Pixel Scroll 3/8/16 I Want To Tell You About Texas Pixel And The Big Scroll

(1) INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY. Iain Clarke’s image of astronaut Mae Jemison, created for the Dublin in 2019 Worldcon bid, makes a great reminder that March 8 is International Women’s Day.

(2) THE FRANCHISE. And the BBC marked the occasion with its article “International Women’s Day: Why women can thrive in sci-fi”.

While the Star Wars expanded universe has a number of popular, female characters, the cultural impact of seeing a female Jedi’s hero journey on the silver screen can not be overstated. “For years we’ve been hearing that women couldn’t front a sci-fi/action film,” Jenna Busch, founder of Legion of Leia.

“The fallacious perception is that they just won’t sell. But, now we have Katniss, Furiosa, and Rey to prove that attitude wrong. There is something about seeing the box office numbers that might be a step in the right direction.”

(3) THERE IS ANOTHER. Last November, James H. Burns saw a van tricked out as the Mystery Machine on Long Island. Now, on the other side of the country, California authorities are seeking a different fan of the Scooby gang who’s been speeding around in her own version of those wheels — “Redding police: Suspect flees in ‘Scooby-Doo’ Mystery Machine”.

On Sunday, March 5, the Redding Police Department was alerted by Shasta County Probation Department about a subject who had allegedly violated their probation around 12:50 p.m. The subject was identified as Sharon Kay Turman, 51, Sgt. Ron Icely said in a news release.

According to the report, officers spotted Turman in the Mystery Machine, a 1994 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, at California and Shasta streets. Turman fled when officers tried to pull her over, traveling at high speeds. A CHP helicopter and Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputies joined the pursuit. Turman is reported to have reached speeds of over 100 m.p.h.

(4) FAKE FAN. A fake GalaxyQuest fan site, created to promote the movie, can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine. One of its features is ”Travis Latke’s” interview with Gwen DeMarco, replete with fannish typos. (I think Travis learned copyediting from me).

TL: How do you do it? How d you deliver one blockbusting performance after another?

GDM: It’s all about the craft. As an actor I try put myself inside the head of my character. Since I sgtarted acting, I always try to become the charactere, that sometimes is very trying. For instance I once played Medea in summerstock in the Hamptons and, gosh, for weeks I hadthey nauseating feeling of having done all the bad things Medea does in the Euripides play.

With Galaxy I delved into scientific research that by the time the show was cancelled I knew enough for a PhD in astrophysics. I mean, it’s a fascianting subject. I made some great friends at the Pasadena Jet Prupolsion Lab who I still consult whenever I have a question aboput quassars and wormholes.

(5) WINE PRESS. To this day, fake fans are still being used to promote things. Hats off to Trae Dorn, who’s been drilling to the bottom of “Wine Country Comic Con’s Bizarre Litany of Lies” at Nerd & Tie. There is no end to it!

Last week we published a piece on Wine Country Comic Con. A first year convention currently scheduled for April 23-24 in Santa Rosa, CA, we were alarmed to find they were using a fake Facebook account to spam groups and talk with potential attendees.

But the more we looked into this event, the more we discovered that this story went further than just the fictional “Frida Avila.” Wine Country Comic Con organizer Uriel Brena has constructed a complex charade of lies, fake staffers, and a whole bunch of weirdness.

This rabbit hole runs deep.

A Full Complement of Fake Staffers

The first thing we found out was that “Frida Avila” wasn’t the only weirdly complex fake staffer created by Wine Country Comic Con. Thanks to some email tips (and a bit of our own digging) we found several more:….

(6) A ROBOT WITH KEANE EYESIGHT. Kirsty Styles at TNW News says “Aido is pretty much the robot they promised everyone back in the 1950s”.

Aido will be friends with your weird kid, act as a security guard, remember your schedule and project movies onto the wall to help with anything from cooking to plumbing.

This is the robot to kill all robots. With kindness.

 

(7) ROWLING ON NORTH AMERICAN MAGIC. Will there be anything left to say about this topic by the time I post it to the Scroll? We’ll find out. Today Pottermore ran the first installment of J. K. Rowling’s revelations about wizardry in the New World.

The first piece of writing from ‘History of Magic in North America’ by J.K. Rowling is here, and we can also give you a taster of what’s to come this week.

Today’s piece goes back through the centuries to reveal the beginnings of the North American magical community and how witches and wizards used magic before they adopted wands.

Wednesday’s piece will divulge more about the dangers faced by witches and wizards in the New World, and on Thursday you’ll discover why the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) took steps to move the magical community deeper underground.

The last piece will take us right up to the Roaring Twenties, when the magical community in North America was under the watchful eye of MACUSA President, Madam Seraphina Picquery – played by Carmen Ejogo in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

These stories will give you some idea of how the wizarding world on this continent evolved over the years, and of the names and events that lay the foundation for the arrival of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in November.

(8) TROPE TRIPE. Arguing over Rowling should put everyone in the mood for Mark J. Turner’s post at Smash Dragons, “Five Fantasy Tropes That Should Be Consigned to History”.

2. The Chosen One

In fantasy books the protagonist often begins life as Mr A.N.Other, minding his own business in some nowhere village doing nothing in particular. Then we discover that he is the son of a king or a powerful wizard or warrior, and suddenly he is able to take on the world, no training required. Or if there is training, the author presses the fast forward button on the process, and our protagonist learns in a year what it would take others a lifetime to master.

And the transformation in our hero doesn’t end there. He has spent his formative years as a farm boy or a swineherd, yet for some reason that has prepared him perfectly for the demands of running a kingdom. When he rises to the throne, everyone lives happily ever after. There seems to be a sub-text in these books that in order to stop the world slipping into chaos, all you have to do is put the “right” person in charge. It’s as if the natural order is somehow disturbed if there isn’t a man or a woman ruling everything. Whereas in reality we don’t have to look too far in our own world for examples of where putting all the power in the hands of one person isn’t necessarily a good idea.

(9) ON STAGE. James Bacon reviews The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore at Forbidden Planet. The play features segments written by authors Christopher Fowler, Stephen Gallagher, Kim Newman, Robert Shearman, Lynda E. Rucker and Lisa Tuttle, alongside a wraparound story by director Sean Hogan.

The writing is hilarious, within moments of our travellers sitting down and their unpleasantness becoming clear, the audience are laughing at dark contemporary humour, riffing off recent well-known scandals, while smart language and profanity reflect more closely the mores and morals of modern society. Using traditional ideas of what we consider horror monsters, the authors skilfully show what monsters really are, that nothing is as monstrous as humanity, and the writers with their sharp razor-like ability to find angles in people, left the audience contemplating where the horror truly lies and what being a monster really is….

The framing worked well – a fancy dress party, as one’s favourite monster on a vintage steam train, a very nice little conceit to create the right atmosphere for the portmanteau of stories. Strobe lights, sudden intrusions, the chimey tinkley creepy music as the stage went dark for the changes, the sound effects and stage work, props and masks/costumes all were just right, adding the perfect amount of tangibility for a lively suspension of belief….

(10) OVER THERE. Larry Correia’s next tour stop is —

(11) SAVE GAME OF THRONES FAVORITES. George R.R. Martin’s characters face “Danger! Peril! Death!” Only this time, it’s not because he’s writing scenes for them in his next novel.

Suvudu is doing another one of their Cage Match tournaments. This time the theme is Dynamic Duos. Jaime (one-handed) and Brienne have been paired together. In the first round they are facing Garth Nix’s Sabriel… and a pussycat.

http://suvudu.com/2016/03/cage-match-2016-round-1-jaime-lannister-and-brienne-of-tarth-vs-sabriel-and-mogget.html

In the first Cage Match, lo these many years ago, Jaime defeated Cthulhu (with a little help from Tyrion). Surely he cannot lose to a fluffy little ball o’ fur (and fleas). Not with the mighty maid of Tarth by his side.

(12) TYSON HOSTS DEBATE. Panelists for the 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate will engage the question: “Is the Universe a Simulation?”

What may have started as a science fiction speculation—that perhaps the universe as we know it is actually a computer simulation—has become a serious line of theoretical and experimental investigation among physicists, astrophysicists, and philosophers. Join host and moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson and his panel of experts for a lively discussion and debate about the merits and shortcomings of this provocative and revolutionary idea.

The Asimov Debate panelists are: David Chalmers, Professor of philosophy, New York University; Zohreh Davoudi, Theoretical physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James Gates, Theoretical physicist, University of Maryland; Lisa Randall, Theoretical physicist, Harvard University; and Max Tegmark, Cosmologist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The debate takes place April 5 at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium. Check the website for tickets. The debate also will be livestreamed via <amnh.org/live>.

(13) BOOKS SCIENTISTS LOVE. Charlie Jane Anders at io9 pointed to a forum in reddit’s Print SF Resources where scientists talk about their favorite books and the scientific problems they find in SF. Filer Greg Hullender makes an appearance there.

(14) STEAMPUNK RULES WHERE STEAMBOATS DOCKED. The Riverfront Times was there when “The Science Center Went Steampunk on Friday – and Everyone Had a Victorian Good Time”.

The St. Louis Science Center takes Fridays very seriously, with a themed evening of special events the first Friday of each month. Last Friday was no exception, as the Science Center hosted a night entirely devoted to steampunk science. The event drew everyone from families to costumed fanatics. All enjoyed a night of demonstrations (did someone say “escape artist”?), activities (where else can you try a steampunk shooting range?), films and more devoted to this take on Victorian-era science fiction.

(15) HYPNOTIC SCULPTURES. Everybody with a quarter-of-a-million spare dollars is going to want one of these.

(16) SUPERGIRL WILL BE BACK. The Mary Sue has deduced Supergirl will get a second season.

While technically nothing official’s been announced, while speaking at Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, CBS President Les Moonves pretty much stated that Supergirl is getting another season. Well, specifically he said:

We have about five new shows on this year. Of those five, I believe all five of them will be renewed, and we own four of them.

[Via Nerd & Tie.]

(17) A NEW SUIT. Another Comic Con is being sued for trademark infringement – but the mark involved is not “Comic Con,” as the Houston Chronicle explains — “Convention bureau sues comic convention over ‘Space City’ trademark”

Houston’s convention bureau is suing the operators of a popular local convention over the use of “Space City” in its name, claiming it infringes on a 12-year-old trademark.

The convention in question, Space City Comic Con, also happens to compete with a similar event that is half-owned by the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau itself. The bureau acquired a 50 percent stake in the more established Comicpalooza last September, spokesman A.J. Mistretta said….

Houston has billed itself “Space City,” a boastful nod to its founding role in U.S. space exploration, since the 1960s. Over the decades, dozens of local companies from plumbers to construction outfits to tattoo parlors have used the moniker as part of their name. But they are not affected by the trademark registered by the convention bureau in 2004, said Charles S. Baker, an intellectual property lawyer with Locke Lord in Houston who is representing the bureau in its lawsuit.

The trademark is narrowly constructed and applies solely to efforts that promote tourism, business and conventions in the greater Houston area, Baker said.

(18) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 8, 1913 – The Internal Revenue Service began to levy and collect income taxes in the United States. (Go ahead, ask me what that has to do with sf. They’re raising money for the space program, okay?)

(18b) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

Born March 8, 1967 — Tasha Turner

(19) MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Amazing Stories’ Steve Davidson makes an ingenious comparison in “The 7 Levels of Recommending”.

Maimonides, a Jewish scholar and Rabbi (which are pretty much the same things: he was an astronomer too…) once developed a “hierarchy of charitable giving”.  He essentially analyzed the different kinds of charity that people extended and attempted to define the different types and then ordered them from least to most selfless.  He ended up with 8 different levels of giving.  The lowest form of charity is giving grudgingly – forced to hand over a dollar to the street bum because he’s blocking your path.  The highest form is giving before it is even needed (my father thought that included my allowance….).

I mention this because, as a result of all of the discussion regarding slates vs recommended readings lists, I thought that a similar hierarchy of the levels of recommending might be instructive.

(20) SHUT UP, PLEASE. Max Florschutz uses “The Loud Neighbor” as a social media analogy. I found his argument appealing until he decloaked his attack —

And this is where a lot of “social” groups these days get it wrong. A lot of what’s being touted online and in social circles these days is the act of calling the landlord to complain about noise, while being just as loud on one’s own, but giving one’s self a free pass to be loud because you have the “right.” It’s wanting the freedom to do what you want, produce as much friction as you want, while not being willing to extend that same courtesy to others. It’s the kind of mentality that leads to things like “safe spaces” where only individuals of one sex or skin tone are allowed entry. Freedom to produce as much friction as possible while denying others the same freedom. One group is allowed to be “loud” while simultaneously “calling the landlord” to complain that the other group needs to be silent.

Is it a perfect allegory? No. But it still holds. We can’t be as loud as we want and expect that no one else be given the same treatment. We need to extend the courtesy that we give ourselves to others. If we don’t do that, then what are we doing but putting ourselves on a pedestal and pushing those around us down?

(21) IS THIS A GOOD THING? You can now pre-order 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush, edited by Kevin J. Anderson and John McFetridge, at various places including Amazon. (My header, there, is just a joke. A message board I used to follow had a devoted Rush fan, and yanking his chain about it was an indirect way of expressing affection.)

Ron Collins drew my attention to the book in a promotional e-mail —

I’m super-thrilled to announce that you can now pre-order copies of 2113, an anthology of stories inspired by Rush songs that includes my work “A Patch of Blue.” I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this one. I’ve spent a lot of good times listening to those guys. [grin]

My story is one inspired by Rush’s “Natural Science,” which is a monstrous work in three acts that’s just cool as all get-out. It was a total blast to write, partially because I got to put it on endless loop while I did it–so, yeah, the song is pretty much indelibly inked onto my brain now.

(22) ENERGIZE – THEN DIE! This is freaking alarming — The Trouble with Transporters.

(23) RAVEN MANIAC. From Amoxtli, the poetic masterwork of the day.

A sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore:

Lenora Rose, people are bound to confuse us, given the name similarity (or not notice that our names were autocorrected to the other version, as my computer tried to do to your name just now).

As I was on the File a-tapping on my keyboard, posts o’erlapping
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
Suddenly there came a fwapping: “The Rose and Jones are not for swapping.”
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
When the accurs’d hour tolls our doom, shall we mistake the name Lenore?”
Said the Filers, “Fear no more.”

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, David K.M. Klaus, James Bacon, Martin Morse Wooster, and Kendall for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

260 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/8/16 I Want To Tell You About Texas Pixel And The Big Scroll

  1. Mike Glyer asked:

    Petréa Mitchell: Does SF do a better job with that trope?

    On the whole, no. Precognitive visions still tend to be really vague, time travellers trying to change the past almost always forget that one thing which is absolutely crucial to changing the timeline, and psychics in general get shunted into alternate legal systems or secret parallel societies just as often as fantasy magicians.

  2. Peace in My Middle Name

    I would have followed you if the whole point of the serie was not : ” Wizards have been depicted as evil by non-magician, but look how cool they are”.

    My ancestors feared werewolves and burned witches, and they are described as being foolish for that in the Harry Potter serie. The description of skinwalker as not so evil is just a (lazy) transposition of this line, and I don’t think there is more to it.

  3. The thing about cultural appropriation is, members of the group-being-appropriated-from get to have their own opinions about whether or not a certain use of their culture by outsiders is OK or not. If they think it’s OK, we generally don’t call it “appropriation”.

    If Jews approve of the way the Indiana Jones movies use elements of the Jewish religion, that does not give anyone else a free pass to use elements of the Navajo religion(s?) in their own work.* Likewise, the fact that folks of European descent don’t seem outraged (except on aesthetic grounds) to good-guy emo vampires does not give a free pass for anyone to compose fiction with good-guy emo skinwalkers.

    *Especially since Raiders of the Lost Ark had a Jewish director, Steven Spielberg, and a Jewish screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan.

  4. @Vivien:

    Maybe so, but as far as wizards are concerned Rowling is Making Stuff Up. There is no particular tradition of seeing them as malevolent. In fact the “they are really cool” trope is far and away the strongest strain in English literature.

    “Skinwalkers” are nothing to do with generic werewolves. They are a specific kind of malevolent entity in Navajo spiritual practices.

    To crowbar skinwalkers into the mushy cream-of-wheat Potterverse theology — and to label as charlatans and self-promoting frauds those who believe them to be evil spirits — is at best uncaringly oblivious.

  5. @Kendall

    That’s a nice collection. (I don’t know what ten credits is in audible terms, but I assume that’s a good price?) In addition to the ones you’ve mentioned, try to squeeze in Of Sorrow & Such, it’s one of my favourites. Might make an interesting counterpoint after Witches of Lychford, in fact.

  6. @dann665

    I wrote:

    Over There: so I guess Larry will be playing to an audience that is mostly younger, male, thrill-seeking, and generally fond of guns. I imagine he’ll be in his element.

    You responded:
    “In my experience, those will not be the only relevant features of that audience. They….hell, “we” back in the day….suffer from a broad range of interests that are not mutually exclusive…”

    Yes. Hence my use of the word “mostly” above.

    There will be some people on that military base who won’t be the slightest bit interested in Larry. Perhaps they get enough guns at work and prefer romances for fun. Perhaps they don’t like Larry’s writing style and prefer more literary books. Perhaps they don’t care for book and watch movies instead. There may even be a handful people who know what he did to the Hugos and Don’t Approve.

    But my comment was about the general trend(s) of people there, which is tailor-made for Larry, really.

  7. I disagree with the assertion that you die while being transpoted, what happens is that you are uploaded into a computer (the transport buffer) and then downloaded again. No reason your soul couldn’t remain attached to your mind through this process.
    The question is what happens if the transporter materializes two of you at the destination. And why doesn’t this happen more often, it seems only sensible to keep the patterns of people going on a dangerous away mission in memory, so if they die, they can be recreated from the backup.

  8. “keep the patterns of people going on a dangerous away mission in memory, so if they die, they can be recreated from the backup.”

    Egan’s novel Diaspora IIRC deals with this somewhat. Bodies are treated as semi-disposable (they require some investment before they can be inhabited). I can’t recall quite how he deals with the “versioning” issue (e.g., two of person X around at once), but the characters definitely count on backups through their adventures.

  9. I made a mistake in mentioning Correia’s trip here. It seemed a cool thing to me.

  10. @Kendall: There’s a review of Binti on Strange Horizons recently (by Vajra Chandrasekara) which I found really, really illuminating. It puts the novella in its colonial context. I had seen some of that during my reading but not all.

  11. @ Will R. I may have had that book in the back of my mind when writing that comment. I know I’ve read some stories of his which deal with backups. Also, I think the Culture series had some mention of this and which you is really you?

  12. @Mike Glyer:

    It’s nice of him to show support.

    I don’t care much for the earlier presumption (not yours) of what his audience would be like. I’ve known people in the service and they are as varied and interesting a lot as any.

  13. Amoxtli: Strange analogy. Is there none of that in Caesar’s Gallic Commentaries? How do you think they ended up speaking French?

  14. The conundrum raised by “The Trouble With Transporters” was explored in the first of the Bantam Books Star Trek novels, James Blish’s “Spock Must Die!”, back in 1970. Realizing that the transporter produces, in effect, exact duplicates of their users instead of actually transporting them, Dr. McCoy worries that the people coming out on the other end have no souls. Scottie comes up with an alternative — a transporter that produces a temporary copy of a person, which is then destroyed upon return. The modified transporter is tested on Mr. Spock, but there’s a malfunction that returns both the original and copy of Mr. Spock to the Enterprise. It takes the whole novel to determine which is the “real” Spock. Needless to say, the plotting of this novel is full of holes. For instance, is the temporary copy of the transported person really someone that can be disposed of without qualms?

    There’s a short animated film from the National Film Board of Canada that examines the subject (without reference to Star Trek) in a more thoughtful way, but it’s been decades since I saw it, and can’t remember the title.

    In addition, I think the same dilemma exists in stories where people store digital copies of their minds, to be downloaded into new bodies, such as in Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. In the case of Doctorow’s novel, no one seems to worry about not having a soul when they’re downloaded.

  15. @bookworm1398 The Culture series is definitely one of the big gaps in my reading. I think I’ve resisted because I know that once I start I’ll want to read them all at once.

    Definitely not unique to Egan, but for some reason that one always sticks out for me because of their strategic use of their stored selves and also because, if I’m remembering right, he kind of sidesteps the question of continuity of consciousness.

    Come to think of it…isn’t the main character in Accelerando also broken down and reconstituted? I seem to remember her making some jokes about whether she could be sure she was the same afterwards. Oh, spoiler alert. (?)

  16. PIMMN: “Skinwalker” is an explicitly Navajo concept, belonging to no other people.

    Are you sure about that? It just seems to me that the Ojibwa bearwalker is kind of parallel to the Navajo skinwalker, at least, and I don’t see any direct connection between the two peoples–am I wrong about that? Or is there a difference I’m missing, aside from the fact that the skinwalkers can turn into more than one animal and the bearwalker is, well, a bear?

    Note: This has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation about Rowling and cultural appropriation. It’s just that I know almost zero about Navajo spirituality, and what I know about the Ojibwa comes from rather casual cultural contact, due mostly to where I live. So–as you seem to know rather more than I do about the Navajo, at least–I’m curious.

  17. Peace

    I entirely respect your right to hold your views; you may feel that white people need to speak on behalf of not-white people, even when those not-white people are members of a semi-autonomous state, conduct their own government, and might expect to be treated with respect rather than condescension. I believe that such condescension is racist, notwithstanding the fact that it is entirely unintentional racism.

    In this particular case, the only Navajo reported as objecting to Rowling’s piece is notable, if not notorious, for his statements following the events last year where Native Americans, including Navajo, refused to act in a Netflix film filled with utterly and absolutely horrendous examples of stereotyping in the worst possible way.

    I don’t presume to speak on behalf of those actors; they spoke, and continue to speak, for themselves. I do, however, suggest that ignoring them whilst lauding an individual who did his best to mitigate the effects of their words and actions is not helpful.

    Finally, the idea that JK Rowling is important in the context of the problems facing the Navajo Nation is also Eurocentric to the point of absurdity. The devastation caused by uranium mining, which, with over 500 abandoned mines, wreaks havoc with the health of humans and animals, is just one of those problems. A Scottish writer of children’s fiction is a very long way down the list…

  18. @ Mike Glyer “Does SF do a better job with that trope? There’s Selden’s Plan. And how Muad Dib functions after being blinded.”

    Personally, the only SF prophecy I really like is Anderson’s Star Prince Charlie, where the Terran’s Scottish ancestry superficially resembles that of the “Prince of the Prophecy”, and so a political faction dragoons him into doing a bunch of tasks that will “fulfill the prophecy”…and incidentally trigger a civil war.

    But then again, what I want to see more of- make that sees ANY of in fantasy is false prophecies. Not misinterpreted, not distorted, not ironically vague, but flat out WRONG prophecy. As in somebody a long time ago while tripping on mushrooms wrote down some gibberish egret people take too seriously.

    As in, a group of seers standing on a hill watches the latest Prophecied One and her peasant army get slaughtered by the Empire. “Hmm. Maybe we should include “Has tactical and strategic knowledge” in the next version of the prophecy.”

    Yeah. That’s a story I could get behind.

  19. Mike Glyer on March 9, 2016 at 10:18 am said:

    Amoxtli: Strange analogy. Is there none of that in Caesar’s Gallic Commentaries? How do you think they ended up speaking French?

    Not really comparable. Multiple movements of people between then and a specific identify of ‘French’. That doesn’t mean bad things didn’t happen to indigenous cultures of peoples in Western Europe in times past (or even times recent) – Amoxtli’s point was it didn’t happen to *French* culture in that way. Whoever Ceasar was beating up it wasn’t people who had any concept of being French nor people that (Asterix comics aside) that French people deeply identify with.

  20. “Skinwalker” is an explicitly Navajo concept, belonging to no other people.

    Other cultures have the concept of a person who can transform into an animal. Other cultures even have the concept of a person who can transform into an animal because they have broken a taboo (the Wendigo comes to mind–if you eat human flesh, you turn into a large monster, fight the hulk, and repeat your name a lot.) Of course there will always be differences in the fine details of the mythologies from culture to culture, but to claim that one set of small differences makes a legend uniquely separate from the others sounds a bit like special pleading to me.

  21. @bbz:

    The Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a pretty good series (thus far, I haven’t read them all) about a world populated by human/insect hybrids (so there are basically moth-people, praying mantis-people, beetle-people, ant-people, etc.). The main plot driver is an invasion of a fairly peaceful mixed land (with a violent history) by a wasp-people empire.

    There are two types of being in this narrative: the Apt, who do not have magic but can use machines (beetles, for example), and the Inapt, who are the opposite (moths, spiders, etc.). The Apt tend to be team players, the Inapt are often more loner types.

    It’s mostly fantasy, with some steampunk thrown in.

  22. I had a story idea where as seers got older, their visions shifted further and further into the future, which made them less and less useful as court advisors. The Seers Guild covered it up by co-opting the visions of the younger members (with the promise to support them in their old age).

  23. @Cat

    Perhaps they don’t like Larry’s writing style and prefer more literary books.

    Trying not to extend things unnecessarily here by uncorking extra bottles.

    IME, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive with respect to an individual, a group (military or otherwise, FWIW), and potentially* Mr. Correia’s work.

    *I can’t comment as I haven’t read any of it.

    @Mike

    His tour is very cool. I would hope that anyone that is offered that sort of opportunity would take advantage of it. Thanks for pointing it out.

    Having witnessed a lifetime of denigration of the character of the US military, it is sort of a sore spot for me. I apologize if I’ve tarnished a well intended mention.

    @PiMMN

    Indeed!


    Regards,
    Dann

  24. Peace is My Middle Name

    Ah, I finally see why we disagree. JK Rowling is not totally making things up on wizards. There are several incidence in the book where JK Rowling makes it clear they are the descendants of the reviled medieval witches, and that the Church was wrong in persecuting them.

    Even if I am myself roman catholic, I am OK with this. I am all for not burning witches, after all, and there are other works of fiction around then a light hearted fantasy I would think of, if I felt I had a right to exercize my Catholic Cultural Appropriation Copyright.

    Sadly, a few of my correligionaries didn’t feel so cool about it, and tried to portray Harry Potter as paganic propaganda, if not satanic. It is no coincidence those same people tends to think themselves as the member of a community endangered by rampant secularism. I don’t think those defensive reactions should be encouraged, in any community, however justified the feeling of cultural insecurity might be.

  25. @Tasha – Happy (belated) birthday!

    @Rose Embolism – I’ve been hoping for some time that the prophecies in A Song of Ice and Fire will turn out to be false. Given all the praise GRRM has had for subverting fantasy tropes, it would be rather appropriate. And after all the effort that some people have put in to predicting how the series will turn out based on those prophecies, I confess I would be mightily amused if that’s what happens (yes, I am a Bad Person for thinking this, I know)

  26. (22) ENERGIZE – THEN DIE!

    I suddenly feel the need to reread “Think Like A Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly.

    Is that a typical video from CGP Grey? If so I have some watching to do!

  27. @Mike Glyer: Strange analogy. Is there none of that in Caesar’s Gallic Commentaries? How do you think they ended up speaking French?

    My understanding is that a) the Gallic wars were not considered a genocide or even a significant depopulation event, b) while a very small number of elite children were taken to Rome, the Roman assimilation process was generally voluntary, limited, and done through financial incentives rather than universal suppression and punishment, c) there was not a significant amount of religious or cultural suppression in the Roman empire, and in fact Rome tended to adopt the religious figures and practices of its new territories, d) local administration was done by the local population, e) the Pax Romana that followed was pretty remarkable, among other reasons, because Augustus intentionally changed the Roman concept of peace through massive propaganda effort, such that conquered cultures retained a great deal of political and military power, and f) these events took place over two millennia ago.

    So I’m pretty sure that the Roman conquest of Gaul is not closely similar to the reservation and boarding school experience of Native Americans, and doesn’t give the modern French a recent, living experience of same, which was the most significant part of that analogy. There’s been a bit more time between the traumas of the Gallic war and Rowling’s depiction of Beauxbatons than there is between people who attended the BIA boarding schools and Rowling’s depiction of skinwalkers and lying medicine men. I doubt, for instance, that there are many women raped by Romans in the Gallic wars alive today who would be hurt by Rowling’s depiction of a magically irresistible schoolgirl or feel that perhaps it was an irresponsible depiction that might lead Romans to underestimate the impact of rape of Gaulish girls in future. Roman anti-Gallic prejudice and policies are not much of an ongoing problem. Influential YA authors don’t run much risk of prejudicing opinion about living cultures there.

  28. I think Larry’s tour is cool. Whatever issues there maybe with either Larry’s politics or on the otherhand the role of the US military in modern geopoltics neither are made worse by people reading fun books.

  29. @ Stevie

    you may feel that white people need to speak on behalf of not-white people, even when those not-white people are members of a semi-autonomous state, conduct their own government, and might expect to be treated with respect rather than condescension.

    Or Peace might just believe in saying something when he sees any culture or set of cultures handled in terms of stereotypes. I can’t help but think that he has, with patience and kindness over a long period of time, earned a more sympathetic reading than you are giving him.

    Even if he didn’t like my comment about Larry potentially having a lot of fans on a military base.

    And I think it’s okay to notice issues of getting a culture wrong in a book even when the culture faces bigger threats in other areas. Just like it’s okay for a woman (or would have been okay for a man) to say “guys, that’s creepy; don’t do that” about an encounter at a convention even though women in Islamic countries have it much worse.

    @Dann665

    I’ve read three and a half of Correia’s books and more of his blog than I care to remember. He despises literary writers and works (I think he refers to “saving gay polar bears”) and exults in his ability to write pulp well, trust me. He isn’t a literary writer and I am pretty sure wouldn’t want you to say otherwise.

  30. Item of interest – I have just got round to reading the “Press Start To Play” anthology – previously mentioned by Vasha on File770.

    I haven’t run into Hugh Howey before, but now I’m definitely interested. I really liked “Select Character” and while I agree with Vasha that it isn’t very complex, I think it’s an EXCELLENT lead-in for a novel. I’d buy that novel sight unseen.

    I’d try to state what I liked about the story – mainly that he pulled off one of the classic jobs of an author – but I think it’s better if you read it without that comment in mind.

    tl;dr – Hugh Howey just popped up on my radar for the first time, and IMMEDIATELY goes on the “borrow everything he writes from library and look for paperbacks” list.

  31. It may be helpful to provide an insight into the realities which Native American actors were confronted with last year:

    http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/04/24/read-page-adam-sandler-script-caused-native-actors-quit-160135

    The Guardian presumably didn’t feel it was newsworthy. By contrast, the same website has coverage of reactions to Pottermore, which make it clear that the Guardian’s quote from Dr Keene, who describes herself as a huge fan, failed to accurately convey the nuances of her views.

    I suppose that probably doesn’t come as a surprise to people who have watched the Guardian go from facts are sacred to anything for page hits, but it may be of value to those unfamiliar with it.

    E for link

  32. The closer French equivalent to the treatment of Native Americans, in so far (and only in so far) as it involves the suppression of culture, would be in the treatment of Bretons, Basques, and other minorities from the late 19th Century through to the middle of the 20th Century.

  33. Stevie – I’m with Peace on this one. To stand by silently is to accept racist ideas and thoughts.

    One thing I don’t see being discussed here (which I do see in such discussions in the kidlit world) are of the child as audience. In seeing a lot of (presumably) adults discussing this from their perspective as adult readers who can recognize and compartmentalize these narratives. Imagine being a child reader – the intended audience for these texts – who happens to be from a Native American tribe, maybe even specifically Diné. How do you address that child’s reaponse upon reading this narrative from a beloved author?

    Some of us think about these things. Now, in my job I’ll get a child whatever s/he wants to read, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have grave concerns about racists texts and their effects on children. And, not just on children in marginalized groups. When cultural appropriations and narratives rooted in racism are normalized in children’s books, they quickly become normalized in children’s minds. And, obviously, some never move past those inaccuracies as they become adults. It’s a pernicious cycle.

  34. Ok, so I’ve been thinking about this and I’m going to try to flip things around:

    In Europe, there was a tradition that a very powerful wizard from the Middle East, who obtained the title of Christ had passed on his secrets to his followers. These miracle workers or “saints” fought against those magicians who did not support their tradition, putting such things as “do not suffer a witch to live” in the religious book they propagated throughout Europe. Many muggles and some witches were burned during the great cleansing, which stopped when the magical community went into hiding in the 1700s.

    How many people would be offended by that? There are several things wrong with the history given in that paragraph, but that’s par for the course.

    Beyond the horrible religious/cultural ignorance and appropriation, there were some other things that bothered me with her writing. The Europeans who showed up in the Americas in the beginning tended to do one of two things: die (50% mortality in some colonies) or raid the deserted villages and fields that Native Americans who had died in any of the various plagues had left behind. The land was not untouched territory, it was just managed in a way that was different than the system that was known to the Europeans at the time.

    I had more to write, but I’m out of time.

    Also, the losses due to disease during the Columbian exchange are estimated at over 50% and maybe as high as 90%. As someone (sorry, out of time) mentioned before, either the Native wizards allowed everyone to perish or they were unable to come up with solutions to the epidemics ranging through the people they lived with.

  35. As someone (sorry, out of time) mentioned before, either the Native wizards allowed everyone to perish or they were unable to come up with solutions to the epidemics ranging through the people they lived with.

    I’d go with something like ‘they were among the earliest to die, because they were more susceptible’.

  36. So, I was thinking about nothing in particular and an image from a book I read, oh, probably at least 40 years ago, hit me. It was SF, almost certainly written for children or perhaps YA, and there was a small group of kids (two? three? maybe just one?) and he/they were alone (run away? Lost? Abandoned?) and had built at least one robot out of tin cans. And I vaguely remember he/them being very proud of refining pitch (and possibly turpentine?) out of tree sap. (I know I was pretty young when I read this; I had to look up what “pitch” was.) There was an island; he/they found/own/built a rowboat. And the kid(s) were rescued or discovered or something, the robot was rowing the boat; the kid(s) told the robot “wait a minute” and got out of the boat to greet someone(?) and after the required minute the robot, being a robot, rowed away….

    (I don’t think robots were a usual thing in the culture of the book; I think the kid who built it was portrayed as a mechanical genius.)

    Does this strike any chords with anyone? As you can see, I have the barest recollection of it, but for some reason it came to mind…

    (Edit because I kant spel gud.)

  37. If you’ve got swords and horses and wheat and shoes all going by that name, and you want your characters drinking something dark and strong and slightly bitter in the morning, just…use coffee.

    You know, it really bugs me when people take what’s obviously tea, and call it “coffee”. Look, it’s plant material you douse with hot water, it steams, it’s brown and bitter and you serve it in mugs. It. Is. TEA. People! TEA! Stop making silly names like “coffee”, and if you’re giving your character a hot beverage to wake up in the morning, just call it what it is- tea.

    Also, the Dragaerians obviously have the right idea- just call it wine, and stop creating ridiculous names like “vodka”, “whiskey”, and “gin”.

  38. K8

    It seems to me to be obvious that adult Native Americans are the people to address their child’s responses to the texts. I really cannot understand why you think otherwise…

  39. It is not just a matter of mere cultural appropriation, or even appropriating culture to belittle it. The topic Rowling is discussing is taboo. It is complex, deeply tied into the Navajo cosmology, and not to be discussed, even in polite Navajo society, let alone among outsiders. Rowling’s fabrication gives offense, and so too does the constant mention of this topic in attempts to compare it to the beliefs of other nations, or to bits of popular culture.

    Stop digging.

Comments are closed.