(1) THE LAST DAY. Macmillan Publishers is moving from the Flatiron to the Equitable Building and taking Tor.com with it. Seanan McGuire commemorates the departure in her story “Any Way the Wind Blows”.
“Captain?”
I turn. Our navigator is looking over his shoulder at me. Well. One of his heads is. The other is still watching the curved window that makes up the front of our airship, crystal clear and apparently fragile. Most people who attack us aim for that window first, not asking themselves how many protections we’d put on a sheet of glass that size. The fact that it’s not a solid mass of bugs doesn’t seem to be the clue it should.
“What is it?”
He smiles uncertainly. “I think I see the Flatiron.”
Tor Books also posted a group shot taken outside the building here.
(2) PITT THE YOUNGER SEEKS PITT THE ELDER. Ad Astra comes to theaters in September 2019.
Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system when he finds his missing father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, has been doing threatening experiments in space. He must unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.
(3) FROM DEEP IN THE FILES. Baen Ebooks is distributing the English translation of a nonfiction work Judgment in Moscow by Vladimir Bukovsky on its retail ebook site, as well as offering a selection of other ebooks from Judgment in Moscow publisher, Ninth of November Press.
Bukovsky spent years in the Soviet gulag, finally being released to the West in 1976. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin’s government asked Bukovsky to serve as an expert witness at a possible trial of the Communist Party. Bukovsky combed through the archives, scanning and copying much of the material there, and, after the trial became a dud, smuggled the material out of Russia. Judgment in Moscow is a behind the scenes look at these original documents which detail how the Soviet leadership and the Communist Party kept the Russian nation enslaved, accompanied by Bukovsky’s commentary elucidating the extent of the evil recorded therein.
Judgment in Moscow is based on the trove of Communist Party archives that Bukovsky spirited away before access was shut down. These contain elaborate details of Soviet meddling in Western politics, and it also details Western complicity in Soviet Russia’s program of totalitarian oppression. Originally written in Russian, Judgment in Moscow was seen as a major indictment of political treachery both inside and outside the USSR.
Baen’s press release says:
Western publishers, including Random House in America, backed down from publishing an English translation out of what appears in hindsight cowardice and fear of offending the emerging new Russian oligarchy. Now after years with no translation available, a new English version has finally been created with Bukovsky’s wholehearted participation.
(4) THE HITS OF SIXTY-FOUR. At Galactic Journey, Cora Buhlert details the unexpected popularity in West Germany of movies adapted from the crime novels of Edgar Wallace – someone better remembered in America as the creator of King Kong. [June 4, 1964] Weird Menace and Villainy in the London Fog: The West German Edgar Wallace Movies.
…Wallace villains are never just ordinary criminals, but run improbably large and secretive organisations with dozens of henchmen. At least one of the henchmen is deformed or flat out insane, played either by former wrestler Ady Berber or a charismatic young actor named Klaus Kinski, who gave the performance of his life as a mute and insane animal handler in last year’s The Squeaker.
The crimes are extremely convoluted, usually involve robberies, blackmail or inheritance schemes and are always motivated by greed. Murder methods are never ordinary and victims are dispatched via harpoons, poison blow guns, guillotines or wild animals. The villains inevitably have strange monikers such as the Frog, the Shark, the Squeaker, the Avenger, the Green Archer or the Black Abbot and often wear a costume to match. Their identity is always a mystery and pretty much every character comes under suspicion until the big reveal at the end. And once the mask comes off, the villain is inevitably revealed to be a staunch pillar of society and often a member of Sir John’s club.
(5) GLORIOUS COVER. Alex Shvartsman posted a cover reveal for his debut novel, Eridani’s Crown. It’s a beauty.
The full wraparound cover was drawn and designed by Tomasz Maronski.
(6) HE’S IN THE HALL. SYFY Wire reveals “Batman first inductee to Comic-Con HOF”.
Holy Hall of Fame, Batman! The Caped Crusader is robbin’ all the other comic book superheroes to seize the illustrious distinction of becoming the very first inductee into the new Comic-Con Museum’s inaugural class of honored comics characters.
The Dark Knight will hold the door for all the rest of the museum’s first, still-unannounced heroic batch, DC revealed in a press release announcing “The Gathering,” a July fundraising event for the new museum. Located near the site of San Diego Comic-Con in the city’s Balboa Park, the Comic-Con Museum (or CCM) will be a 68,000-square-foot shrine to all things heroic and villainous, drawing on decades of rich history from the pages of comics, graphic novels, and more.
“On the occasion of Batman’s 80th anniversary, a ceremony honoring DC’s most popular super hero will be the centerpiece” of the July 17 event, which is timed to help kick off this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
(7) DARK PHOENIX. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan talk about making Dark Phoenix together and reveal some of their on-set antics.
(8) FINANCIAL OMENS. Our Designated Financial Times Reader Martin Morse Wooster peered behind the paywall at Dan Einav’s interview with Michael Sheen and David Tennant about Good Omens.
Stars are usually personally held accountable when a series fails to meet the expectations of the fans–and lovers of fantasy and sci-fi are often notoriously implacable, To say that a screen adaptation of “Good Omens” has been hotly anticipated is to understate the extent of the fervour Gaiman’s devotees have for his work.
Do the actors feel anxious about a potential backlash? ‘I read the book when it first came outm so I’m one of those fans and I’ve felt the weight of expectation,’ says Sheen. “But Neil has said all the way through that he’s not making it for the fans, he’s making it for Terry.”
Tennant, who is no stranger to opinionated fans from his days as Doctor Who, is a little more blunt, ‘You can’t make TV which pleases what people’s preconceived notions might be. You just have to make something you feel proud of and works for people who haven’t read the book.
(9) WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Likewise behind a paywall, at Commentary, astrophysicist Ethan Siegel argues in “Are We Alone In The Universe?” that the likelihood there is life elsewhere in the universe is vanishingly small.
When we ask the big question–where is everybody?–it’s worth keeping a great many possibilities in mind. Aliens might be plentiful, but perhaps we’re not listening properly. Aliens might be plentiful, but they might self-destruct too quickly to maintain a technologically advanced state. Aliens might be plentiful, but they may choose to remain isolated. Aliens might be plentiful, but they might purposely choose to exclude Earth and their inhabitants from their communications. Aliens might be plentiful, but the problems of interstellar travel might be too difficult to overcome.
But there’s another valid possibility that we must keep in mind, as well: Aliens may not be there at all. The probability of the three vital leaps, as described above, is enormously uncertain. If even one of these three steps is too cosmically impossible, it may well be that in all the universe, there’s only us.
(10) BRADBURY REMEMBERED. [Item by Robert Kerr.] “Ray died 7 years ago today. I know he’d like to be remembered, but he’d like to be remembered with joy. Among Ray’s many accomplishments was writing the script for the Epcot attraction Spaceship Earth. This picture was taken in 1982 at the opening of Epcot. Ray took a bus or train to get to Florida, but he had to get back to L.A. faster than a bus or train could get there. Ray was a self-proclaimed coward who didn’t conquer fears very well. He never drove a car his entire life, and at 62 he was going to get on a plane for the first time. He said they put a bunch of martinis in him and loaded him onto the plane. To commemorate the occasion of Ray’s first time on a plane, some Disney animators drew a piece showing Ray on a plane, martini in hand, with Mickey Mouse sitting next to him. Ray kept that piece on display in his study for the rest of his life.”
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 5, 1908 — John Russell Fearn. British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp magazines. A prolific author, he also published novels as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms such as Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong and others. As himself, I see his first story as being The Intelligence Gigantic published in Amazing Stories in 1933. His Golden Amazon series of novels ran to over to two dozen titles, and the Clayton Drew Mars Adventure series that only ran to four novels. (Died 1960.)
- Born June 5, 1928 — Robert Lansing. He was secret agent Gary Seven in the “Assignment: Earth” on Star Trek. The episode was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have starred Lansing and Teri Garr, but the series never happened. He of course appeared on other genre series such as The Twilight Zone, Journey to the Unknown, Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (Died 1994.)
- Born June 5, 1946 — John Bach, 73. Einstein on Farscape, the Gondorian Ranger Madril in the second and third movies of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Also a British body guard on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. And he was the body double for shooting for Saruman in place of Christopher Lee, who was unable to fly to New Zealand for principal photography on The Hobbit film series
- Born June 5, 1960 — Margo Lanagan, 59. Tender Morsels won a World Fantasy Award for best novel, and Sea-Hearts won the same for Best Novella. She’s an alumna of the Clarion West Writers Workshop In 1999 and returned as a teacher in 2011 and 2013.
- Born June 5, 1976 — Lauren Beukes, 43. South African writer who’s the author of a number of SF novels. Zoo City won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award, The Shining City, about a time travel serial killer and the woman who catches him, is being adapted as a series in South Africa, and Moxyland is a cyberpunk novel set in a future Cape Town. Very impressive!
(12) WHO WRITER OUSTED FROM ANTHOLOGY. Gareth Roberts has been “dropped from an upcoming Doctor Who anthology over ‘offensive’ transphobic tweets” BBC Books has confirmed.
Parent company Ebury confirmed that Roberts’ contribution to Doctor Who: The Target Storybook, will not feature….
Ebury’s decision to drop Roberts over his tweets, which it says conflicts with its “values as a publisher”, has sparked debate on social media.
Gareth Roberts defends and explains himself and the terminology he used in a “Statement on BBC Books and Transgenderism” on Medium.
(13) CURRENCY EVENTS. In “If We Told You Neal Stephenson Invented Bitcoin, Would You Be Surprised?” on Reason.com, Peter Suderman says, in a survey of Stephenson’s novels, says that in The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, Stephenson “described the core concepts of cryptocurrency years before Bitcoin became a technical reality.”
For nearly three decades, Stephenson’s novels have displayed an obsessive, technically astute fascination with cryptography, digital currency, the social and technological infrastructure of a post-government world, and Asian culture. His novel Anathem is, among other things, an elaborate investigation into the philosophy of knowledge. His new book, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, pursues these themes literally beyond the grave, into the complications of estate planning and cryogenics.
(14) CALLING LONG DISTANCE. Drop by the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum between now and January 12, 2020 to see the phone he used to call the Moon in the interactive exhibit Apollo 11: One Giant Leap for Mankind.
Artifacts and objects featured in the exhibit include:
- Buzz Aldrin’s penlight used in the Lunar Module and Apollo 11 patch worn on the surface of the moon
- NASA X-15 silver-gleaming pressure suit used to train Neil Armstrong and America’s first astronauts in the 1950s
- Moon rocks from the lunar surface, acquired during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 missions
- Oval Office telephone that President Nixon used to call Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they explored on the lunar surface
- Presidential Medal of Freedom Award presented to astronaut Michael Collins by President Nixon
- Original of President Nixon’s draft speech prepared in the event of a “moon disaster”
- A 3-D printed, life-sized statue of Neil Armstrong in his space suit, as he climbed down the ladder of the Lunar Module on the moon
- A giant, exact recreation of an Apollo mission command module
(15) HUGO CONTENDERS. Garik16 progresses with “Reviewing the 2019 Hugo Nominees: Best Short Story “.
6th Place On My Ballot:. “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine, February 2018)
This Story can be found HERE.
Thoughts: This story won the Nebula Award, and I don’t think it’s a bad pick for the award, which is a testament to the strength of this ballot. It’s a fantasy story about nine slaves’ lives and hopes, with the teeth taken from them as the gateway to their stories (and the effects of those teeth on George Washington) – with those slaves’ lives having various degrees of fantasy elements, all fitting the themes of those realistic slave-lives. Still, I think it probably works the least of these six as a cohesive whole, even if the individual parts of this story are excellently done (with the final part reclaiming the supposedly noble action of Washington to free his slaves on his deathbed, in a really nice touch).
(16) NOT EXACTLY THE BURNING BUSH. NPR discusses the means of “Getting Fire From A Tree Without Burning The Wood”.
A scientist walks up to a cottonwood tree, sticks a hollow tube in the middle and then takes a lighter and flicks it. A jet of flame shoots out from the tube.
It seems like a magician’s trick. Turns out, there’s methane trapped in certain cottonwood trees. Methane is the gas in natural gas. It’s also a powerful greenhouse gas.
So how does it get inside towering trees like the ones on the campus of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee?
“The wood in this particular species naturally has this condition called wetwood, where it’s saturated within the trunk of the tree,” says the lighter-flicking scientist, Oak Ridge environmental microbiologist Christopher Schadt.
This wetwood makes for a welcoming home for all sorts of microorganisms.
…Some of those organisms turned out to be species of archaea that are known methane producers. So it’s not the trees themselves that are making the methane, it’s the microbes living in the trees.
…Because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas, Cregger says, it’s important to see how much of it the trees are actually producing.
This raises the surprising notion that trees could actually be contributing to global warming. Yes, these trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but could the methane be making things worse?
(17) CLARKE’S FOURTH LAW? BBC wonders “Does pornography still drive the internet?”.
Consider the opening lines of The Internet is for Porn, a song from the Broadway musical Avenue Q.
Kate Monster: “The internet is really, really great.”
Trekkie Monster: “For porn!”
…Credible-seeming statistics suggest that about one in seven web searches is for porn. This is not trivial – but of course it means that six in seven web searches are not.
The most-visited porn website – Pornhub – is roughly as popular as the likes of Netflix and LinkedIn. That’s pretty popular but still only enough to rank 28th in the world when I checked.
But Avenue Q was first performed in 2003, an age ago in internet terms, and Trekkie Monster might have been more correct back then.
New technologies often tend to be expensive and unreliable. They need to find a niche market of early adopters, whose custom helps the technology to develop.
Once it is cheaper and more reliable, it finds a bigger market, and a much broader range of uses.
There is a theory that pornography played this role in the development of the internet, and a whole range of other technologies. Does it stack up?
(18) GIMME THAT REAL OLD-TIME RELIGION. Beer helps: “How Iceland recreated a Viking-age religion”.
The Ásatrú faith, one of Iceland’s fastest growing religions, combines Norse mythology with ecological awareness – and it’s open to all.
…The ‘blót’, as the changing-of-the-season ceremony is known, began with the lighting of a small fire, which flickered in the breeze as the congregation listened to Old Norse poetry and raised the beer-filled horn to honour the Norse gods. Elsewhere on the island, similar ceremonies, I was told, were taking place.
The blót had been organised by the Ásatrú Association of Iceland, a pagan faith group that is currently one of the country’s fastest growing religions, having almost quadrupled its membership in a decade, albeit from a low base of 1,275 people in 2009 to 4,473 in 2018.
The congregation, which comprised a few dozen souls, including a Buddhist and a Hindu guest, had gathered near a sandy beach on the outskirts of Reykjavik, next to the city’s domestic airport, to celebrate the first day of the Icelandic summer. It was 25 April, slightly chilly and mostly overcast. Rain looked likely….
(19) WITH WINTER COMES ICE. The whole Game of Thrones cast raps in A Song of Vanilla Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones x Ice Ice Baby.
[Thanks to Lenore Jean Jones, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
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1) I regret never going to their offices there…
5) That is rather glorious
(16) Why did it have to be trees!
third
@1: that’s one hell of a sendoff; here’s hoping they have many successful years in their new quarters.
@2: this looks … unpromising.
@3: proving that Puppy publishers also virtue-signal. I doubt that every publishing house was afraid of offending oligarchs; I suspect they said ~”This is a load of dingos’ kidneys.”
@7: the cast may have had fun, but the reviewers’ consensus is less favorable. One of the kinder comments, from The Grauniad: “The mutant franchise fizzles out forgettably.”
(1) Is it wrong to want more of this? Because those other layers sound fascinating.
(1) Talk about leaving you wanting more! I would definitely read a book about this airship’s crew’s explorations of the multiverse.
Title credit! Mil gracias, Mike!
Gareth Roberts digs himself a much deeper hole. It was thoughtful of him to make it so abundantly clear that the right decision was made.
(1) 27 of their 30 years were spent in the Flatiron. So, naturally, when Cathy and I visited, they weren’t there yet, and of course we never made it to the Flatiron. Oh, well! Maybe next lifetime.
The internet is for scrolls
The internet is for scrolls
Me log in for kindred souls
And scrolls, scrolls, scrolls!
I thought Cora Buhlert’s article was interesting but I suspect the posters for the Edgar Wallace movies are much more interesting than the movies themselves.
With AD ASTRA: Is that Fred Armisen (!!!) in the trailer?
15) Stephenson also described holding computer data for ransom in REAMDE before it became a thing.
@Martin Wooster
Oh, the movies themselves are plenty of fun as well, but the posters really were great and very effective.
(11) Before I ever knew about “Assignment: Earth”, I saw a TV broadcast (in color) of the 1959 movie 4D Man, which starred Lansing and featured an incongruous but excellent jazz score. Well worth seeing.
(12) WHO WRITER OUSTED FROM ANTHOLOGY.
Well, at least he makes his position quite clear; there’s no waffling in that “explanation”, and no need for the BBC to second-guess themselves.
(12) Gender politics in Britain (like Brexit, it seems) is just nuts and exhausting.
1) That’s a cute story and I also wouldn’t mind reading more about the adventures of Stubby and her crew. Lovely artwork, too.
Regarding the group shot, is that scaffolding around the groundfloor of the Flatiron building or did someone really put such an anachronistic canopy around the Flatiron building of all places?
I’m reading Fall now and enjoying it quite a bit. It connects with Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. We’ll see how the second 400 pages goes.
@rochrist. At 800 pages, it’s a short story then?
3) Bukovsky was also a member of the Resistance International, a US propaganda outlet that supported UNITA, the apartheid militia in Angola. They also supported the Contras in Nicaragua. On the board was genocidal Neocons like Richard Perle and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
He is also a conspiracy theorist that think the European Union was created to be turned into a authoritarian socialist state and is therefore a supporter of the rightwing hate party UKIP.
(1) Besides being a cool building, the Flatiron will always remind me of a day in the summer of 1997 that I’m sure some people from Tor would remember. My job was in the building, and on walking out for lunch that day I found that there seemed to be a whole lot of army tanks in front of the park that’s right there. That was somewhat disconcerting even though they weren’t doing anything, and it wasn’t immediately apparent that it was a film shoot because the crew was off doing something else, but I eventually found out that this was for the Roland Emmerich version of Godzilla. So that meant I had to go see the Roland Emmerich version of Godzilla the following year. I really don’t advise anyone to watch that movie, but it was oddly satisfying to get to that scene and see my office and Tor and the whole building get ostentatiously demolished.
Clip Hitchcock:
I both agree and disagree. Bukovsky is clearly both a propagandist and conspiracy theorist nowadays, but he used to be one of the really important dissidents. So even if the conclusions in his book might have been ridiculous, there were still the value of all the copies from documents, just as with the Pentagon Papers. And the book was seen as valuable enough to be translated and published in other languages.
So I do think there was a real problem in that Random Houses wanted changes done. I just find the stated reason very unlikely.
@ Chris S: In Stephenson terms, it’s starting to push the novella boundary.
Harold Osler:
Not sure why you say that? Unless it is more of a statement on how hard it is to keep up with social changes on what is deemed as acceptable as you grow older (it has started to hit me with a hammer a bit more often now).
The article says nothing that is special for UK, so to restrict it to gender politics there is wrong. Same discussion exists in Sweden, US, Canada and many countries.
It is also not that “nuts” to see that “tranny” has become a word that is more connected to porn than to those who identify themselves as transpersons. I.e a term not to be used about people.
Yes, words changes meaning. Yes, it is hard to keep up. But also, yes, when you find out that they have changed and you have used them in an insulting way, it is ok to apologize. This regardless of opinions of identity or gender norms.
Here are some examples of how Roberts spoke about “trannies”. I do not find it that surprising or hard to understand why he was removed.
1. Sorry to hear they’re leaving, but…at least we got an excellent story out of the deal. And, if we’re very lucky, we may have just seen the first installment of a very interesting new series.
@Hampus Eckerman The article says nothing that is special for UK
I don’t know the situation in Sweden, but the UK has a particular problem with transphobic feminism right now that’s distinct from American right-wing bigotry and surprises American progressives. It’s almost entirely online and in the press for the moment – not like the pervasive and unquestioned homophobia I remember from the 1980s – but it’s worrying.
From the influences he cites, I’d say Gareth Roberts picked up his views from the press rather than direct contact with TERFs(*). A cynic might wonder if he resented being yelled at for using a slur that’s not his to reclaim and went looking for justification.
Also, I’d appreciate it if we could avoid using the t-word where possible, even to discuss its historical use? Transphobia hits me hard these days, and I’d rather not be reminded.
(*) Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Most people know the acronym by now, but someone always asks.
Hugo reading continues. I’ve just finished Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson. I am sad to say I do not like it, not at all, which is very sad because no question the writing is good. But it is so not my thing. The tone seems oddly upbeat for me, for a story whose contents are, for me, grim and off-putting. Were it not on the Hugo ballot, I’d have read perhaps ten pages, if that.
Yes, sorry if it sounded as if I didn’t acknowledge that. I was more talking about the reasons Roberts were kicked out and those reasons are more or less valid in US, Canada and Sweden too. They didn’t require any special understanding.
We do sometimes see some prejudice in Swedish media, a notorious example a few months ago by our main program for investigative journalism, but it is nowhere near the situation in UK. That kind of vile language and attacks are not seen as acceptable in any way.
I will refrain from using the t-word. My apologies.
(12) Man who has gone to great lengths to be obnoxious to people is surprised and upset when people don’t want to work with him.
Thanks Hampus. I think I read the drive-by post as a comment on transphobia in the UK and you read it as a dig at “political correctness” – either’s possible, with no further context.
12) I’m not sure why Gareth Roberts thinks ‘lots of people share my terrible opinions!’ is a good defence. It’s a shame he’s a twit, because I’ve enjoyed his Doctor Who stories over the years, but given that he continues to yell offensive nonsense in public he can hardly be surprised that the BBC don’t want to be associated with him.
Camestros Felapton says Man who has gone to great lengths to be obnoxious to people is surprised and upset when people don’t want to work with him.
Some of you might have by now noticed that Birthdays get done on the same basis which means I skip those individuals whose politics I vehemently disagree with. That they don’t like the authors that we like is also one of the reasons that they don’t get Birthday write-ups.
It seems a bit churlish to not note the birthdays of notable SF authors whose politics you may not care for. Orson Scott Card’s politics are horrible, but he’s still an important writer.
For them as might be interested, three of Judith Tarr’s 1990s historical novels (Throne of Isis, Eagle’s Daughter, Queen of Swords) are now available for preorder on Kindle (release date 07/04) — I assume that she got the rights back and is self-publishing them. Me, I already preordered all three.
On another note, I’m almost done with Doctor Who S11 and I find myself a bit torn — on the one hand, I really like Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, and I like all of the companions, and I appreciate the fact that we’re getting through an entire season without a single Dalek or Cyberman; but on the other hand, for whatever reason, most of the individual episodes just aren’t grabbing me for some reason. (The one with the giant spiders was super creepy, though.) It’s probably just me, and I’ll be curious to see the next season when it comes along, though.
I don’t see where Roberts’ exclusion from the BBC Books project is exhausting. His repeated declarations that transgender people don’t exist is as awful as people in my Texas youth who called interracial marriage “miscegenation.”
It wasn’t exhausting to hear that and choose to never have anything more to do with those people.
Kim Newman reviewed all the Edgar Wallace films in a mammoth article for Video Watchdog. In his introduction he said words to the effect of “imagine that you had never seen a Hammer film and then were given all of them in a box set”
@12: apparently Roberts hasn’t caught up with the fact that his equivalent of Flat-Earthism (“I don’t believe…”) is bull.
@Lampus Eckerman:
I guess it depends on how much you believe his documents; he’s enough of a crank now that one can wonder how much he’s offering speculation, or even outright forgery, as truth. I certainly don’t expect Baen to have anyone on tap who can verify the papers, any more than I’d expect them to be able to be definitive about (e.g.) the Venona decrypt.
J Allen: I don’t know when you think Orson Scott Card’s birthday is, but Wikipedia says it’s August 24. Same date as James Tiptree, Jr.
In fact, last August 24 there was no Pixel Scroll because I’d just had surgery to install my pacemaker. Picking that day to skip was sheer churlishness on my part, I know.
Mr. Glyer, I was citing OSC as a prominent example or Someone Whose Birthday Shall Not Be Named, and certainly not implying any churlishness on your part!
@ J Allen
But… if it isn’t OSC’s birthday, I don’t see why you mentioned him at all..? Is there another writer who was born today who you think ought to have been mentioned..?
(But the most likely explanation, whenever you think Cat missed someone, is that Cat just missed someone. It happens. Cat’s political preferences aren’t necessarily the ultimate deciding factor in any given example. Feel free to announce them yourself, though! People often mention additional projects that didn’t make it into the limited word count or aren’t obviously sfnal, too.)
@J Allen —
Whatever author might get skipped on any given day, interested commenters are always welcomed to mention them in the comment section. It’s not like their names are forbidden. If Cat puts the birthday list together, she gets to include whomever she feels like including.
Even if yesterday had been OSCs birthday, Cat is the person expending the energy to write the Birthday entries and it’s entirely up to Cat to decide who she includes and what criteria she uses.
I appreciate the work, Cat!
Cat makes the list, Cat chooses who she wants on the list. A person wanting to make sure a person should be on a list should make one themselves.
If I see someone missing that I feel is interesting enough, I mention it in the comments for that day. Everyone can do that. I find it kind of weird that people think they can dictate what others should write.
3) Baen: “Western publishers … backed down from publishing an English translation out of what appears in hindsight cowardice and fear of offending the emerging new Russian oligarchy. ”
What Bukovsky said since then(*) was that Random House wanted “to force me to rewrite the whole book from the liberal left political perspective.” That seems considerably different from not wanting to offend Russian oligarchs. I wonder why Baen doesn’t trust their own author on the subject of his previous publishing deal?
(* Link is to a magazine whose front-page stories include “diversity training is racist” and “Barry Goldwater got a raw deal”, so I would take their analysis with a slight grain of salt, but that’s where I found the quote.)
I think Cat should compile birthdays by any criteria she likes, since she’s doing all the work. If people feel like somebody is being overlooked they can post a comment or prepare their own daily SF/F birthday list.
This is a fanzine, after all. No fan writer should have to feel like they’re writing to somebody else’s expectations.
J Allen says It seems a bit churlish to not note the birthdays of notable SF authors whose politics you may not care for.
When they treat writers whose political and cultural viewpoints that they disagree with the courtesy and respect that everyone deserves, I’ll list them. Not until then. I also limit myself to around eight Birthdays a day and generally speaking I can easily fill those slots with folks far more deserving them. And generally speaking more interesting than them as well.
@HAmpus–Not sure why you say that? etc.
Well, I said England because that’s where he lives and The BBC and so on. And I said that because if you get drawn down the rabbit hole of gender politics there via Twitter, etc. it’s hard to keep up.
And it’s nuts to me, for example, when a lesbian who made the statement that she would defend herself if attacked by trans activists is hauled into court on charges of making a threat.
And it doesn’t take much to be labeled a ‘transphobe’–I got called that for saying that, as a gay man, I wouldn’t have sex with someone with a vagina.
A transphobe, a ‘genital fetishist’ and told to ‘break through my self-imposed gender barriers’ which, to me, is left-wing conversion therapy. So yeah.
Especially given this news today:
Feminist speaker Julie Bindel ‘attacked by transgender person’ at Edinburgh University after talk (The Scotsman)
Harold Osler:
Ok, so you basically made a comment that didn’t have anything to do with Roberts. Not sure why. I have absolutely no idea what “lesbian” you are talking about and why, which makes it irrelevant.
Otherwise I agree that we find attraction where we find it. Still can’t see what that has to do with Roberts.
That, too. My Amazon UK sales round-ups actually have a bunch of unofficial rules that I semi-follow, and it’s mostly because I have only so many spoons to write them up and I’ve got to cut it down somehow. I don’t generally share Puppyish sales, for example, on the general assumption that most Filers wouldn’t be interested (well, and also, they don’t come up that often because most Puppies aren’t big sellers in the UK; very USA-centric themes). But I also don’t generally share sales for book 3 of a random series that otherwise isn’t on sale (unless it’s a series that I know Filers like). When you’re making lists you have to have criteria. If people don’t like your criteria they can make their own or mention it in a comment or whatever.
ETA: … and sometimes people share sales I skipped over for whatever reason! And that’s awesome too!