Pixel Scroll 7/6/16 And She Gave Away The Pixels Of Her Past And Said, “I’ve Lost The Scroll Again”

(1) BLAME THOSE GUYS SOUTH OF CANADA. T. R. Napper’s “Americans Destroy Science Fiction” was passed along by JJ with the observation, “I find this piece ridiculously clueless about the history of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, and about the actual reasons for the kerpupple and the American domination of the Awards. However, it certainly contains a different point of view, with some very valid points.”

…But let’s rewind a little. When I first started writing a few years back I heard there was this controversy in the genre. That diversity was being blocked, or rolled back, by a conservative praetorian guard of writers. My first thought was to man the barricades: to fight with those fighting for this thing they said was diversity, a concept I’ve always correlated with equity.

I worked in international aid for fifteen years. In that time, friends and colleagues of mine have been shot at, beaten, kidnapped, murdered, blown up, car-jacked, abused, and imprisoned. These horrific things were done to them because they tried to build a school for girls, or they ran a women’s empowerment program, or simply because they had the temerity to stand with the poor against a corrupt and violent social order.

So, you see, social justice, equity, are things I have a passing concern with.

The problem, I soon discovered, is that this debate is not about equity, and sure as hell isn’t about diversity. Rather, it is an inside-the-bubble conversation between two groups of American writers, each attempting to claim victim status. Worse, the boundaries of the discussion almost completely exclude non-Americans, and even within the US context there was little mention of disability, and none of class.

This particular tributary of the American culture wars is little more than tiny elite – the middle and upper-middle class of the most powerful country in the world – debating and defining diversity in the genre as a whole. It boils down to insiders arguing how to make awards more representative of 45% of the population (the middle and upper class) in a country accounting for 4% of the global population (the US).

(2) GAMING ADDICTION. On Real Life Magazine, Tony Tulahwitte, in an article called “Clash Rules Everything Around Me” talks about his love of Clash of Clans and tries to make the case for the positive things about spending all that time gaming.

Clan Prestige kicked me out immediately; Clan Friendship kicked me out for donating weak troops; Clan Love communicated mostly in Arabic. So I stayed awhile in the dead-silent Clan Maturity, left a week later for Clan Corgi Butts, and ended up where I always suspected I belonged: in the Trash Clan.

(3) KEEPS ON GOING. A total of nine NASA missions received extensions this week, including the two in the headline: “New Horizons Receives Mission Extension to Kuiper Belt, Dawn to Remain at Ceres”.

Following its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the Kuiper Belt, known as 2014 MU69. The spacecraft’s planned rendezvous with the ancient object – considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system — is Jan. 1, 2019.

“The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise,” said NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. “We’re excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn’t even discovered when the spacecraft launched.”

Based upon the 2016 Planetary Mission Senior Review Panel report, NASA this week directed nine extended missions to plan for continued operations through fiscal years 2017 and 2018.  Final decisions on mission extensions are contingent on the outcome of the annual budget process.

In addition to the extension of the New Horizons mission, NASA determined that the Dawn spacecraft should remain at the dwarf planet Ceres, rather than changing course to the main belt asteroid Adeona.

Green noted that NASA relies on the scientific assessment by the Senior Review Panel in making its decision on which extended mission option to approve. “The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion – the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun — has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona,” he said….

(4) EASTERCON 2012 CHOW. Lawrence Schoen posted “Eating Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky” on Monday —

And there, in that weird moment of existential, Star Trek-related crisis, I was found by a band of SF academics from Oxford who I very tentatively knew, mostly through a common acquaintance with Paul Cornell (who is the Kevin Bacon of the UK SF scene). And like some kind of choir of angels they took me from the windowless confines of the convention hotel, first into the Outside, which I had almost forgotten existed, and then off to a Chinese restaurant with a bunch of other fans.

(5) SMOOTH SEGUE. Here’s where I drop in the Rob James Morgan tweet in response to Delilah S. Dawson’s fears about something literally eating authors.

(6 FEELS GUIDE TO FANAC. Suvudu’s Matt Staggs recommends a book and podcast discussion: “Therapist Kathleen Smith Talks About ‘The Fangirl Life’ on ‘Beaks & Geeks’”.

In her book The Fangirl Life: A Guide to Feeling All the Feels and Learning How to Deal, Kathleen Smith, a licensed therapist, introduces readers to her own brand of fan-friendly self-help: a unique niche in therapeutic thought where Doctor Who is more important than Doctor Freud, and the feels is very real. This is her first book aimed at fangirls, but Smith has been offering sage advice to female fandom for handling anxiety, relationship troubles, and more for a long time at her site www.fangirltherapy.com.

If you enjoy flailing over badass fictional ladies or speculating endlessly over plot points, but would like to carve more space for the narrative of your own life, this is the book for you. Written by a proud fangirl who is also a licensed therapist, The Fangirl Life is a witty guide to putting your passions to use in your offline life, whether it’s learning how writing fan fiction can be a launching point for greater career endeavors, or how to avoid the myths that fictional romance perpetuates.

(7) T5S. Aaron Pound reviewed Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin for Dreaming of Other Worlds. (Haiku warning!)

Full review: There is a vague and indistinct region in between the genres of fantasy and science fiction. While some books rest comfortably on one side of this division or the other, others are happy to rest in that ambiguous zone between them, maybe from some angles a work of fantasy, and from others a work of science fiction. The Fifth Season is one of those books, with elements that make one think that the story is a pure fantasy, and others that are squarely within the realm of science fiction. Against this backdrop, Jemisin weaves a brutal story of enslavement, oppression, and anger that is at once intensely personal and breathtaking in its scope.

(8) QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Kyra: I consider SFWA to be a one-syllable word, pronounced as spelled.

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman joined Gene O’Neill for lunch in Las Vegas on Episode 12 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

For the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded in Las Vegas during StokerCon, I headed out to Hash House A Go Go, one of my favorite restaurants—at least in its San Diego incarnation. My breakfast there is always one of my favorite Comic-Con meals. But alas, there turned out to be more than a 90-minute wait that Sunday morning in Vegas, so I moved on to Yard House at the recommendation of my guest, Gene O’Neill, who’d eaten there earlier that weekend.

Gene, with whom I attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, has been nominated 11 times for the Bram Stoker Award, and has won twice, in the categories of Long Fiction and Fiction Collection.

(10) INDIANAPOLIS FANDOM. Tony Schaab wrote a report on InConJunction for ScienceFiction.com.

Dubbed “The Crossroads of the Multiverse,” the small but mighty InConJunction celebrated it’s amazing 36th show this year on July 1-3, 2016, at the Marriott East in Indianapolis, IN.  A fan-run convention since the beginning some 30-plus years ago, the show is organized by The Circle of Janus Science Fiction & Fantasy Club.  With a heavy focus on sci-fi and fantasy, the show boasts several unique and entertaining aspects, including a fully-functional Bridge Simulator, an expansive Live Auction, a cosplay Masquerade, and specific rooms dedicated to ‘Doctor Who,’ anime, and more.

(11) SEVENTH HELL OF WHO. Not everyone thinks it was bad, however, “’Doctor Who’ Showrunner Steven Moffat Admits Series Seven Was ‘Miserable’”, at ScienceFiction.com.

If you don’t recall, Season Seven of NuWho involved a “monster movie of the week” feel with a series of standalone episodes that built up to the departure of Amy and Rory in the midseason episode ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’, the Doctor’s first adventures with Clara Oswald, and the introduction of John Hurt as the War Doctor. But with important moments like these, how could the season have been so generally bad? Well, it sounds like the pressure of Matt Smith leaving the show and the 50th anniversary got to Moffat a little bit:

“Matt [Smith], who was a friend and ally, was leaving – I couldn’t get him to stay. It felt like everything was blowing up around me. I was staggering into the 50th, with no Doctors contracted to appear in it, battered with endless hate mail about how I hadn’t got William Hartnell back and ‘Sherlock’ series three at the same time. I was pretty miserable by the end of it, and I couldn’t bear to let that be the end.”

(12) THE LOST WORLD. “See Gigantic Prehistoric Monsters Battle Modern Lovers” when the Alex Film Society screens The Lost World (1925) on Sunday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m.

“Imagine a Lost World—millions of years old—and now found by a daring exploring party. Imagine this world still existing as in the beginning of time—with gigantic antediluvian monsters roaming it—ape men—prehistoric men living on it—fighting at every turn for existence—fighting the monsters who would devour them. And it all happens in this tremendous love and adventure drama—and people from your own world were brave enough to encounter hardships and dangers to bring back this story to you. Without doubt the biggest motion picture achievement.”

Featuring some of the biggest stars of the silent era, including Wallace Beery, Bessie Love and Lewis Stone, as well as no less than a dozen different species of dinosaur, our print of The Lost World is a fully restored version from the George Eastman House collection. Famed composer and pianist Alexander Rannie will accompany the film with the musical score that was written for the original release.

 

Lost World poster COMP

(13) CHANGING ICON. In The Hollywood Reporter, Graeme McMillan has the story: “Tony Stark Replaced by Black Woman as Marvel’s Comic Book Iron Man”. The theory is that a brilliant MIT student who built her version of Iron Man armor will replace Tony Stark from Invincible Iron Man #7 onwards.

Williams debuted in Invincible Iron Man No. 7 in March of this year, and will headline a relaunched version of the title later this year as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch. Created by series writer Brian Michael Bendis — who also co-created Miles Morales, the half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man who debuted in 2011 — and artist Mike Deodato, Riri has been shown to be even more resourceful than Stark himself, and just as stubborn.

Williams’ ascension as Iron Man (The title of the series will remain the same, according to Marvel) continues a trend for replacing, or at least adding to, the traditional white male heroes with a more diverse cast over the last few years; in addition to the Miles Morales Spider-Man, Sam Wilson became Marvel’s second black Captain America in 2014, the same year that Jane Foster took over as Thor.

imvim2015_promo-p_2016

(14) WILL THERE BE A MELTDOWN? Breitbart.com is canvassing the internet hoping to find negative reactions to the Iron Man story. This is a tweet they included in their news item.

(15) CAP CLAIMED BY BATTLING BOROUGHS. BBC reports a Marvel will place a statue of Captain America in a Brooklyn park. Naturally, this is causing controversy. For a change, it has nothing to do with Hydra.

The company has commissioned a 13-ft (3.96m) bronze statue which will be housed in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

It will be unveiled at the San Diego Comic Con later this month before being placed in the park from 10 August.

A sketch of the statue released by Marvel shows the character holding his signature shield in the air…..

The figure will also bear the superhero’s quote “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn” – said in the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger.

However, some fans have pointed out the original comic book character was actually from Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

In the comics, the superhero was the son of Irish immigrants – a similar background to that of co-creator Jack Kirby, who was the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants living in the same area.

(16) COMIC STRIP. The eponymous character of The Wizard of Id is attending Wizardcon this week. Today he has a tough decision to make.

(17) NEXT ROGUE ONE TRAILER COMING. UPI says the second Rogue One trailer will premiere in the US on ABC.

According to fansite Making Star Wars, television listings for ABC reveal that they plan on airing a new Star Wars special on July 15 that will also include a new three minute trailer for Rogue One.

The title of the special, Secrets of The Force Awakens, shares the same name as a making of documentary that was included in the blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

(18) JUNO. NASA posted images received from Juno as a time-lapse video of moons orbiting Jupiter.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a unique time-lapse movie of the Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter. The movie begins on June 12th with Juno 10 million miles from Jupiter, and ends on June 29th, 3 million miles distant. The innermost moon is volcanic Io; next in line is the ice-crusted ocean world Europa, followed by massive Ganymede, and finally, heavily cratered Callisto. Galileo observed these moons to change position with respect to Jupiter over the course of a few nights. From this observation he realized that the moons were orbiting mighty Jupiter, a truth that forever changed humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos. Earth was not the center of the Universe. For the first time in history, we look upon these moons as they orbit Jupiter and share in Galileo’s revelation. This is the motion of nature’s harmony.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day mc simon milligan.]

163 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/6/16 And She Gave Away The Pixels Of Her Past And Said, “I’ve Lost The Scroll Again”

  1. “And yet. From the 1920s to the 1950s, prominent African-American intellectuals could reasonably conclude that moving to France meant more freedom. And Canada did welcome escaped slaves. So it seemed like there was something better going on elsewhere.

    I now suspect the answer is in Samuel R. Delany’s classic essay, “Racism and Science Fiction.” As with American SF fandom and industry, people of color and other “marked” minorities used to be below the percentage-of-population threshold where they seem like a status threat, but now they are above it. “

    This where it is both right and wrong. Because the keyword is “status threat”. We have had several waves of immigration in Sweden and the definition of who is counted as “white” has changed after everyone (east europeans and italians are now white, they didn’t use to be). And of course there have been people muttering and some of them angry. But the toxicity is now at a much higher level than before. That is because of the other keyword, “something better going on”.

    Because there used to be something better going on. It used to be that Sweden had an unemployment rate between 2-4%. People who came here got work. They got quickly integrated. There were no ghettos. And that is not the truth anymore. Now people connect their own worry about employment and economy with immigration. They are scared for loosing status. But earlier, there were no such worries. They felt safe. Secure. And then we didn’t have this hatred going on.

    So it is not only a matter of number of immigrants. We have adapted before. It is a matter of how the whole population fares in the economy.

  2. Hampus Eckerman: This where it is both right and wrong. Because the keyword is “status threat”. We have had several waves of immigration in Sweden and the definition of who is counted as “white” has changed after everyone (east europeans and italians are now white, they didn’t use to be).

    Thanks for putting that on the table. The US has gone through the same thing.

  3. Hampus Eckerman on July 9, 2016 at 10:51 am said:

    This where it is both right and wrong. Because the keyword is “status threat”. We have had several waves of immigration in Sweden and the definition of who is counted as “white” has changed after everyone (east europeans and italians are now white, they didn’t use to be

    The same in Australia. Post-WW2 emigration from Southern Europe to Australia led to larger Italian and Greek communities who were seen as being intrinsically foreign to a population that saw itself as British/Irish* (Anglo-Celtic a term with its own issues)

    For an even more rapid change in how overt racists wander about with their taxonomy, the recent election in Australia saw the electoral return to prominence of Pauline Hanson. In the original version of her racist panic-mongering in the late 1990s her target was ‘Asians’ (as in people from Southeast Asia and China), whereas the new racist panic-mongering is ‘Muslims’.

    *[This, of course, was never the actual truth]

  4. @Peer Sylvester:

    The one edge I am sure we have though, is that its less lethal here to be a minority – hate crimes notwithstanding, because we have less guns, we have less dead. And we have far less police killings. But thats a whole diffeernt debate and one I suspect were on the same side anyway 😉

    Yeah, we’re on very close to the same page there.

  5. @Hampus Eckerman:

    This where it is both right and wrong. Because the keyword is “status threat”. We have had several waves of immigration in Sweden and the definition of who is counted as “white” has changed after everyone (east europeans and italians are now white, they didn’t use to be).

    Oh sure. As Mike notes, we’ve seen the very same phenomenon, and with Eastern Europeans and Italians to boot. Before that the Irish.

    It can also go the other way. I have a sense that most people here used to consider Arab-Americans “white” for all practical purposes, but that’s out the window now. And in the USA, no matter how many other groups get recategorized as white, it never, never happens for people of the African diaspora.

  6. @JJ: Oh, don’t worry; while the SFWA board can decree “Yep, we’re gonna have an earworm song”, there’s no way any one tune could get through two different Worldcon business meetings!

  7. @Kevin Standlee

    I suggest that you set up the Jeremy Szal Awards to be selected solely by you. That way they will be Perfect In Every Possible Way.

    Oh yes. It must be so absolutely offensive to you and The American Way to see more diversity and international recognition come into the Hugo awards, that they might branch out a pick. I’m sure it would be very triggering for you.

    Tell me: how many teeth did you spit when The Three Body Problem had the audacity to win? You must have been furious.

    If the idea of more diversity upsets you, that’s fine, but please don’t even think about trying to stop us trying to make process. Whatever the Hugo awards were is not important, what they are now is significant, and now they are an international ceremony (WorldCon kinda gives that away) where anything from any part of the world can be included. And that should be reflected in what gets nominated, but it isn’t. Whence the problem.

    America is the centre of fandom, raking in the overwhelmingly vast majority of attention and publicity. Asking other countries to fork over whatever scraps you leave remaining so you can feel better about yourself isn’t just absurd; it’s laughable. As many, many people have pointed out, there is a different, non-American perspective to all this. Get used to it.

    Keep up with the “We Americans created the Hugos and you all better be grateful” attitude; it’ll definitely get you places. Not good places, but places.

  8. I’ve decided I’m entitled to the Nobel Prizes. Not receiving, of course, just deciding who they should go to. Damn grabby Nords, thinking they own it just because they invented it and funded it forever.

  9. Jeremy Szal: Tell me: how many teeth did you spit when The Three Body Problem had the audacity to win? You must have been furious.

    Jeremy, I encourage you to educate yourself before spouting off like this and embarrassing yourself so badly.

    Kevin Standlee has been involved with Worldcon for around 40 years, since he was a teenager. He has done as much as anyone to try to help and reach out the rest of the world with Worldcon and the Hugo Awards. You are criticising in possibly the most wrong place you could criticize.

    I noticed that you couldn’t be bothered to respond to my comment pointing out that Worldcon and the Hugo Awards are the only organization and awards program which have made a concerted effort to reach out and involve the rest of the world, that 10 of the last 22 Worldcons have taken place outside the U.S. Why is that?

    Shall we talk about the Ditmars, which go to only Australian authors? Shall we talk about the Aurealis Awards, which go to only Australian authors? Shall we talk about Australia’s Natcon, which has never been held outside Australia?

    Tell you what, when the Ditmars and the Aurealis Awards start recognizing works from other countries, and Australia’s Natcon starts taking place in countries outside Australia, then you might be in a better position to complain that Worldcon and the Hugos have not yet achieved perfect reach with the rest of the world.

    In the meantime, you just sound like that neighbor of mine who keeps complaining that I don’t bring them cakes that I’ve made often enough. 🙄

  10. Tell me: how many teeth did you spit when The Three Body Problem had the audacity to win? You must have been furious.

    Jeremy, come on. Did you follow the Puppy mess last year? Three Body Problem *wouldn’t have even been on the ballot* if Marko Kloos hadn’t withdrawn his Puppy-nominated book. If you’re going to be angry, be angry at slatemongers who want to keep their white male USA! USA! USA!-type publications front and center at the Hugos.

    I liked other books better than Three Body, but I was happy that it won. I think most of us were. You are off base on this one.

  11. @Jeremy Szal
    I think you misunderstood Kevin Standlee. As JJ mentions: Kevin Standlee has been involved with Worldcon for around 40 years, since he was a teenager. He has done as much as anyone to try to help and reach out the rest of the world with Worldcon and the Hugo Awards.

    Kevin Standlee’s response in this thread is one he makes when people complain about the Hugo’s or Worldcon but aren’t stepping up to be part of the community, learn its history, and become volunteers working to make it be what they’d like.

    You want Worldcon to be more world what are you personally willing to do to make that happen? Are you involved with any of the International Worldcon bids? Are you heavily involved in convention running in your own country and looking into bringing Worldcon to your country? If so are you attending this year’s Worldcon? Are you hanging out online with Worldcon SMOFs and JOFs – the volunteers who put on Worldcon and the Hugos? Are you talking with past runners of international Worldcons to find out what you can do and what it takes to put on an outside the USA Worldcon? What are you doing to help Worldcon become more World other than insulting the people who give thousands of hours and spend hundreds to tens of thousands of their own dollars to make Worldcon happen each year?

    Worldcon is the convention which runs the Hugo awards. Everything is done by volunteers. It’s paid for by members – attending and supporting members of Worldcon the year it’s held who also get to nominate and vote on the Hugos. It’s not-for-profit.

    BTW many of us voted for Worldcon to be in Helsinki next year and are thrilled it won even if we can’t make it for financial or health reasons. Many of us voted for The Three Body Problem and many of those that didn’t believe it’s a worthy winner. Filers are on the lookout for more SFF by non-US/UK authors to expand our horizons. Reading recommendations are always welcome at File 770.

    I can’t say your comment impressed me much with your knowledge of Worldcon/Hugos, the people who make it happen, or your ability to convince people to attend any convention you might run in the future. Time will tell if you really care and want to be part of the change many of us are working towards – join us. Be the change you want.

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