Pixel Scroll 8/19/19 Click, Click, Click Went The Pixel, Post, Post, Post Went The Scroll

The Dublin 2019 juggernaut coasted slowly to a stop today. Here is a sampling of people’s farewell tweets.

(1) PROGRAMMING.

(2) RIBBONS.

(3) MEDALS.

(4) T-SHIRT.

(5) FEEDBACK SESSION.

(6) OOK OOK. Something from the HOAX daily newzine:

(7) CLOSING CEREMONIES.

(8) SLOW GETAWAY.

(9) COMPLETE AND UNINTERRUPTED. Ada Palmer, whose Campbell presenter speech was interrupted by absurdities appearing in the closed captioning behind her, has posted the text online: “2019 Campbell Speech + Refugee Charity Fundraiser”. This excerpt comes from the post’s introduction –

…I hope I find a video somewhere so I too can enjoy such disasters as “dog mechanism” for “dogmatic” and “Bored of the Rings and Cream of Thrown” for Lord of the Rings & Game of Thrones. More seriously, it was a great honor to speak again at this year’s Worldcon, and I couldn’t be more proud of Jeannette Ng‘s courageous acceptance speech, bringing attention to the crisis and violence happening right now in her home city of Hong Kong, and to the great responsibility we in the science fiction and fantasy community have to make sure that the theme of empire–which has numerous positive depictions in genre literature from space empires to the returns of kings–does not end up celebrating the dangerous, colonial, and autocratic faces of empire, and that as we explore empire in our work (including in my own work) we do so in ways which examine empire’s problems and advance versions of empire which reverse or rehabilitate it, and which affirm the greater values of free-determination, autonomy, and human dignity.

(10) GROWING UP. In an article for the September WIRED, “We Can Be Heroes: How the Nerds Are Reinventing Pop Culture”, Laurie Penny discusses how fandom–and, specifically, writing Harry Potter fan fiction–led her to a writing career, including stints as a writer for Joss Whedon’s HBO show “the Nevers” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor.”

But fandom also helped me meet people unlike myself, and that was just as important.  There comes a time in the life of very lonely, misunderstood, intelligent child of privilege when they must confront the fact that being intelligent, lonely, and misunderstood is not the worst thing that can befall a person, that some people have a great deal more to contend with on top of being an unsalvageable dweeb.  I was and remain a clueless Caucasian shut-in with a lot to learn, but that part of my education started when I began following fans and creators of color.  My first real friends who weren’t white lived thousands of miles away, and I knew them through jerky avatars and punnish screen names and an exhaustive knowledge of Tolkien lore.  I educated myself with the articles and books they linked to.  There were long, torturous flame wars.  I listened.  I took notes.”

(11) MORE ABOUT HUGO LOSERS PARTY. Marguerite Kenner pursued more information about why there were problems (Hugo finalists who couldn’t get in when they arrived). Thread starts here.

Ada Palmer also pointed out the effect on people with accessibility needs:

(12) ADMIRING UNCANNY. Their local newspaper covered the Hugo won by Lynne and Michael Thomas’ Uncanny Magazine in the Semiprozine category: “Urbana-based Uncanny Magazine lands another rocket at Hugo Awards”. Jim Meadows sent the link with a note: “Of course, you already know who the Hugo winners are, but I thought I’d pass along the local coverage from the Champaign-Urbana area, where the Thomases now live. Uncanny has received local coverage before, and I’m impressed by the degree of media support it gets in the area. I don’t think this would have happened to this degree a few decades ago, but even a print version of Uncanny would have been more difficult to do a few decades ago.” The article appeared on the website of the (Champaign, IL) News-Gazette on Sunday evening, and appeared on the front page (below the fold) of the paper’s print edition on Monday morning.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 19, 1807 Jane C. Loudon. A very early SF writer as her novel, The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, was published in 1827. If you’d like to read it, the Internet Archive has it available. (Died 1858.)
  • Born August 19, 1893 Hans Waldemar Wessolowski. An artist best remembered for his cover art for pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Clues and Strange Tales. Wesso was the name most commonly cited wherever his art is given credit. Wesso painted all 34 covers of the Clayton Magazines Astounding Stories from January 1930 to March 1933.  (Died 1947.)
  • Born August 19, 1921 Gene Roddenberry. Oh, you know who he is. But did you know he wrote a lot of scripts for Have Gun – Will Travel? Indeed, his script for the show, “Helen of Abajinian” would win the Writer’s Guild of America award for Best Teleplay in 1958. (Died 1991.)
  • Born August 19, 1950 Mary Doria Russell, 69. The Sparrow series, The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, are awesome. The Sparrow won the Arthur C. Clarke, BSFA, and Tiptree Awards, and it was the reason she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. 
  • Born August 19, 1950 Jill St. John, 69. She’s best remembered as Tiffany Case, the Bond girl in  Diamonds Are Forever. She was the first American to play a Bond girl. She shows in The Batman in “Smack in the Middle” and “Hi Diddle Riddle” as Molly. And she played Jennifer Holmes in the 1960 film version of The Lost World. Fascinatingly, she’s an uncredited  dancer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
  • Born August 19, 1952 Jonathan Frakes, 67. Best known for his portrayal of Commander William T. Riker in  Next Gen though I’m fond of his voicing David Xanatos on the Gargoyles series. Interesting bit of trivia: For a time in the Seventies, he worked for Marvel Comics at cons as Captain America.
  • Born August 19, 1988 Veronica Roth, 31. She’s best known for her Divergent trilogy, consisting of Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant; and also  Four: A Divergent Collection. The first two were made into films, a proposed series was cancelled.

(14) HIVES. LAist’s selections as “LA’s Coolest, Weirdest, Most Immersive Themed Bars” tilts heavily towards genre. For example —

Scum & Villainy

Theme: A Star Wars-inspired bar for geeks

Obi-Wan Kenobi promised a young Luke Skywalker that he would “never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” than the Mos Eisley Spaceport. This Hollywood Boulevard bar does its best to top the cantina where Han shot first, complete with war room-style maps and customers milling about in their best First Order cosplay. It wouldn’t be accurate to say Scum & Villainy is only a Star Wars bar. All fandoms are welcome at weekly game nights, karaoke, trivia contests and occasional cosplay evenings. Leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones, it transformed into Fire & Ice Tavern, with a sad-faced Weirwood tree, an Iron Throne and Stark and Targaryen sigils. As for the menu, expect beer, themed cocktails and bar bites such as quesadillas, tots and chicken fingers, which were one of Greedo’s favorite snacks, as any real Star Wars fan knows.
6377 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 424-501-4229.

(15) LUNCHTIME, AND YOU’RE IT. A Yahoo! reporter shares “What it’s like to see a blinking, breathing ‘Jurassic World’ dinosaur up close” on the Jurassic World Live Tour.

It’s actually not the teeth that get your attention first. 

It’s the eyes.

The velociraptor’s yellow eyeballs don’t exactly look at you but through you, a soul-piercing kind of stare that suggests she’s wondering just how salty your skin tastes.

At least that’s how I feel when I’m stalked by one of the dinosaur puppets from the Jurassic World Live Tour, a traveling stage show that arrives in dozens of U.S. arenas starting Sept. 26 in Columbus, Ohio, and runs through 2020. 

My raptor encounter takes place in a nondescript building that looks like a dentist’s office and smells like freshly baked bread. The first clue that I’m in the right location (which is located next to a bakery): A sign on a door that reads “DINOSAUR CROSSING.” I walk inside, and it turns out to be a portal to the Jurassic era where dinosaurs roam.

(16) VERSUS TROLLS. NPR tells how “Trolled Online, Women In Politics Fight To Hold Big Tech Accountable In The U.K.”

Lisa Cameron is a member of the British Parliament. She’s also a victim, and survivor, of online trolls.

Cameron was new to politics in 2015, when she was elected in East Kilbride, Scotland. She’d been a clinical psychologist, a wife, a mom, and a trade union representative — the kind of political newcomer democracies want to run for office.

But the sludge of the Internet began to attack her — and not just for her policy stances. Her inbox, Facebook and Twitter accounts filled with insults about her appearance, rape fantasies, pictures of decapitated bodies, threats to her family, and anti-Semitic slurs (Cameron is Jewish).

Cameron’s #MeToo story — and those of her female colleagues in Parliament — has helped usher in a new era in the United Kingdom: digital assault is understood as a real threat, one that is pushing the government to hold tech giants accountable for their role as hosts to these attacks.

Cameron says the ugliness got to her. “It makes you question whether you are doing something wrong in your job, whether politics is right for you.” She also wondered if running was unfair to her two children.

Then, a horrific attack — not against her, but against a female colleague who was sworn into Parliament in the same class — changed the conversation for Cameron, and for the entire country.

In 2016, Member of Parliament Jo Cox was gunned down and stabbed on the streets by a white supremacist. According to prosecutors, he was radicalized on the Internet, where he viewed Nazi materials and, on the eve of the attack, researched right-wing politicians and the Ku Klux Klan. The motive appeared to be policy-oriented. The killer was pro-Brexit. And Cox, a member of the Labour Party, wanted Britain to stay in the European Union. But some believed she was targeted because she was a woman.

The Prime Minister’s office reached out to men and women in Parliament to ask if they had been intimidated online. The final report, published in December 2017, coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement in the United States. U.K. regulators didn’t set out to spotlight female leaders. But they did, because women had horrific anecdotes to share.

(17) SUPER-RESISTANCE. Art Spiegelman, in “Art Spiegelman: golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism” in The Guardian, is a discussion about the rise of superheroes in the late 1930s. 

…In late 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor, while the Nazis were Blitzkrieging London, Simon, an entrepreneurial freelancer for Funnies, Inc, was hired by Goodman to write, draw and edit for him directly. Simon showed him the cover concept for a new superhero that he and Kirby had dreamed up – a hero dressed like an American flag with giant biceps and abs of steel has just burst into Nazi headquarters and knocked Hitler over with a haymaker to the jaw. Goodman began to tremble, knowing what an impact this book would make and remained anxious until the first issue of Captain America, dated March 1941, landed on the stands. Goodman had been terrified that someone might assassinate Hitler before the comic book came out!

Captain America was a recruiting poster, battling against the real Nazi super-villains while Superman was still fighting cheap gunsels, strike breakers, greedy landlords and Lex Luthor – and America was still equivocating about entering the conflict at all. No wonder Simon and Kirby’s comic book became an enormous hit, selling close to a million copies a month throughout the war….

A related article explains that this piece was originally written as an introduction to a Folio Society collection of classic Marvel comics but Spiegelman withdrew it because he had a reference to “an Orange Skull haunts America” in a discussion of the Red Skull and Marvel found this unacceptable.(“Spiegelman’s Marvel essay ‘refused publication for Orange Skull Trump dig’”).

(18) KILLING JOKE. The BBC covers “Edinburgh Fringe funniest joke: Vegetable gag wins top prize” and the also-rans. No, I don’t know what “florets” is a sound-alike to; anyone alse to enlighten me?

A joke about vegetables has made it to the top of the menu as this year’s funniest at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel has won Dave’s “Funniest Joke of The Fringe” award with the niche culinary pun.

He took the title with the gag: “I keep randomly shouting out ‘Broccoli’ and ‘Cauliflower’ – I think I might have florets”.

It is from Falafel’s show It’s One Giant Leek For Mankind at the Pear Tree.

In its 12th year, the prize rewards the funniest one-liner to grace the venues of the festival and celebrates the pool of talent the Fringe has to offer.

(19) TALK TO ABOUT THE HAND. Something CoNZealand-goers won’t have to travel to see: “‘Nightmare’ hand statue looms over New Zealand city”.

A giant hand which has been described as a “Lovecraftian nightmare come to life” has been lifted into place atop Wellington’s City Gallery in New Zealand.

Ronnie van Hout’s “Quasi” installation was carried by helicopter to its new home on Monday overlooking the city’s civic centre.

The artwork, which was created in 2016, originally stood on top of the Christchurch Art Gallery. It is on loan to Wellington, where it will stand for the next three to four years.

The operation has cost NZ$74,000 (US$47,000; £39,000), which includes transportation, designing the hoist, and “Wellington-proofing” the hand against the local elements, Stuff news website reports.

The relocation of the five-metre tall (16 feet) sculpture, which weighs 400kg (880 pounds), has stirred up a mixture of revulsion and civic pride in New Zealand’s capital.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Hampus Eckerman, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Jim Meadows, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

49 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/19/19 Click, Click, Click Went The Pixel, Post, Post, Post Went The Scroll

  1. Did anyone attend the Fannish Inquisition at Dublin 2019? I’m looking for info about Memphis, and anything else. Please contact me offline — mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

  2. Ahem. I realize this is days too late, but …

    In Dublin Con I was bred and born
    In Glyer’s Green now I lie in scorn
    I served me time in the filer’s trade
    But I turned out to be a scrolling blade

  3. (6) This was in the parody newsletter “The Trout of Doubt” at the end of the con, not the official newsletter “The Salmon of Knowledge”.

  4. 11)

    There’s no point blaming CoNZealand for the access issues. They didn’t select the venue or the guest list.

  5. 11) The venue was the Guinness Store House if I’d understand correctly, and it absolutely should have had the possibility to handle most access issues with both ramps and lifts available. At least if they’d been prepared. But I think they have limits on how many with wheel chairs that are allowed in different places because of fire restrictions.

    As for whom to blame, I have absolutely no idea. As ConZealand apologized, they seem to think they at least shared some responsibility. But I think the blame/apology apart is a thing between organizers and those affected (as long as they get an apology). I’m more interested in how to avoid something like this happening again. I.e, how to handle a private party, that still is almost an institution, and make sure it is organized with the same care as the rest of the convention.

  6. On the whole I had a nice convention where I myself didn’t feel any large hiccups or failures. If I should mention three things in total, they would be: 1) Queueing and the congestions they caused. 2) A lack of seating in a quiet area. 3) A website lacking in information.

    The first point was solved by an herculean effort in signs, marking up queuing lanes and having traffic directors. I thought it worked well, even if I personally had to skip out on all panels Saturday because feeling trapped down with no movement space.

    The second point could have been solved with a slightly different arrangement of tables in the dealers room, to cut away noises with separation walls. I thought for a while I had to escape into the quiet room when I started to get high strung, but it didn’t feel very welcoming with a daunting warning sign, so I left the Convention Center instead.

    The third is the one that irritated me. I guess all information was in one of the books they handed out at registration, but I hadn’t that one with me. There wasn’t even a map of the convention center on the website, much less opening hours for different rooms. As I had the schedule in my phone, I would have preferred to have the rest of the necessary info available digitally.

    Three points in all with slight critique on what I personally experienced. So lets go to praise instead which I could give in abundance:

    The organization felt great, from registration the day before the convention. Always someone there to direct people to the correct line, asking to make sure, making sure people weren’t blocked. How many volunteers were involved? I’ll sing their praise to heavens.
    Nice places to eat near the Convention Center, getting away from the classic convention fast food.
    On all panels I went to, people used their microphones! And it didn’t stop there, most of the time they made sure to hand mics to audience during question time or repeat the questions loud.
    Combining Retro-Hugos with the Opening Ceremony worked very well and Ellen Klages was just perfect as presenter, handling the small mishaps with humour and inspiration.
    The Hugo Ceremony, apart from the texting, was very nice, especially with the live music.
    The Masquerade too was nicely done, but they really should have stopped at 2-3 rounds of power point karaoke and switched to something else. And for heavens sake, don’t start with the power house Mary Robinette Kowal, as she madr all other performances pale by comparison.
    I got to hear Sassafrass again! I really love hearing Palmer and Schiller live. It is not the same on record.
    Kathleen Hunts lecture on Vampires was my favourite, I truly prefer the lectures or the one single expert to the panels. But the one of Vikings in fantasy was also interesting.

    And apart from that, Dublin was a very fine city to walk around in and friendly people everywhere. I was very happy with this convention.

  7. (13) Another early Frakes appearance is in the 1980s version of the Twilight Zone.

    PS Thanks for the title credit

  8. (13) Another early Frakes appearance was in an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard playing a cousin (or something, it’s been ~35 years since I’ve seen the episode) of Boss Hogg. Not genre unless you consider the General Lee to be a magical car – which I do.

  9. The Scum and Villainy Cantina is of course also the long-time home of Kevin Smith’s more-or-less weekly show ‘Fatman Beyond’.

  10. Born August 19, 1950 — Mary Doria Russell, 69. The Sparrow series, The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, are awesome.

    Yay, her! I love those books.

    But also boo, her! Because she has forsaken us for the land of historical fiction. Sob.

    In fact, just a week or two ago I saw that she has a new book that came out the sixth of this month. It’s The Women of the Copper Country, about the labor movement of the early 20th century and Annie Clements, who organized a strike against a large copper company.

  11. @9: I like the speech, but it seems longer than I’ve heard presenters do in the past. (I’m also finding it a bit tangled even with the text in front of me — was there vocal punctuation added live?) OTOH, 2015 was the last time I saw (even by wire) any of the Hugo award ceremony; is this much buildup now typical?
    Also: given how little it took to set him off last year, I wonder whether Silverberg got snarky about Ng’s acceptance speech for the Campbell or had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

    @10 is a lot more substantial than I’ve gotten used to seeing from Wired and a fascinating contrast to the common fannish line of ~”We won some time ago — nerds’ stories are mainstreamed!”, starting with its then-time recognition (in the quoted section) that there were people even more out of the mainstream (equally unjustifiably). I wonder how long it will be before all the variations of people are accepted, or whether there will always be new types finding that fantastika gives them room that society does not.
    I was struck by They believe themselves to be the Rebel Alliance, the browncoats, the riders of Rohan, when in fact they are the Empire and always have been. I think the author is missing that many of the backlashers were not originally part of the Empire — they simply got acceptance earlier, perhaps thanks to being ~cosmetically acceptable — and that this is an old sorry pattern of people pulling up the ladder after them. cf the Irish Americans taking (most) control of Boston from the Yankees, then oppressing African Americans (and possibly Italian Americans, before I was in the area).
    (And I’m wondering whether the author misused “salubrious”, or the editor, or I’m just misreading the context. nit, nit, nit.)

    @13: if I’d ever heard that about Roddenberry, I’d forgotten it — but it makes what I’ve heard was his original pitch for Star Trek (“Wagon Train to the stars”) more … understandable.

    @13bis: did Laugh-In credit any of the dancers who didn’t have speaking roles? (Were there any others? IIRC Hawn danced in addition to playing a ditz, but I don’t remember the full cast; the IMDB list is … long.)

    @Camestros: TFTI — I learned to pronounce “florets” as it’s spelled, but I can imagine Brits pronouncing it more like “fleurettes” (which it might have evolved from).

    Possibly the whole idea of the incoming concom hosting the Hugo Losers party needs to be rethought, or possibly it needs to be treated rigorously as a convention area that just happens to be managed from out of town (as areas and even divisions need to be given how complicated Worldcons have become).

    @JJ re @11: who was handing out invitations, and how many were given to non-nominees? If the venue was chosen by Dublin rather than NZ, a lot of flamage may have been against the wrong group; a more-local group should have been more on top of both access and exactly what they were getting. (Not that I expect any of the flamers to apologize….)

  12. Semi-random info relevant to the Hugos:

    I still constantly hear claims from puppy types that: 1. “Nobody” pays any attention to the Hugos anymore; and 2. Hugo nominees are books that don’t sell well compared to their own preferred authors.

    So here’s some data from Amazon sales rankings. I’ve listed rankings from 8/18/19 (before the winners were announced), 8/19, and 8/20. I’ve also included rankings for Correia’s most recent books as a sort of baseline, both to provide a comparison with what puppies consider “popular” and also to establish that their rankings weren’t rising overall while the nominees’ rankings were.

    It constantly amazes me just how willing the puppy types are to completely ignore reality, even when it smacks them in the face.

    The Calculating Stars #1,375 — #275 — #71
    Trail of Lightning #655 — #563 — #626
    Spinning Silver #8,079 — #6,713 — #6,865
    Record of a Spaceborn Few #20,301 — #14,065 — #8,963
    Space Opera #43,114 — #21,253 — #15,700
    Revenant Gun #35,449 — #25,956 — #24,288

    And for comparison:

    House of Assassins (2019) #15,835 — #16,856 — #17,865
    Monster Hunter Siege (2017) #24,279 — #26,721 — #23,546
    Monster Hunter Memoirs Saints (2018) #42,445 — #41,729 — #29,745
    Monster Hunter Memoirs Grunge (2016) #62,171 — #62,591 — #109,721
    Monster Hunter Memoirs Sinners (2016) #78,252 — #86,675 — #84,753
    Monster Hunter Files (2017) #92,833 — #44,578 — #58,427

    What surprises me most is the big surge for Space Opera, considering that it didn’t win anything.

    (Oh, and Trail of Lightning has such high sales because it’s listed on KU right now!)

  13. @Chip Hitchcock–

    and that this is an old sorry pattern of people pulling up the ladder after them. cf the Irish Americans taking (most) control of Boston from the Yankees, then oppressing African Americans (and possibly Italian Americans, before I was in the area).

    Speaking as someone both native to the area, and of both those ethnic groups–initially, yes. On all the surface levels they’re are a really poor mix socially and culturally, and the Italians were initially a lot less politically aware than the Irish were even when the Irish were fresh out of steerage escaping the Famine.

    And then, in this, at the time, heavily Protestant, indeed WASP, region, the two groups noticed that they were each the only other Catholics, and that by getting their heads out of their asses, they would have a vastly expanded pool of potential marriage partners. And moreover, those girls were exotic beauties. Really. I listened patiently to it from uncles on both sides of the ethnic divide for many years. The Irish waxing lyrical about the dark, beautiful Italian girls; the Italians singing the praises of fair Irish beauties–all of whom, in real life, appeared to me to be nice-looking, but not stunners by any means.

    You knew Maria Clara Whyte, right? She told me once that when she first arrived in Boston, she was really startled by how many families were mixed Irish and Italian, because those two ethnicities pretty much never intermarried in Brazil. And then she realized that for a long time these were almost the only Catholics in the area, a reality only somewhat masked by the fact that the Catholics had become the majority.

    My Sicilian grandmother’s mantra was that her children were Americans, they were going to marry Americans, and she wanted to know her grandchildren. Much the same on my father’s side, except it was another generation back.

  14. Safe travels for all heading home from Dublin
    19) If I can and do go to Worldcon next year…I do want to see the thing, if it is still up of course.

  15. (9) “Dog Mechanism” is the way I feel some mornings, when my West Highland Terrier patiently waits for her food delivery system to get downstairs and do its job.

  16. @Contrarius
    Does a rise in sales rank from 8,079 to 6,865 actually mean anything of substance? I take your point wrt to Caculating Stars, but in all of the rest, the rankings are so low that I’m not sure it doesn’t mean “sold four copies on Thursday, and five on Friday”.

  17. @Bill —

    Does a rise in sales rank from 8,079 to 6,865 actually mean anything of substance?

    Nice attempt to cherry-pick numbers, Bill. 😉

    Fortunately, I made no claim that every single book on the list has experienced a huge rise in sales; what I claimed — and substantiated — was that there’s an obvious and strong trend upward overall.

    in all of the rest, the rankings are so low that I’m not sure it doesn’t mean “sold four copies on Thursday, and five on Friday”.

    Heh.

    You do realize that you’ve just categorized Larry Correia as a poor seller, right? Even the lowest-selling nominee is outselling 2/3 of the books Correia has published in the last 3 years.

  18. 9)

    I don’t think Palmer should ever be allowed to present a Hugo (or Campbell) again. While her speeches this year and last were lovely and would be fine at another event, they lasted 6 minutes and 5 minutes. Last year’s Winner got to speak for 2.5 minutes. None of the other presenters get to do that.

    It’s supposed to be about the winners, not the presenters. 😐

  19. @JJ — Palmer was standing in for Rebecca Roanhorse. IIRC, she said that Roanhorse had written the speech. I haven’t double-checked, but I think she said that on the podium.

  20. Evidently Paul McCartney wanted Roddenberry to help him create a musical in which Wings would be in outer space. The ex-Beatle had hired Gene to develop a story from an outline. Gene delivered the story, which was supposedly aboout bands competing in outerspace. Once the story was delivered, Gene was supposed to move onward, but nothing ever came of it.

    https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/entertainment/sir-paul-mccartney-wanted-star-trek-creator-to-make-wings-space-movie-742390.html

  21. Contrarius: Palmer was standing in for Rebecca Roanhorse. IIRC, she said that Roanhorse had written the speech. I haven’t double-checked, but I think she said that on the podium.

    Great, so now we have two presenters who think that upstaging the winners is acceptable. I can’t wait for next year. 😐

  22. @JJ —

    Great, so now we have two presenters who think that upstaging the winners is acceptable. I can’t wait for next year.

    Since both of your complaints relate to Campbell presenters, now would be the time for you to go check the lengths of previous Campbell-presentation speeches for comparison. Were Palmer’s and Roanhorse’s out of line with those who went before them, or were they following tradition?

  23. Chip asks did Laugh-In credit any of the dancers who didn’t have speaking roles? (Were there any others? IIRC Hawn danced in addition to playing a ditz, but I don’t remember the full cast; the IMDB list is … long.)

    Not as such. They’re listed as guest performers only. I suspect that individual performers will list their involvement in the show as she did and that’s the only way you know someone was involved. They certainly were members of the Union so they would’ve been acknowledged that way.

    I’m not showing any books done on the series save one done while it was on the air which surprises me.

  24. @Contrarius
    I wasn’t trying to cherry pick, honest. I conceded your point wrt Calculating Stars; of the other five, Spinning Silver has the 2nd highest ranking of the books you are talking about.

    But assume I was, in fact, trying to cherry pick. I’ll rewrite to the least cherry of the non-winners: Does a change from 655 to 626 in daily rankings mean anything significant about the sales trends of the book?

    what I claimed — and substantiated — was that there’s an obvious and strong trend upward overall.

    You claimed and substantiated that Amazon-stated rankings rose. You did not substantiate that such changes in rank represent a “strong” trend upward. That’s what I was asking about.

    You do realize that you’ve just categorized Larry Correia as a poor seller, right?

    It should be obvious from my question that I don’t know if these rankings represent poor sales, or not (else I wouldn’t have asked). But regardless, I couldn’t give a shit as to whether Correia is a poor seller or not. As far as I know, I’ve never read anything he’s written.

    And because I’m ignorant, can you explain what numbers you were posting? If I look at Calculating Stars (paperback edition) right now, I see:
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #39 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
    #13 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
    #28 in Colonization Science Fiction

    If I look at the Kindle edition, I see:
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
    #1 in Space Exploration Science Fiction eBooks
    #1 in Colonization Science Fiction
    #1 in Colonization Science Fiction eBooks

    OTOH, if I look at Trail of Lightning (paperback):
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #253 in Dystopian Fiction
    #75 in Native American Literature (Books)
    #427 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

    and Kindle:
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
    #5 in Native American Literature (Books)
    #12 in Science Fiction Adventure
    #3 in Native American Literature (Kindle Store)

    I’m guessing you were comparing Kindle edition Best Sellers Ranks. So Calculating Stars is still holding most of its gains (good for MRK), but Trail of Lightning is lower now than before your data. If that’s the case, I still suspect that numbers that aren’t top-100ish don’t really represent massive sales, and small variations in rankings that are in the hundreds to thousands are more representative of day-to-day noise than of “obvious and strong upward trends”. But I don’t know. Which is why I was asking.

  25. @bill: The two winners (Stars and Spaceborn Few, which is part of the Best Series) both saw substantial jumps. The remaining nominees mostly saw milder jumps. All of which says that winning the Hugo definitely counts for something.

    As for whether a jump from #8000 to #6000 really means anything, well, Amazon won’t tell us what the numbers actually mean, but if it were just a jump from three sales to four, you’d expect a huge tie at #6000, and another at #8000. In fact, it would almost have to be a jump from #6001 to #6000, because of the tie. So, unless Amazon’s numbers are even funkier than they seem (which, I admit, they might be), a change from #X to #Y almost has to involve sales of at least the absolute value of X minus Y. Otherwise, the work would have merely tied others at some intermediate value.

    In any case, it’s at least suggestive that the other nominees all went up. If it were just random fluctuations, you’d expect at least one of them to have randomly gone down. But, bottom line, the effect of the Hugo on the winners seems pretty clear.

  26. @Bill —

    “Does a change from 655 to 626 in daily rankings mean anything significant about the sales trends of the book?”

    It does, actually, because once you get that close to the top of the sales rankings it takes a lot bigger change in the # of books to effect an increase in rank. But, as I already pointed out, Trail of Lightning is that high because it’s available for free on KU right now.

    “You claimed and substantiated that Amazon-stated rankings rose. You did not substantiate that such changes in rank represent a “strong” trend upward.”

    Sorry, Bill, but this isn’t a peer-reviewed, double-blinded, statistically-proven scientific study — nor did I intend it to be. The trend is obvious. If you wish to test the null hypothesis and see whether p < 0.05, then by all means go to it.

    “It should be obvious from my question that I don’t know if these rankings represent poor sales, or not (else I wouldn’t have asked).”

    I use Correia as a comparison when I look at sales rankings because: 1. he’s the Ur-Puppy; 2. Puppy-types seem to be constantly trying to remind everyone how popular Correia’s books supposedly are; and 3. He’s published a lot of books, which conveniently gives me a lot of data points for comparisons.

    The pups also seem to constantly insist that award-nominee books are NOT popular with the sff-reading public. Therefore, all I have to do to prove them wrong by their own standards is to show that award nominees sell as well as or better than Correia.

    Therefore, I don’t care if these books sell “poorly” compared to, say, a best-selling romance novel or whatever; I only care that they sell as well as or better than books written by the pups’ own champion.

    “And because I’m ignorant, can you explain what numbers you were posting?”

    Sorry, I forgot to specify this time. I always use Paid in Kindle Store rankings for all books, because sometimes books don’t have a hardback edition and sometimes they don’t have a paperback edition, and so on, but they virtually always have a Kindle edition — so I can get more consistent numbers that way. The rankings change hourly.

    “and small variations in rankings that are in the hundreds to thousands are more representative of day-to-day noise than of “obvious and strong upward trends”.”

    No — that’s one of the reasons why I included Correia’s numbers. If this were a result of “day-to-day noise”, then: 1. we should have expected some of the nominees to go up and others of them to go down; and 2. we should have expected to see the same trend in Correia’s numbers. But we didn’t see either.

  27. “It does, actually, because once you get that close to the top of the sales rankings it takes a lot bigger change in the # of books to effect an increase in rank. But, as I already pointed out, Trail of Lightning is that high because it’s available for free on KU right now.”

    I would expect something like a Zipf distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law for Amazon rankings and sales. The most popular book is probably selling something like twice as much as the 2nd most popular, etc. At least, Zipf’s law is commonly a good fit for things like city population, etc.

  28. Cat Eldridge: They certainly were members of the Union so they would’ve been acknowledged that way.

    Just to add chaff to your signal, because that’s what we do here…. My father worked for NBC and was a video engineer on some Laugh-In episodes — he was credited a couple times, and not credited other times. And he was certainly a member of a union.

  29. Mike says Just to add chaff to your signal, because that’s what we do here…. My father worked for NBC and was a video engineer on some Laugh-In episodes — he was credited a couple times, and not credited other times. And he was certainly a member of a union.

    My understanding was the Unions repping the actors and related trades were pretty tight-assed about making sure they got credited in large part because they got their piece of the action every time they got a Union job.

  30. @JJ: got it in a later scan. (No huhu — this subthread has gotten scattered, and xrefs to hold it together are a win.)

    @Contrarius: It constantly amazes me just how willing the puppy types are to completely ignore reality, even when it smacks them in the face. That characteristic is hardly limited to the puppy types. The local paper has a periodic column in which a mediator quotes Republicans saying why they won’t vote Democrat even though Trump; the “reasons” tend to involve unfacts.

  31. Waving a very weary but back-at-home wave from another Worldcon goer. I’d say more, but I’ve only stayed up until 8pm to try to reset my body-clock. My mind hit bedtime and toddled off to sleep quite some time ago.

  32. @Chip —

    That characteristic is hardly limited to the puppy types.

    Too true — except that I would characterize large swaths of the GOP as “puppy types” in a general way.

  33. @Contrarius: swathes, yes — but these were Republicans who admitted to being dismayed by uber-puppytype Trump, which I thought might have distinguished them.

  34. @Hampus Eckerman The organization felt great, from registration the day before the convention. Always someone there to direct people to the correct line, asking to make sure, making sure people weren’t blocked. How many volunteers were involved? I’ll sing their praise to heavens.

    Seconding this. Really excellent work by the organisers and volunteers, even with all the queues to manage.

    My other thought is that diversity and inclusion are finally part of the mainstream of fandom. There’s lots of work to do, of course, but my last worldcon was 2014 and the contrast was really noticeable.

  35. @Chip–The Republicans who “admitted to being dismayed by uber-puppytype Trump” mostly did very little other than ostentatiously Viewing With Dismay before buckling down to get Trump elected. Some, yes, but mostly no.

    There were exceptions, and the number of exceptions, the GOP members who have realized, finally, that they made an awful mistake, is growing. But at thispoint, if they haven’t either changed their party registration, or announced their support for Bill Weld’s primary challenge, they’re still puppy-adjacent, in my view.

  36. Contrarius on August 20, 2019 at 8:35 pm said:

    I would characterize large swaths of the GOP as “puppy types” in a general way.

    I’m not sure if that’s more of an insult to the GOP or the puppies. Maybe both. Fitting in any event. 😀

    (At least the puppies haven’t gone for voter suppression yet. But that’s probably mostly because they haven’t figured out a way to do so. Yet.)

  37. @Xtifr —

    (At least the puppies haven’t gone for voter suppression yet. But that’s probably mostly because they haven’t figured out a way to do so. Yet.)

    As it happens — A certain long-unbeloved puppy type was opining on another blog, just today: “Correia is in the (Dragon) finals despite having actively run against himself, so evidence is the activists have less influence there than they might wish. ”

    As though “activists” had somehow been trying to suppress any votes for Correia!

    LOL.

  38. @Lis: I’m speaking of right now, rather than three years ago; what’s dismaying is that the lies have formed an enormous pile, far beyond the heap during the campaign, but these people still haven’t caught on. See Diane Hessan’s periodic Globe column, on days when you’re not coping with other issues.

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