(1) LOST SIGNAL. John DeNardo shocked fans and writers alike by revealing today that SF Signal is shutting down.
When we started SF Signal in 2003, it was because we loved speculative fiction. Having a blog allowed us to share that love with other fans. We never dreamed it would have grown like it has. In these past 12 years and 10 months, we’ve shared our love of genre, we’ve provided a forum for other fans to come on board as contributors to also share their genre love, we gave authors a place to tell us about the exciting new worlds they’re creating, and I like to think we’ve made a ton of new friends. We even picked up a few Hugo Awards along the way. It’s been quite a ride.
But all good things come to an end.
It was a very hard decision to make, but we have decided to close down SF Signal. The reason is boringly simple: time. As the blog has grown, so has its demands for our attention. That is time we would rather spend with our families. We considered scaling back posts, but it felt like SF Signal would only be a shadow of its former self. So yes, it feels sudden, but a “cold turkey” exit seems like the right thing to do.
(2) GAMES OF FAME. Six classic games are being inducted into video game hall of fame – CBS News has the story.
A video game that had players zapping space aliens with lasers and another that put them in covered wagons in 1848 have been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, along with four other games recognized for their influence on gaming and pop culture.
“Space Invaders” and “The Oregon Trail,” along with “Grand Theft Auto III,” ”Sonic the Hedgehog,” ”The Legend of Zelda” and “The Sims,” make up the class of 2016 honored Thursday at the hall inside The Strong museum in Rochester.
The winners were chosen from among 15 finalists culled from thousands of nominations from around the world. Contenders that missed the final cut were: “John Madden Football,” ”Elite,” ”Final Fantasy,” ”Minecraft,” ”Nurburgring,” ”Pokemon Red and Green,” ”Sid Meier’s Civilization,” ”Street Fighter II” and “Tomb Raider.”
(3) IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Abigail Nussbaum, in Captain America: Civil War, launches her review with this lede:
It’s a bit of a strange thing to say, but I might have liked Captain America: Civil War better if it were a less good movie. When films like The Dark Knight Rises or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice deliver rancid political messages wrapped in equally rancid plots and characterization, the reviewer’s job is made easier. We can point to how a failure to recognize the actual complexity of a situation, or to imbue characters with full humanity, both informs and reflects the simplistic, quasi-fascist message of the movie. Civil War is a trickier customer. It tries–and on some level, manages–to be more intelligent and more thoughtful than something like Batman v Superman. Its characters take the film’s central conflict seriously, discussing it rationally and trying to find a way to resolve it without descending into fisticuffs. But even as they do so, they reveal the inherent impossibility of their project, the way the core assumptions of this entire genre combine to form a black hole that it can never escape. I’ve said it before, but the minute you start taking superheroes seriously, and debating the rights and wrongs of them, only one conclusion is possible: that superheroes are a really bad idea, and that any fictional world that houses more than a handful of them will inevitably devolve into a horrifying dystopia in which the rule of law and the authority of democratic government are meaningless.
(4) SINGING IN THE SHOWER. Space.com told readers “Meteor Shower Spawned by Halley’s Comet Peaks This Week”.
Dusty debris that Halley’s Comet has shed on its 75-year-long laps around the sun slams into Earth’s atmosphere during the first week of May every year, creating an annual meteor shower known as the Eta Aquarids. (Another Halley-spawned shower, the Orionids, occurs every October.)
(5) SWIRSKY INTERVIEWS KOWAL. At Rachel Swirsky’s blog: “Silly Interview with Mary Robinette Kowal, intermittently teal storyteller”.
RS: A lot of novelists let short stories lapse when they embark on their novelling careers. You keep publishing strong short fiction, like last year’s “Midnight Hour” in Uncanny Magazine. How do you make time for short stories, and what do you get from them that you don’t get from longer fiction?
MRK: Honestly, these days I start a lot of the short stories while I’m teaching my Short Story Intensive. Part of the process is that I write along with the students in order to demonstrate how to start from a story seed and then develop it into a story. I often have a market in mind when I’m doing these, so the demonstration does double duty. The thing that I love about short fiction as a writer is that I get to experiment with a lot of different styles and ideas without the huge time investment of a novel. Plus, as a reader, I find that a short story can often deliver more of a sucker punch to the emotions and I kinda like that.
(6) SMACK ATTACK. J. R. R. Tolkien is pitted against George R. R. Martin in the latest installment of Epic Rap Battles of History. Tolkien’s shots include: ”You’re a pirate, you even stole my RR!”
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- May 5, 1961 — Astronaut Alan Shepard became the United States’ first man in space in a brief sub-orbital flight from Cape Canaveral.
- May 5, 2002 – Spider-Man is the first movie to top $100 million on opening weekend. (Remember when $100 million was a lot of money?)
(8) RARE ENDORSEMENT. John Picacio gave a strong boost to nominee Larry Elmore in an April 27 post “The 2016 Best Professional Artist Hugo Award”.
Larry Elmore is a legendary and deeply influential fantasy illustration icon, who has had a huge impact on generations of Dungeons & Dragons fans — game players, writers, artists, editors, publishers, designers, filmmakers, convention organizers — and beyond. More to the point, he has a major body of published eligible work in 2015 and that work doesn’t take extensive sleuthing to discern whether it’s eligible. His book The Complete Elmore Volume II contains over 700 drawings from a career dating back to 1981, and was produced and first published in the fall of 2015.
Was Larry Elmore amongst my nomination selections? No. He wasn’t.
Do I believe that ‘No Award’ is an option this year? It’s the Hugos. It’s always an option.
No disrespect to the other finalists, but Larry Elmore winning a Hugo would not be a lifetime achievement award but it would recognize a lifetime of professional art achievement by someone who is legitimately eligible this year.
The history of that winners list would be shinier with his name on it.
Larry Elmore responded in the comments –
thank you for all your nice words, I am honored to be nominated. I never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought of being nominated. I came from the gaming industry (my first big breaks) and it seems like that type of art has been ignored for many years, but I agree that game art has had a large influence on a couple of generations…and still does. Because I take the award seriously, I feel more than honored to be nominated. I have had a career that has spanned over 40 years, I have loved it. I am 67 and I paint or draw every day…I am obsessed I guess…..but I love it, I keep trying to get one good painting!!!!
(9) DIVE! DIVE! If you’re having this problem, Fred Kiesche offers a technological solution.
https://twitter.com/FredKiesche/status/728185864917024768
(10) DAMAGED. Kukuruyo, the artist behind Hugo nominee #GamerGater Life, is under attack. Like some of last year’s slated nominees he’s unwillingly become a ball in the game —
Since i publicy became a gamergate supporter, the ammount of reports i’ve gotten on art sites have increased, many times in very underserved cases (i got a drawing pulled because the characters had sweat. Yes, sweat…) as well as the amount of people lying about me on blogs and such. And i don’t mean making critiques of me, i mean outright lies (one guy even wrote about how i voted for some candidate in the past US elections, which is interesting considering i’m a spaniard living in Spain). Not only that, but my website began to have attemps to break in. At some point i was receiving more than 50 attempts to break in each day, until i upgraded my security.
But this broke into a new level when i was announced as a finalist for best Fan artist at the Hugo awards. Then people in the social justice circles discovered that i support gamergate, and since then, interesting things have been happening one after the other (aside from the wave of verbal attacks, of course).
First one of my gamergate related works got reported and banned from deviantart. Then someone picked a cheap fanart that i was commissioned to do, about a half nude Ms.marvel, and tried to frame me as a pedophile, because aparently the character has 16 in the original canon (something i even didn’t know), ignoring the fact that the character body was adult. This story was writen about in (as far as i know) a blog and then in a comic news article, expanding the idea that i’m a pedophile for an anime style fanart thats no different than the millions upon millions of anime character fanarts out there, and that i was somehow a terrible threat for teenagers out there who have their heroes destroyed by evil me. I was reported in devianart for “pedophilia” and the drawing was taken down. I got reported on twitter. The attemps to break into my website have come arround again. Then they contacted my advertising affiliates, telling them i was hosting child pornography, so they would cease to advertise with me. They acepted a middle ground solution at first, but then they changed their policies, and now i can no longer receive their service. Yes, and advertising website changed their policies just because of me… and just yesteday some guys where trying to get MARVEL to SUE ME because of a fanart!
But hey, i’m sure all of this is just a coincidence! this has nothing to do with the Hugo awards or gamergate. I’m sure it’s just that a whole lot of people randomly decided the same week to try to fuck me up in every way they could, right? this can’t possibly be related with people from a particular ideology, pissed off because someone with the wrong opinions got a Hugo nomination.
(11) TINGLE IS HARD TO TROLL. The Daily Dot compiled the nominee’s tweets to show how “Chuck Tingle counter-trolls the Gamergaters who nominated his erotica for a Hugo Award”.
As hilarious and thorough as these VOXMAN owns are, mere Twitter owns aren’t enough to defeat a campaign whose main goal seems to be attention for Day. He’s expressed, in so many words, that hate can only make him stronger.
That’s where the third prong of Tingle’s trolling makes a difference. As the Daily Dot’s April Siese discussed in her recent profile of Tingle, the hard and sexy author’s true identity remains a mystery. He cannot very well reveal himself by showing up to an award ceremony. So, in his place, he has invited perhaps the one person internet alt-rightists and Gamergate-adjacent agitators hate most.
IMPORTANT: cant go to hugos award so to thwart devil plans, true buckaroo ZOE QUINN (name of @unburtwitch) has agreed to accept award for me
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) May 5, 2016
Zoe Quinn, game developer and anti-harassment activist, was the original target of Gamergate after an ex-boyfriend revealed alleged details of her sex life online. She’s the boogeyman (boogeywoman?) Gamergate frothingly rose up to “defeat,” their imaginary platonic ideal of a “Social Justice Warrior.”
(12) WHAT YOU KNOW V. WHAT YOU CAN PROVE. Andrew Liptak finds a great deal of hearsay to repeat in “Gaming the System: The 1987 Hugo Awards” at Kirkus Reviews. On the other hand, it’s hearsay that a lot of people haven’t read before.
During the lead-up to this convention, Hubbard’s interests seemed to have helped beyond mere sponsorship of convention booklets and workshops. Fans have alleged that Hubbard’s followers worked as a block and voted in such numbers that Black Genesis, the second of the Mission Earth series, found itself a Hugo finalist for Best Novel. Ian Watson, writing in Conspiracy Theories, noted that the presence of the book as a finalist, was suspect.
“Did all those who nominated [Black Genesis] in the first place merely have supporting memberships — suggesting that the only reason for buying the membership was to nominate BG? Furthermore, how many of the people who nominated BG only nominated BG and nothing else? If we could discover this information from Paul Kincaid [Award Administrator] then we might have an indicator of whether BG was in fact “bought” on to the ballot.”
(13) CURING AWARD FATIGUE. Joe Sherry at Nerds of a Feather, in “Other Genre Awards: Or, So You’re Tired of the Hugo Awards”, suggests awards alternatives to revitalize your jaded taste buds.
So, you’re tired of reading about the Hugo Awards, are you? All the fighting and arguing and gnashing of teeth got you down? Do you still like Awards and the recognition of good things? We have some awards for you! If you’re newer to this whole genre awards scene, the first place I would recommend you start (besides this article) is the Science Fiction Awards Database. There’s quite a bit to peruse and a full directory of all the genre awards.While it is certainly possible that they are missing something, it does seem pretty darn exhaustive. Since there are a horde of genre awards out there, the real question, then, is “What are you looking for from a literary award?”
(14) RULES IDEA. Kevin Standlee’s next proposal – “Plus 2”.
Here’s yet another proposal to try and counteract bad actors (I call them “Griefers”) trying to disrupt the Hugo Awards by deliberately nominating works that they expect will be disliked by the majority of the membership as a whole, taking advantage of the “first-five-past-the-post” nature of the nominating round. The other proposals I’ve written up depend on the entire membership participating in a second round of voting, either with 3-Stage Voting (members vote down potential finalists) or Double Nominations (members select finalists from a list of top 15 semi-finalists).
This proposal invokes the subjective judgment call of the Worldcon Committee (in practice, of the Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee), hereafter just “the Committee” or “the Administrators,” to add works to the final ballot. This proposal would authorize the Committee to add up to two additional works to the final ballot. The Committee’s selection would be limited to adding not more than two works from among those works that were among the top 15 nominees or that appeared on at least 5% of the nominating ballots cast in that category.
(15) THE VIEW FROM SP4. Kate Paulk catches up on her Hugo commentary in “Not An Action Report”.
Let’s just say I do not have much patience or goodwill for those who seem to think that I wasn’t sincere in congratulating the Hugo finalists last week. Sweetheart, just because you can’t lie straight in bed doesn’t mean that other people aren’t capable of honesty.
As for the charming specimen who wants to chase up the ballots of all puppy-aligned voters and throw them out (presumably without refunding memberships – even though every one of those ballots was cast by someone who paid for the privilege, no mention of this little issue was made that I saw (although I freely admit that I could have missed it even if it was in huge flashing neon letters)), mine bears very little resemblance to anyone’s lists, including the Sad Puppies 4 list.
Why? Because SP4 collated a whole lot of people’s preferences. My preferences don’t look like anyone else’s. There might be some overlap here and there, but I’m weird even by geek standards.
The second paragraph doubtless is a response to ideas discussed in Facebook’s Journeymen of Fandom group thread, as quoted by Vox Day this week.
(16) DESIGNATED DRIVER. How did this sober advice get on the internet?
@bethmeacham Nah. @markokloos
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 5, 2016
(17) INSEUSSANCE. RedWombat made a metrical prediction in a comment.
“Pooh-pooh to the fans!” he was grinchily humming.
“They’re finding out now that No Award is coming!They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!
Their blogs will be blogged and their cries will be cried
My Xanatos Gambit will not be denied!That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch, “that I simply must hear!”
He paused, and the Grinch put a hand to his ear.And he did hear a sound rising out of a tweet
It started in sour but then it went sweet!And this tweet wasn’t sad!
Why this tweet sounded glad!Every fan down in Fanville, (well, not quite all)
(Getting fans to agree is an order quite tall)
Was laughing at Tingle’s great big brass…fortitude.He hadn’t stopped fans from enjoying the Hugo, just the same!
He tried to stop fandom, but fandom still came!
(Though not quite like in books with Chuck Tingle’s name.)And what happened next? Well, on Twitter they say
The Grinch’s gall bladder grew three sizes that day.And so the Grinch stands, while elk snivel and whine
Claiming “Don’t you all get it?! Victory’s mine!Stop thinking it’s funny! Stop having fun!
Why won’t you acknowledge that I’ve really won?!”But in Fanville it’s Christmas, and fans know it is true–
That this time the Grinch lost to…Literally Who.
[Thanks to Doctor Science, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Hampus Eckerman, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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Paul Weimer: I will miss working for SF Signal
Has anyone offered to take over the archive yet?
(10) (11) – Being a finalist brings attention. Not just to the reason for nomination, but the entirety of your work (think Presidential hopefuls).Once you have people’s attention, things done in the past often reach the ears and eyeballs of those who were never the target audience.
+2, 3SV, and DN – Personally, I do not like the idea of a control group choosing additional works. If anything, this will cause uproar as to why those works were chosen over others.
While I like DN more than 3SV, it (and +2) fails for a very obvious reason:
Bad Actors are most successful when they follow the written rules.
+2 and DN both pick an arbitrary number of nominated works, 15. As has been shown for the past two years, RPS have no problem finding and voting for complete drivel. What makes anyone think that Beale (or any future Nob) cannot simply increase the slate to 15 per category?
Yes, we still only get to personally nominate Five Works but, much as with “nominate 4, 6 finalists”, any coordinated group can side-step this by splitting into smaller blocs.
Sure, they won’t have the votes to lock up Novel or BDP-LF, but all other categories will easily fall to the slates like they do now.
@JJ Given the size of the archive, that would be non-trivial hosting costs. I think John is talking with a couple of people but nothing has been announced and I’ve not heard anything through back channels, yet.
I would be quite sad if the hundreds (!) of posts I’ve done over the last five years went poof, and sadder still if the thousands of posts of everyone else who has worked with SF Signal went poof.
GSLamb: What makes anyone think that Beale (or any future Nob) cannot simply increase the slate to 15 per category?
Because they’d have to get 60% of the nominators to take all 15 slots — in which case, they’d be the majority, and it’s rather hard to argue with the majority getting their choices on the ballot.
“What makes anyone think that Beale (or any future Nob) cannot simply increase the slate to 15 per category”
I think that you’d only be allowed to nominate 5, like now, but then do the downvoting/selecting out of the top 15. There would be no way to actually slate the entire “semi-finalist” list, not with the numbers they have.
kate: 10) for the record, whoever’s trying to take down Kukuruyo’s website shouldn’t.
I assume you mean take down via hacking or DDOS, not legal methods like DMCA or the like.
This argument would carry much more moral weight if SSaRR wasn’t primarily a transparent attempt at smearing people who aren’t paedophiles.
Also, the Rabid Puppies chose to nominate – and vigorously defend – a sleazy artist who draws naked pictures of schoolgirls so you should perhaps be careful with the ‘degenerate’ label.
Kukuruyo is the perfect puppy: always innocent and always gaslighting. Just like I’m sure he didn’t know his drawing of Ms. Marvel depicted an adolescent girl ( even though the revised work showed an adult adult) I’m sure the other banned work definitely showed just “sweat”.
GSLamb:
The increase in people and money necessary? Note that DN, with the Goldfarb addendum, and 3SV have exactly the same possibility to keep works from the ballot.
3SV or DV would make it impossible to slate works on to the ballot unless it was with the approval of the majority of Worldcon voters.
If you think that an outsider could easily fill all 15 entries of the longlist, it doesn’t matter whatever we do with the voting system. Then the only possibility to fix this would be to either limit nomination to attendees or to let the administration arbitrarily throw out votes.
MC DuQuesne:
Trying to bring to the light? Who, that has not been brought to the light a long time ago, is it you are talking about? And who are you calling a “snitch”? Seems like an abusive word, so it would be good to know who you are attacking.
Today they are counting the votes for the London Assembly, with a system that makes EPH look simple. First we vote for a mayor, by a two-vote preferential system. Then we vote for the Assembly, with a single first-past-the-post regional vote for one of 14 seats. Finally we get a single vote for the remaining 11 seats, using a modified D’hondt (capitalised this way as he was Belgian) system, where votes are shared across a list using fractional proportionality until all the seats are filled (the first round is n/1, the second is n/2, the third n/3, and I think you can guess the rest).
Three ballot papers and an hour reading up on just how D’hondt voting works.
@ Paul Weimer
Archive.org was my first thought to preserve the posts. They will often take a whole site in danger if they know about it.
So. Are they going to hand out wooden dinosaurs at MACII?
You have to be careful not to include a round zero, or democracy collapses.
@James Moar. That’s when we apply the Morrissey rule: “Panic on the streets of London. Panic on the streets of Birmingham. I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again?”
Hampus Eckerman: So. Are they going to hand out wooden dinosaurs at MACII?
I kind of like that idea, it works on several levels:
1) the Swirsky bête noire level
2) the Chuck Tingle level
3) the dinosaurs insisting that they can stop the meteor-of-progress level
(10)
OK, as justifications go, this is a new one. Yes, I know she was 16, Your Honor, but her body is adult!
I don’t know, maybe there is some linguistic problem here. One hopes. One doesn’t see how it could be, but one still hopes.
Again, Kukuryo being Spanish maybe is an excuse for not having grasped that no, people are not pissed off because your hitherto brilliance has suddenly been discovered; they are pissed off because you have been used to shame the Hugos. You and Chuck Tingle, who grows ever and ever in my estimation (er…) when juxtaposed with these kind of reactions.
Also, welcome to the spotlight, where things that previous nobody noticed (e.g. you have penned some really distasteful art, or you have infringed on copyright) now have several thousands watts trained upon.
@JJ; Kimberly K.; Hampus; et al
I do not believe that an outside group can swamp all nominees. However, I also do not believe that most of the categories need more that ~100 votes to make the ballot. Within these categories, slightly more than 300 people can thwart “the will” of 3800 others by swamping 15 nominations. Also, once Beale tires of this (as he did the I.D. vs Evolution debate), there is always the chance that a larger group comes along.
Mind you, EPH does clear up a lot of this but, until that is ratified, I cannot assume EPH. As I cannot survive, much less get to, a Worldcon in the foreseeable future, I am simply positing doom scenarios to see if the new proposals hold up. I would hate for a rule change to be ratified only to see it work contrary to intentions.
Bloody hell, I forgot! I have a wooden dinosaur at home! I shall tingle it and all will be well.
Both 3SV and DN are fully compatible with EPH and I myself think it is necessary that EPH is ratified. None the least because otherwise we will have an additional year of dreck.
Hampus Eckerman: Bloody hell, I forgot! I have a wooden dinosaur at home! I shall tingle it and all will be well.
Bring that dino along to decorate Park770!
@GSLamb
I think that trying to coordinate what would essentially end up being 3 different slates, that would probably only work with perfect discipline, in order to gum up just a few of the categories is way too much work for VD. Right now he can put up his slate and wait for mayhem to follow. Having 3 slates, and then making sure it’s evenly distributed among them, and that they’d all stick with it perfectly, on the hope that they will block the entire semi-final list just doesn’t seem likely, especially since this would be after EPH has done its calculations(I think), thus mitigating their influence even more.
Thank you so much to all of you who’ve given so generously to create a File770 mini-park experience in the Fan Village at MidAmeriCon II.
At this point, we’ve achieved 2 — TWO — Mini-Parks with bench, plaque, sign, and foliage, plus an Ancillary Bench and Ancillary Plaque.
In less than 10 days, 59 of you donated $1,329 — which, less GoFundMe transaction fees, works out to $1205.80 (a fee rate of about 9.3%).
We’ll be providing you with more information about how the Mini-Parks will work once we receive it.
We’ll also be sending the sponsors information on how to submit a photo of your SJW credentials for the Thank You to the Sponsors post on File770.
We’re going to leave the campaign live, so that we can continue to post updates for you there, but we’re not asking for any more donations.
You’re all legends! Roll on to Worldcon!
Without any regard to the current controversy, let me just say that there’s not much in this world I consider worse than a snitch, a fink, a scab, a betrayer, a judas.
And now, I have a bleg to make: I need to find two quotes from The Final Encyclopedia to reference in something I’m writing. There is a copy in town I could get to, but it’d be a several-hour hassle. If someone happens to have a copy handy and could easily find me the quote where one of Hal’s teachers mentions his having dropped all armor to go through a narrow passageway, and the fine Rilke pastiche about the deer, I’d greatly appreciate it. (That poem just might be a minor classic, if it could escape the confines of the novel in which it’s embedded–I don’t expect most people to love the Childe Cycle as I do–into the wider world.)
ALL TRUE SCROLLAROOS MEETING AT WORLDCON HINDER PIXELMAN AGENDA!
Flight of the Conchords – Pixelpotamus vs. Scrolloceros
While I still hope to see the Hugo for Short Story go to an excellent science fiction yarn, Chuck Tingle is one of the best things to happen to this year’s ballot process.
I haven’t read the current WSFS constitution lately. Is there still a clause that permits the giving of one “special” Hugo? For example, the “Best Moon Landing Ever” Hugo. Gee it would be fun to see one such awarded to Mr. Tingle during the ceremony.
‘Nuff said.
@JJ: I wrote to John immediately after reading his closing up shop post; Amazing Stories is moving to distributed hosting in September (all the bells and whistles) and has offered to host the archive of the site.
John wrote back, informing me that my offer was being added to their list and that the crew at SF Signal would be evaluating everything over the next bit of time.
It truly is a remarkable archive of excellent posts, information, reviews and commentary and needs to remain available to the community.
***
Anyone writing for SF Signal who would like to continue a feature or explore new ones are more than welcome to get in touch with me to see what we can work out.
***
Meanwhile, my current host is having “glitches” again since yesterday (sorry folks): (Its not just us, many of their clients are expriencing issues right now. See what happens when an indie host sells to GoDaddy? See what happens when you buy an annual hosting package for a pretty decent penny and it becomes non-refundable after 60 days?)
Truthfully, when we signed on, it was an excellent package with excellent migration and wonderful tech support…
@Paul Weimer I was cleaning my bookmarks up yesterday and found that I had several Mind Melds bookmarked to reread. Thanks for your hard work; I’ll be sad to see them end.
On an unrelated note, Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows just popped up in the Kindle store! Sadly, it’s $11.15, which moves it firmly out of the “impulse” category …
Speaking of space raptors, Kage Baker had a parrot named Harry who led her to a unique a theory of the origin of parrots.
Harry now lives with Kage’s sister, Kathleen Bartholomew.
The Beale Butt Award for Best Buckaroo.
John A Arkensawyer, I don’t know how much of the passage (pun not intended) you need, but I found this in Chapter 60:
“I’m sorry,” said Hal. “I used you all. I’ve always used people.”
“Maudlin self-pity!” snapped Obadiah. “What weakness is this, after all we taught you, and now that you’re face to face at last with what you set out to do?”
Hal grinned, a little wanly.
“You sent me out to become human, after you were killed,” he answered. “But you also put me on the road even before you sent me out. Can’t you let me be a little human now, from time to time?”
“As long as you get your job done, boy,” rumbled Malachi.
“Oh,” Hal sobered. “I’ll get it done, if it can be done. There’s no changing or stopping the juggernaut of history, now. But, you know what the real miracle is? I wanted to start Donal over again, to get him right this time. But what I did worked even better than I could have dreamed. I’m not Donal, redone. I’m Hal; and even all of what Donal was, is only a part of me, now.”
“Yes,” said Malachi, slowly. “You’ve put away all armor. I suppose you had to.”
“Yes,” said Hal. “The passage ahead’s too narrow for anyone wearing armor.” He lost himself for a moment in thought, then went on, “And all those who come after me are going to have to come naked, likewise, or they won’t get through.”
He shivered.
“You’re afraid,” said Walter, quickly, leaning forward intently in his chair. “What are you afraid of, Hal?”
“Of what’s coming,” said Hal; and shivered again. “Of my own testing.”
“Afraid,” said a new voice in the room, “of me. Afraid I’ll prove him wrong about this human race of ours, after all.”
John A Arkensawyer, and this is the poem about the deer:
ARMAGEDDON
Yes, they are only deer.
Nervous instincts, fitted with hooves and horns,
That foolishly stamp among these Christian pines
Affixed like seals to the legal foolscap of winter;
And, illiterately facing the line of the snowplowed asphalt
Scrawled by a book-learned hand among these hills,
Cross to the redcapped men.
@Cassy B, thank you immensely. If you ever come to Little Rock, remember: You know a local! Or you can cash in that favor some other way. Your choice.
I’d forgotten about the redcapped men. Just a little too apt for my purposes at this moment in history for me to feel purely good about it, but I’m using it anyway.
Speaking of Space
RaptorsX, they’ve landed a second Falcon 9 on Of Course I still love you.I wonder if io9 could help out with the sfsignal archives. Of course, who knows what the effect of the Hulk Hogan/Gawker suit will be on the downballot sites like kotaku, io9, and jalopnik.
Also, currently it appears to be raining from Virginia to Rhode Island, making this bus ride to New York city not nearly as pretty as it could be.
(10)
Then someone picked a cheap fanart that i was commissioned to do, about a half nude Ms.marvel, and tried to frame me as a pedophile, because aparently the character has 16 in the original canon (something i even didn’t know), ignoring the fact that the character body was adult.
The stupid is thick with this one. When you are commissioned to draw existing characters, it is not fan art. It is paid for art without any remuneration to the owners of the intellectual properties. Fan art is generated and displayed without it being profited on. That’s why fan art and fan fiction get largely ignored; they aren’t making money or they aren’t expressly calling for money.
So, when you get nominated for an award and have a whole bunch of Disney’s intellectual property in pornographic images that you have implicitly admitted that you make money off of, what did you think was going to happen? They can (and do) ignore the shadow economy of commissioned art online, but when you start jumping up and down waving your arms that you’re doing it, you’ve screwed yourself.
@Alexvdl – considering some of the commentary on SF Signal regarding IO9’s less-than-stellar accuracy, I don’t think a lot of Signal’s readers would appreciate that particular move.
Speaking of barnacles, Lackington’s has published possibly the oddest story of the year so far; when Sara Saab sets out to write of the loves of sessile crustaceans in “Salt and Cement and Other Denials”, the result is, well….
@kate (& JJ)
Thanks very much. It’s nice to not be alone in this.
For those looking for examples of leftist bullying there other day, here is the next in a long string of examples. Vandalism and other criminal activity is not/are not acceptable “consequences” in a civilized world.
@JJ
What other reason would there be for such a dedicated effort to hack his server? As another example, there once was a website called Occupy Wall Street Exposed that was immediately hit by a concentrated ddos attack for posting links to police reports of criminal activity at various OWS encampments.
What other reason could there be for selecting those two specific targets at those specific times than politically inspired vandalism?
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Regards,
Dann
Bleeding Cool posts more details on the Project Wonderful thing
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/05/06/project-wonderful-changes-policy-on-advertising-over-ms-marvel-nude-images/
Yes, I agree that the chap should be able to produce dubious images, but I’m not feeling terribly sorry for him if other people chose not to support it.
Man, I wasn’t aware that “leftists” were the only ones upset about both the Hugos, Gamergate, or drawing teenage girls in states of undress.
Doug Piero Carey on May 6, 2016 at 5:54 am said:
“I haven’t read the current WSFS constitution lately. Is there still a clause that permits the giving of one “special” Hugo? For example, the “Best Moon Landing Ever” Hugo. Gee it would be fun to see one such awarded to Mr. Tingle during the ceremony.”
The pertinent section would be 3.3.17: “Additional Category. Not more than one special category may be created by the current Worldcon Committee with nomination and voting to be the same as for the permanent categories. The Worldcon Committee is not required to create any such category; such action by a Worldcon Committee should be under exceptional circumstances only; and the special category created by one Worldcon Committee shall not be binding on following Committees. Awards created under this paragraph shall be considered to be Hugo Awards.”
It would have had to have been run through the regular nomination/voting process. However, there is nothing in the constitution that would stop a Worldcon Committee from handing out a Committee Award; in fact, many Worldcons have and do for people who go above and beyond in making the con a success. I won’t speak to the merits of such an idea.
I think there is still a clause that permits a special Hugo, but it would be too late to institute one for this Worldcon. (I suppose next Worldcon could do it, given that it’s Dr Tingle’s activities this year which have attracted attention.)
There is also a Special Committee Award, which if I understand things rightly is not the same, but the Committee would probably not want to involve itself in the conflict in this way.
I did consider a little while ago the idea of a Hugo for Best Absurdity (for which Tingle would be eligible, and which things like ‘F*** Me, Ray Bradbury’ could have won in previous years). But instituting a category to deal with problems in other categories is rarely a good idea.
@nickpheas
Interesting link, to see how far the results this one drawing has had. What amuses me is that the actual story is a business has made a business decision about who and what to do business with, but some people who would usually claim a devotion to the free market are trying to claim these market forces are censorship.
Would Voxman qualify for Best Absurdity?
Jared and Andrew,
A Committee Award was what I was trying to remember, thank you.
The committee probably doesn’t wish to involve itself in this way though. I understand if this is so. But I want to see the guy who put a lot of fun back into a rather gloomy balloting get some recognition for his contribution.
@Alexvdl
Which is not anything close to what I implied. To be blunt, there is more than a passing amount of bullying that comes from the left ranging from tire slashing and shooting campaign offices to mass vandalism at WTO meetings to using DDoS attacks to silence contrary opinions. Bullying is not a tactic that is limited to any one political perspective.
While the range of people that are upset about those specific issues is well beyond “leftists”, IMO it is not unreasonable to suggest that the folks that have channeled it into vandalism probably have a leftist perspective on the world.
@nickpheas
If memory serves correctly…and it has been a decade since I was that into comic strips….Project Wonderful did advertising for an awful lot of strips that appeared to involve nudity and young women. At least, that was what their advertisements suggested was going on. Such things weren’t really my speed then nor are they now. While the hosting provider certainly can legitimately claim to have a ToS problem with his creations, Project Wonderful is being just a bit hypocritical, IMHO.
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Regards,
Dann
@JJ, Paul Weimer, et al.
I alerted the Archive Team (no direct relation to archive.org) to the SF Signal situation yesterday. They’ve grabbed–or are in the process of grabbing–a fresh backup of the site.
https://twitter.com/ArchiveBot/status/728270941676027904