Pixel Scroll 7/21/21 No Gods Were Stalked In the Making Of This Scroll Title

(1) HAUNTED. At Horrified: The British Horror Website, Sarah Jackson discusses the objects that become haunted in classic ghost stories written by women: “Haunted objects in women’s weird fiction”.

Like hermit crabs, ghosts and demonic forces are extremely adaptable when it comes to finding a new home. Especially fond of portraits, mirrors, and dolls, they have also been known to inhabit more mundane items. A saucepan. A fur boa. A pair of gloves. A snuff box.

Household items charged with supernatural power are a common motif in the large body of weird fiction written by British women in the first half of the twentieth century. Sometimes the effect is darkly comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes terrifying. As Melissa Edmundson notes in her introduction to Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 (Handheld Press, Melissa Edmundson, 2019) many of these haunted objects are ‘traditionally feminine’, and almost all have some connection to women’s changing roles and complicated relationship with domesticity and sexuality in this period.

(2) HE’LL RETIRE THE SERIES WITH THE RECORD. Stephen Jones reminded Andrew Porter about ending his Best New Horror anthology series in 2022. He wrote:

“I quietly announced it nearly two years ago.

“It was always the plan that when — or if! — I ever reached volume #31 (one more volume than THE PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES) then I would probably retire it. It’s an annual anthology that now takes nearly two years to compile!

“The final volume (in this format at least) will be published by PS Publishing towards the end of the year.

“It will hopefully set the record for the longest-running horror anthology series from the same editor.

“I decided to let Gardner Dozois’ record with THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION stand.”

(3) NEXT GAIMAN BOOK TO TV.  “Neil Gaiman’s ‘Anansi Boys’ to Get Amazon Series Adaptation” reports Variety.

…The streamer has given the limited series a six-episode order with plans in place to begin shooting in Scotland later this year. First published in 2005, “Anansi Boys” follows Charlie Nancy, a young man who is used to being embarrassed by his estranged father, Mr. Nancy. But when his father dies, Charlie discovers that his father was Anansi: trickster god of stories. And he learns that he has a brother. Now his brother, Spider, is entering Charlie’s life, determined to make it more interesting but making it a lot more dangerous.

The character of Mr. Nancy appears in both “Anansi Boys” and the Gaiman novel “American Gods,” the latter of which is currently airing a series adaptation on Starz. However, there is no connection between the two projects and “Anansi Boys” will serve as a stand-alone story.

The author tells how it happened in “The Other Half of the Secret” at Neil Gaiman’s Journal.

I mentioned that making Good Omens two is half of what I’ve been working on, and will be working on for next eighteen months, and I said I’d tell you soon enough what the other secret project I’ve been working on is.

It’s this

…And I cannot tell you how happy I am to be making it, and making it in the way that we’re making it.

Anansi Boys started in about 1996. I was working on the original Neverwhere TV series for Lenny Henry’s film company, Crucial Films.

I loved a lot of what we were doing in Neverwhere. 25 years ago, it felt like we were doing something ahead of its time. 

Lenny and I went for a walk. Lenny grumbled about horror films. “You’ll never get people who look like me starring in horror films,” he said. “We’re the hero’s friend who dies third.”

And I thought and blinked. He was right. “I’ll write you a horror movie you could star in,” I told him.

I plotted one. I tried writing the first half-dozen pages of the movie, but it didn’t seem to be right as a movie. And I was beginning to suspect that the story I was imagining, about two brothers whose father had been a God, wasn’t really horror, either.

… A top Hollywood director wanted to buy the rights to Anansi Boys, but when he told me that he planned to make all the characters white, I declined to sell it. It was going to be done properly or not at all.

And then, about ten years ago, two things happened at the same time. Hilary Bevan Jones, a producer who had made a short film I had directed (called Statuesque) mentioned she’d love to make Anansi Boys as a TV series, and a man named Richard Fee, who worked for a company called RED, spotted me eating noodles in a London noodle bar, waited outside so he didn’t seem like a stalker, and told me how much he loved Anansi Boys and that he’d love to make it into television.

I loved the TV that RED had made, loved Hilary and her team at Endor, and, unable to decide between them, suggested that they might be willing to work together. They both thought this was a good idea. …

(4) WORD. SFFANZ found a couple of noteworthy sff items on the Christchurch Word Festival program. New Zealand’s Christchurch Word Festival is on August 25-29.

Our attention has been drawn to two specfic items on the programme:

Speed Date a Speculative Fiction Author“, featuring Graci Kim, Cassie Hart, Sascha Stronach, and Karen Healey

The Stardust Cabaret“, including Sascha Stronach and AJ Fitzwater, with “star-stuff infused performances”

(5) CONLANG. BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth program for July 20 was on invented languages such as for Game of Thrones: Word of Mouth – “The Art of Inventing Languages”.

How does one go about inventing a language? David J. Peterson is the creator of the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for fantasy series Game of Thrones, as well as many others. He joins Michael Rosen for a playful discussion about all things conlang, and Michael tries his luck at inventing a new language for bacteria.

(6) VISUAL EFFECTS. Yesterday BBC Radio 4 also ran the third of three episodes in its series Unreal: The VFX Revolution, called  “The New Flesh”.

Oscar winner Paul Franklin tells how visual effects changed and how they changed cinema. By the mid 1990s, Industrial Light & Magic, the VFX house at the heart of the rebirth of photochemical illusions, was home to a small but growing band of digerati convinced that the next breakthrough was at their fingertips. Jurassic Park not only proved their point but showed audiences and filmmakers that nothing could be the same again. The quest for the illusion of life, for the subtlety of performance would eventually lead back to Middle Earth and the evolution of Gollum – the perfect fusion of man and digits. Meanwhile the illusory world of The Matrix put its extraordinary moments of Bullet Time at the heart of its story and ideas. This was visual effects as both story and metaphor. Christopher Nolan’s Inception took that warping of reality to a different, hyper-real realm as Paul Franklin and his team folded the streetscapes of Paris upon each other. And now? What does the future hold for storytelling and visual effects?

(7) VERDANT ARTHURIANA. A second trailer has dropped for The Green Knight, to be released July 30.

An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, THE GREEN KNIGHT tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1995 – Twenty-six years ago, Patricia McKillip’s Something Rich and Strange won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. The book was first published in hardcover by Bantam Spectra in November 1994.  It was originally published as part of Brian Freud’s Faerielands series, a collaborative series of novels where the writer could choose from a set of illustrations that Froud did and write their novels around those pieces of art. Only two of the four planned books were published with the intended artwork, this one and The Wild Wood by Charles de Lint. A third illustration would be used but not as part of this series but rather as the U.K. edition of Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife which was intended to be part of this series but instead got a Susan Seddon Boulet cover.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 21, 1929 John Woodvine, 92. He’s first shows up genre wise in An American Werewolf in London as Dr J. S. Hirsch, but shortly thereafter he’s Master West 468 in The Tripods and Prior Mordrin in the Knights of God children’s SF serial. Finally he’s Justice Dimkind in A Perfect State which is at least genre adjacent. 
  • Born July 21, 1933 John Gardner. Grendel, the retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s viewpoint, is likely the only work he’s remembered for. Gudgekin The Thistle Girl (and Other Tales) are genre fairy tales as are The King of the Hummingbirds (and Other Tales); A Child’s Bestiary is, well, guess what it says it is. Mickelsson’s Ghosts, his final novel written before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a ghost story. OGH says he remembers Gardner’s short fiction collection The King’s Indian (1974) very fondly. It made a big impression on him when he was in college and still thought he might become an sf writer. (Died 1982.)
  • Born July 21, 1944 David Feintuch. Astounding Award winner for best new writer. He wrote one science fiction series, the Seafort Saga, and a fantasy series, Rodrigo of Caledon. An eighth novel in his SF series, Galahad’s Hope, was apparently completed but never published. (Died 2006.)
  • Born July 21, 1948 Garry Trudeau, 73. Best remembered for creating the Doonesbury franchise which I’m not pretending is genre but I wanted to note his birthday.  The first daily strip was published Oct. 26, 1970 (he does new ones only on Sundays now) which means he’s been at it for over fifty years. 
  • Born July 21, 1951 Robin Williams. Suicides depress me. I remember a bootleg tape of a performance of him and George Carlin in their cocaine fueled days. No, not even genre adjacent but damn brilliant. Such manic energy. Genre wise, he was brilliant in most everything he did, be it Mork & Mindy, Hook which I adore, The Fisher KingBicentennial Man or Jumanji. (Died 2014.)
  • Born July 21, 1969 Christopher Shea, 52. Someone at casting likes him as he showed up in three Trek series, VoyagerDeep Space Nine and Enterprise playing a total of four roles. His only other genre was on Charmed
  • Born July 21, 1976 Jaime Murray, 45. If you watch genre television, you’ve most likely seen her as she’s been Helena G. Wells in the Warehouse 13, Stahma Tarr in Defiance, Fiona/the Black Fairy In Once Upon a Time, Antoinette in The Originals, and Nyssa al Ghul in Gotham. Film wise, she was Livinia in The Devil’s Playground and Gerri Dandridge in Fright Night 2: New Blood

(10) THE EARLY BIRD. San Diego Comic-Con International has posted the Program Schedule for Comic-Con@Home, running July 23-25 – there are also some pre-con items on the schedule for today and tomorrow.  

(11) IT’S A MYSTERY TO HIM. James Davis Nicoll has picked out some really good ones: “Five Captivating SFF Mystery Novels” at Tor.com. I want to read all of them.

The Apothecary Diaries 01 by Natsu Hyuuga (2020)

Kidnapped and sold as a maid to the rear palace, the sprawling residence for the emperor’s many wives and consorts, Maomao is determined to keep a low profile until her term of service is over and she can return to her old life as a would-be apprentice to her apothecary foster-father in a nearby red light district. Bright, pragmatic, and aloof, Maomao sees little to covet in the endless squabbles of the rear palace.

Sadly for this plan, Maomao’s observant nature, unusual skills, and inability to restrain from interfering in potentially lethal misadventures draw the attention of powerful eunuch Jinshi. Maomao has committed an error even riskier than offending one of the court’s most powerful functionaries. She has inadvertently shown that her deductive prowess could be useful. Which means, of course, when confronted with seemingly inexplicable mysteries—or even just the need for a toxin-resistant food taster—it is to Maomao that Jinshi turns. And if things go horribly wrong? Well, that probably won’t affect Jinshi.

(12) LEND ME YOUR EARS. At Nerds of a Feather, Paul Weimer takes “A second look at N.K. Jemisin’s 2020 Hugo Finalist novel, THE CITY WE BECAME” – which is actually a first listen.

…With the novel now a Hugo Finalist, and me, as the author, as a native New Yorker having re-read the book recently in audio, I thought a second look  at the book was in order to explore other facets of the novel, and the audiobook in particular….

While I had highly enjoyed reading the book in ebook last year, my choice of re-reading it audio, first a way to fill some loose hours in my listening schedule and a way to tag back into the book in order to rank it as a Hugo Finalist on my ballot. I was, however, riveted from the beginning for a number of reasons.

The choice of narrator, Robin Miles, is an excellent choice. Miles has worked with Jemisin before (notably on the Broken Earth trilogy) and has a very good voice for Jemisin’s word choice and sentence style. It’s a wonderfully immersive performance on her part, and her voice kept me listening, to the point of NPR style “Driveway moments” throughout the production. This is a book I could have done even better listening to it on a long driving trip.

The use of sound in the audiobook was inspired. While this is not a full cast production, and just has the aforementioned Miles as narrator, the production is not content to just use her considerable vocal talents. The audiobook employs some sound effects and tricks to help immerse the reader into, particularly, the cosmic horror of the novel in a way that the print novel doesn’t quite manage….

(13) SPACE OPERATICS. And last week Paul Weimer looked at this book for Nerds of a Feather: “Microreview: Assassin’s Orbit by John Appel”.

… With the recent publication of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shards of Earth, and now this, John Appel’s debut into novels, Assassin’s Orbit, there appears to be a mini boomlet in space opera stories set in a verse where Earth, the center, has been removed from the equation, and in point of fact, the power that ended Earth is one that might return in full force and flower and destroy what has been built in the meantime. And, also, the theme of how expatriates, if not outright refugees, try to build a new life far away from a home they cannot return to is one that is very much of this moment….

(14) ESSENCE OF WONDER. Author Jenn Lyons will be on Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron on July 24 at 3:00 P.M. Eastern: “Dragons, Demons, Gods: Astounding Award Finalist Jenn Lyons on Her Series A Chorus of Dragons”.

This is now a streaming show that you connect with using one of these platforms: YouTube; Facebook Live; or Twitch.

(15) DUNE CAST POSTERS. Warner Bros. has released a series of character posters from Dune, the film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel directed by Denis Villeneuve. Its world premiere will happen at the Venice Film Festival in September before its October 22 release. See the character posters on Twitter. Thread starts here. Poster of Timothée Chalamet, who stars as Paul Atreides; Zendaya (Chani); Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica); Jason Momoa (Duncan Idaho); Oscar Isaac (Duke Leto Atreides); Javier Bardem (Stilgar); Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck); and Stellan Skarsgård (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen). Also Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen and David Dastmalchian and Charlotte Rampling.

(16) PRO TIP. Larry Correia gave everyone a free lesson about “How To Write Your Author Bio” [Internet Archive link] at Monster Hunter Nation. The TL:DR version is: write a straight bio with your credits, then take the curse off by writing a blog post that belittles whatever you humblebragged about. For example:

And —

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: Scarlet Nexus,” Fandom Games says this game is “one of the most anime-friendly games ever” but not based on any actual anime, so you don’t have to prep before playing the game.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chris M. Barkley, N., SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

57 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/21/21 No Gods Were Stalked In the Making Of This Scroll Title

  1. First!

    (15) DUNE CAST POSTERS. Ok I’ve got really mixed feelings about seeing Dune. I really, really love this novel and my images of the characters and the settings are hardwired in my mind’s eye. On the other hand, I am interested in seeing how a modern take of the novel split across two films does in bringing the novel to life.

  2. 9) Regarding John Gardner, his novel Freddy’s Book is definitely genre – a giant writes a fantasy adventure in which a giant knight takes on the Devil – and his wonderfully tricky novel The Sunlight Dialogues is arguably genre-adjacent. Other works include Nickel Mountain, which isn’t remotely genre but is still one of my favourite novels of all time…. I think I say something similar every time he comes up in a birthday list, and I don’t regret it; he was a writer of grace and beauty, and he shouldn’t be forgotten.

  3. (16) Translated Larry “I still put the Hugo nominations down, because I want to trade on the prestige of the award, but I’m also a dishonest asshole, so I’m going to hypocritically whine about doing so”.

  4. @Steve Wright: I say this every time Gardner’s birthday rolls around, too: although it was panned by a lot of critics at the time, I think Freddy’s Book is terrific.

  5. PhilRM says I say this every time Gardner’s birthday rolls around, too: although it was panned by a lot of critics at the time, I think Freddy’s Book is terrific.

    If next year, someone wants to write-up their own Birthday take on him, I’d be absolutely delighted. I love fresh takes.

  6. Aaron Pound nicely states Translated Larry “I still put the Hugo nominations down, because I want to trade on the prestige of the award, but I’m also a dishonest asshole, so I’m going to hypocritically whine about doing so”.

    Larry is predictably the worst sort of pond scum. And I think that he’s at best a mediocre writer. He’s never going to win Hugos.

  7. 9) Autopsy after Robin Williams’ suicide revealed that he suffered from Lewy body dementia, which you may recall is what killed Gene DeWeese (slowly and painfully).

  8. I reread Gardner’s “October Light” fairly recently and enjoyed it. Lots of people who were reading in the ‘70s must have read his work. He was a bestseller and a respected writer. I also have copies of a Chaucer biography and a couple of works on writing.

  9. Lowell Gilbert says I could get quite excited about an “Anansi Boys” adaptation.

    I really liked that novel when Hill House sent me a review copy of their edition. Gaiman had a lighter than usual tough in that story. Done right, it could be a great limited series.

  10. @Cat: If next year, someone wants to write-up their own Birthday take on him, I’d be absolutely delighted. I love fresh takes.
    I will try to remember that!

  11. PhilRM says If next year, someone wants to write-up their own Birthday take on him, I’d be absolutely delighted. I love fresh takes.

    I will try to remember that!

    That would be most excellent!

  12. I really liked that novel when Hill House sent me a review copy of their edition. Gaiman had a lighter than usual tough in that story. Done right, it could be a great limited series.

    I went to a reading of Anansi Boys, put on by Powell’s Books here in Portland. It was held in a large church, and you were required to purchase a copy in order to attend (no problem, I was going to buy the book anyway). They handed out tickets for the signing afterwards, and swore they picked the numbers at random. I was literally the last person they chose, and by the time I got up to talk to Neil, I’d already read about 3/4 of the book.

  13. Translated Larry “I still put the Hugo nominations down, because I want to trade on the prestige of the award, but I’m also a dishonest asshole, so I’m going to hypocritically whine about doing so”.

    Exactly this.

    That said, I do mention my Hugo nominations as well as the Space Cowboy Award in my author bio, but then I earned them fair and square.

    Though it took me a while to remember that I can now also put “The new book by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert…” in the blurb of every book I publish. And when I finally remembered it, I thought, “Well, maybe not this one, cause it’s a murder mystery.”

    Regarding author bios, I once had someone take to Amazon to give one of my books (which they’d gotten for free) a one star review, because that person was so incensed that I had mentioned that I have an MA degree in my author bio. Some people are just weird.

  14. (16) PRO TIP.

    I’ve seen most of the Puppies bragging about their cheated Hugo nominations, and it always just makes me laugh. They may be fooling some people with their faux accolades, but there are plenty of Worldcon members who remember and know exactly what those particular credentials are worth (aka Nothing) when Puppies brandish them.

    And how sad it is, that so many Puppies are so desperate for any sort of recognition that they will brag about something they obtained through cheating.

  15. 9) Woodvine also played the Marshal in the Doctor Who serial “The Armageddon Factor*. (I hadn’t known about his Tripods role – I don’t think I ever saw all the episodes.)

  16. I have seen DC Comics put “by Hugo-nominated writers” in some of their marketing, unfortunately. Comics fans may be less likely to know about the whole Puppy thing.

  17. It’s obvious that the NYT Best Seller list is based on reported sales from a small number of sources, because manipulating those sales is how people have gamed their way onto the list.

  18. Worldcon people and, more broadly, sf/f lit fandom (as distinct from “people who regularly read sf/f fiction” and “people in other fandoms”) people likely have an inkling about the Puppies. The much broader group for whom “Hugo” is a meaningful recommendation but aren’t anywhere near this particular bit of fandom? Probably not.

    I imagine quite a lot of people have picked up something from a Puppy author because it said “Hugo” on the cover/back/author profile/whatever and came away with a distinct feeling of what the hell. Hopefully – or fortunately – the relatively brief presence on the ballot and (for the most part) their relative lack of market presence internationally means that most of them had the next Hugo-associated book they picked up be a good one, and the award’s reputation will happily survive the blip.

  19. @Meredith.

    That was my major concern regarding Hugo decisions during Puppygate – that the award would forever be tainted by association, every historical listing of the award that included Finalists would include those names, etc., which is why I advocated to make those astericks more than wooden.

    In fact I advocated for demanding that their names be removed so that they could not legitimately call themselves “Finalists” and I still think something along those lines ought to be done for the follow-on reasons you and others have mentioned. There should be continued repudition if there is continued promotional use.

  20. @David Goldfarb: We are talking about the writer of Full Frontal Nerdity or is there someone else promoted by the Puppys working at DC, that I am not aware of? (Discounting Sandman Overture, winning a Hugo is a whole different Ballgame).

    For me the question if someone can be proud about the nom has also got to do with how well they did against no award in the final voting. I think if you loose badly against it then there is not much honour in beeing nominated.

    For Larry it makes sense to not listen his Hugonomination his readers have zero respect for it. Interesting enough that he doesn’t care for the other awards he was nominated and even won (Gemmell and Dragon Award as far as I remember).

  21. “Wow, two scroll items!

    OTOH, sometimes people don’t quite realize how prolific I am. In fact…”

    :is handed card that says Hugo Finalist:

    “Oh wait, you DO know.”

  22. Jamoche says It’s obvious that the NYT Best Seller list is based on reported sales from a small number of sources, because manipulating those sales is how people have gamed their way onto the list.

    No, the list is not compiled from a small number of booksellers. Fifteen years ago, the number was known to be at least four thousand bookstores as well as a number of wholesalers. You cannot game your way onto that list. That’s an urban legend.

    I suspect it’s a lot larger these days as I know that two local booksellers are part of it. They send in their sales weekly by a proprietary system the Times uses for compiling sales.

    Now listening to Dick Francis’ Enquiry

  23. On manipulating The NY Times best seller list – You can just go for the brute force approach

    On January 22, 2012, Mark and Grace Driscoll’s Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (Thomas Nelson) was No. 1 under the “hardcover, advice, and misc.” rankings. But the following week, it hadn’t sold enough copies even to make the top 15. The reason: Mars Hill had paid California-based marketing firm ResultSource Inc. $25,000 to orchestrate sales. Only individual book purchases count in the Times ranking. ResultSource made a bulk order (an order of 11,000 books for about $217,300) look like thousands of purchases from individual buyers across the country.

  24. Through some reading on theory of computing, I have reached the SFnal conclusion that for Ents, a decision and a divorce is the same thing (an “Entscheidung”).

    @Christian Brunschen hypothesized that this MAY be the reason all the Entwifes left.

  25. For Larry it makes sense to not listen his Hugonomination his readers have zero respect for it.

    It isn’t even that. Larry does list his Hugo nominations, desperate to claim the prestige associated with the award, while simultaneously whining about how much he hates the award. He’s a giant hypocrite who wants to be associated with the Hugos while denigrating them at the same time.

  26. @cat Eldridge you absolutely can game the NYT bestseller list. Handbook for Mortals? The Art of the Deal?

  27. Miles Carter says you absolutely can game the NYT bestseller list. Handbook for Mortals? The Art of the Deal?

    Prove it. Saying it’s gamed is not proof. It’s like the gambler who loses at cards and claims the House is cheating but is really just a piss poor player. Saying something isn’t proof.

  28. @cat Eldridge I don’t have to prove anything, the facts speak for themselves. The NYT will sometimes label what they believe to be bogus entrants with a dagger on their own list. The NYT clearly believes that some people game their way onto the list through bulk purchases. They are probably the best judge of that issue. Perhaps you could email them and let them know that their concerns are unfounded.

  29. I don’t remember all the details, but I vaguely remember a case where a new author built up a pre-order list over a considerable length of time. Those pre-orders all counted as sales during the first week when the book finally went on sale and the book made the NY Times list. Technically not gaming? I don’t know, but it sounds like gaming to me.

  30. @StefanB

    For Larry it makes sense to not listen his Hugonomination his readers have zero respect for it. Interesting enough that he doesn’t care for the other awards he was nominated and even won (Gemmell and Dragon Award as far as I remember).

    But Larry does list his Hugo and Campbell/Astounding nomination as well as his Dragon and Gemmell wins and even the French Julia Verlanger Award. And I doubt he and his very American readership have a lot of respect for a French SFF Award.

    And while there have been accusations of “gaming” the New York Times besteller list, most of those involved books by political figures, which were bought in bulk for party faithfuls. There also was a case in the UK of self-published thriller author Mark Dawson buying his own book in bulk to give it away and hit a UK bestseller list, where the numbers required are smaller.

    But while I don’t trust Correia any further than I can throw him, I do believe he came by his New York Times bestseller status honestly. He is popular and as far as I recall, he hit the lower ranks of the extended list at the height of summer, when general booksales are down and the numbers needed to hit the list are lower than in fall/winter.

  31. @Chet Desmond
    Actually, we go for months without having to notice his existence.

  32. @Cora, Aaron: He wrote he ditches them, if there isn’t enough space, so I did assume that they aren’t in all his biographys. But he spend a lot of time on something that is unimportant for him. 🙂

    I think Larry is a good snark target.

  33. “… as far as I recall, he hit the lower ranks of the extended list at the height of summer, when general booksales are down and the numbers needed to hit the list are lower than in fall/winter.”

    It was October 17, 2010. That only counts as summer here in the deep south.

  34. For Ents, the Halting problem is particularly difficult- has the Ent halted or is he just in deep thought.

  35. Meredith moment: Bryce Zabel‘s Once There Was a Way is available from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine. What if The Beatles continued to make history as the greatest rock-and-roll band ever? is the premise of the novel. “Hold on to your hats, folks. You’re in for quite a ride.” — Harry Turtledove.

  36. @P J Evans

    He’s been mentioned twice in the last week. That’s what inspired my comment. Click on the tag if you don’t believe me.
    I’d never even heard of the guy before I started reading this site.

    @Flaneur

    I assume that was directed at me. Sorry my vocabulary isn’t “white” enough for your standards.

  37. (5) David J Peterson is pretty interesting. And what a job! Professional Language Creator! I can’t say I’m jealous, since my ambitions never went that direction, but it’s awesome that he managed to make it a job! 😀

    I saw him on an episode of Face Off (the only “reality” show I ever really watched). He provided some audio snippets representing possible alien languages, and the contestants had to create makeups depicting the creatures they thought might have made those sounds. He then joined the judges panel as a special guest, and provided some technical commentary on the results. It was very cool, and definitely not the sort of thing you see every day!

  38. Chet: He thinks if he throws frequent extravagant tantrums he can dictate what I cover here. Fuck him.

  39. @Xtifr: As a non-linguist, I found Peterson’s book, The Art of Language Invention, fascinating and informative.

  40. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
                    276  0
                     DAYS

    since a Puppy showed up to say
    “I’m a totally neutral observer
    who’s never heard of the Puppies and…”
    ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

  41. Chet Desmond,

    Fred Gwynne is (or was) white so ahh what? There’s a lot of rent-free going around it seems

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