Pixel Scroll 7/29 To Scroll in Italbar

American exceptionalism, Madeleine L’Engle, sci-fi music, and another trailer about a movie you’re likely to skip, all in today’s Scroll.

(1) Did an American manhole cover beat Sputnik into space? While Superman was fictional, a super-manhole-cover may actually have flown “faster than a speeding bullet.”

The next month, in [an underground nuclear bomb] test codenamed Pascal B, the team wanted to experiment with reducing the air pressure in the explosives chamber to see how that affected the explosion and radiation spread. A four-inch-thick concrete and metal cap weighing at least half a ton was placed over a 400ft-deep borehole after the bomb was installed below. The lid was then welded shut to seal in the equipment.

Before the experiment, Dr Brownlee had calculated the force that would be exerted on the cap, and knew that it would pop off from the pressure of the detonation. As a result, the team installed a high-speed camera to see exactly what happened to the plug.

The camera was set up to record one frame every millisecond. When the nuke blew, the lid was caught in the first frame and then disappeared from view. Judging from the yield and the pressure, Dr Brownlee estimated that it left the ground at more than 60 kilometres per second, or more than five times the escape velocity of our planet. It may not have made it that far, though – in fact the boffin, who retired in 1992, believes it never made it into space, but the legend of Pascal B lives on.

“I have no idea what happened to the cap, but I always assumed that it was probably vaporized before it went into space. It is conceivable that it made it,” he told us.

(2) And after reading that story, I’m certain everyone can see why the Mutual UFO Network’s “Track UFOs” tool is indispensable. 😉

(3) SF Signal’s always-interesting Mind Meld feature asks “What Books Surprised You the Most and Exceeded Your Expectations?” of Renay from Lady Business, Marc Turner, Ilana C. Myer, Kenny Soward, Marion Deeds, Eric Christensen, and Delilah S. Dawson.

One of the books singled out as a pleasant surprise is a Hugo nominee. Ahh – but which one?

(4) Today’s birthday boy – Ray Harryhausen!

Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman and Diana Harryhausen.

Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman and Diana Harryhausen.

(5) Madeleine L’Engle deserves the accolades paid by the writer in the body of this post for Mental Floss. Not so much the editor’s headline “How ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Changed Sci-Fi Forever” – because it didn’t.

The book, published at the beginning of the second wave of feminism, also carried a groundbreaking message: Girls could do anything boys could do, and better. A year later, The Feminine Mystique, written by L’Engle’s former classmate Betty Friedan, would emerge as a platform for the frustrated American housewife, and Congress would pass the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal to pay a woman less than what a man would earn for the same job. To some extent, Mrs. Murry in A Wrinkle in Time is already living the future: She’s a brilliant scientist who works alongside her husband and in his absence, too; later in the series, she wins a Nobel Prize. (Math whiz Meg would grow up to follow similar pursuits.) And Meg, a girl, is able to succeed where the men and boys—Calvin, Charles Wallace, and her father—cannot.

With that character so like herself, L’Engle struck back against the 1950s ideal of the woman whose duty was to home and family (the same expectations that conflicted the author in her thirties). Instead of staying at home, Meg goes out into the universe, exploring uncharted territories and unheard-of planets.

At the time, science fiction for and by women was a rarity. There was no one like Meg Murry before Meg Murry, though she left a legacy to be picked up by contemporary young adult heroines like The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen and the Harry Potter series’ Hermione Granger. Beyond creating this new type of heroine, A Wrinkle in Time, along with Norton Juster’s 1961 book The Phantom Tollbooth, changed science fiction itself, opening “the American juvenile tradition to the literature of ‘What if?’ as a rewarding and honorable alternative to realism in storytelling,” writes Marcus. This shift, in turn, opened doors for writers like Lloyd Alexander and Ursula K. Le Guin. In these fantasy worlds, as in the real world, things can’t always be tied up neatly. Evil can never be truly conquered; indeed, a key to fighting it is knowing that. It’s a sophisticated lesson children thrill to, and one in which adults continue to find meaning.

I remember enjoying L’Engle’s book – which I heard read aloud a chapter a day by a teacher in elementary school. A Wrinkle in Time, published in 1963, was received as a children’s book. Women who did groundbreaking work in the adult science fiction genre like Judith Merril and Andre Norton had already been writing for years by then. And when Ursula Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey first appeared in the late 1960s, their emergence was facilitated by the New Wave.

(8) There will be a live showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Hollywood Bowl in LA on August 18 with the musical soundtrack performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Recognized as one of the greatest works of science fiction cinema, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is acclaimed for its technological realism, creative audacity and inspired use of music. Behold the film’s visual grandeur on the Bowl’s big screen while the soundtrack is performed live, including Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, music by György Ligeti, and the “Blue Danube” Waltz.

The Hollywood Bowl will give E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial the same treatment on Saturday, September 5, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing John Williams’ entire Academy Award-winning score.

(9) H.P. in his post “On the Hugo Awards controversy” on Every Day Should Be Tuesday draws this conclusion  —

The big difference comes down to matters of style and subject preference. The Puppy nominees show a pretty heavy thumbprint of Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and Vox Day’s tastes. They run heavy to kaiju, superficial noir elements, and religious themes. They don’t align well with my own tastes, but then neither do the tastes of the recent Hugo electorate. If the Hugos are to be the sort of elite fan award that they purport to be, and once were, then they shouldn’t display such narrow tastes, whether of Puppies or anyone else. To that end, my hope is that all of this will draw more people into the process and lead to a more diverse electorate; my fear is of that electorate being dominated by factions. We will see (always end with a super strong closing line).

Yes! The solution is — fire the voters!

(10) “Do you believe in miracles?” This time it’s not Al Michaels asking the question but Jason Sanford.

All of which brings up an interesting coincidence — the 2016 DeepSouthCon has been cancelled. According to an announcement on their website, the people running the con “decided that it was no longer feasible to host the convention.”

I have no proof the selection of Wright as guest of honor and the cancelling of the convention six months later are in any way related. These facts may simply be two isolated events swirling in the chaos we delightfully call existence.

But this is still an interesting coincidence. Or miracle, depending on your worldview.

Some say that Outlanta picking the same May 13-15, 2016 weekend weighed heavily in the decision. If so, I agree it’s logical that a con with Wright as GoH would have trouble competing for Outlanta’s fan base….

cat calendar

(11) Samuel Delany, interviewed in The New Yorker, was even asked about the topic du jour —

In the contemporary science-fiction scene, Delany’s race and sexuality do not set him apart as starkly as they once did. I suggested to him that it was particularly disappointing to see the kind of division represented by the Sad Puppies movement within a culture where marginalized people have often found acceptance. Delany countered that the current Hugo debacle has nothing to do with science fiction at all. “It’s socio-economic,” he said. In 1967, as the only black writer among the Hugo nominees, he didn’t represent the same kind of threat. But Delany believes that, as women and people of color start to have “economic heft,” there is a fear that what is “normal” will cease to enjoy the same position of power. “There are a lot of black women writers, and some of them are gay, and they are writing about their own historical moment, and the result is that white male writers find themselves wondering if this is a reverse kind of racism. But when it gets to fifty per cent,” he said, then “we can talk about that.” It has nothing to do with science fiction, he reiterated. “It has to do with the rest of society where science fiction exists.”

The interview is behind a paywall, nevertheless the Google cache file revealed all.

(12) American Ultra comes to theaters August 21. With luck, you’ll have something better to do that evening.

[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to Brian Z.]

195 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/29 To Scroll in Italbar

  1. VD has a whole stack of different victory conditions. A veritable Staples store. Don’t play Dune with him.

  2. 50’s AND BEFORE

    1. PELLINORE AND PERCIVALE
    The Once and Future King, T. H. White
    Phantastes, George MacDonald

    2. AND THEY SHALL BE MADE INTO CONCEPT ALBUMS
    The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany
    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe

    I’ve read both, and wasn’t all that thrilled by either. Gormenghast.

    3. TALES THAT WILL CHILL YOUR VERY BONES
    Dracula, Bram Stoker
    The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

    4. MONSTROUS CLEVER FELLOWS
    The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
    Jurgen, James Branch Cabell

    5. CIMMERIA AND ZIMIAMVIA
    The Sword of Conan, Robert E. Howard
    The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison

    6. KIDNAPPED BY THE FAIR FOLK
    Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
    Land of Unreason, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

    7. SWORD! AND! SORCERY!
    Jirel of Joiry, C. L. Moore
    Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber

    8. NIGHTMARES OF PRAGUE AND KIEV
    The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
    The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

    Didn’t like Metapmorphosis, haven’t read M&M.
    Silverlock, by John Myers Myers.

  3. I wonder if anyone over at puppidum’s HQ has noticed Mike and Kyra’s sneaky plan; here we are, happily voting on works which cover just about every viewpoint in the genre, from way back when, and nobody has flounced, fainted, or needed smelling salts waved under their nostrils.

    I really like the kitten as well…

  4. 1. The Once and Future King, T. H. White
    2. The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany. Must go back to his short works, and soon.
    3. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft. Closest decision of this set? Well, maybe not …
    4. Jurgen, James Branch Cabell. Not my favourite Cabell, but …
    Forcing people to make these choices gets other people written out of the first people’s wills. (Does that make sense? It’s getting late here)
    5. The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison. Whenever I finish this I want to go back to the beginning and start again. But then, you would, wouldn’t you?
    6. Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
    7. Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber
    8. Never read either. Tempted to argue for writing in the Kalevala. Not sure if it’s eligible, but as a literary confection based on Finnish folklore, rather than a Grimm-style collection, I feel it should. And it fits with the European theme

    Hmm. Abstentions galore in the other sections; now when I’ve got a little list of potential write-ins there’s nowhere for them to go. Still, why let them go to waste:
    (i) Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan
    (ii) Cenydd Morus, The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed
    (iii) William Morris, The Well at the World’s End

  5. Well, damn – I have to abstain from this set of brackets, as the only item on the list I’ve read is Once and Future King. But I’m enjoying seeing the comments by people who are voting!

  6. From Beale: “No Award was the original objective for Rabid Puppies, and with the exception of Best Novel, that is now the worst case scenario for us.”

    So there’s that.

    Really convincing, assuming you ignore his earlier screaming that “No Award” was unfair to his nominees, and if it won any category, he was going to burn the Hugos down for the foreseeable future. Reaaaaaaally convincing.

    I recall a game of “Discworld : Ankh Morepork”, which features players with hidden personalities and victory agendas, in which I blatantly went all out for the Noble type goal of “Build a strong power base”. Naturally, the other players ganged up and scattered my forces to the wind, and then went after each other – leaving me to futz around a little before revealing I was, in fact, Vetenari with the goal of “have a wide influence”.

    The difference between me in that game and Beale’s pathetic attempts at being an evil mastermind is that I had a little card issued to me at the very start which I turned over to show that, yes, that had been my goal all along.

    https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91312/discworld-ankh-morpork

  7. I wonder if anyone over at puppidum’s HQ has noticed Mike and Kyra’s sneaky plan; here we are, happily voting on works which cover just about every viewpoint in the genre, from way back when, and nobody has flounced, fainted, or needed smelling salts waved under their nostrils.

    Speak for yourself. I’m still not over God Stalk getting knocked out. *puts on the Tom Waits*

  8. 1. PELLINORE AND PERCIVALE
    The Once and Future King, T. H. White

    2. AND THEY SHALL BE MADE INTO CONCEPT ALBUMS
    The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany

    3. TALES THAT WILL CHILL YOUR VERY BONES
    The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

    4. MONSTROUS CLEVER FELLOWS
    Jurgen, James Branch Cabell

    5. CIMMERIA AND ZIMIAMVIA
    The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison

    6. KIDNAPPED BY THE FAIR FOLK
    Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees

    A minor classic, and just edges out the Pratt / DeCamp

    7. SWORD! AND! SORCERY!
    Abstain.

    8. NIGHTMARES OF PRAGUE AND KIEV
    The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

  9. Redwombat

    I feel your pain.

    However, I was very precise with my wording; I’m pretty sure that ramping up Tom Waits, the Cure and Nick Cage to full volume means smelling salts in your, and their, futures are highly improbable.

    Plus kitten

    Of course, when we get to the finals all bets are off..

  10. Uh, not quite on topic, but just to settle a bet, as it were …

    How is James Branch Cabell’s last name pronounced? Is it “kuh-BELL” or “KABBle” or something else entirely?

  11. Well then…

    1. PELLINORE AND PERCIVALE
    Abstain. Never read either. Don’t care.

    2. AND THEY SHALL BE MADE INTO CONCEPT ALBUMS
    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe

    I tried reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter expecting to love it. And the first paragraph is killer. But I stopped reading pretty early: the young hero started walking to Elfland and there was a lot of landscape on the way and Dunsany seemed to want to tell us about all of it. I had no emotional investment in the landscape and combining that with the utter lack of dialog, I got bored.

    3. TALES THAT WILL CHILL YOUR VERY BONES
    WRITE-IN: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.

    Lovecraft’s work repels me. Dracula I got through, but wasn’t compelled. Stoker’s other fantasy/horror novel I’ve read, The Jewel of Seven Stars, isn’t good enough for a write-in. So this I give to Dickens, who’s classic ghost story is within the 1818 cutoff.

    4. MONSTROUS CLEVER FELLOWS
    The Dying Earth, Jack Vance

    I dislike a couple of the protagonists in this book and I’m not great at maintaining interest under those conditions, but the invention in the worldbuilding and the language sells me, and it engendered The Book of the New Sun, which I love as much as anything I’ve ever read.

    5. CIMMERIA AND ZIMIAMVIA
    The Sword of Conan, Robert E. Howard

    The best Howard Conan stories really are quite good. I think he’s underrated as a stylist – the man painted some very striking mental pictures. And count me as another huge fan of Mr. Busiek’s comics adaptations.

    6. KIDNAPPED BY THE FAIR FOLK
    WRITE-IN: The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson.

    How the fuck did this get left out of the tournament when it is, in a purely objective sense, the best book ever? This is, to be sure, a bleak novel. I’d go so far as to call it triumphantly bleak. Anderson’s eye is blank and pitiless as a cold, Northern Sun. And its portrayal of a savage, alien faerie makes a brilliant book-end and foil to The Lord of the Rings.

    7. SWORD! AND! SORCERY!
    Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber

    I started reading Jirel a couple years ago and stopped within a few pages. The prose style was much more wrought-up than I prefer. Leiber’s understated and dryly humorous style can hold me for long stretches, and I love Fafhrd and appreciate the Mouse.

    8. NIGHTMARES OF PRAGUE AND KIEV
    Abstain.

  12. Soon Lee: From Beale: “No Award was the original objective for Rabid Puppies, and with the exception of Best Novel, that is now the worst case scenario for us.”

    CPaca: Really convincing, assuming you ignore his earlier screaming that “No Award” was unfair to his nominees, and if it won any category, he was going to burn the Hugos down for the foreseeable future. Reaaaaaaally convincing.

    Beale is retconning his original plan. Originally, he had all of his minions convinced to buy Supporting Memberships and nominate so that they could “steal” the Hugos. I suspect he deliberately withheld the knowledge that the Hugo voting process works quite differently from the Hugo nominations process, because he wanted the minions to get on board with his slate.

    Then, once the ballot was announced, and a bunch of SFF fans said, “Well, you’ve taken the ballot, but we still have the option of ‘No Award'”, a bunch of minions were going, “Wait, what? What do you mean we can’t sweep the voting the same way we swept the nominations?”, first Beale was threatening, “If you ‘No Award’ us, we’ll see that your Hugos get ‘No Awarded’ forever”, and when that threat didn’t gain any traction, was forced to hastily amend his position to “We were always going for ‘No Award'”.

  13. I’m not over God Stalk getting knocked out either.

    I haven’t read a lot of these but:

    7 Jirel of Joiry

  14. JJ

    Thank you for rounding it out; that was my recollection of the series of events, but I get a bit twitchy when I am immersing my brain in neurological pain killers; they do very weird things.

    I was due to have an operation a couple of days back to block some nerve paths, but the consultant thought it too risky, so I’m back to the joys of the medication; thank you, and everyone else, for helping me.

  15. Vasha:

    Are Borges’s Ficciones and Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks not eligible?

    Ooh, 13 CLOCKS! I change my abstention on the last matchup to a write-in for THE 13 CLOCKS!

    The best!

    IDK:

    Cujo is probably about as far away from a fantasy as King has ever written. There is a complete dearth of any supernatural element altogether.

    As others have pointed out, not entirely. While, say. “The Body” or “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” are un-fantasy through and through. Plus various others — “A Good Marriage” and “Big Driver,” from FULL DARK, NO STARS aren’t fantasy, and “1922” is either fantasy or guilt-induced delusion, but nothing in it requires it to be fantasy. Only “Fair Extension,” in that collection, is unreservedly supernatural.

    The current private-eye series he’s writing is slowly slipping into fantasy — MR. MERCEDES has no fantasy elements, FINDERS KEEPERS has none in the main plot, but there’s paranormal stuff in the minor plot that sets up the third book, which looks like it’ll have a paranormal main plot.

    I didn’t much like the main plot of CUJO, but all the stuff with the cereal advertising disaster is really well written…

  16. > “Never say die on God Stalk!”

    HONOR BREAK ME, DARKNESS TAKE ME, NOW AND FOREVER, SO I SWEAR

  17. Kyra

    I would be happy to costume you for the oath, which should be a matter of solemnity, and therefore requires, at the very least, appropriate clothing.

    I have vast amounts of fabric in my stash, and short of living as long as Methuselah, it’s not going to be used, though I will probably take the Liberty printed silk velvet into the grave with me…

  18. Greg,

    Haven’t read either, so I’m following Brian Z’s lead and writing in Goethe’s Faust.

    Stevie,

    but I vastly prefer Marlowe’s version which not only put bums on seats, or at least a lot of litter in the standing area, but also has some of the most heart/soul gripping moments in the history of theatre.

    The Golden Age! Alas! We should all vote for both of them! If we also add Bulgakov, Kyra will waver, Will R. and maybe one of the trufan dinosaurs probably likes The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Jim Henley will say yes to anything as long as we make noises about supporting P.C. Hodgell. Add Jim Butcher and Steve Moss is with us in a heartbeat. It’s a movement!

  19. 3. Stoker
    I think I have a thing for the epistlatory (sp.?) format. Also Lovecraft’s prose is just bad. I love the mythos but Lovecraft’s writing is a horror and not in the sense of genre.

    5. Eddison
    But I can sympathize with anyone who bounced off Ouroboros. I’ve tried reading it three times separated over years. The first two times I couldn’t make it out of the first two chapters. The last time I made it to the wrestling match (chapter three if I remember right) and suddenly found myself liking it. From there the deeper I got the more I loved it. Is it wrong that my favorite character is Lord Gro though?

    Also, since this isn’t the SF bracket, I suppose time traveling to make an 80’s to 90’s write in just isn’t the done thing. For some reason though Morgan Llywelyn started tugging on my brain. Though whether for Red Branch, Bard, or Finn Mac Cool I’m not sure. Probably Red Branch. Not even a little jaunt in time? Damn causality anyways!

  20. Brian Z

    Probably not wise to rely on me for a movement; I spend altogether too much time in hospital to manage that.

    However, when it comes to Marlowe’s Faust I’m prepared to woman the barricades against those who traduce it.

    Of course, I’d like to be on the side of the barricades which include the food and drink; I have learned from Terry Pratchett who’d worked the whole thing out…

  21. The tricky bit with Goethe’s Faust is that it is two plays, published with a massive interval in between, and whilst both are billed as tragedies they do, in fact, both end in redemption with Faust going to Heaven. I appreciate that theologically this is A Good Thing but I vastly prefer Marlowe’s version which not only put bums on seats, or at least a lot of litter in the standing area, but also has some of the most heart/soul gripping moments in the history of theatre.

    In Goethe, on the other hand, we are grappling with a language which has more than it’s fair share of completely untranslatable words and phrases.

    This is not necessarily a bad thing; my three hour, single essay, finals exam in ‘Advanced Sociological Theories and Models’ included half a page in German with the single word ‘discuss’ below it, and I fell upon it with great joy, because Weber’s definition of sociology contains a number of completely untranslatable terms which were good for at least an hour before I had to engage my brain.

    This doesn’t work well in the theatre for non-German speakers, since translation is so difficult, and in reality it doesn’t work very well for German speakers either, since 21 hours performance time stretches dedication beyond practical limits. All in all, Goethe’s epic work doesn’t actually tell a story, though it’s framed as one; it’s fascinating to the sociology part of my mind, but the theatre bit says ‘this is non-fiction clothed as plays which aren’t very good plays”…

    Faust I is pretty good and has a solid plot, though it’s Gretchen rather than Faust who has the most compelling storyline. Faust II is where Goethe goes totally off the rails and the audience usually dozes off.

    I like Marlowe’s take, too. The one Faust version I absolutely cannot abide (even less than Faust II) is Thomas Mann’s take Dr. Faustus. Think everything bad about Faust II magnified by several degrees.

  22. The broken sword. Shoot how did I forget to lobby for that ! There are so many deserving books already slain in this brutal bracket – but my TBR list is growing as well.

  23. @Red Wombat – You know there is no devil. It’s only Godstalk when He’s drunk.

  24. 2. AND THEY SHALL BE MADE INTO CONCEPT ALBUMS
    The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany
    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe

    3. TALES THAT WILL CHILL YOUR VERY BONES
    Dracula, Bram Stoker
    The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

    4. MONSTROUS CLEVER FELLOWS
    The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
    Jurgen, James Branch Cabell

    5. CIMMERIA AND ZIMIAMVIA
    The Sword of Conan, Robert E. Howard
    The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison

    6. KIDNAPPED BY THE FAIR FOLK
    Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
    Land of Unreason, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

    7. SWORD! AND! SORCERY!
    Jirel of Joiry, C. L. Moore
    Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber

    8. NIGHTMARES OF PRAGUE AND KIEV
    The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
    The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

  25. @Peace: Tom Whitmore once gave me this rhyme, which I think dates from the time of the controversy over Jurgen:

    Tell the rabble
    My name is Cabell.

  26. Stevie – if you’ve any fondness for anime, give Puella Magica Madoka Magi a try. It’s Faust smashed up with magical girls. To the point that the runes that appear in the background of certain scenes are encryptions of quotes from Goethe, if memory serves. (The series wikipedia is an amazingly useful resource.)

  27. First, as the voters learned their own power, a horde of off-bracket nominees, most within the rules but some a bit outside them, descended merrily upon us.

    The following each got one vote: At the Back of the North Wind, A Christmas Carol, Red Shadows, Past Master, Three Hearts and Three Lions, Puck of Pook’s Hill, Tarzan of the Apes, She, A Night on Bald Mountain, The Kalevala, The Great God Pan, The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed, The Well at the World’s End, and Ficciones

    The following got two votes: Goethe’s Faust, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Wind in the Willows, and The Thirteen Clocks

    The following got three votes, and will take home a Pulvapies Prize: At the Mountains of Madness, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Broken Sword

    The following got multiple votes, and will be added to the bracket somehow: Silverlock (5 votes), Gormenghast (8 votes)

  28. And now the on-bracket works:

    WINNER, seeded: The Once and Future King, T. H. White – 41 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Phantastes, George MacDonald – 4 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    T. H. White powerfully approaching a classic story with modern storytelling handily beats what many regard as the first modern adult fantasy novel. The Once and Future King will be seeded in the first all-period round.

    WINNER: The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany – 26 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe – 17 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    A fairly close match, and Poe would probably have gone further in a horror bracket. But in fantasy, Dunsany wins the day.

    WINNER, seeded: Dracula, Bram Stoker – 40 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft – 13 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    In the monsters vs. monsters match, Dracula shall go on to suck another day as a seeded candidate, and Lovecraft’s horror shall retreat into eldritch realms beyond human ken.

    WINNER, seeded: The Dying Earth, Jack Vance – 31 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Jurgen, James Branch Cabell – 6 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Vance’s much loved collection is a solid winner of Cabell’s nearly-banned classic, and The Dying Earth will be seeded in the first all-period round.

    WINNER: The Sword of Conan, Robert E. Howard – 23 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison – 19 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    After a long and hard-fought battle, the iron-thewed Cimmerian reigns supreme over Eddison’s heroic fantasy.

    WINNER, seeded: Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees – 22 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Land of Unreason, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – 8 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    When it comes to the mysteries of fairy, Mirrlees is the winner, and will be seeded in the first all-period round. Land of Unreason will be taken to the realms beyond our own.

    WINNER: Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber – 25 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Jirel of Joiry, C. L. Moore – 22 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    A match so close that the loser got more votes than some of the winners. Jirel of Joiry therefore takes home an “Alley Man” award. But it is Two Sought Adventure that will press further into the labyrinthine depths of the bracket.

    WINNER: The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka – 19 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov – 9 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams to find himself in a fantasy bracket. The Master and Margarita will spend eternity in a shadowy yet pleasant realm.

  29. Oneiros:

    (sneaky edit!)
    1) Can I throw in a write-in for Gormenghast?
    (Credit to Susana S.P. for the idea of writing in Gormenghast – I don’t know how it slipped my mind)

    That was super extra-sneaky. But credit to Brian Z. and Joe H., actually. I just forgot Peake.

    Kyra:
    I’ll bring the lembas and butterbeer if you bring the deeper ‘n ever pie!

    I was going to assent and start packing, on the condition of not having to read Redwall first (can’t add any more series to the piles), but I just peeked at the new bracket, and I am scared you’d bring the dice.

    Soon Lee:
    Is there such a thing as an inverse concept album? Alastair Reynold’s novella “Diamond Dogs” would surely figure somewhere.

    [googles] WhatHowHadINotHeardofThis! And Echo and the Bunnymen, too. And Childe Roland.

  30. WINNER: Two Sought Adventure, Fritz Leiber – 25 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    Jirel of Joiry, C. L. Moore – 22 bars of gold-pressed latinum
    A match so close that the loser got more votes than some of the winners. Jirel of Joiry therefore takes home an “Alley Man” award. But it is Two Sought Adventure that will press further into the labyrinthine depths of the bracket.

    Well, hell — you’ve got extra entries in this bracket, anyway, which you’re going to have to match up. Why not bring both of these forward, in light of the preponderance of votes for both of them?

  31. > “Why not bring both of these forward, in light of the preponderance of votes for both of them?”

    I’d thought about it, but once a work actually loses in a pairing, it seems like a lost cause to keep it in the bracket anyway. The absolute best-case scenario is the two would get matched up against each other in the final and, well, we already know how that will go if so.

  32. For the Concept Album bracket:

    Tales of Mystery and Imagination, The Alan Parsons Project
    I Robot, The Alan Parsons Project
    2112, Rush
    Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie

    With an Honorable Mention for Tacky Campiness to Europe’s SF single The Final Countdown.

    Or is that Campy Tackiness?

  33. Kyra: The following got multiple votes, and will be added to the bracket somehow: Silverlock (5 votes), Gormenghast (8 votes)

    YAY SILVERLOCK!!!!

  34. @Stevie

    However, I was very precise with my wording; I’m pretty sure that ramping up Tom Waits, the Cure and Nick Cage to full volume means smelling salts in your, and their, futures are highly improbable.

    I have to assume you meant Nick Cave? Because Nick Cage at full volume is just an ungodly level of self-harm.

  35. You can tell it’s death metal; I mean, he played it almost four times fasterr than the original!

    …has anyone done a punk version? That would be epic….

  36. Bruce Baugh wrote

    Folks making John Cage jokes really need to see the speed-metal cover of 4’33”. And be sure to stay for the outtakes of failed efforts along the way.

    And now I want to see the Screamo version.

    (My son would be so happy!)

  37. All the talk earlier about Goethe’s Faust had me thinking: Surely Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray should have been on this list somewhere?

  38. Oops, now I have read Kyra’s run-down, I see Dorian Gray got write-in and I missed them.

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