(1) CALL ME KATSU. The Awl author Silvia Killingsworth declares “You Can’t Make Me Call It A Robopus”.
“The researchers built another octopus-inspired bot called ‘Poseidrone’ that tackled the more difficult challenge of swimming. A few different tactics were employed before engineers decided the best swimming mechanism was to give up control of Poseidrone’s arms altogether. The end result is a little kooky-looking (think a chicken flapping its wings underwater), but it gets the job done.”
Biomimicry, soft electronics and smart control mechanisms help these robots get a better grip on a complex world
(2) MINNEAPOLIS MARATHON. David Stever writes: “We have a Twin Cities radio station KTMY that has touted itself as ‘all thing entertainment’ for the past few years (they have a gossip alert every 30 minutes throughout the day), and one of their sponsors has put together a Game of Thrones listener contest with a neat twist. Folks have been putting their names in to participate in a 46-hour Games of Thrones watching party by four individuals which will be followed by a GoT trivia contest to thin out the survivors, so that from the four, a single winner will be given two tickets for a tour of Iceland put together by a travel agency/sponsor. If only it could have happened during Minicon weekend…
Click here for more information about The Nights Watch Marathon, a binge-fest of the HBO series presented by myTalk 107.1 starting April 19.
(3) KEEP REWATCHING THE SKIES. Hello Giggles found more candy in a Harry Potter movie — “This ‘Harry Potter’ professor got a new wand in the middle of the series and no one noticed”.
In the Harry Potter world, a wand is maybe the most important tool at a wizard’s disposal. In the real world, we obsess over each and every Harry Potter book and movie, searching for new tidbits we missed the first few hundred times around. Turns out, we’ve collectively missed one very big change involving a very big part of the wizarding world.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Flitwick, played by Warwick Davis, underwent some major, major changes. His entire look changed (and, we have to say, for the better)….
“I have two different wands in Harry Potter,” Davis explained. “In the first two films, when I played the older looking Flitwick, I had quite an intricate wand that consisted of many different materials. It was wood and it had a kind of pearlescent handle and then a kind of brass tip, and the brass tip connected with your hand.” …
(4) LOOSE ENDS. At Entertainment Weekly, “Harry Potter actors reveal the questions they still have for J. K. Rowling”
LUNA LOVEGOOD
EVANNA LYNCH: I think the big blank is her mom. I’ve always wondered what she’s like. We’ve just been told her name is Pandora and that she died doing an experiment, and I just wonder, I really am curious what was her relationship with Luna? Because obviously she’s so close to her dad, and I find that there’s always one parent that you have more in common with or that you confide in more, and I wonder … was that her mom? Or just what kind of person she was.
(5) CAMPAIGNER. James H. Burns has a bulletin from the political front:
I was at an event yesterday with President Bill Clinton, a local Long Island rally to help get out the vote for his wife’s Presidential run, in New York’s April 19th primary… [Here’s a video.]
It occurred to me how much of the President’s speech had a futuristic ring. (By the way, whether you agree with Mr. Clinton’s politics or not, he remains a charismatic, compelling, and humorous orator.) He mentioned that much of his work with his foundation (which has had success around the world with healthcare, human rights and “green” initiatives) has reinforced to him the importance of using available technologies in creative ways.
“We can have environmental policies that actually grow the economy,” said Mr. Clinton, citing the success of solar energy programs in Iowa, and other endeavors.
As to the obstacles by some factions to the implementation of certain new programs, Clinton stated, “That’s nothing new… Rich people have always been greedy!”
It was under Clinton, of course, that the internet first flourished, which made another statement intriguing: “You can build all the walls you want around America; you can’t keep out social media.”
There was also one other idea that might strike particularly close to home, at least for those who remember a very famous William Shatner sketch (and this, from the most Kirk-like of our recent presidents):
“We have to take down the walls to participation,” said the President, referring to the continuing increasing costs of a college education, and student loans. “College debt is the only debt in America that you cannot refinance… A college education is a lifetime assset… Let’s make it like a mortgage…
“Then, everyone could move out of their parents’ house.”
(6) PROPELLER BEANIES. Terence McArdle’s obituary for country singer Merle Haggard in the April 7 Washington Post tells how one mundane abused the quintessential faannish icon.
In 1957, [Haggard] was sentenced to five years in California’s San Quentin State Prison for car theft and burglary.
The burglary charge resulted from an inebriated attempt to pry open the back door of a restaurant in broad daylight. After his apprehension, Mr. Haggard simply walked out of the Bakersfield City Jail.
Having embarrassed the local police with his escape, he was captured at his brother’s house in Lamont, Calif., 25 miles away. Mr. Haggard recalled in his 1999 memoir, “Merle Haggard’s My House of Memories,” written with Tom Carter, that he had been spotted earlier that day in Bakersfield wearing a propeller beanie as a disguise.
(7) LINES FOR FELINES. Ebook Friendly compiles fun examples of the Twitter meme “What if book titles were rewritten for cats?”
#CatBooks
The Lord Of The Strings pic.twitter.com/xeTnDV8iKC— Lizzy Lou Who ?? (@_wintergirl93) April 7, 2016
(8) BAUERSFELD OBIT. American radio dramatist and voice actor Erik Bauersfeld died April 3. He was the voice of Admiral Ackbar (“It’s a trap!”) and Bib Fortuna in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
BoingBoing has assembled a tribute with YouTube clips and links.
(9) DRAGON AWARDS: MORE REACTIONS. Kate Paulk and Vox Day both wrote about the new awards today. They reacted — with approval, naturally, but without implying they were aware it would happen.
Vox Day react to the Dragon Awards announcement in “Making SF awards great again” at Vox Popoli.
Yes, indeed, I think the Hugo Awards might have just taken a few hits over the last decade or two. In any event, I’m sure the science fiction fandom community is every bit as delighted about people taking their advice and setting up a new and alternative award as they were about people taking John Scalzi’s advice to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards….
I am registered to vote in the Dragon Awards and I would encourage you to do so as well. I’ll post my recommendations here the week after the Hugo shortlist is announced, in the event that any of you might happen to be curious about them.
Kate Paulk recommends the new awards as “Another Way To Help End Puppy-Related Sadness” at Mad Genius Club.
Apparently someone at DragonCon has decided the field needs a new set of awards because, well… this. I like their set of categories: they fit nicely with the way the field is evolving, with no fewer than four game categories – one for each major type of game. Talk about comparing like with like.
They also separated comic books and graphic novels, and they have a dedicated YA category. Is that not wholly awesome?
Things aren’t 100%, yet – there’s a bit of a copy-paste artifact in their Best Fantasy Novel info that made me giggle but still… It’s nice to see a recognition that Fantasy is not Science Fiction is not Horror is not…
Even more interesting, the Dragon Awards are a complete people’s choice award. Anyone can sign up and vote, and it costs nothing. I’m really looking forward to comparing what comes out of the Hugo process and what comes out of the Dragon process – particularly in terms of numbers of voters and the like (hopefully the Dragon folks will be nice and give us that information to play… ahem… run statistical analysis with.
Faithful File 770 reader Christopher M. Chupik registered a palpable hit with this comment:
Sad Puppies was in it’s death throes a few weeks ago, according to them, and yet we also managed to manipulate DragonCon into doing our bidding.
But how often do you find Damien G. Walter in agreement with, in this case, nearly everyone?
https://twitter.com/damiengwalter/status/718106388497620992
(10) HEROIC PENS. New merchandise in the virtual window at the iPenStore —
Cross celebrates three classic Marvel Super Heroes with the new Marvel Collection of pens from the Marvel Universe: Captain America, Spider-Man, and Iron Man. Available in the Classic Century II rollerball and the Tech 2 ballpoint pen/stylus.
(11) THE OLD IN-OUT IN-OUT. Burgers were on John Scalzi’s agenda today in Los Angeles.
When I leave here, it will take me an hour to travel 13 miles. I'm in no rush. pic.twitter.com/j2EQn63w91
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 7, 2016
(12) THESE ARE THE JOKES. Horrible Tolkien-themed pun in Dan Thompson’s Brevity cartoon today. (In other words, I laughed…)
(13) ICON JOINS ALIEN DAY CELEBRATION. Birth. Movies. Death. has the story. “Sigourney Weaver Will Help The Alamo Drafthouse Celebrate ALIEN DAY”.
ALIENS’ female leads take center stage with Sigourney Weaver joining NY screening and Jenette Goldstein & Carrie Henn leading LA talent to mark chest-bursting 4.26.16 date – plus exclusive new Mondo T-shirt and line of official merchandise…
While it may be true that in space no one can hear you scream, they will be heard loud and clear on April 26, 2016 as Alamo Drafthouse and Mondo join in on 20th Century Fox’s nationwide celebration of LV-426 / ALIEN DAY / 4.26.16 – a date paying tribute, of course to the desolate LV-426 featured in both films.
While the Alien Queen instantly became the stuff of nightmares, it is the three female leads who hold iconic status with fans everywhere. In response, Alamo Drafthouse and Mondo are pleased to announce that star Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver – Ellen Ripley herself – will be on hand for a screening of ALIENS at New York City’s Town Hall. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Jenette Goldstein – AKA the tough-as-nails Private Vasquez – and Carrie Henn – the indomitable Newt – will be in attendance for ALIENS at The Theatre at the Ace Hotel – just around the corner from where Alamo’s first LA location is now under construction. And last but not least, Alamo and Mondo will co-present a terrifying ALIEN + ALIENS double feature at Chicago’s beloved arthouse titan, The Music Box Theatre.
(14) IT’S NOT A WRAP YET. ScreenRant tells, “The Mummy Reboot Is Now Filming; Set Photos Feature Tom Cruise”.
Universal Pictures is now working on a reboot of The Mummy franchise in order to launch a rebooted version of Universal’s shared monster movie universe. Action veteran Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation), Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders) and Jake Johnson (New Girl) are starring in the film, with Alex Kurtzman (co-writer of Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness) in the director’s chair. The plot sees Cruise’s ex-Navy SEAL take on a Mummy that is being played by Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service).
Coming Soon has posted the first set photos of Cruise and Wallis – who, in the latter’s case, is playing an archaeologist – filming scenes in Oxford, England for The Mummy reboot. The pictures show a night shoot somewhere in the center of the famous university city. While these images don’t really give much away, what the photos do confirm is that the film is set in the present day (as previously reported), as we can tell by the contemporary clothing being worn by the pair – something that makes all the more sense, what with Cruise playing a former Navy SEAL….
The first photos of Tom Cruise on the set of The Mummy! https://t.co/jMoB75dIbo #TheMummy pic.twitter.com/vaPLiKYTVn
— ComingSoon.net (@comingsoonnet) April 6, 2016
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, David Stever, Martin Morse Wooster, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris S.]
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It’s mentioned somewhere in the books that the terraforming of the other continent on Barrayar itself and emigration to Komarr and Sergyar which do have varying forms of democratic participation in government help keep a lid on discontent.
@Bruce Baugh: Those short story reviews were great. I doubt I will read the collection (not my thing) but I’ll keep an eye out for more things you write.
@ Ryan H. I agree China is a good comparison, so where are the equivalent of the Tiammen square protestors? Who’s in charge of censoring the news? Its not just that the government is still in power, its that there is no challenge to their power.
SpaceX: That is a truly remarkable thing.
@Xtifr:
I’ve generally called them ‘fan’ and ‘dealer’ cons. The ‘fan’ cons are run by and for the fans. The ‘dealer’ cons (like FanExpo here) are really put on for the dealers, with the fans as the product being sold to them, much like the network TV advertising model. Given that the dealer cons tend to have more corporate backing and more money to throw around, they also tend to get more famous actor guests and thus pull in larger crowds of more casual fans.
The Prometheus Awards had a pretty good batch of winners this year, and the longlist was excellent. Although I’m far from libertarian, I plan to keep an eye out for their awards, because they seem to have picked some entertaining stuff. And their picks don’t, overall, seem that libertarian anyway. Well-written ripping yarns are always appreciated around Casa Lurkertype, particularly by Mr. Lurkertype.
So perhaps the D*C Awards will become like that. Not this year — too rushed and unpublicized — but give them a few and they’ll hopefully steer us towards nifty keen FUN in various subgenres of novels, videos, and games.
I’m inclined to trust that the award administration will be honest. IF indeed D*C is running it and they haven’t farmed it out. I have no idea, since we don’t know who’s running it, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt their first year until shown otherwise. Which I doubt we’ll be shown any data at all.
Since You-Know-Who is gone, they seem to be okay folks and certainly do a good job of handling so many people every year. I doubt D*C will put a thumb on the scale ideologically, but they MAY throw out some obvious bad faith nominations — multiple accounts slating, be it Puppies, Bronies, or Wholock gals. This process is SO asking for ballot stuffing. Or they may throw up their hands and take everything at face value because they don’t have enough time to analyze the data. As for me and my house, we will serve the Katsu. 🐙
I confess I buy fewer books at cons because of the lugging problem. But I still do it if the author is there. Even at my toughest and poorest, I usually manage to have a paperback come home with me. But only one at the last con, go me! (SVCC, I bought a set of LEGO minifig armor and got a free t-shirt from Netflix) I get the cover to my e-reader autographed now; authors are quite used to that. I filled one in 2012-3 thanks to Worldcon, Baycon, and the Nebulas. Then I set it aside and bought a new one (Connie Willis and MRK: lovely penmanship. John Scalzi and GRRM: a scrawl).
Barrayar: you would think the minor Vors, already known for scheming, would gin up some sort of rebellion, possibly in conjunction with rich non-Vors. Grassroots members, but actually run by business. Kind of a Tea Party thing? Particularly now that Barrayar has contact with the rest of the galaxy and the peasants can see all the freedom (of various sorts) that other planets have.
@steve davidson: I hope the situation improves rapidly.
Today’s Dinosaur Comics covers a frequently discussed topic here at File770: the appearance of the Suck Fairy! (Though not by that name.)
As for the Dragonish Awards, I’m not quite sure why all the negativity. These people have plenty of experience putting on a large, popular, convention that attracts and pleases all sorts of people. This is not some random group of folks coming in out of the blue. These are people who have at least already earned our trust in their good intentions, if not their competence at award adminstration. (Although if DragonCon is like other cons I’ve been to, they probably have some experience with minor awards for things like costuming.)
I had two unexpected book windfalls today. Someone on this site recommended The Interior Life by Katherine Blake; I thought, I need to find a copy of that out-of-print paperback sometime… and today I randomly spotted it on the dollar rack outside a used bookstore. Fine condition, maybe going for a buck because it’s obscure?
And then, having participated in DABWAHA this year, I learned I’d been randomly selected to receive one of the many prizes various authors offer… three signed books by Ilona Andrews (Clean Sweep, Sweep in Peace, Magic Stars). Haven’t read Andrews, been meaning to.
Used up luck for today…?
Lee Whiteside wrote: “The Phoenix SciFi Con mentioned here a while back has thrown in the towel.”
Was this mention in a comment? Because I didn’t have any luck using the F770 search box just now. Whatever the case, it apparently zoomed right past me back when. Admittedly, Hilde and I are largely out of the local fannish loop these days, due to health and time constraints, and haven’t even made it to every Leprecon the last few years. But it sounds like the organizers didn’t do much marketing past their GoFundMe page.
Here’s some cold, hard data on the sexism of Hollywood movies: use it the next time an MRA whines about women getting to do “so much!”.
2000 movies analyzed as to how many lines men get vs. lines women do.
“Frozen” must be great, right, it’s all about the two girls! Nope, 57% of the lines in it are given to men/boys. You can read the data for all 2000 of the movies.
(Mike: I humbly suggest this for the next Scroll. If it’s not too SJW.)
@Anthony – that’s only going to help the promulgation of revolutionary democratic ideals back on repressive ol’ Barrayar! Hearing all about how cousin Bonehead who was a shit shoveler at home and son of a long line of indentured shit-shovelers got packed off-planet due to an over-supply of shit-shovelers and ended up winning a seat on the Council and voting himself a shiny new shit-shovel is going to give the shit-shovelers at home Notions!
I can see ImpSec keeping a tight leash on the typical aristocratic scum fomenting unrest for advantage – that’s just politics, and occasionally they let one slip through for Miles to foil if Bujold needs to dash of a quick novella. It’s the grass-roots stuff, the burgeoning Barrayaran Spring with all the kids being funneled into Imperial agricultural or catering colleges so they can be educated serfs and servants boiling over with doomed youthful idealism and recreational drugs and maybe a Labour movement and a Land Reform movement and a Womens’ Rights movement and so on and so forth – not a hint of any of that. Notable by its absence, you might say.
@Greg: “I’ve wondered whether authors could arrange to autograph single sheets of paper with the cover image on them. (Maybe with a white space at the bottom.)”
I know some authors who use promotional postcards for that purpose.
@Mike:
That logic only works if all the readers are buying the same books. It’s the same issue the Hugo nomination pool has, just in a slightly different context. I just flagged a bunch of superhero fiction for my wish list today, but it’s mostly indie stuff that I don’t expect anyone else here to have even heard of. There’s just a lot of material out there; it wouldn’t be hard to find a dozen fans of a genre who have completely different sets of favorite authors or series.
Heck, let’s look at Marvel for a minute. I’m a Spider-man kind of guy. Not exclusively, but that’s my core Marvel fandom. I know X-Men people, and several Filers are Ms. Marvel people, and a lot of vocal FF people spoke up when the recent movie bombed. Then there are the Avengers folks, and the people who like the Daredevil and Cloak & Dagger “gritty ghetto” stuff, and I haven’t even touched on Dr. Strange or Iron Fist or…
You see where I’m going with this? There’s going to be some degree of crossover between any combination of those groups, but if you add all the people together, they’re going to dwarf the sales of any single Marvel title. It’s inevitable in a large marketplace.
tl;dr – I read SF, but I’m not contributing to J.D. Robb’s sales numbers. That doesn’t mean I’m not buying a ton of books… they’re just not hers. There are millions of books I don’t buy, and the same is true for every reader on the planet. That’s true regardless of how big media conventions get; the two facts are utterly unrelated.
@Nigel: Yes, I hadn’t considered an Arab Spring-like movement. But the one on our planet ended up not doing so well. 🙁 It’s plausible once there’s a lot of peasants-turned-skilled labor. And the colleges are certainly going to lead to a nascent women’s movement, now that the girls have a choice beyond “marry the guy from the next farm and breed a lot”. Sort of a Marlo Thomas “That Girl” phenomenon. That, and the dashing rebel bad boys who go to other places are always romantic and might be worth following into the Cause and exile. Then their kids are used to relative freedom.
@Rev. Bob: I think you’d enjoy JD Robb. Start around the fifth book, the early ones are uneven. They’re all stand-alone enough.
@lurkertype: “I get the cover to my e-reader autographed now; authors are quite used to that. I filled one in 2012-3 thanks to Worldcon, Baycon, and the Nebulas. Then I set it aside and bought a new one (Connie Willis and MRK: lovely penmanship. John Scalzi and GRRM: a scrawl).”
It’s funny, in a way: I use covers for just about every other electronic device I own, but not my e-reader.
What I’ve been doing for the past few years is using a stylus with a sketch app to get authors to sign a blank page at conventions. It takes a little more time and effort than signing one book does (touchscreens make bad handrests, y’know), but it’s a lot easier and faster than signing even a small stack of books – for both of us! Then, when I get home, I can export the autographs to my laptop and tip ’em into my ebooks, typically right around the title and/or copyright pages. (I did that with Every Heart a Doorway earlier today.)
Sometimes I still bring physical books to autograph sessions – like an ARC of one of the Honor Harrington books last time I saw David Weber – but going electronic has been a lot easier. I don’t have to wrack my brain before each con to remember who’s coming and find their books in the Stacks Of Doom, and I never have that “oh, man, if I’d known you were gonna be here, I woulda brought…” moment. (Well, okay, that does happen with DVD inserts sometimes. Much less frequent, though.)
ETA: Nothin’ against J.D. Robb, just hasn’t sufficiently gotten my interest. (And Mount TBR is already so high…) I just needed a handy Recognizable Name for the example, and hers came to mind.
Ryan H on April 8, 2016 at 1:30 pm said:
Ask me in person sometime. Other people involved do not agree with my version of events. We spent years and a succession of working groups (all of whom I’m sure were working in good faith) attempting to build the One Perfect Forever Website. This is a case where “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” and consequently nothing ever got done.
Last year, the WSFS MPC discharged all of the various working groups and assigned the job to the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee, which isn’t perfect but did manage to get TheHugoAwards.org done. Now the only bottleneck is for our webmaster to free up enough time from her Day Jobbe and other commitments to do the rebuild.
lurkertype on April 8, 2016 at 2:44 pm said:
Someone (I cannot remember who it was) asked me to carry books back from Spokane because they knew I was driving, and that I could eventually hand them over at a BASFA meeting. Except I’ve forgotten who it was, and they’ve forgotten they bought the books, and thus I have a half-box of books I do not want and do not know to whom they belong. I’m hoping that someday the BASFA member in question will remember and contact me about it.
Nigel and lurkertype: I suspect all that’s coming, in one form or another, in a generation or two. I also think that’s going to be a a dreadful surprise to most of the current generation–which might be why we haven’t seen the Signs yet! (Whether or not Bujold ever gets around to writing the Next Generation, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
ETA: And I also bet that even ImpSec isn’t immune from “fighting the last war” syndrome . . .
@Vasha: Thanks! 🙂
I don’t think I disagree with that, however, do you have an idea for pragmatically testing how many people who go to a Dragon Con — a popular culture con which emphasizes mass media and comics — buy sf/f books, and how many? There may be a long tail, but experience shows there’s got to be a bestselling bump at the head of that tail: is it 5,000 fans buying the occasional book, or 30,000 fans buying a bunch of books? If it was the latter, I think traditional publishers would be camped out there already.
I just downloaded the 2015 Dragon Con pocket program. I went through the lists of exhibitors, vendors and artists. Galaxy Press was listed. That was about it. Seemed strange. Baen does stuff on the program. In 2014 they ran photos on FB of a Baen table. But no 2015 table? Anyway, it seemed like a person ought to be able to tell whether publishers were marketing themselves at Dragon Con by checking these listings.
As for the Dragonish Awards, I’m not quite sure why all the negativity. These people have plenty of experience putting on a large, popular, convention that attracts and pleases all sorts of people. This is not some random group of folks coming in out of the blue. These are people who have at least already earned our trust in their good intentions, if not their competence at award adminstration.
There is limited evidence that the people running the awards are the same people as those who are running the con, and a reasonable amount of evidence that they are not the same.
I was always annoyed at Miles lack of support for women’s inheritance rights simply because he didn’t like how it would impact him.
I believe the penalties for stirring up rebellion are far harsher on Vor than proles, which may reduce the interest in minor nobility stirring things up.
DragonCon has an entire hotel devoted to games and a massive gaming track. I find it myopic that many people at 770 ignore the gamers and what a large overlap there is between gamers and readers.
Cons of all sorts are growing. There was a long article about this last month in the Wall St. Journal. With the internet, all sorts of hobbyists or fans of something can connect – and form a Con.
It is also odd that none of you have mentioned GenCon – the worlds biggest RPG Con. GenCon is much bigger than WorldCon and has a very large author track. Publishers frequently show up.
DragonCon’s early roots were the old Atlanta Fantasy Fair. It failed. The gamer group bound together to be the founding force behind the current DragonCon. DragonCon has very deep gaming roots. DragonCon has always had a very big author track – from Year 1 forward.
Current/Future Reading
Current Reading: Barsk by Schoen. I’m enjoying this more than I expected to. Actually, I’m not sure what I really expected but it didn’t seem like my sort of thing so I’m glad I gave it a try.
Future Reading: On deck I have A Labyrinth of Drakes, Exit Pursued By A Bear, Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul, and a short stack of Christian fiction I checked out to keep up on the genre for work purposes.
@airboy
The people at File 770 who game do discuss gaming, and the games they’ve enjoyed, including those they’ve nominated for Hugos. They’ve also discussed whether the Hugos should have a game award, or whether games should be nominated in the BDPL category, amongst other subjects. I find it bizarre you expect the people at File 770 who don’t game to go out of their way to discuss gaming.
@Mike: “I don’t think I disagree with that, however, do you have an idea for pragmatically testing how many people who go to a Dragon Con — a popular culture con which emphasizes mass media and comics — buy sf/f books, and how many?”
Not a clue; I responded because your logic was flawed, not because I wanted to propose a study of my own. I have to agree with airboy (minus the “myopic” crack) on this aspect, though:
D*C has a lot of everything. Sure, there’s media and cosplay, and that gets a lot of attention from outside because it’s easy to see. But there’s also filking and author panels and gaming and science and lots of other stuff. There are tons of readers there – if there weren’t, the literary tracks wouldn’t have enough interest to justify their continued existence. (And then there are the readers who don’t go to that programming because they come to cons to do other things. Ten thousand people means at least twenty thousand reasons to attend.)
ETA, @kathodus: Note the second part of airboy’s quote – the gamer/reader overlap. Not imaginary…
Aaron on April 8, 2016 at 4:19 pm said:
But there is incontrovertible evidence that the people running the awards work for the people who are running the con, and were chosen by the people who run the con. So my argument still stands. The people running the con have shown competence, and they are ultimately in charge of these awards, even if they’re not directly administering them themselves.
@airboy
We like games, and gamers, here. We like them so much that we assume that misogynistic man-boy trolls like gamergate don’t speak for all gamers.
Petréa Mitchell: I personally trust that the D*C awards administrators will be making a good-faith effort to run honest awards that adhere to their vision of a broad-based fan-voted award. How well that vision matches up with what people outside the organization hope or fear it is, and how well the administrators will cope with people who want to participate in bad faith, are questions that are not fully answerable until the awards are handed out. Possibly not even until they’ve tried this for a few years.
Given that the rules openly state that the administrators reserve the right to adjust the results however they see fit, there will be no way for anyone to judge — EVER — how well and how honestly they administer the awards. Even if they release result totals, are they going to release totals of the votes on the ballots they eliminate? I would doubt it.
The rules say that they have the right to challenge people for ID if they suspect their identity is false. But there is no way that they will have the staff and the time to challenge and engage in verification of a massive number of ballots.
And this is where, and why, the “everyone gets to vote for free” policy falls apart. In this day and age, there are all sorts of methods for freeping such awards, and not only are the admins not going to be able to stop it, they may very often not be able to detect it — or they may, in cases, mistakenly decide that honest votes are freeped.
This is why I am content to vote on the Hugos and watch on the sidelines what happens with the D*C Awards. I don’t see any point in making the effort when I have zero confidence that 1) my ballot will actually be counted rather than eliminated for some arbitrary reason; 2) my votes, and those of other honest voters, will not be overwhelmed by freeped votes.
@Nigel – Having said that, certainly in Lord Vorpatril’s Alliance, it seemed to me that Barrayar was ripe for an intellectual bourgeois elite to begin espousing revolutionary principles. Overdue, in fact. I would be expecting strikes and mass meetings and demonstrations as the old order crumbles.
I’m multiple books behind (I, uh, don’t love Miles) so this may be pure ignorance, but I think Cordelia might be meant as something of a safety valve, espousing safely revolutionary ideas while remaining firmly in the aristocracy. That’s not actually how social groupings really work, but it’s close enough for fiction.
I think it’s about time for them to look for the Vor Kerensky (autocorrect, why would you want to change that to Karen’s KY?!), though.
But there is incontrovertible evidence that the people running the awards work for the people who are running the con, and were chosen by the people who run the con.
No, there actually isn’t. There is evidence that someone said “Hey, Dragon*Con should have awards, and we’ll do it”, and someone at the con said ‘Sure”, but work for them? No, there’s zero evidence of that.
@TheYoungPretender
As a fairly regular gamer of the, I just want to say Yes. THIS.
@airboy – I talk about games when I think it’s relevant to the conversation at hand. You know, like people tend to do in normal social interactions.
DragonCon has an entire hotel devoted to games and a massive gaming track. I find it myopic that many people at 770 ignore the gamers and what a large overlap there is between gamers and readers.
No one has ignored gamers. Many people here are gamers. Exactly why do you think people here have ignored gamers? And sure, there’s some crossover, but we’ve already said that there are at least some book people at Dragon*Con, the gamers who buy books are included in that accounting.
It is also odd that none of you have mentioned GenCon – the worlds biggest RPG Con. GenCon is much bigger than WorldCon and has a very large author track. Publishers frequently show up.
And? As a book con it is fairly ordinary. I’ve been to several Gen Con’s and the books and authors aren’t what bring me there. Or what seem to bring most con attendees there. The book section of the exhibitors hall is a small area tucked into the back, smaller than the artists area. The largest book publisher I’ve seen there (other than the ones like Paizo and WotC who also publish RPG books) is Angry Robot, although I could have missed a booth.
@Aaron:
Lies. Lies to which we are so dedicated that you and I, in each other’s presence, spent four hours playing the Sentinels of the Multiverse Roleplaying Game with one of the designers and that RPG won’t even be available to the general public for months, just to pull off the appearance of being gamers. Perfidy that, um, perfidious just proves the vastness of our deception. Also, Tachyon is best Sentinel.
@aaron @Jim
I am extremely jealous of the both of you.
As for myself, I pull off the appearance of being a gamer by (still) running one of the longest Amber diceless PBEMS ever run. All just a cover, don’t you know.
@Paul: I am extremely jealous of the both of you.
You should be. It is a really excellent game. Also, don’t listen to Jim’s speedster propaganda. Everyone knows that Absolute Zero is the best of the Freedom Five.
Also, I fake being a gamer by running an ongoing 3.5e D&D game in my home that meets a couple times per month, and has been running for two years now.
Sentinals of the Multiverse RPG? I’ve played the regular game twice at cons; it was cool. But I’ve not played a super-hero RPG since…. <thinking>…. Champions, back in the early 1980s. (Played plenty of other RPGs, mind you, but for some reason no superhero ones.) How did it play? Are the mechanics good? (My recollection of Champions was the best part was designing the characters….)
Doctor Science –
I know this is long past the time you put the message up, but the Clakkers in the book are powered by magic, like Golems specifically. Because of this they don’t need fuel however the trade off is a lack of free will. The exact nature of it isn’t explained because the characters themselves don’t know, it’s told from the point of view of agents trying to understand it and a Clakker who is trying to figure out the nature of his soul as well, so it’s intentional that the reader not yet know exactly what powers the Clakkers.
It’s a good point but one I feel is well explained within the parameters of the narrative.
I haven’t gamed much since college, when a DM …. you know what? Trigger Warning is enough information there.
Gaming tended to play into my anxiety issues, anyway. Now I tend toward one-person math games like Ken-Ken or Kakuro, or else solitaire (Klondike, usually). I did have a favorite stone-matching game on my Palm Pilot called Glyph, but I’ve never seen it anywhere since Palm fell. The Bejeweled family of games is sordid compared to the beauty that was Glyph.
In case anyone here thinks I’m anti-gamer or anti-comics, I’ll note that I was assistant manager of a game and comic book store for several years while in high school and college. And it was because of that store that I got involved with Worldcon, when the manager encouraged me to find a way to get down to the 1984 Worldcon in Anaheim for the “End of the Quest” party celebrating the release of the 20th issue of Elfquest.
Now as far as the Hugo Awards go, I think that as a matter of practical politics, anyone who thinks a given game (computer or otherwise) deserves a Hugo Award should have nominated it in Best Related Work. I am not persuaded by the BDP Long Form argument, and frankly it usually takes fewer nominations to make the ballot in BRW. Get games nominated enough times and there will be more proof that Worldcon members actually care sufficiently about games for there to be a category for them.
Regarding innovation in categories: the Best Graphic Story category, viewed with great suspicion by a significant chunk of the Business Meeting attendees, was actually trialed once by a Worldcon before it became a permanent category. This wasn’t obvious because the trial year was the one after the permanent category (with a sunset clause requiring re-ratification) got first passage, so the ratification (in light of what works were nominated for the trial year) took effect for the following year and there was no gap in presentation of the category. In other words, in a highly technical sense, the first of the three Girl Genius Hugo Awards was for a Special Category, and the second and third for the permanent BGN category. By the time we got to ratification, members were convinced that the category had sufficient support from Worldcon members to keep going. This is why we tend to want trial periods with sunset clauses on all Hugo innovations these days. We got burned with Best Professional Artwork and don’t want that mistake to happen again.
I’m not anti-comics, anti-games or anti-music. I’m anti-weak categories.
It looks like the list of nominees that fans have voted for during the nomination stage is a pool of suggestions.
A jury (as yet unnamed?) creates a shortlist drawing from fan suggestions. Like governments naming a bridge or scientists naming a research ship who say they are going to let the internet decide but then discard the internet suggestions they don’t like.
Then, there is a popular vote to pick a winner from the shortlist.
When the organizers feel their spidey sense tingling, they declare “someone must be voting more than once,” and reserve the right to appoint somebody to do some kind of “investigation” and potentially discard votes.
I can see why it would be set up that way, but it doesn’t sound ideal.
@Brian Z.:
So, like Brad Torgersen’s turn as Puppy Honcho.
Brian Z.: A jury (as yet unnamed?) creates a shortlist drawing from fan suggestions. Like governments naming a bridge or scientists naming a research ship who say they are going to let the internet decide but then discard the internet suggestions they don’t like.
So in other words, the anonymous administrators reserve the right to decide for themselves who the 5 finalists in each category will be.
That’s hardly the popularly-chosen award that they’re claiming it will be, isn’t it?
I am only spending this weekend slaving over a hot indie game interface design because of my intense commitment to ignoring gaming.
I am only spending this weekend slaving over a hot indie game interface design because of my intense commitment to ignoring gaming.
I am regretting not being able to play games with you when you were at Chessiecon. I did, however, play games with some other authors in attendance out of an intense desire to snub gaming.
Aaron on April 8, 2016 at 7:07 pm said:
If they’re doing the con’s awards, then they work for the con, pretty much by definition. The con has its name attached to these awards.
The conrunners are, by all available evidence, reasonably competent at their jobs. People who are competent at their jobs do not allow random strangers to use the company’s brand without oversight.
What you’re asking us to assume is that the conrunners are complete blithering idiots. The evidence is strongly against that. Complete blithering idiots don’t create a successful and popular convention year after year.
Now, that said, I freely admit that the rules we’ve seen so far technically seem to allow some random person to choose the winner. But actually doing that would damage the con’s reputation and tarnish its brand. I know for a fact that DragonCon is protective of their brand.
But even so, so what? If I vote, and they cheat and discard my vote, what have I actually lost? Either the winners are good or they’re not, and likely it’ll be a mix of both. Which is what happens with every other award out there. Why should I be so incredibly concerned with this particular award? If I don’t like the sort of thing that wins, I’ll ignore them. If they seem to be picking the sort of thing I like, then I’ll start paying attention to them. Why do I care what mechanism they use to choose their winners? I’m concerned with the results.
And at the moment, with no awards yet given, I don’t really care one way or the other about them. 🙂
— Vox Day
As I understood it, “registering to vote in the Dragon Awards” isn’t a thing? They’re open to everyone regardless of whatever?
RedWombat on April 8, 2016 at 8:54 pm said:
I am only spending this weekend slaving over a hot indie game interface design because of my intense commitment to ignoring gaming.
That just means you need to do some really, really intensely high level ignoring.
Remember, indie video games don’t count as real games, which is why Zoë Quinn has had such a great couple of years.
If they’re doing the con’s awards, then they work for the con, pretty much by definition.
That is not necessarily true. You’re assuming it to be true, but go and look at the page set up for the awards, and then go and look at the Dragon*Con page itself. Notice how little the two reference one another. Notice that the Dragon*Con page has given scant attention to this announcement. Try to find a link to the awards on the Dragon*Con page.
People who are competent at their jobs do not allow random strangers to use the company’s brand without oversight.
People do this all the time. I’ve seen lots of people, competent at their jobs, do really strange and often stupid things with their IP because they didn’t think the decision through.
Everything about these awards shows that the people running the awards are far less competent in almost every way than the the people running Dragon*Con itself. Just compare the websites of the two, and it is readily apparent that the Dragon*Con website is polished and professional, and the Dragon Award website is a slapdash and amateurish affair. If there was as much oversight as you seem to think there is, then one would expect the award page to be at least as well produced as the regular page (and one would expect that the award page would appear on the regular con page, at least via a link).
I also note that there is still an entry on one of their FAQs that says the nomination period will close on July 30, which is contradicted in other places that say the period end on July 25. Exactly how much oversight do you think there is on this?
As I understood it, “registering to vote in the Dragon Awards” isn’t a thing?
They are open to anyone, but you have to register with a name and e-mail address.