Pixel Scroll 5/20/18 I Know What You’re Thinking: Did He Scroll Six Pixels Or Only Five?

(1) SAFE AT HOME. Adweek tells about an Incredibles 2 movie product tie-in: “Why The Incredibles Needed an ADT Home Security System”.

Even superheroes need a good home security system, says a fun new ad from ADT and Disney, themed around the upcoming premiere of The Incredibles 2.

In the 30-second spot, animated by Pixar, the film’s titular super-family gets a tour of their new alarm system from superhero costume designer Edna Mode.

There are, for example, water level sensors—to safeguard against “surprise attacks” if a villain is hiding, for some reason, in a full bathtub, wielding a rubber ducking, waiting to pounce. There are motion sensors with live video—useful for tracking Mr. and Mrs. Incredible’s super-fast middle child, Dash. Intrusion detection can warn of invaders—and also help keep their teen daughter, Violet, gifted with invisibility, from sneaking out.

 

(2) CONSUMMATE PROFESSIONAL. Want to know how to tank your writing career before it starts? Tony Perez offers his advice:

(3) DO GIANTS SHRINK? John Scalzi tackled a question about Robert A. Heinlein’s residual influence in “Reader Request Week 2018 #6: The Fall(?!?!?) of Heinlein”.

But the question wasn’t whether Heinlein is going to disappear; it’s whether he’s declined as an influence. I think it’s fair to say he has, if for no other reason than that in the last 30 years, the scene in SF/F has changed. For one thing, fantasy and fantasy writers are much more influential in the field and on emerging writers than they were when Heinlein was alive; there’s an entire generation now edging into their 30s who grew up at Hogwarts, and for whom people like Robert Jordan (with an assist from Brandon Sanderson) and George RR Martin loom large in their landscape. Over on the SF side William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Lois McMaster Bujold (not to mention Suzanne Collins) are much nearer influences, to name just three.

Also, as hinted above, YA authors are much more significant influences now than they were three decades ago. I can’t tell you how many younger authors count people like Tamora Pierce and Scott Westerfeld as significant in their development, and why wouldn’t they? And, yes, Heinlein wrote juvies, but the fact he wrote them is not the same as them currently being widely read and being influential. They’re not, which is not entirely surprising, as almost all of them are now sixty years old and the world they were written in doesn’t exist any more.

(4) DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS. Comics fans won’t be surprised at the wide variety of results, I suspect: “Image Comics Had Seven Different Artists Color a Black & White Todd McFarlane ‘Spawn’ Drawing”.

While we wait for more news on Blumhouse’s Spawn feature film, creator Todd McFarlane is finishing up issue #286 of the Image Comics series, which is going to printers today. For this one, Image did something pretty awesome, enlisting seven different artists to interpret a cover McFarlane drew for issue #286, in their own personal style.

The result? Seven vastly different pieces of art… which all began as the same piece.

McFarlane wrote on Facebook, “Here’s the list of AWESOME people who lent their coloring skills to Spawn issue 286 this month (in order of the covers below):

  • Jean-Francois Beaulieu
  • Nikos Koutsis
  • Moreno Dinisio
  • Frank Martin
  • Matthew Wilson
  • Owen Gieni
  • Annalisa Leoni

Pretty wild to see how much color can completely change the entire feel of a drawing…

(5) RUNNER-UP. Usually the winner gets all the publicity. Kevin Polowy, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story, “Emilia Clarke calls Brad Pitt’s $120K bid to watch ‘Game of Thrones’ with her the ‘weirdest experience of my entire life'”, says she can’t talk about the anonymous bidder who donated $160,000 to watch an episode of Game of Thrones with her to benefit Haitian relief because the bidder was anonymous.  But she says that Brad Pitt bidding $120,000 was quite strange.

Clarke clearly did not want to get into details — perhaps because the bidder from Sean Penn’s fundraiser for relief in Haiti chose to remain anonymous.

But she did speak a little more about the runner-up, Brad Pitt. The actor fell short in his attempt to spend some QT with the GoT star who plays Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen. Pitt bid only $120K at the Sotheby’s event.

“It was the weirdest experience of my entire life,” Clarke, 31, said of the auction. “I thought my head was going to explode. I went bright red and couldn’t stop smiling. It was amazing. I texted everyone I knew.”

(6) DEEP CUT. Shadow And Act reports “Laura Harrier’s Role As Millie Montag Cut From Fahrenheit 451”.

Laura Harrier’s role in Fahrenheit 451 was cut from the final version of the HBO film. Harrier, who is in Cannes for Black KkKlansman, revealed the fate of her role to The Wrap.

The actress, who starred last in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, would have had the rare distinction of starring in two Cannes films in one year.

Harrier was supposed to play the wife of Michael B. Jordan’s character Guy Montag, but the character was trimmed from the adaptation due to time.

“The character definitely has a big part in the book, but because of the length of the film, (director Ramin Bahrani) decided they needed to change the storyline and the structure of the film,” she said. “And unfortunately my character didn’t fit with the storyline. It’s something you always hope doesn’t happen, but I’m not the first it’s happened to, and I definitely won’t be the last.”

(7) ISS CARGO RATES. I thought there was a popular joke among hard sf writers that Newton’s fourth law tells us “Everything costs more and works less,” but Google says I misremember…. Ars Technica headline: “NASA to pay more for less cargo delivery to the space station”. A large price increase by SpaceX will overcome a smaller price cut by Orbital ATK.

A new analysis finds that NASA will pay significantly more for commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station in the 2020s rather than enjoying cost savings from maturing systems. According to a report by the space agency’s inspector general, Paul Martin, NASA will likely pay $400 million more for its second round of delivery contracts from 2020 to 2024 even though the agency will be moving six fewer tons of cargo. On a cost per kilogram basis, this represents a 14-percent increase.

One of the main reasons for this increase, the report says, is a 50-percent increase in prices from SpaceX, which has thus far flown the bulk of missions for NASA’s commercial cargo program with its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.

This is somewhat surprising because, during the first round of supply missions, which began in 2012, SpaceX had substantially lower costs than NASA’s other partner, Orbital ATK. SpaceX and Orbital ATK are expected to fly 31 supply missions between 2012 and 2020, the first phase of the supply contract. Of those, the new report states, SpaceX is scheduled to complete 20 flights at an average cost of $152.1 million per mission. Orbital ATK is scheduled to complete 11 missions at an average cost of $262.6 million per mission.

But that cost differential will largely evaporate in the second round of cargo supply contracts. For flights from 2020 to 2024, SpaceX will increase its price while Orbital ATK cuts its own by 15 percent. The new report provides unprecedented public detail about the second phase of commercial resupply contracts, known as CRS-2, which NASA awarded in a competitively bid process in 2016. SpaceX and Orbital ATK again won contracts (for a minimum of six flights), along with a new provider, Sierra Nevada Corp. and its Dream Chaser vehicle. Bids by Boeing and Lockheed Martin were not accepted.

(8) DEADPOOL ROUNDUP. The Mary Sue’s Kaila Hale-Stern claims Deadpool 2 Has Trolled the Critics into Liking It” while scanning reviews of the movie.

There’s a personality divide where some people are just never going to like a main character like Deadpool or a movie like Deadpool 2, and that’s okay! It is, however, refreshing to hear that there’s fun to be had here for those who want to have it. If one of the worst things you can say is that a movie is “too hip” for its own good, our curiosity is piqued.

(9) JOE KUBERT STORYTELLER AWARD. The inaugural award was given this weekend. “‘Usagi Yojimbo’ Creator Wins First Joe Kubert Storyteller Award”The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

The first Joe Kubert Distinguished Storyteller Award was presented Saturday at Ontario’s Comic Con Revolution, and the recipient is a comic book veteran whose career has lasted for more than 30 years and multiple publishers. Stan Sakai, the creator of epic anthropomorphic historical series Usagi Yojimbo, was tapped for the honor, although he was unable to attend the ceremony.

Sakai, who was born in Kyoto, Japan, and raised in Hawaii, got his start in comics as a letterer in the early 1980s on a number of independent comic book series, including cult classic Groo the Wanderer by MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones and Mark Evainer. He was soon writing and illustrating his own characters, beginning with The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy in the debut issue of the anthology title Albedo. Usagi Yojimbo followed in the very next issue, setting Sakai’s career path for years to come….

(10) HOSHI OBIT. Japanese monster movie actress Yuriko Hoshi (1943-2018) has died.

Actress Yuriko Hoshi, who was nominated for the Award of the Japanese Academy in 1997 for her supporting performance in Night Trains to the Stars, was perhaps most known for being a staple of Toho’s Kaiju films, appearing in Mothra vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and, most recently, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus.

Today we’re sad to report, via Toho Kingdom, that Yuriko Hoshi passed away this week after a battle with lung cancer. Hoshi, born in December 1943, was 74 years old.

(11) SUBSEQUENT ARRIVAL. Jeb Kinnison, after reading Filers’ comments, has added a few hundred words to his article “Why ‘Arrival’ is Bad Science Fiction”, linked here yesterday.

(12) DESTINATION MOON. “Aiming for the Moon, Literally: One Foundation’s Plan for a Lunar Library” – but who’ll be there to check it out?

The Arch Mission Foundation has plans to put the entirety of Wikipedia, among other things, into an elaborate microfiche archive, then send it to the moon. And it’s not even the first time they’ve done something like this.

Wikipedia it seems, is everywhere on Earth—on smartphones and dumb phones, in countries with great internet access and in places with less.  But on the moon? It’ll be there soon, too, thanks to a nonprofit group with a mission to share knowledge across time and space.

(13) TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED. The colors on these Roman stone slabs faded long ago, but scientists have figured out what they were: “Ancient Romans Painted Horrifying Blood-Red Warnings on Wall Across Scotland” at LiveScience.

Ancient Romans used blood red, bright yellow and stunning white paints to illustrate dire warnings on the wall that separated them from the rebellious tribespeople of Scotland, a new study shows.

The painted warnings — including Roman eagles with blood-stained beaks, and the slain and decapitated bodies of the defeated victims of the victorious Roman legions — were shown alongside Latin inscriptions on carved stone slabs placed along a Roman rampart in Scotland.

Archaeologist Louisa Campbell from the University of Glasgow says the carved and painted stone slabs would have served as “Roman propaganda” to local tribespeople north of the Antonine Wall, a fortified wall built across Scotland by the Roman legions during the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius in the second century A.D.

(14) SCI-FI TRAILER. 2036 Origin Unknown with Katee Sackhoff – here’s the official trailer.

(15) ARCHIE MCPHEE. A cultural icon finally gets its due in the Rubber Chicken Museum.

If you make your way to our Seattle Archie McPhee store, you’re in for a treat. Last week we premiered our new Rubber Chicken Museum! You can see the world’s largest rubber chicken and the world’s smallest rubber chicken, as well as everything in between. Our museum is dedicated to the history, cultural zeitgeist and general hilariousness of the rubber chicken. It is a must see! Plus, you can also see our new “Room 6” collection of historical novelties. You’ll get your PhD in LOL!

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day J-grizz.]

138 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/20/18 I Know What You’re Thinking: Did He Scroll Six Pixels Or Only Five?

  1. (2) CONSUMMATE PROFESSIONAL. Ahhhhh! Yipes, that was scary, and not in the way the submitter intended.

    (4) DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS. I’m not a Spawn fan, but I liked seeing those variations – very groovy. [ETA: Perhaps especially the light-blue background one, just for being very different, background-wise.]

    (11) SUBSEQUENT ARRIVAL. I LOL’d at “This post wasn’t intended to be widely circulated” – why’d you post it to the internet, then?

    (14) SCI-FI TRAILER. Speaking of bad SF, this doesn’t look good to me.

    – One-fifth (or one-sixth!)

  2. (2) CONSUMMATE PROFESSIONAL.

    I will point out that this isn’t Tony Perez’ “brilliant” idea, he’s just quoting the moron while doing the kindness of eliding the moron’s identity.

  3. Soon Lee: He Scrolled Two Fifth Pixels.

    It was very weird reading that just after listening to a podcast that talked about the three fifths compromise!

  4. (2) I wonder if the litigious author-to-be is disappointed in not being named because they also believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

    (7) When SpaceX was a newcomer without a track record, they needed to charge less than the competition to compensate for higher risk, but still high enough to make a profit so they can sink it into R&D. Now that they’ve got a pretty good track record, they’re still going to win on price even though they raised their price quite a bit, and they’ll have even more profit to sink into R&D, i.e., the BFR.

  5. 11) Seems (not to be hostile!) to be a hole dug deeper. Good science fiction imparts some extra scientific or technological knowledge, which if it includes novel science that might plausibly be discovered, at least is coherent with foundational principles and can be assigned some nonzero probability of actually being true.

    That would seem to leave out an awful lot of great SF.

  6. (2) I can hear the sound of that manuscript hitting either the real or virtual recycle bin.

    (3) Techie nuts and bolts SF doesn’t age well. People don’t think incest, underage girls having sex, and rape are no big deal. Women don’t become accomplished in a profession and drop it the minute they get a chance at bay-beez (Heck, some never want bay-beez). LGBTQ people exist and are happy. You have to explain what “miscegenation” means to the kids nowadays, and the young’uns who swooned over this past weekend’s Royal Wedding are going to laugh at the concept of it being a bad thing that makes the children unfit for society.

    (11) “Hot take” is still stupid when doubled down on. Things on Internet are visible to other people.

    (13) I don’t know how you say “bitchin’ and totally metal !!1!” in Latin, so I’m gonna say it’s clarissimus. Google Translate says “egregie et prorsus metallum,” but that’s too literal.

  7. 3) Heinlein’s juveniles are (mostly) great. And they were a formative influence on many a young fan, back in the day – including me. Emphasis on the were, though – times change, other writers come along, and Heinlein is not the big draw into SF reading that he used to be. And that’s fine. It doesn’t detract from his qualities as a writer – if anything, it makes it easier to judge his qualities as a writer, because fewer people are assessing him with an unconscious pro-Heinlein bias. Honest criticism is always better than hagiography.

    Heinlein has many faults, and many virtues – like all writers. If he’s no longer setting an unconscious “baseline” for what SF is – as, I suspect, he did for me, and for many others – it’s easier to judge both of them.

  8. Heinlein’s juveniles were great, but I did the mistake of reading some of them again just a few years ago. And they don’t work. I read Tunnel in the Sky and it was so obviously written long ago it was ridiculous with all these portals to other planets and high technology, and then having people ride through the portals on ox charts. And while it might have been a great thing then to include women as smart and capable, the protagonists constant surprise that they could be so was grating.

    Starman Jones had the same problems, enormous space ships travelling through space, but all calculations made by looking up numbers in old books. It just didn’t work anymore. I would not recommend these books to new readers. There is no way he can be a baseline for what SF is anymore.

  9. About an hour ago, I was struck by either a very good or very bad idea, and I’m about halfway through its execution. Maybe the first line will give some of the regulars enough of a hint to say whether I should finish the job.

    “It’s file o’clock on a Caturday…”

  10. It’s File o’Clock when the whistle Scrolls (no one owns a Pixel my time).

  11. A light scroll was filing, and the little pixel with the cluttered scrawl had not written a sonnet all day.

  12. (2) This is surprisingly common. During my brief stint as an editor, I had at least one query descend into threats of litigation almost that quickly. In that case it wasn’t actually baked into the query letter, but the lawsuit was threatened a few days later when we did not at once receive the query with shouts of gladness at its self-evident brilliance.

    Inexperienced and lower-tier writers seem to have two failure modes: (1) a vastly inflated notion of their own talents and originality, or (2) paralysis at the immense obstacles in the way of being published. One symptom of case #1 seems to be a habit of vexatious litigation.

  13. By dubiously-popular demand, and with apologies to those both named and not…

    The File 770 Rag

    It’s file o’clock on a Caturday
    My mailbox just sounded a chime
    Mike’s news for fans is awaiting me
    Today’s Pixel Scroll’s here right on time!

    There’s a dozen or two short news items there
    Plus a couple of odd videos
    A comic or two and a birthday or three
    And maybe some blog links – who knows?

    Pixels keep scrollin’ on
    And comments keep rollin’ along…

    Scroll us some pixels, Seven-Seventy
    Serve up the news tonight
    You’re the place that we go to be “in the know”
    And the comments will roll in all night

    Now Meredith’s cruising an ebook site
    To tell us which books are priced right
    But it seems that her dragon
    Is blockin’ my wagon
    So I’ll probably be here all night

    I see movement – there, in a dark corner
    They’re probably the shy lurker type
    Far away, I may hear puppies baying now
    But I’m not looking into their hype.

    Oh, pixels keep scrollin’ on
    And comments keep rollin’ along…

    Well, Kendall scored fifth ‘fore I hit the end
    With Hampus in second-fifth place
    Sometime Soon Lee will appear
    Followed by Paul Weimer
    As Stoic and Chip up the pace.

    Damn, I can’t read this verse for the life o’ me
    But not ’cause I’m blind, drunk or mean
    No, JJ said it was too spoilery
    And encoded it in ROT13.

    Fpebyy hf fbzr cvkryf, Frira-Friragl
    Freir hc gur arjf gbavtug
    Lbh’er gur cynpr gung jr tb gb or “va gur xabj”
    Naq gur pbzzragf jvyy ebyy va nyy avtug

    The discussion’s still rolling on Caturday
    Camestros and Tim just arrived
    Lis, Jon, Andrew, Ctein,
    James, Bruce, others most fine,
    Ding! A new Pixel Scroll just arrived!

    And the book recs, they grow just like lava flows
    As Mt. Tsundoku’s slopes reach the skies
    And my bank account weeps as my rent money creeps
    Into publishers’ pockets – b’bye!

    Oh, pixels keep scrollin’ on
    And comments keep rollin’ along…

    Scroll us some pixels, Seven-Seventy
    Serve up the news tonight
    You’re the place that we go to be “in the know”
    And the comments will roll in all night

  14. 3)
    Heh,
    On the newest episode of SFF Audio where Jesse and I talked about Glory Road, the last half hour devolved into a debate between him and I about whether people “should read Heinlein any more”
    http://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-474-readalong-glory-road-by-robert-a-heinlein/

    11)
    “As I rule I don’t comment there because of the hostility of some of the frequent commenters”

    Hmm. I think strenous disagreement is not equal to Hostility.

  15. @various: Aw, shucks. Yer just sayin’ that ’cause I managed to fit your names in there. 😉

    @Paul: I confess I was a little worried about whether the correct pronunciation of your surname was a proper rhyme in that line.

    @JJ: I take it this means you’re not mad about being blamed for the ROT13 stanza? 😉 (And has anyone decoded it yet?)

    @Stoic: I don’t think I’ll be up for an encore anytime soon…

  16. Damn. I should’ve said “buying” instead of “looking” into the hype, to get the extra layer of meaning.

    Mike, if you appropriate the filk for a future post, please make that change…

  17. @Bob. There are a number of ways to pronounce my last name–the way that my family pronounces it (Wee-mur), the way a lot of people pronounce it (Why-mur) , and a couple of other variants I’ve heard in NZ, Australia and Engl;and…

  18. Jeb Kinnison:

    We invent plausible FTL, stargates, ansibles, witty AIs, and transhumans because we want them to be real to enable an expanded future and we love stories that let our imagination live there.

    Of course, the first question that might come into the reader’s head is, “Who is we, friend?” However, even asking the question would probably be a sign to him you’re the great unwashed. Besides, I like those stories too, but I don’t consider the existence of other stories an attack on their very existence or on human life or whatever melodrama he sees in it. I like both kinds (though I suspect identifying the “other” kind would entail so much question-begging no one would be happy by the end of it), and really, in any case, just because you want something to be true, that doesn’t mean it is true. That’s just woolly-headed wishful thinking, whatever the benefits he sees from accepting it.

    He reminds me in many ways of a fellow I once met who complained about how Jack London’s “To Light a Fire” was an evil, man-hating story because it showed that life is futile and death is not only inevitable but waiting right around the corner to mug you. Never mind the fact London’s view was that yes, if you’re an ill-educated fool, that is true–your environment will swat you down like the animal ill-suited to its environment that you are, which is, come to think of it, much the same as the opinions many Alaskans held about Into the Wild, which they saw as glorifying a soft-shelled, untrained city boy who essentially killed himself out of callowness…similar in turn in many ways to the usual defense of “The Cold Equations.”

    I object to the idea because it is demoralizing and weakens anyone who accepts it.

    (Bold added.)

    Translation: Those other kinds of stories are not just poor but in some way evil, because their insidious worldview will seep into your soul and sap your purity of essence…er, vital fluids…er, callow, untried youthfulness…er, pro-human optimism. It’s a very weak view of the world if it can be corrupted by merely reading something different.

    Enough snark. There’s his basic problem right there: Chiang didn’t write the story to get you to accept that position, he wrote it to get you to entertain it (and, presumably, be entertained by it). The first is propaganda, the second art (and the start of thoughtfulness, science, and wisdom); I hope Kinnison is able to make the same difference when writing his own works.

  19. The lead in Tunnel is a numbskull of a rare sort: he makes everyone around him look better without handicapping them too much with his participation in group project. I think it’s because while in many ways he is slow on the uptake, he has one rare, valuable skill, the ability to listen to other people.

  20. (11): “Dreaming of future science vs. nihilist literary fiction.” Gosh, there’s no worldview baked into that opposition. Nope, none at all. Oh, and he’s confused “magical technologies I desperately want to exist” with “science”.
    @Rev. Bob: brilliant!

  21. @Paul Weimer: I was pronouncing it Throatwobbler Mangrove.

    Well, more like Warbler, I suppose.

  22. Niall McAuley on May 21, 2018 at 7:18 am said:

    @Paul Weimer: I was pronouncing it Throatwobbler Mangrove.

    Golf clap.

  23. On the newest episode of SFF Audio where Jesse and I talked about Glory Road, the last half hour devolved into a debate between him and I about whether people “should read Heinlein any more”

    Glory Road was the one that finally made me give up on Heinlein. I had enjoyed Stranger and MIAHM, but got increasingly frustrated with each thing I subsequently read. (WHY is going back in time to have sex with your mom THE PLAN?)

    But Glory Road had (I felt at the time) a really great, hook-filled opening chapter, and got less and less interesting with each chapter, until about two-thirds of the way through I had no interest in pick it or any other Heinlein up again.

  24. I LOL’d at “This post wasn’t intended to be widely circulated” – why’d you post it to the internet, then?

    Posting something to your personal blog isn’t wide circulation. Technically you reach the whole planet but most blogs toil in obscurity. Maybe he sells pieces elsewhere when he wants them to get attention and uses his blog for more personal writing he doesn’t expect to make a splash.

  25. Rev. Bob, brilliant! I especially loved the stanza about Meredith’s dragon… (and, yes, I *did* decode the rot-13 verse.)

  26. @Marshall What interest I have in the novel ends with the duel in the Tower. After that…the novel just was flat for me. I was not interested in Star’s world.

    I do admit this book sustained me through a drive in Nebraska in 2013, but 2018 me was much less enthused.

  27. I’m sorry: who is Tony Perez? But his tweet makes good sense.

    I also thought Scalzi’s thoughts on Heinlein made good sense, and I speak as a Baby Boomer who loves Heinlein.

  28. (11) I wonder what Kinnison would say about Terry Carr’s Nebula Award nominee Cirque, which had n pvgl jurer gryrcnguf oebnqpnfg vzntrf bs jung jnf tbvat ba va gur pvgl, gurer vf n Ornfg jubfr culfvpny nfcrpgf naq orunivbe punatr onfrq ba gur zragny fgngrf bs gur crbcyr ivrjvat vg (naq ubj crbcyr ivrj vg ner nssrpgrq ol jung gur gryrcnguf oebnqpnfg), naq gurer ner nyvraf znxvat n cvytevzntr gb Pvedhr orpnhfr gurl xabj rirelguvat gung gurl’ir rire rkcrevraprq, cnfg be shgher, naq gurl qba’g haqrefgnaq gur pbaprcg bs pnhfnyvgl hagvy bar bs gur nyvraf rkcrevraprf gur Ornfg’f genafsbezngvba naq gur rirag orpbzrf n eryvtvbhf rkcrevrapr sbe gur nyvraf. It seems to have all the things he hates about Arrival, it’s just not wrapped in the Sapir-Whorf conjecture.

  29. Meredith Moment (sans dragon, avec dodo): The first novel in Jasper Fforde’s “Thursday Next” series, The Eyre Affair, is currently US$1.99. Verified at Amazon and Kobo, so it looks like a publisher sale – although the email I saw with the deal says it’s a one-day sale and thus ends tonight.

  30. @Paul — My memories of it are vague (this was 20 or so years ago), but I think I noped out around the time the main female character was telling some story about a place where everyone is doing absurd feats of strength. And then I was pretty much asking myself “what is this book even about any more?”

  31. I never forgave Glory Road, although it was not Heinlein’s fault. The copy I read as a preteen had a naked woman with ginormous knockers on the cover (being followed by a baldy dwarf, if I recall correctly), which my older brothers teased me about unmercifully. I did not think the novel was worth it.

    Let’s see if Google image search finds it…Yes, it was the New English Library paperback cover by Bruce Pennington.

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