(1) READING SERIES CROWDFUNDING. Less than two days to go in the Fantastic Fiction Kickstarter at KGB and Matthew Kressel says they’re still about $1500 shy of what they need to run for six years.
Here are a few of the clever Facebook appeals made by the Kindling Kris Dikeman to encourage people to squeeze out a few more bucks for the series.
- Sick of how things are going? Hoping the singularity hits soon? You can make things better right now by supporting the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Pay tribute to our future robot overlords and receive cool stuff at http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
- Has the state of our world got you wishing the zombie apocalypse would just start already? You can make the world a better place without the rotting undead’s help by supporting the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Plus, you’re going to need stuff to read while you’re cowering in the dark. Check it out: http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
- Considering a move to the Shire to escape the current state of the world? Put down that second breakfast and shuffle your hairy little feet on over to the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction reading series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Galadriel sez: do it for me, hafling: http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
(2) DISAPPOINTMENT. Mari Ness sent a series of tweets discussing why she isn’t on Worldcon 75 programming.
There's a reason: the deadline for volunteering on panels was March 30.
As of March 30, I did not have a confirmed accessible room.
— Mari Ness, still masked (@mari_ness) June 12, 2017
(3) WILD CARDS. In “Something Old, Something New…” George R.R. Martin refutes an old complaint, then explains why readers will have no grounds for it in the Wild Cards book coming out tomorrow.
I’ve had some readers complain about my name being featured on the covers of the Wild Cards books because I “didn’t write them.” That’s a bullshit complaint, IMSHO. No, I am not the sole author of the Wild Cards stories, I am only one of… ah, lemme see, I believe it was forty-one writers at last count.
I am, however, the editor of every single one of the twenty-three volumes published to date, and the new ones in the pipeline as well… the guy who recruits all those writers, determines the ‘overplots’ of the triads, solicits proposals, accepts and rejects, and gives extensive notes on rewrites. (And there’s a LOT of rewriting in Wild Cards, to make all the bits fit together so the whole will be more than the sum of its parts). It’s a lot more work than any other sort of anthology, believe me… though I love it, so I don’t complain… too much. I earn those credits, and to suggest that my name is just being ‘slapped on’ the covers while someone else does the work is as ignorant as it is offensive.
(4) BIRD IS THE WORD. At Tor.com, Aidan Moher makes Yoon Ha Lee’s Raven Stratagem sound irresistible.
Unlike its predecessor, Raven Stratagem requires no warming up period. Very little of the narrative in Raven Stratagem is bogged-down by incomprehensible infodumps about “calendrical rot.” In comparison, it feels open and airy. Through Cheris and Jedao, Lee proved his ability to create complex and interesting characters, and this time around he throws the doors open by introducing several new point-of-view characters, all of whom are engaging in their own way. From the crashhawk Brezan, who’s on a mission to take Jedao down, to General Kel Khiruev, who is reluctantly beholden to the undead general after he commandeers her swarm, to Shuos Mikodez, leader of a faction of assassins, each of the major players has their own well-defined and compelling part to play in Raven Stratagem’s overall narrative. They’re all damaged and dangerous, full of regrets, but they are also vulnerable and likeable in a way that allows readers to connect with them on the right emotional level.
(5) FOOLPROOF WISDOM. Timothy the Talking Cat continues to dispense advice to writers in “More Mentoring from Tim” on Camestros Felapton’s site. It’s all one graphic, so we’ll have to do without an excerpt. But I’m sure knowing Timothy’s track record you have already clicked through before reaching the end of this paragraph.
(6) AUSTIN OBIT. UK comics fan Alan Austin died May 9.
Alan Austin, pioneer of UK comics fandom and a long-time friend of 30th Century Comics, passed away yesterday morning after a long struggle with cancer.
Beginning in the 1970’s, Alan published the long-running fanzine Fantasy Unlimited (later Comics Unlimited), which drew together comics enthusiasts from all over the UK, and indeed, all over the world. He also published Whiz Kids, Golden Age Fanzine, and the Marvel Super-Hero Index, as well as being a co-publisher of the very first Comics Price Guide for Great Britain. For many years, he ran the shop Heroes, in Islington, London, and in later years was a regular feature at UK comic marts.
Neil Gaiman purchased his first Spirit comic book from Austin’s shop in 1975.
(7) VERDUGO OBIT. Actress Elena Verdugo died May 30. Her radio, movie and TV career spanned six decades. Although she was best known for her TV role in Marcus Welby, M.D., her genre work included horror movies like The Frozen Ghost (1945). Here’s an excerpt from her New York Times obituary,
… Because she had a Hispanic surname, Hollywood mostly typecast her in horror movies and comedies as Gypsy girls, Indian maidens, Mexican peasants, harem handmaidens and South Sea islanders. “With that name, they don’t call you up to do little American parts,” she was quoted as saying in “Women in Horror Films, 1940s” (1999) by Gregory William Mank. “They think you’re a black-eyed, dark-haired señorita” and I’m blond. So I put on my wig and tried to live up to what they thought ‘Spanish’ to be or ‘Gypsy,’ or ‘native,’ or something.”
She later played opposite Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff in Universal’s “House of Frankenstein” (1944), in which a trio of movie monsters collaborate against their makers’ enemies, and in “The Frozen Ghost” (1945), also opposite Chaney.
(8) TODAY’S DAY
Superman Day
What’s that?! There in the sky? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s the Man of Tomorrow! Superman has gone by many names over the years, but one thing has remained the same. He has always stood for what’s best about humanity, all of our potential for terrible destructive acts, but also our choice to not act on the level of destruction we could wreak. Superman was first created in 1933 by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the writer and artist respectively. His first appearance was in Action Comics #1, and that was the beginning of a long and illustrious career for the Man of Steel. In his unmistakable blue suit with red cape, and the stylized red S on his chest, the figure of Superman has become one of the most recognizable in the world.
Mark Seifert at Bleeding Cool News has more:
In 2013, DC Entertainment declared June 12 as Man of Steel day “in celebration of the summer’s most eagerly anticipated film”. The date seems to have stuck, with a name change to “Superman Day” because I’ve seen a whole lot of #supermanday hashtags in my twitter feed this morning. I know that Metropolis, IL just held their Superman Celebration over the past 4 days€¦
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 12, 1968 — Rosemary’s Baby first seen this day.
- June 12, 1987 — Predator first played to audiences.
- June 12, 2015 — Jurassic World debuted.
(10) PAST TENSE. ComicsBeat tees up an unusual WW2-era critique, “Bennett and Savuage take on Japanese Internment in new BOMBSHELLS UNITED series”.
It was important to Bennett to make her takes on DC’s greatest heroines less inherently perfect and to provide them with the opportunity for improvement and redemption. “I’m very into fallible heroines,” Bennett explained. “I understand why so many inspirational characters are given to girls, whether it’s to make up for the years that their weren’t any or that there were so many damsels in distress, but there’s a degree at which when we only give children– but little girls especially– aspirational heroines, we’re denying them the ability to screw up. To have a complete human experience. Being a child and seeing these role models, I knew that I could never possibly compete or live up, so when I screwed up it was horrible. These characters weren’t afforded the opportunity to fail and come back from it.”
Indeed, the first arc of Bombshells United is all about failure– in particular, America’s failure to protect the rights of up to 120,000 Japanese Americans when the national government imprisoned them in internment camps for the duration of World War II. In Bennett’s exploration of Japanese American internment, she casts Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy, two characters who have carried the Wonder Girl moniker, as second generation Japanese Americans whose friends and family are being held against their will. While Cassie and Donna are not Japanese in the mainstream DC Universe, according to Bennett, these are her universe’s “definitive versions” of the characters.
(11) POSTSCRIPT. Abigail Nussbaum has more to say — “Five (Additional) Comments on Wonder Woman”.
My problem, however, with talking about Wonder Woman as a feminist work is that most of that feminism is external to the film. That is, Wonder Woman is feminist because of what it is, not because of what it does. To be clear, I absolutely agree with the statement that being the first movie about a female superhero in the current, mega-successful iteration of superhero movies (and one of only a small number before that) is a feminist act in its own right. But there’s only so much that you can say about that, and that’s a problem that is exacerbated by Wonder Woman herself. More than almost any other character in pop culture, Diana exists outside of patriarchy. And while it’s powerful to see a woman who brushes aside the assumption that she’s not as good as a man because the very idea that this might be true is completely foreign to her heritage and upbringing, what this also means is that a lot of the central questions of feminism are equally foreign to her. I’m not as down on Wonder Woman as Jill Lepore, writing in The New Yorker, but she’s not wrong when she says that “Gadot’s Wonder Woman doesn’t fight for rights because she transcends that fight; she is unfettered by it and insensible to it, an implausible post-feminist hero.” Diana’s journey over the course of the movie involves learning to see humanity–or, as she puts it, “men”–for what it is, with all its strengths and flaws. But left completely unacknowledged is the degree to which the cruelty of men is often visited upon women. How does Diana’s bemusement at the concept of marriage face up to the discovery that almost all of the people she meets in 1918 would consider it acceptable for a man to beat his wife? How does her decision to engage in heterosexual intercourse change in light of the fact that she is moving through a rape culture? How does her joy at seeing a baby withstand the knowledge that most women in that period have no choice in when or whether to have children, and that many of them die in childbirth?
(12) WONDER WHY. Meanwhile, Stephanie Abraham clearly feels there’s no pop culture victory that can’t be pictured as a defeat with a little effort — “When Will Wonder Woman Be a Fat, Femme Woman of Color?”
Why couldn’t Wonder Woman be a woman of color? When it was announced that Gadot would play Wonder Woman, audiences went wild body shaming her for not having large enough breasts. One can only imagine the white supremacy that would have emerged had the announcement said instead that she would be played by a Black woman. On Paradise Island, there are Black warriors in addition to white ones, which is a good start, but other women of color are missing. Also, while the female warriors are strong and ass-kicking, they all have tall, thin body types and they all could be models on a runway. In fact, in a pivotal battle scene, Wonder Woman struts across the battlefield as if on a catwalk. As a result, their physical strength plays second fiddle to their beauty, upholding the notion that in order to access power women must be beautiful in a traditional way. Especially with the body positivity movement gaining steam, the film could have spotlighted female warriors with fat, thick and short body types. While people have said that warriors can’t be fat, some of our best paid male athletes are, particularly linebackers on the football field, and no one doubts their physical strength.
Another problem is that the story’s overt queerness gets sublimated by heteronormativity. Diana comes from a separatist commune of women who have intentionally chosen to live without men. In one of the first scenes between Diana and Steve, she explains that she read 12 volumes of a series on sex that concluded that while men are required for reproduction, when it comes to female pleasure, they’re unnecessary. While a love story develops between them, a requirement in superhero stories, Diana thankfully doesn’t compromise her integrity for him.
(13) GENRE MOVIE POSTERS. Bill recommends Posteritati —
Hundreds of SF movie posters: https://posteritati.com/genre/sci-fi?page=1
Hundreds more Fantasy movie posters: https://posteritati.com/genre/fantasy?page=1
Note: click “In Stock Only” to “off” to maximize browsing.
(14) BIONIC HANDS. Click on “3D printed bionic hands trial begins in Bristol” to see the video report.
The world’s first clinical trial of 3D printed bionic hands for child amputees starts this week in Bristol.
They are made by a South Gloucestershire company which only launched four years ago.
If the trial is successful the hands will become available on the NHS, bringing life-changing improvements for patients.
(15) PROSPECTIVE ASTRONAUTS. NPR’s story “Meet Your Lucky Stars: NASA Announces A New Class Of Astronaut Candidates” comes with pictures and short interviews.
Jasmin Moghbeli, one of the dozen candidates, spoke with NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro from Houston’s Johnson Space Center, where she’ll undertake the training program starting in August.
Moghbeli, who says she’s wanted to be an astronaut since the sixth grade, talked about what kind of candidate it takes to earn the coveted spot.
“Start looking into science, technology, engineering, math, those kinds of fields,” the German-born, New York native says. But whatever you do, she says, love it.
“There were many other applicants that applied who were extremely qualified for this position that aren’t lucky enough to be sitting up here like I am,” she adds. “So make sure you’re doing what you love. If I did not get the call saying, ‘Hey can you join us here at NASA?’ I still would’ve been extremely happy in the career that I was in.”
The seven men and five women of the class bring an impressive resume to NASA: The astronaut candidates are an athletic crew and include former SpaceX employees, a marine biologist and half of them are military officers.
(16) CAPED CLAPTRAP. Glen Weldon claims “Adam West Saved Batman. And Me.” If only by reaction — the author argues that the show was so silly it revived interest in the One True Dark Knight.
In my book, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, I attempt to unpack how the show, and West’s performance in particular, are the reason anyone’s talking about the character of Batman today.
Batman comics had languished near the bottom of the sales charts — the publisher even made (likely disingenuous) threats to cancel them outright — before West took the hero into the mainstream. The mainstream embraced him, and — after a brief Batmania fad gripped the country in 1966 — swiftly tired of all things Bat. Batman comics sales plummeted again.
Comics creators and fans resented the clownish version of their hero who’d spent time in the cultural spotlight, and reacted against it by engineering a version of the character who was — specifically and intentionally — everything West’s Batman wasn’t: dark, haunted, gothic, brooding. Obsessed.
A new generation of comics readers — who knew a little something about obsession — saw themselves in this new, grim, self-serious Batman. For better or worse, he’s been DC Comics’ top-selling hero ever since.
(17) NOT FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON. Whenever Larry Correia blows his stack at me, once he finally runs out of obscene things to say, which takes awhile, the next thing he does (like today) is tell people I keep linking to his blog to get pingbacks that will lure traffic from his popular site. Which is not only a lie – I link whenever I have an interest in an item – but is absurd on its face. Below are the Alexa rankings for our two sites. And the fact is that although Correia has repeated this claim several times since 2014, at no time then or now was his site ranked above mine, or anywhere close to it.
(Bear in mind that 1 would be the highest ranking, so the site with the most traffic has the lower rank numbers.)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Bill, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
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Iphinome
Heh! Though I always imagined that Morticia’s relationship with Thing was a lot more, well, friendly. Oooh, thank you Th-thing!
Chip Hitchcock
I hadn’t read “Bianca’s Hands,” so I was mostly picturing a stereo version of THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS.
Na na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na na na
PIC’ SCROLL!
@Techgrrl — I too have fond memories of the bookstore near the Winchester House with the awesome SF section. That was where I first became acquainted with zines, and I’m convinced one of them was the earlier version of File 770 although I may be remembering things through one of my filters. I used to go there and poke around looking at books after seeing movies. I’m thinking it was the Books Inc in the Pruneyard shopping center but that seems a little farther away from the theater than I recall.
Thomas Covenant: Which trilogy is it where he rapes someone? A truly rotten “hero”.
I gave up somewhere in the second trilogy over lines like “his mind bifurcated”. And the “clench” game.
I didn’t know there was a bookstore near the Winchester House, but I remember taking the tour when I was young, and thinking it was a very cool place.
And am I hallucinating, or do I remember hearing about an upcoming fantasy (or horror?) novel kind of loosely based on the Winchester House? My google-fu is weak.
I hear tell of a TV series based on the outlines of the construction of the Winchester House.
Hmmm … That might be what I was misremembering. On the plus side: Helen Mirren!
Robert Whitaker Sirignano on June 13, 2017 at 9:30 am said:
I’m pretty sure that’s right in the beginning of the very first book.
You know, I recently reread the Mordant’s Need duology (The Mirror of Her Dreams/A Man Rides Through) and discovered, to my surprise, that it is not particularly suitable to the “clench” game. However, it is thoroughly in love with the word “sybaritic,” so that’s a thing.
Except for Jan. 2017 when your site was down around 1,000,000 and Larry’s was around 600k.
I see someone has a hard time reading graphs.
and @xtifr:
The technical bookstore WAS Computer Literacy, which became Fatbrain, which became B&N and then nothing at all. Your clue led me to wikipedia, which confirms that the BIG CL was on 1st Street in San Jose, which is the one I would always hit on my way to the airport.
Maybe the Books, Inc. is the other, but all I remember is a big sprawling bookstore in a strip mall, very pleasant, trees to provide a little bit of shade. It was lovely. In the late 80’s I was spending a lot of time in the Bay Area and made it a point to partake of the bookstores.
Sadly, while searching for CL, I discovered that Digital Guru is shutting down this week. [sigh]
I can definitively state that the bookstore near the Winchester Mystery House was Books, Inc., in the Town and Country Village. I know this because I worked there. Yes, it was a terrific place, with a great science fiction section and author appearances. One of the best places I ever worked — though this may partly be because I met my husband there.
The Books Inc near the theaters was in the Town and Country center – it was a lot of smaller buildings. The Pruneyard was on Bascom in Campbell, a couple of miles south and east. IIRC, it had a bookstore, also, but I don’t remember now if it was Clean Well-Lighted Place or Upstart Crow.
Msb
Continued impotent rage after he insulted a whole community because he wanted a participation award, didn’t get it, and people were mean to him about it.
Shut my office door and read Raven Strategem all afternoon, or keep my door open and do actual work? Oh noes, the indecision!
@Rob Barrett
I chose secret option c) Spend the day in a tedious meeting in a boiling hot room, seething but not reading. However, my commutes have allowed me to get several chapters in, and so far it’s meeting my high expectations.
Yup, thanks to lurkertype for identifying Computer Literacy. And my apologies for having overlooked that comment the first time I skimmed the thread.
[godstalk]
Continued impotent rage after he insulted a whole community because he wanted a participation award, didn’t get it, and people were mean to him about it.
I think it is more than that. I think LC (and the rest of the Pups and various hangers-on) had convinced themselves that they were the really popular segment of the genre fiction world, and that there was a silent majority of fans out there who were just waiting for someone to take up the banner and lead them to the promised land. I think that LC, BT, Hoyt, JCW, and the rest expected that hordes of fans would rally to their cause and prove once and for all to those elitist Hugo voters that they were the “real” vanguard of science fiction.
Look at all of their claims to vast popularity. Look at the repeated assertions by Puppy hangers-on that “traditional publishing” is dying and they represent the future. Look at their obsession with “clicks”, and making sure that those they don’t like don’t get “clicks”. They have built up a fantasy version of reality where they are both the beleaguered insurgency oppressed by evil institutions like Tor, SFWA, and Worldcon, and simultaneously their work represents the preferences of the vast majority of fans. They were going to challenge those who held them down, and with the mass of fandom rise to their rightful place at the top of the heap.
And, then it didn’t happen. Their plan not only backfired, it backfired spectacularly. It turns out that the Pups and their followers represent only a small slice of fans. The masses didn’t rally to their side. And as a result, the Pups feel betrayed. They are angry that people didn’t do the “right” thing and support them. Hence, the proliferation of Puppy conspiracy theories – people were promised book contracts in exchange for opposing the Pups, people were bribed into opposing the Pups, people bought memberships to Worldcon for people in exchange for promises to oppose the Pups, and so on and so forth. Any excuse will do except the truth: People didn’t support the Pups because they don’t like their work, and, to a certain extent, because they don’t like the Pups themselves.
The truth hurts, and as a result, the Pups have been lashing out ever since the bitter reality that undercut their pretensions became clear to them and everyone else.
Don’t Read the Yellow Scroll
“And I would have pixelled away with it too, if weren’t for those meddling scrolls” – Larry Correia (apocryphal)
@Aaron:
I seem to as well, as that’s my reading of the graphs too. Can you please explain what I’m not understanding?
@ techgrrrl
Someone may have answered this already (hard for me to keep track of things I meant to comment on if I catch up on the thread first). But I remember that store and think it may have been a Books, Inc. (This was way back in the mid ’80s when I lived in Campbell.)
I seem to as well, as that’s my reading of the graphs too.
The individual dips are statistical noise, and are meaningless. Even Alexa admits this. The only even remotely meaningful number is the aggregate over time.
It looks like LC had posted a brand new screaming rant about OGH on his blog in which he recounts the FB conversation that got him all riled up. To sum up: LC bloviates and rants, and OGH makes him look like the fool that he is (although that’s not hard, LC does a lot of the heavy lifting on that score all on his own). As usual, LC lies a lot, beginning with his claim that JDA started “having trouble” with File770 commenters when it came out that he was a Trump supporter.
I only have one comment: OGH said LC was the thinnest-skinned man in SF. This is incorrect. BT is the thinnest-skinned man in SF. LC is the second thinnest-skinned man in SF.
Nah, it was always “Admire us! Respect us! Give us shiny tokens of your esteem that we are entitled to due to us wanting them!”
Failure to admire, whether a sin of omission or commission, is a sin to be decried.
Shut my office door and read Raven Strategem all afternoon, or keep my door open and do actual work? Oh noes, the indecision!
It was an easy decision. And a suitable finish to the start in Ninefox Gambit.
From Larry’s blog: “the seedy underbelly of fandom”.
LOL. I love that.
Seedy underbelly and multiple Hugo award winner, thankyouverymuch. ;-D
You know, maybe that’s the real reason why Larry hates Mike so much…. Maybe his little green monster-hunter logo is actually green with envy?
It’s really kind of a shame to see him ranting so. I actually enjoyed the first couple of MHI books. Got tired of them pretty quickly, but at least the first two or three were fun!
I don’t know if Mike is paying for Alexa, or if he’s done whatever set-up are necessary to be accurate, or if LC has, but I’m curious about Alexa saying that Mike is very popular in China and that 92.1% of site visitors are from there and only 4.6% are from the US. LC’s site is 91.4% from the US. Filers read more pages and spend more time here than LC’s visitors do at his site though.
God, what a rant. I don’t like Correia’s stuff anyway, but I don’t think I’d want to read the work of that personality.
I think Robert Whitaker Sirignano speaks for us all when he says I can only take in so much stupid at any one time.
@Bill: I can just about remember TB&TB theme! So jazzy. Loved that toon.
@John From GR: I have my own kazoo and know some Wagner.
In any field (I’m thinking of 3 in particular I’ve been in, all different), I’ve always found the top people to be the best. It’s the B-list and lower who are the assholes. Gene Wolfe cracked a joke when I got his autograph. Terry Pratchett was as pterry as anyone could want when I met him. Robert Silverberg has taken time out to craft a snarky remark just for me. Connie Willis is always delightful. The most-average humblest guy I met (so much so that I didn’t realize who he was till several other things happened and the penny dropped) was not only my boss’ boss’ boss, but a Nobel Prize winner.
@techgrrl: Glad to have helped. Mr. lurkertype used to work in the same complex as Computer Literacy, so I spent many an hour there. Amazon did them in right quick. As others have said, Books Inc. was in T&C and Clean Well Lighted Place was in the Pruneyard. I miss ’em all.
@Chip: JJ’s embed is the Shatner “Get a Life!” skit from SNL.
@Aaron: that’s a good summary. I’d add that they can’t seem to differentiate SFWA from WSFS, and don’t forget how Scalzi is the Great Satan. And that the Pups are middling to horrible writers, and they know almost nothing about fandom or the history of SF. But yes. The truth hurts them, and they can’t face up to it.
Meanwhile, I still got a small pile of OGH-edited daily Worldcon newszines from 1982 and 1984 looking for a good home. Vintage laffs. Mike, are those available online somewhere, digitized or whatever? I could scan them if there’s somewhere they should be and aren’t.
lurkertype: The two characters in that freeze-frame weren’t just generic Trek dorks, they were based on two specific NYC Trek dorks. They got all het up about this sketch and were threatening to sue SNL/NBC until literally everyone else in NYC-area Trekdom pointed out that that would be publicly admitting they were, in fact, Those Guys.
That is pretty funny. At the time that skit was televised, I as a relatively young fan had just been to 3 annual Star Trek conventions — and even as an ardent fan, I still found myself rolling my eyes at the fans who were obsessed with irrelevant minutiae. One I still remember, due to its immense stupidity, was when Harve Bennett, the absolutely brilliant director of The Wrath of Khan was telling all kinds of wonderful stories about things that happened on set and the motivations for various things in the script — and then he opened it up for questions, and some idiot asked why there was no Jefferies tube on the new Enterprise. 🙄
Chip Hitchcock: transcript or other link? I get ~”not available in your country” on that video clip.
It’s the famous skit from Saturday Night Live where guest host William Shatner plays himself as Guest of Honor at a Star Trek convention. You can read a transcript of the skit here.
The money quote is, of course, “Get a Life, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show!”
MODERATOR’S WARNING: This site is not hosting any link to Correia’s tantrum.
ATTN. CHARON DUNN:
I can’t find an email for you and need to chat. Both Mike and JJ know my email.
Thanks.
lurkertype, you can message The Big Kahuna on Facebook, if you have an account.
@JJ: and indeed, as far as anyone knew, the actual guys it was based on had never kissed a girl.
I saw this the first time at a party of my local fen group and we HOWLED and applauded. I of course must point out that most of us lived in our own houses and apartments, read books, and had done more than kissing. But we knew those dorks. My friend informing me of the real guys and their ire was just icing on the cake.
I never knew Bob Odenkirk and Judd Apatow wrote it!
I do not have the Book of Face, so I need an actual email. Even a fakey sorta one, the kind you’d use for the Dragon Awards.
———————-
More Puppy dissonance: how can we be both the “seedy underbelly” and the Seekrit Cabal Masters of fandom?
I’m always so fascinated by the one-sided war they have against traditional publishing.
Margaret Atwood has been awarded the 2017 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This prize is a big deal here in Germany, big enough to be reported in the mainstream TV and radio news. The actual ceremony will take place at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
In other news, today I visited a neighbouring city which still has two great independent bookstores and went home with The Power by Naomi Alderman, Fellside by M.R. Carey, Frostblood by Elly Blake and the UK paperback edition of The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi.
Raven Strategem is en route, but hasn’t gotten here yet.
Wow, Correia has finally gone full-on unhinged. That poor guy seriously needs to get some psychological counseling. Living in such a sick and twisted imaginary universe as he describes must be incredibly emotionally painful for him.
Not being able to cheat his way to a Hugo obviously hurt him a lot more than he was previously willing to let on. 😐
@Marshall: And yet most of the upper echelons of Sad Pupdom are tradpub in part or in whole. So… biting the hand that feeds ’em?
@JJ: Anybody so desperate for egoboo that he was willing to cheat his way to a Hugo in the first place (which we had previously only seen from the LRH hordes) would obviously still be invested in it/hurt by it only a few years later. What’s changed is he’s lost the will or ability to pretend that he isn’t. I hope, in his agony, he doesn’t do something stupid with one or more of his many, many, many guns.
The only good thing about the Kerpupple is that we all became aware of Chuck Tingle, who is a national treasure. Love is real.
@Joe H: I was out of college, but enough of a primitive that I didn’t notice the questionable aspects; I was just bored — I can only take so much detail about the simple mechanics of a trip. (Yes, Simmons, I’m looking at the Keats cycle too.)
@JJ: thanks for the script link; I’d been off TV so hard/long by the time SNL came on that I missed a joke (in a show that I was lighting) that everyoneelse got — but that didn’t get me the habit. Sounds like somebody was reading from that script when writing Galaxy Quest.
@JJ (latest): “I can only think that the business with the apple must have upset him more than I realised.” (Adams, in the Komodo Dragon chapter of Last Chance to See.)
Hi Lurker! The Facebook linkage works, and I’ll go shoot OGH an email in case you’re not a Facebooker (the best pics of The Big Kahuna are on my blog, click my profile to get there).
15) One thing that jumped out at me when I clicked thru and read the article was that the ceremony was graced by the presence of Vice President Pence. On the one hand, that was certainly better than the alternative. On the other… it does make me wonder if any of the candidates are gay. Not that I’d ask, because it’s none of my business.
@ Bruce A: Not to mention those of us patiently waiting for The Door Into Starlight…
@ Xtifr: Good point! Do people complain about Martin Greenberg’s name on all those anthologies he edited?
@ Cassy: I’ve heard a variant on that story attributed to JMZ at SDCC one year. Can’t vouch for its veracity, though.
The only good thing about the Kerpupple is that we all became aware of Chuck Tingle, who is a national treasure.
I can think of a few other things, but none of them are actually related to the Pups.
Out of curiosity (which killed or at least seriously wounded the cat) I went over to LC’s website to see what the kerfuffle was about.
Wow. So much anger and bad language.
I’ll not be veering that way again soon.
@Marshall Ryan Maresca: I believe Toni Weisskopf is their kindred spirit in the publishing world, and not part of the New York/London liberal elite, so when they are railing against tradpub, Baen doesn’t count as one. Then again, it may be that it’s really the Neilsen-Haydens, and Scalzi that they hate, and the rest of tradpub just gets the overflow. Furthermore, since Tom Doherty is the publisher of Tor, and a major investor of Baen (unless he’s been bought out by now), I wonder how they wrap their heads around that when they’re doing their tradpub hate.
One good thing (to me; maybe not to anyone else) from the Kerpupple is that I started reading File 770. 🙂
In unrelated news, Seanan McGuire narrated Down Among the Sticks and Bones herself, which surprised me since the narrator for the previous novella did a good job, IMHO. It looks like the first/only book McGuire’s narrated so far, but from the 5-minute sample (not a great bit for judging), she sounds good. Also it’s cheaper than the first audiobook book is (cheap enough that it’s a bit of a waste to use my credit on it, so I won’t) (this is how they get ya!).
@ Aaron: The weekend of LonCon, my partner was at a con elsewhere with a major Puppy supporter who was crowing gleefully about the record number of supporting memberships and how that meant that the Puppy slate and No Award were between them going to sweep the Hugos.
He was much, much quieter on Sunday after the results were announced.
@ Kurt: I’ve described that (in a different, non-Hugo-related context) as someone having a bad case of insufficient adulation.
@ JJ: A trope inverted to great effect in Galaxy Quest, when the in-depth show trivia knowledge of a fan was crucial to saving both the ship and the mission.
“I don’t know… but I know who I can ask!”
Also, who was it a couple of scrolls back who was insisting that “Larry was never interested in awards”? Or wait, that might have been on Facebook — it all blurs together after a while.
@ Aaron: One good thing to come out of it for me personally is that I became much more involved in reading new releases, nominating, and voting for the Hugos.
@Lee: That was one of, oh, about a billion of scenes I loved in “Galaxy Quest”! 🙂
And oh yes, more involved in the Hugos – another benefit of the Kerpupple for me.
ETA: Now I want to go re-watch “Galaxy Quest.” 😉
Clickity.
Moved. Now in Lowell MA. May possibly have mentioned this before, but I’ve been hot and tired. Gradually walking less on eggshells, though.
Wow. So much anger and bad language.
And so much of it vented directly at OGH, with only a passing swipe at the various commenters. I figure that this is because the Pups assumed at the outset that OGH would be sympathetic to their cause – he’s an old white guy, and I get the general impression that he’s moderately conservative, but not nearly as much so as even the most moderate of Pups. In that way he’s kind of like Scalzi insofar as the extreme faction of the science fiction right assumed that he was far more conservative than he actually is, and would follow them down their rabbit hole of vitriol.
Instead, OGH played it pretty straight with both sides of the Puppy kerfuffle, and that outrages the Pups. He quotes what they actually say, and then links to where they said it. He airs what they consider their private conversations out for the public to see (never mind that those “private” conversations are on public fora on the internet). His primary sin is not being “on side” in their eyes. They feel that OGH should be standing with them, shoulder to shoulder against the terrible evil SJW oppressors, but he isn’t. And to them, that’s betrayal. And as a result, they rage and fume impotently while OGH just goes on reporting the news.
A course in anger management seems to be in order.