Pixel Scroll 4/5/19 We Can Scroll It For You Wholesale

(1) GAME OF LUNCH. Ethnic cuisine of Westeros? Gothamist tells you how to order it in “Shake Shack Offering ‘Secret’ Game Of Thrones Items For Valyrian Speakers ONLY”.

Below, you’ll find a little guide explaining what you need to say in order to actually purchase these items. It’s more “bend the tongue” than “bend the knee,” but you get the drift

(2) BLOCKING TECHNIQUE. Foz Meadows takes stock of social media as various platforms enter their teenage years: “Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself”.

…I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

(3) A WARRIOR HANGS UP HIS SHIELD. Fulk Beauxarmes’ protests against the growing influence of white supremacists in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and use of their symbols in its heraldry, inspired me to nominate him for Best Fanwriter. In a new post he decries the continued inaction of the Society’s leadership and also announces that he’s “Leaving the SCA”.

On February 15th a post that Ronan Blackmoor had recently made was brought to my attention. He’d apparently posted to his Facebook page a triumphant announcement that he and Balder had been “completely cleared” of all accusations of wrongdoing and that there would be “consequences” for all the “leftists”, “SJWs” and “SCAntifa” who had brought “fake charges” against him.

…That was the last straw for me….

(4) AIRBNB ISSUE. Do you need to check your reservations?

(5) SURVIVAL REQUIREMENT. James Wallace Harris does a good job of describing the problem and of identifying a solution. If only he sounded more enthusiastic about it! “Subscribe to SF Magazines – Become a Patron of an Art” at Worlds Without End.

…I’ve come to realize that I have to pay if I want certain things in this world to exist, even if I don’t use them.

I subscribe to four SF magazines that I seldom read. I read when I can, or when I see a story recommended, or when a friend tells me about a story. I subscribe because I want them to exist. I subscribe because I want a place for new SF writers to get published. I subscribe because one day if I can ever get back into writing fiction I’ll have a place to submit my stories.

We have to realize that free content on the internet isn’t free. We’ve got to come up with revenue systems that work. I think the internet needs to remain free, so we can always have instant access to content, but we need to find ways to pay publishers who present free content on the web.

(6) THE KISS OF SOMETHING. Chuck Tingle mingles praise and profitmaking in his response to Archive of Our Own’s Hugo nomination.

(7) GHOST OF A MACHINE. In “A Crime Novel for Future Urban Planners” on CrimeReads, Benjamin Samuel interviews Seth Fried, author of The Municipalists, a near future novel in which detective Henry Thompson solves a cyberattack with the aid of OWEN, “an experimental, highly intelligent hologram…who’s developed his own protocol for day drinking.”

Despite being a holographic projection of a supercomputer, OWEN can sometimes feel more human than Henry—or at least OWEN seems to enjoy life a little more. But ultimately, there are limitations to what he can do. What were some of challenges of having an AI character?

OWEN was a lot of fun to write. Since he’s a shape-shifting light projection, he’s essentially a superhero who can’t physically interact with anyone. So anything he wants to accomplish has to come through trickery or convincing Henry to give some life-threatening strategem the old college try. 

(8) FRENCH ADDRESSING. Some authors had fun responding to this idea – Seanan McGuire and John Chu among them – but one took offense (see the thread).

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 5, 1900 Spencer Tracy. Yes, he did some genre, to wit he was in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where he played Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde! The film even featured Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. (Died 1967.)
  • Born April 5, 1908 Bette Davis. She’s in Burnt Offerings, am Eighties horror film that did well with the audience and not so well with the critics; I also see she’s in Madame Sin which I think is SF given the premise. (Died 1989.)
  • Born April 5, 1909 Albert Broccoli. He’s mostly known as the producer of many of the James Bond films, and his heirs continue to produce new Bond films. With Harry Saltzman, he produced the first eight Bond films including From Russia with Love which is still my favorite Bond film though You Only Live Twice with a screenplay by Roald Dahl comes close. (Died 1996.)
  • Born April 5, 1917 Robert Bloch. His Wiki page says he’s best known as the writer of Psycho, but I’ll guarantee that only film geeks and many of y’all know that. I know him best as the writer of the Trek “Wolf in the Fold” episode. His Night of the Ripper novel is highly recommend. And I know that “That Hellbound Train” which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story is the piece of fiction by him I’ve read the most. (Died 1994.)
  • Born April 5, 1926 Roger Corman, 93. Ahhhh, popcorn films! (See popcorn literature for what I mean.) Monster from the Ocean Floor in the early Fifties was his film and Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf on Syfy just a few years back was another such film. He’s a man who even produced such a film called, errr, Munchies. A Worldcon guest of honor in 1996.
  • Born April 5, 1920 A.C. Crispin. She wrote several Trek and Star Wars novelizations and created her series called Starbridge which was heavily influenced by Trek. She also co-wrote several Witch World novels, Gryphon’s Eyrie and Songsmith, with Andre Norton.  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom was her last novel prior to her death from bladder cancer while in hospice care. (Died 2013.)
  • Born April 5, 1965 Deborah Harkness, 54. She’s the author of the All Souls Trilogy, which consists of A Discovery of Witches and its sequels Shadow of Night and The Book of Life. I listened to the Jennifer Ikeda-narrated audiobooks which was an amazing experience. Highly recommended as Harkness tells a remarkable story here. I’m not even fond ’tall of vampires in any form and hers actually are both appealing and make sense.
  • Born April 5, 1982Hayley Atwell, 37. Agent Carter with her as Peggy Carter I’ll freely admit has been the only series or film in the MCU repertoire that I’ve flat enjoyed so far. Even the misogyny of the males though irritating in that setting made sense. Oh, and I’m interested to see her in Christopher Robin as Evelyn Robin.

(10) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman calls on everyone to “bond over bing bread” with Malka Older in Episode 92 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Malka Older

This turns out to be a perfectly timed episode of Eating the Fantastic, though I didn’t plan it that way, and had no idea while recording such would be the case. The reason for my feeling of serendipity is because my guest is Malka Older, author of the novels InfomocracyNull States, and State Tectonics — which comprise the Centenal Cycle — and which just a few days ago was announced as having made the final Hugo Awards ballot in the category of Best Series….

She joined me for lunch at Momofuku CCDC, a restaurant which will be familiar to regular listeners of this podcast, because Rosemary Claire Smith joined me there a little more than two years ago in Episode 32. I try not to be a repeat customer at any of the spots I visit — at least not while recording for the podcast — but a lot has changed since that visit. David Chang installed a new executive chef, Tae Strain, and gave him orders to “destroy” the menu (according to an article in the Washingtonian), which meant ditching the ramen and pork buns for which Momofuku is so famous. But hey, where else am I going to get a chance to try kimchee potato salad?

We discussed why democracy is a radical concept which scares people (and what marriage has to say about the dramatic potential of democracy), the pachinko parlor which helped give birth to her science fictional universe, how what was intended to be a standalone novel turned into a trilogy, her secrets (and role models) when it comes to writing action scenes, which of her characters moves more merchandise, how (and why) editor Carl Engle-Laird helped her add 20,000 words to her first novel, what she learned about herself from the collaborative Serialbox project, the one thing about her background I was embarrassed to admit I’d never realized, and much more.

(11) OVERFLOWING JOY. Alasdair Stuart’s latest issue of Full Lid includes piece on Mac Rogers’ movie The Horror at Gallery Kay, a look at Us, a detailed look at Project Blue Book (Stuart says “Turns out you can take the boy out of ufology but the man keeps watching tv shows about it”) and some Hugos joy.

Project Blue Book was a real thing, the USAF’s probably whitewashed investigation into the UFO phenomena. Doctor J. Allen Hynek was a real person and remains one of the vanishingly small amount of actual scientists to look into UFOlogy as a field and not a snake oil vending machine. His son Joel is a prolific special effects technician who designed the camouflage effect for the Predator by the way. The cases the episodes are based on are real too, the first two episodes dealing with the Gorman (renamed Fuller) Dogfight and the The Flatwoods Monster. In the first, a pilot engaged a UFO in something approximating combat. In the second, a family were first terrified by what they were sure was a downed UFO and second by the enraged townsfolk who refused to believe them.

(12) FUTURE PLAY. “Books that would make great video games” were considered by Quirk Books. First on their list –

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

This sci-fi novel features space battles, espionage, and cute talking robots. Obviously, we see this book being turned into a space opera-esque RPG ala Mass Effect, with a touch of shoot ‘em style space battles. Think Galaga but with interdimensional space politics and dueling. 10/10 would play for days.

(13) MORE APRIL FOOLISHNESS. Space.com finds this joke had multiple layers — “Behind the Scent: Lockheed Martin Bottles Astronaut’s Smell of Space”.

Lockheed Martin’s April Fools’ Day joke passed the smell test.

The aerospace company on Monday (April 1) kicked off its prank by announcing a launch, but rather than it being of a rocket or a spacecraft, it was Vector, “the first ever fragrance to capture the aroma of space.” And no sooner did the liftoff occur, than thousands of people came to Lockheed Martin’s website to request a sample.

One might expect that to be the gag, but the company went a step further, not only creating a spot-on ad for the bottled essence of space, but also producing the scent for real, as in actual vials of the unisex (if not also universal) eau de (zero-g) toilette

(14) MONETIZING. “Rare Harry Potter first edition with typos sells for $90,074” – UPI has the news.

Auction house Bonhams said the first-edition copy of Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone — known in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — attracted a high bid of $90,074.

The specific edition is famed in the Potter fandom for containing a handful of typos, including misspelling the word “Philosopher” and the repetition of “1 wand” on the list of items the boy wizard needs to obtain for school.

Think of all the rare typos I make here – I wonder how much Bonhams could get for my blog?

(15) FAILURE TO LAUNCH. SHAZAM! Never Takes Off” for Leonard Maltin.

Shazam! wants to be slick and smartassy except when it suddenly chooses to be warm and sincere—like a TV commercial for some medication or life insurance. You can’t have it both ways but this film repeatedly tries to do so. I’ve always loved the character who originated as Captain Marvel in 1940s comic books (and lost that name to Marvel in a famous lawsuit). He was essentially a rip-off of Superman but he had his own style and flavor. This movie, however, is a muddle.

(16) SLAG HEAPER. Vox Day sneers at this year’s Hugo-nominated novels in “From pulp to Puppies” [Internet Archive link] at Vox Popoli.

Total nonentities. All six of these novels together won’t sell as many copies as a single Galaxy’s Edge novel. Novik would have been considered a C-level talent at best in the 1980s. And people could be forgiven for thinking that the Rabid Puppies were still dictating the nominees with titles such as “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” on the short list.

(17) FURTHER VIEWS. Ian Mond remarked on Facebook:

Congrats to all the Hugo nominees. I won’t whinge that the best novel category doesn’t, for the most part, reflect my tastes. Nor will I set up a movement of like minded people to ensure it does so in the future….

Jonathan Strahan responded in a comment:

For about 20 seconds I considered trying to put together an Alternate Hugos Best Novel list, and then I realised (1) there are a lot of those and (2) you can’t have an Alternate Hugo list really. These are the books that fans who nominated *liked* the most. That’s fine and pretty cool.

(18) WHERE IS IT? Adri Joy begins this review with many questions: “Microreview [Book]: Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman” at Nerds of a Feather.

I thought I knew what to expect, going in to Terra Nullius. I’d seen the book recommended on speculative sites, I’d read enough about it to know that its take on colonisation and extermination of indigineous people was almost but not quite based on the experience of Australia’s indigenous communities following the British invasion in 1788. And yet, by a hundred pages in, I was starting to doubt what everyone and everything (including the book’s own blurb) was telling me. Was I missing clues to a larger mystery? Were there adjectives that I was misreading or apparently historical references that I was misinterpreting? Where, to be blunt, was all the science fiction?

Of course, if you’re paying attention, that’s an intentional feature of Claire G. Coleman’s brilliant debut novel, which offers a perspective on the invasion of Australia which is very much a speculative novel, and yet still inexctricably and uncomfortably intertwined with the real historical treatment of Aboriginal Australians over centuries of white rule. Coleman herself is Noongar, a community from the south coast of what is now Western Australia, and Terra Nullius is the product of a black&write! indigenous writers fellowship. Despite being a first novel, this is a book that’s utterly confident both in its content and its narrative structure, and for very good reason….

(19) CHICXULUB SNAPSHOT. Douglas Preston tells about the discovery of fossils laid down on “The Day the Dinosaurs Died”.

He began shovelling off the layers of soil above where he’d found the fish. This “overburden” is typically material that was deposited long after the specimen lived; there’s little in it to interest a paleontologist, and it is usually discarded. But as soon as DePalma started digging he noticed grayish-white specks in the layers which looked like grains of sand but which, under a hand lens, proved to be tiny spheres and elongated ­droplets. “I think, Holy shit, these look like microtektites!” DePalma recalled. Micro­tektites are the blobs of glass that form when molten rock is blasted into the air by an asteroid impact and falls back to Earth in a solidifying drizzle. The site appeared to contain micro­tektites by the million.

As DePalma carefully excavated the upper layers, he began uncovering an extraordinary array of fossils, exceedingly delicate but marvellously well preserved. “There’s amazing plant material in there, all interlaced and interlocked,” he recalled. “There are logjams of wood, fish pressed against cypress-­tree root bundles, tree trunks smeared with amber.” Most fossils end up being squashed flat by the pressure of the overlying stone, but here everything was three-dimensional, including the fish, having been encased in sediment all at once, which acted as a support. “You see skin, you see dorsal fins literally sticking straight up in the sediments, species new to science,” he said. As he dug, the momentousness of what he had come across slowly dawned on him. If the site was what he hoped, he had made the most important paleontological discovery of the new century.

(20) HIGH LIFE REVIEW. NPR’s Andrew Lapin concluded: “In The Art-House Sci-Fi Film ‘High Life,’ No Aliens — Just Alienation”.

The spaceship hurtling away from Earth is staffed with men and women sprung from death row to aid in a mysterious science experiment. The once-condemned crew believe they’ve been given a chance to redeem themselves and do one final good deed for humanity. Only later, as their signals to Earth begin to go unanswered and their true mission comes into focus, do they realize they have in fact been condemned twice.

High Life is strange and wondrous, less a traditional sci-fi film than it is a seductive journey into the long, black night of death. For many Americans it will also be a wormhole into the work of French director Claire Denis, who’s been active in cinephile circles for three decades but has never before helmed a movie entirely in English. Of course, having the hipness cred of A24 and Robert Pattinson providing the rocket fuel doesn’t hurt.

A prologue that wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarkovsky film shows Pattinson’s human guinea pig Monte in the aftermath of something horrible, wandering alone on the deck of this rocket to nowhere, with only a mysterious baby keeping him company. It’s a great hook — what the hell happened here? — shot at Denis’ familiar meandering pace, proving that even lightspeed won’t rush her story. It’s also a mission statement. As he hurtles toward oblivion, Monte’s acts of paternal care exist in a kind of vacuum. Maybe life and love are possible within a universe of infinite cruelty, and it’s up to the individual to determine their worth.

(21) ON TRACK. When they write the book it should be titled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Moby Dick“Fossil of ancient four-legged whale found in Peru”.

The fossil of a 43-million-year-old whale with four legs, webbed feet and hooves has been discovered in Peru.

Palaeontologists believe the marine mammal’s four-metre-long (13 ft) body was adapted to swim and walk on land.

With four limbs capable of carrying its weight and a powerful tail, the semi-aquatic whale has been compared to an otter or a beaver.

Researchers believe the discovery could shed light on the evolution of the whale and how it spread.

“This is the most complete specimen ever found for a four-legged whale outside of India and Pakistan,” Dr Olivier Lambert, a scientist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and co-author of the study, said.

(22) SJWCS ARE JUST IGNORING YOU. NPR reports: “Cats Don’t Fetch, But Know Their Names As Well As Dogs, Researchers Say”.

Call a dog by his name, and his tail wags, he starts panting happily, and he showers you with love and affection.

Call a cat by his name, and… well, cats are a bit harder to read. Does the cat even know what his name is?

So researchers in Japan set out to answer the question: Can a cat understand the difference between its name and any other random word that sounds like it?

Research on cats is slim compared to research on dogs. That may be because cats can’t be bothered to participate in the experiments. But in a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, the Japanese researchers devised a way to get results whether or not the cats cared to cooperate.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Greg Hullender, Michael Toman, ULTRAGOTHA, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

110 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/5/19 We Can Scroll It For You Wholesale

  1. 18) Looked up Terra Nullius and bought it. The Kelly Link blurb helped. 🙂

    “Scroll that pixel down, boys
    File that pixel down
    The only song that I can sing is
    Scroll that pixel down.”

  2. 9) Robert Bloch was a very young member of the Lovecraft Circle, the guy who wrote a story in which a character very obviously HPL himself is killed off by a Chthuhuian being (he got permission from HPL, signed by 9 of HPL’s own characters, including Abdul Al-Hazred). Lovecraft then wrote a sequel in which that being killed off the character based on Bloch, using Bloch’s real Milwaukee address; and Bloch wrote a third story in which the being which had killed both their doppelgangers then destroyed the world.

  3. 16. Sigh

    18. Adri came aboard NOAF the same time I did last year. She’s an excellent reviewer.

    1) Only at the Manhattan one. Darn. I got to meet David in Helsinki in 2017. Nice guy. Like his book on conlanging.

  4. 17) Not seeing those comments at the links provided. Do I need to be a Friend, or something?

  5. (19) I read this, and it’s a WOW piece. The writing is excellent, too, and it probably should be a nominee next year for non-fiction/related work.

  6. (2) Perhaps I’d change my mind on reading the essay, but I like being able to make demonstrative jerks vanish with a few keystrokes.

    (9) IMDB confirms that Bette Davis starred in Return from Witch Mountain (1978). My favorite movie of hers is The Nanny, where she plays something close to a monster until [SPOILER] n synfuonpx fhqqrayl gheaf ure vagb n gentvp punenpgre. A powerful little movie.

    A scroll without a pixel is like a walrus without an antenna.

  7. Vox: All six of these novels together won’t sell as many copies as a single Galaxy’s Edge novel.

    Ok, what is a Galaxy’s Edge novel? Surely he’s not referencing Mike Resnik’s magazine, is he?

  8. P J Evans on April 5, 2019 at 6:09 pm said:

    (19) I read this, and it’s a WOW piece. The writing is excellent, too, and it probably should be a nominee next year for non-fiction/related work.

    Several interesting links to other resources on the subject in this thread. (What? You thought this was the only place I could be disagreeable?)

  9. My cats not only respond to their own names, they know all the other cat’s names. If I call out for Leto Purrrtreides, the other two look at him.

  10. ULTRAGOTHA, I’ve met cats that know the word “cheese” – they’re cheese-aholics, and their people had to resort to spelling the word. (My sister is the current person for one of those cats. And yes, the cat gets cheese as a treat.)

  11. Darren, I have a folder on my hard drive containing five stories on it, plus the PNAS paper. (I’ve also asked my sister to save the New Yorker dead-tree edition for me.)

  12. My cats are taking turns being visible to the friend who’s caring for them while I’m in-hospital. There’s always one watching him, rotating between the two of them. Yesterday it was Freya who sat on the bed watching him restock the food and add fresh water.

    Update: the last five days have developed the complication of extreme dizziness and nausea along with spiking blood pressure, really spiking blood pressure. Might be an inner ear problem, possibly an infection. To be determined.

  13. Cat Eldridge: Ok, what is a Galaxy’s Edge novel? Surely he’s not referencing Mike Resnik’s magazine, is he?

    Nah, it’s one of those crappy plot-by-number self-published MilSF series by a couple of authors who have a 20BooksTo50K clone business called “Six-Figure Author”. 🙄

  14. @9: ah yes, Roger Corman — producer of “The Flowers that Kill in the Spring, tra-la!”

    @16: I have visions of an independent audit determining just how few copies of a Galaxy’s Edge novel (whatever that is, per @JJ) were actually sold. I also have visions of a pony fitting my tiny corner lot….

    @18: sounds like the author may have done a large scale version of a mildly stfnal-sounding telling (by Garrett? Piper? ??) of Pizarro’s conquest, but from the other side; about time?

    @Darren Garrison: is the Arrowzing link something I won’t regret clicking, or should it be redone as an Internet Archive link? I’m suspicious of something calling itself “freethought”.

    @Cat Eldridge: so they’re playing Cat Chess with him?

  15. JJ says re my query as to what Galaxy’s Edge is Nah, it’s one of those crappy plot-by-number self-published MilSF series by a couple of authors who have a 20BooksTo50K clone business called “Six-Figure Author”. ?

    Ahhh. Well I doubt any of those books has sold even a tenth of what any of the Hugo nominees have sold to date. So Six Figure Author, my ass.

  16. (22) Cats are nice. Some also play fetch. It just isn’t as popular a sport with cats as with dogs. Cats prefer Catch The Red Dot.

    (16) VD is a bore.

    (19) This really is amazing, and important.

  17. Ok, what is a Galaxy’s Edge novel? Surely he’s not referencing Mike Resnik’s magazine, is he?

    Nope, he’s not. Galaxy’s Edge is a self-published space opera/military SF series by Nick Cole and Jason Anspach. It was quite popular with the Kindle Unlimited crowd last year, though I haven’t seen any new books in the series in a while now. I think Cole and Anspach promoted it as “Star Wars without the SJW stuff”, though to me it seemed like cookie cutter military SF that turned into sort of Star Wars, but told from the POV of Imperial stormtroopers.

    However, Anspach and Cole aren’t Six Figure Author. That’s somebody else, Chris Fox I think, though they all follow the same template.

    As for how many books Galaxy’s Edge has sold, I don’t doubt that some books in the series probably outranked various Hugo finalists on Amazon for a while. However, Galaxy’s Edge is likely Amazon-exclusive, so that’s all the sales it gets. Meanwhile, the Hugo finalists are in every bookstore.

    PS: Get better soon, Cat.

  18. Chip Hitchcock asks me Eldridge: so they’re playing Cat Chess with him?

    More likely being puzzled who he is as I just left and never came back. Certainly I wasn’t expecting a month long stay here or I’d have packed a bag to come with me. My first hint I was staying was when the ER MD took one look at the open elbow and ordered an IV installed followed by getting me in a private ER room with a very fast order for antibiotics

    As it was, I had to get a friend to bring in the iPad charging cord. And I’ve been using hospital personal cleaning supplies. Of course they’ve got their own ideas of hygiene as I get an anti-bacterial wipe down every day…

  19. Chip Hitchcock on April 5, 2019 at 7:49 pm said:

    @Darren Garrison: is the Arrowzing link something I won’t regret clicking, or should it be redone as an Internet Archive link? I’m suspicious of something calling itself “freethought”.

    That is someone else tearing into a JDA blog post, where JDA proves to be an antivaxxer on top of everything else.

  20. @Chip Hitchcock

    Freethought is an atheist blog collective, and P.Z. Myers is a biology professor. I hang out there a fair amount.

  21. Hope your health improves swiftly, Cat.
    Do not stare directly into the scroll, pixel blindness may ensue.

    16) I suspect the six Hugo noms this year comfortable outsell all of Castallia House (if that’s even still a thing).

    17) I’ve only read one of the nominees this year, Space Opera, which I felt was very thin gruel. I kept reading it to find out if it got funny, but it didn’t, mildly amusing was about as far as it got. YMMV, of course. though the gur qrnq onaqzngr frpgvbaf jrer gur zbfg vzcnpshy gb zr. I stalled out in the first Becky Chambers, need to read Revenant Gun as I’ve enjoyed the series so far, and looking forward to Spinning Silver. Of the other two, I didn’t really get on with the lady astronaut short story, and have no idea on the Roanhorse, but it sounds interesting.

    So 50:50 from here, which means that I am going to put together a campaign to destroy the Hu… oh, sorry, it means I’m going to read what I want to read and move on.

    Was disappointed that OctoHeist in Progress didn’t make it as a short, it kind of reminded me of Snowcrash, AKA Neal Stephenson before he started to deforest entire continents.

  22. Chris S.: I’ve only read one of the nominees this year, Space Opera, which I felt was very thin gruel. I kept reading it to find out if it got funny, but it didn’t, mildly amusing was about as far as it got… I stalled out in the first Becky Chambers, need to read Revenant Gun as I’ve enjoyed the series so far, and looking forward to Spinning Silver. Of the other two, I didn’t really get on with the lady astronaut short story, and have no idea on the Roanhorse, but it sounds interesting.

    If it’s any consolation for you, Space Opera was very much not my thing, either; whatever cultural background it is which makes that book really funny for people, I don’t have it. I enjoyed the Chambers, but it’s a quiet book, not a flashy one, and very character-oriented, which may or may not suit a lot of people. I thought that Steve J. Wright (no relation) did a really thoughtful review of it here.

    I think that the author really nails the landing in Revenant Gun; since it’s not a standalone novel, it won’t rank as highly on my novel ballot, but it’s one of the Top Two for me in the Series category. I think that Spinning Silver is really well-written and makes beautiful use of the folktales and fairytales from which it is drawn, but the ending really pissed me off and I’m not sure how I’ll rank it.

    I really liked The Calculating Stars (and The Fated Sky). There are some issues with it, but I thought overall it was excellent. I would recommend giving the excerpt a try; if that doesn’t work for you, then the book probably won’t, either. The synopsis for Trail of Lightning holds no appeal for me whatsoever, but I’m going to at least try the excerpt, and if that doesn’t do anything for me, just leave it off my ballot.

  23. #21 – I’m reminded of the long ago days when BC was funny: Whales got legs!
    (and “Pixels got scrolls!” too.)

  24. I hang out at PZ’s “Pharyngula” darn near as much as I do here. I understand how “freethought” might seem like an alarm bell, but the host and his regulars are, indeed, good thinkers. The ongoing “political madness” thread is one of my most valued news firehoses these days.

  25. (1) I am waiting impatiently for a promised Shake Shack to open down the street. In what used to be an organic health food grocery. Sign of the times?

    (2) I would probably have more opinions about cancel culture if I socialized with the other YA writers more, but I spent too many years not writing because I figured it wasn’t worth the effort of dealing with all those vicious angry negative people trying to solve the world’s problems via interpersonal aggression. I will confess to just a little bit of schadenfreude.

    (14) You can appertain a whole lot with $90k. Now that I have finally retained the services of a professional editor to help me deal with all the typos I can’t reach, I’m going to have to hang onto a few of my typo-riddled first editions, just in case I eventually write something praiseworthy and/or the value of typo-infested first editions continues to increase. I went through a brief anti-editor phase after the last one but I seem to be recovering.

  26. Kip Williams on April 5, 2019 at 9:20 pm said:

    I hang out at PZ’s “Pharyngula” darn near as much as I do here.

    Did you get my e-mail a while back about the “death of a cell” post you commented on? PZ was dismissive when asked specifically why the cell died, but I had worked it out a while before PZ posted the video.

  27. StephenfromOttawa: 17) Not seeing those comments at the links provided. Do I need to be a Friend, or something?

    Yes. And rats! I made a mistake. I ordinarily avoid linking to FB that isn’t set to Public.

  28. I want to read SPACE OPERA in part because I once interviewed Israel’s Eurovision contestant for The AP’s Jerusalem bureau. (I said to my editor, “EUROvision? Did you notice we’re in the Middle East here?”) So, you know, memory lane. Just came across the article 2 days ago when organizing some old files.

    Also, can I have $300? That’s the sum I bet that some whiny Puppy would say exactly what VD has (I see here) just said about the Hugo finalists. He is not only a bore, he is predictable to the point of being a sure thing.

    And cats do indeed know their names. Well, some, anyhow. I volunteer in cat rescue, and I have 4 cats of my own. So there are often 6-8 felines in this house (and occasionally, as many as 12). And in this multi-cat environment, if I call for any one of my own cats by name, that cat shows up (and not just at feeding time). I also currently have a foster kitten who knows his name–same thing, out of all the names I use around here, he reacts when I use his.

  29. I’m pretty sure every cat I’ve had (a total of 9 over the past 35 years) has known his/her name. I’m not at all sure they have quite the same notion of what names are that we do. Mera, a beautiful gray tabby, used to answer “Mehwa?” when I called her.

    She wasn’t the world’s smartest cat. She’d answer my calling even when she was hiding from me.

  30. Mine not knew they’re names, they recognise the tone of voice used with it, i.e. a quiet pissed Talley means I’m not at all pleased with what you just did and he usually takes that to leave me alone for a while.

    They also recognise “Who’s hungry? and “Who wants to eat?” as complex sentences so that just saying hungry doesn’t by itself trigger anything. As I said above, tone is something they’re acutely aware of as well.

    Restless night here at Maine Medical, day 25. The vertigo as the RN puts it is strong enough at times to wake me up. Headache of course is just being itself — strong and annoying. No word yet from the medical team.

  31. Laura Resnick correctly notes Also, can I have $300? That’s the sum I bet that some whiny Puppy would say exactly what VD has (I see here) just said about the Hugo finalists. He is not only a bore, he is predictable to the point of being a sure thing.

    I’m sure that brainless group of always pissing on themselves and others Puppies (no, I don’t like them ‘tall) will no doubt turn it into a meme before long. Afterall the Great and Powerful Vox said it, therefore it’s TRUE.

  32. Kip Williams@2: “Perhaps I’d change my mind on reading the essay, but I like being able to make demonstrative jerks vanish with a few keystrokes.”

    I too doubt it would change your emotions, but it might change your thinking about your emotions. I’m figuring out right now how to present it in a way that gets people to read it who normally wouldn’t ever even see it. It’s good enough to not simply signal-boost. It deserves more.

  33. 9) Bette Davis was also in Watcher in the Woods, a Disney film which is also the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in the theater. (Caveat: I would have been 12 or so.) My 7 year old brother actually had to leave the theater midway through.

    My first encounter with Robert Bloch (although I didn’t know it at the time) would have been the story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”, which I encountered in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology book at the public library, and which I also found pretty darned scary at the time.

  34. @Anne Sheller–No, they don’t have the same notion of what names are. Both dogs and cats know their humans make that sound when there’s something for them specifically to pay attention to. They’ll often similarly know the sounds you make for the attention of other pets and humans in the household. But in and of itself it has no emotional significance for them, which is why it is almost always both okay and easy to rename a newly adopted pet in your home if you want to.

    If they have individual identifiers for us, it’s more likely to be a scent that they associate with us.

  35. @Mike: Sorry about the bare ruined click where late the Scrolled birds sang. I’m out of town on business for the next while (including weekends), so I may just be “clicking” most days, so I can keep up with the conversation, even if not participating (much).

  36. 16) If anyone is interested in relative sales figures, here are some to peruse from yesterday. I have off-and-on kept track of Amazon sales rankings for more than a year, comparing various works and authors to Correia works — Correia because he is the ur-puppy, and puppy types constantly go on about how popular he is and how many books he sells.

    I am happy to report that the majority of Nebula and Hugo nominees consistently outsell his books of similar vintage (comparing 2018 books to 2018 books, 2019 books to 2019 books, and so on).

    Oh, and I only look at “paid in Kindle store” rankings to give them all a consistent basis for comparison. And I rarely bother to look at “free from KU” books, because — duh — the reader doesn’t actually have to pay for them!

    rankings from 4/5/19:

    Spinning Silver — #4,697
    Witchmark — #38,820
    Calculating Stars — #6,117
    Blackfish City — #67,291
    The Poppy War — #20,320
    Trail of Lightning — #5,001
    Revenant Gun — #19,802
    Space Opera — #14,178
    Record of a Spaceborn Few — #20,853

    (Jemisin)
    The Fifth Season — #1,974
    The Obelisk Gate — #2,753
    The Stone Sky — #6,231

    (Scalzi)
    The Collapsing Empire — #9,020
    The Consuming Fire — #4,837

    (Correia, 2018)
    Target Rich Environment (2018) — #47,151
    Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints (2018) — #44,575

  37. 2018 Novella Reading

    Icefall by Stephanie Gunn, Twelfth Planet Press (excerpt)

    Synopsis: The Mountain on the planet of Icefall holds the mystery to a lost colony and an irresistible, fatal allure to the climbers of the universe – every one of whom has mysteriously died in the attempt to reach the summit – but Maggie is determined to be the first to reach the top. Aisha, once seriously injured in a climbing incident herself, has always supported her wife, trusting that Maggie would always return from her adventures. But no one ever returns from the Mountain.

    What I Thought: This finalist for the Aurealis Award for Best SF Novella is a story of obsession and how it can lead people to make choices which destroy them – but it’s also a story of strange mysteries, and learning to cope with traumatic physical and psychological injury.

    Although this story takes place hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now, when planets all over the galaxy have been terraformed and colonized and the geography of the Earth has long been destroyed, it contains numerous references to 20th-century people, countries, ethnicities, and geographical features, which is incongruous enough to impair suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting story steeped in mountain-climbing lore and technical details, with some intriguing futuristic technology.

  38. I didn’t like A Closed and Common Orbit, the only Chambers work I’ve read. I thought Revenant Gun was fine, but for me the first volume of the trilogy was the one that had the big impact. I’ve really enjoyed some of Valente’s work, but to me Eurovision holds no charm or interest, so the premise of Space Opera hasn’t seemed attractive. I was kind of lukewarm about the “Lady Astronaut of Mars” short story. I did like Roanhorse’s Hugo winning short story from last year, but the descriptions I’ve seen of her novel don’t sound like the sort of thing that wins Hugos.

    So having said all that, I’ll read the Roanhorse, Valente, and Kowal, and maybe even the Chambers novel hoping that they are excellent and the kind of thing I can enjoy.

  39. @JJ —

    I think that Spinning Silver is really well-written and makes beautiful use of the folktales and fairytales from which it is drawn, but the ending really pissed me off and I’m not sure how I’ll rank it.

    What annoyed you about the ending?

  40. Re: JDA’s latest and anti-vaxers generally, there’s this quote from today’s Guardian:

    Sam Kovac can’t say for sure what prompted it, but in the past few weeks the Sydney veterinarian has been faced with the same alarming, beguiling question over and over: “Will this vaccination give my dog autism?”

    That’s the Guardian, not the Onion!

  41. (2) Foz makes some good points, but she doesn’t really offer any answers. I like to think the real problem is just that we as a society haven’t worked out how to deal with the internet in terms of things like “good manners,” and that a lot of the problems we’re seeing will go away by themselves over time.

    Key to that happening is finding a way to sharply restrict anonymity. People are much better behaved when they think they might be held accountable for things they say by people they encounter in the real world. There’s a place for anonymity–discussion groups for people thinking of coming out of the closet, for example–but on today’s Internet, it’s hard not to be anonymous, and I think it’ll be impossible to make much progress while that continues to be the case.

  42. @Joe H – I didn’t see it in the theater, but I was similarly scared by Watcher in the Woods at a young age. Just last year I tracked down a copy of the book, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

    @Anne Sheller – my last girl cat was such a fan of attention and petting that all I had to do to get her out from under beds or other places she was hiding was to bend down and stick my hand out. She’d zoom right to it for petting. 🙂

  43. @Greg
    Being anonymous – or at least not easily identifiable – is crucial for a lot of people on the Internet. (Haven’t you read about people being threatened?)

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