Pixel Scroll 5/15/17 Scroll Sat Alone On His File Of Stone, And Pixeled And Godstalked A Bare Old Bone

(1) ADVANCED ALT-MARKETING. Jon Del Arroz is convinced you can sell more books if you fight with the right people. And the right people are on the left.

His business had a good day on Monday, as he garnered negative attention from Paul Weimer, and tangled on Twitter with SF Bluestocking’s Bridget McKinney.

Things got rolling after this Weimer tweet:

Jon took all that back to his blog and positioned himself as a staunch defender of Anne McCaffrey against a benighted feminist in “The Cult Of The New And Its Destruction Of Culture”.

…It started because I was talking to a Tordotcom reviewer. A Hugo Nominated Fanzine writer chimed in to tell me how irrelevant I am by referencing my last novel, how she looked up “Rescue Run” and found that there was “nothing in sci-fi that returned on a google search”.

I corrected, of course, stating not only is there my extremely highly regarded, award nominated and well-reviewed book, but that I chose the title intentionally as an homage to the late great Anne McCaffrey, who wrote a book by the same name. This work was demeaned by her first as “it’s only a short story” (It’s a novella, actually) and this person who is nominated for the Hugo Award for fanzine work, retorted to that by calling Anne Mccaffrey “old and irrelevant.”

… And of Hugos? This fanzine writer who writes self-described “feminist” commentary on science fiction is attacking the first woman ever to win the award! For shame! It boggles my mind to see this kind of lack of reverence for her.

When it comes to protecting the reputation of Anne McCaffrey, I didn’t know Jon had a dog in this fight. Now I know he’s got at least a puppy.

(2) HIGH ON KYLO. If you think the death of Han Solo might make people question having children at all, that’s because you haven’t met last year’s crop of new parents: “Turning to the Dark Side: Kylo is the fastest growing baby name in the US in honor of the latest Star Wars villain” — the Daily Mail has the story.

  • The name, inspired by Star Wars’ Kylo Ren, has jumped a massive 1,467 spaces
  • Popular culture also inspired parents to name their girls after popstar Kehlani
  • The most popular boys’ name is still Noah and it’s Emma for girls once again
  • Despite being in news every day, Donald and Hillary proved unpopular names

… The Social Security Administration released its annual list of the 1,000 most popular baby names for 2016 on Friday.

(3) ANOTHER CAPTAIN ON ANOTHER BRIDGE. This part is obvious – The Verge says “Seth MacFarlane’s upcoming TV series looks like a parody of classic space adventure shows” – but the idea that it takes inspiration from GalaxyQuest is hopeful.

(4) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Why do the Imperial Stormtroopers all appear to be left-handed?  It’s because their ammunition magazines on their weapons are on the left side, so it’s easier to hold the guns left-handed.

So is this Lego Storm Trooper inaccurately showing a right-hander?

(5) BONUS TRIVIAL TRIVIA

And while we’re on the subject of Star Wars, did you know….? (Via Scifihistory.net.)

(6) BOOTHE OBIT. Powers Boothe, who appeared in Deadwood and Sin City died May 15 at the age of 68. Boothe also played Gideon Malick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first in The Avengers (2012), then on TV in ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born May 15, 1856 – L. Frank Baum

(8) HEADQUARTERS IN THE SADDLE. Gamer and comic owner lives the life as a jouster: “The boss who lives as a medieval knight”.

Given how Jason spends his weekends, you might imagine that his day job is equally daring, that he is some sort of professional stuntman.

Instead, he is the chief executive of one of the UK’s largest computer games companies – Rebellion Developments.

Jason set up the Oxford-based business with his younger brother Chris in 1992, and today it has an annual turnover of more than £25m.

Still wholly owned by the two siblings, its best-selling titles include Sniper Elite and Rogue Trooper.

For the past 17 years the company has also owned cult UK comic book series 2000 AD, and publishes a range of novels.

(9) CALLING DR. DYSON. Maybe there is a Ringworld? “The most mysterious star in the galaxy”.

The starlight dips in an irregular pattern, suggesting that something is intermittently blocking the star. This bizarre behaviour, first reported in autumn 2015 and not seen in any other star, has scientists baffled. Researchers have proposed a myriad of explanations, including black holes, comet swarms, and interstellar clouds. But a conclusive answer remains elusive. And one hypothesis in particular has raised eyebrows: aliens.

Yes, aliens.

Perhaps, researchers have posited, an advanced alien civilisation has constructed a vast structure encircling their star, maybe an enormous power plant that harnesses the star’s energy. When parts of the structure pass in front of the star, it creates dips in the starlight.

(10) I HEARD THE NEWS TODAY. A local Albuquerque TV station recently  devoted 1-minute video bio to — “George R.R. Martin Living and Loving New Mexico”.

(11) UNLUCKY STRIKE. The Chicxulub asteroid hit “the worst possible place”:

Scientists who drilled into the impact crater associated with the demise of the dinosaurs summarise their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary on Monday.

…It is becoming clear that the 15km-wide asteroid could not have hit a worse place on Earth.

The shallow sea covering the target site meant colossal volumes of sulphur (from the mineral gypsum) were injected into the atmosphere, extending the “global winter” period that followed the immediate firestorm.

Had the asteroid struck a different location, the outcome might have been very different.

“This is where we get to the great irony of the story – because in the end it wasn’t the size of the asteroid, the scale of blast, or even its global reach that made dinosaurs extinct – it was where the impact happened,” said Ben Garrod, who presents The Day The Dinosaurs Died with Alice Roberts.

(12) ORION DELAYED. And we’re getting farther from returning to the Moon — “NASA nixes Trump’s moonshot plan” reports The Register.

NASA will miss its deadline for the first flight of the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System, with the launch moved from 2018 to 2019.

The agency’s Bill Gerstenmaier also told media in a briefing last Friday that as well as delaying the first flight (designated Exploration Mission One, EM-1), the EM-2 mission that will carry astronauts will probably miss its original 2021 date.

In February, the new Trump administration asked NASA to assess the feasibility of changing the EM-1 mission, planned as an uncrewed jaunt into cislunar space between Earth and Luna, to instead carry human cargo around the moon.

NASA has concluded that it can’t justify the cost of such a change to the schedule.

(13) FLYING TOYOTA IN YOUR FUTURE? The car maker pushes in a big stack of chips: “Toyota ‘backs flying car project’ in Japan”.

Japanese carmaker Toyota has announced its backing for a group of engineers who are developing a flying car.

It will give 40 million yen (£274, 000) to the Cartivator group that operates outside Toyota city in central Japan.

The Nikkei Asian Review reports Toyota and its group companies have agreed in principle to support the project.

So far crowdfunding has paid for development of the so-called Skydrive car, which uses drone technology and has three wheels and four rotors.

(14) GIFTED CHILDREN. Here is the trailer for Fox’s series The Gifted, set in the X-Men universe. It will air this fall.

(15) INSTANT CLASSIC. Bill filed the numbers off an old earworm in this update to “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”

With apologies to Allan Sherman

Hello Scrolls and Hello Pixels
Many posts are just for ticks. You’ll
Find that some are entertaining.
But not those that end up being all mansplaining.

I follow daily the blog of Glyer.
And I’ve become a faithful Filer.
You remember Rabid Puppies?
Their campaign to win the Hugos got them bupkis.

Some folks come here to rant and foment
But I’d prefer a Meredith Moment
A nice movie for my Roku,
Or a book to put on top of Mount Tsudoku.

[bridge]
Let’s go scroll, we pixel filers
Let’s go scroll, my reading pile has
Climbed so high. It’s not so long til the
Ballots are due in Helsinki.

I see my comment is second fifth.
It’s regarding Bob Asprin’s Myth.
But it’s missing a URL link
So I shall leave and appertain myself a cold drink.

[Thanks to Lex Berman, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to  File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

166 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/15/17 Scroll Sat Alone On His File Of Stone, And Pixeled And Godstalked A Bare Old Bone

  1. (3) ANOTHER CAPTAIN ON ANOTHER BRIDGE. As I mentioned on the trailer thread, this looks great! Usually something that would seem too over-the-top to me, but I loved “GalaxyQuest” (never sure if it’s one word or two) and this looks like a great series inspired by the movie.

    (5) BONUS TRIVIAL TRIVIA. I’m one of the lucky 10,000 today, thanks.

    (11) UNLUCKY STRIKE. “it wasn’t . . . [x, y, or z] . . . it was where the impact happened” – This kind of stuff always bugs me, taking something with multiple factors and claiming one is the one that matters and the others are irrelevant. Surely it was the combination of the size, scale, global reach, and location?! If it had been in a different place OR had been a smaller asteroid OR … etc. (Why do I want to shout a quick “Daiyanu” now.)

    (14) GIFTED CHILDREN. I can’t put my finger on it, but this feels a little, uh, something. Over-done? Also, I’ve seen shows like this before. But I’ll give it a shot, X-Men fan that I am/was. 🙂

    @robinareid: Great, interesting comment! I believe drudges were men and women (e.g., Camo, but IIRC he wasn’t the only one). IIRC, women usually ran infrastructure, e.g. the headwomen at Bendent (Manora?) and Harper Hall (Silvina), so not just drudges and cooks (they seemed to be responsible for all stores, keeping the whole place running – not just food ISTM anyway).

    Even as a kid it seemed a little odd to me that women weren’t riders for green dragons (till Mirrim). Did McCaffrey ever even make another female non-queen dragon rider after Mirrim? But she had some weird ideas about human sexuality (thanks, I think; I hadn’t read the peg thing…sigh…). She basically supported homophobic “if you’re the top, you’re not gay” garbage by saying things like brown and bronze riders (who sometimes fly greens, did she forget?!) were always straight. Le sigh. Of course, some of that felt was weird retconning, though maybe it was always in her head cannon; in the original 6 books, she just implied there was same-sex stuff going on, but never said it outright, after all. I liked that better than her later explanations and re-explanations, ick.

    Aside: Google sometimes is not my friend. Silvina was Camo’s mother?! By Robinton?!?!?! I somehow missed this in People of Pern and apparently it’s in Masterharper of Pern (a book that has a lot of weird retcon’ing to answer for already). She did some weird retcons.

    @NickPheas: Arroz’s site is the 5th hit for me on Google if I use quotes. I’d rarely search for an unknown title without quotes (maybe not even a known one). Phrase searches are best with titles IMHO.

  2. Del Arroz writes on his blog:

    Then there’s the fanzine element of this person’s nominations. Fanzines were originally created as content for Star Trek — but Pern in the 70s-80s was one of the biggest concepts out there for fanzines. Fanzines arguably wouldn’t exist without Pern fandom, in homage to Anne McCaffrey. Everything that this hugo nominated commentator does is built on the backs of what she’s dismissing out of hand.

    This is a wildly inaccurate history of fanzines. They originated in SF/F in the 1930s and were one of the primary ways that fans became fandom. The first generation of SF/F greats included a lot of fanzine contributors before they were pros.

    A fanzine writer like Bridget McKinney (or Mike Glyer) owes nothing to Star Trek or Pern. Fanzines were flourishing decades before either existed.

  3. robinareid:

    “I read an argument once (and I’m cudgeling my brain and may have to try to track it down) that argued that rape fantasies made sense in a rape culture (not that the writer used that term!) because of how as the fantasies could serve to eroticize the inevitable (my very simplified view).”

    That might be one reason. Another very clear reason is that some of us find danger, taboo and power dynamics being erotic by themselves. Even when not inevitable. There is no shortage of men with the same kind of fantasies, it is just that it isn’t socially acceptable and therefore has never become a cultural trope in the same way.

  4. @robinareid That was when I started evolving my theory that “feminism” in a work cannot be solely based on textual elements but is part of a reader response

    I don’t know if you’ve read Eve Sedgwick on paranoid and reparative reading, but it’s something I find myself thinking about a lot in fannish contexts. (Although – disclaimer – it’s a really dense and chewy piece of academic writing and I need to re-read it a few times to be sure I’ve got my head round it.)

    I definitely recommend Jay Dixon’s book – I’d mostly forgotten about it, but it’s coming back now. Very much about Mills and Boon specifically, though, for all that a lot of her wider points apply to the rest of genre romance.

    I read an argument once… that rape fantasies made sense in a rape culture…. because the fantasies could serve to eroticize the inevitable

    That makes sense, and I might also flip it around and argue that rape fantasies are a way for women to find space for the erotic in a culture that denies them sexual agency. (And that the way those two readings work together is part of how patriarchy perpetuates itself, of course.) IIRC, Dixon’s reads romance novels as adventure fiction for women that doesn’t challenge the social order but finds space within it, which is a wider application of the same point.

  5. But they really do show their age in many ways, and it’s just silly for anyone to deny it.

    This is a phenomenon not confined to McCaffery’s books, or to SFF, or even our current times. To quote my Master:

    “O gifted men, vainglorious for first place,
    How short a time the laurel crown stays green
    Unless the age that follows lacks all grace!”

  6. Me reading Killashandra:

    “You’ve changed, man. It used to be about the crystal singing.”

    (Loved the first two Harper Hall books because musical redhead escaping abusive mother hello! Then Dragondrums switched protagonists on me and I lost interest.)

  7. @Nickpheas —

    That is a very fine credential Hampus

    But is it heavy?

  8. JDA: Fanzines arguably wouldn’t exist without Pern fandom

    He’s showing his “heavy credentials” all right, and it turns out it’s a PhD in “has absolutely no idea what he is talking about”. 🙄

  9. Menolly excusing her mother’s abuse of her? Totally, utterly psychologically plausible for an abused child to do that. Dragonsong and Dragonsinger utterly hold up for me today, and Menolly’s character is the reason why. (Well, that and the idea of having that many teensy dragons as your friends.)

  10. FEMALE PROTAGONIST! (Seriously, how rare was that in SF at the time (1966 Wikipedia reminds me–I would have been in junior high then).

    From Andre’s Norton’s 1971 “On Writing Fantasy”:

    These are the heroes, but what of the heroines? In the Conan tales there are generally beautiful slave girls, one pirate queen, one woman mercenary. Conan lusts, not loves, in the romantic sense, and moves on without remembering face or person. This is the pattern followed by the majority of the wandering heroes. Witches exist, as do queens (always in need of having their lost thrones regained or shored up by the hero), and a few come alive. As do de Camp’s women, the thief-heroine of Wizard of Storm, the young girl in the Garner books, the Sorceress of The Island of the Mighty. But still they remain props of the hero.

    Only C. L. Moore, almost a generation ago, produced a heroine who was as self-sufficient, as deadly with a sword, as dominate a character as any of the swordsmen she faced. In the series of stories recently published as Jirel of Joiry we meet the heroine in her own right, and not to be down-cried before any armed company.
    When it came to write Year of the Unicorn, it was my wish to spin a story distantly based on the old tale of Beauty and the Beast. I had already experimented with some heroines who interested me, the Witch Jaelithe and Loyse of Verlaine. But to write a full book from the feminine point of view was a departure. I found it fascinating to write, but the reception was oddly mixed. In the years now since it was first published I have had many letters from women readers who accepted Gillan with open arms, and I have had masculine readers who hotly resented her.

    But I was encouraged enough to present a second heroine, the Sorceress Kaththea. And since then I have written several more shorter stories, both laid in Witch World and elsewhere, spun about a heroine instead of a hero. Perhaps now will come a shift in an old pattern; it will be most interesting to watch and see.

    So, not many. For Reasons.

  11. @Kip W: “Rev. Bob: Don’t search results often depend on your search history, so that two people Googling the same thing will get different results?”

    They can, but (a) I hadn’t searched for either topic and thus conclude that my results are at least typical, and (b) Google is right there; feel free to run your own search and see if your results indeed vary. As I’m sure many of our parents might say, “are your fingers broken?” 😉

    @Kendall, @NickPheas: I deliberately searched without quotes in an effort to more closely approximate the Average User’s experience and results. Google’s autocomplete feature just LOVES to strip out quote marks.

    And I’ve always been under the impression that GalaxyQuest is one camel-cased word, but as long as the meaning is clear… (shrug)

  12. @ Ghostbird
    Thanks for the Dixon recommendation; it sounds really interesting. Joanna Russ’ article “Somebody’s trying to kill me and I think it’s my husband: the modern Gothic” seem relevant here; IIRC she argues that the Gothics were, as you say, “adventure fiction for women that doesn’t challenge the social order but finds space within it”. It’s in To Write Like A Woman.

  13. I cannot see the phrase “rape fantasies” without thinking of the brilliant Margaret Atwood story by that title.

    I loved McCaffrey unreservedly as a teen. Female protagonist actually doing stuff? Sign me up, over and over. All the rapey stuff in Pern went straight over my head and it wasn’t until, years later, that I’d go, “Oh, wait.” But you know…that happened with so many F&SF books — or books overall — that it’s the norm rather than the exception. One reason I’ve been enjoying doing the Doc Savage rereads is rediscovering the joyful bits.

    I recommend the Elizabeth Bear/Sarah Monette A Companion to Wolves if you want to look at what that dragon/rider sex trope looks like, spun out in a more logical way. I still love a lot of McCaffrey’s stuff, and she’ll always be one of my heroes, because she put up with a lot of bullshit. She was the first female SFWA Grandmaster and a huge influence on the genre. One of the joys of working with the SFWA Cookbook was the fact that Fran and I were following in her footsteps; she did the first two SFWA cookbooks and was heavily involved in the organization.

    I got to meet her in Seattle very late in life. I glowed for about a day afterward. I’m very lucky to have gotten to meet so many of the people whose writing helped make me who I am.

  14. This is a wildly inaccurate history of fanzines.

    What? A Puppy got genre history wrong? That’s unpossible!

  15. I still love a lot of McCaffrey’s stuff, and she’ll always be one of my heroes, because she put up with a lot of bullshit. She was the first female SFWA Grandmaster and a huge influence on the genre.

    I was somewhat amused that in Bretnor’s Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow: A Discursive Symposium, McCaffrey (the only woman contributor) was one of the few authors to back up their assertions about the field with actual numbers.

  16. (4) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
    So is this Lego Storm Trooper inaccurately showing a right-hander?

    It’s a Clone Trooper carrying a DC-15S, not a Stormtrooper. ‘The Clone Wars’ series shows that while the clone army tended to be left-handed dominant, Jango Fett was ambidextrous as was his son, Boba.

    Stormtroopers using their E-11 blasters are always shown as carrying them left-handed, suggesting that Imperial training used a left-hand dominant style for both combat and parade routines.

  17. Rev. Bob: Don’t search results often depend on your search history, so that two people Googling the same thing will get different results?

    I’ve gotten different results doing the exact same search on two different computers.

  18. @msb

    And thanks for the Russ recommendation – I’ll pick up a copy of To Write Like a Woman.

  19. @Kendall: Re gender of drudges.

    I’m fairly sure that in the later works they were–and yes, there were Headwomen, somewhat equivalent in my mind to the Housekeeper and head servants (not the equivalent to nobility). But in the early novels–my memory of them–the worldbuilding wasn’t that developed, and my sense of a lot of women doing all the crummy maintenance work which is required of women compared to the few elite Queen riders came from the early work. And I am not saying that work wasn’t important–but the denigration of women’s work generally was reflected in the Pern novels.

    And yes, I think a lot of retconning took place in the later works. The implications and room for fannish imaginations to stretch in the early works I think were important for the fans (and though I don’t know about current Pern fandom, it was quite a large and active one during the day from what I’ve read).

    I figured the tentpeg story would be new to many, sigh.

    @rcade re Del Arroz Fanzines arguably wouldn’t exist without Pern fandom, in homage to Anne McCaffrey.

    ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

    Yeah, that is a stunning display of ignorance.

    @Hampus: That might be one reason. Another very clear reason is that some of us find danger, taboo and power dynamics being erotic by themselves. Even when not inevitable. There is no shortage of men with the same kind of fantasies, it is just that it isn’t socially acceptable and therefore has never become a cultural trope in the same way.

    Yes–very much yes–and I think there is a huge matrix of human sexualities that exists, much of which are not socially acceptable (though a lot more is now than was true in mainstream America in the 1960s). My discovery and response to fanfic BDSM in Keelywolfe’s “Shut Up Series” was completely revelatory in that regard. I should have specified the limits on that argument: I’ll have to reread Friday (if that is the author who made the argument’s book), but I suspect that this is very much based on straight white women’s self-reporting, thus a very limited group, plus, the Anglophone/American place and the time).

    @Ghostbird: Sedgwick is one of my theory goddesses (hi! I don’t think we’ve talked before–I’ve been reading/lurking on File 770 most of the last academic year but I hope to talk more now that summer has arrived!)–one of my teaching areas is critical theory, and I fell in love with her work during my doctorate! Every time I read or teach it, I understand a bit more–she’s brilliant! If you like Sedgwick, you might also enjoy my newest theory goddess–Sara Ahmed, especially Queer Phenomenology)

    And yes, Sedgwick’s and other reading response theorists are so important (and yet so resisted by literary studies, sigh). Fetterly’s Resisting Readers was also very important to my original understanding of the concept.

    That makes sense, and I might also flip it around and argue that rape fantasies are a way for women to find space for the erotic in a culture that denies them sexual agency. (And that the way those two readings work together is part of how patriarchy perpetuates itself, of course.)

    It makes PERFECT sense! And so does what you say about Dixon’s point.

    This also reminds me of one of Stephen Greenblatt’s point about subversive elements in literature (he was talking about Shakespeare, but damned if I don’t think it applies in other contexts): this is a quote from one of the essays I assigned my critical theory class this term (because I don’t have my Greenblatt at home, darn it): “Explaining the dialectic between Shakespeare’s art and an Elizabethan state authority censorial of subversive ideas regarding religions and political power, Greenblatt has described a process by which ‘subversive insights are generated in the midst of apparently orthodox texts and simultaneously contained by those texts, constrained so efficiently that the society’s licensing and policing apparatus is not directly engaged’ (Invisible Bullets’ 41). Though Greenblatt views this condition as an ‘historical phenomenon, the particular mode of this particular (Elizabethan) culture’ (57), I would argue that something very much like this ‘submissive subversiveness’ in which ‘a disturbing vista . . . is glimpsed only to be immediately closed off’ (52) occurs as well in [Harper] Lee’s novel” (Patrick Chura, “Prolepsis and Anachronism” Emmet Till and the historicity of To Kill a Mockingbird” p. 16). What I saw my undergrads struggle with, a struggle I see happening in some fandom discussions of books as well, is the difficulty of the idea of a text being simultaneously subversive and orthodox plus the complexities of how different readers “read” it (and the apparently very human impulse to think our interpretation is the correct one!).

    @Dawn: Menolly was a redhead? Dang, of course she was. (And ditto the loss of interest with the shift to male protagonist). I liked the part where she was off living on her own with the fire lizards best.

    @James Davis Nicoll: Love the Norton quote! Especially this part: In the years now since it was first published I have had many letters from women readers who accepted Gillan with open arms, and I have had masculine readers who hotly resented her.. And I loved Norton’s work too: even her male protagonists were different than the traditional hero dudes—and of course all the stories with animal companions and telepathic bonding with sentient aliens in feline form had me from the get-go.

    There’s also Joanna Russ’s essay, also in 1971, on What Can a Heroine Do?” And both of these are one of the reasons I somewhat crankily push my students not to use “heroine” in their papers as if it is the neutral equivalent of “hero” because, really, it’s not. (And not in one of my student’s papers, but in an anonymized essay I was reading for an academic journal, I waxed a bit acerbic on seeing the phrase “female heroine.”).

    And that’s what I think IS important to remember—that *at the time* McCaffrey’s stories, problematic as Older Me now sees them—were important. BUT, as others have said, to ignore that they may not speak to younger readers in 2016 is an even greater problem. I would actually enjoy hearing what Del Arroz loves in McCaffrey’s work, just talking about the books themselves and his relationship with them—that’s always fascinating to read and a far different thing from implying that if other people don’t feel the same way he does, we’re doing it wrong.

  20. @Cat Rambo: But you know…that happened with so many F&SF books — or books overall — that it’s the norm rather than the exception.

    True. So very very very true.

    Reminds me of Edith Crowe’s great essay on Tolkien (I’d say it’s the first feminist essay on Tolkien, and the one that disproves the idea that “feminists hate Tolkien”) in which she notes that when she read it in 1965, there were few books with female protagonists (the essay starts with her story of a friend’s daughter complaining about the male-dominated HOBBIT), and does a fantastic reading of Tolkien’s work (including the SILMARILLION) in which she concludes that Tolkien (although not a feminist) wrote works that shared some values with some feminists (including the lack of reliance on rape as a standard plot device).

    Oh, and thank you–I think–for the link. I had that paperback edition with Asimov’s forward and while I had mercifully forgotten it, the moment I started reading it, I remembered.

    Um. Yes. That was fandom (hell, that was the culture at large back then–as I mention in various debates about sexual harassment, the first time an adult man made a pass at me, I was 14 — and it was at a party at my parents house–my father was the Dean of the College of Mines, the drunk guy was a faculty member in the College, and everybody laughed jovially–this happened when I was putting out food on the buffet table, so right in front of everybody–and my younger brother was told, haha, to protect me–then my mom had me doing dishes in the kitchen for the rest of that party).

  21. OK, I shall stop spamming soon: but want to thank James for the Bretnor refrence (I had not known–have ordered the three non-fiction works on sff). And I guess Meredith moment: when I just googled Bretnor’s name, a whole bunch of his fiction came up at free on kindle in bundles and groups.

  22. @robinareid

    Hi yourself! And thanks for the recommendations. Theory takes a lot of energy for me – it’s not something I can read on my daily commute – but I’m trying to get up to speed so suggested reading is always welcome. And yes, Sarah Ahmed is great. I’ve not yet tried her full-on academic work, but I’ve been reading her blog for a while now and I very much like “Living a Feminist Life”.

    …the difficulty of the idea of a text being simultaneously subversive and orthodox plus the complexities of how different readers “read” it (and the apparently very human impulse to think our interpretation is the correct one!)

    Nicely put. And very relevant to fan conversations, I agree.

  23. @robinareid:

    Menolly was a redhead?

    …wasn’t she?
    *checks book covers*
    *flips through books*
    *Googles*

    …dang, I guess she had dark hair. My mental picture obviously included red hair because Menolly was me, dammit! Where’s my music school and mini telepathic dragons? 😛

  24. Kendall,
    I read the beginning of the thread you linked to but don’t have time to go down that rabbit hole.

    The incident that I am referring to occurs in Dragondrums. Menolly and Robinton are sailing and covertly mapping the coastline of the southern continent. Robinton’s gold fire lizard starts blooding her kill. Menolly sends her female fire lizards away. Her male fire lizards are all watching the gold fire lizard intently. She hisses at them and launches into flight, the males right behind her. The scene ends because this book is supposed to be for kids. Kids who haven’t read the first trilogy will read right over the text. Anyone who has read the descriptions of dragon mating flights in the other trilogy understands clearly what is not described. To my mind, anyone who denies that sex occurs is in denial. To be fair, though, the scene reads more as if Menolly is raping Robinton than the other way around.

    Robinareid,
    I hadn’t realized that McCaffrey had retconned away from the gay sex. I thought one of the cultural differences between the dragonriders and the rest of Pern was their acknowledgement that there are many forms of sexual expression among humans and were okay with this.
    One of my best friends in 9th grade was a major fan of Kathleen Woodiwiss so I read two of her books. They were exactly the same book except one was set in the American Revolution and the other in the American Civil War. I didn’t like it the first time so she could never convince me to read a third. The heroine was so passive she might as well have been a doll. I felt the same way about Barbara Cartland novels, though sex never happened on the page of her books.

  25. Before “fanzines” were Amature Press Associations, which date back to the 1920’s and earlier, where people could write what they wanted. APAs attracted people like H.P.Lovecraft, who graduated to other things.

  26. 1- #PulpRevolution? This cult of new Del Arroz is propagating is destroying the cultural foundations pulp was based on. #DimeNovelRevolution!

    4- Maybe they inserted the clone DNA backwards? If they’re shooting with their off hand it explains why they miss so much.

    6- Powers Boothe was great and will be missed. There were rumors that Deadwood was going to maybe get a conclusive movie but I can’t see it going forward without him in it.

  27. @rcade “This is a wildly inaccurate history of fanzines. They originated in SF/F in the 1930s and were one of the primary ways that fans became fandom. The first generation of SF/F greats included a lot of fanzine contributors before they were pros.”

    Indeed. I’ve had great fun reading the fanzines published during WWII and before (archived on efanzines.com). Here’s an example from 1941’s “Futurian War Digest” http://efanzines.com/FWD/FWD9.htm which features the revelation that Anson MacDonald was Robert Heinlein.

  28. World Weary says “I still read some of my old favorites but I would never recommend her books to anyone born after 1980, for all the reasons Bonnie spells out above.”

    Bonnie lists a bunch of problematic stuff but I think generally people born after 1980 (including myself) wouldn’t consider those things such a big barrier. Plenty of their favourite music and Japanese cartoons are problematic galore. Maybe those born after 1990 are a tad more sensitive to those things.
    I want to try McCaffrey someday.

    ===

    I’ve been visiting File770 for about 2 years now, I come for the news of culture wars, diversity/inclusion conversations, convention behaviour, awards, general gossip and political aspects of the writing/fan scene. It’s what this place does better than any other site.
    But I find all the franchise stuff extremely offputting. It’s not just that I don’t like this stuff but that it can be found on lots of other sites and they’re already hard enough to avoid!
    I can understand reporting about Saladin Ahmed writing for Marvel or Ken Liu doing a Star Wars book but Marvel variant covers?

    Are most of the regulars here grateful for franchise coverage?

    Avoiding Seth MacFarlane projects would be nice too.

  29. @rcade —

    This is a wildly inaccurate history of fanzines. They originated in SF/F in the 1930s and were one of the primary ways that fans became fandom. The first generation of SF/F greats included a lot of fanzine contributors before they were pros.

    I am woefully ignorant of fan history, but could it be that Del Arroz is simply confusing fanzines and slash?

  30. I loved the first Dragons book, I thought the second was OK. The White Dragon was poor.

    I liked the first Mennolly book as a change of pace, but then lost interest.

    The Crystal Singer was almost unreadable for me – McCaffrey grabbed a bunch of real placeneames from Ireland and pasted them at random onto moons, planets, people, whatever.

    It was like reading about your hero Harlem from the planet Brooklyn visiting the moon Hoboken. Nope.

  31. Robert Adam Gilmour:

    I just skip the parts I’m not interested in. To be honest, that is more Dr. Who, Star Trek and Star Wars. Marvel I still look at.

  32. Robert Adam Gilmour

    Welcome aboard!

    If Mike posts something that I am not interested in, I just don’t read that post.

    When the commentariat is discussing something that doesn’t hold my interest, I just skim through those comments. Another topic will come up soon enough. We generally have multiple threads in each comment section.

    If there is something that you want people to talk about, please bring it up. Most of the regular commenters have wide ranging interests and enjoy discussing them.

    Please allow me the opportunity to discuss something that doesn’t interest you. It will be your turn again soon.

  33. I also read McCaffrey back when I was tiny & wee — at one point I owned paperbacks of the first two Dragonriders novels that had been deaccessioned from the public library. Never got super far into the series — the initial trilogy and some of the Dragonsong books, and that’s about it. Most of the problematic stuff went WHOOSH right over my head back at the time — I just dug the teleporting dragons and the Thread. At this point, I’m happy to have read them, and happy to leave them in my past.

    As for the Irish name thing, that was something that bothered me all out of proportion in Leigh Brackett’s Sword of Rhiannon — she was so good with names, so why did she just grab a word straight out of Celtic lore for part of her million-year-old Mars?

  34. Robert Adam Gilmour: It’s not just that I don’t like this stuff but that it can be found on lots of other sites and they’re already hard enough to avoid! Are most of the regulars here grateful for franchise coverage?

    In terms of fandoms, I can tell you absolutely one thing that all the commenters here have in common: they all comment here.

    I completely skip over anything anime or manga and most things comic book as well. On the other hand, there are lots of people here who enjoy those passionately — and we even have one or two pros in that area who comment regularly.

    I don’t watch much TV and pretty much skim over the stuff related to TV shows, especially Doctor Who. I skip anything superhero — books, movies, comics — because it holds no interest for me.

    And yet there is one thing I can tell you about all the other people here who really enjoy those things I do not: they also enjoy something I enjoy, whether it’s space opera or fantasy or computer geekery or Star Trek or certain authors.

    I don’t think that there’s one regular commenter here with whom I do not share at least one common fannish appreciation. It doesn’t matter what I want to talk about, there will be people here who love it too — and they will probably know more about it than I do, and be able to introduce me to new things about it.

    I’ve also gotten turned onto books and series and authors and subgenres I’d never tried before, because of recommendations and discussions by others here. If this site covered only things that I know and love, I would rarely learn anything new.

    The diversity of topics covered here is precisely what makes this site so wonderful, in my opinion. Trying to narrow its focus by cutting things out would just make the site lose value for someone.

    And it’s not a zero-sum game. Covering comic book news doesn’t mean that the next WJW book doesn’t get covered, or that there’s no room for discussion of Ann Leckie’s latest blog post. Mike is happy to include pretty much anything genre in the scrolls if someone here is interested in.

    The more topics and the more fans discussing them, the merrier, sez I.

  35. I do skip those things but they take up a huge amount of space here and each time I see a trailer for a new franchise thing I die a little more. Just wondering if people here are so attached to the franchise news because it’s so easy to find elsewhere?

  36. @Bonnie McDaniel: McCaffrey thought she was parodying toxic masculinity, or at least the whole rescuing-the-helpless-damsel trope, in Restoree; her preferred cover was the one in which the woman is carry-cuddling the man instead of vice versa. (That and the proving that restorees do retain memories is all I remember of this book, so I’m probably missing something.)

    @various: It’s not clear in my recollection whether women harping was forbidden, or misunderstood as such by reactionary Holders, or simply grossly unusual because the women’s auxiliary school was clearly a social function rather than a serious school; I thought McCaffrey was making this up until I saw some late-1800’s class pictures of New England Conservatory, where all the students were women. (A century later NEC was considered one of the Big 5(?) music schools in the US; I have no idea where (e.g.) the early Boston Symphony Orchestra players learned, if they even learned in the U.S. at all.)

    @robinareid: the Pern books were a lot more honest than much medieval-setting fiction of the time; remember the first line of “Weyr Search”? (I also think your analysis of the power structure is incomplete; there is also a non-riding, land-holding nobility — albeit lesser: cf the scene in the first book in which several of their ladies are seized as hostages.) I’m … stunned … at the tentpole discussion you link to; I remember her delighted telling (in 1975, when she was a local GoH) of the librarian(?) who was shocked to work out what green and blue riders did. I suppose I shouldn’t be; the 2-generations-younger politician who claimed that rape can’t result in pregnancy may also have believed what he was saying.

    @Kendall re @11: the point is that the place was the thing that could have most-trivially been different, as most of the world is deeps or dry land rather than shallows; my SWAG is that hitting anywhere in 99% of the Earth would have produced much less damage. There would have been some damage — cf fallout from the Tambora eruption — but probably not the mass extinction.

    rcade: thank you for confirming Del Arroz’s ignorance with that quote — saves me wondering whether I should read him just in case there’s any sense there. Reminds me of Majel Roddenberry telling LAcon 2 (1984) ~”None of you would be here if it weren’t for my husband!” (It’s not totally untrue — there’s at least one BNF who started as a Trekkie — but conventions were growing long before OST.)

    @Hampus: that’s quite a credential — but why is it not growing up with you? Looks big to be unweaned, and might be more sociable if it grew up in your company rather than being moved.

    @Cat Rambo: interesting discussion of Asimov’s intro. One cavil: what McCaffrey sang when young doesn’t necessarily tell you what her voice was like later. I sang with her in the aforementioned 1975 and was more impressed by her frank admission (“what’s left of The voice”) than the singing.

    @robinareid (later): even [Norton’s] male protagonists were different than the traditional hero dudes AFAICR, they were the first leads who were plain outcasts (as opposed to disguised/captive/down-on-their-luck princes/geniuses/right-despite-all-opposition-types); that may not have made as much difference as it should to someone having a safe middle-class upbringing, but I do think the librarian who steered me toward Norton rather than Heinlein is owed something for the better side of my personality.

    @World Weary: are you sure that’s Robinton rather than someone younger and lower in the hierarchy? I vaguely recall a scene closing right after ~”but aren’t you torching for Robinton?” in Dragondrums (which I am not willing to re-skim).

  37. Robert Adam Gilmour –

    Bonnie lists a bunch of problematic stuff but I think generally people born after 1980 (including myself) wouldn’t consider those things such a big barrier. Plenty of their favourite music and Japanese cartoons are problematic galore. Maybe those born after 1990 are a tad more sensitive to those things.
    I want to try McCaffrey someday.

    Born shortly after 1980 and grew up on Pern, Xanth, Dragonquest, etc as some of the first Fantasy novels I read. I remembered all of them fondly. Then I re-read them as an adult and yeesh. I mean I’ll still always have the great memories of reading the books and loving the dragons and other worlds and so on, but they don’t hold up real well and some things I just didn’t get the references for being so young that as an adult I do.

    Having never read the books as a kid and not having the nostalgia glow for them I hope you enjoy the Pern books more than I did re-reading them. I’ll always have a soft spot for the books no matter what, though I also completely understand the criticism about them.

    I like the franchise coverage personally, I thought the covers were interesting and wouldn’t have come across them otherwise.

  38. @Chip Hitchcock: I think that scene in Dragondrums involves Menolly and Sebell and Sebell’s queen.

  39. Fanzines arguably wouldn’t exist without Pern fandom

    Slowly a million Kirk/Spock fikkers turn and glare…

    Incidently, Mary Ellen Wathne, who had a huge library of fanfics. used to state that the rallies fanfics and fanzines weren’t for Trek, they were from Starskey and Hutch fandom.

    Pern:
    As I was a naive teenager at the time, a lot of the context for the Pern books went over my head; I found the adult books a slog, actually. I was a huge fan of the Harper Hall duology. Hell, it was maybe ten years before the term “Mary Sue” entered my conciousness.

    McCaffrey may have had women protagonists, but she wasn’t the only one to do so in the 70s. The unjustly obscure HM Hoover for example, had competent women as protagonists and in positions of authority, without the rape subtext.

    I agree that Pern has agreed badly. But I would still recommend the Harper Hall duology to teen readers.

  40. Are most of the regulars here grateful for franchise coverage?

    Since we’re taking a survey, I usually skip comic book news on File 770 that doesn’t have a SF/F hook. I’m a longtime comics reader but I don’t frequent any comics sites.

    What brings me to File 770 is fandom news, fandom feuds, fanzine lore and general SF/F news. I got hooked on reading those subjects here.

  41. Clip Hitchock:

    “@Hampus: that’s quite a credential — but why is it not growing up with you? Looks big to be unweaned, and might be more sociable if it grew up in your company rather than being moved.”

    Still only 11 weeks old and swedish law says that a kitten must be 12 weeks old before you are allowed to move it from its mother.

  42. @ World Weary: That scene involved Menolly and Sebell, who was much closer to her age and not a father figure. There’s still the underlying problem of vicarious lizard lust overriding the characters’ choice, but without the added squick factor of Robinton being one of the partners.

    I’m really enjoying the McCaffrey discussion, BTW, though I don’t have anything to add that others haven’t already said – I also enjoyed the early Pern books when I was young but the Suck Fairy hit them pretty hard.

  43. Hampus Eckerman, Robert Adam Gilmour, World Weary, et al: This is a very helpful discussion.

    To tell the truth about the outbreak of Marvel news here — I had a chance to get on a press release distribution, and the pictures are so pretty!!!!

  44. Space Opera seems to be the theme at Tor, and elsewhere (BN, Black Gate) as well, this week.

    I am just finishing a Space Opera by Joyce Chng, and my next intended read is the debut Space Opera by Jessica Reisman. So I guess I am “on topic” with my reading?

  45. Robinton was — according to McCaffrey — based on a much loved teacher of hers from music school.

    @Chip Hitchcock – Good point. I see her son, who is a lovely, lovely, lovely man at conventions sometimes. I’ll have to ask him. Asimov comes off as so petty, though, that it’s hard to credit him with being objective there.

Comments are closed.