(1) TIE-IN BOOKS. “The Secret Life of Novelizations”, an 11 minute segment on WYNC.
Write a great book and you’re a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you’re a visionary. Turn a great film into a book…that’s another story.
Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings — some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them — but respected they are not. Instead, they’re assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren’t good enough to do anything else. But the people who write them beg to differ.
OTM producer Jesse Brenneman goes inside the world of novelizations, featuring authors Max Allan Collins, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Hand, and Lee Goldberg.
(2) SPOCK DOC. Lance Ulanoff reviews For the Love of Spock at Mashable — “’For the Love of Spock’ is a moving love letter to an icon and a father”.
For the Love of Spock is three stories woven together into a solid, emotionally charged strand. There is the story of a gifted actor — a renaissance man, as he is described in the film — and his journey from bit player to fame, fortune and permanent pop-culture icon status.
It’s also the story of a character who sprang from the mind of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, but became flesh and blood — and Vulcan salutes — in the hands of Nimoy. And finally, it’s the story of a father and son and their decades-long journey toward love and mutual acceptance.
There’s no way to fit 83 years into a rather fast-paced 100 minutes. As a consequence, huge swaths of Nimoy’s life and career are mentioned all-too-briefly (his directing career) or not at all (Star Trek V and VI, and much of his latter TV career).
(3) MORE FREQUENT DARK. SF Site News says editor Sean Wallace has announced his magazine is stepping up its schedule.
Sean Wallace has announced the the dark fantasy magazine The Dark will shift to a monthly schedule beginning with the May 2016 issue.
(4) ADAMANT. J.C. Carlton says he is really, really right about that book he still hasn’t read – “Why Generation Ships Will NOT ‘Sink’ A Failure To Communicate” at The Arts Mechanical.
As an engineer, I think that Mr. Robinson is clearly wrong. Or at least, he doesn’t understand the basic rules for setting mission parameters and designing to meet those parameters. Mr. Robison’s vessel failed because he wanted it to fail. But to extend that to saying that ALL such proposals would fail is more than a little egotistical. And wrong, really wrong.
Now I haven’t as yet read the book.(Somehow this sticks in the craw of the people over at File 770….
Real pioneers don’t screw up because failure is not an option and incompetence is something that can’t be tolerated. Yes the environment and the unknowns get the pioneers, think the Donner Party, but the typical pioneers don’t go down without a fight. They do the work that needs to get done because they are working to make a better place for the next generation, not themselves. We as a culture have suppressed the pioneer spirit in the last few years and maybe that’s a mistake. Because pioneers desire and understand liberty and the alternative is tyranny.
Here’s a bunch of links to get the pioneer spirit started. Sorry, Mr. Robinson, our carracks to the stars will not fail because the pioneer spirits in them, will not let them fail. Look if my ancestors can cross the North Atlantic in a tiny leaky little boat, can I say anything less?
(5) HOWDY NEIGHBOR. “Never Before Seen Galaxy Spotted Orbiting the Milky Way”: New Scientist has the story.
The galaxy’s empire has a new colony. Astronomers have detected a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way whose span stretches farther than nearly all other Milky Way satellites. It may belong to a small group of galaxies that is falling into our own.
Giant galaxies like the Milky Way grew large when smaller galaxies merged, according to simulations. The simulations also suggest that whole groups of galaxies can fall into a single giant at the same time. The best examples in our cosmic neighbourhood are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way’s two brightest satellites, which probably orbit each other.
Orbiting galaxies
About four dozen known galaxies orbit our own. The largest in terms of breadth is the Sagittarius dwarf, discovered in 1994 – but it’s big only because our galaxy’s gravity is ripping it apart. The next two largest are the Magellanic Clouds.
(6) BATMAN V SUPERMAN V ABIGAIL. This is the kind of post that has inspired me to write Abigail Nussbaum’s name on my Hugo ballot from time to time. In the paragraphs following the excerpt, she deconstructs a scene from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and gives us a wonderful premise for understanding what shaped Superman’s psyche in the Snyder and non-Snyder movie versions.
Nor am I here to talk about how Batman v Superman fundamentally betrays its two title characters–and betrays, along the way, the fact that Snyder and writers David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio fundamentally do not understand what either of those characters are about. Because the truth is, I don’t really care. I’m not a comic book reader, but I’ve been watching Batman movies for twenty years, and good or bad they all depict the character as, at best, someone who is working out their mommy-and-daddy issues by beating up poor criminals, and at worst, an outright fascist. I’m perfectly willing to believe that there is more to the character, and that the comics (and the animated series) have captured that, but I think at this stage it’s a mug’s game to go to a Batman movie expecting to find more than what they’ve been known to give us. As for Superman, if I want stories about a character who is all-powerful yet fundamentally good, and still interesting for all that, I’ve got the MCU’s Captain America, not to mention Supergirl, so that fact that Batman v Superman depicts Superman as someone who seems genuinely to dislike people, and to be carrying out acts of heroism (when he deigns to do so) out of a sense of aggrieved obligation, doesn’t really feel worth getting worked up over. On the contrary, I was more upset by those scenes in Batman v Superman in which characters insisted–despite all available evidence–that its Superman was a figure of hope and inspiration, because they made it clear just how badly the people making the movie had misjudged its effect.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- April 17, 1810 – Lewis M. Norton patented a vat for forming pineapple-shaped cheese. (Even John King Tarpinian doesn’t know why he sent me this link.)
- April 17, 1970 — With the world anxiously watching on television, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returned to Earth.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY DUCK.
- April 17, 1937 – Daffy Duck.
From the CBS News Almanac: …That day saw the premiere of a Warner Brothers cartoon titled “Porky’s Duck Hunt.”
The cartoon followed Porky Pig as he attempted to bag a most unusual duck … a duck quite unwilling to follow the rules:
Porky: “Hey, that wasn’t in the script!” Daffy: “Don’t let that worry you, Skipper! I’m just a darn fool crazy duck!”
Actually, make that DAFFY Duck, in his very first film role — his first, but by no means his last.
(9) ACCOUNTING FOR TASTES. Fynbospress, in “Preorders” at Mad Genius Club, sorts out how that sales tool affects traditional and indie publishers differently.
Several years ago, indie publishers put up quite a hue and cry about not having preorders available to them on Amazon, unlike their trad pub competitors. Amazon listened, and made preorders available, with a few caveats to ensure that indie pub would indeed have the product ready on ship date, and not leave Amazon holding the bag while angry customers yelled at them.
With glee, indie pub rushed out to put things on preorder…. and promptly found it wasn’t all that and a bag of chips. It’s a useful tool, but it isn’t nearly as important to them as it’s made out to be.
The critical differences:
- Amazon counts a preorder toward the item’s sales rank the day the order is placed.
This makes logical sense in the non-publishing world, as the “sale” happens the day a contract to sell is agreed upon, not the ship date, not the date money changes hands, nor the date the customer receives the item. This is pretty standard whether ordering a run of shoes manufactured in China, selling wheat futures in Chicago, or a racehorse in Kentucky.
(10) QUIDDITCH ON TV. “Quidditch, the sport of wizards” was a segment on today’s CBS Sunday Morning. There’s a video report and a text article at the link.
Quidditch, anyone? No idle question in Columbia, South Carolina, where a big championship match is underway this weekend. Anna Werner attended last year’s contest, where she saw an author’s imaginary game come to life:
It’s been nearly 20 years since the first Harry Potter book came out and proceeded to cast a spell over fans around the world. J.K. Rowling’s creation became the most popular book series in publishing history, with over 450 million copies sold — and one of the biggest movie franchises in film history, with nearly $8 billion in ticket sales.
And now Potter-mania has spawned another craze, one based on the high-flying fantasy game played by Harry and his friends called Quidditch, which has now jumped from the world of wizards to the playing fields of Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Yes, real-world Quidditch, complete with players “riding” broomsticks.
“Quidditch has exploded into the college scene and the high school scene all over the world,” said one girl. “It’s absolutely amazing!”
It’s even been the subject of a documentary called “Mudbloods” (a Harry Potter reference, of course).
“People get passionate about it because they grew up with Harry Potter,” said one fan.
The documentary introduces Alex Benepe, one of the founders of Quidditch. He’s been playing since 2005, when a classmate at Middlebury College turned to him with an idea: “‘This weekend, we’re gonna try and play real-life Quidditch,'” Benepe recalled. “We were freshman. And I just thought to myself, ‘There’s no way this is gonna work. This is gonna be so dumb!'”
(11) PLAYING QUIDDITCH. CBS Sunday Morning also provides “A how-to guide to Quidditch”.
The Balls
A volleyball doubles as a Quaffle, which players use to score points, either by throwing it or kicking it through a hoop.
Bludgers are dodgeball-weapons used against opposing players; hit someone with a bludger, and they are temporarily out. They must drop whatever ball they possess, head to the sidelines, and touch a goalpost before returning back to the field.
In the J.K. Rowling books, a Snitch (or a Golden Snitch) is a winged ball that tried to avoid capture. Since magical equipment is harder to come by in real life, Snitches are instead played by people dressed in yellow, who run onto the field at the 18-minute mark and must evade players who try to steal their “tail.”
If a Snitch loses his tail (actually a tennis ball in a sock), the game is over, but in the event of a tie score, play goes into overtime.
(12) RUNNING LOGAN’S MOVIE. Once upon a time there was a Jeopardy! answer…
John King Tarpinian says “In the book middle age would be ten.”
And while we’re on the topic, John recommends Reading The Movie Episode 3: Logan’s Run, a 2011 video.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Xtifr, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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Totally off immediate topic:
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
I know there was some discussion of Bujold’s latest here a while ago, but I just wasn’t able to jump in at the time. But I have been thinking thoughts, and darn it, decided to share here, rot13 of course. I may have to write an essay since the book won’t leave my mind (I’m working on another essay about queerness in Bujold, so Bujold has been on my mind).
May have turned out a bit longer than I thought….!
V GUVAX V fnj fbzr pbzzragnel urer nf jryy nf bgure cynprf nobhg gur vffhr bs npgvba: v.r. crbcyr nffhzvat vg jnf zber gur zvyfs/npgvba bs n ybg bs ure rneyvre jbex, if. n abiry bs punenpgre (naq n ebznapr yvxr N Pvivy Pnzcnvta), naq pbzzragf nobhg gurer orvat ab npgvba. V qba’g erpnyy fcrpvsvpnyyl jub fnvq jung be va juvpu fcnpr V ernq vg (Svyr 770, erivrjf ba Qernzjvqgu, erivrjf ba fbzr bs gur oybttvat fvgrf V ernq), be juvpu V ernq svefg, ohg V jnag gb gunax gubfr crbcyr orpnhfr vg jnf zl vzzrqvngr erfcbafr gb vg (“gur obbx unf YBGF NAQ YBGF bs npgvba, ohg…”) vf jung yrq gb guvf!
V guvax gurer vf npgvba, ohg vg’f vagreany npgvba—punenpgref haqretbvat punatrf. Zber guna gung, nygubhtu V guvax Pbeqryvn naq Byvire ner obgu cebgntbavfgf, V frr uvz nf gur cevznel cebgntbavfg (orpnhfr bs gur nzbhag bs punatr ur rkcrevraprf va uvf aneengvir nep). Pbeqryvn pbzrf onpx gb Fretlne jvgu n cyna gb unir qnhtugref hfvat gur sebmra fcrez naq rttf gurl unq fnirq rneyvre va yvsr, nf jryy nf gb erfvta nf Ivprervar, naq ragre n jubyr arj cunfr bs yvsr ba Fretlne. Fur arire inevrf sebz gung cyna, rira nf ure eryngvbafuvc jvgu Byvire fuvsgf sebz gur ybivat/ohg abg ybiref rkprcg va eryngvba gb Neny gb gur arj eryngvbafuvc va vgf bja evtug, naq gung’f pyrneyl rfgnoyvfurq ol ure ershfny (juvpu ur nagvpvcngrq) gb nppbzcnal uvz vs ur tbrf gb Oneenlne.
Ur, ubjrire, vf pbzcyrgryl guebja ol ure bssre bs gur rahpyrngrq rttf naq “trargvp zngrevny sebz Neny” juvpu jbhyq nyybj uvz gb unir fbaf jvgu Neny, ivn VIS hfvat gur hgrevar ercyvpngbe (gur BAYL bgure gvzr gur cbgragvny bs gur hgrevar ercynpngbe unf orra fubja va Ohwbyq’f fgbelirefr vf va Rguna bs Ngubf jurer gur grpuabybtl, cyhf gur hfr bs binevna gvffhr (oebhtug ol bevtvany pbybavfgf naq ercynprq ol pbzzrepvny genafnpgvba) jnf fbeg bs n onpxtebhaq srngher abg fbzrguvat hfrq ol gur znva punenpgref.
OGJ, V jbhyq YBIR n Ohwbyq fgbel frg ba Oneenlne jurer gjb srznyr punenpgref jub ner abg zneevrq naq yvivat gbtrgure orpnhfr gurl ner creprvirq nf byqre/hazneevntrnoyr (lrnu, vg jbhyq or gbhtu tvira gur senzr fur frg hc nobhg gur fubegntr bs jbzra ba Oneenlne va gur yngre Zvyrf abiryf, ohg bar jnl nebhaq jbhyq or univat punenpgref jub ner abg Ibe be jub ner sebz zvabe Ibe snzvyvrf bhg va vfbyngrq eheny nernf jub qvqa’g unir gur zbarl gb cnl sbe jung unq gb or na rkcrafvir grpuabybtl va gur rneyl lrnef) ner noyr gb hfr vg gb unir gurve puvyqera. Nynf, V fhfcrpg bar jbhyq unir gb tb gb snasvpgvba sbe gung orpnhfr V pnaabg vzntvar Ohwbyq jbhyq jevgr vg—nyy/nal bs gur dhrrearff V frr va ure jbex vf orgjrra znyr punenpgref cevznevyl, naq gur guerrfbzr bs Byvire/Neny/Pbeqryvn qbrfa’g fgevxr zr nf gung dhrre, va gur frafr bs dhrrearff nf abg abezngvir).
Naq V guvax gung bssre, znqr ol Pbeqryvn, vf bar bs gur ernfbaf gung ur ortvaf gb frr ure va n arj naq qvssrerag yvtug: V qb ybir gur snpg gung nsgre Neny’f qrngu, gurve ybir naq crefbany eryngvbafuvc pbagvahrq, jvgubhg orvat ybiref (V frrz gb erpnyy bar bs gurz erzrzorevat gung gurl gevrq vg bar qvfnfgebhf gvzr, naq tnir hc), ohg znvagnvavat gur cebsrffvbany vagrenpgvbaf naq jbex nf jryy nf sevraqfuvc.
Naljnl, onpx gb Byvire (jubz V nqber). Uvf cynaf sbe uvf yvsr ner guebja ragveryl nfvqr, naq ur fcraqf n tbbq qrny bs gur abiry qrnyvat jvgu gur erfhygvat vagreany pbasyvpg bs jung gb qb, jung ur unq gubhtug ur pbhyq qb, jung ur abj jnagrq gb qb, jvgu gur batbvat vffhr bs gheavat 50 nf jryy (znwbe yvsr punatvat, rfcrpvnyyl jvgu gur npprff gb tnynpgvp pner bayl pbzvat gb Oneenlne va uvf yvsrgvzr). Vg’f snagnfgvp gb frr n ZNA fgehttyvat jvgu nyy gurfr dhrfgvbaf—naq gung vf fbzrguvat ryfr V nqber. Gung vagreany fgehttyr, juvpu vf pbaarpgrq ng cbvagf jvgu gur rkgreany npgvba, vf oevyyvnagyl qbar.
Gur vagrejrnivat bs vagreany/rkgreany npgvba va gur yngre cneg nf gur ivfvg gb gur ergverq fuvc anzrq nsgre Fretlne, gur vffhr bs jung gb erirny naq jura gb erirny vg gb Zvyrf (lrnu, ybgf bs qvnybthr gura naq va gur ortvaavat nf Pbeqryvn naq Byvire pbaarpg bire qvfphffvat Neny, naq V YBIR vg), gur cbyvgvpny qvfphffvba bs gur batbvat guerng bs gur Prgntnaqnaf (gvrq gb gur vffhr bs jung gb qb jvgu gur qvfpbirerq jnerubhfr bs zngrevny va Pncgnva Ibecngevy’f Nyyvnapr) juvpu yrnqf gb Byvire fhqqrayl qbhogvat gung zvyvgnel freivpr jnf gur orfg be bayl jnl gb freir/cebgrpg Oneenlne (nsgre Pbeqryvn abgrf gur arrq sbe zber fpvrapr rqhpngvba guebhtubhg Oneenlne), naq uvf fuvsg njnl sebz gur zvyvgnel/cbyvgvpny sbphf gb fpvrapr. (Bs pbhefr, V ernq naq er-ernq gur rneyvre fghss, fb V pna cvpx hc nyy gur nyyhfvbaf: V unir ab vqrn ubj rssrpgvir gur abiry vf sbe ernqref hasnzvyvne jvgu gur Ibexbfvtnairefr—V pnaabg rira vzntvar vg!). Naq gung, bs pbhefr, vf eryngrq gb nyy gur ceboyrzf bs n ‘orfg frevrf njneq.”
Fb, ybgf bs npgvba, naq zhpu bs vg, rfcrpvnyyl gur rkgreany vffhrf, gvrq gb gur cerivbhf abiryf, ohg va n jnl gung qrirybcf/ohvyqf ba vg, abg ercrngf vg, naq abg bayl gung, ergheaf gb bar bs gur zbfg vzcbegnag gurzrf va Ohwbyq’f frevrf: gur vzcbegnapr bs puvyqera, naq gur arrq gb erohvyq gur jbeyq sbe lbhe puvyqera. [Crefbany nfvqr: V qrpvqrq ng na rneyl ntr V qvqa’g jnag puvyqera, be n uhfonaq, naq V’ir arire erterggrq gung, ohg jura V vaunovg guvf fgbelirefr, V frr gur cbgrapl bs gung oryvrs, naq gur vzcbegnapr bs vg nf zbgvingvba, naq gur pbzcyrkvgvrf bs vg. V nyfb ybir gur fcrpgnpyr bs Zvyrf gelvat gb qrny jvgu gur snpg gung uvf zhz unq n ebznagvp naq frk yvsr pbzcyrgryl vaqrcraqrag bs uvz—vg’f na batbvat vffhr sbe znal nqhyg puvyqera, favpxre.]
V’ir gnyxrq n ybg nobhg Byvire—whfg orpnhfr bs jbexvat bhg gur vffhr bs gur npgvba/punatrf va uvf yvsr—ohg V jnag gb fvat pryroengbel fbatf nobhg Pbeqryvn va grezf bs ure punatrf (juvpu frrz gb unir gnxra cynpr ynetryl bssfgntr, ohg juvpu ner gbhpurq ba guebhtubhg, naq V YBIR YBIR YBIR YBIR YBIR YBIR gur eriryngvba bs gur vaare ernyvgvrf bs ure naq Neny’f zneevntr nf Byvire orpnzr n cneg bs vg nf jryy, naq nyy gur nyyhfvbaf naq uvagf ng jung fur unf qbar ba Fretlne nf Ivprervar, sebz tebjvat gur urnygu pyvavpf gb urycvat gur frk jbexref havbavmr nf jryy nf Ohwbyq fubjvat gur ernyvgvrf bs gur batbvat jbex bs ehaavat na rzcver/nqzvavfgrevat n cynarg).
Bar svany abgr naq gura V unir gb tb tebprel fubccvat: V’ir orra jbaqrevat ng gur gvgyr fvapr V svefg urneq vg—frrzrq zhpu ybatre naq fbzrubj pyhaxvre guna ure rneyvre barf juvpu (V purpxrq!) nyy unir gvgyrf 1-3 jbeqf ybat, gvgyrf juvpu zbfgyl qb abg ersre gb gur punenpgref (UN! n uvag sebz gur fgneg gung guvf bar jnf qvssrerag). Naq gura jura V ernyvmrq jub gur punenpgref jrer, V jnf jbaqrevat nobhg gur pubvpr bs anzrf (V unir gb er-ernq gb frr jura jr ner gbyq nobhg gur bevtva bs gur anzrf—gung gurfr ner anzrf gurl ner pnyyrq ol gurve fhobeqvangrf, pbyyrnthrf, rgp. –bgure crbcyr!). Fb gur gvgyr abg bayl uvagf ng gur ebznapr ol cnvevat gurve anzrf, ohg frg hc gur rkgreany/vagreany cnggre. Gurfr ner n choyvp anzr bs fbegf (abg n gvgyr, ohg n avpxanzr tvira gurz), ohg gur abiry ohvyqf va na vagreany aneengvir gung vf abg uvagrq ng ol gur gvgyr (be gung pbhyq or creprvirq ol znal, ng yrnfg znal jub qb abg jbex sbe gurz!).
Persuasion
Wildcat on April 18, 2016 at 11:12 am said:
No. Normally, the hotel reservations are fine. The con books enough room blocks or adds more. In this case it appears more people are reserving rooms than they expected and they’re taking steps to ask anyone who proactively snagged a hotel room but now doesn’t plan to go to release it now instead of waiting. I highly doubt they have any plans to yank reservations. That way lies heaping, steaming, fetid, piles of bad will.
Between our roommate, and my not being able to get all the dates we needed at the DoubleTree, we had THREE room reservations last year. Sasquan’s hotel liaison folks fixed me up at the DoubleTree for the dates I needed and I then released my Red Lion reservation. Our roommate came in on our DoubleTree reservation and released *her* Red Lion reservation and we were down to a sensible one reservation by about three weeks before the con. Having more nights booked than will be used is not an uncommon problem. I applaud MAC2’s Hotel staff in addressing it early.
I wonder how many attending members they have so far? I understand there will be a demographics page on the MAC2 web site soonish.
@robinareid
The trouble wasn’t the lack of action; it was the lack of a plot. Things happen in the story, but no one is actually trying to accomplish anything. I’m all for counting internal growth as being sufficient to have a plot, but although Oliver does experience change, I wouldn’t call it growth, nor was it anything he (or the reader) felt he needed to do. It just happened.
Stories where things happen for no apparent purpose are called “tales.” In the modern novel (say, since “Tom Jones” in 1749), things happen for a reason. Sure, at novel length there can be loose ends, but, in general, all the pieces should work together. “Gentleman Jole” is a tale, not a novel, and we live in an age where most people don’t tolerate tales very well.
lurkertype:
When a friend of mine first game to see my roller derby team play, he remarked that it struck him as being very similar to Quidditch if Quidditch were played in real life. The parallels aren’t 1-to-1, but the jammer is definitely the human snitch on wheels.
@Darren Garrison,
Thank you for that rant. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Would read again.
@Greg Hullender,
I enjoyed (loved) “Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen” enough to include it in my Hugo nomination ballot despite being uncertain if it’s a 2015 or a 2016 publication.
@Darren Garrison: I blame Arthur C. Clarke: That whole Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic meme is (a) not really true, and (b) all too frequently gets inverted to Any magical technology we want will therefore some day be possible.
Somewhat less facetiously, a lot of it has to do with a failure to understand how science progresses. For example, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity didn’t invalidate Newton’s Theory of Gravity; it showed that the latter is the non-relativistic, weak-field limit of GR. (Which is why it works so well in everyday life, as we don’t generally travel at velocities approaching the speed of light or live in regions where the curvature of spacetime is non-negligible.)
robinareid on April 18, 2016 at 11:35 am said:
(Snippage to remove spoilers)
I disagree with this.
– The Escobarans giving those 17 replicators full of rape babies back to Barrayar shows the potential of the uterine replicator.
– Miles’s in vitro repairs show the potential of the uterine replicator.
– The entire societal shift that is happening under the noses of High Vor men shows the potential of the uterine replicator. (In addition to the sex imbalance in Miles’s generation, Vor men are also having trouble getting married unless they agree to use it for their offspring.)
– The political reasons Aral and Cordelia never had another child, which they easily could have with a Uterine Replicator.
– The difference to Ekaterine’s marriage if she and Tiene had used a Uterine Replicator.
– Gregor’s ongoing struggle with the demons of his genetics.
– Count Vormuir’s little baby factory.
– Count “Ghem”bretten’s adventure in gene scanning when *he* planned to use the replicator.
– There’s an entire sub plot in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance that hinges on the Uterine Replicator—the smuggling of Barayarran military surplus wouldn’t have happened if Count Vormercier hadn’t married in his late age and, by having a baby in a replicator, cut Theo and Roger out of their expected inheritance.
– Then there’s the entire plot of Diplomatic Immunity and the whole premise of Falling Free.
– Quaddies, Haut, Betan Hemaphrodites, Guppy in Diplomatic Immunity, Tej and all the Jewels in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. I’m hard pressed to name a Vorbook that isn’t permeated with the societal, ethical, psychological, and scientific pitfalls and potentials of the Uterine Replicator.
– Even Cryoburn is in dialogue with it from the complete other direction.
ETA: and the lengthy and hair tearing committee Miles headed up to completely re-vamp Barrayar’s reproductive laws. That was driven (over by a mack truck) by all the potentials and implications of URs.
——————————-
Yes, that was lovely trope twisting.
——————————-
At a Kaffeklatch with Jo Walton at Sasquan she commented (having read the book by then) that she had plumped for the title “Sergyar” to go with “Barrayar” and “Komarr”. While I, too, would have loved that symmetry, I can see why they decided not to go with it. It’s rather an inside Baseball of a title. I’m not sure I liked what they did pick, but I think “Sergyar” would have been more opaque.
@ Wildcat
I got one of those too …and I already had an attending membership since well before I made the reservation. So their system for generating the e-mails is not without flaws. But I understand their motive: it costs nothing to make a reservation just on spec, but if people have realized/decided they won’t be going after all, it would be useful to free up those rooms for people who didn’t move as fast.
That’s practically the official motto of science fiction!
—Persuasion
Jane Austen, of course, was the sister of a pair of admirals, and knew something of the navy.
I’ve been browsing that web site looking for details to confirm if this is related to a PBS documentary I watched a while back. I’m 99 percent sure it is, but for some reason, the web site seems to avoid mentioning the one key term I was looking for “chain gang.” If so, it is a good documentary, and hits close to home (literally) for me. According to family lore, the spot where my family has lived for generations used to be a chain gang camp (I speculate that they were involved in clearing forest, or possibly making clay bricks, or both) and that prisoners who died in the camp were buried there. As children, my mother and a cousin dug up bones in the front yard (this would have been in the late 1940s or earliest 1950s) that the family doctor identified as human. (I’m sure that there was absolutely no type of official investigation into it whatsoever.)
I wish I could find more historical material on my immediate area, and how long the land (which is still largely forest) was cleared and occupied. The body could possibly have been a chain-gang member, or some earlier pioneer (failed or not, hey, on topic!) or even a Cherokee, since this is in their old territory.
Interesting side history note about the area–during WWII, while my grandmother was home from work with her infant daughter, a bomber crashed a few hundred feet from my grandmother’s house. The crew parachuted out and hid behind the chimney of my great-grandfather’s house as the sky rained airplane parts and practice bombs. The military cordoned off the area and cleaned it up, but for years later people were plowing up airplane parts and bombshells. There has long been in our family a large piece of twisted, rusted iron that was claimed to be one of those bombshells. A few years back, skeptical that it might be scrap from some old farm machinery or something, examined it closely and did google image searches for WWII bombs. Sure enough, I was able to confidentially identify a bomb mounting lug on my piece of scrap.
I did a bit of googling after that, looking for any news accounts of the incident–and discovered that warplanes accidentally crashed over the continental US literally hundreds of times during WWII. Never knew that before. I never did find my particular needle in the haystack.
Very much agree. Any future technology that we have will almost certainly be constrained to ordinary matter built from normal atoms built from protons, neutrons, and electrons. No magic discoveries on how to stabilize unstable particles, tweak physical constants or such (like the magical cloth and ball used in Ananthem, no discovery of exotic new element/energy of the week that conveniently gets you out of a corner you’ve been written into.) Therefore, we are limited to the physical properties of ordinary matter, and either the configuration of electrons around various elements allow something to be done with those atoms–or it doesn’t.
We are very near the limit of what can be done with silicon semiconductors, for example, and any alien species we might encounter–whether one hundred, one million, or one hundred million years ahead of us–will not (if it uses silicon semiconductors) have computer chips much faster or more advanced than what we will have in probably 10 years or less. It may be possible to squeeze a little more performance out of graphene, or some form of molecular machine, but we are still limited by a couple of factor–the speed that electrons can travel through the material and the speed that the atoms in a molecule can twist around. (Take for instance some of the most complex nanotechnology on the planet, ribosomes–they build protiens at a rate of only 10s of amino acids per second–fast by out scale, but orders of magnitude slower than a modern integrated circuit. Can people design molecular machines that calculate orders of magnitude faster than a ribosome does?)
Greg Hullender:
The Pioneer Movement is actually a name for the communist youth organizations.
Ultragotha. Sorry that should have read potential for same sex couple on Barrayar. All of what you say is true but primarily for het couples. I did mention Ethan but noted how so much was in background. Can you list a single example of tech used by named same sex couples to allow two men or two women to have children together?
@Hampus: Failure is not an option, comrade!
John A Arkansawyer on April 18, 2016 at 7:58 am said:
If you rot-13 everything including the name of the work, and leave us with absolutely no hints about what you’re referring to, there’s no way for us to tell if we dare un-rot-13 it.
PhilRM on April 18, 2016 at 1:08 pm said:
I agree about the reversal part, b, (although if you count “after we’ve been placed in a simulation”, it becomes less true), but I’m curious why you say a.
Clarke’s Third is the main reason I consider myself a classic agnostic (doesn’t believe it’s possible to know if god(s) exist). There is no miracle that can be performed that couldn’t be the action of a sufficiently advanced alien, rather than a god. Specifically, because sufficiently advanced technology can completely control my sensory input and/or memories, so I can’t trust either one.
So what is this flaw you claim in Clarke’s law itself, as opposed to its improperly inverted pseudo-corollary?
ULTRAGOTHA: I disagree with this [lack of potential use of uterine replicators in Vorkosiverse]
I think robinreid was referring to the idea that uterine replicators could be used to enable a same gender couple to have a child, not the various other uses. The general potential is certainly allowed for; there’s even a line–in Mirror Dance?–where Cordelia is actively, almost viciously gleeful about how the high Vor lords are about to be culturally blindsided by this technology–blindsided because it’s hitting them from the women’s side of the cultural divide. It may be that Cordelia also had this possible use in mind, but she doesn’t mention it, and most of the references to replicators (including most of the ones you cite) focus on heterosexual couples reproducing–except for Ethan of Athos. The potential was clearly there, but no one seems to notice it much . . . from a Barrayaran perspective, this possible use of the technology may well be something of a shock.
ETA: And ninja’d by robinreid herself! Sorry.
1) TIE-IN BOOKS. Actually, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (the much-hyped volume by mostly British academics from a decade ago) included two tie-in novels: 2001 and Graham Greene’s The Third Man, likewise written after the movie.
@Darren Garrison: I blame Arthur C. Clarke: That whole Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic meme is (a) not really true,
Depends on your point of view, I think. For those using it the tech is not “magic” but when explaining it to the rest of us “It’s MAAAGIC” works as well as a more technical description would.
(I agree with your point B)
@Xtifr: Good point. What’s best? The name of the work? The name of the author? Both?
Robinareid on April 18, 2016 at 2:30 pm said:
Ah, yes. That subtext when whooshing over my head.
>pauses to comb hair<
Other than Betan hemaphrodites, no. Homosexuality appears to be slightly more acceptable on Barrayar than the US at the time, but in the Vor milleu where we spend most of our time, long term s/s relationships don't seem to exist–or if they do, the viewpoint characters don't remark on them.
John A Arkansawyer on April 18, 2016 at 3:16 pm said:
Well, if the name of the work constitutes a spoiler in context (which is what I assumed), then you might be able get away with something like name of author plus decade of publication, or something similarly vague. On the other hand, if it’s a recent work, even that might be too much information. It’s possible that there’s no way to present your example without spoiling things. Or it might be easy. I really don’t have enough information to tell without reading your spoilers. (Which I might be willing to do, since I’m less spoiler-averse than most people.)
@Vasha Actually “The Third Man” was written not for publication but as a “treatment” as the film was developed. Greene writes in the Preface included in my Penguin Classics edition, “The film in fact, is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story.”. Both are terrific in my opinion.
Neat bit of news about the forthcoming Chinese Superman … with DC.
http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2016/04/14/naming-super-man
@Darren Garrison: Yes, it’s the same Slavery By Another Name. Book, then website, then documentary, if I’m remembering the order correctly.
@Xtifr: So what is this flaw you claim in Clarke’s law itself, as opposed to its improperly inverted pseudo-corollary?
This depends a bit on how you interpret Clarke’s statement. I’ve always read magic in that quote as meaning not susceptible to rational analysis by the person studying the technology. It’s in this sense that I think it’s not generally true, unless you presuppose that said person doesn’t understand enough of the laws of physics. If you sent a cell phone back to a group of natural philosophers in the 17th century, they are going to be utterly perplexed. Send it to a group of physicists in, say, the 1940s, and they’ll figure out what the components are doing (although they’ll spend an enormous amount of time exclaiming “Oh my god how did you make this so small???”) Once your science has progressed to understanding how matter and energy and the elementary forces of nature actually work, there has been a fundamental shift in the way science approaches new phenomena. (This is of course not at all the same as saying that our understanding of physics is complete.)
Of course, if you’re going to posit that you exist in a simulation and that everything you sense and remember has actually been made up and fed to you, then all bets are off, but in that case I think you’ve thrown out the baby, the bathwater, and the bathtub. Also the bathroom and the house.
Of course, if you’re going to posit that you exist in a simulation and that everything you sense and remember has actually been made up and fed to you,
If that is the case, I demand the cheat codes so I can play on God mode.
@Mike Glyer: That’s practically the official motto of science fiction!
Then my work here is done!
@Robinareid
Actually there’s a point in one of the earlier novels where Lady Vorpatril is frustrated that Gregor keeps rejecting all the eligible Vor ladies she’s finding. Someone suggests she should be trying to find him a boy. She says that lacking a technological breakthrough, that wouldn’t solve their succession problem. (I.e. two males can’t have a child together.) That’s consistent with Ethan of Athos. Never does anyone suggest to Ethan that Athos doesn’t need ovaries.
In my view, then, the sudden appearance of that technology is a continuity error on Bujold’s part. She’d repeatedly made it clear that *no one* had that kind of technology, but then it’s abruptly available.
Oneiros —
A friend of mine tells a story about a satellite he had a part in being stuck on the launch-pad. They determined what was wrong and what was required to fix it, but it turned out that the only way to fix it quickly, and not send it back to the clean room for disassembly and miss their launch window, was for someone with good dexterity and small hands to do the fix — I think you can see where this is going — So they put a call out on the local radio for someone of that nature, and they got hold of a local dental surgeon to reach in the inspection hatch to do the thing that needed doing. So, a literal case of “rocket surgery”.
@Xtifr: Then i think it’s both true and kind, or at least not untrue and not unkind, to say it occurs somewhere in John Barnes’ Thousand Culture series.
@ Greg Hullender
My suspicion is that this is one of those cases where SF authorial imagination is constrained by the evolution of contemporary biotech evolution + cultural paradigms. It took quite a while in our own culture for anyone to admit that certain in vitro fertilization methods could greatly benefit same-sex couples who wanted children sharing both their genetic material. And even when I saw the first mutterings of admission on that point, it was always in reference to male couples. (I suppose female couples are supposed to be happy with using sperm donors.) Other than the uterine replicator aspect, the Vorkosigan-universe possibilities closely parallel the development of (at least the science for) the manipulation of genetic material and denucleated ova in our own universe.
Beyond that, Bujold seems to have a glaring blind spot when it comes to depicting sexual/romantic desire between women in practice (as opposed to theory). But in that I suppose she’s simply reflecting the literary prejudices of the fandom.
(9) Well actually…..
Commercial sales are a bit different from consumer sales. Getting a purchase order is a great thing, but companies don’t usually pay performance bonuses based on a PO as it can be easy to back out of the deal before the order ships. IME, the day an order ships is the day when the sale is considered “made” for the purpose of paying bonuses. It’s also the day that the banks will generally consider the sale to matter for accounting purposes.
The consumer equivalent of visiting a store is when the PO is issued (the customer brings the shoes to the counter) and when the product ships (out the door in a bag) all at the same time.
IIRC, is it possible to cancel an Amazon pre-order. Yup…just checked. I can cancel my pre-order of Justin Cronin’s “The City of Mirrors” if I want. Not that I would because that series is fabulous.
Amazon is certainly free to do as they please with pre-orders relative to ratings, but I would think that the method most in keeping with the rest of the consumer world would be to count pre-orders either the day they take payment from a credit card or on the day the books ship. Counting only the day that an easily cancellable order is placed is….different.
(12) It is rare for me to like a movie more than the book. Logan’s Run is one such rare occasion.
—–
Having not read the book and having largely ignored the review(s), I’m pretty pleased at being able to skip past the review of the review(s) and subsequent discussion. **chuckle**
On another front, the third book in Sebastien de Castelle’s Greatcoats series (Saint’s Blood) arrived Friday from the UK. I’m almost done with this masterful tome that has been whipsawing me between laughter and tears. This series is quickly becoming one that I will want to re-visit again, and again, and again….
—
Regards,
Dann
@PhilRM: Oh. Ok, I can see that. That’s not how I interpreted Clarke’s claim, but what you say makes sense in the context of your interpretation. Although….
They may be able to make an (accurate as it happens) guess as to how it works, but will they be able to prove that it works the way they guess, and doesn’t actually involve magic? And if not (and I don’t think they could with the technology available at the time, especially if it’s a smart phone), then they haven’t actually distinguished it from magic, have they?
Anyway, I guess the way I always interpreted Clarke’s claim was more like: don’t assume something’s magical just because you can’t find a way to explain it.
(Missed the edit window)
John A Arkansawyer on April 18, 2016 at 5:09 pm said:
That’s probably good enough. Indeed, I now don’t want to read your spoilers, because I’ve read a few stories in that ‘verse, and enjoyed them, but am not hearing any bells ringing.
The real test, of course, will be if someone else speaks up now and says, “oh yes, I agree, that was a real heartbreaker!” 🙂
@Ultragotha: at a Kaffeklatch with Jo Walton at Sasquan she commented (having read the book by then) that she had plumped for the title “Sergyar” to go with “Barrayar” and “Komarr”.
I can see the temptation, BUT, while the titles made sense for the other books, in this case, the planet is just the setting–it’s not terribly significant in any military sense, or even political except that’s where Oliver and Cordelia work.
Sorry for the whooshing: yeah, I went back and read it and went FACEPALM because DOH, I knew what I was talking about! Why getting feedback for revision is so important I keep telling my students!
All the other ways you note the use of the replicators shows how brilliantly Bujold incorporates social engineering as well as all the other stuff in her work–and I always chuckle to myself at the impact.
And yet it’s not in the least utopian: she grounds it in economics and different planetary cultures to show the essential neutrality of the tool which can be used for such a wide range of purposes (I shudder to think of the Jackson Hole applications).
@Mary Frances: great explanation filling in the gap I’d left (I’ve been thinking so much about queerness and Bujold that too much of that was shorthand, not to mention first draft). And I’m sitting here, well, I was sitting there when I read it, thinking WOWZA I never even thought about that but YEAH! Lots of potential for upsetting the patriarchal apple carts of the Vor male caste along multiple axes (though I suspect the technology is still limited fairly well off people). Great comments!
@Greg: THANKS_-and DANG, I cannot remember it (Lady Vorpatril talking about lack of technology. DO you happen to remember which one? I may erm need to start re-reading all of them for research, yes, that’s it, research!
Athos needs ovarian tissue certainly–but none of that horrible awful sinful woman flesh around it–and yes, Ethan depends on both — it is as far as I know the only all-male society created in sff, and I think it is one of the most quietly stealth feminist texts around because Bujold completely avoids the idea that a completely male culture would be a testosterone dystopia to show that if men suddenly are responsible for all the work women do, it produces a quite peaceful culture (as opposed to war war war all the time), and I think her idea of social credit for caretakers is brilliant (and how Ethan blurts it all out at his surprise at what happens elsewhere is priceless). We should so do it. But Athos is in the background as Ethan ventures out to the galaxy at large (I would love to see more stories on Athos, but they wouldn’t be military sf, heh, or typical action oriented stuff which is of course why I’d like to see them).
Wait, what? The uterine replicators were introduced in the first Cordelia book–the technology wasn’t available on Barrayar, but Time of Isolation, etc. And I doubt the Vor caste even checked that page in the tech catalog when they regained contact with the greater galactic culture afterwards — they were too busy looking into big guns. Oh, wait–I see–you’re talking about the fact that the uterine replicators were on Barrayar stored in a closet somewhere for Cordelia and Aral to use, so she should have known about them? I’ll have to go reread and think about it.
My first off the top guess is that it took a while for the tech to catch on: I’d have to work out the timeline and that Lady V. just didn’t pay attention to that sort of thing.
Although now that I see the brilliant comment by Heather Rose Jones–yeah, I need to connect dates of publication to the knowledge/ development of the IVF technologies here!
Excellent point as is: Bujold seems to have a glaring blind spot when it comes to depicting sexual/romantic desire between women in practice (as opposed to theory). But in that I suppose she’s simply reflecting the literary prejudices of the fandom.
And the larger prejudices overall, especially if one is of a certain age (if I recall correctly, we’re fairly close in age, and I was in my twenties before even learning that there was such a thing as homosexuality–and at that I picked it up from Mary Renault novels–she was raised in one of the midwest vowel states, me in Idaho, but that simply was not talked about).
I had her sort of identified as one of a group of women authors whose works I love because they are wonderful with women protagonists and characters (Tepper is another). One of their limits is they cannot see or conceive (hah pun intended upon reread) sexual/romantic attraction as anything other than heterosexual. It still frustrates me–it would be so easy for her to present some of the named less important characters as reflecting the wide ranges of sexual and gender identities that must exist in the galaxy at large–most of her work does not show sexual encounters–that comes only in the Sharing Knife series–but just showing people in various relationships with quick references? So could happen. It would be background, but that’s important too.
But then I go read Joanna Russ and Melissa Scott (and now your work too! MOAR to read!)
@Will R.: Your link to the article about the loss of the Bounty got me sucked down a rabbit hole of reading about that incident all day (accident reports are addictive, aren’t they?)
In addition to that article, which is written for laypeople, you can also read the very detailed Coast Guard investigation report; other interesting links include a timeline with notes by maritime safety expert Mario Vittone, and an article by G. Anderson Chase where he talks about risk assessment decision-making and the principle of Bridge Resource Management (team contributions to decisions).
@Xtifr: They certainly wouldn’t get all the details; e.g., while they would certainly figure out the phone had an antenna, I suspect inferring the existence of the WiFi internet would be a bridge too far. However, the point is that there wouldn’t be anything in the phone that they would find inexplicable, i.e., that would require the existence of magic, which is the relevant issue for my interpretation of Clarke’s statement.
Ethan of Athos is all the Bujold I’ve read. Is it all that good? Because that was pretty good. I hesitate to jump in because there are a lot of books in her world. I’m weird about stuff like that. I still wouldn’t have read about Vlad Taltos if I hadn’t found four of those books at a garage sale, then idly picked one up to browse.
@Robin Reid:
There’s also the short story “Full Fathom Five My Father Lies” by Rand B. Lee. Surely that can’t be the only other one, either.
@John A. Arkansawyer: Ethan of Athos is actually one of the less skilled books in the series, IMO; if you enjoyed it, you will definitely like the other early books. Start with the omnibus Cordelia’s Honor (or Shards of Honor if you can’t get hold of that).
Oooo, some of you may have known about this story by Ann Leckie (two parter) in which how Breq got the icon she carries in the series is disclosed. I just learned about it!
Bookmarking to read later because hed is so ded.
She Commands Me and I Obey part 1 of 2
I admit, head hung in shame, that I’ve read not much Bujold — a couple of her fantasy novels 20+ years ago, and, much more recently, the Vorkosigan short story in Hartwell & Cramer’s Space Opera Renaissance, which pretty much convinced me that I need to do a deep dive sooner rather than later.
@Vasha
There’s an all male society in an A. Bertram Chandler short story from the 50’s(?) Can’t think of the name at the moment. Not a recommendation just another example. (Chandler always bored the heck out of me). As I recall everything is solved at the end by introducing women to a culture that’s never known them…
Accident reports: don’t recall what led to reading it but ended up reading a few weeks back on the loss of B-36 #44-92035 near Carswell, TX. Can’t say the crew didn’t have spirit (or that they didn’t make a series of bad decisions). Details of this and other B-36 crashes at:
http://www.air-and-space.com/b-36%20wrecks.htm
@Vasha: I hadn’t heard of the story (I tend to default to novels, so perhaps more accurately, it is the only novel-length work that contains–but is not set in, alas–an all male society, one founded by fundamentalist separatists). Thanks for the reference (have ordered the anthology)!
So ,yes, there may well be shorter works…
(HAH, ninjaed by Stoic Cynic on the Chandler story”
NOw, there’s ManWorld or whatever it’s called (one of the four timelines in Russ’ _The Female Man_–that’s the ultimate dystopian war culture, though they’re at war with women).
Googled around: Wikipedia’s article (which needs citations) uses “single-gender planets” (should be single sex mutter grumple): lists Ethan, then Bertram Chandler’s novel _A Spartan Planet_ based on you guess it, SPARTA! From the 1960s.
And a short story: “Cordwainer Smith’s 1964 short story “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal” portrays a society in which all of the women have died out.” (Lots more female only works, heh, and EofA also stands out in that nobody died–a group of fundamentalists just set up a male separatist colony!).
So let’s edit my comment to “it’s very rare and doesn’t happen very often especially in novel length works.” But then there aren’t many single-gender (female) worlds being explored these days.
Most of of inhabitants of Chandler’s Spartan Planet think that they live on Planet All Dude.
@robinreid
The Leckie is a great short! Someone recommended it here awhile back which is when I read it. Envy you a first reading 🙂
@Stoic CYnic: Thanks! I am saving it for a reward after I turn my late bibliographic essay in.
Because DANG I’ve been wondering about that icon and how she got it!
James David Nicolls: I found the Sparta Planet reference in Wikipedia, so will have to check that out as well!
I’m betting Bujold’s is radically different than all of them (and I vaguely remember Larbalestier talking about some even earlier SF that had “battle of the sexes” stories and had single-gender cultures — but mostly short stories I think which I am shamefully prone to avoiding because I prefer novels).