(1) NEBULA WEEKEND WITH THE QUEEN. Read “The Merqueen’s Report: Nebula Awards Weekend, 2018” by Cat Rambo.
…At five, the always cool Monica Valentinelli came to my hotel room and helped me begin the transformation into Mer queen. I had tweeted about the dress months before, at which point my friend Kris Dikeman said it needed a seashell tiara, Nick Hyle then volunteered a trident, and by the time of the Nebulas I was a little worried it would turn out to be a costume instead of an outfit and instead it was GLORIOUS and I felt like the belle of the underwater ball….
…Sunday morning was time for my favorite part and another one I will take full credit for implementing, unlike most of the other stuff: the volunteer breakfast. We had close to fifty people show up this time, which was the third so far, and people seemed to happy to get their fancy certificates (suitable for framing!) and get a chance to talk with each other. I told the joke I stole from Joe Haldeman about SFWA, like soylent green, being made of people once again and a good time was had by all….
(2) HEAR ABOUT SFF ARCHITECTURE. Henry Lien will be one of the participants in “Imagined Cities: Innovative Use of Architecture in Film and Literature” in LA on June 2.
Description
The Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles will host a conversation between renowned architect Jimenez Lai and children’s fantasy author Henry Lien entitled Imagined Cities: Innovative Uses of Architecture in Film and Literature at its gallery in Westwood on Saturday, June 2, 2018 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The conversation is in connection with the Taiwan Academy’s current exhibition Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding Taipei & L.A., which explores the construction of “architecture on top of architecture”, and multi-purpose use of properties as ways that cities deal with the issue of limited space in densely populated urban areas. The Imagined Cities event explores such themes in fictional depictions of cities.
“From Blade Runner to Howl’s Moving Castle, film and literature have historically embraced innovative uses of architecture,” says Henry Lien, the author of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. “Science fiction and fantasy are particularly effective in expanding notions of beauty in buildings and cities, which becomes relevant as cities experiment with new ways to solve population density issues.”
Jimenez Lai, the founding partner of Los Angeles-based studio Bureau Spectacular and the curator of Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding Taipei & L.A., hopes to explore the universal issue of limited space in densely populated urban areas through the dialogue and the exhibition.
According to Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles, the exhibition demonstrates an interesting comparison between Taipei and Los Angeles, discussing topics surrounding art, architecture, urbanism, and the way of life between the cultures of Taiwan and the United States
Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding Taipei & L.A runs through July 7, 2018, and is free and open to the public, as is Imagined Cities: Innovative Uses of Architecture in Film and Literature. To attend Imagined Cities, please RSVP through https://www.eventbrite.com/e/imagined-cities-innovative-use-of-architecture-in-film-and-literature-tickets-46236212757
(3) DOZOIS HOSPITALIZED. Christopher Casper posted on Facebook that Gardner Dozois is in hospital:
Friends of Gardner – He is currently in Pennsylvania hospital under medical sedation and intubated. While in the hospital for a chronic condition he had a serious and rapid deterioration causing some major systems to fail. He has an amazing team of doctors and the doctors are cautiously optimistic that his condition can be reversed!
I will do my best to keep everyone informed.
I am comforted and Gardner would be humbled by the hundreds of IM I received in the last 24 hrs expressing concern and love for my father. Due to the mere quantity, please forgive me if I am unable to respond personally to them all. Gardner is blessed to be so loved by so many.
Please continue to send good vibes, well wishes, and prayers his way. It is appreciated and thank you.
(4) THEY’LL BE MISSED. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have moved from the country town of Winslow, Maine to the city of Waterville, Maine, and that’s affected their summer travel plans. They tell how in the latest “Liaden Universe® Infodump No. 120”.
LEE AND MILLER WILL NOT ATTEND WORLDCON 76
We had intended to attend WorldCon; we had budgeted time and money; arranged schedules, and then — in late February, we looked at a house in town (we have long been looking to move into town, closer to services and conveniences), fell in love with the place, made an offer, and — the long and short of it is that, all the money and time we had budgeted for attending WorldCon instead went to moving into the new house. We’re very sorry that we won’t be at the con with our friends and readers, old and new. But we’re very happy with our new situation.
On the topic of conventions — this is the first time since 1997, that we haven’t had a convention, or three, on the schedule. That feels. . .strange, indeed.
Everyone who is going to WorldCon — have fun!
(5) ICE STATION EUROPA. Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie dropped the 2010: Odyssey Two tagline “All these worlds are yours – Except Europa” when sending along this link to Nature’s article “Evidence of a plume on Europa from Galileo magnetic and plasma wave signatures” [PDF file].
The icy surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is thought to lie on top of a global ocean1–4. Signatures in some Hubble Space Telescope images have been associated with putative water plumes rising above Europa’s surface5,6, providing support for the ocean theory. However, all telescopic detections reported were made at the limit of sensitivity of the data5–7, thereby calling for a search for plume signatures in in-situ measurements. Here, we report in-situ evidence of a plume on Europa from the magnetic field and plasma wave observations acquired on Galileo’s closest encounter with the moon….
(6) AT THE CANYONS OF MADNESS? BBC says “Giant canyons discovered in Antarctica”.
Scientists have discovered three vast canyons in one of the last places to be explored on Earth – under the ice at the South Pole.
The deep troughs run for hundreds of kilometres, cutting through tall mountains – none of which are visible at the snowy surface of the continent.
Dr Kate Winter from Northumbria University, UK, and colleagues found the hidden features with radar.
Her team says the canyons play a key role in controlling the flow of ice.
And if Antarctica thins in a warming climate, as scientists suspect it will, then these channels could accelerate mass towards the ocean, further raising sea-levels.
(7) THEY DUCKED. Here’s “How ancestors of living birds survived asteroid strike”…
The ancestors of modern birds may have survived the asteroid strike that wiped out the rest of their kin by living on the forest floor.
The new theory, based on studying fossilised plants and ornithological data, helps explain how birds came to dominate the planet.
The asteroid impact 66 million years ago laid waste to the world’s forests.
Ground-dwelling bird ancestors managed to survive, eventually taking to the trees when the flora recovered.
“It seems clear that being a relatively small-bodied bird capable of surviving in a tree-less world would have conferred a major survival advantage in the aftermath of the asteroid strike,” said Dr Daniel Field of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.
(8) BEAN OBIT. Moon explorer and Skylab astronaut Alan Bean died May 26. NASA has posted a “Family Release Regarding the Passing of Apollo, Skylab Astronaut Alan Bean”.
Apollo and Skylab astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth human to walk on the moon and an accomplished artist, has died.
Bean, 86, died on Saturday, May 26, at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. His death followed his suddenly falling ill while on travel in Fort Wayne, Indiana two weeks before.
“Alan was the strongest and kindest man I ever knew. He was the love of my life and I miss him dearly,” said Leslie Bean, Alan Bean’s wife of 40 years. “A native Texan, Alan died peacefully in Houston surrounded by those who loved him.”
A test pilot in the U.S. Navy, Bean was one of 14 trainees selected by NASA for its third group of astronauts in October 1963. He flew twice into space, first as the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12, the second moon landing mission, in November 1969, and then as commander of the second crewed flight to the United States’ first space station, Skylab, in July 1973….
On Nov. 19, 1969, Bean, together with Apollo 12 commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, landed on the Ocean of Storms and became the fourth human to walk on the moon. During two moonwalks Bean helped deploy several surface experiments and installed the first nuclear-powered generator station on the moon to provide the power source. He and Conrad inspected a robotic Surveyor spacecraft and collected 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of rocks and lunar soil for study back on Earth.
(9) TODAY’S DAY
- May 26 – Dracula Day
Of all of the monsters known to man, which one could possibly be considered more iconic than Count Dracula? The quintessential vampire, Count Dracula has inspired tens of films and stories the world over, not to mention the virtual immortality of the character during as a beloved Halloween character. For all of these reasons, it’s undeniable that this icon of horror more than deserves his own little holiday so the world can show its appreciation for his contributions to the worlds of cinema and literature over the centuries. So put on your fangs, and let’s sink out teeth right into this, shall we?
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- May 26, 1961 — The Twilight Zone aired “Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Jack Elam utters the words, “It’s a real Ray Bradbury.”
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
- Born May 26, 1912 — Jay Silverheels (“Tonto” on The Lone Ranger TV series)
- Born May 26, 1913 – Actor Peter Cushing
- Born May 26, 1951 — Sally Ride, astronaut. First American woman in space
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Chip Hitchcock discovered the game of Monopoly roused surprisingly strong feelings in these Something Positive characters.
(13) SARTORIAL SPLENDOR. Indeed, it is a most absolute and excellent hat.
My wife is unsure about this hat. I crave your thoughts on it. pic.twitter.com/sWuJYIAY7B
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 25, 2018
(14) HOLLYWOOD LAWYERS FIND WORK. Sesame Street production company Sesame Workshop (formerly known as Children’s Television Workshop) has sued distributor STX over Melissa McCarthy’s new movie The Happytime Murders.
Quoting The Hollywood Reporter: “’Sesame Street’ Sues STX Over New Melissa McCarthy Puppet Movie” —
The makers of Sesame Street are suing the promoter of a new Melissa McCarthy movie, saying it’s abusing the famed puppets’ sterling reputation to advertise the film.
A judge Friday scheduled a hearing next week to consider a request for immediate relief by Sesame Workshop, which sued Thursday in federal court for unspecified damages.
The film, The Happytime Murders, is scheduled for release Aug. 17. McCarthy plays a human detective who teams with a puppet partner to investigate grisly puppet murders.
The lawsuit said the Sesame Street brand will be harmed by a just-released movie trailer featuring “explicit, profane, drug-using, misogynistic, violent, copulating and even ejaculating puppets” along with the tagline “NO SESAME. ALL STREET.”STX Productions LLC says in a statement it is confident in its legal position.
And Vanity Fair’s article “Sesame Street Sues Over Melissa McCarthy’s R-Rated Puppet Murder Movie” notes —
Apparently, the puppet-based entertainment industry is more divided than we knew. The people behind Sesame Street may not like it, but The Happytime Murders has the imprimatur of Muppet royalty: the director is none other than Jim Henson’s son, Brian Henson, who is also the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, and will feature a number of puppeteers from various Muppet movies.
Variety summarized Sesame Street’s complaint as follows:
But “Sesame Street” creators are incensed at the reference, arguing in the lawsuit that it will confuse audiences and harms the “Sesame Street” brand. The marketing campaign “seeks to capitalize on the reputation and goodwill of ‘Sesame Street,’” the suit says. “While the trailer at issue is almost indescribably crude, ‘Sesame’ is not trying to enjoin defendants’ promotion or distribution of their movie. It is only defendants’ deliberate choice to invoke and commercially misappropriate ‘Sesame’s’ name and goodwill in marketing the movie — and thereby cause consumers to conclude that ‘Sesame’ is somehow associated with the movie — that has infringed on and tarnished the ‘Sesame Street’ mark and goodwill.”
(15) IS REY BELIEVABLE? YouTuber MisAnthro Pony is skeptical about Star Wars’ Rey:
She knows how to swim even though she spent her entire life on a desert planet, she’s as powerful as Kilo Ren despite receiving no training from Luke, she’s as skilled of a swordsman as Obi Wan, and now she can gun the Millennium Falcon like a pro in a matter of minutes. She apparently seems to know everything about stuff she should know nothing about. OK, Rey doing things she shouldn’t have been able to do in The Force Awakens was stupid too. But this is reaching it. This is really reaching it.
Carl Slaughter defends the presentation of the character:
Oh I don’t know. Luke blocks multiple gadget beams blindfolded with a light saber the first time he wields it. After only a few hours of training in the Force, he pinholes the shot that takes out the Death Star. After only a couple of months of training with Yoda, even Darth Vader is impressed. Never mind that even the best Jedi are trained all their life from toddlership by a team of instructors in an academy.
(16) ON HIS GAME. And Chuck Tingle is skeptical about some gameplaying skeptics….
have heard that there are lonesome basement boys moaning on and on about a ladybuck on the cover of BATTLEFIELD video game. wonder if they know ladybucks are better warriors than them. cant be a warrior when your sitting lonesome in the basement all day
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) May 24, 2018
top funniest devils are lonesome basement boys moaning on ETHICS IN BASEMENT DWELLING and HISTORICAL ACCURACY what in the heck do you think your playing this is a dang video game its just a plumber fixin pipes and eating turtles who the heck cares
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) May 25, 2018
(17) SPOILERS AHEAD. If you’ve seen Deadpool 2, you may be ready for ScreenRant’s spoiler-filled “Deadpool 2 Pitch Meeting.”
(18) MULTIPLE DUNII. Consequences of Sound reports “Denis Villeneuve confirms his Dune adaptation will be split between two films”.
In what might prove beneficial, given the scope of Dune as a story, Villeneuve recently confirmed that he plans to split the adaptation into two films, still likely to be substantial in length each. While speaking to the Quebec publication La Presse, he mentioned the news while touching on the process of turning Herbert’s 896-page epic into a cohesive feature (or set of them): “Eric Roth wrote the first draft and I worked on my side afterwards… I have not had such fun on the creative side since Incendies! My wish would have been to make both films at the same time, but it will be too expensive. We will do them one at a time.”
(19) DESPITE POPULAR DEMAND. Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter story “‘Star Wars’: Boba Fett Movie in the Works With James Mangold”, says that James Mangold and Simon Kinberg, who last worked together on Logan (which Mangold directed and co-wrote and Kinberg produced) have been signed by Disney to develop a Boba Fett movie.
As N.K. Jemisin asked –
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/999807454111137792
(20) KEEPING IT LEGAL. Like everyone else whose internet babblings are read in Europe, Timothy the Talking Cat is updating Cattimothy House security policy.
A message from our Legal and Compliance Department:
Dear User/Subscriber/Stranger/Prisoner
Due to the recent legislative changes in the European Union (a body not recognised by our founder and CEO, Timothy the Talking Cat), we have made several changes to our security policy.
… Our change in policy means that we will no longer:
- Post lists of your names and misdeeds as a notice in the town square.
- Maintain in a dark basement a wall with your photographs joined together with lines of red twine, with some faces circled in red marker and others defaced with a huge question mark….
Much more humor follows…
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, Lis Carey, Andrew Porter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Soon Lee, Jonathan Cowie, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contirebiting editor of the day microtherion.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
(14) Riders in the Sky briefly had a kid show on Saturday mornings, sort of twenty-ish years ago. One feature of the bunkhouse set (the main set) was that in a frame on one wall there was a puppet town. In one episode, the puppet Sheriff is hurrying through the set, and strikes up a conversation with the Riders (Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, and Too Slim, or some subset thereof). It’s not a long conversation, though. He has to hurry off because Dirty Bob has escaped from jail again, and he has to go catch him.
“Well, good luck, Sheriff! I hope you catch him.”
“Oh, he won’t get far… he’s just a puppet, you know.”
20) Read those terms with care-Timothy may well post you in the square in place of your and misdeeds!
Here in 6960, the name of “Timothy the Cat” still produces tremors (even if it’s simply one’s sides shaking in laughter).
(14) While I am not a lawyer (and do not even play one on TV) I’m pretty sure that the ‘parody is fair use’ provisions that allow Avenue Q to exist will also protect The Happy Time Murders. It’s not like this is the first R-rated Sesame Street parody ever made, or even the first one with some pretty specific references to the fact that it’s a Sesame Street parody.
@5: that’s 2010: Odyssey Two, not 2001.
@7: aauugghh!
@13: but if he takes it off, will there be another slightly gaudier one? It really does look like we should call him Bartholomew….
edit: sacrificial pre-Fifth!
19
There are a lot of people in that thread confusing actors’ ethnicity with characters’ ethnicity.
Clickity
20) Is Timothy sleeping on Murderbot?
Asking for a friend.
Posting from 1069 where King William is burning Northumbria.
13 – I want to see the other 499 hats of Johnathan Scalzi.
ETA Semi-ninja’d by Chip.
Chip Hitchcock: 2010, indeed! Hie thee to the appertainment portal!
6) And if Antarctica thins in a warming climate, as scientists suspect it will, then these channels could accelerate mass towards the ocean, further raising sea-levels.
Or the Elder Things are released from their long sleep!
14) The people behind Sesame Street may not like it, but The Happytime Murders has the imprimatur of Muppet royalty: the director is none other than Jim Henson’s son, Brian Henson, who is also the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, and will feature a number of puppeteers from various Muppet movies.
None of which is even a little bit relevant.
Has anyone here been watching Krypton? I’ve been enjoying it more than I expected to, especially after a certain General showed up. The season finale included a couple of nice twists, and sets things up for an interesting second season.
13) It is a wonderful hat! He just needs a shirt with purple somewhere in the design to go with it.
14) They didn’t have any issues with Avenue Q, so I’m inclined to believe the claim that the issue this time isn’t the content but the tagline. And I think the tagline is poorly chosen; you don’t advertise a thing by focusing on what it’s not.
15) An ongoing problem. Male characters can be as improbably multi-talented as fuck (James Bond, anyone?) and nobody has a problem with it, but just put the same set of skills on a female character and the whiners come out like mosquitoes at dusk.
(13) SARTORIAL SPLENDOR. Well it’s purple, so there’s that going for it. 🙂
(14) HOLLYWOOD LAWYERS FIND WORK. “. . . arguing in the lawsuit that it will confuse audiences . . . ”
Phrasing it like that (“No Sesame. All Street.”) just makes the point that it’s not “Sesame Street.” Anyway, it’s an easy fix in the trailer if Sesame wins. (No one will think it’s SS, though!) And hey, the suit’s already done the movie a solid; I hadn’t heard of it before! 😉 Now I’ve seen the “ooh wow, shiny, red-band trailer” and am a bit interested in seeing it.
@rochrist: “Or the Elder Things are released from their long sleep!”
Or? OR??? Those’re some rose-colored glasses, right there. 😉
(14)
Remember that early Peter Jackson movie “Meet the Feebles”?
Or the Angel episode “Smile Time”?
Both excellent examples of non-Sesame Street but similar looking puppets. With the former more definitely not suitable for young children.
(6) Iä! Iä!
(15) What Lee said.
@Bonnie: I watched Krypton and am looking forward to Season Two. I also thought Siren had a solid first season and am glad it got a renewal. Really looking forward to Cloak & Dagger starting in about a week and a half, though!
13) It rather suits him.
15) So, if I’m reading this right, the issue is that Rey is an implausibly powerful ninja space magician. If she was just an ordinary ninja space magician, there wouldn’t be a problem. All righty then.
@rochrist
Ursula Le Guin’s “The New Atlantis” seems apposite:
Where are you?
We are here. Where have you gone?
I think some filers would appreciate this twitter-question.
And this thread about LothR is also making the rounds.
@Soon Lee: I immediatly thought of Meet the Feebles. When it came out, I found the idea quite cool and watched it twice (once in the cinema), but I dont think I really liked it – it was a bit on the nose.
This trailer seems even more on the nose though…
The Happytime trailer didn’t seem very original or very entertaining.
[click]
@Peer: LOL at both of those. I like the replies to the second one, too, although since it’s the internet, a few people try to rain on the parade; but most play along with the silliness, some suggesting amusing alternatives. 🙂
I like this alternate explanation, linked in a reply to the Gandalf one. It reminds me of a very old Dragon Magazine article called something like “Gandalf Was a Fourth-Level Wizard,” which laid out the spells Gandalf cast in D&D terms and made the case that he was only (or at least, only had to be) 4th level to cast them.
Oh, that reddit thread is cool too!
Ooh, I think this is my first title credit, ever. What an unexpected honor!
I’ve pre-appertained myself a Mojito for “contirebiting”, BTW.
A Meredith moment: Steve Brust’s ebook The Book of Jhereg, containing the first 3 Jhereg novels, Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla, is on sale today for $1.99 at Amazon US and Kobo. I sort of feel funny about announcing ebooks on sale in the US as a Meredith moment, since I think she’s in the UK, and probably isn’t seeing them on sale there, but I’m sure it will pass, probably around midnight PST.
@microtherion: Actually, ‘contirebiting’ is somewhat legitimate legitimate fanac, specifically, cosplaying George Leroy Tirebiter as a conrunner.
When the kids and I saw DEADPOOL 2 last night, there was a trailer for THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS. Afterward, the kids talked about how they never would have done a movie like that before this modern era in which we live.
I got to tell them that not only did their parents’ generation have MEET THE FEEBLES, but our crass-and-raunchy adult puppet film was directed by Peter Jackson.
I’ve got a file, you can comment if you like
It’s got a pixel, a scroll that rhymes
And things to make it look good
I’d give it to you if I could, but I appertained it
Gardner Dozois is gone.
https://twitter.com/MichaelSwanwick/status/1000849132230184961
And apparently some fairly terrible stuff went down at a WisCon panel on “killable bodies”/acceptable groups/races to target for violence in SciFi/Fantasy stories:
http://wiscon.net/2018/05/27/killable-bodies-in-sf-panel/
The way to find Gardner at a con was to listen for the sound of laughter, follow it to the big group of eminent writers, and he’d be at the center of it.
Gardner Dozois. Damn. Never met him, but knew of his work, and saw him at the latest Chicon. Somehow this one hits home.
@Nate Harada: Wow. This sounds absolutely horrendous. Especially as the husband of a woman with disabilities. I want to know more.
I’m not sure if I read any of Gardner Dozois’ fiction, but I really like several of his anthologies, including (but not limited to) last year’s Book of Swords and the much older Modern Classics of Fantasy, the book that finally (by including one of its component stories) got me to read Zelazny’s Lord of Light.
@Nate Harada–Wow. That was a panel idea clearly not thought out sufficiently. How did they think it would not go badly.
I’m very sorry to hear of Gardner Dozois’s death?
re: Gardner Dozois
Aw, dammit. RIP. My condolences to his friends and family.
Damn.
If there had been a Grand Master award for editors …
Gardner Dozois was an incredibly skilled editor and, based on what his friends say and what I saw at Worldcons, a hugely fun and witty companion. I was fortunate enough to be on his Friends list on Facebook, and got to witness his wisdom and humanity. After his wife died a year ago, he missed her terribly; they had been married for 47 years. What a loss to all of us who are SFF fans. May his family and friends find consolation in their good memories of him.
Very sorry to hear about Gardner Dozois. Sympathies to his family and friends.
@Nate Harada, @Lis Carey
That panel title sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. I suspect that the intent behind the panel was criticising that certain groups of people are considered acceptable to kill in many SF works (which is not necessarily a bad topic), but the title alone is just “ugh”. Also, with a potentially controversial panel like this, the con should vet panelists very carefully.
@Nate Harada: “killable bodies” panel
I must admit to a – hm – morbid curiosity about the rest of the panel, particularly its intent. I mean, this is WisCon. I don’t expect them to schedule deliberately offensive panels.
Based on those two words, I can imagine having a useful discussion about fridged loved ones, unambiguous enemies of the protagonist(s), the inevitable fates in an apocalyptic scenario of those who rely on certain meds or treatments, members of the military who get killed/injured in the line of duty, and maybe “leave me behind, I’m only slowing the rest of you down” scenarios. That said, I’d like to know what the actual mission statement for the panel was. I’m hesitant to condemn a topic based on two words.
“Killable bodies” was not made up by the con, it’s a known term in political discourse
Twitter user @SamFromInternet was livetweeting the panel here: https://mobile.twitter.com/SamFromInternet/status/1000753929624412163
Plus there are other people in the panel tag #KillableBodiesInSFF for more details.
This is the description of the panel The Desire for Killable Bodies In SFF:
In SFF with an action element there’s a desire for cool giant battle scenes, heroes who spin, twirl, slice off heads, and general melee violence. This is an old background trope: the killable mook, guard, or minion whose life can be taken in a cool or funny way is familiar from traditional action films. But many SFF stories take this trope further with a killable race or non-sentient army: the Orcs in Lord of the Rings, the Chitauri in Avengers, and the many robot armies that we see represented solely so that heroes can create cool violent carnage without having to answer difficult moral questions. What happens when SFF comes to rely on this trope? If we’re going to have violent action in SFF, is this better than the alternative? Is it ever not just super racist?
I’m not at Wiscon, so I’m going to decline to speculate how they got from this to banning one of the panelists, and I hope it’s not the panelist I know.
Condolences to the family and friends of Gardner Dozois…. that is a big loss to SF, indeed.
Aw, damn. Gardner made great contributions to SF, as a writer and an editor.
My condolences to his friends and family.
In general I’m Facebook friends only with people I’ve met in real life. Gardner’s one of the few exceptions; I never met him in person. I first interacted with him on the old Asimov’s forum where he was a welcoming presence (there as here, I tended to read what others posted and didn’t comment very much), and those was my first forays into online fandom.
Gardner’s Year’s Best SF annual collections were an influential part of my SFnal reading. Those huge volumes provided a great snapshot of the state of the genre and were a reliable way to get introduced to the works of up & coming writers (this was back in the 1990s before the web made everything so much more accessible). I would regularly read a writer for the first time in a Gardner Year’s Best, then a few years later, they’d have become a name writer. He was hugely influential on the genre.
I wasn’t expecting to be feeling as strongly as I do about the passing of somebody I never met. There is a Maori proverb that’s apropos:
Re:Wiscon–
Bouncing around the internet only turns up various reactions and no actual transcripts of what was said. It’s probably going to take time for it to shake out.
So far, the main thing I’ve seen is that people are complaining that she “humanized Nazis and Confederates”.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the un-named panelist gets doxxed–I’m already seeing outrage from some Twitterers.
JJ: That’s not enlightenment. It’s character assassination. The indications are that a panelist screwed up badly. We don’t need to make it worse by accusing people of being monsters before we even get the facts of how it happened. It’s a good way to become monsters ourselves.
@Lee: Bond is a poor counter; he’s trained. Comparing Rey with Luke as the writer does is more reasonable; they’re both ridiculously adept with no training. (One could handwave them as savants, grasping immediately what takes years of training for the less-talented, but IIRC this is never pointed to in the movies.) OTOH, I haven’t seen any of this complaining about Rey; I wonder whether it’s anywhere above the puppy-traveler level.
Gardner played the clown at conventions, often unprintably. But at home he took Asimov’s beyond the limits of its founding editor to the point where it commonly had an outsize share of Hugo nominations. We’ve lost someone of subtle but huge effect.
I am surprised that Freitag is in the middle of the Wiscon issue. I am not surprised there was an issue; my past experience as a frequent program participant suggests that their model is who-likes-this-idea and who-wants-to-be-on-this-panel rather than what-does-a-small-committee-think-there-should-be — not surprising given the convention’s orientation (and they did have a panel for would-be moderators every year I was there), but it leaves room for its particular issues. And I wonder how many of the people on that Twitter thread were actually at the panel.
Chip Hitchcock: I haven’t seen any of this complaining about Rey
Really? Because it was all over the genre news sites and entertainment sites when both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were released (of course, it happened with Jyn Erso when Rogue One was released, as well).
Tom Becker: We don’t need to make it worse by accusing people of being monsters before we even get the facts of how it happened. It’s a good way to become monsters ourselves.
No one has done this. 🙄
Re:Rey,
I have to defend Rey to my many fellow SW fan friends. The idea that she can fight is so perplexing to them even though it’s established in the film that she can obviously take care of herself. She’s ready to give Tito a beat down when she rescues BB-8. She fights off two different goons when they try to kidnap BB-8 with ease! And then she bests an I’m assuming trained lightsaber fighter who minutes earlier was shot with a bowcaster; a weapon that has been established to literally blow people through the air on impact.
(Also: long time lurker, first time poster. Hello!)