(1) DISNEY’S STICKY FINGERS LAND. Brady Macdonald, in “Galaxy’s Edge smugglers make off with anything not nailed down in Disneyland’s new Star Wars land” in the Redlands Daily Facts, says that crooks have been helping themselves to maps of Galaxy’s Edge and menus at Oga’s Cantina and then unloading the swag on eBay, ensuring that Disney is cracking down.
The “free” collectibles in Disneyland’s new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge that didn’t have a price tag and weren’t nailed down have found their way to cyberspace with many of the five-finger discount items showing up on the secondary market.
A simple search for “Galaxy’s Edge” on the eBay online shopping site reveals a slew of purloined items that probably should not have left the Black Spire Outpost village on the Star Wars planet of Batuu, the setting for the new 14-acre land at the Anaheim theme park.
Other resourceful Galaxy’s Edge visitors simply took more of the free Star Wars stuff than Disneyland might have anticipated or expected. As a result, many of the pilfered and hoarded souvenirs are no longer available in the new Star Wars land.
Gone are the Galaxy’s Edge maps and Docking Bay 7 sporks that are likely not to reappear in the park or the land. It’s always possible they were intended as grand opening swag. Or maybe new shipments of the popular keepsakes are bound for Batuu….
…What constitutes thievery? If a Disneyland employee hands you something without a price tag on it are you obligated to give it back? Most people would agree that keeping a theme park map as a souvenir is OK, but taking restaurant silverware is stealing. It appears plenty of Disneyland visitors are stepping over that grey line.
(2) BILL VS. BRIANNA. Bounding Into Comics’ slant on things is self-evident from the first paragraph, but they have rounded up enough tweets to let you navigate to the source material: “Brianna Wu Takes Aim At Star Trek Actor William Shatner, He Fires Back!”
Star Trek actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series, found himself in the middle of an internet argument about autism, and how society should accommodate those with the disorder. Congressional candidate Brianna Wu threw herself into the argument attempting to take a shot at Shatner. The actor quickly shot her down with a firm response about her own past.
One of Shatner’s threads begins here (and includes a couple of comments where Scott Edelman tries to contradict Shatner with a cocktail of Harlan Ellison and George Bernard Shaw quotes).
One of Brianna Wu’s threads starts here.
The mystery question is whether Shatner writes his own tweets or delegates that to someone else?
(3) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE INTERNET. In the aftermath of Ulrika O’Brien’s BEAM #14 editorial, John Scalzi analyzes his role in the past decade of Hugo fanhistory: “On Being Denounced, Again (Again)”
6. So why, over the last decade plus change, have certain people focused on me as the agent of change (and not necessarily a good one) with regard to the Hugos? After all, this latest editorial is not the first jeremiad about me on the subject; people will recall I was a frequent example from the Puppy Camp of Everything That Was Wrong in Science Fiction and Proof the Hugos Were Corrupt, etc.
Here are some of the reasons:
a) professional/personal dislike and/or jealousy;
b) unhappiness with inevitable change with fandom and the science fiction and fantasy community and genre generally and the need to find a single cause to blame it on;
c) ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the labor of other people (many of them not straight and/or white and/or male) to change the tenor of the SF/F community (and as a consequence, its awards);
d) a general lack of understanding that the SF/F community is a complex system and like most complex systems a single input or actor, in this case me, does not usually precipitate a wide system change on its own;
e) my privileged position in the community makes me an easy and acceptable target/strawman/scapegoat — no one’s exactly punching down when they go for me.
(4) ABOUT THAT GATE. Darusha Wehm, Escape Pod associate editor and author, has also responded to Ulrika O’Brien’s BEAM 14 editorial. Thread starts here.
(5) HE WANTS GEEZERS TO GET OFF HIS LAWN, TOO. This was S.M. Stirling’s response to Scalzi’s post:
(6) DEVOURING BRADBURY. In “David Morrell: Preparing for Crisis and Finding Inspiration” on Crimereads, Mark Rubinstein interviews David Morrell about his new collection, Time Was. Morell explains how he started off as a writer “devouring Ray Bradbury” and how his short stories “tend to be in the Serling/Bradbury mold.” He also offers good advice about a writing career from his teacher, Phil Klass.
David Morrell: …Philip Klass, my writing instructor from years ago, insisted that writers who went the distance and enjoyed long careers, were those who had a definable viewpoint and a unique personality in their prose. That’s been my lifelong goal as a writer.
(7) LONDON CALLING. Britain’s North Heath SF Group has been in touch. Filers are invited!
It is a small group not even three years old and based at the Kent end of London (not far across the Thames from the Excel if ever they hold another Worldcon there).
While the group is only 15 strong, they are getting a fair bit of social media interest and now have over 100 Facebook followers nearly all from SE London.
If any Filers are based in SE London (apparently the 89 and 229 busses to the Brook St stop is useful if any live on those routes), or have fan friends based in SE London then they’d be welcome at their next meet which is especially for new members. July 11 – see details on Facebook.
The group is a broad church SF group (member’s interests span books, films, TV) with some having specialist interests.
Last weekend a few gathered for a barbecue, and yes, the garden really is bigger on the outside….
(8) FRIEND OBIT. “Robert J. Friend, Tuskegee Pilot Who Led U.F.O. Project, Is Dead at 99” – the New York Times has the story.
Robert J. Friend, one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, who defied racism at home and enemy fire over Europe and who later oversaw the federal government’s investigation into U.F.O.s, died on Friday in Long Beach, Calif. He was 99.
… “Do I believe that we have been visited? No, I don’t believe that,” he said. “And the reason I don’t believe it is because I can’t conceive of any of the ways in which we could overcome some of these things: How much food would you have to take with you on a trip for 22 years through space? How much fuel would you need? How much oxygen or other things to sustain life do you have to have?”
But unlike many of his colleagues, he favored further research.
“I, for one, also believe that the probability of there being life elsewhere in this big cosmos is just absolutely out of this world — I think the probability is there,” he said.
(9) WRIGHT OBIT. An actor in theALF series died June 27. BBC has the story —
Actor Max Wright has died aged 75 after a long battle with cancer, his family has confirmed.
He was well known for playing Willie Tanner, the adoptive father of an alien, in the hit 1980s sitcom ALF.
(10) DRAGO OBIT. Actor Billy Drago, known for his work on Charmed, X-Files, and The Untouchables, died June 24. Details at SYFY Wire: “Effortlessly menacing character actor Billy Drago dies at 73”
…As far as his recurring roles, he played the eccentric Barbas, The Demon of Fear on the original Charmed, as well as outlaw John Bly in the beloved The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. He also had several one-off roles in series like The X-Files, Masters of Horror, and Supernatural.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 27, 1941 — James P. Hogan. A true anti-authoritarian hard SF writer in the years when that was a respectable thing to be. I’m sure that I’ve read at lest a few of his novels, most likely Inherit the Stars and The Gentle Giants of Ganymede. A decent amount of his work is available digitally on what is just called Books and Kindle. (Died 2010.)
- Born June 27, 1966 — J. J. Abrams, 53. He of the Star Trek and Star Wars films that endlessly cause controversy. I can forgive him any digressions there for helping creating Fringe and Person of Interest, not to mention Alias at times.
- Born June 27, 1952 — Mary Rosenblum. SF writer who won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel for The Drylands, her first novel. She later won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Short Form for her story, “Sacrifice.” Water Rites and Horizons are the only ones available digitally. (Died 2018.)
- Born June 27, 1959 — Stephen Dedman, 60. Australian author who’s the author of The Art of Arrow-Cutting, a most excellent novel. I really should read Shadows Bite, the sequel to it. He’s the story editor of Borderlands, the tri-annual Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine published in Perth. Apple Books has nothing for him, Kindle has The Art of Arrow-Cutting and a few other titles.
- Born June 27, 1972 — Christian Kane, 47. You’ll certainly recognize him as he’s been around genre video fiction for a while first playing Lindsey McDonald on Angel before become Jacob Stone on The Librarians. And though Leverage ain’t genre, his role as Eliot Spencer there is definitely worth seeing.
- Born June 27, 1975 — Tobey Maguire, 44. Spider-man in the Sam Raimi trilogy of the Spidey films. His first genre appearance was actually in The Revenge of the Red Baron which is one serious weird film. Much more interesting is his role as David in Pleasantville, a film I love dearly. He produced The 5th Wave, a recent alien invasion film.
- Born June 27, 1987 — Ed Westwick, 32. British actor who has roles in the dystopian Children of Men, S. Darko (a film I couldn’t begin to summarise), Freaks of Nature (a popcorn film if ever there was one), the “Roadside Bouquets” episode of the British series Afterlife (which I want to see) and The Crash (which may or may not be SF).
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Moderately Confused adapts a fairy tale to our phone-obsessed times.
(13) ALA DROPS MELVIL DEWEY NAME FROM AWARD. The decimals remain, but Dewey is gone. Read the resolution here. Publishers Weekly reports:
Citing a history of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual harassment, the council of the American Library Association on June 23 voted to strip Melvil Dewey’s name from the association’s top professional honor, the Melvil Dewey Medal. The ALA Council approved the measure after a resolution was successfully advanced at the ALA membership meeting, during the 2019 ALA Annual Conference in Washington DC.
Best known by the public for creating the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Dewey was one of the founders of the American Library Association in 1876, and has long been revered as the “father of the modern library,” despite being ostracized from the ALA in 1906 because of his offensive personal behavior.
In an article last June in American Libraries, Anne Ford questioned why the ALA and the library profession still associates its highest honor with a man whose legacy does not align with the profession’s core values. This week, some 88 years after his death, Dewey’s #TimesUp moment appears to have finally come.
(14) HATCHING DRAGONS. Michael Swanwick explains how he wrote “My Accidental Trilogy” at Flogging Babel.
…When I began work on The Dragons of Babel, I had no idea whether it existed in the same universe as The Iron Dragon’s Daughter or not. The two books had no characters or locations in common. Even the names of the gods were different, though at the head of each pantheon was the Goddess. Only she and the dragons were the same. Ultimately, I decided that it did no harm for the books to be in the same world (though, presumably, on different continents) and would please those who had read The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. So I brought Jane back—not from our world but from an earlier period of her life, when she was behaving very badly—for a brief cameo appearance. Just as a small treat, an Easter egg, for those who had read the earlier novel.
To my surprise, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter had been characterized by reviewers as an “anti-fantasy” because it challenged many of the assumptions of genre fantasy. This had never been my intent. But, the idea having been placed into my head, in The Dragons of Babel I set out to upend the standard model of fantasy in as many ways as possible while still delivering its traditional pleasures….
(15) THE KING WILL ABDICATE FROM BROADWAY. The New York Times says no more monkey business after mid-August: “‘King Kong’ and ‘Cher Show’ Musicals Announce Closings”.
“King Kong,” the big-budget musical driven by its massive namesake puppet, will close Aug. 18 after less than a year on Broadway, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday.
… “King Kong” was capitalized for $30 million, according to the production. That sum — enormous by Broadway standards — has not been recouped.
The show eventually opened to stinging reviews, with most of the praise going to the towering title character himself, a colossal marionette clocking in at 20 feet tall and 2,000 pounds. For the week ending June 23, it grossed just shy of $783,000 at the box office, only 53 percent of its potential take.
(16) MARS RUNS OUT OF GAS. Nature updated the search for life on Mars. For one brief, shining moment, it was Camelot: “Record methane level found on Mars”.
NASA’s Curiosity rover last week measured the highest level of methane gas ever found in the atmosphere at Mars’s surface. The reading — 21 parts per billion (p.p.b.) — is three times greater than the previous record, which Curiosity detected back in 2013. Planetary scientists track methane on Mars because its presence could signal life; most of Earth’s methane is made by living things, although the gas can also come from geological sources…
… NASA ran a follow-up experiment last weekend and recorded a methane level less than 1 p.p.b., suggesting that the high reading last week came from a transient gas plume.
(17) GETTING UNSTUCK IN TIME. Camestros Felapton is happy to offer “Some advice for time travellers”. Pay attention — even if he starts with “Don’t Panic!” there’s a lot here you haven’t heard before.
4. Listen to that mysterious stranger you meet early on
Honestly, even if you aren’t currently planning to go time travelling, NOW is the time to carry a notebook. When the uncannily familiar stranger and/or your great aunt starts babbling to you about destiny, or how what has been written can (or cannot) be unwritten, get them to pause a moment and ask them to write it down in your handy notebook.
This encounter may be the point where you are told The Rules (we’ll get to The Rules in a moment). Having them written down will make your life so much easier and will also make it easier for you to explain them to your younger self when you meet them when you are disguised as an uncannily familiar stranger.
(18) SIT ON IT. The Warner Bros. Studio Tour is adding a Big Bang Theory exhibit: “BAZINGA! The Sets Are Coming to The Tour”.
Starting June 28th, take a seat in Sheldon’s spot and relive your favorite moments from apartment 4A. Recreate Sheldon’s signature knock, stroll through the foyer to see the infamous broken elevator or visit the Caltech Physics Department Cafeteria featuring original costumes from Leonard, Sheldon, Penny, Howard, Raj, Bernadette and Amy.
(19) COLBERT ON MEDIA. Steven Colbert starts with the news that Kim Kardashian is offering a new line of makeup that doesn’t go on your face. The Good Omens cancellation petition is his second bit, starting at the 2:00 mark (in case you want to fast-forward past Kim Kardashian’s thighs).
[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]
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(17) Finally advice I can use in my daily life.
We shall file on the pixels, we shall file on the scrolling grounds…
I remember when I first got into fandom in the late Seventies, pre-internet, some fanzine fans thought they were Trufans and convention fans were fakefans. I felt inadequate for years because for some reason I believed them. I’m still grateful to some fella named Glyer for allowing subscriptions to his zine, since I was too shy to even write a letter of comment back then.
@11: you are more generous to Hogan that I’d be; I tried a couple of his works decades ago and concluded they were libertarian nonsense — but what I hear of Puppy writing suggests it makes his work look sound.
@13: The removals I see tend to involve today’s realization that yesterday’s behavior was bad. (Mundane example: Harvard Law School removing a symbol derived from a benefactor who was reportedly not just a slaveholder but an exceptionally cruel one.) It’s interesting that Dewey was too much for his peers to stomach a century ago. (During the WFA trophy controversy, I read that some of Lovecraft’s peers had told him privately that he was unacceptably *ist — but I haven’t read that he was ever publically called on his rants.)
He transitioned from an author of clunky but serviceable hard sf with moments of inspiration to a crank promoting everything from HIV denial to Velikovskiism to holocaust denial.
James Davis Nicoll says He transitioned from an author of clunky but serviceable hard sf with moments of inspiration to a crank promoting everything from HIV denial to Velikovskiism to holocaust denial.
I’ll admit that I missed that phase in his life. Was that fairly late on? If I’d known, he wouldn’t have gotten a Birthday note.
Amazing, isn’t it, how the decades fly past!
Lenore Jones / jonesnori: I felt inadequate for years because for some reason I believed them.
It makes me so sad to hear this. You have such a lovely huge fannish heart, and your presence on File 770 and at conventions is such a gift. ❤
The lingerie/loungewear/intimate apparel part of the fashion community has been blowing up about Kim Kardashian lately — she’s launching a shapewear line called Kimono and, for obvious reasons, this has drawn considerable ire.
(4) My personal definition of fan doesn’t even really require sf/f, because transformative works fandom (and I’m culturally much more of that kind of fan) doesn’t distinguish between sfnal content like Supernatural or The Lord of the Rings and not-sfnal content like Leverage or Law and Order. You’re still a fan whatever your current fandom’s genre is. Mind you fandom itself happily soaks everything in sfnal tropes and premises given a days writing/drawing/metaing lead time, so a book/show/film/whatever not having overt sfnal content isn’t much of an obstacle to sfnal fandom. Sometimes takes them out, too — the infamous coffee shop and high school AUs often use purely real world settings, even for sfnal works like the Ancillary books.
(5) I’m quite looking forward to the “visibly aging” effects of Hugo-voting to happen to me. I’m still a bit shaky on “not getting asked for ID” to be honest.
(7) LONDON CALLING
Erith’s a bit too much of a nightmare to get to (even when I’m actually *in* London visiting family — my sister’s ashes are scattered in Erith, so I’ve been there a couple of times but not many, because whoever designed the train system for South East London apparently never considered that people might possibly want to get from one bit of it to another bit of it, and I don’t do buses for hips reasons) but I hope they get a bunch of nice new members to chat to. If I remember I’ll tell my sister about it, she’s defected to Crystal Palace and I think the route’s easier from there.
(7) And look, they’re dog-friendly, too!
And on the other side of the Atlantic, oh well.
(13) Dewy’s contributions are real, and so, sadly, was his racism, his antisemitism, and his sexual harassment of women in a profession that, paradoxically, he opened up to them. And yes, the ALA decided, more than a hundred years ago, that yes, it could force out its co-founder for his unacceptable behavior, while keeping and acknowledging his contributions. Real standards of behavior, and common sense pragmatism. His attitudes and behavior were appalling, but Dewey Decimal is a very good system for small to medium libraries.
And if Dewey hadn’t been full of himself and had his head up his ass, it could have been Dewey Decimal, not the Cutter system, that got adapted to serve the needs of large academic collections, too. Library of Congress needed something capable of more detail and flexibility than Dewey’s system as he created it. They approached him for permission to expand and adapt it. He said no. So they turned to Charles Cutter, the Librarian at the Boston Athenaeum, and asked to adapt his system. He said yes.
Dewey’s system would have had to be expanded and made more complex. Cutter’s system was a thing of beauty, finesse, and fiddliness. I worked at the Athenaeum before even that institution switched from Cutter to LC. I loved the Cutter system, LC preserves most of its practical virtues, and is simpler.
And Charles Cutter and his system are still remembered, in the “Cutter number,” the last line of the class number that makes the final distinction among books on the same subject. Both LC and Dewey systems use it, and I’ve heard fascinating folk etymologies from people who have no idea Cutter was a person, that it is, in fact, Cutter, and not cutter.
And yes, at least in the 80s, when I was getting my library science degree, we did learn that Dewey made great contributions, and that he was a creep.
The seven hundred and seventieth time the servant reported, “A scroll as small as a footnote is rising from the pixels.”
Worldcon fandom is not declining if you measure it by attendance. There were 45,090 attendees over the last 10 years, an average of 4,509 that compares well to any other era of the past 50 years.
If you also count supporting members, Worldcon fandom may be bigger now than it’s ever been (66,650 over 10 years). A lot of us consider ourselves a part of this fandom whether we are able to attend.
rcade: Worldcon fandom is not declining if you measure it by attendance.
Bear in mind that comment was posted by an author who has made posts here disparaging recent Hugo results as a “dog’s breakfast”, because apparently the grapes are quite sour in that direction. 🙄
I doubt that he has any real conception of what Worldcons are like these days. And as long as his buddy the Dragon Award admin keeps putting his books on the ballot, why would he care?
A pixel’s a pixel, no matter how scrolled. (Apologies to Dr. Seuss.)
Lenore Jones / jonesnori on June 27, 2019 at 8:28 pm said:
Well, it may relieve you to know (or may not) that at the time, I was nearly as contemptuous of the ‘zine fans as they (apparently) were of me. Of course, I grew up in con fandom, so it never once occurred to me that the way of life I was born into might be less than perfect. But mostly, I was young, and it was the seventies, and I was busy rebelling against anything I could find, especially if it seemed old and musty. And boy did the ‘zine scene seem old and musty!
(I eventually got over it, partly because I got older and less arrogant and self-absorbed, and partly because people like Terry Carr convinced me that maybe the scene wasn’t quite as bad as I’d supposed–though I never really developed an interest. And aside from the time I spend here, still don’t have one.)
Still, the idea that people who merely write about SF are somehow better fans than the people who actually go out and meet the authors and get to know them…well, I found it laughable at the time, and I still do.
Xtifr: the idea that people who merely write about SF are somehow better fans than the people who actually go out and meet the authors and get to know them…well, I found it laughable at the time, and I still do
You think that’s bad, you should have seen my reaction when Mike told me that, according to many of the old-time fen, Real Fans™ did not actually talk or write about SF — that was something that those non-Real Fan™ sercon losers did. I thought he had to be joking. But it certainly explained why I have bounced off of a lot of the old-style fanzines I have sampled, which consist of a great deal of pompous bloviating and navel-gazing, and little-to-no actual discussion of SFF.
I have my own mindset regarding fans and Fandom. Wikipedia gives the definition as “a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest”.
With that mindset, anyone who tries to gatekeep who shouldn’t be allowed to be a part of the fandom is a person that does not show camaraderie or empathy towards others. I.e they aren’t fans. Regardless of what ever credentials they will try to show as proof. From my view, that isn’t worth anything if you aren’t welcoming, accepting and open to the new stuff that other generations or groups might bring.
Basically, if someone says that another person isn’t a fan, then I will not respect that person as a fan either. Lets call it the Fandom-paradox.
Gee, and here I thought one of the reasons for going to Cons was to pick up, swap and talk about Fanzines.
Not the only reason to go to a Con, of course. There’s also sitting in the lobby and talking with a favorite author; not to mention NOT talking about SF, substitute activities including mass bubble-blowing-a-thons; sword fights in the hallways, buying every packet of lime jello in the city for non-standard usages; watching Saturday Night Live at room parties (fun because everyone watching gets ALL of the references); filking (those with no voice can also imbibe); those panel things are happening too; hall fandom …
San Jose, last year’s Worldcon, was the most recent one I’ve physically attended and, as I do at other cons, I make time to do a visual, non-scientific survey of the attendees during the convention and, if I have the time and opportunity, I try to engage with as many other fans I do not know and who are not of my clade as I can.
Escalators make this relatively easy, and the San Jose convention center had them. I can report that there seemed to be as many oldpharts (like me) as there were youngpharts (anyone not obviously a boomer). I can also report that most on the escalator rode, rather than walked, up or down.
There was also a “decent” mix of white and non-white and probably near-parity in gender. Decent means regularly visible, but by no means where we hope to get to.
So there’s that.
@4. Well, Darusha pretty much identified the line there: liking as a qualification vs participating as a qualification. My fannish experience and education has taught me that participation in fannish activities is a requirement for earning the title of Fan. That was the tradition, handed down to me by oldsters more oldster than me, ones what ought to know because they were there at the beginning.
Once earned though, you can also qualify for the title of Fugghead if you run around telling other people that their interest isn’t valid. It’s wasted time and energy that can be better devoted to more Fanac. (Although, yes, it is acceptable to be puzzled and befuddled by fans who don’t want to participate.)
Fandom begins with liking SFF. It doesn’t (have to) end there.
Steve:
Well, more or less everytime I hear of someone saying that someone or some people aren’t Fans, they are participating, just not in the way the gatekeeper think is the correct way. If they didn’t participate, how would the gatekeeper even know they existed?
(2) BILL VS. BRIANNA.
It’s obviously a minion in charge of Shatner’s Twitter. Unless Shatner is actually very online in a 4Chan-adjacent way.
“Let a thousand awards bloom.”
More skiffy awards porn is not a blessing, actually.
Hogan started including overt Velikovskiism in his fiction no later than 1999’s Cradle of Saturn but from his own comments, he seems to have encountered and been converted to the views of noted Holocaust deniers Arthur Butz and Mark Weber in the 1980s. Thus the glowing tribute to Zundel.
The HIV weirdness seems to be a libertarian thing: as I recall, L. Neil Smith also promoted Duesberg’s model.
Some Hogan essays.
The idea that Scalzi broke the Hugos is ridiculous on its face. Even his immense popularity could not get him a nomination for either eligible work and everything that was nominated was better. I think what I saw this year was documented by Wesley Morris about criticism/American culture in general–that people are impatient to see your political commitments out front and then you can try to do the things that only art can do.
This is evidently another year where novella sweeps in and saves the day. Binti was maybe not a winner but a fabulous conclusion to that series. The YA readers should revolt at the poor opinion of teenagers that they cannot have appreciation for a) lyrical prose or b) pure imagination. The Belles was NOT where I thought I would end up, but it was clearly the most original and one of the best written.
Lindsay Ellis has posted a 44-minute discussion of “Game of Thrones”; at the conclusion, we learn this is just part 1.
@Hampus Eckerman
But that would make you not a fan too . . . Drat! Now I’m not a fan! This thing is dangerous! 🙂
~Hogan: The prologue of Code of the Lifemaker is good sensawunda. I never got around to reading the rest of the book and I’m content to leave it that way.
(16) Is NASA investigating the possibility that the “transient gas plume”‘s source was in fact an invisible cow? Invisible cows are farting all over the rover.
(5) With all the data that millenials are on track to be generally poorer than their parents, I wonder how much the “WorldCon attendance is falling” hypothesis is simply due to the fact that we don’t have money to attend cons (and there’s more cons, and we’re all more likely to have an available local con to go to) like the previous generation of fans did. (I saw the comment above that attendance isn’t actually declining, so I’m more proposing an alternative hypothesis, but I do think that the rate of WorldCon attendance has probably declined, as SFF fandoms have increased enormously but attendance at that particular con seems to have not.)
@Becca
As a rule, older people tend to have more money than younger ones. Pay tends to go up as you get older. You pay off your house and quit having a mortgage payment. The kids move out. Etc. Also, for similar reasons, older people often have more free time, particularly if they’re retired.
I was at LibertyCon in Chattanooga a year or two ago, and someone there made the same comment to me about how WorldCon is for old, overweight people. I asked him, “Did you attend the LibertyCon opening ceremony yesterday?” When he said he had, I asked, “Did you think those people were mostly young and fit?” He admitted they weren’t, and he didn’t argue with me when I told him I didn’t see any difference between the WorldCon crowd and the LibertyCon crowd other than people’s accents. (And the fact that Eric was the only person of color, but I didn’t share that with him–one fight at a time.)
Our local convention, Norwescon, does have a younger crowd, and we often see people with kids–particularly on the weekends. That makes sense for a con that doesn’t require a lot of travel. Much lower cost (no plane tickets, no hotel bills) and much lower time commitment means much friendlier to younger people.
If there really is a generational change, I wouldn’t expect to see the impact on WorldCon attendance until maybe 2050 or so.
I would be curious as to the median age of Worldcon attendees over time.
I know it doesn’t meet with S.M. Stirling’s approval, but mine keeps increasing by one year right about the same time every February. And being the sweet fellow he is, I can guess what his advice would be to keep that from happening.
@Mike Glyer
Really? I’ve been 39 for the past 21 years.
That’s brilliant. What shall we call this, Schrodinger’s Credential?
:facepalm at imprecise wording:
@Greg Hullender: Why didn’t I see you at this year’s Norwescon, then, where I was a volunteer “gatekeeper”?
@Jeff Jones
It came right after we returned from an overseas trip, and we were just too tired to go. We’ve been managing to attend every other one.
I wonder if there are enough local Filers to arrange a get together at the next Norwescon?
Mike Glyer:
Or The Not-a-Fan Domino Effect. 😉
This year was my first Norwescon and I had a good time (despite my hotel room being in a different zip code than the convention space)… but next year I’m going that way for Westercon and am seriously considering Conflikt (and also haven’t decided about New Zealand yet), which will probably max out my long distance travel energy.
Is the preview box partially covering the Post Comment button for anyone else?
It’s Not-a-TruFans all the way down.
June 27th was Bob Keeshan’s birthday. Is Captain Kangaroo genre? Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit are kinda out there.
It was also Robert Aickman’s birthday. His stories were more horror, but he did win a World Fantasy Award. I didn’t know he had co-founded the Inland Waterways Association to preserve England’s canal system.
Down where the pixels scroll
Dammit, I gave a naming to my original quote again and not the the second part regarding The Gatekeeping of The Unknown. In Fandom, you only name twice.
Is the preview box partially covering the Post Comment button for anyone else?
Yes it is. I noticed after that last update by the hosting company.
As far as older fans having more money for cons – I wish. When I was working, I had money but not enough time (or energy). I retired and the money disappeared with the job.
Meredith Moment: Jacqueline Carey’s standalone novel Starless is currently $2.99.
Also, at least for me, the Comment label is covering the Italics button (or whatever it is to the left of the link button).
I don’t see the Italics button at all. When I click on the Comment label the content in the text box grays and gets indented, which is slightly astonishing.
Also, the time machine seems to be stuck in the present.
This, alas, has been my problem for years.
Patrick Morris Miller says
The quote button will give you exactly what the old Italics tags did. That’s what I just used in this comment.
I’d known that Hogan had gone Velikovskyite, but hadn’t known about the HIV and Holocaust denialism. sigh Given his background, it’s the extended Salem Hypothesis all over again.
(The Salem Hypothesis being ‘anybody who claims scientific credentials and supports creationism is most likely an engineer’. For some reason, engineers seem over-represented in lots of conspiracy-theory level ideas. Hogan was an aerospace engineer by training.)
With regards to Worldcon… I was helping a friend with one of the fan tables at Anticipation in Montreal, and we had a nicely set up table with big displays that happened to be right near one of the main entrance doors to the big convention hall where the art show and dealers were. It was a fantastic location to people-watch from.
I remember seeing multiple generations of fans go by in a group. (Man in his 50s, young woman in her late 20s, the latter carrying a baby.) I ended up having a conversation with a young woman there which started because her daughter of about 8 had recognized one of the books we had on our display and nearly ran over to us. I also ended up chatting with a woman who was well into her 60s who had asked what the part of our display that mentioned ‘Rule 34’ meant. (Who just laughed and nodded when I told her the answer.)
I’m not particularly worried about Worldcon for the foreseeable future.
I’ve read all of Hogan’s stuff, and liked most of it. I’m not sure I’d call him libertarian though. He seemed to be writing about a post-scarcity economy where hoarding riches made no sense at all.
Wasn’t aware of the HIV skepticism though.
Collapse of the Fan Function
Cascading collapse of the fan function
With apologies to Sgt. Pepper and Billy Shears
I’m fixing a hole where the fans get in
To stop my fandom wandering
Where it will go
I’m filling the space that runs through my gate
To stop my self from wondering
Where fans will go
And it really doesn’t matter if
I’m wrong I’m right
Where I belong I’m right
Where I belong
See the people standing there
Who disagree and never win
And wonder why they don’t get in my door*
*[I didn’t even have to change those last seven lines]
Not that it’s discounted or anything, but for those as may be interested, The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh seems to have dropped onto Kindle sometime in the fairly recent past. Pretty much all of her non-shared-world short fiction as of 2008, including the entire cycle of stories originally published as Sunfall.
Fandom has five little fans
Five little fans fanning their fans
Where the fans are fanned are the five fans
And the five fandom fans fan their fandom fans