComicsBeat Heidi MacDonald tracks the issue — “Finn Jones leaves Twitter after trying to explain why a white Iron Fist isn’t problematic to an Asian person”.

Don’t get me wrong, Jones has a right to talk about his show, but when he explained to an Asian person, Geeks of Color’s Creative Director, Asyiqin Haron, how to feel about race…he got busted whitesplaining. Then, when the heat got too much for him, Jones just deleted his twitter account.

Pretty much the same thing happened when Tilda Swinton and Margaret Cho had a tense email exchange over the Ancient One

(10) FAUX-MEN COMICS. Trae Dorn at Nerd & Tie says “The Fake X-Men Comics From ‘Logan’ Are Incredible”.

When Logan director James Mangold asked Marvel comics if he could include X-Men comics in the final Hugh Jackman Wolverine installment, he was told he could as long as they weren’t any real comic books. To create the old-school style books for the movie then, Mangold reached out to Joe Quesada and Dan Panosian to create the pages of the books for the movie….

They’re all, frankly, fantastic, and really capture the feel of the X-Men books from the 1980s. I love the way they look just close enough while retaining a slightly off aesthetic letting you know this is another world. It just adds to the fabric of a world which just feels lived in.

There’s a gallery with the post.

(11) THE FLAW IN THE OINTMENT. It’s a hell of a lot more entertaining when somebody else is on the receiving end of these pleonasms. Jonathan McCalmont unleashes “Rabid Cuddlers” at Ruthless Culture.

…Unfortunately for the puppies, while it must have been comically easy to convince a bunch of teenaged nihilists to troll the Hugo awards, it was never going to be easy to convince basement-dwelling trolls to set aside their Japanese pornography long enough to read a bunch of over-written Catholic fantasy novels. The fact that Gamergaters turned up to harass liberals but didn’t stick around to spend money explains why prominent puppies have  downplayed their involvement, decreased their ambitions, and failed to step back from the movement in time and wound up being forced to repeatedly beg for financial support from their dwindling fanbase…

…The puppies’ experiences as nerd-fuhrers may well come to define their adult lives but their flirtations with moral entrepreneurship failed to secure them the kind of following that might provide access to the lucrative world of conservative cultural commentary. Even worse, their attempts to cultivate a right-wing alternative to the stuttering multiculturalism of mainstream genre spaces appears to have resulted in little more than a handful of underwhelming blogs supporting the work of a few self-publishing authors….

…The social and ideological instabilities of the puppy movement should come as no surprise once you realise the gulf that separates adolescent edge-lords  from a bunch of stupid old men who want fandom to go back to the way it was in 1953. What is surprising is the speed at which a movement whose ruthlessness once made international news has been reduced to bleating about politeness and passing out internet hugs. Liberal genre culture may be ponderous, self-serving, and morally confused but it was never quite that pathetic….

(12) ABOUT. Who doesn’t enjoy a flash of humor at the end of an author bio? Here’s the last line of Kendare Blake’s

She lives and writes in Kent, Washington, with her husband, their two cat sons (Tybalt and Tyrion Cattister) and their red Doberman dog son, Obi Dog Kenobi.

[Thanks to JJ, Mark-kitteh, Cat Eldridge, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

68 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/6/17 Holy Pixels, Scrollman!

  1. There may never be a more beautiful takedown of John C. Wright than the one Jonathan McCalmont has just penned:

    Obviously, nobody deserves to be immiserated and socialist government would ensure that nobody would ever be reduced to online panhandling but if you are going to be a radical right-winger who burns his professional bridges because he plans to live on the money he makes giving suck-jobs to Pepes then you might want to make sure that they leave the money on the dresser before you take out your false teeth.

  2. 9) I’m conflicted about this issue. On one hand, I think it’s fine to redo shows with characters that are a different gender or race from the original. On the other hand, I would like to see more non white characters on the screen.

  3. (11) THE FLAW IN THE OINTMENT.
    This is the same person who was critical of Mike & File770 for linking to Puppy posts, who maintained that the best thing to do was to ignore them* & they’ll go away?

    *Because anyone who has been bullied knows just successful that tactic is, right?

  4. Hiii~

    @bookworm1398 This is still my favourite visual representation of why changing characters from an underrepresented group to the dominant one (i.e. from Asian to White) is not the same as changing white characters to be from other races. Basically, do we not already have enough stories about That Guy? Sorry to Finn Jones for being on the receiving end of what must feel quite personal when you are an individual in a single show who no doubt works pretty hard, but it sounds like he made rather a twit of himself in responding to the criticism so…

    I have a similar reaction to that Doctor Who casting speculation in (3) – not to say Kris Marshall wouldn’t do a great job with the part, but having stopped watching the series early in Peter Capaldi’s tenure due to disappointment over Moffat’s take on the character and apparent inability to Do Better on representation of women and LGBT characters, I’d be incredibly disappointed for the BBC to decide what 2017 DW needs is White Man Number 14, rather than throwing a single raisin into another near-empty bowl. That comment from the new showrunner about “not wanting casting to be a gimmick” doesn’t give me much hope though.

    @rcade Beautiful and not undeserved, but IIRC JCW’s panhandling was some months back – those are quite some lengths to go to for researching a takedown of a movement you haven’t bothered engaging with…?

    (2) – I got the Massacre of Mankind from the Strange Horizons fund drive prize draw, but haven’t read it yet because I can’t remember if I ever read the original War of the Worlds. In theory this situation is easily rectified.

    Unsolicited Reading Update: Uhhh OK how did I already get to 40 books read at the start of March, especially when I should be reading more 2016 short fiction for the Hugos? In fact, I’ve only read one additional 2016 novel in that time as well – After the Crown, by K.B. Wagers, which confirmed their place on my Campbell ballot. I’m also trying to develop a tenuously informed opinion about a couple more prominent series, namely the Vorkosigan saga (hardly going to need my help to get on the ballot but they’re good reading!) Cherryh’s Foreigner series (first one did nothing for me, not gonna happen unless someone tells me they start moving significantly faster in later books) and the Craft Sequence (running out of time to finish these but definitely an option at the moment).

    I also tried to read more books by black authors for black history month, including some long put-off classics like Parable of the Sower (yes), Brown Girl in the Ring (YES) and Babel-17 (sure) and some newthings like Binti: Home (loved it, wholeheartedly recommend for people who liked the first one, but probably won’t convert you if you didn’t). Even with the focus, 75% of the books I’ve read so far are by white authors (2/3 women), which further underscores how much I personally need to do to seek out diverse voices if I want to read beyond my own demographic…

    Next up is the Princess Diarist on audio (Carrie…), Synners on Kindle.

  5. (8) CREATED IN 7 DAYS. Laws yes. 🙂 Backed!

    (12) ABOUT. Snort. This reminds me of reading the mini-bios of local dinner theatre actors, which are mostly straightforward, but occasionally get goofy. Not this goofy, though!

    SF Reading: I read a ton of Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes over the last few days, finishing it just over an hour ago. Great book – a lot of interesting stuff (clones, murder mystery on the ship, secret pasts, AI, hacking, nasty people, all kindsa stuff!). There were a couple of times where a character’s actions (or inactions, really) based on recently-acquired knowledge didn’t make sense to me, and some end-of-book tech was a little tough to suspend disbelief for, but overall it was great and I recommend it. 🙂

  6. (11) nestled amid the piles of sneers was a useful idea: that puppies anonymize their outrages of the day because the real aim is to reinforce in-group loyalty and identity. (Most Filers probabyly figured this out yonks ago, but I was bemused by the bad manners.) But I think I need only very small doses of Rude Culture.

  7. Msb on March 6, 2017 at 11:44 pm said:
    (11) nestled amid the piles of sneers was a useful idea: that puppies anonymize their outrages of the day because the real aim is to reinforce in-group loyalty and identity. (Most Filers probabyly figured this out yonks ago, but I was bemused by the bad manners.) But I think I need only very small doses of Rude Culture.

    You get that idea when you read the comments in that part of the internet. If you’re not in the group, all those snide, unpleasant nicknames they have for their enemies, and ritual denunciations of signifying works (Scalzi, Leckie, Jemisin), are kind of weird, but they are obviously an essential part of the group identity.

  8. (9) the main problem with this is that the casting is absolutely true to the source material. Iron Fist is very much about a white kid raised in an Asian culture not quite being home in either.
    There’s no terribly good reason why they didn’t choose to make Master of Kung Fu, save for the fact that the main hook has been done to death, but that’s not Iron Fist.

  9. Loathsome as JCW is, I’m really not sure that we should condemn him for using Pateron.

    NK Jemisin does as well, is a better writer, is a nicer person, is she a panhandler as well?

  10. Are two (3)s the new tradition?
    I do agree with @Arifel that it would be a shame for Who to drop the ball on this one, given the opportunity. But I can also understand the BBCs nervousness.
    Having said that, I also think that Arifel has missed out by stopping watching Capaldi’s run for that reason; there must be very few shows you actually do watch if that’s your criteria?! Admittedly, I’m a man but I didn’t think Moffat had done particularly badly by female characters in his run on the show (and he hasn’t finished quite yet), although I grant you that this is a matter of perception rather than anything else; sure we can debate statistical things like numbers of actors, but the stories and/or characters themselves are going to be a bit subjective.
    I do concede that there may be an issue with LGBT characters – but so far, Who has not been a show in which that aspect of their character has been amplified – and no, I don’t think “this is a family show” is the reason for this.

  11. @ Rob_matic
    Another aha moment for me, thanks! I see that direct research pays off, though I would be loath to do it without a hazmat suit. Thanks to you and other filers willing to brave the rudeness and grammar errors. I’m an editor, and I see enough lousy writing in my work.

  12. NickPheas: Loathsome as JCW is, I’m really not sure that we should condemn him for using Pateron.

    I certainly don’t. I sponsor about 20 different creators on Patreon. I think of it as a way to help the people whose work I enjoy pay the bills each month, so that they are less stressed and can be more creative and productive. I also think of it as a way to prevent the need for emergency GoFundMes — because, as we saw last month, by the time it gets to foreclosure time, it’s merely postponing the inevitable.

    While I disagree with JMC’s dismissal of it as “panhandling”, I agree with his point that JCW has dug himself a huge hole now with his despicable behavior. Even if he does, at some point in the future, once again manage to produce decent fiction comparable to his work from 15 years ago, there are now thousands of Hugo voters like me who will require a cold day in hell to arrive before we’d consider ever buying — or even reading — it.

  13. Re the Cage Match. I am glad that some of the more beyond-all-reason fan favorites :cough: River Tam :cough: are not included in this. In previous iterations, voting for such favorites outweighed all sense in these sorts of matchups, to the point of absurdity.

    RE: Who. On another note, the BBC Doctor Who twitter thread showed a picture of Capaldi facing off against old old old school Mondasian Cybermen, which is rather exciting to me. As this is a two parter to end the season, its possible that Capaldi’s Doctor will fall and regenerate after meeting the Mondasians just like the 1st Doctor did…

  14. David Brain:

    there must be very few shows you actually do watch if that’s your criteria?!

    You meant this as a reductio ad absurdum but in all seriousness, the only TV show I’m close to up to date on is Steven Universe.

    I’ll catch up with Doctor Who someday when my free time priorities are different and access to TV/cheap streaming is better, but I can’t deny it will take longer if there’s not an intriguing new dynamic to catch up for, no matter how good Capaldi is as White Man 13. As to Moffat’s treatment of women and LGBT characters, yes, one can say it’s subjective but I am far from the only person to have this opinion…!

  15. Just finished Gibson’s “The Peripheral” (which was much better than expected). Now I’m going to start Tom Toner’s Amaranthine Spectrum series. Has anyone read the first two Spectrum books?

  16. My Patreon pennies tend to go to magazines (so really just subs by another name), and web comics and online writers who are providing free content with no other income stream. Authors I tend to support by buying their books, although I do chip in where they’re clearly in need and extra support would let them get back to creativity. (The stereotype of the writer starving in a garrett somehow being inspired to create great art needs to go die in a fire)
    I’d happily subscribe to a patreon of a writer who supplies shorts in return but I already have enough shorts to read! I think Kameron Hurley uses that model quite successfully, and Red Wombat seems to have done well with it for her Summer in Orcus serial. JCW seems to have done something similar with his Patreon.

    I believe JCWs problems stemmed long-term from losing his day job as a technical writer a while earlier. I don’t know if he’s back in regular employment or just trying to support himself as a full time writer.

  17. @bookworm1398 – Iron Fist, as a character, has always been white. Yes, there have been some massively racist (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), annoying (Remo Williams, Kung Fu), and jaw-droppingly pointless (The Last Airbender) white-washings in TV and films. Yes, the actor really should have stopped before sticking his foot in it. This does not change the fact that Netflix stayed true to the source when casting him.

    In a side note, I do think that removing himself from Twitter for a while is the best thing from him, though I hope he apologized.

  18. I have a feeling Steven Moffat has had a lot more ‘helpful’ guidance than Russell T Davies did. When the programme first came back it was seen as a niche series that may die horribly so RTD was left alone in case failure was contagious. By the time he stood down and Moffat took over it had reached flagship programme status and Audience Reaction panels and Marketing/Promotion were a lot happier to try and stick their oar in with the new guy. I think ‘Studio notes’ would be the equivalent for US produced TV.

  19. “This is the same person who was critical of Mike & File770 for linking to Puppy posts, who maintained that the best thing to do was to ignore them* & they’ll go away?”

    It is only wrong when others do it.

  20. Meredith Moment: KSR’s Aurora is currently $2.99 on Amazon.

    Reading: I finished Naamah’s Blessing (Jacqueline Carey’s final Kushiel novel), which was as beautiful and as heartbreaking as I’ve come to expect from her. And now, for something completely different, I’m reading Sword-Woman and Other Historical Adventures, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s historical fiction.

  21. @rob_matic:

    You get that idea when you read the comments in that part of the internet. If you’re not in the group, all those snide, unpleasant nicknames they have for their enemies, and ritual denunciations of signifying works (Scalzi, Leckie, Jemisin), are kind of weird, but they are obviously an essential part of the group identity.

    All of which is especially weird when you remember this is a group who accuses the left of using certain words, phrases, terms, and names merely as “virtue signalling.” This name-calling and denunciation looks suspiciously similar, albeit with a spiteful intent.

  22. (9) The problem with changing Iron Fist’s race is that a lot of his story is based on being white. As someone wrote in the comments to this article Asian would be the race that would require the most reworking of the Iron Fist character. And making him anything other then white would undercut his interplay with Luke Cage.

    Iron Fist is only getting a show because of his connections to Luke Cage and the Heroes For Hire so asking for all of that to be rewritten does not seem to be the best use of peoples time. Perhaps trying to get them to make a show about Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu , Cat, or White Tiger instead would make more sense.

  23. @Eric Franklin

    All of which is especially weird when you remember this is a group who accuses the left of using certain words, phrases, terms, and names merely as “virtue signalling.”

    Not at this point. They’re so consistent about accusing the other side of their own faults that I’m starting to get really suspicious about their obsession with pedophilia.

  24. 9 – I don’t see a problem with changing the race or gender of a character when the race or gender isn’t essential to the character itself. Ben Affleck playing Black Panther might be a bit messed up. But as someone mentioned it’s part of his background as being lost between cultures. Then again I can also see the argument that cultural dissonance might be even stronger if it was an Asian-American stuck between the two worlds. Either way the actor isn’t responsible for the casting decisions so it seems like he kind of stepped into it. Taking a social media break is a good thing from time to time for anyone.

    That said I’m really excited for the show!

    11 – Woah, what does he have against Hawaiian shirts? I’m going to the Tommy Bahama boards for consolation.

  25. Re Baxter – I read the term “Xeelee Sequence” above and realized I’d forgotten to get around to reading this series. It was on my TBR list when I was reading a lot of “modern” space opera and hard SF, and then I got sidetracked and forgot about it. I’ve decided to pick up the “Vacuum Diagrams” collection as my intro, but now I’m stuck because there are two Kindle editions – one published by Gateway, costing $3.99, and running 439 pages; the other published by HarperCollins e-books, costing $6.99, and running 516 pages. The ToC looks the same for both of them, but the HarperCollins book looks like it may be better formatted. Any ideas as to the difference in the two? I’m tempted to go for the $7 one rather than the $4 one, because of the extra 77 pages and the potentially better formatting. But that’s almost twice the price, so I’m torn.

  26. First it was fedoras, now it’s Hawaiian shirts and mustaches. Oh, and lose some weight, Readerboy. (Are there standards for glasses? Are my trifocals OK, or should I go for progressives? Or would that be too allegorical?)

  27. @rob_matic:
    You get that idea when you read the comments in that part of the internet. If you’re not in the group, all those snide, unpleasant nicknames they have for their enemies, and ritual denunciations of signifying works (Scalzi, Leckie, Jemisin), are kind of weird, but they are obviously an essential part of the group identity.

    We’re all kinds of weird here too with our in-group references:

    God Stalk!

    Fifth!

    Meredith Moment.

    Mostly harmless, but sometimes in ways that make me feel less comfortable, e.g. CUL…

    The intent counts.

  28. Loathsome as JCW is, I’m really not sure that we should condemn him for using Patreon.

    I didn’t read it as a slam against Patreon, but instead a slam at burning so many bridges that one has been driven to Patreon.

    But I like Patreon and laughed at the slam against Wright, so I may have read it with those conclusions in mind.

  29. I don’t understand why Puppies refuse to name or link the object of their criticism. They aren’t shy about taking pleasure in upsetting us and the things we value, like the Hugo Awards and increased diversity in SF/F. They don’t seem to think they can hide what they’ve written, thanks to Mike Glyer’s All-Seeing Eye. They love turning SF/F into a never-ending culture war. What’s the point of not taking us on by name?

  30. @Soon Lee

    I also suspect our puppy-related conversations are based on the assumption that people remember small details from two years ago, which probably makes them quite opaque at times.

    Hopefully our in-jokes are generally harmless though. (I’ve previously suggested an end to using CUL, but didn’t get much traction)

  31. rcade: I don’t understand why Puppies refuse to name or link the object of their criticism. They aren’t shy about taking pleasure in upsetting us and the things we value, like the Hugo Awards and increased diversity in SF/F. They don’t seem to think they can hide what they’ve written, thanks to Mike Glyer’s All-Seeing Eye. They love turning SF/F into a never-ending culture war. What’s the point of not taking us on by name?

    The posts at Puppy blogs invariably consist of a mix of lies and misrepresentations. The lack of links, and the lack of even any definitive clues as to who and what are being talked about, are how they greatly reduce the chance that anyone will go read the source for themselves and realize that the Puppies are pathological liars and truth-twisters.

    Of course, Puppy laziness helps with that. Most of the commentariat don’t seem to feel the slightest need to go find out more information — never mind the truth — and are happy just to swallow whole the garbage they are being fed.

  32. rcade: puppies also think they’re denying traffic that might lead to a loss of revenue, exposure, etc.

    it’s very childish. the equivalent of shutting your eyes, covering your ears and saying “lalalala I can’t hear you lalalala”

    whereas they take great pleasure from our linking to their stinking, perceiving it as a double bonus victory.

    children.

  33. Greg Hullender:

    “Not at this point. They’re so consistent about accusing the other side of their own faults that I’m starting to get really suspicious about their obsession with pedophilia.”

    They didn’t start to talk about that until after it was revealed that the gamergate hangout 8chan also was a den for pedophiles. When that became well known, they tried to find reasons to accuse others of the same thing.

  34. I had to stop watching both Dr. Who and Sherlock due to the treatment of the women characters. I liked Capaldi but I was spending all my time being annoyed. By the time Capaldi came around, I had already been thinking about dropping the show and he wasn’t enough to keep me onboard, especially when I have limited time to watch TV, much as I like it. If I know Moffat is involved, I am just not going to bother giving it a try anymore.

    Cage Match is an appalling time thief! I couldn’t stop last night when I should have been sleeping.

  35. I suspect that I’ll pick up the Baxter book. I thought the sequel to The Time Machine, Time Ships, was fairly enjoyable as well.

  36. I liked The Time Ships quite a bit — an expansion of Wells’ book to Stapledonian scale.

    I also liked the Xeelee sequence, but it was very different in feel, and the Xeelee novels were — not uneven, necessarily, but very different to each other, to the point that you wouldn’t have known that some of them were part of the series except that they were explicitly included in the list.

    (I also really liked his Apollo-level-technology space books — Moonseed and Titan and the Mars one whose name escapes me (was it just Mars?), although Titan remains one of the grimmest books I’ve ever read, and looks increasingly and depressingly prophetic, except for the part where I doubt we’d even launch the mission in the first place.)

  37. I also really liked the Baxter/Reynolds THE MEDUSA CHRONICLES. One of the two streams in the book is set in an alternate 1960’s, clearly working on Baxter’s Apollo-technology book chops.

    @joe And yeah, on Titan, you have a point…

  38. Lis, that is a great review and I don’t think I can argue with any of it …

  39. @Arifel:

    You meant this as a reductio ad absurdum but in all seriousness, the only TV show I’m close to up to date on is Steven Universe.

    True, you’ve got me bang to rights there. 🙂 (Meanwhile I’m still only halfway through series 2 of SU…)

    And yes, there are plenty of people who have written about their objections to the way Moffat writes women. And there are others who have defended him equally vociferously. Obviously, I tend towards the latter position and, to be honest, I’m too long-standing a Who fan to really get upset about things like this*. Moffat has done a lot more than many other shows have even dared to try, especially for such a high-profile show; yes, this does mean that he is then held to a higher standard and this is a good thing. I just also think that to then criticise him for (perhaps subjectively) falling short feels to me as though he can’t win. 🙂

    *I like most of Colin Baker’s stories. That may tell you rather too much about me for my own comfort, but it gives you an idea where I’m starting from…

Comments are closed.