(1) DEFENDING SELF-DEFENSE. Larry Correia covers a lot of ground in “Self-Defense Is A Human Right” at Monster Hunter Nation. Here’s a representative excerpt.
Orlando is yet another example that Gun Free Zones are vile, stupid ideas. The intent is to prevent people from getting hurt. The reality is the opposite. Your feelings on the matter don’t change the results. The vast majority of mass shootings have taken place in areas where regular citizens are not allowed to carry guns.
I’ve seen a lot of people over the last few days saying that the “random good guy with a gun” is a myth. That is foolish simply because we have plenty of examples where a mass shooter was derailed or stopped by the intervention of a random person who happened to be near. Just in my home state alone, which is relatively peaceful, with low crime, a low population, and above average police response time in our urban areas, I can think of several instances where a killer was interrupted or stopped entirely by somebody other than the responding officers.
Sometimes these were regular citizens with concealed weapons permits (KSL shooting, mass stabbing at Smiths) and others they were off duty police officers in regular clothing going about their daily lives who responded first (Trolley Square, Salt Lake Library hostage situation) or even a parole officer who just happened to be at a hospital (Cache) for unrelated reasons, and ended up saving lives.
The identity of the responder doesn’t matter, just that there is one as soon as possible. The important thing is how much time elapses between the beginning of the massacre and the violent response, because that is time the killer is allowed to work unimpeded. In some cases the attack was in a gun free zone and the responders had to leave, go to their vehicles, retrieve a weapon, and then return (Pearl Mississippi, and if I recall correctly the Appalachian School of Law).
Traditionally the gay community has trended overwhelmingly statistically liberal in their politics, with a correspondingly low number of gun owners. But being unarmed also makes you easier victims for evil people. This has to change.
I don’t care what your personal beliefs are, or what your lifestyle is, self-defense is a human right. Take advantage of it. Please.
(2) EUROCON HITS MEMBERSHIP LIMIT. Eurocon 2016 Barcelona has sold out four months ahead of the event.
The committee is creating a waiting list where members who no longer want their memberships can arrange an exchange with people who wish to join—email [email protected]
Perhaps unexpectedly, the committee is also publicizing on its Facebook page things that people who don’t have memberships can do at and around the con:
Even if you are not lucky, there are several activities you can enjoy without a membership. Our DEALERS ROOM will be awesome! Bring your wallet and cards, we will make sure you keep on using them. You can also enjoy the EXHIBITIONS (three, but allow us our secrets for the moment), and there will be a number of presentations of books in the LIBRARIES of Barcelona.
Also, our friends at GIGAMESH bookstore will have special activities during the days before Eurocon, and CHRONOS bookstore has several surprises in the oven, too.
For a bit of money, if you have some left after the Dealers Room, there will be THREE PANELS open for the general public at CCCB. We are doing this in order to attract people from outside fandom, but that doesn’t mean these events can’t be enjoyed by true fans who, ahem, forgot to buy their memberships in time.
Last but not least, FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA will project a few movies with panels afterwards featuring some of our celebrities. The tickets will not be expensive, we promise.
(3) CLASS. Showrunner Ness is conflicted — “Doctor Who spin-off will have a gay lead character”: should he take credit, or say that’s how the world should work?
Doctor Who spin-off TV series Class will feature an gay lead character, it has been confirmed.
Celebrated author Patrick Ness is helming upcoming the BBC spin-off series, which features teenagers at a school set in the Whoniverse.
The show has been described as a British take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and Ness revealed this week that like Buffy, one of the main characters will be gay.
After recent events in Orlando, he tweeted: “Been asked if Class will have LGBT representation in it. Will a lead character with a boyfriend who he kisses & sleeps with & loves do?
“We were keeping that secret, but today that secret doesn’t seem very important. #lovewins”
The series stars Mr Selfridge’s Greg Austin, alongside Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah.
Ness added: “Kind of astounded that having a gay lead on Class has been such big news. One day it won’t be, one day soon.
(4) EYE ON SHORT FICTION. At Locus Online, “Rich Horton reviews Short Fiction, May 2016”.
March is science fantasy month at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which I always like. There’s something about mixing SF and fantasy that to my mind brings forth ideas wilder and more colorful than either genre provides alone. The best, which is to say, weirdest example comes from Jason Sanford (not surprisingly). ‘‘Blood Grains Speak Through Memories’’ (3/17) is set in a far future in which the environment is preserved by ‘‘anchors’’, humans enhanced by ‘‘grains’’ on their land. ‘‘Normal’’ humans (called day-fellows) are forced to a nomadic life: if they stay too long anywhere, or interfere with the environment (use too high technology, or cut down a tree), the grains will compel the anchors to kill them. Frere-Jones Roeder is an anchor with doubts, some related to her now dead life-partner, some to an atrocity she committed at the behest of the grains long before, some expressed in her concern for her son, exiled to life among the day-fellows. When a day-fellow girl becomes infected by the grains on her territory, she is finally pushed to take a drastic step. It’s cool and strange stuff, almost gothic at times, thought-provoking and honest.
(5) DROP IN ANYTIME. Jeremy P. Bushnell selects “Five Books Riddled with Holes” for Tor.com.
I have a good friend who suffers from trypophobia, the fear of holes. (If you think you might have this, I don’t recommend Googling it, as right on top of the search results is a rather horrific array of “images for trypophobia.”) When my new novel, The Insides, came out, I had to apologize to this friend—going so far as to offer to personally hand-annotate her copy of the book with trigger warnings—because holes are at the very center of the narrative. The novel features a set of characters who use magic to cut holes into the fabric of time and space, and these holes don’t always behave as they should: sometimes they open or reopen unexpectedly, sometimes weird things come out of them.
(6) THERE’S THAT PESKY TAVERN AGAIN. Guess what shows up in “Juliette Wade takes a ridiculously close look at the worldbuilding of Ancillary Justice” on Ann Leckie’s blog?
Paragraph 1:
The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. It was minus fifteen degrees Celcius and a storm had passed just hours before. The snow stretched smooth in the wan sunrise, only a few tracks leading into a nearby ice-block building. A tavern. Or what passed for a tavern in this town.
I’m going to start here with the word “The.” That little article has an important job, which is to tell you that “body” is something that someone already knows about. It’s as if someone just said “Wow, a body,” and then the story picked up an instant later. As readers, we are seeing it for the first time, but we can sense that observing someone outside the boundaries of the page. Thus, “the” implies the presence of a narrator. The first hint of a world comes with “the snow around it.” Our minds produce a snowy scene.
(7) PLANETARY SOCIETY. In the fifth installment of The Planetary Post, Robert Picardo and Bill Nye take a special tour of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to see the amazing new James Webb Space Telescope.
(8) EXTRA CREDIT. The Planetary Post webpage has additional links of interest.
Juno Orbit Insertion: The Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4-5 (orbit insertion is on the night of July 4 in the Americas, early July 5 in the Eastern Hemisphere). This groundbreaking mission will improve our understanding of the solar system’s beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Watch our CEO Bill Nye demystify the cutting-edge science behind NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Follow Emily Lakdawalla to learn when you will be able to see new Jupiter pictures from its camera, JunoCam.
Tanking It To The Streets: After an epic parade through the streets of Los Angeles, the last unflown space shuttle external tank arrived at the California Science Center to be displayed alongside the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The tank, known as ET-94, had quite an eventful journey—including a rescue at sea.
New Space Policy Podcast: Planetary Radio just launched a monthly podcast that looks underneath the hood of how NASA works. Join Space Policy Director Casey Dreier, Policy Advisor Jason Callahan, and Mat Kaplan in this new series exploring the history, politics, and process of how we get to space. A new episode will be released on the first Friday of every month. Subscribe to Planetary Radio on your favorite listening platform.
SpaceX’s Fantastic Four: Elon Musk and his team have done it again and landed a fourth first-stage booster. This makes three landings by sea and one by land. Be sure to watch the spectacular Falcon 9 landing from the side of the booster.
LightSail™ 2 Test Success: Our citizen-funded LightSail 2 spacecraft recently breezed through a major systems test. The CubeSat successfully deployed its antenna and solar panels, communicated with the ground, and unfurled its 32-square-meter solar sails in a lab setting. Read more in our full recap.
(9) JUST LIKE CLOCKWORK. Tor.com has posted the first chapter of David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars as a free read.
A plantation in a flourishing 18th century British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby, a young woman who is perfectly content growing up in the untamed frontier. But days spent working on complex automata with her father or stalking her brother Michael with her Martian nanny is not the proper behavior of an English lady. That is something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England.
However, when events transpire that threaten her home on Mars, Arabella decides that sometimes doing the right thing is far more important than behaving as expected. She disguises herself as a boy and joins the crew of the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company, where she meets a mysterious captain who is intrigued by her knack with clockwork creations. Now Arabella just has to weather the naval war currently raging between Britain and France, learn how to sail, and deal with a mutinous crew…if she hopes to save her family remaining on Mars.
Arabella of Mars, the debut novel by Hugo-winning author David D. Levine offers adventure, romance, political intrigue, and Napoleon in space—available July 12th from Tor Books. Read chapter one below, and come back all this week for additional excerpts!
(10) POWERED BY BELIEF. Kameron Hurley is a trusted interpreter of the career writer’s inner life — “Real Publishing Talk: Author Expectation and Entitlement”.
As I’ve had more interest in my work, and more opportunities have come my way, I’ve also learned how to say no to things that aren’t furthering my ultimate goal of building my work into its own powerhouse. This is another reason I still hold onto the day job, because it means I don’t have to take every deal or every opportunity. Still, it’s hard to say no. You’re always concerned about opportunities drying up. What if this is the best it ever gets? What if I don’t get an opportunity again?
And then I look at my career and I go, “We are just getting started.”
And it is this, this hope, this rally from the depths of doubt and despair, that keeps me going. You must believe in the future. You must believe you can create it. You must believe that endurance, and hard work, and persistence, will carry you through.
(11) YOON HA LEE. Aidan Moher was pleased he found a reason to persist, as he explains in “Stealing the Future: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee”.
I have a confession to make. When I finished the first chapter of Ninefox Gambit, the debut novel from noted short fiction author Yoon Ha Lee, I thought that was all I would read. It wasn’t clicking with me. I found the world confusing, the action gruesome, and the pace difficult to keep up with. I could recognize that novel’s quality, and the originality that Lee is known for, but other books beckoned, and there was an easy, lazy whisper at the back of my head. “It’s just not for you,” it said. I listened, and moved onto another book.
Yet, here I am reviewing it.
(12) SEASON 10 SHOOTING BEGINS. CinemaBlend tells fans “Doctor Who Is Giving Fans Way More Of An Unexpected Character”.
It was announced today that Bridesmaids star Matt Lucas will reprise Nardole for the opening episode of Doctor Who Season 10, which begins filming in Cardiff on June 20. Reuniting with the Twelfth Doctor and meeting his new companion, Bill (played by Pearl Mackie), for the first time, Lucas’ Nardole will have a recurring role throughout the season. The episode is being written by showrunner Steven Moffat, and it was also revealed that Sherlock actor Stephanie Hyam will have a guest cast role this season.
(13) CYBERPUNK WOMEN. Before moving on to the positives, Geoff Willmetts starts with the shortcomings of “Cyberpunk Women, Feminism And Science Fiction by Carlen Lavigne (book review)” at SF Crowsnest.
I had slight misgivings with the preface to Carlen Lavigne’s book, ‘Cyberpunk Women, Feminism And Science Fiction’ when she starts describing the history of cyberpunk without mentioning Bruce Bethke’s 1983 short story but in the proper introduction, she clearly is well read on the subject and covers the history in the following chapter. She describes cyberpunk as belonging to the 4 C’s: corporation, crime, computers and corporeality (read that as corporations) and the changes to our world today as computer technology takes over our reality and taken to extremes. She also includes cyborgs as a near fifth C. Oddly, she misses out the meaning of ‘punk’. Not the original meaning which meant ‘prostitution’ but that of rebellion as given with the UK punk movement of the 1980s. The reason why ‘cyberpunk’ didn’t really last that long was because, unlike William Gibson’s assertion that people would rebel against computers, is because they embraced the technology instead. Many of you people reading here lived through that period and look what you’re reading this review on. Something else Lavigne misses out on is Gibson admitting that he doesn’t like computers and I suspect those who read his novels probably raised their own eyebrows as to how druggies could program computers when you really need all your attention when writing code.
(14) OUTSIDE OF A WALRUS. Camestros Felapton created a parody of Tran Nguyen’s Spectrum-winning art “Traveling To a Distant Day,” as it appeared on the cover of semiprozine Hugo nominee Uncanny.
Then he shared his analysis: “Hugo Choices 8: Best Semiprozine – Sci-Phi beats No Award” — and for a moment I panicked because I thought that meant it was the only nominee he placed above the event horizon. But no, he means all the nominees deserve to be ranked above No Award.
What Sad Puppies (particularly SP4) has inadvertently demonstrated, is that the lack of authentic conservative voices in modern science fiction lies less with sinister conspiracies or SJW gate-keepers but rather a genuine lack of conservatives writing SF/F of any great depth. Sci-Phi journal hasn’t fixed that problem but at least it is attempting to do something constructive about it.
(15) GAIMAN ON STAGE. In the Baltimore Sun Tim Smith reviews a production of Neverwhere, the fantasy novel and BBC television series by Neil Gaiman adapted for stage by Robert Kauzlaric and performed by the Cohesion Theatre of Baltimore. He says “this theatrical version…is well worth visiting.”
Whatever the influences, Gaiman spins a good, fresh yarn. And Kauzlaric’s adaptation does a mostly smooth job of cramming in characters and incidents, while maintaining a coherent thread.
Likewise, director Brad Norris proves adept at keeping the Cohesion production cohesive, drawing nicely delineated portrayals from the actors (accents are respectably achieved), and keeping the pace taut enough to make a long play feel almost speedy.
Some of the dry wit in the script could use brighter delivery; that may emerge as the run continues. But the violent bits — the story gets pretty dark at times — are well in hand, deftly guided by fight choreographer Jon Rubin….
(16) ABOUT FEYNMAN. In a 2011 TEDX talk called “Leonard Susskind: My Friend Richard Feynman”, Stanford physicist Susskind tells Feynman stories. Sidney Coleman is mentioned starting at about 4:06 and continuing for a minute as Feynman, Susskind, and Coleman, take on some clueless philosophers over the nature of artificial intelligence.
Richard Feynman was a very complex man. He was a man of many, many parts. He was, of course, foremost, a very, very, very great scientist. He was an actor. You saw him act. I also had the good fortune to be in those lectures, up in the balcony. They were fantastic. He was a philosopher; he was a drum player; he was a teacher par excellence. Richard Feynman was also a showman, an enormous showman. He was brash, irreverent — he was full of macho, a kind of macho one-upmanship. He loved intellectual battle. He had a gargantuan ego. But the man had somehow a lot of room at the bottom. And what I mean by that is a lot of room, in my case — I can’t speak for anybody else — but in my case, a lot of room for another big ego. Well, not as big as his, but fairly big. I always felt good with Dick Feynman.
[Thanks to JJ, robinareid, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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Thanks everyone! I knew people here would know.
I was very surprised when he was on Real Time with Bill Mahar a few weeks ago.
I was expecting more craziness from him, but instead he ended up being one of the most rational people on the panel. (It was probably just a momentary phase.)
@Dann
That number is actually the result of a fairly widely discredited study. The 200,000 number, which Correia has regularly quoted was actually stated for a five year period, so it was 40,000 annually. Second, the study had a much too small and regionally limited focus group in which it based its projections. Third, there was no statistical proof applied to the numbers each member of the group cited to the number of times they claimed their carrying a gun prevented a crime from happening. One subject alone claimed his carrying a firearm prevented 500 crimes in a year. 1.3 crimes a day, every day.
Because the NRA has blocked proper studies into gun violence in the US, it makes it almost impossible to find accurate numbers beyond raw numbers of rates of violence and use.
Phantom, like you, I don’t think it is beneficial with a long debate. But I think it’s worth pointing out that this:
is wildly exaggerated.
Sure, there are “reports” of those incidents. But unless someone have verified those reports, investigated what really happened, and evaluated that against some pre-defined definition of what “defensive gun use” really is, your “reports” are anecdotes and not data.
And here’s the catch: Attempts to verify these stories about defensive gun use generally fail – see this study. See also the last paragraphs of this comment, by TYP, from a different pixel scroll.
The whole logic about arming other people so you have something to selfdefend against. It is like the brittish habit of puting the water pipes outside of houses so they are easier to change when they freeze.
Just read about it. That is shocking and appalling.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/the-guardian-view-on-jo-cox-an-attack-on-humanity-idealism-and-democracy
See? Once again the hard-ons for guns people have turned it into self-defense blah blah shit.
Did anyone say ban all guns? No
Did anyone say ban rifles? No
Did anyone say ban handguns? No
Just ban the fucking machine guns. Oh but I like to use it for target practice.
Fine–YOU get to be the only registered owner. You can’t sell it; you have to keep it locked away so it can’t be “stolen” and any crime or murder committed is your fault.
You don’t fucking need a gun that shoots hundreds of rounds unless you’re targeting people.
This morning I remembered A.E. Van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951), which dramatizes the tradeoffs between totalitarianism, revolution, and capitalism.
The motto of the Weapon Shops, repeated several times, is “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free”.
However, these weapons are incapable of being used for anything but self-defense (or for suicide). Because, I guess, Van Vogt wanted to talk about something besides gun control…
Hey, I liked Hex too!
The main difference (well, among many) was that the main characters were unutterably crap at preventing the bad guys from executing their plans, and much more effective at being killed. In at least one case, repeatedly.
the 200,000 defensive uses of guns per year is clearly horseshit. I’d be shocked if it’s 2,000, but of course, there is no federal funding for gun violence research.
Larry’s extract above would have been more realistic if the socially-awkward white male teen had shot her for declining his advances. Who writes “stuff” like that? More to the point, who buys it? I’m hoping that was early in his career and he’s moved on since then.
@Simon Bisson, Camestros Felapton: Just saw it on the news. Shocked and saddened.
@Mike Glyer: I really ought to look up this story one day. It sounds very interesting.
Hex: When we were first watching it (on BBC America or SyFy?), we somehow managed to miss the episode near the end of S2 where the bad guys, um, do, in fact manage to trigger the Apocalypse or something along those lines. So we were kind of confused by the last couple of episodes.
And when Charlie Jade started airing on SyFy, I somehow missed the first episode (the one that explains the entire premise and the different worlds). Which in some ways almost improved the viewing experience because I had to try to piece together the larger story with little or no help.
No responsible society would allow me to own a gun with my current mental health diagnosis. Does this mean I am not deserving of defense in case of an attack?
(Moot point given where I live, where society also makes an attempt to feed and house individuals who can’t do so themselves.)
I’ll note @Dann did not answer on the specifics in my comment on how others with a similar gun as the shooter being inside the nightclub at the time of the shooting would have made things better/less dead/less casualties or how bringing your AWS with you while your out drinking and dancing at nightclubs or other crowded venues actually works safely and smartly. He behaved exactly like The Phantom and every other person I’ve ever engaged with – ignore the hard specific questions and point to debunked studies.
@TYP
The idea of the Second Amendment’s absolute right to a gun stems form Heller, a decision decided in 2008. . . . Please cite where it talks about a right to self defense. I’ll wait.
From Heller:
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home”
“the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the
Second Amendment right. “
In recent days I have been reminded regularly of this conversation between Murbella & Duncan:
That also, is my dream.
Dann: “Primary responsibility” is among other issues, not the same thing as SOLE responsibility. Imagine how my responsibility to feed myself would work i we had no other food growers, no other food makers, no food inspection agencies, no price regulation, and no government programs to help pay for my food if I cannot, and nobody willing or able to feed those who cannot feed themselves. My responsibility for feeding myself comes in at the level of purchasing or growing my own food, and cooking it, and even for all those steps, I can pay someone to do the work for me (or in the case of friends, simply reciprocate or return some other favour at a later time). The ONLY step that nobody else can do for me is to go from food on plate to food in tummy. I can choose to commit other steps myself, but I neither have to nor necessarily wish to.
(this is not even touching on whose responsibility it is to feed children, because I assumed you meant adults.)
As to my responsibility to protect myself, that begins and ends with a handful of basic practices like my legal obligation to wear a seatbelt and the social custom to lock doors and hold onto personal possessions and small children with some care. I can choose to call police, learn self-defense, get a gun, but I am not obligated to, and if I fail to, you are not allowed to blame me for the actions of a criminal.
@Hampus
Several items listed there are tagged to indicate that they are poor examples of the defensive use of guns specifically to make the point I think you are trying to make. People using guns for self defense poorly do not negate the many instances of others that do so properly.
Like I said. Opinions differ. I disagree with that perspective.
@Johan P
Hold on a second. One small problem. I am not Phantom.
@Tasha
I’d recommend a pistol, a thorough CCW course w/license, tons of range time, and abstinence from alcoholic beverages for your theoretic night out. Notice that most of those deal with preparing the deadliest weapon which is between the ears. [An AR-15 is an impractical choice for that situation. That doesn’t mean that it is impractical for every other situation.]
@Lenora
I do not believe that we are as far apart on the issue of personal responsibility as your response implies.
As with other responses, the unpackery involves the ability to deal in nuance and can only be productive with a modicum of civility and faith that everyone is trying to participate with the best of intents. Too many folks on both sides of this issue can’t manage to achieve that low level of discourse. [I’m not suggesting anything about you with that response. Just explaining my reluctance to fully engage in general.]
—
Regards,
Dann
@Bill: That edit you made of TYP’s comment is breathtakingly dishonest:
By taking out the bolded sentence, you falsely indicated TYP was referring to Heller rather than the second amendment. Shame on you.
Well I’m off to have a VNG test. We are going to do fun things with light and air to see if it makes me dizzy while having me hooked up to machines to see what going on. I expect I may pass out at least once during testing and will have a migraine by the end. Wish me luck. I’m praying I don’t go into one of my rare convulsions during the test.
@Dann
There were a number of armed security guards and police with guns which did little good in Orlando. How do you see more patrons with guns having changed the situation in the nightclub in Orlando this past weekend having helped specifically? Keeping in mind number of people and a shooter with an AWS?
Dann, I’m sorry about that.
Dear Dann,
Your night out, armed and ready and watchful for theoretical attackers, sounds like the least relaxing night out ever. I’d rather stay home and watch a movie.
It’s like I told someone who was convinced that terrorists were going to attack Toronto (where I lived at the time): “dude, if I live my life avoiding public places in fear of a possible attack, the terrorists have already won.”
The thing about that list, Dann, is that there’s no way to know how many of the items on it are reliable. We do know unreliable items got onto the list. We don’t know how many. What I believe (with, I think, good foundation) is that weapons manufacturers have beacoup resources with which to put together a reliable list, and would do so if it served their interests. And yet they don’t. The likeliest reason is that a reliable list wouldn’t serve their interests, which suggests to me a reliable list wouldn’t be quite so big. It might even be quite small.
@Dawn Incognito: For a safe, relaxing night out, make sure your designated driver is also your designated shooter. See? Easy-peasy!
@Arkansawyer
I believe you confused Bill and Dann – which is somewhat understandable.
@Bill
How about you quote what I wrote, and not the decision I’d been referring to as the radicalism that invented this right, from whole cloth, in the last few decades?
You know how we might be able to get better data on gun use and safety? Have the CDC do a study on…OH WAIT THEY CAN’T.
If the ammosexuals hadn’t barred that, they might have some ground to stand on. The fact that they deliberately tried to suppress research is…pretty incriminating in and of itself.
(Also, the blah blah freedom blah blah basic right argument: like, I have not noticed Canada becoming a pit of tyranny lately.)
@TYP: Nope. The dishonesty in this case is all Bill’s. Scroll up and you’ll see he was the one who dishonestly quoted you.
Read a great review by Liz Bourke (posted at tor.com) about Claire Humphrey’s _Spells of Blood and Kin_ that sent me posthaste to buy it:
http://www.tor.com/2016/06/16/book-reviews-spells-of-blood-and-kin-by-claire-humphrey-review/
@Dawn Incognito: Right. It reminds me a lot of the argument that “it’s just common sense” that women can’t go out alone or dress in ways that conservatives don’t approve of or get a little tipsy at parties. In other words, anyone who wants to relax and have a little fun is to blame if anything happens.
In *other* other words, victim blaming.
Ah, my reaction in gym when kick off landed the football perfectly in my hands. Happily for me, everyone else was even more surprised and I got a surprising distance before someone got to me. In the right direction, even!
When I had the home invader, my witty banter only paused during the second or two immediately after the head trauma.
(1) I always find it instructive to look at the people who respond to a mass shooting with “actually, everyone needs to own a gun!” and see what, if any, financial benefits these people would stand to gain from increased gun sales, and would likely lose from increased gun restrictions. People like . . . NRA staff. Politicians bribed by the NRA. Gun store owners.
Very, very instructive.
Nope.
I read The Aeronaut’s Windlass back when it first came out, and I was so disappointed in the writing quality that I almost didn’t bother finishing it. (And I’m someone who really loves the Dresden Files.) The book is bloated and tedious, the characters are consistently cardboard, and the plot is so incredibly cliched that anyone paying the slightest shred of attention should be able to predict most if not all of the plot points well before they occur. The cats at least didn’t bore me, not to the same extent that everything else did (though that might just have been because I’m a huge cat lover), but they definitely don’t elevate this to anything close to a Hugo-worthy book. I won’t even be picking up the sequel, and I never thought I’d say that about a Butcher book.
On to books!
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer: I’m going to echo everything @Standback said upthread (with the caveat that I can’t comment on audiobook quality). This is a complex, fascinating, highly entertaining read, and I’m really excited for Book 2. (Which I could have sworn was out later this year, but is now showing as Feb. 2017, which vexes me.) If you love complex political drama, this will almost certainly be your cup of tea. It is not a quick read, because Palmer likes to throw you in the deep end of a very unfamiliar society peopled by a very large cast (without any sort of appendix). Based on the quality of this book, I’m really excited to see what Palmer produces in the future. Highly, highly recommended. (Ada Palmer also looks to be Campbell eligible, and she’s definitely on my shortlist.)
Join by Steve Toutonghi: In a future wracked by the effects of climate change, technology has been developed that allows humans to psychically “Join” with other humans to create a new type of entity (a single entity with multiple bodies, now called “drives”) with a chance at effective immortality. This is a debut, and a very worthwhile one—a dash of Sense8, a dash of Ancillary Justice, but a copy of neither. Our main characters are all Joins, which leads to a very interesting aesthetic, and the story moves at a good pace. Not sure if there will be a sequel, but I’ll definitely pick up Toutonghi’s follow-up.
The Broken Hours by Jacqueline Baker: A man with a tragic past becomes a personal assistant to H.P. Lovecraft. This sounded so good, and it started out so well, but really fizzled by the end. I was looking for cosmic horror, not pure psychological drama, and I thought the pacing (which worked well at the beginning at creating a sense of creeping dread) just became a slow slog by the end.
The Raft by Fred Strydom: This is kind of hard to describe. Sometime in the future, everyone on earth simultaneously loses their memories. We follow a father, trapped on a beach commune and desperate to find his lost son, as he undergoes a series of strange adventures. That description doesn’t really do justice to the story, which unfolds like a puzzle: many tangents that turn out not to be tangents, questions about what is and is not real. Not for everybody, but if you’re looking for an original and complex plot with some chewy themes, you might want to pick this up.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham-Jones: A coming-of-age story about a boy growing up in a family of poverty-stricken, itinerant werewolves. This was a quick and very enjoyable read, though it is definitely not for the faint at heart. It’s very much a story about the cyclical nature of poverty, how family “curses” proliferate from generation to generation, how petty horrors snowball into unspeakable yet silent tragedies.
Speaking of books, I have an odd request that I’m hoping someone can help out with.
I’m thinking about writing a superhero novel. Origin story, career highlights, clandestine romantic relationships, and so forth. Thing is, I want to do it in the form of a trashy tell-all memoir that may have been ghostwritten (or at least needed some help to turn the hero’s anecdotes into something publishable).
The problem is, I don’t read a lot of memoirs, trashy or otherwise, and I have no great desire to plunge in and read a whole lot of them to get a feel for the form. Thus, I’m looking for recommendations – ideally examples that I can pick up cheap as physical objects, and hopefully dealing with people who don’t come across as completely revolting. Short, somewhat cheesy, and easy-to-find are good qualities.
@Rev Bob.: Not exactly what you’re looking for, but this was the first thing that popped into my mind. Written like a pop self-help book for superheroes instead…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Notebooks_of_Dr._Brain
Emma: Thanks for all the book feedback!
@Rev. Bob
Sounds like a fun project! Not my type of read so no personal recommendations but when I popped Trashy Memoirs into DuckDuckGo this was one of the first hits:
http://the-toast.net/2015/12/17/please-recommend-your-favorite-trashy-memoirs/#idc-cover
Looks like the blogger’s recs and three pages of comments. Hope it helps!
Soon Lee: Aye, it was a coo. No’ a bull, even, a lass, an actual coo. I liked everything else about it a lot, and bought the book afterwards. I love Highland cattle so much that I couldn’t see one as evil, even when it was out of focus or in shadow. Grouchy at best, only if defending their young. One of my favorite things about Scotland was seeing them everywhere.
Xtifr: The 60’s/70’s hippies who laid the foundations were heavily into drugs. Steve Jobs gave LSD much credit, and BSD Unix (ancestor of Linux and Android) was written by guys who did a lot of LSD and pot. Then came 80’s cocaine. Today it’s back to pot and ecstasy. And caffeine is certainly a drug. So anyone who thinks programming didn’t involve drugs is so misinformed I’m not sure they should be reviewing that book. Even the old IBM shirt and tie guys had three-martini lunches and smoked like chimneys. Add to that the punk mistake and no. This is not the person to review this book. I’d like a second opinion.
Something of interest for those who fondly remember “Quantum Leap”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ScMs6_I8s
Colbert’s continuing geekiness is a delight. One of us!
@Bill: taking your quote by itself (rather than as the bogus answer it’s been shown to be): that’s a clear demonstration of what happens when a party owned by NRA controls who sits on the Supreme Court. The statement is laughable given that the 2nd Amendment is the only part of the Bill of Rights that starts with an explanation of why it’s necessary; a sane court would not have decoupled the explanation from the rule and would have noticed that we no longer have hostile borders. The writeup stands right next to the 2000 election decision writeup, which a legal acquaintance called the most result-oriented reasoning he’d ever seen.
@Greg Hullender: sorry I wasn’t clear. I was wondering not about the cost of the fuel per se, but the cost of the reduced payload from having to reserve the last and most effective part (because it’s not lifting other first-stage fuel) of the first-stage fuel for re-entry. But I hadn’t thought about the stage being essentially an ultra-fragile tree (loves compression, hates deflection).
@Darren: I had not followed that thread; interesting comment. However, ISTM that it’s not necessarily relevant when discussing a system rather than an individual flight; wouldn’t you still have to reduce the maximum payload, and therefore reduce everything to be sure of not exceeding the limit? OTOH, I can see it depends on the uses of the reusable booster; if it’s mostly resupply missions, having to do N+1 missions could win if the reusable booster lowered the cost (including extra planning hours, launch-pad refurb and other wear and tear, …) to N/(N+1) of the cost of a throwaway mission.
Rev. Bob: James Spada’s Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept Secrets was an enjoyable trashy tell-all.
@lurkertype: the “B” in BSD Unix stands for Berkeley. I think that says enough right there. 😀
(Calling BSD the “ancestor” of Linux/Android (Android is Linux), is a bit misleading, but all things considered, I’ll allow it. Writing this from my Debian GNU/Linux desktop system. With a BSD VM in the background.)
@TYP, Arkansawyer
Yes, the Second Amendment does not explicitly refer to self defense. Why should it? It lists the right — to keep and bear arms. It also lists one (of several) reasons the right exists — so that citizens can be a part of a militia. It does not list several other reasons the right exists; e.g., hunting, target shooting, other sports, and self defense. Other enumerated rights also do not list all the reasons they exist. The Freedom of Press exists so people can criticize their government, write fiction, convey news, etc. No one would rationally say that since it doesn’t mention the internet, the freedom to make comments on a blog post is not protected.
But I reject that it was dishonest to quote Heller in response. You can say that the 2A doesn’t mean I have a right to use a gun in self defense, and I can say it does. But it doesn’t matter what either of us think on the matter, because the Supreme Court is who gets to decide, and they have said that it does. Heller is how we know what the 2A means. I quoted Heller because it refutes TYP’s statements about the 2A.
It’s a new and radical legal doctrine with little support before the the last thirty years.
If you had read Heller, you would have seen the many instances the Court found, from English Common Law, through the Founding Era, through the 19th century and on up until modern times where the 2A was widely understood to protect the right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense (and you are the ones being dishonest by asserting otherwise). It is not new and radical. It is settled law. The belief that the 2A is only meaningful in the context of an organized militia is the new (since Miller) and radical interpretation.
Rev. Bob: The first example meeting your criteria that comes to mind is Robert Evans’s The Kid Stays in the Picture. The audio book version is especially cheesy.
@Bill
If your bloviating extended to the dissents in Heller, and the dissents in a whole scad of gun cases in the last few decades, you’ll see the arguments that Heller twists these views of the common law to and past the breaking point. You’re also someone whose arguments required you to distort the quote you were responding to, which says something about your confidence in them.
But then, your ability to then say that the law is whatever the Supreme Court says it is, and then a paragraph latter say it’s settled law beyond dispute says something. It provides you with your argument that an assault rifle in every house Makes America Great Again, so really, why should you care? (I’m anticipating your argument about how you really hate Trump, but your voting for him, but let us not doubt that you really hate him, you’re just voting for Trump because trans* bathrooms.)
We regulate guns. We always have, whether it’s Militia Acts of 1791, or Firearms Acts of 1934 or what have you. Reversing that settled policy is radical. Just as reacting in a mass shooting is a good deal more complicated than your time playing Call of Duty lead you to believe.
@lurkertype
Who’s a lovely Highland Coo?
Who’s a widdle cutie Great Beastie of London?
Yes, you are.
Yes, you are!
>> There was armed security, but that’s clearly not enough. What we need is untrained civilians packing heat in crowded nightclubs.>>
…and drinking.
Surprisingly good piece by Michael Fumento on the legend of the Good Guy With a Gun and the likelihood that at many mass shootings, gun-wielders have been present and decided not to engage because, shit, that’s some scary business.
@Camestros – Was that not an amazing fly!? And it was so tiny that I couldn’t even see that the eyes were like that by looking!
100mm macro lens is a thing of glory.
@ursula I liked those insect shots you showed on twitter. I’ve not managed to get many insects with my new macro lens as yet, though…
@Kurt Busiek
Yeah. Because guns and alcohol, now there’s a great combination. Almost as good as guns and children–remember when the gun enthusiasts’ response to Sandy Hook was “arm the teachers”?
We had a mass shooting at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville about eight years back. One of the church members had a concealed carry permit and was carrying. Of course he couldn’t get a clear shot. Fortunately he was clearheaded enough to refrain from getting the gun out. But at that point he couldn’t even help tackle the shooter because he was handicapped with a gun he couldn’t use, but also couldn’t bring near enough for the shooter to grab.
Fortunately most of the Unitarians hadn’t brought guns to church so there were plenty of people who *could* grab the shooter.
Re: Highland coo — I’ve heard (and not sure if it’s true–it was from an irate American-who-did-internship-in-Britain farmer) that the reason they used a cow was because they couldn’t get a domestic boar with full tusks, because every farmer has ’em removed long before the boar gets full grown. Even if you had an enormously good-natured boar that would be willing to wear prosthetic tusks (which is not at all a given) they apparently look hopelessly fake and also involve a lot more time with one’s hands in a pig’s mouth than is considered wise by members of the veterinary profession. So they gave up early on attempts to do the Beast as a boar and went with…coo.
Rev. Bob – These memoirs have been pretty popular at our library: Leah Remini’s Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, Felicia Day’s Your Always Weird On The Internet, Alan Cumming’s Not My Father’s Son, Everybody’s Got Something by Robin Roberts, Yes Please by Amy Poehler, pretty much any of the Holly Madison or David Sedaris books, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You by Steven Tyler, Boys in the Trees by Carly Simon, M Train by Patti Smith, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, When Breath Becomes Hair by Paul Kalanithi, Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling, Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die by Willy Nelson.
That’s a lot, I know. The danger of asking book-related questions in front of someone who is currently in Reader’s Advisory mode. I’ll let you decide which ones might be trashy. As for price, might I suggest visiting your local library? 🙂