(1) THE WAY TO LIVE IN FANDOM. In “A few post-Wiscon thoughts on being an ally” Sigrid Ellis covers several topics, and this segment speaks to fans far beyond the environs of WisCon.
Here’s the thing: if the fates are kind, all of us will one day be old in fandom. Two, three, four generations will pile in after us, building on what we have fostered. We, too, will be pushed to the margins and passed by.
Yet my heart and head are with the youth. With the future. I cannot bring myself to condemn change that spreads power among more people. I cannot argue against hearing more people tell their own stories. I cannot stand against representation, inclusion.
And yet, and yet, and yet …
What I want, what a crave, is for people to LISTEN to each other. To empathize. I want the young’ns to thank those who came before for their victories, however incremental. I want the founders and established folks to respect the anger and impatient demands for change. I want the next generation to not throw out everything just because it was done before. I want the previous generation to avoid “because we always do it this way” as a reason.
When I hear some Old Fart say something dismissive and intolerant, I wince. I want to prevent my respected elders from showing their ass in public, I want to cover for them, I want to protect them from being overheard.
When I hear some Young Turk calling to burn it all to the ground and start again, I wince. I want to run interference, I want to soften their demands, I want to compromise and meet them halfway.
(2) WHAT IT’S ABOUT. In a piece for Bloomberg, “’Star Wars’ Is Really About Feminism. And Jefferson. And Jesus”, Cass Sunstein has excerpts from his book The World According to Star Wars.
….Like a great novel or poem, Star Wars doesn’t tell you what to think. You can understand it in different, even contradictory ways. Here are six of those ways.
Feminism
From the feminist point of view, is Star Wars awful and kind of embarrassing, or actually terrific and inspiring? No one can doubt that “The Force Awakens” strikes a strong blow for sex equality: Rey is the unambiguous hero (the new Luke!), and she gets to kick some Dark Side butt. Just look at the expression on her face when she has a go at Kylo Ren.
By contrast, the original trilogy and the prequels are easily taken as male fantasies about both men and women. The tough guys? The guys. When you feel the Force, you get stronger, and you get to choke people, and you can shoot or kill them, preferably with a lightsaber (which looks, well, more than a little phallic — the longer, the better).
But there’s another view. Leia is the leader of the rebellion. She’s a terrific fighter, and she knows what she’s doing. She’s brave, and she’s tough, and she’s good with a gun. By contrast, the men are a bit clueless. She does wear a skimpy costume, and she gets enslaved, kind of, by Jabba the Hutt. But isn’t everything redeemed, because she gets to strangle her captor with the very chain with which he bound her? Isn’t that the real redemption scene in the series?
(3) SISMAN OBIT. Publisher and novelist Robyn Sisman (1955-2016) died May 20 of cancer reports The Bookseller.
She began her career in publishing at Oxford University Press where she worked her way up to become an editor.
She later became an editorial director at J M Dent and created two publishing imprints – Everyman Fiction, a list of contemporary fiction; and a classic crime line, which included writers such as Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis), Margery Allingham, and Kingsley Amis.
Malcolm Edwards believes she commissioned the first Interzone anthology at Dent.
Sisman then joined Hutchinson, part of the Random House group, via a stint at the newly established UK arm of Simon & Schuster.
She oversaw publication of Robert Harris’ wartime novel Fatherland, but also such books as Kim Newman’s The Night Mayor and Brian Stableford’s Empire of Fear brought to her attention by an sf advisor.
Sisman’s career as a writer began with her debut novel, Special Relationship, published in 1995 by Heinemann. She wrote five other romantic comedies, Just Friends (Penguin), Perfect Strangers (Penguin), Weekend in Paris (Penguin), A Hollywood Ending (Orion) and The Perfect Couple? (Orion).
She was married to author Adam Sisman.
(4) TOP DRONE. I don’t know what Luke will go shooting womp-rats with now – “The U.S. Air Force May Have Just Built Its Last Fighter Jet” reports The Daily Beast.
In the direst scenario, Air Force fighters simply won’t survive over enemy territory long enough to make any difference during a major war. In that case, the penetrating counterair system, or PCA, might not be a fighter jet as we currently understand it.
Instead, it could be a radar-evading drone whose main job is to slip undetected into enemy air space and use sophisticated sensors to detect enemy planes—and then pass that targeting data via satellite back to other U.S. forces. “A node in the network,” is how the strategy document describes the penetrating system’s main job.
The Air Force could start work on the penetrating counterair system in 2017, according to the new air-superiority plan. The document proposes that this possible stealth drone could team up with an “arsenal plane”—an old bomber or transport plane modified to carry potentially hundreds of long-range missiles
(5) AERIAL SNACKAGE. Richard Foss was up early to guest on a TV show called Food: Fact or Fiction and wrote a great post about his experiences.
One segment was about the history of food aboard commercial aircraft, the other about food in space, and each had their humorous moments. As part of one I had to eat some airline peanuts, and unfortunately they had brought the sweet kind that I detest. I managed to fake enjoyment when the camera was on, but must have made an interesting face as soon as it stopped, because the cameraman asked if I was choking. When I told him the situation, he complimented me on my acting, because he had thought I loved peanuts as long as the camera was on. The annoying part? They had to shoot the scene three times, so I ate a whole bag of the nasty things.
(6) UP THE AMAZON. John Scalzi delivered “A Tweet Spree on Amazon Authors and Envy” — 17 tweets and a kitten picture. Here’s number 6.
6. I've had single digit Amazon Author rankings in SF/F; I've been off the list of 100 entirely. As far as I can see, no impact on sales.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) June 7, 2016
(7) AUGUST BRADBURY SHINDIG. Steven Paul Leiva signal boosted a call for submissions for this summer’s Ray Bradbury Read in LA.
On August 22, 2016, in celebration of the ninety-sixth anniversary of the birth of American and Angeleno literary great Ray Bradbury, the Ray Bradbury Read will take place in downtown Los Angeles from twelve noon to three p.m.
The Ray Bradbury Read will feature three hours of short readings from the works of Ray Bradbury; from his short stories, novels, poems, and essays…
The readers of Bradbury’s work will be members of the public selected by the process described below. There will also be guest celebrity readers….
To be considered as a reader you must submit a proposal for a reading of a five-minute-or-under excerpt from one of Bradbury’s many works. The excerpt can come from any of Ray’s published prose and verse writings and should have a central theme, coherence, and completeness about it. More than one excerpt or poem can be read, as long as their reading time does not exceed five minutes. Excerpts from plays and screenplays will not be accepted.
(8) WALK THROUGH MGM. Marc Scott Zicree, Mr. Sci-Fi, visits the former MGM, where Twilight Zone was shot.
(9) DO ANYTHING ELSE IF YOU CAN. William F. Nolan wrote on Facebook:
A major misconception: that all famous, successful writers find it easy to bring in vast amounts of money and have always enjoyed big bucks, right from the start of their fabled careers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Stephen King had his phone cut off for non-payment and had to use a gas station phone to receive calls while sweating for low pay in an industrial laundry. Ray Bradbury lived on tomato soup for years as his stories were rejected. Charles Beaumont had to hock his typewriter for food. Richard Matheson nearly starved trying to live on random, penny-a-word sales. Just a few examples from many. It takes talent, hard work and a LOT of years to “make it big” as a writer. And most writers never do. A tough game, people. Very, very tough indeed. Write if you must — but ONLY if you must.
(10) NOT A STRANGER. ScienceFiction.com shares “Strange Opinion: Bob Gale Of ‘Back To The Future’ Is Not Happy About ‘Doctor Strange’”.
In a recent interview with MoviePilot, Bob Gale let his opinion be known about Marvel’s upcoming ‘Doctor Strange’ movie, a film that he is not looking forward to. While you might think “Who the hell is Bob Gale?” and “Why does his opinion matter on this?” let me tell you, I had similar thoughts. I knew he was a writer/producer on the ‘Back to the Future‘ movies back in the 80?s (and has done little else since, except for ‘Back to the Future’ video games and promos, and the ride at Universal Studios), and I thought it was very strange that years later the man would pop up again with comments on a Marvel movie. However, Bob Gale having an opinion on the matter is not as strange as I originally thought, as it turns out that back in the 80s (at the height of his relevancy) the man wrote a screenplay for ‘Doctor Strange,’ which unfortunately never got made. Apparently Bob Gale is a huge ‘Doctor Strange’ fan and an expert on the character, which is why he tried to get his movie made, and also why he feels so strongly about Marvel’s upcoming film featuring the character.
Of course I’d listen to Bob Gale’s opinion. He majored in film at USC. More important, that’s how he happened to take me (a fellow USC student) to the first LASFS event I ever attended, the club’s 1970 anniversary dinner, where Harlan Ellison read aloud “Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.” He can say anything he likes about Doctor Strange as far as I’m concerned. 😉
(11) FANTASY TOURISM. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has “Rough Guides to Getting Around Single-Climate Planets”.
Ursa Beta Minor (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams) Introduction: The Pleasure Planet Ursa Beta Minor was designed, manufactured, and terraformed to be the ultimate vacation destination. The planet is comprised completely of warm oceans and thin strips of beach front. It is always Saturday afternoon, and the bars are always open. In fact, as you read this, you’re wondering why anyone would travel to any other single-climate planet, and frankly we have to agree with you.
Where to Go: Aside from the beaches and the bars, there is only one other destination: Light City, the capital city. While in Light City, visit the headquarters of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which will be very disappointing, but afterwards you can stroll down Life Boulevard and walk past the shops that literally no one is wealthy enough to afford.
Getting There and Getting Around: You’ll need a ship equipped with some sort of Infinite Improbability Drive, or at least a Bistromatic Drive. Once in orbit, you can only arrive by air, as the owners really want you to see Light City from up there, or else the whole trip is a waste.
(12) APPERTAIN YOURSELF A LIBATION. Stoic Cynic in a comment:
Apropos of nothing in this thread (yet), and with apologies to Johnny Mandel, Mike Altman, the cast of MASH, and various posters toasting world peace:
Through early morning fog I see
Another troll post on the screen
Their words that are meant to rile me
I realize and I can seeThat scrolling past is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I pleaseGames of trolls are a loss to play
Not gonna feed it today
That losing card I’ll some day lay
But right now though I have to sayThat scrolling past is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I pleaseTheir words are time we’ll not see again
It doesn’t hurt when it begins
But engage and get all drawn in
The loss grows stronger, watch it grinScrolling past is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I pleaseSea Lions once demanded me
To answer questions they thought key
Is it to be, or not to be?
And I replied, oh why ask me?Scrolling past is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I pleaseAnd you can do the same thing
If you please
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Stoic Cynic, and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
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::ticky::
::talky::
(1) THE WAY TO LIVE IN FANDOM.
The Generation Gap lives on! Isn’t that the typical main sequence of growing up, from the young invincible know-it-all to the elder’s sense of resignation & cynicism? We could change it, if only we could change human nature.
(I guess this opinion places me firmly in the Old Fart camp.)
(12) APPERTAIN YOURSELF A LIBATION.
Nice one Stoic Cynic!
What?
So near, and yet so far.
Fifth! For real!
Second fifth!
(11) Tsk tsk to B&N for getting their Hitchhiker’s trivia mixed up! It’s Ursa Minor Beta, not Ursa Beta Minor. That’s like calling them Barnes Noble And.
(Oh, and “Bistromathic” not “…matic”. Seeing as it involves mathematics.)
(1) THE WAY TO LIVE IN FANDOM.
I don’t always click and read all the pieces linked in a Scroll. Sometimes Mike’s excerpts are the best (or the only necessary) part of a piece. But this one is well worth reading in its entirety.
(12) Stoic Cynic, nice one!
Second fifth!
Fifth schmifth.
4) This makes the amount of money being spent on the F-35 even more ridiculous.
The subsidiary that sells books written in reverse Polish?
Posts scroll in at the fifth,
Pixels scroll in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I tick the box of my fifth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
@James Moar: “The subsidiary that sells books written in reverse Polish?”
Not to be confused with Barns & Noble, which specializes in farm buildings and inert gases.
So… downtime from jetlag – but I got three books read on the plane! Including one by our very own Busiek – the first volume of Autumnlands.
Currently now reading China Miéville’s Three Moments of an Explosion on my brand new Kindle Paperwhite (it was bought for me, taking the choice out of my hands, but I’m just glad to have an ereader right now as I really can’t continue to travel with paper books.)
4) Drone
With all of these flying drones, I’m wondering when we’re going to be designing O.G.R.E’s…(which as I recall evolved from drone tanks to fully autonomous tanks)
I knew there was a Japanese movie, a melodrama, called ‘Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World’, but until today I confess I didn’t know there was a Harlan Ellison book called ‘The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World’.
There’s also a Neon Genesis Evangelion episode called “The Beast that shouted ‘ai’ at the Heart of the World” (where ‘ai’ reads ambiguously as Japanese for ‘love’ or English ‘I’)
Paul only if we go straight to Continental Siege Aircraft, aka Ogre Magi.
@alexvdl: only if you think this blue-sky idea will actually happen. Remember back in 2000, when we were saying “Where’s my flying car?”
Amazon Author Rankings: Obvious that it means nothing. Heinlein isn’t in the top 100, let alone the top 10. Nary a whisper of Asimov, or Leinster, or McCaffrey or Merrill or Russ or ….
I’m sure it changes every day, but I was a bit put off by how many names I wasn’t familiar with. Not haven’t read – have never heard of.
I thought this was supposed to be MY genre!
On the other hand (borrowing a suggestion from #1): it is a good way to find authors I’ve never heard of. I guess it really is time to throw away those really old, worn out (comfortable and comforting and filled with oh so many memories) slippers and buy a pair of Crocs (brand name chosen deliberately)….
@Chip Hitchcock,
I don’t just think it’ll happen, but believe it’s inevitable. Drones are cheaper, less complex, and have the added bonus of not sending people into harm’s way.
So I was kind of paralysed by indecision today when trying to decide what to tackle reading next… when V.E. Schwab’s This Savage Song automagically appeared on my Kindle.
Huzzah for pre-orders is what I say.
Today I’m going to starve people at crossroads or just spread manure, because my faminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.
@Rob_matic,
Wait, what? That’s not supposed to be released until 5 JULY!
Ooh, contributing editor credit! Thanks to OGH.
(4) So we’ll have mobile aerial platforms shooting broadsides of missiles at distant targets identified by forward sensor drones. We could fly these “battleplanes” in a kind of 3D version of the old Napoleonic war line-of-battle – a net or wall, perhaps.
Give the General in charge a telepathic cat, and you’re in business!
Not according to the publisher’s website.
Present!
Reading: I finished revisiting Katherine Kurtz’ Camber of Culdi trilogy for the first time in probably 30 years and quite enjoyed them. Next up: I couldn’t quite fit Aurora into my schedule, so I’m substituting Orphans of the Sky. After that, I think Hugo-nominated novellas.
::tickly::
psssttt…..::ticky::
STAR WARS is about blowing things up and selling tons of plastic junky toys. It hasn’t been about anything else for over 20 years.
Just finished Victor Lavalle’s novella, The Ballad of Black Tom. This belongs to the same sub-[sub?]-genre as Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country–the Lovecraftian mythos as reimagined through the lens of characters and/or writers of color. This one is set in New York in 1924. Unfortunately (and this is probably due to the fact that it’s a novella and the plot has to move along) the cultural aspects are not so deeply explored. (Although there is one incident in particular that, sadly, could have been ripped out of today’s headlines.) It’s also more explicitly Lovecraftian–Cthulhu is namechecked and described.
The story suffers, in my view, from an unnecessary POV shift about halfway through. It would have made for a tighter focus and characterization if the author had stuck to the original POV character throughout, although as the story unfolded, that would have resulted in going to some pretty dark places. This one would also have been better at a greater length, I think. As it is, it’s okay, but nowhere near the fantastic Lovecraft Country. (I think I’ve decided that the latter book will be my 2016 benchmark.)
[x-posted to 2016 Recommended List]
[whoops forgot ticky]
Star Wars was originally an attempt to re-do Flash Gordon.
When King Features nixed that – we got a ton of toys and a record album by Queen.
Why do I keep forgetting that, with rare exception, film and television are burdened with the economic imperative of having to appeal to the least common denominator?
Will we ever finally understand that “dumbing down” science fiction almost always results in dumb science fiction?
Steve: I know the initial STAR WARS film was a homage to the old serials. What it became is quite something else. I did look it up on Google, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the merchandising revenue has overtaken the films’ revenue.
I should have phrased: “I didn’t look it up”.
Start Wars has been dumbed down so that no one film is going to be any better than any other.
@Robert: I saw the original in first release. I was as wowed as anybody else.
But that was 39 years ago and my opinion has (I believe justifiably) changed.
Have we done Pixel in God’s Scroll yet? Probably.
Lucifer’s Pixel?
The Scrolling Hand?
Beowulf’s Pixels?
Go Scroll the Pixels?
@Bonnie McDaniel
I think I liked it a bit better than you did–I gave it four stars in my review on Rocket Stack Rank.
My biggest problem with it was that it was so dark that it left us with no one to root for except Cthulhu.
alexvdl wrote: “I don’t just think it’ll happen, but believe it’s inevitable. Drones are cheaper, less complex, and have the added bonus of not sending people into harm’s way.”
The people on the receiving end may beg to disagree.
My own thought is that single-shot micro-drones are probably already under development. These would be about the size, and similar in appearance to, large dragonflies. The body would be a carbon-fiber firing tube, and its ammo would be something like the mini-rockets fired by the old Gyrojet pistols. Twin lenses at the front (as in cellphone cameras) provide the dragonfly’s eyes, sending a stereoscopic view back to the remote operator.
The rotors would be on wings that would swing out and deploy from its pre-flight configuration. Deployment would be a larger drone air-dropping a swarm of the dragonflies from higher up. After deploying into flying configuration, the swarm would approach a target as a group, until close enough to pick out individuals on the ground.
At that point, individual operators take over each dragonfly, and the hunt for specific targets is on. With facial recognition capability (the mother drone flying above, linked to the dragonflies, would provide the processing power), one particular individual could be targeted for assassination.
One target, one bullet. Flying snipers. No more (or at least limited) collateral damage. A dragonfly could take out the best man, instead of an entire wedding party.
A power source for the rotors and electronics would be the greatest weight obstacle to actual development, I think.
All this is my own blue-skying. Asking the next question: “After today’s drones, what?” But it seems plausible enough to my own mind that I’d be surprised to find out something like this isn’t already being worked on.
Would you like toys with your big crappy summer blockbuster film?
I’ll let the master himself explain the problem with Ursa Minor Beta:
“Ursa Minor Beta is certainly the most appalling places in the Universe. Though it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of the magazine Playbeing headlined an article with the words ‘When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life’, the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.
Playbeing, a curious journal devoted in roughly equal parts to galactic politics, rock music, and gynaecology has much to answer for in this respect.”
Greg Hullender:
I would consider that a bigger problem than you do, apparently.
(6) UP THE AMAZON
John Scalzi can shrug and say he doesn’t notice any difference in earnings between being in the top 10 or not even being in the top 100, but that’s because he’s not contemplating the possibility of never even breaking into the top 10,000. I can assure you that it does represent quite a difference in earnings.
Re new fighter jets: When you google for f-35 clusterfuck you get over 50,000 hits. F-35 boondoggle gets close to 50,000. Read a few of those to see just how well the latest jet fighter is going.
(ETA, if you read just one article, this recentish one is a reasonably good choice.)
“The people on the receiving end may beg to disagree.”
Sure. But that’s a REMF thing. In terms of rubber to the road, you’re worried about losing the people you spent thousands/hundreds of thousands training vice… wedding. Just as many people can be killed by drone as by manned jet, but drones wouldn’t involve loss of US lives.
Which, unfortunately, is what most hawks care about.
Fun game: ask an American how many people died as a result of the Iraq War, see if the total is actually a reasonable estimate of the total or just Coalition losses.
Doc Strange? I liked the artwork. The stories are always “pull the rabbit out of the hat”, and Doc Strange would win. For me, that was not substance. Doc Strange had to find out which wand to wave or what incantation to say, and do it in ten pages.