(1) HUGO CONTENDING ART BOOKS. The Daily Beast gives a rundown — “These Are 2019’s Hugo Awards Art Book Finalists”.
… We compiled the six art book finalists below to give you an idea of what’s competing for the venerable award in August, along with some information about them from Amazon….
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, $36 on Amazon: Illustrated by Charles Vess, Written by Ursula K. Le Guin. “Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the timeless and beloved A Wizard of Earthsea, this complete omnibus edition of the entire Earthsea chronicles includes over fifty illustrations illuminating Le Guin’s vision of her classic saga.”
(2) LARSON & JACKSON TOGETHER AGAIN. NPR’s Linda Holmes says “Brie Larson’s Directorial Debut Glitters With The Charming ‘Unicorn Store'”.
“Bringing a unicorn here is not an easy or inexpensive endeavor. You have to be the right sort of girl.”
The right sort of girl.
The backbone of Brie Larson’s offbeat directorial debut, the comedy Unicorn Store, is the idea of what it means to be the right sort of girl. Larson plays Kit, a woman pushing 30 who lives with her parents and favors an aesthetic heavy on rainbows, glitter and — yes — unicorns. And after she receives a couple of mysterious magical letters, she finds herself in the company of a man who calls himself The Salesman (Samuel L. Jackson). He’s the one who says these words, who tells her that she’s in line for a unicorn of her own. But she has to earn it. She has to be stable. She has to make a home for it. She has to be an adult, ironically, to be the right companion for a unicorn.
(3) NICE TRY? BBC reports “Google’s ethics board shut down”.
An independent group set up to oversee Google’s artificial intelligence efforts, has been shut down less than a fortnight after it was launched.
The Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) was due to look at the ethics around AI, machine learning and facial recognition.
One member resigned and there were calls for another to be removed.
The debacle raises questions about whether firms should set up such bodies.
Google told the BBC: “It’s become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can’t function as we wanted.
“So we’re ending the council and going back to the drawing board. We’ll continue to be responsible in our work on the important issues that AI raises, and will find different ways of getting outside opinions on these topics.”
There had been an outcry over the appointment of Kay Coles James, who is president of conservative thinktank The Heritage Foundation. Thousands of Google employees signed a petition calling for her removal, over what they described as “anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant” comments.
(4) HEY RUBE. Steve Davidson complains that he can’t evaluate what technical changes make Archive of Our Own eligible in the 2019 Hugo category for which it was nominated, then, disregarding the argument he just made, asks why AO3 wasn’t nominated in another category that isn’t designed to recognize technical changes: “The Hugo Awards Best Related Work Category and the AO3 Nomination” at Amazing Stories.
In terms of AO3, since I can’t see the “change”, how am I to judge the substantiability? Maybe, in my mind, it isn’t transformative enough to warrant a vote. But I can’t make that judgement because I have no reference. I do not have the opportunity to weigh in on the Hugo Administrator’s choices.
Third: we’ve already determined that websites can qualify under the Best Fanzine category and we can read right in the definition of Best Related Work that works qualify for that category “provided that they do not qualify for another category”.
Why doesn’t a website featuring fanfic qualify for the Best Fanzine category? Call me a rube, but I can hardly think of a better category for a collection of fanfic than Best Fanzine. In fact, I seem to recall that a bunch of highly regarded professional authors published their fanfic in…fanzines. (The printed kind that some of you may not be familiar with.)
(5) BOOKS SHE LOVES. Shelf Awareness brings you “Reading with… Sarah Pinsker”:
Book you’re an evangelist for:
Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. It’s a wordless depiction of an immigration experience. The protagonist doesn’t share a language with anyone in his new country; their language is gibberish to him and gibberish to the reader. Any item we might recognize is rendered in such a way as to make it foreign to the reader as well, so we experience the confusion that the man feels: strange fruit, strange animals, strange monuments. Tan’s illustrations tell the immigrant’s story a thousand times better than words could have.
Book you’ve bought for the cover:
Saga Press is reissuing three Molly Gloss novels over the next few months (Outside the Gates,Dazzle of DayandWild Life) followed by her first collection, Unforeseen. I already had two of the books, but I’ve preordered all four of these both for her prose and the gorgeously stark matching covers by Jeffrey Alan Love.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- April 6, 1967 — Star Trek’s “City on the Edge of Forever”, written by Harlan Ellison, first aired.
- April 6, 1968 — 2001: A Space Odyssey was released.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born April 6, 1905 — Thomas P. Kelley. Writer of Thirties pulp novels that were serialised first in Weird Tales (The Last Pharaoh, A Million Years in the Future and I Found Cleopatra), Uncanny Tales (The Talking Heads) and Eerie Tales (The Weird Queen). (Died 1982.)
- Born April 6, 1918 — Kaaren Verne. She appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon as Charlotte Eberli. The film btw was very much fanfic bearing little resemblance to the original premise of Holmes. She also appeared in The Twilight Zone, Kraft Suspense Theatre and Fireside Theatre (freelance writers such as Rod Serling were a script source for the latter). (Died 1967.)
- Born April 6, 1935 — Douglas Hill. Prolific writer of short novels for both adults and younger of a sword and sorcery bent even when within an SF setting. Best known series include The Last Legionary, Demon Stalker and Huntsman. He served for a short period as assistant editor of the New Worlds magazine under Michael Moorcock. (Died 2007.)
- Born April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 82. He is best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, first appearing in The Empire Strikes Back. Other genre appearances include being Harvey Dent in Batman and voicing Two Face In The Lego Batman Movie.
- Born April 6, 1947 — John Ratzenberger, 72. In-house voice actor for Pixar whose roles have included Hamm in the Toy Story franchise, The Abominable Snowman in the Monsters, Inc. franchise, The Underminer in The Incredibles franchise, and Mack in the Cars franchise. He made minor live appearances in Superman and Superman II.
- Born April 6, 1948 — Larry Todd, 71. Writer and cartoonist, best known for the decidedly adult Dr. Atomic strips that originally appeared in the underground newspaper The Sunday Paper and his other work in underground comics, often with a SF bent. In our circles, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Science Fiction and Imagination magazines being three of his venues. He also did some writing for If magazine. He also did, and it’s really weird art, the cover art and interior illustrations for Harlan Ellison’s Chocolate Alphabet.
- Born April 6, 1981 — Eliza Coupe, 38. Tiger, one three main roles in Future Man, a web series where a video game apparently is actually real and deadly. She also had a recurring role on Quantico as Hannah Wyland, a series I swear is edging into genre. She was also in Monster Mash (also known as Monster Mash: The Movie and Frankenstein Sings), based on the Bobby “Boris” Pickett song “Monster Mash” and other sources.
(8) SPOTTED OWL. Mike Lawson has won the Spotted Owl Award for his mystery House Witness. The Spotted Owl Award is handed out by a group called Friends of Mystery, based in Portland, Oregon. Eligible are mysteries written by authors from the Pacific Northwest. The finalists were —
- Baron Birtcher – Fistful Of Rain
- Robert Dugoni – A Steep Price
- Warren Easley – Moving Targets
- G.M. Ford – Soul Survivor
- Elizabeth George – The Punishment She Deserves
- Stephen Holgate – Madagascar
- Mike Lawson – House Witness – winner
- Martin Limon – The Line
- John Straley – Baby’s First Felony
- Jon Talton – The Bomb Shelter
(9) CARTER BROWN. The winner of the inaugural Carter Brown Mystery Writing Award has also been announced:
- Alibi for a Dead Man by Wilson Toney
The award is named in honor of the prolific Australian author Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka Carter Brown).
(10) MARKETPLACE. Here’s a service someone should start:
(11) WATCH OUT FOR THOSE BOUNDERS. Jim C. Hines referees “Bounding Into Comics vs. Fonda Lee” and finds it’s definitely not a fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.
I got to meet and hang out with author Fonda Lee at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop a few years back. Recently, Lee was at Barnes and Noble and observed:
“This is what modern fantasy writers are up against. In my local B&N, most authors are lucky to find a copy of their book, super lucky if it’s face out. There are 3.5 shelves for Tolkien. 1.5 for Jordan. Here’s who we compete against for shelf space: not each other, but dead guys.” (Source)
Her Tweets got a lot of attention, leading to an article by John Trent at Bounding Into Comics that derides Lee and accuses her, among other things, of criticizing Tolkien. Not that Lee ever did this. Her second Tweet in that thread said, “Before you @ me about the importance of classics, I love LOTR too, okay?” One might almost suspect Trent’s comment, “Lee isn’t the first person to criticize Tolkien,” of being an attempt to stir up shit.
An effective attempt, it seems. Lee has been barraged by Tolkien Defenders over on Twitter….
(12) THE BREW THAT IS TRUE. “How Artificial Intelligence Is Used To Make Beer”.—Forbes has the story.
There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can make our world more productive and effective. There are even breweries that are using AI to enhance beer production. Is this brilliant or unbelievable? While it’s admittedly too soon to tell, using data to inform brewmasters’ decisions and the possibility of personalized brews makes AI-brewed beer definitely intriguing.
(13) SJWC RETRACTION. Yesterday’s NPR-headline Pixel was quickly corrected: “All Right. Some Cats Do Fetch”.
A tongue-in-cheek NPR.org headline comparing the fetching abilities of cats and dogs revealed a truth known by countless cat owners: Some cats do fetch.
“Cats Don’t Fetch, But Know Their Names As Well As Dogs, Researchers Say,” the original headline proclaimed. This didn’t sit well with some readers.
“In what world do cats not fetch?” Kate Haffey commented on Facebook.
“Artemis knows her name and fetches,” Brandi Whitson said on Twitter. “She’s obsessed.” …
(14) HAPPINESS IS… And while we’re pushing your buttons, read this article in the Portland (ME) Press-Herald — “Dog owners are much happier than cat owners, survey finds”.
The well-respected survey that’s been a barometer of American politics, culture and behavior for more than four decades finally got around to the question that has bedeviled many a household.
Dog or cat?
In 2018, the General Social Survey for the first time included a battery of questions on pet ownership. The findings not only quantified the nation’s pet population – nearly 6 in 10 households have at least one -they made it possible to see how pet ownership overlaps with all sorts of factors of interest to social scientists.
Like happiness.
For starters, there is little difference between pet owners and non-owners when it comes to happiness, the survey shows. The two groups are statistically indistinguishable on the likelihood of identifying as “very happy” (a little over 30 percent) or “not too happy” (in the mid-teens).
But when you break the data down by pet type – cats, dogs or both – a stunning divide emerges: Dog owners are about twice as likely as cat owners to say they’re very happy, with people owning both falling somewhere in between.
(15) HISTORIC GADGET. “Heath Robinson: WW2 codebreaking machine reconstructed” – BBC has the story. For any Filers not in on the joke: the US equivalent to Heath Robinson is Rube Goldberg — but this machine worked.
A World War Two codebreaking machine has been reconstructed after a seven-year project so it can run in public for the first time.
The Heath Robinson has been restored at The National Museum of Computing in Milton Keynes by a team of six.
The machine was an early attempt to automate code-cracking and, due to its complexity, was named after the illustrator W Heath Robinson.
Phil Hayes, of the museum, said the work was “quite an achievement”.
He said it completed using a hand-drawn circuit diagram along with replica circuits based on 1940s technology.
(16) OLD HABITS DIE HARD. CNN wondered why “Why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVDs in the mail”. They came up with six reasons. In the process, they made Cat Eldridge’s day: “Years ago I had an argument with a techie who insisted that new technologies always drive out old technologies. I said that’s simply not true. And here’s proof of that.” Cat and Bruce Sterling agree.
Remember when Netflix used to be a DVD-by-mail company? Well, for 2.7 million subscribers in the US, it still is.
The familiar red envelopes have been arriving in customers’ mailboxes since 1998 and helped earn the company a healthy $212 million profit last year.
Why are so many people still using this old-school service in the age of streaming? There are a number of reasons.
(17) FIRE IN THE HOLE. NPR watches as “Japan (Very Carefully) Drops Plastic Explosives Onto An Asteroid”.
Early Friday morning, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft detonated an explosive device over a small asteroid. The goal was to create a fresh crater that will later be studied by the spacecraft.
Researchers watched from mission control in Sagamihara, Japan, and clapped politely as Hayabusa2 released an experiment known as the Small Carry-on Impactor. The device consisted of a copper disk packed with HMX high-explosive. Once the mothership had safely moved out of the line of fire, the impactor apparently detonated, firing the disk into the side of the asteroid. A camera released by Hayabusa2 appeared to catch the moment of impact, which sent a stream of ejecta into space.
…”These particular asteroids are the precursors to what Earth was made from,” Connolly says. Ryugu is rich in carbon, and minerals on its surface contain water and so-called prebiotic compounds that could have started life on this planet.
“Ryugu is a time capsule,” says Connolly.
This is not Hayabusa2’s first attack. In February, the spacecraft physically touched down on Ryugu and fired a small pellet into its surface. The dust kicked up by that opening shot was collected and eventually will provide researchers with detailed information about the asteroid’s makeup.
But to really understand Ryugu, researchers also want to know what’s down there, and that’s why they created Friday’s crater. In a few weeks, after the dust has settled, the little spacecraft will survey the blast site to see what lies beneath. It may even land a second time to collect subsurface samples.
(18) CLASSIC APOLLO 11 PUBLICITY RESOURCE. In honor of the flight’s 50th anniversary, David Meerman Scott has scanned in his collection of Apollo 11 press kits:
Press kits prepared by the public relations staff at the major contractors for the Apollo 11 mission provided valuable additional information not found in NASA issued news releases. Reporters and editors from media outlets including television and newspapers had access to such documents from dozens of manufacturers while working on stories about the first lunar landing.
(19) STAR TREK FAN FILM. Gizmodo/io9 is drawing your attention to a fan film (“Temporal Anomaly is a Star Trek Fan Film Half a Decade in the Making”). The film appears as two parts, each from 24–27 minutes each.
First conceived and pitched to Kickstarter backers in 2013, Temporal Anomaly is an ambitious fan project set in the Star Trek universe, a nearly hour-long fan film created by Power543 Fan Films.
(20) DISCOVERY. The Popcast analyzes The Borg Paradox.
If you thought the last Paradox was good, you’re going to love this one. The Borg are here and Resistance is Futile!
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Stephen Cunnane, in “Gary the Gargoyle: Short and Breakdown” on Vimeo, offers a short fiilm about a gargoyle and an analysis of how the creatures in the film were designed.
[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Cora Buhlert, Conrarius, John King Tarpinian, Bill, rcade, Martin Morse Wooster, Dann, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
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Arifel: This is just like the time all us EU citizens won the Nobel Peace Prize…
And the Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2006! 😀
@JJ: Thanks for all your comments; I appreciate them a lot (and I’ll go over to Cam’s to see what you’ve written there!).
I agree that this isn’t going to be resolved by any one conversation between a few particular people ending with “Ohhhh there is a clear-cut unambiguous answer here!” 😛 (I do look forward to the voting packet, though.)
Not to prolong the discussion of details, but: It makes sense to me that a series running 2017-2018 should be nominated in 2018 for one 2017’s work only; but that gets complicated as soon as it’s more than one year. A series running, e.g., 2016-2018, IMHO shouldn’t be able to be nominated, in 2018 for both 2016 and 2017; it should either be nominated just for 2017, or else in 2019 it should be nominated for the entire series.
OTOH, I see your point, and I understand your interpretation, even if I see things differently.
Thanks again, and best of luck to AO3 🙂
Today (April 6, anyway) was also the day in 1917 the US entered WWI. I remember this because it is also the day my mother was born. And strangely, my maternal grandparents were married on July 28, 1914–the day World War I started. ObSF connection: Tolkien and other authors were transformed by realities of WWI.
Hampus: “I continue to be confused of what this site you s nominated for. The category says ” “either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.”.
[snip]
So what is the Non-Fiction or content that was nominated?”
Judging by your subsequent posts and responses to others, it seems to me that you are focused on this section of the rule: “…which is either non-fiction, or…” May I suggest you focus on this part of the rule: “…if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.” (emphasis mine).
Consider that if Dublin hadn’t added a Best Art Book category this year, then the Earthsea book would have qualified under Best Related. The book is primarily fiction, but the ‘noteworthy aspects other than the fiction’ are the illustrations.
The ‘noteworthy aspects other than the fiction’ for AO3’s nomination are the platform design elements. And I suggest to everyone that they wait for the packet. It seems to me that the fundamental question everyone has regarding the eligibility of this nomination, or which elements to judge, can only be answered at that time. I note that the nomination has already been deemed eligible by the administrators, who while not perfect, are in a better position to judge the question.
And for the people who think it should have been nominated under Best Fanzine: I don’t see any of you being upset by the nominations in the Best Fancast category, which are all essentially audio fanzines. I have never understood why, if audio books can be eligible for Best Novel, then audio or video fanzines aren’t eligible for Best Fanzine. But I digress…
And on a less contentious subject –
(10) This service does exist, in a way. I use howjsay.com, but there are others, too.
Pingback: NEWS FROM FANDOM: April 7, 2019 - Amazing Stories
4) In re: AO3’s nomination, Mr. Davidson asked a question which I was also wondering about-why AO3 would be ineligible for Fanzine.
I have no dog in this hunt. I have zero problems with AO3’s nomination. I just wondered about Fanzine. So I read the rules for Fanzine just now and I believe I can answer that to my satisfaction, if to no one else’s. AO3 is, so far as I’m aware, not “published serially” (i.e., in issues) and a minimum of four issues is required to be eligible for Fanzine, Fancast or Semiprozine. AO3 isn’t published serially as far as I know, so those categories wouldn’t apply.
As to its nomination in Related Work, I defer to the Hugo administrators in their determination that it qualifies, at least for this year. I would still prefer that a standalone work win Related, but AO3 is eligible imo.
No one is upset because the rules for fanzine specifically exclude anything that qualifies as a fancast:
Given that kind of question, it would be helpful to learn in the Hugo voters packet, or via other means, what parts of AO3 were created in 2018.
@rcade: I wonder whether it would be helpful to somehow compile a list questions I hope the Voter Packet (or some other statement from AO3?) will address? Or whether that’d mostly be contentious and gatekeeper-ish?
Non-fiction can be a more difficult definition than you might think. Many public libraries, for instance, file poetry and plays in their non-fiction sections. Not to mention books that are just collections of art. Is art factual? Especially when it’s depicting something that never happened? (Or, as my spouse just postulated, is it that it is a fact that someone made the art, and the corresponding book is non-fiction because of that?)
And then there’s religious texts like the Bible. They get filed in non-fiction, but I don’t think I need to explain why people have arguments about it.
And then there’s books about Bigfoot by people who claim that Bigfoot is real.
Anyway, I’m not saying that the library categories line up with the Hugo categories, but I do think they might affect people’s subconscious ideas about things.
@Arifel: and I never congratulated you about that! Please accept my congratulations now.
@JJ: The Time magazine cover leads me to think of a 2nd person story: “You find yourself nominated for a Hugo award. Do you decline it? Y/N”
rcade: “The rules for fanzine specifically exclude anything that qualifies as a fancast”
Yes, that change was made when Best Fancast was added in order to make the category work. Which I hope will illustrate the point I was trying to make, i.e., that the Hugo Awards aren’t entirely logical or consistent. So perhaps everybody should just ease up a little on the rules-lawyering.
“I wonder whether it would be helpful to somehow compile a list questions I hope the Voter Packet (or some other statement from AO3?) will address?”
One might wonder if they will include the 1943 version of “The Weapon Makers” rather than the heavily revised 1952 version that is what is available now.
@Hampus
I don’t think this is a language issue. I interpret that text the same way you do.
At the root of this, I think, is a desire by a lot of people to “award a Hugo for fan fiction.” I doubt anyone really wants to give an award to AO3 for the software platform; they want an award that recognizes the fan fiction that’s inside it. (You see that in all the tweets from people saying “I’m a Hugo nominee for my fan fic!”)
The argument that although AO3 contains fiction, it’s most notable for its non-fictional parts has an interesting implication: it suggests that all that fan fiction is so bad that only the software that manages it is of interest. No one is making that argument, though, which suggests they really do believe that the fan fic is the most important thing about the site.
In my view, then, AO3 should be ineligible for this award.
Greg, you’re missing the point. Again.
It’s not about fanfic (or the fan art): it’s about it being a library for fanfic, where you can find what you want to read without (usually) needing an expert to guide you.
(I’m sorry you don’t seem to like or understand fanfic. You’re missing so much.)
It would not be the first time people voted for something in pursuit of acceptance of what the nominee symbolizes for them.
Of course, whether it’s good or bad, the fan fiction is only eligible as individual works in the wordcount fiction categories.
@Greg —
**If** I voted for AO3, it would NOT be for the fiction itself (some of which is good, some execrable). I would be voting for the community and opportunities that are so successfully fostered by the platform. (And Hampus, these would be the non-fictional aspects.)
@Standback —
Thanks for your thoughtful input. Some of the best I’ve seen so far.
And to whoever it was that mentioned Worldcon — exactly. If something like AO3 is eligible, why isn’t something like Worldcon?
P J Evans says Greg, you’re missing the point. Again.
It’s not about fanfic (or the fan art): it’s about it being a library for fanfic, where you can find what you want to read without (usually) needing an expert to guide you.
(I’m sorry you don’t seem to like or understand fanfic. You’re missing so much.)
Even better yet, they’ve created something truly different and that’s worth supporting. It really does seem that much of the opposition to this nomination is a dislike of fanfic which is a pity as some of it is damn fine writing. Indeed some of it is better than much of the MilSF being shoveled out over at Baen these days. Don’t believe me? Just read some of the later Man-Kzin fiction which frankly is truly worse that the Trek video fanfic and that is pretty awful.
Andrew:
That is an excellent poem.
— that describes our living/dining room to a T.
Speaking of! For the first time in history, I had read ALL of the Best Novel nominees before the ballot dropped. I’m astonished.
For Best Series, Science Daughter & I would like some guidelines on starting places for The Laundry Files (which I’ve read most of already) and October Daye. Which book or two is the best intro for each of those series?
For BDP Short form, Mr Dr & I have been watching The Expanse and The Good Place all along, but Daughter has not. Do any of you know of a “most important eps” list for each of those series? Mr Dr & I are perfectly willing to re-watch as much as necessary, but we don’t watch that much TV in a normal week so Daughter wants the Good Parts Version.
@Greg: Here are a few true things:
1. I don’t like having to plow through ten stories I don’t like looking for a story I might like.
2. I don’t like being faced with hundreds of short descriptions, or loglines, when trying to find a story, movie or TV show to watch. It’s too overwhelming and I use up all my time trying to find content instead of enjoying the content. This is as true as applied to Netflix as it is applied to short fiction recommendation sites like Rocket Stack Rank and as it is to fanfic archives like AO3.
3. I did not include AO3 in my nomination this year or any previous year.
4. When considering where to rank AO3 on my ballot, I am considering its functionality as a site and not its fiction.
5. I did consider the functionality of Rocket Stack Rank as one of the reasons I included it in my nominations. But considering the functionality of your site did not mean that I thought the writing of your reviews was so bad that only the design of it was of interest.
I’ve always considered Rocket Stack Rank to be a valuable resource for me in finding good stories to read because of how it is designed. So, yes, some of us really do place a lot of emphasis on how well a site does what it sets out to do.
I was simply expanding on what you said (which only listed some of the Pixar films). I think the fact that he’s been in every Pixar feature film is noteworthy.
For me, at least, nominating AO3 is very much like nominating, say, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. They’re tools for getting at fiction, and (in their different ways) learning about the various neighborhoods and categories pieces of fiction inhabit, along with (in many cases) info about the creators and their neighborhoods and categories.
@Doctor Science
I assume you’re after something less trite than “the start”? For the Laundry, if you’re interested in just trying one thing to see if you like the flavour, maybe one of the novellas like Equoid? It’s conveniently online, gives the flavour, stands alone fairly well, and doesn’t spoil much beyond the basic concept.
Mark:
I guess I meant “is there a place to begin besides the start, as for Discworld.” The first one our public library system has is The Fuller Memorandum, so I’ll re-read that & then decide if it or Equoid is more to her taste.
(10) The poem The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité seems relevant – inasmuch as it gives hints and examples at least!
I would rank AO3 high in the Hugos if:
1. They are a new innovation – From what little that I can see by poking around the site, related news articles, and its GitHub location (and I know virtually nothing about GitHub), the site has been around since at least 2014.
2. The expansions in functionality are extraordinarily significant – When I say extraordinarily, I mean revolutionary. Not just improvents in user interfaces. I’m not getting the idea that the actual functionality of the site has radically changed in an incredible way.
3. The concept of fanfic needs to be recognized by the Hugos – Despite the antipathy that some have towards fanfic (I have a “best of times”/“worst of times” attitude myself), we all know that fanfic is gigantic. When I have gone to cons, virtually every other person I talk to is writing it. I don’t think fanfic as a genre needs to be acknowledged by the Hugos when it is doing fine all by itself.
In this case, differing opinions/arguments/corrections would be great.
I like this explanation.
@Doctor Science
I can see The Fuller Memorandum working as a jumping on point to some extent, it’s the start of Bob’s power curve, and personally I think it’s the one where the series finds its feet for the king run rather than the high concept hijinks of the first couple of books.
I also recall that The Nightmare Stacks was meant to be an intermediate jumping on point, with a new character and new antagonists.
@Doctor Science
For DP-SF, I can try to recommend a good primer on The Good Place. It’s a bit difficult because the episodes are decidedly not stand-alone – they all build on each other. And the charm of the show comes in the development of character and story, but here goes.
1.01 – Everything is Fine, 1.04 – Jason Mendoza, 1.07 – The Eternal Shriek, 1.10 – Chidi’s Choice, 1.13 – Michael’s Gambit, 2.01 – Everything is Great!, 2.02 – Dance, Dance Resolution, 2.04 – Team Cockroach, 2.07 – Janet and Michael, 2.10 – Best Self, 2.12 – Somewhere Else, 3.02 – The Brainy Bunch.
That should take you up to 3.04 – Jeremy Bearimy. I actually think you can go straight from that to the next finalist ep 3.09 – Janet(s), but if you want more context for it, then I suggest first watching 3.08 – Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By.
On the other hand, if you want a more condensed list, then I suggest 1.01 – Everything is Fine, 1.13 – Michael’s Gambit, 2.04 – Team Cockroach 2.10 – Best Self, 2.12 – Somewhere Else, 3.02 – The Brainy Bunch.
Lorien:
Thank you SO MUCH!
@Doctor Science: Unless the reader has a high tolerance for squickitude, I would suggest either “Down on the Farm” or “Overtime”, rather than “Equoid””, which earns its content warnings and then some.
That said, I mostly haven’t had the later novels fall into my orbit, so I don’t know whether they, too, have gotten more intense. If they have, then “Equoid” might be a better choice. To me, “Equoid” is more horror than anything else, while the other two stories are more science fantasy. That they cross genre as they do is one of their charms.
Mark says I also recall that The Nightmare Stacks was meant to be an intermediate jumping on point, with a new character and new antagonists.
I agree it’s a easonable place to start as well.
Whatever you do, make sure to read The Annihilation Score as it is narrated by Dominique “Mo” O’Brien, the somewhat estranged wife of Bob Howard, at this point in the series continuity. She’s the possessor of a Cursed Object, to wit a violin that can literally kill. Stross gives her a unique voice with a decidedly different view of The Laundry.
Dr Science: Glad you liked the poem.
@Doctor Science: I second the recommendation for The Fuller Memorandum and the anti-recommendation for “Equoid”.
“Equoid”, besides being VERY VERY gross in ways that the series normally isn’t, is not a good representation of the series in that it spends a whole lot of time on direct Lovecraft pastiche (framed by a diatribe on why Lovecraft is terrible, but still, this is about him whereas the series just assumes that you get what subgenre this is riffing on), and in that there isn’t really an unfolding of mysteries or much of a plot, but rather yards of “There’s a really disturbing thing and the narrator knows all about it already, but he’s going to hold off on explaining it to you so you can instead get it a bit at a time from this epically long fake Lovecraft letter that he’s arbitrarily cut up into interludes”– which isn’t just annoying but also pretty inconsistent with the character, since Bob normally explains everything (though we still do get plenty of Bob narration, which is my least favorite aspect of the whole series, and it is as repetitive as Stross can be at his worst: he tells us at least three times that unicorns aren’t sparkly, makes the same joke about alien anal probes at least twice, and complains at least twice that Lovecraft is affecting his writing style).
All of the above describes the first half of the novella. The second half is a lot more like an okay Laundry Files book, with a plot, a lot of infodumps, and some actually funny jokes. But to get there you must read the first half, and… no.
I don’t like it a lot.
Greg Hullender: The argument that although AO3 contains fiction, it’s most notable for its non-fictional parts has an interesting implication: it suggests that all that fan fiction is so bad that only the software that manages it is of interest. No one is making that argument, though, which suggests they really do believe that the fan fic is the most important thing about the site.
This argument is a hilariously massive logical fallacy.
The implication of its nomination in Related Work is that AO3 as a functionality is worthy of recognition. Period. Full Stop. Anything else is shit that you just made up. 🙄
Greg Hullender: The argument that although AO3 contains fiction, it’s most notable for its non-fictional parts has an interesting implication: it suggests that all that fan fiction is so bad that only the software that manages it is of interest. No one is making that argument, though, which suggests they really do believe that the fan fic is the most important thing about the site.
WTF did you get that idea, that the fic must be bad?
They nominated the site as a whole, which says absolutely nothing about the fiction. (And, as someone who has read some of the fiction hosted there, some of it is very high quality.)
Equoid wasn’t to my taste either, but it did win a Hugo.
I really liked The Nightmare Stacks.
@Lorien Gray
I’ve come down with a nasty cold or something, so I’m not going to respond to anyone else, but I wanted to thank you for your kind words. Eric deserves the credit for the site organization; he’s always trying to find ways to make it more useful. I’ll let him know what you said. (He’s headed to the pharmacy for me right at the moment.)
I liked The Atrocity Archive, the first book in The Laundry Files. I read it when it came out, which was a long time ago, but I think it told a good story and had a fitting sense of eeriness. If you want a good long read, start at the beginning and keep going.
For a more recent entry point into the series, I would recommend The Nightmare Stacks. It focuses on new characters and formerly minor characters in the series, so I think it can be enjoyed without having read the previous books. Also, it is just a really great book, with several amazing scenes that I’m not even going to try to describe. I’ll just say that Stross pulls out all the stops and it works on several levels.
@Greg Hullender–
From this I conclude that you believe that a library is a building with books in it, and the librarians are clerical help, and our advanced degrees are a fraud.
The AO3 nomination isn’t about the fiction on the site.
Nor is it about programming qua programming.
It’s about a truly impressive work of librarianship, It’s about a work that makes that fiction available, accessible, findable, and providing a place for the community around it to come together. It’s about changes in the past year that may not be amazing works of programming, but which do greatly improve the accessibility and usability of site in ways that, yes, librarians have often had to argue extensively about with programmers who don’t see it as significant.
AO3 is a really impressive, important work, which has gained significantly in functionality in the past year, which is definitely “related” in that it exists for the transformative works community, which is part of the larger sff community.
And a lot of the expressed opposition to the nomination certainly does seem to be expressing disrespect for transformative works, incomprehension that librarianship is even a thing that matters, or both.
The more I see of the opposition to it, the more I think it’s going to be first or second on my ballot.
@ Greg Hullender
I nominated AO3 for the software platform (including the philosophical structure of how to manage and present a library of works of fiction) and not for the fan fiction content.
Personally, fanfic is not my cup of tea, but AO3 obviously is worthy of recognition. I’m glad it’s on the ballot.
How could something as logical and consistent as how fanzine and fancast are defined in the rules make your point? It’s normal to turn one award category into two while crafting rules to exclude a work from qualifying in both.
No one is upset that fancasts don’t qualify in fanzine.
A03 is facing the same kinds of questions as any other unusual, trendsetting Best Related Work nominee.
I like fan fiction. Though I’m a web application developer, when I hear people tout the software platform I’m having trouble seeing what’s so special about it. How is A03 appreciably better than FanFiction.Net?
@Doctor Science: wrt Daye (since I don’t see people answering this while they’re piling on about Laundry), IMO you can start with almost any book; McGuire is very good about giving needed bits of prior-story, and she doesn’t seem to be building toward a megadisaster as the Laundry books are — she does not put all the pieces back in their places after each story like a TV series, but there aren’t huge movements from one story to the next. Just skip the first 3 books, which aren’t as good as the rest. (My observation, but ISTR that other Filers have also concluded this.)
@Meredith, re LPs in decor: could it be that LPs are more recognizable than casettes in any picture wide-angle enough to show much of a room? Also, if you include 78s the external form was widely known for maybe half a century, while cassettes lasted a shorter time before giving way to CDs. wrt the original (Netflix still sending disks), I live in a major city and have not been happy with custom streaming — it has broken down (massively reduced resolution) in major action scenes; could it be that a lot of the subscribers have even worse service and prefer the reliability of having the data source in their house rather than at the other end of a wire?
And wrt the picking over the word “non-fiction” in the BRW definition: I think Hampus et al are incorrect in insisting that this means fact/text/… are required; I read it as simply meaning that fictions (which already have a handful of categories) are excluded. I note that the category has evolved from Non-fiction Book through Related Book (possibly to shut down arguments about art books) to Related Work (possibly to allow for anything related); possibly the amenders didn’t think it was necessary to make additionally clear in the definition how broad the category was.
wrt @Standback’s suggestion that a Worldcon could be nominated, I raise the practical objection that nobody post-nomination could experience it (where all other items so far nominated are still around); this could also be a difficulty with (e.g.) an art installation, but the latter would at least have a longer lifespan (and be cheaper/easier to experience). (This is not just speculation; the year BRW’s antecedent appeared, the Worldcon had pieces of an art something called “Axolotl” that GoH Kate Wilhelm had collaborated on.) But the real answer is that chunks of the WSFS constitution, like many rules elsewhere, is a response to somebody being a twit (see, e.g., the natural-persons clauses — I remember somebody buying their pet rock a membership); I suspect that if a Worldcon got enough nominations to appear in the also-rans list, there would be a clarification added at the next business meeting — although I wouldn’t want to have to work out just what that clarification would be.
Compare the Imperial Radch collections on both:
FanFiction.net
Archive Of Our Own
FanFiction.net uses the FictionRatings which are a handful of ratings roughly equivalent to the MPAA ratings.
AO3 allows much more finely-tuned warnings. If a work contains violence, erotic content, or content of another sensitive nature, it allows the author to specify exactly what sort.
Compare the searching capabilities of both sites:
FanFiction.net (click “Options” to see fine-tuning options)
Also has an alpha index by universe name.
AO3’s Search Functionality (scroll down to see fine-tuning options)
Also has an alpha index by universe name.
I’m sure that a regular user of AO3 could provide a more-detailed comparison.
Not being able to experience a work as performed is not by itself enough to disqualify it. Plays and other live performances are all eligible as dramatic presentations, even if they weren’t recorded. Therefore, I am not seeing anything that by itself disqualifies a Worldcon (or any other SF/F convention) from being nominated as a Related Work. But the Administrator at the time might see it otherwise if it got enough nominations to make the ballot.
Actually, that is my reaction to pretty much any fiction by Stross that I’ve ever tried, so I’m not going to bother with the Laundry Files again.