(1) CLOSE THE GAP. David Dean Bottrell, Producer, Sci-Fest LA, is asking people to help support The Tomorrow Prize, due to be presented this weekend:
Although Sci-Fest LA has been temporarily side-lined our amazing short story competitions continue!! Unfortunately, a grant we were depending on, has fallen through at the last second, and the awards are this coming weekend! We need your help to make up a $500.00 gap IMMEDIATELY needed to award the prizes to our winners!
Donate at: http://www.lightbringerproject.org/support/
You can make a donation via our new non-profit sponsor, LIGHTBRINGER PROJECT. Please add a note during the payment process for what the donation’s for — You can mention Sci-Fest, Tomorrow Prize or Roswell Award.
(2) INDIGENOUS VOICES. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has posted an update about her efforts to fund and launch an Emerging Indigenous Voices Award. (This would not be an sff award, but was prompted by the Canadian literary controversy reported here last week.)
I’ve gathered $4355 in pledges from people who wish to make this a reality. I’ve also e-mailed Robin Parker, who has also obtained pledges for a similar drive. We could be talking about more than $7,000 if we pool those resources together.
I have sent an e-mail to folks at the UBC Longhouse asking for some guidance.
I feel that if an award does become a reality, it must be managed by an Indigenous organization. I aim merely to help funnel money to them.
It may take some time to sort things out. I am putting together documentation tracking who pledged, how much, etc.
In the meantime, you can fund or support local organizations which represent Indigenous people in your community.
We should not turn to Indigenous and marginalized groups only when bad stuff happens and there are ways to support them that don’t involve donations. Read and review Indigenous literature. Suggest Indigenous artists as guests of honor at conventions. If you have access to a platform, invite them to write op-eds, guest posts, etc….
(3) ESCHEW CHRONOLOGICAL SNOBBERY. L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright raised her voice in defense of Anne McCaffrey at Superversive SF — “When New Is (Not) Best–The Degradation of Grand Master Anne McCaffrey”.
People talk about strong female characters today. Sometimes they mean kickbutt fighters. But when the term first got started, it meant females who held their own, who acted and achieved and accomplished, female characters who were smart.
Lessa was all that. To me, she was the sole female character in SF who really had the qualities I wanted to have. I adored her.
Recently, I was in a store and I picked up a copy of Dragonflight, the original Pern book. I remember thinking, Huh, it probably wasn’t that good. I’ve just glamorized it. Let me see… After all, some of her later books were a bit fluffy. Maybe this early book was just fluff, too, and I had just not noticed. I started flipping through it.
I read an astonishing amount of it before I realized I was standing in a bookstore and embarrassedly put it down.
It was still that good.
(4) THEY KNOW WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE. An author tells about eavesdropping on fan sites in “The Big Idea: Megan Whalen Turner” at Whatever.
As a newbie author, I was self-Googling like mad and just before The King of Attolia was published. I found a livejournal site dedicated to my books. I lurked. I did tell them I was lurking, but I knew right from the start that having authors around is a great, wonderful, exciting thing—right up until they make it impossible to have an honest conversation about their books, so I was careful not too lurk too often. In return, I got to watch these smart, funny people pick through everything I’d written and I became more and more convinced that they didn’t need my input, anyway. Everything in my books that I hoped they’d see, they were pointing out to one another. Watching them, I decided I should probably probably keep my mouth shut and leave readers to figure things out for themselves. That’s why when they got around to sending me a community fan letter, I’m afraid that my answer to most of their questions was, “I’m not telling.” Over the years, it’s hardened into a pretty firm policy.
(5) SPACE OPERA WEEK. Tor.com has declared: It’s Space Opera Week on Tor.com!
Alan Brown has a handle on the history of the term: “Explore the Cosmos in 10 Classic Space Opera Universes”.
During the Golden Age of Science Fiction, there was a lot of concern about the amount of apparent dross being mixed in with the gold. The term “space opera” was originally coined to describe some of the more formulaic stories, a term used in the same derisive manner as “soap opera” or “horse opera.” But, like many other negative terms over the years, the term space opera has gradually taken on more positive qualities. Now, it is used to describe stories that deal with huge cosmic mysteries, grand adventure, the long sweep of history, and giant battles. If stories have a large scope and a boundless sense of wonder, along with setting adventure front and center, they now proudly wear the space opera name.
Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer discusses why she embarked on her Vorkosigan Saga reread series for Tor.com in Space Opera and the Underrated Importance of Ordinary, Everyday Life
The Vorkosigan series is space opera in the really classic style. There are big ships that fight each other with weapons so massive and powerful that they don’t even have to be explained. The most dramatic conflicts take place across huge distances, and involve moving people, ideas, and technology through wormholes that span the Galactic Nexus, and watching how that changes everything. So it’s also about incredibly ordinary things—falling in love, raising children, finding peace, facing death.
And Cheeseman-Meyer’s latest entry “Rereading the Vorkosigan Saga: Borders of Infinity“ covers a lot of ground, but I must applaud this comment in particular —
At this point, I suddenly realize how little time we really get to spend with the Dendarii Mercenaries, who have now appeared as a fighting force in only two of the seven books in the reread.
Liz Bourke, in “Sleeps With Monsters: Space Opera and the Politics of Domesticity”, reminds readers that relationships are the web that connect the infinite spaces of this subgenre.
Let’s look at three potential examples of this genre of… let’s call it domestic space opera? Or perhaps intimate space opera is a better term. I’m thinking here of C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series, now up to twenty volumes, which are (in large part) set on a planet shared by the (native) atevi and the (alien, incoming) humans, and which focus on the personal and political relationships of Bren Cameron, who is the link between these very different cultures; of Aliette de Bodard’s pair of novellas in her Xuya continuity, On A Red Station, Drifting and Citadel of Weeping Pearls, which each in their separate ways focus on politics, and relationships, and family, and family relationships; and Becky Chambers’ (slightly) more traditionally shaped The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, which each concentrate in their own ways on found families, built families, communities, and the importance of compassion, empathy, and respect for other people’s autonomy and choices in moving through the world.
But lest we forget the reason Tor.com exists, Renay Williams plugs the franchise in “A Plethora of Space Operas: Where to Start With the Work of John Scalzi”.
101: Beginner Scalzi
If you’re brand-new to Scalzi’s work, there a few possible starting places. If you want a comedic space opera adventure, you’ll want to start with Old Man’s War and its companion and sequel novels, The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony. If you’re in the mood for straight up comedy SF, then Agent to the Stars is your entry point. And if you want some comedy but also kind of want to watch a political thriller in your underwear while eating snack food and don’t know what book could possibly meet all those qualifications at once, there’s The Android’s Dream, which is the funniest/darkest book about sheep I’ve ever read.
(6) AMEN CORNER. The celebration also includes a reminder from Judith Tarr: “From Dark to Dark: Yes, Women Have Always Written Space Opera”.
Every year or two, someone writes another article about a genre that women have just now entered, which used to be the province of male writers. Usually it’s some form of science fiction. Lately it’s been fantasy, especially epic fantasy (which strikes me with fierce irony, because I remember when fantasy was pink and squishy and comfy and for girls). And in keeping with this week’s theme, space opera gets its regular turn in the barrel.
Women have always written space opera.
Ever heard of Leigh Brackett? C.L. Moore? Andre Norton, surely?
So why doesn’t everyone remember them?
Because that second X chromosome carries magical powers of invisibility.
And having read that, who would you be looking to for an “Amen!” Would you believe, Jeffro Johnson at the Castalia House Blog? Not from any feminist impulse, but because it fits his own narrative about the Pulp Revolution — “The Truth About Women and Science Fiction”:
…Yes, the “Hard SF” revolution did turn the field into something of a boy’s club. The critical frame that emerged from it has unfairly excluded the work of a great many top tier creators that happened to be female. And much as it pains me to admit it, feminist critics do have a point when they complained about women being arbitrarily excluded.
However… when they treat the Campbellian Revolution as the de facto dawn of science fiction, they are perpetuating and reinforcing the real problem. If you want creators like Leigh Brackett and C. L. Moore to get the sort of attention they deserve, you have to recover not only the true history of fantasy and science fiction. You have to revive and defend the sort of classical virtues that are the root cause of why they have been snubbed in the first place.
(7) TODAY’S DAY
Sea Monkey Day
The history of sea monkeys starts, oddly enough, with ant farms. Milton Levine had popularized the idea of Ant-farm kits in 1956 and, presumably inspired by the success of his idea, Harold von Braunhut invented the aquatic equivalent with brine-shrimp. It was really ingenious looking back on it, and ultimately he had to work with a marine biologist to really bring it all together. With just a small packet of minerals and an aquarium you’d suddenly have a place rich with everything your brine-shrimp needed to survive. So why sea monkeys? Because who was going to buy brine-shrimp? It was all a good bit of marketing, though the name didn’t come about for nearly 5 years. They were originally called “instant life”, referencing their ‘just add water’ nature. But when the resemblance of their tails to monkeys tails was noted by fans, he changed it to ‘Sea-Monkeys’ and so it’s been ever since! The marketing was amazing too! 3.2 million pages of comic book advertising a year, and the money just flowed in the door. So what are Sea Monkeys exactly? They’re clever mad science really. Sea Monkeys don’t (or didn’t) exist in nature before they were created in a lab by hybridization. They’re known as Artemia NYOS (New York Ocean Science) and go through anhydrobiosis, or hibernation when they are dried out. Then, with the right mixture of water and nutrients they can spring right back into life! Amazing!
Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like Trisolarians!
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born May 16, 1944 – Danny Trejo. Incidentally, he opened a donut shop in Hollywood today – it sold out of donuts in the morning. He also owns a taco shop and a cantina.
(9) COMIC SECTION. Daniel Dern recommends today’s Candorville: “We already knew the creator’s a Star Trek geek, clearly he’s also a (DC) comic book fan…”
(10) DOCTOROW. This is the book Cory Doctorow was promoting at Vromans Bookstore when Tarpinian and I attended his joint appearance with John Scalzi a couple weeks ago. Carl Slaughter prepared a summary:
WALKAWAY
Cory Doctorow
Tor
April 25, 2017
Hubert was too old to be at that Communist party.
But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be?except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society?and walk away.
After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life?food, clothing, shelter?from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.
It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down.
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years…and the very human people who will live their consequences.
PRAISE FOR WALKAWAY
- “Thrilling and unexpected….A truly visionary techno-thriller that not only depicts how we might live tomorrow, but asks why we don’t already.” Kirkus
- “Doctorow has envisioned a fascinating world…This intriguing take on a future that might be right around the corner is bound to please.” ?Library Journal
- “Memorable and engaging. …Ultimately suffused with hope.” ?Booklist
- “The darker the hour, the better the moment for a rigorously-imagined utopian fiction. Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly-extrapolated revolutionary struggle. A wonderful novel: everything we’ve come to expect from Cory Doctorow and more.”?William Gibson
- “Cory Doctorow is one of our most important science fiction writers, because he’s also a public intellectual in the old style: he brings the news and explains it, making clearer the confusions of our wild current moment. His fiction is always the heart of his work, and this is his best book yet, describing vividly the revolutionary beginnings of a new way of being. In a world full of easy dystopias, he writes the hard utopia, and what do you know, his utopia is both more thought-provoking and more fun.”?Kim Stanley Robinson
- “Is Doctorow’s fictional utopia bravely idealistic or bitterly ironic? The answer is in our own hands. A dystopian future is in no way inevitable; Walkaway reminds us that the world we choose to build is the one we’ll inhabit. Technology empowers both the powerful and the powerless, and if we want a world with more liberty and less control, we’re going to have to fight for it.”?Edward Snowden
(11) LITFEST PASADENA. In addition to the Roswell Award and Tomorrow Award readings, this weekend’s LitFest Pasadena includes these items of genre interest:
Saturday
Famed afro-futurist writer Nalo Hopkinson (The Chaos) joins the Shades & Shadows Reading Series for an evening of dark fiction from noir mystery to sci-fi.
Sunday
Popular comic book and TV writer Brandon Easton (Agent Carter), joins fellow comic book writers to discuss “Manga Influences on American Culture.”
(12) SPEAKING PARTS. Pornokitsch shows why someone could argue “Middle Earth Has Fewer Women Than Space”.
This research is from April 2016. The folks at The Pudding analysed thousands of screenplays and did a word count of male and female dialogue.
Unsurprisingly: Hollywood skews heavily in favour of dudes talking.
Naturally, I looked for all the nerdiest films I could find. This was a lot of fun, although the results were… pretty bleak. …..
There follows a whole chart about genre films.
…2001 is literally a film about two dudes floating in space, and it has a higher percentage of female dialogue than two of the Lord of the Rings films.
(13) IOU. Jon Del Arroz thinks I should be paying him when I put him in the news. Now there’s an innovative marketing mind at work.
File 770 should be paying me for content at this juncture.
— Jon Del Arroz (@jondelarroz) May 16, 2017
(14) PANTHER UNPLUGGED. Ernie Estrella at Blastr demands — “So why did Marvel pull the plug on Black Panther & The Crew after just two issues?”
How long should a comic book aimed at reaching a more socially aware audience be given latitude before it’s canceled? According to Marvel Comics, just two. Marvel is canceling one of two monthly titles that Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, Black Panther & The Crew. After two issues have underperformed in sales, the title has been abruptly put on notice. Marvel had seen enough and was not satisfied by the early numbers to stick with a title while it finds its audience. Coates told Verge that issue #6 will be the series’ finale, wrapping up the storyline that was introduced in the debut issue, which came out in this past March.
Coates co-writes the series with Yona Harvey, and together they crafted a story starring Black Panther, Storm, Misty Knight and Luke Cage investigating the murder of a civil rights activist who died while in police custody, Ezra Keith. Relevant to America’s current societal problems facing inherent racism, Coates and Harvey’s story also dives into the main four heroes and tries to look deeper at their varied experiences as black people in the Marvel Universe….
(15) NEW GRRM ADAPTATION. George R.R. Martin gives fans the background on developments they’ve been reading about in the Hollywood trade papers — “Here’s the Scoop on NIGHTFLYERS”.
In 1984 I sold the film and television rights to “Nightflyers” to a writer/ producer named Robert Jaffe and his father Herb….
This new NIGHTFLYERS television series — actually, it is just a pilot script at present, still several steps short of going on-air, but I am told that SyFy likes the script a lot — was developed based on the 1987 movie, and the television rights conveyed in that old 1984 contract. Robert Jaffe is one of the producers, I see, but the pilot script is by Jeff Buhler. I haven’t had the chance to meet him yet, but hope to do so in the near future.
Since I have an overall deal that makes me exclusive to HBO, I can’t provide any writing or producing series to NIGHTFLYERS should it go to series… but of course, I wish Jaffe and Buhler and their team the best of luck. “Nightflyers” was one of my best SF stories, I always felt, and I’d love to see it succeed as a TV series (fingers crossed that it looks as good as THE EXPANSE).
[Thanks to Greg Hullender, Carl Slaughter, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar, with an assist from Camestros Felapton.]
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(2) INDIGNEOUS VOICES. -> INDIGENOUS
Or are they annoyed rocklike native peoples?
(13) IOU.
Surely Jon Del Arroz should be paying you for raising his profile?
Soon Lee: Well, what did that take, about 90 seconds for the appertainment to begin flowing?
Soon Lee: (13) IOU. Surely Jon Del Arroz should be paying you for raising his profile?
Well, yes, he should definitely be paying Mike for increasing his bandwidth. But he should probably get a hefty discount for the fact that the result is that a lot more people now know what an asshole del Arroz is, thanks to the signal boost. 😀
(3) Anne McCaffrey’s writing style and ability as a storyteller is not and has never been the problem with her stories. I still love her books, although when I reread them I find myself flinching more each time – to the point where I hardly reread most of them. I was very young when I first read Dragonflight, and even as a child I recognized that what F’lar did to Lessa was not right. Yes, she was a strong woman – but that was out and out rape.
And it’s not just that book. There is a lot of problematic sex throughout her works. Like many authors I like because of the impact they had on me, I do not gloss over the bad bits – I recognize that those exist and bother me. I still like McCaffrey’s work, and her – she was the first author I ever met – but I have no illusions about her work and how badly it has aged.
There’s a certain segment (my spellcheck wanted ‘cretin segment’, which I almost left) that can’t stand any criticism or examination of the influential works and authors of the past. And it fundamentally strikes me as sad. How tragic would it be if the best of what was being published today had failed to advance at all from what was pushing the boundaries ten, twenty, fifty years ago or more? What an insult it would be to those authors they are trying to preserve in unthinking amber if no one had build on their ideas.
Anne McCaffrey doesn’t need to be defended. By any metric she is an indisputable giant of the field. Her works would also be unpublished if submitted today simply because the audience has moved on, through no small part by her own efforts and accomplishments.
We owe those who have influenced the field better than sticking them on a pedestal and never examining them.
First fifth!
P.S. what Ryan said.
Dangit, that real first fifth wasn’t there when I posted! Or something! Second and a half fifth!
Ha! As more of a lurker than a daily poster it’s been a while since I’ve claimed a fifth, and I wasn’t even trying!
Also, it beyond cracks me up that the fifth thing is still going on.
@Mike,
A quick drink is a good drink?
There are some creators where it is almost impossible to miss their personal kinks. The spanking fetisch of Heinlein and Robert Jordan, the foot fetisch of Tarrantino, etc.
I haven’t read McCaffrey, so I can’t say anything about her.
W00T – Hugo Voter packet link just hit my inbox – got my e-mail minutes ago (but it went to spam cuz their e-mails always do)!
@Mike Glyer etc. FYI.
ETA: I’m already liking how they did this. #1 links are on the voting page, and #2 the epub/mobi/pdf packages are separate. So instead of downloading all formats (larger downloads), I click the EPUB link and get the EPUBs. And the EPUB and MOBI packets include a PDF for items that were only supplied as PDF. So no extra downloading, and no missing things that were only able to be provided in one format. 🙂 And it hows how bit the ZIP file is so I know if it’s huge. Nice.
The 2017 Hugo Award voter packet been dropped.
@Sean Kirk: Don’t worry, I picked it up, dusted it off, and am about to open it up. 😛 😉
The Hugo Voter Packet is more incredible than usual.
All the Short Fiction.
Complete Novels:
All the Birds in the Sky
A Closed and Common Orbit
Ninefox Gambit
Death’s End
Too Like the Lightning
Complete Novels in the Series Category:
Borders of Infinity
The Craft Sequence Vol. 1 – 5
The October Daye Series Vol. 1 – 10 (requires registration at Netgalley and separate download)
His Majesty’s Dragon
Complete Best Related Works:
Women of Harry Potter
The View from the Cheap Seats
The Geek Feminist Revolution
Words are my Matter
Traveler of Worlds
Graphic Story is 600 MB and still downloading.
Came here for the first time in _lilterally_ centuries because I got my Hugo packet. I’ve been immersed in Stardew Valley, rather than reading File770 or anything else of substance. If I had any shame, I would feel it. My SJW credentials have certainly been calling me out on it.
Anyway, I’m 80% through TLTL so far (if you’ve been keeping track at all, I’m almost three weeks into this read). I’m so torn about whether I love or hate this book that I think I may love it. I really need to get through Stardew Valley and start reading again, but I’m in the middle of a bunch of stuff right now, so I’m not sure if that can happen.
The Campbell download is quite nice, too. 🙂 I haven’t opened up the files yet, but it looks like Infomocracy and Too Like the Lightning (sorry, those are the titles I recognize – many other files in this folder, just not sure which are novels or short or what).
ETA: Oh and Everything Belongs to the Future, I know that name, gah my brain is ready for sleep, sorry.
All the Puppies should be paying Mike for the exposure — otherwise no one outside their little bubble would ever hear about them except when they’re cheating to get on the Hugo ballot!
And here they are again, spouting off stuff they know nothing about and claiming their “enemies” said things none of them ever did, while ignoring things they did. Because you have to stay on message and narrative 24/7 when you’re a Puppy, and that message is “Do the opposite of whatever the SJW or suspected SJW do!”
Those are some nifty space opera essays. Nutty Nuggets from Tor; someones’ heads are probably exploding.
Also what Ryan said. McCaffrey is one of the giants upon whose shoulders today’s feminist authors stand on, to adapt Newton. But physics is a lot better thanks to Newton, and others in turn who stood on his shoulders. That’s how we improve.
Ooh, and off to claim my Packet! So much for going to sleep early tonight!
@ Kendall I was so excited it just fell out of my hands. Its like Christmas in May.
I like Bujold’s author’s note that she provided in her packet for Best Series.
“Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books, …..”
No Bothans were harmed delivering this Hugo Packet.
@kathodus
One of us, one of us!
My computer battery died partway through Hugo packet shenanigans but I’m really impressed with the wealth of things I’ve seen so far, and from what people are saying here there’s even more to look forward to in the categories I didn’t get to. And from a financial standpoint, the ten October Daye books alone more than make up the price of supporting membership for a UK reader- they are £5 – 6 each on Amazon UK last time I checked. Thank you so much, DAW!
I’m highly enjoying the recommendations coming from space opera week so far- here’s a great tweet thread that crossed my feed https://twitter.com/quartzen/status/864239042795376645 which added a looot of new blood to mount tsundoku for me. It’s a shame but not a surprise that the puppers can’t join in without making it an us v Tor “pulp revolution” pissing contest, but good on them if they’re having fun and rediscovering classics too.
Ooooo, the packet is excellent. In addition to what’s mentioned above, all the novellas are in there. I’m particularly impressed by how much is in ebook format rather than pdf. I have to commend whoever had the arduous task of wrangling all the authors and publishers.
Too Like the Lightning in the packet is particularly good given its limited availability outside US.
I’ve decided to love it on days with an odd number composite number, hate it on days with an even number and watch it cautiously as if I were a semi feral cat being offered food on days with a prime number.
While the Packet is super-keen, it’s kind of annoying to have to download things I already own (many but not all of Series) or don’t want. I guess I can delete them after unzipping, but still. I wouldn’t have minded having to click 5 or 6 times per category as usual.
Heh. Network errors now and again. It’s almost like thousands of voices cried out “THE PACKET IS HERE!” and were suddenly silenced as they began downloading.
I hate PDF. A few years ago, two of the books came only in PDF which you had to type in a password for every time you opened them. And no adjusting of font size. IIRC, those 2 books finished pretty low in the rankings.
oh wow am I glad I kept up with the reading, particularly on Series.
I highly recommend the Chuck Tingle packet contribution 🙂
@lurkertype: I seem to recall the last couple of packets were bundles, not individual downloads.
A big improvement this year is to be able to download the format you want, instead of having mobi bundled in with epub (I don’t use mobi unless it’s the only option) and PDF when there’s any alternative. So that’s something!
Wow, the graphic novel download is huge. 😉 I’m done downloading but that took for e ver.
ETA: Okay now really I’m going to bed. Gah, I’d rather start reading some more, LOL.
Hugo Voter’s packet:
BIGGEST MEREDITH MOMENT EVER.
There seems to be a minor error in the novel mobi zip: It omits “The Obelisk Gate”. (There’s a pdf of All the Birds in the Sky) The epub and pdf zips have a pdf version of The Obelisk Gate.
And it seems like an overall excellent packet! Both in pure amount of goodness, and with most in e-reader formats rather than pdf.
There was an epub folder containing 1 to 14 for me. Quick Calibre auto conversion for the Kindle needed.
The perennial ungrateful bah to publishers preferring mucked about pdf files rather than reader friendly ones. Honestly Hodder, you really think there isn’t a copy on The Pirate Bay already? Yes, I know it’s a gift, I’m just baffled by putting work in to spoil my reading experience.
NickPheas: There was an epub folder containing 1 to 14 for me. Quick Calibre auto conversion for the Kindle needed.
Those are the novellas, novelettes, and short stories in the October Daye universe. You have to go to NetGalley for the 10 novels.
Also, the MOBI versions of stories 1-14 are in a subfolder in the Series MOBI packet download, so you don’t have to convert them with Calibre.
So, now that I have a Netgalley account (soooo impressed that they gave us the whole of October Daye), do they actually give ARCs to internet randos?
Can’t talk, reading packet.
*downloading packet*
*chortling quietly to self*
Finally, I get to read Too Like the Lightning.
Mark: So, now that I have a Netgalley account (soooo impressed that they gave us the whole of October Daye), do they actually give ARCs to internet randos?
Yes, but… I recommend taking the time to read the website’s recommendations and set up a good profile for yourself, talking about what you read and enjoy most, and where you blog and/or comment about books.
Before requesting a book, read the publisher’s statement because they will state what they are looking for, and you may be able to tweak your profile to make yourself look like a better choice.
I also recommend thinking twice before requesting a book, and being really sure that you want to read it AND are able and willing to take the time to post a decent review of it. Once you’ve been given access to a book, it becomes part of your statistics, and your profile shows your percentage of books granted vs. books reviewed, which publishers take into account when they make decisions about giving out ARCs.
Books by less famous authors (and thus, less requested) are more likely to get granted. For example, I don’t even bother requesting the books by Scalzi.
Don’t request and get too many books at once, stick to 1 or 2 at a time and don’t request a new one until you’ve turned in a review. I took out too many at a time once, and felt overwhelmed. I had to work really hard to get them cleared so that I could request new books I actually wanted to read a lot more.
If someone just starting out on NetGalley has trouble getting approvals, there are books by little-known and self-pubbed authors which can be immediately accessed without approval. Pick one you think you’d enjoy, and then post a review on it, and it will improve your stats. Repeat as necessary until you’ve got an established track record for publishers to see.
And of course, be sure to turn in a review of the October Daye series; that will give you a good start on NetGalley (and it will also encourage DAW books to be as generous to the Hugo packet in future years!).
13) Well, in an email, Superversive SF’s Publicist thanked me for “promoting the book” on twitter. So yeah…
Hm, I wonder if netgalley are OK with “simultaneous review elsewhere”? I guess the other option is to hold myself to “the only things that get tallied are PUBLISHED books”. Yes, I have a running log of “published books I’ve read” with a somewhat fluid line as to what actually constitutes a book. Good for annual stats, good for going through the previous year to see what was eligible for (Hugo) nomination, and for ranking the eligible-looking works. Also good for various other number crunching. Mmm, lovely lovely calendar biting.
@JJ
Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll wait until I’ve got some time for reading current books before I request anything then.
[nth-stalk]
I guess they’re working on the theory that all publicity is good publicity.
I wonder, has all the time and effort that the Puppies have expended in this culture war marketing rubbish actually worked out for any of them?
Now you say you’re reading
Well I’ve been reading too
Why don’t you scroll me a pixel?
Scroll me a pixel?
I scrolled a pixel over you.
Oh, Beulah, scroll me a pixel!
[It’s being obstreperous.]
This pixel’s on fire
Scrolling down the road
Notify my ticky box
This scroll will explode
So it looks like Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country Is getting turned into an HBO series by Jordan Peele.
Original story on gizmodo/io9
http://io9.gizmodo.com/jordan-peeles-next-project-is-a-terrifying-lovecraftian-1795275560.
@TYP
That’s great news. I read recently that Ruff originally conceived it as a TV series, so I guess it’s circled around to its original start!
Up on pixel creek, he sends me
I don’t have to scroll, email he sends me
My prose is weak, he amends me
A fanboy’s dream if I ever did see one.
And here’s an interesting article on the Captain America kerfuffle. I’d forgotten–if I ever knew, because one of my first three comic books was Fantastic Four #54*–that Sam Wilson predated T’Challa.
*I think. I know X-Men #20 and #22, but I could be off a number on Fantastic Four. I’d like to see those covers with the numbers removed.
@10, all the m-dashes (I’m assuming m-dashes) in the excerpt were replaced with question marks.
YAY for Hugo Packet! And almost all in e-reader formats, too! (I hate PDF but understand it’s necessary for Graphic Novels.) Last year I spent several days cleaning up one of the PDF books after a conversion to epub left it still unreadable (and huge; there were publisher-logos every single page).
Cassy B notes YAY for Hugo Packet! And almost all in e-reader formats, too! (I hate PDF but understand it’s necessary for Graphic Novels.) Last year I spent several days cleaning up one of the PDF books after a conversion to epub left it still unreadable (and huge; there were publisher-logos every single page).
Errr I’ve got several GNs I purchased on iBooks that are in the ePub format Apple has as its de facto standard.
Or they could use CBR/CBZ which is intended for those…
Hugo Packet my old friend
I’ve come to scroll through you again
I’ll also say, YAY! for the Hugo packet. And. Um. I’d better clear out my reading schedule.
Also, I’d be happier if all of the graphic novel nominees didn’t have a giant “Hugo Award Selection” watermark across every single page, but I guess I can understand the reason for it.