Pixel Scroll 6/1/21 Welcome To The Hotel Cthulhu: You Can Get Eaten Anytime You Like, But You Will Never Leave

(1) OCTAVIA BUTLER BIRTHDAY MONTH. The Los Angeles Public Library and The Huntington are commemorating Octavia E. Butler’s birthday throughout June in a joint celebration of her work, her legacy, and her community.

The virtual events listed below are all free, open to the public, and family-friendly, ideally for ages 10 and up.

  • Parable of the Sower Book Club Chat — Sat., June 5, 4 p.m. | Reserve
  • JPL & Octavia E. Butler — Sat., June 12, 2 p.m. | Reserve
  • Octavia Lab Tour — Fri., June 18, 4 p.m. | Reserve
  • Make a Zine Celebration of Octavia E. Butler and Juneteenth — Sat., June 19, 4 p.m. | Reserve
  • In Conversation with Author Lynell George — Fri., June 25, 4 p.m. | Reserve
  • Parable of the Sower Graphic Novel Creators’ Presentation — Sat., June 26, 4 p.m. | Reserve 

(2) CHAMBERS ON TOUR, AT YOUR COMPUTER. Becky Chambers is doing a virtual tour for her upcoming book A Psalm for the Wild-BuiltTor.com has information about it, including links to the independent bookstores hosting each stop on the tour. It looks like she’ll be appearing in tandem with different SFF authors on Zoom at each of the three “stops” — Martha Wells, Sarah Gailey, and T.J. Klune + Alix E. Harrow. “Join Becky Chambers on Tour for A Psalm for the Wild-Built”.

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, it’s been centuries since the robots of Panga became self-aware and walked into the wilderness. When one walks right into the life of a tea monk named Dex, an entirely unexpected connection is formed. The robot wants to know what people need. But how can one person answer that question? As Sarah Gailey said, “This is a book that, for one night, made me stop asking ‘what am I even for?’ I’m prescribing a preorder to anyone who has ever felt lost. Stunning, kind, necessary.”

(3) POST-PANDEMIC BOX OFFICE. Variety reports “’A Quiet Place Part II’ Smashes Pandemic Era Records”:

…The movie business is breathing a little easier after Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II roared to $57 million over the Memorial Day Weekend. It’s a sign that cinemas are back after more than a year of pandemic era closures, capacity restrictions, and skittish customers.

Deadline says, “That’s a number which isn’t too far from the $60 million which the John Krasinski-directed sequel was anticipated to do in its three-day opening pre-pandemic.” 

(4) REJECTION SLIP-UP. Remember, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. Joe Vasicek lays out his evidence in “Short Stories, Author Blacklists, and Navigating Woke Science Fiction”.

Last year, I had a short story published in the anthology Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. Not only was it one of my highest paying short story sales to date, but it also made it onto the Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List with a *** rating, their highest tier. Only 13 out of 293 stories on the list received that honor—and making the list at all was an accomplishment!

But a funny thing happened after the anthology came out: for a stretch of several months, I stopped receiving personalized rejections for my short story submissions, and instead got only form rejections. Normally when I write a cover letter for a short story submission, I mention the last three markets that I was published in. For example: “My stories have recently appeared in Again, Hazardous Imaginings; Twilight Tales LTUE Benefit Anthology, and Bards and Sages Quarterly (forthcoming).” In a typical month, I’ll get maybe a dozen or so form rejections and a couple of personalized rejections, depending on how many stories I have out on submission.

Back in March, I started to notice that I wasn’t getting any personalized rejections. Suspecting that my publication credit in Again, Hazardous Imaginings wasn’t helping me, I decided to change things up and only list my publication credits for stories listed in Locus Magazine’s Year In Review issue. My thinking was that all of the Hugo and Nebula eligible markets give their yearly reports in that issue, and since all of the editors want to acquire stories that are likely to win awards, a publication credit in one of those markets is more likely to get them to pay attention.

Lo and behold, I started getting personalized rejections again….

(5) YOUNG PEOPLE. In the latest Young People Read Old SFF, James Davis Nicoll turns the panel loose on “The Longest Voyage” by one of my favorite writers, Poul Anderson.

… Anderson’s curious views of the narrative role of women at the time of writing surely do not pertain to The Longest Voyage because The Longest Voyage contains no women to speak of. As well, Anderson has chosen for the setting an Earthlike moon of a gas giant, perhaps the first plausible example of such a world I recall encountering. Perhaps this story highlights Anderson’s strengths in a way to which the Young People will respond?

(I can’t bear to look!)

(6) HIGHER-TECH CONEHEADS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Even Daleks, after a hard day of extermination, need to take an ice cream break!

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • June 1, 1984 — On this day in 1984, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock premiered. It was written and produced by Harve Bennett, and directed by Leonard Nimoy.  It starred William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan. George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Merritt Butrick and Christopher Lloyd. Critics generally loved it and thought Nimoy caught the feel of the series; audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a 61% rating. It would finish third at Aussiecon Two behind 2010: The Year We Made Contact which won the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo and Ghostbusters which came in second.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born June 1, 1858 – Frank Ver Beck.  Wood engravings; illustrations for Collier’sThe Ladies’ Home Journal,Scribner’s; superlatively, animals, sometimes in a style eventually called anthropomorphic.  Twenty books, e.g. A Handbook of Golf for Bears, and in particular Baum’s Magical Monarch of Mo.  (Died 1933) [JH]
  • Born June 1, 1914 — George Sayer. His Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times which won a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies and is considered one of the best looks at that author. He also wrote the liner notes for the J. R. R. Tolkien Soundbook, a Cadmeon release of Christopher Tolkien reading from excerpts from The SilmarillionThe Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. (Died 2005.) (CE)
  • Born June 1, 1928 — Janet Grahame Johnstone, and Anne Grahame Johnstone. British twin sisters who were children’s book illustrators best remembered for their prolific artwork and for illustrating Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians. They were always more popular with the public than they were critics who consider them twee. (Janet died 1979. Anne died 1988.) (CE)
  • Born June 1, 1940 — René Auberjonois. Odo on DS9. He’s shown up on a number of genre productions including Wonder WomanThe Outer LimitsNight GalleryThe Bionic WomanBatman Forever, King Kong, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered CountryEnterpriseStargate SG-1 andWarehouse 13He’s lent both his voice and likeness to gaming productions in recent years, and has done voice work for the animated Green Lantern and Justice League series. (Died 2019.) (CE) 
  • Born June 1, 1947 — Jonathan Pryce, 74. I remember him best as the unnamed bureaucrat in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He’s had a long career in genre works including Brazil, Something Wicked This Way Comes as Mr. Dark himself, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as Governor Weatherby Swann, The Brothers Grimm, in the G.I. Joe films as the U.S. President and most recently in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote as Don Quixote. (CE) 
  • Born June 1, 1947 – Adrienne Fein.  One of three Founding Mothers of CMUSFS (Carnegie Mellon Univ. SF Society).  Introduced Arthur Hlavaty to apas .  Known as a loccer (loc or LoC = letter of comment, the blood of fanzines) but no slouch as a fanartist, e.g this cover for Granfalloon 1 and interiors there, this one for It Comes in the Mail 18, interiors for Riverside Quarterly.  (Died 1990) [JH]
  • Born June 1, 1947 – Chris Moore, age 74.  Four hundred sixty covers, fourscore interiors.  Collection, Journeyman.  Here’s a cover for The Stars My Destination; one for The City and the Stars; one for Hexarchate Stories.  Here’s his story.  [JH]
  • Born June 1, 1948 – Mike Meara, age 73.  Nova Award for Best Fanwriter.  Administered the FAAn (Fan Activity Achievement) Awards at Corflu 32 (fanziners’ con; corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable).  Fanzine, A Meara for Observers.  [JH]
  • Born June 1, 1954 — Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 67. A filker which gets major points in my book. See him with The Black Book Band here: “Back in Black”. And yes, I’m stalling while I try to remember what of his I’ve read. I’m reasonably sure I’ve read both of his Isaac Asimov’s Robot City novels, and now I can recall reading Alternities as well. God, it’s been twenty years since I read him. I’m getting old. (CE)
  • Born June 1, 1958 – Ian Gunn.  Seven dozen interiors in Banana WingsFocus, and like that; in Program Books for ConFrancisco the 51st Worldcon, ConAdian the 52nd, Aussiecon 3 the 57th; logo for The Frozen Frog; 10 Ditmars (one won by a story!), 2 FAAn (Fan Activity Achievement) Awards, 1 Hugo at last.  (Died 1998) [JH]
  • Born June 1, 1965 — Tim Eldred, 56. Author and illustrator of Grease Monkey, a most excellent humorous take on space operas and uplifting species.  As an illustrator alone, he was involved in Daniel Quinn’s superb The Man Who Grew Young. (CE)
  • Born June 1, 1994 – Caighlan Smith, age 27.  Two novels, two shorter stories.  Has read A Doll’s HouseLes MisérablesFrankenstein, two Gormenghast books (the third on its way).  [JH]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) BIG BEZOS IS WATCHING. According to The Guardian, “Amazon US customers have one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing”.

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices.

The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile.

But Sidewalk has come under fire for the apparent lack of transparency with which Amazon has rolled out the feature, as well as the limited time available for users to complete the tricky process required to opt out. Other critics have expressed concerns that failing to turn the setting off could leave customers in breach of their internet service provider’s terms and conditions.

“Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices work better,” the company said in a Q&A document for users. “In the future, Sidewalk will support a range of experiences from using Sidewalk-enabled devices, such as smart security and lighting and diagnostics for appliances and tools.”…

(11) CHAPTERS TAKES THE CASH AND LETS THE CREDIT GO? [Item by James Davis Nicoll.] I somehow overlooked Donna Scott’s Best British SF series, now in its fifth year. Went to Chapters Indigo to order it. Chapters credits the anthologies to various famous male authors.

(12) JDA’S SPORTS REPORT.

(13) REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED OLD. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Ancient Athenian Curse Jar Contained Dismembered Chicken And List Of Intended Victims” at IFL Science.  I particularly love the article’s turn of phrase, “perhaps you need to lift your vengeance magic game.”

Have you ever hated someone so much you sacrificed a chicken in the hope its slaughter would empower a curse, then carved the targets’ names into the pot holding the chicken and buried it for more than 2,000 years? If not, perhaps you need to lift your vengeance magic game, because someone not only did that but also found 50 people they hated enough to score a place on the pot’s exterior. We don’t know whether the curse worked, but it must be conceded all the intended victims are dead.

The pot (or “chytra”) buried between 325 and 270 BCE in a corner of a building in the Athenian Agora provides insight into the uses of magic at the time. Almost a century after Socrates and Plato, the home of ancient reason and learning still had people practicing something mystical.

Having been dug up in 2006 from a corner of the Athenian Agora’s Classical Commercial Building, the chytra has finally been described by Dr Jessica Lamont of Yale University.

Under the wonderful title “The Curious Case of the Cursed Chicken”, Lamont has described her findings in Hesperia. The pot contained the head and lower limbs of a chicken, but this was no remnant of a meal. A large iron nail has been stuck through the underside, its wide circular head sealing the entrance, and a small coin has since fused to the nail head. “This assemblage belongs to the broader realm of Athenian binding curses, which, … aimed to ‘bind’ or inhibit the physical and cognitive abilities of its human targets,” Lamont writes. These were usually written on lead tablets, but the nail and animal sacrifices were common features.

More than 30 of the names are still legible, some of them familiar while others were previously unknown from Athens. The handwriting suggests at least two people carved the names, something Lamont says is “largely unprecedented in Greek curse tablets”. Other writing could include the actual curse and up to 25 names, but only scattered letters can be read….

(14) ON TOP OF OLD SMOKEY. The Pasadena Museum of History knows where you can find the humble artifacts left behind by a historic science experiment: “Lookout Mountain and the Speed of Light”.

The first lookout tower of the Angeles Forest was erected on Lookout Mountain No. 2 in 1913 and was active until 1927 when it was moved to Sunset Peak. Today, one will find on Lookout Mountain, in addition to a sign and a register, three in-line concrete blocks. The tallest of these, forty-two inches high, has a metal tablet marked “ANOTONIO 1922” and one of the smaller blocks, twenty-six inches high, has an unmarked survey point. If a sight is taken in a westernly direction over these two points, it will align to a spot on Mt. Wilson, marked on topo maps as “Michelson.” These blocks supported a mirror system for an exacting experiment by America’s first Nobel Prize winner, A.A. Michelson, in the years 1922 to 1926 to determine the speed of light.

The speed of light had been measured before, but never on such a spectacular scale or with as much accuracy. At station “MICHELSON” on Mt. Wilson; an octagonal mirror was mounted on a rotor that reflected a light beam to the station “ANTONIO” on Lookout Mountain, nearly twenty-two miles distant; then reflected back to another facet of the octagonal mirror, where it was reflected in the observer’s eye….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Trailers: Army of the Dead” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say this new Zack Snyder film has robot zombies, brain zombies, and “the awesome zombie-killing saw,” and a team of mercenaries that has six “damaged bad-asses,” “two fun-loving bad-asses” and “the world’s most obvious traitor.  But Snyder, free of studio control, still can’t figure out how to focus his film!”

[Thanks to John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Nina Shepardson, James Davis Nicoll, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Peer.]

70 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/1/21 Welcome To The Hotel Cthulhu: You Can Get Eaten Anytime You Like, But You Will Never Leave

  1. First!

    (7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY. I love the Star Trek III: Search for Spock film which I saw in Seattle. I thought it did a very excellent job of telling a fresh story and that the original crew did a marvellous job in it.

  2. Anderson really was one of my faves, back in the day. I ration how often I review his material because otherwise the Because My Tears are Delicious to You reviews (which are seven years old today!) would be swamped by Anderson books.

  3. (8) Jonathan Pryce made a wonderful Master in the “Curse of the Fatal Death”

  4. (7)
    I had fun earlier today reading a Twitter thread that asked people for lines from that movie. It sticks with you. (The more they overthink the plumbing…why, yes, people liked them stealing the Enterprise right out of Spacedock.)

  5. P J Evans: I had fun earlier today reading a Twitter thread that asked people for lines from that movie. It sticks with you.

    One of my past credentials was named Mr. Adventure. He was very timid. 😀

  6. (11) If you look on the book pages in question, Donna Scott is listed as the editor for the Best of British Science fiction anthologies, but lists a couple short story writers as the “byline” first (whose names show up in the search page).

    Amazon does something similar in that their apparent style for listing anthologies is to list some (not always all) of the contributors and if we’re lucky they’ll list the editor at the end (Donna Scott’s name doesn’t show up first for any books on Amazon.come except for Best of British Science Fiction 2017, and that’s probably only because she’s mistaken listed as “Donna Scott (Author)”.

    (It’s also frustrating because Goodreads will often import similarly structured data from Ingram (which Amazon/Chapters probably do as well), which means that there’s often a lot of work to correct anthologies so that editors are listed first instead of various editions of anthologies scattered around different authors.)

  7. @4: “Your Personal Failures Can Be WIPED OUT By Joining This Wonderful New Conspiracy Cult, (now endorsed by Former Presidents, entire political parties, high-priced attorneys, nationally televised pundits and Uncle Bob’s Tin Foil Hat Emporium):

    NOTHING is your fault! Your personal failures are actually singular accomplishments that have been repressed, suppressed and co-opted by a powerful cartel of extremely powerful, corrupt, influential, unidentified and forever anonymous individuals who have decided that YOU will never achieve the heights of fame and fortune someone once suggested that you are entitled to, even if that someone was you.

  8. 5) :Cringes, looks:
    “His political views did not drift into the comforting harbour of Libertaria so much as those views beached themselves at a hundred knots on Libertaria’s inviting shores.”

    Yeah, in a recently recorded SFF Audio podcast, I brought up how Anderson’s political beliefs very distinctly shifted in that direction and how it changed his fiction.

  9. Paul Weimer says Yeah, in a recently recorded SFF Audio podcast, I brought up how Anderson’s political beliefs very distinctly shifted in that direction and how it changed his fiction.

    So how’d it change his fiction? I’ll admit that I’m not able to see an obvious change in fiction his political beliefs would account for. But then I admit that I didn’t read his fiction that way that consciously.

  10. @Cat
    Anderson had a future history (not the Traders/Empire) set of stories going that were pro-World government, moderate in its political beliefs, and definitely “we must all stay together”. The story “Marius” is probably the pinnacle of that point of view, dealing with thorny issues of rebuilding the world into one polity, and what compromises are justified in that.

    After that, he switched definitively to much more pro-Libertarian fiction and stories and much more oriented on personal freedom and government as being more a force for tyranny, even when it holds back anarchy. (The more well known future history(

    I would have loved to know what he thought, late in life, of Marius, because I think he came to the opposite conclusions he did when he wrote it.

  11. (4) The author seems to be implying there’s some left-wing conspiracy among major publishers to silence the right. While most publisher will have an editorial point of view, the bottom line is they are still a business involved with making money and will publish what will sell the most copies in the current market. Perhaps he should be worried about the organized conspiracy of the reading public?

  12. 4) I knew Joe Vasicek a little from a forum for self-publishers in the early 2010s and let’s just say that the sort of thing he writes isn’t what mags like Uncanny, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, etc… are looking for. Sometimes there is no conspiracy, but a story just isn’t a good fit.

    That said, he also didn’t do himself any favours with that anthology. Ditto with some of the other markets he lists. And no one has taken Tangent Online seriously in ages now.

    5) Poul Anderson was ubiquitous for a while and even my little import bookstore always had at least one book by him, so I’ve read quite a bit of his work. I enjoyed it, too, until I found Lois McMaster Bujold and realised that the Miles Vorkosigan stories were just so much better than the Dominic Flandry stories.

  13. Paul, I’ve never read the Psychotechnic League stories which is what those future history stories were called. Baen Books published them in three volumes, The Complete Psychotechnic League series, and they’re available in three volumes from the usual suspects, nine dollars apiece which is a reasonable price I’d say.

    Still listening to Clark’s A Master of Jinn and reading Green’s Jekyll and Hyde Inc., while also indulging in Ridley’s The Other History of The DC Universe, specifically The Question story.

  14. Troyce says The author seems to be implying there’s some left-wing conspiracy among major publishers to silence the right. While most publisher will have an editorial point of view, the bottom line is they are still a business involved with making money and will publish what will sell the most copies in the current market. Perhaps he should be worried about the organized conspiracy of the reading public?

    Like the community that votes for the Hugos, the general readership of genre fiction definitely leans strongly left. It has done so for at least several generations now and certainly doesn’t have much of a taste for conservative leaning fiction of any kind.

    Give that, why would any mainstream publisher bother to print such works? There’s certainly not enough profit in it. I for one would love to get a look at the accounts of Baen Books to see just profitable they really are.

  15. NESFA also has a fine selection of Poul Anderson books and NESFA does not have a bulletin board where people discuss how best to depopulate American cities.

  16. Cat Eldridge on June 2, 2021 at 6:43 am said:
    Slight correction: it was the Polesotechnic League, not the Psychotechnic League.

  17. Miles Vorkosigan stories were just so much better than the Dominic Flandry stories.

    There’s an essay: the morally compromised heroes of SF. Flandry is definitely much worse than Miles but the Miles books do have that undercurrent of “if one of us did it, it’s OK.”

  18. @PJ Evans. Actually, there are TWO series: Polesotechnic League AND the Psychotechnic League. Polesotechnic is Van Rijn and Flandry;

    Psychotechnic is his loose series mostly written before his turn to Libertarianism that includes Marius, the Maurai and many others.

    As James notes, NESFA sells a number of volumes of Anderson’s fiction; no surprise to anyone, I own most of them.

  19. (4), Per one of WEST WING’s two uses of Latin, Post Hoc Propter Hoc. [1]

    Were other submitters seeing similar impersonal responses?
    Was there anything happening IRL that might have reduced editors’ time and focus? Were there more mss making the rounds, and therefore competing for editorial time?
    Is it known whether said editors had read said anthology?
    Were there cover letters/notes with the submissions?

    [1] This was an episode title, The other WW Latin (that I’m aware of, there could have been more) is from another episode. Here’s a two-minute NPR segment with the show audio plus translation and brief discussion.

  20. @ Cora Buhlert

    5) Poul Anderson was ubiquitous for a while and even my little import bookstore always had at least one book by him, so I’ve read quite a bit of his work.

    My favorite Anderson books are the stand-alone Viking era fantasies (Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, War Of The Gods, Mermen’s Children, The Broken Sword).

  21. James Davis Nicoll says NESFA also has a fine selection of Poul Anderson books and NESFA does not have a bulletin board where people discuss how best to depopulate American cities.

    Chortle. I certainly own far more works published by NESFA than I do by the possessors of the latter bulletin board. (Indeed I currently have none by the latter.) Do they even realise civilisation is city centered, and that without cities that there is no civilisation?

  22. Rob Thornton says My favorite Anderson books are the stand-alone Viking era fantasies (Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, War Of The Gods, Mermen’s Children, The Broken Sword).

    My all time favorite stand-alone nove is Orion Shall Rise with the Polesotechnic League stories being my all-time favorite franchise of his. I know the quality of those varies widely in terms of the storytelling but I love most of them.

  23. @Paul Writer: Actually, there are TWO series: Polesotechnic League AND the Psychotechnic League.

    By the way, can anyone tell me exactly why those names? They don’t exactly roll trippingly of my tongue, especially Polesotechnic*. And Psychotechnic sounds like an elite group of evil mind manipulators, like Norton’s Psychocrats.

    *(Does anyone else tend to read that as “Paleotechnic”,or is that just my addled perception?)

  24. Cat Eldridge on June 2, 2021 at 6:58 am said:
    Give that, why would any mainstream publisher bother to print such works? There’s certainly not enough profit in it. I for one would love to get a look at the accounts of Baen Books to see just profitable they really are.

    I’m sure they do fine, saving all that money on copyediting and all.

    And some of us do pick up the odd 1632 book now and again.

    Personally, I’m happy that the genre is big enough for all of us even if most of what Baen has on offer doesn’t interest me.

  25. The Polesotechnic League was named by Karen Anderson from Greek roots for “selling skills.” Or so Poul said. They were modeled on the European Hansa League of merchants. Nicholas van Rijn was modeled on King Christian IV of Denmark whose bastard daughter Leonora Christine is the namesake of the eternity-defying spaceship in TAU ZERO.

    The Psychotechnic stories are indeed about an organization psychological manipulators, originally benevolent but eventually malignant. I edited the first collection of those stories and helped on the more recent one, which does not contain the novella “Starways” over rights issues. Some of these stories are pure pulp but others, such as “Marius” are excellent.

    Poul said that he was originally quite liberal when young but became a “small-l libertarian” as he aged.

  26. The Avatar, possibly Anderson’s worst novel or at least the worst Anderson I own in hardcover, has an amusing passage in which the protagonist very nearly retreats to his fainting couch because:

    dead-serious talk is going on in the Council about resurrecting Keynesian fiscal policies?

    Not Keynesian! Anything but Keynesian! There’s also a vigorous defence of high Gini co-efficients, although not in those terms.

  27. Coincidentally, René Auberjonois has had me thinking about the term that gets tossed around here some of “genre adjacency” and how there are two different ways to get there on the video front. The first is what I think of as Picket Fences-style, where there’s no clear fantastic component, but weird things keep happening that are usually explained away but keep things off-balance. Leverage probably also falls into this bucket.

    The second is to have a straightforward show in another genre – mystery or legal, for example – but have so much of the permanent and floating cast have genre credits that it feels like a deliberate call-out. Castle is probably the all-time champ at this, but, getting back to Auberjonois, we’ve just starting going through Boston Legal, and it’s feeling like it may be a good example of both strands, with a cast with solid genre history so far and the Shatner-inspired weird elements thrown in for good measure. I’m not sure it’s actually good yet, but that’s a different discussion.

  28. @Daniel Dern — multiple Latin titles (In Excelsis Deo, Posse Comitatus); Hebrew (Shibboleth); Italian (Eppur si Muove); Arabic (Abu el Banat)

  29. @Sandra

    Thank you. I didn’t realize you edited some of the collections, most excellent.

    I would like to get a copy of Starways, come to think.

  30. Paul Weimer says I would like to get a copy of Starways, come to think.

    Good luck on getting an epub. It appears the only one available is from Orion and is only in the United Kingdom right now. It doesn’t appear to be currently in hard copy but there’s lots of those in gently used copies out there. Do search for as Star Ways.

  31. @Cat
    Yeah, the whole “UK ebooks” region lock issue. There are a number of ebooks I would love to get, but being in America, they are unavailable. A lot of the Orion books are in that category

  32. @11
    I’ve noticed this with anthologies at all the ebook sellers including Amazon, listings under a contributor as author. I remember when I had a nook years ago, I was always so frustrated because it seemed whoever was “in charge” didn’t seem to understand books very well.

    Auberjonois was delightful in Benson, which isn’t remotely genre adjacent but must be acknowledged!

    Everytime I watch STIII, I rediscover how much I enjoy it. Solid, but not spectacular, apparently. “I (stomp) am tired (stomp) of you (stomp)”!!!

    I third the appreciation for Pryce in that Who morsel. He was the best thing in it–which is saying something! Lumley as Doctor could have happened for real. When T Baker quit, she would have been my third choice. But only in my imagination. No way the Beeb casts a woman as Doctor pre-2000. No way. Still, Lumley would have been a good Doctor.

  33. (4) Not all publications give personalized rejections. (I remember being astonished at getting personalized rejections from Algis Budrys when I submitted to Tomorrow Science Fiction. Where did he find the time?) Even the ones that do give personalized rejections don’t give them out all the time, especially if they are swamped.

    Also, maybe if you’re writing more traditional SF stories, you should understand your market. That’s one of the first tips writing resources give out when talking about submissions. Make sure your story fits the magazine. Don’t send your ghost story or sword & sorcery story to Analog (unless you can figure out a hard SF way to write that type of story). Don’t send hard SF to a market that is looking for literary speculative fiction.

    I didn’t see my avatar when I added my comment, and I thought I’d lost my avatar… But don’t Call Me Joe. (See, I got in a Poul Anderson reference!)

  34. Sandra Miesel: i just want to say how much I enjoyed your essays on the work of Poul Anderson (and Gordon Dickson) back in the 70s and 80s. Showed me how much depth there could be to what was still generally regarded as bubblegum fiction.

  35. The very first time I saw Auberjonois was in the Night Gallery segment “Camera Obscura” with Ross Martin, on NBC. Very memorable. Wow, he was only 31 or so.

  36. Brown Robin says I third the appreciation for Pryce in that Who morsel. He was the best thing in it–which is saying something! Lumley as Doctor could have happened for real. When T Baker quit, she would have been my third choice. But only in my imagination. No way the Beeb casts a woman as Doctor pre-2000. No way. Still, Lumley would have been a good Doctor.

    Those charity Who productions are all quite amazing. This one I’ve watched at a half dozen times. I’ve long since decided that all of them are actual Doctors that exist in alternate Universes making them canon of sorts.

  37. (4) Yes, it helps to know your market.

    (10) While Amazon is undeniably useful, it helps to remember that it is also Evil, and to exercise appropriate care while using it. I don’t have any “smart home” products from any vendor–though I admit that if my living circumstances were different, I’d consider a Roomba, and some “Ring” type of doorbell device. Only if I can get he benefits without them reporting back to the company without my intentional permission, though.

  38. 10) Saw this. Checked my Ring account. Sidewalk will only connect with exterior lights. Not with Ring doorbells. I only own doorbells, so no real issue.

    For now….

    Regards,
    Dann
    Tolerance always has limits – it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant. – Sidney Hook (1975). “Pragmatism and the tragic sense of life”

  39. I will give Baen at least some credit for giving P.C. Hodgell a home; and (per recent discussions) they’ve also added Simon Green to their mix.

  40. @Bill – Thanks. That was the only episode title I found in a quick search.

    @Cat E

    …civilisation is city centered, and that without cities that there is no civilisation?

    Where is Credential, is civilization.

  41. 12) Has JdA achieved some victory over @File770 churls I was not previously aware of? Outside his own head of course.

  42. The West Wing wore its liberal heart on its sleeve to excess on more than one occasion, but in general, it was written with the assumption that its audience was not stupid. I wish more shows were like that. (The family is streaming through Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, and I’m bouncing hard off Skye and the dumbness attached to her in the second season.)

  43. @NickPheas: It’s the File’s hopes and dreams that have been crushed, when JdA achieved victory over SJWs everywhere by having one of his claims over SFSFC not being summarily dismissed by the judge. The settlement conference appears to be next week, on the 9th, and the trial on the 14th (assuming no settlement).

  44. It would be a much better world if SF fans had imprinted on Anderson’s libertarianism then Heinlein’s. Heinlein was too utopian; Anderson lived in my world.

Comments are closed.