(1) THE (AMERICAN) GODS THEMSELVES. Neil Gaiman pointed to Leslie S. Klinger’s announcement of a planned reference work about “American Gods”.
I’m thrilled to announce that next Fall, William Morrow will publish Annotated American Gods, with my notes based in significant part on Neil’s manuscripts, journals, and research material as well as many other sources, including conversations with Neil and answers to the questions of “Who are all these unidentified gods anyway?”. I believe that this will be a large-trim edition, with the notes on each page in the margins, based on the 10th Anniversary edition text. Among other things, the notes will highlight all of the significant textual changes that were made for that edition. There will be black-and-white images of various people, places, and maybe even gods!
(2) ATTRACTIVE IDEA. You might say the Worldcon’s YA award gets some love from the Word of the Day:
@worldconya You have a fan! @MikeGlyer
Word of the Day: Lodestar — See the full definition https://t.co/ezyLn2Ds5K— He is Risen! (@LilyValleylives) August 29, 2018
(3) TREK FEATURES IN PRE-EMMY ANNOUNCEMENT. Deadline hails fans with some award news: “‘Star Trek’ Beams Up TV Academy’s 2018 Governors Award”
“Bridge to engineering — what’s that, Scotty?” “Ach, it’s the Governors Award, Captain — comin’ right at us!” “Mister Spock?!” “It seems that Star Trek has been selected to receive that honor from the TV Academy next month, Captain.”
The award to Star Trek recognizes “the visionary science-fiction television franchise and its legacy of boldly propelling science, society and culture where no one has gone before,” as the Academy put it. The honor will be beamed up September 8 during Night 1 of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
(4) POETRY CONTEST DEADLINE. 40th Anniversary Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Speculative Poetry Contest deadline is August 31. Acclaimed Irish poet John W. Sexton is this year’s judge and esteemed Texas poet Holly Lyn Walrath is Chair. You do not have to be a SFPA member to enter poems. Rules at the link.
(5) MORE TO CTHULHU THAN MEETS THE EYE. With HPL’s 128th birthday this month, Bryan Thao Worra takes on the question “How Can Writers of Color Reconcile H. P. Lovecraft’s Influence with His Racist Legacy?” at Twin Cities Geeks.
…When I would read a story like The Shadow over Innsmouth, it felt more relevant to our journey than most of the refugee narratives on the market. Someone arrives in town to discover peculiar folks are nice at first, then turn into monstrous horrors who have bizarre traditions they want the protagonist to partake in? That’s an oversimplification, certainly, but the seeds are there to be sown. It can be sensitive to have a conversation on the real politics that ignited the Laotian Secret War, but a conversation on an alien war between Great Old Ones and Elder Things, with poor humanity caught between mindless horrors duking it out? There’s a tale that could be told, although not without its complications. Are the Great Old Ones NATO or the Warsaw Pact to Lovecraft’s Elder Things and Elder Gods? Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth appear in The Whisperer in Darkness; there, the reader learns these creatures take the brains of their victims to their distant planet in shiny metal cylinders. Simple science-fiction horror or an interesting metaphor for the cultural brain drain of a country as refugees board the metal cylinders of American planes to escape to safety?
…If I encouraged my community to read only safe, respectable literature touching on Laos, we’d find our people depicted typically as the faceless, coolies, or the enemy. In the works of writers like H. P. Lovecraft, and others, I felt we could at least start to flip the script and assert our true authentic voice from an unexpected direction. When I began writing in earnest, I had a desire to avoid many of the colonial, imperialist, and feudal trappings that disempower us. I saw science fiction, fantasy, and horror as a way to discuss our journeys and to empower ourselves, even as there can be no doubt these genres are filled with any number of paranoid and small-minded figures who may know how to put a sentence together but not necessarily an inclusive core. But like any zone of literature, one works at it.
(6) MORE ON JOHN WARD. Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) board member Jeff Tidball addresses the question “It Is Wise for GAMA to Seek a New Executive Director”. As Mark Hepworth noted in comments, Tidball very carefully avoids saying why Ward was not kept on. He does say that Ward was appointed ten years ago in very different circumstances:
The GAMA board of directors announced on Friday that it is not renewing the employment agreement of its Executive Director, John Ward. (Read a copy of the press release hosted on this site.) A fair number of members want to know why, and that’s great, because it indicates that GAMA’s members are interested in the governance and management of their trade organization.
The board’s decision arose in a closed meeting of the board, so the details and voting record of individual board members are confidential. The board’s consensus in recent discussion has been that the decisions made by the body are the decisions of the entire body, and so it would be inappropriate to publish a list reciting the votes of each member.
(Side note: This is based on very recent dialogue, the ultimate resolution of which is still pending. The question arose in the first place when a previous board decision led to a board member’s business being threatened. So, if you’ve seen or been part of board meetings in the past where detailed notes and vote-tallies were circulated, that’s why what I’m reporting here may be different from your experience.)
I wasn’t on the GAMA board ten years ago when John Ward was hired as its Executive Director. Many people, some of whom were intimately involved in the hiring process, some of whom were on the board at the time, many of whom were acquainted with the state of GAMA at that time, have assured me that John Ward was the best candidate for the position of ED when GAMA faced existential crises of finances and responsible organization. I believe them.
It’s been suggested that because John was the right person for that job, ten years ago, he must therefore still be the right person for the current job. There’s a logical disconnect there. The right person to turn a company around is not necessarily the right person to envision its future. The right person to fight a war is not necessarily the right person to rebuild the landscape. And so on. The skill sets are different.
Circumstances change, and GAMA’s have changed. The change is largely thanks to John Ward. The board gives him credit for what he’s done and applauds what he’s accomplished. So make no mistake: I thank John Ward for the hard work he’s done for GAMA. At the same time, I believe that a new voice and skill set would be better to lead GAMA for the next ten years.
(7) ALTERNATE NATURAL HISTORY. Ursula Vernon did a bunch of these today. Not in a single thread, so you’ll need to seek them out. Here is the premise and two lovely examples:
People who missed the original posts—these veggies, alas, are fictional, in honor of @casskhaw the Microfiction Queen’s birthday. I’m sorry, I’d like to grow some of them too!
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) August 30, 2018
The Penitent Order Of St Genevieve strictly forbade use of animal products to its knights, which proved difficult during the Crusades. Generations of monks perfected the Genevieve Leatherlock, an apple so tough its fruit leather could be used as armor, tack, and building material https://t.co/bBCNaoRVur
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) August 30, 2018
The Casey Persimmon was a mouth-puckeringly tart fruit rarely eaten raw. Instead it was used primarily to make a liquor called White Ruin, which was much prized by pirates. Persimmons have a high vitamin C content, so this would have helped stave off scurvy as well as sobriety. https://t.co/4xz9sP1eWY
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) August 30, 2018
(8) BOUNCED OFF THESE BOOKS. Liz Lutgendorff finds most of the books that topped NPR’s poll “shockingly offensive” — “I read the 100 “best” fantasy and sci-fi novels – and they were shockingly offensive”. (The poll was a product of 5,000 nominators and 60,000 voters.) Lutgendorff used this test to help evaluate the list:
The test had three simple questions:
1: Does it have at least two female characters?
2: Is one of them a main character?
3: Do they have an interesting profession/level of skill like male characters?
It was staggering how many didn’t pass. Some failed on point 1….
Many failed on my second criteria, like Out of the Silent Planet or Rendezvous with Rama.
C S Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet was one of the oldest books on the list, aside from Jules Verne. It’s an early attempt at explaining space flight and encountering an alien race. Most of the plot revolves around the main character, Ransom, trying to understand the aliens before managing to escape back to earth.The most entertaining aspect of the book is the ludicrous physics. There is one woman in the story, who Ransom exchanges about three sentences with before she wanders off. Perhaps you can forgive that on age, the book being from 1938.
The same can’t be said for Rendezvous with Rama, which was written in 1973. It was critically acclaimed and won many of the main science fiction prizes such as the Nebula Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Hugo Award and Locus Award. The story centres around a group of space explorers who have to investigate a mysterious spacecraft that enters the solar system.
While there are more women, almost all are subordinate to the main male lead. There is one female authority figure who is on the Council of Rama (the organisation directing the efforts of investigation), but she doesn’t play a significant role. I also got distracted by the fact that, inexplicably, the male lead sleeps with almost all the women mentioned in the book.
Finally, most would fail on the third part of the test because the women characters were all mothers, nurses or love interests. They were passive characters with little agency or character development, like the women in A Canticle for Leibowitz and Magician. They were scenery, adding a tiny bit of texture to mainly male dominated world….
(9) NELSON OBIT. An opportunity here to take note of her fascinating career — “Miriam Nelson, 98, Golden Age Dancer and Choreographer, Dies” in the New York Times – even if Jerry Lewis provides the unlikely genre connection:
Miriam Nelson, whose seven-decade career as a choreographer and dancer spanned the golden ages of Broadway, Hollywood and television, died on Aug. 12 at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 98.
Much of Ms. Nelson’s movie work was for nonmusicals. She choreographed the madcap party scene at Holly Golightly’s apartment in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), and also appeared in it as the glamorous party guest in gold brocade and pearls who argues with the man wearing a fake eye patch.
Behind the camera, Ms. Nelson taught … Jerry Lewis to hoof it like a space alien in “A Visit to a Small Planet” (1960) and the whole cast of “Cat Ballou” (1965) — led by Jane Fonda, who she said was a balletically trained natural — to execute Old West dances for the hoedown scene.
(10) THE ROADS MUST SCROLL. Today’s trivia –
Moving sidewalks may have been synonymous with airports since the mid-20th century but the technology was known even earlier. A “moving pavement” transported people between exhibits during the Paris Expo in 1900 and science fiction novelist H.G. Wells even mentioned them in his 1899 tale “A Story of the Days to Come.”
Sources: USA Today “A short history of airport moving walkways “ (2016) and QI “Moving Walkways”)
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born August 31, 1797 — Mary Shelley. Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) considered by many to be very first genre novel. Though not appreciated for it until rather recently, she was a rather excellent writer of biographies of notable European men and women.
- Born August 30 — R. Crumb, 76. Ok, this is a weird associational connection. Back in 1966, The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick was illustrated by R. Crumb in Weirdo #17. Crumb days text is by Dick. It’s really, really weird. You can find it here.
- Born August 30, 1955 – Judith Tarr, 63. Perhaps best known for her Avaryan Chronicles series, and myriad other fantasy works. She breeds Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona. Need I note horses figure prominently in her stories?
(12) WORKING FOR LEX. Here’s one of the DC Crossovers that have been discussed in Scrolls — Lex Luthor Porky Pig Special #1 variant,. Became available August 29, according to Graham Crackers Comic Books.
Facing financial and personal ruin, a desperate Porky Pig applies for and gets and entry-level position with LexCorp. Grateful to his new benefactor, Porky becomes Luthor’s most loyal employee and defender. But when a major scandal breaks in the news and Lex is called before a Congressional Committee, guess who is about to be offered up as the sacrificial pig?
(13) ESA ASTRONAUT INTERVIEW. Newsweek interviews European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti about her time after her stay on the ISS and her current role on the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway project (“Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti: NASA Lunar Gateway Is ‘Natural Next Step in Exploration’”).
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is [… the] first Italian woman in space […] the former fighter pilot spent almost 200 days on the International Space Station (ISS) from 2014 to 2015—a record spaceflight for an ESA astronaut.
As well as investigating how fruit flies, flatworms and even human cells behave in space, Cristoforetti gained fame for brewing the first espresso on the ISS….
Q: What is your role with the Gateway?
A: I’m a crew representative for the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway project. It’s a space station that will be built around the moon in the early 2020s. For human spaceflight, you always want astronauts involved so that they can give a little bit of perspective to the future crew members, users and operators. I’m just starting that, I’m just getting myself into the topic.
(14) INNERSPACE. The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival debuts October 1-7 in New York, and will explore “the medicinal and therapeutic use of psychedelics and investigate the existence of inner worlds through trance music and science fiction, horror, surrealism, fantasy and virtual reality film.”
Simon Boswell will be there —
Renowned film composer and noted psychedelic Simon Boswell will headline a night of music on October 3 at Mercury Lounge on the Lower East Side for a special concert at The Inaugural Psychedelic Film and Music Festival. Performing with his musical group The AND, Boswell will play pieces from his illustrious film composition career in rock, electronica, gothic horror and futuristic styles.
Mr. Boswell is notable for integrating electronic elements with orchestral instruments to create vibrant and atmospheric soundtracks for widely praised cyberpunk, horror and science fiction films including Santa Sangre (1989), Hardware (1990), Dust Devil (1992), Shallow Grave (1994), Hackers (1995) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999). He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Original Television Music for the BBC series The Lakes (1997) and in recent years has composed for several film projects and toured worldwide with The AND, performing live music against video backdrops of remixed content from his impressive film resume.
Tickets available on Ticketfly: https://ticketf.ly/2nyeb1o
(15) IN VINE VERITAS. Someone reading today needs this book – just not sure who it is. Altus Press announces plans for “Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars”. (No indication there is any connection with the series of similarly-themed action figures from days gone by.)
In 2014, Altus launched The Wild Adventures of Tarzan, with Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don. Two years later came the monumental King Kong versus Tarzan, a dream project long thought unachievable.
Now, in association with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Altus Books, the Wild Adventures announces its most breathtaking project to date.
Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars!
Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his amazing creations have long dreamed of reading a novel in which the Lord of the Jungle visits the Red Planet and encounters John Carter.
In Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars, this finally happens!
When a witch doctor’s sorcery hurls the ape-man’s soul out of his magnificent body, Tarzan discovers himself on a weird, treeless landscape, a dying planet inhabited by creatures unknown to him. Marooned on Mars, Tarzan must learn to survive in an unfamiliar environment. With no hope of rescue, the ape-man begins the arduous journey that takes him from being a friendless stranger on an alien world to his rise as a force to be reckoned with. For on Barsoom—as Martians style their home planet—there exists apes. Great apes of a type not found upon Earth. Hairless giants resembling gorillas, but possessing two sets of arms. Not to mention ferocious lion-like monsters known as banths as well as the elephantine zitidars. Tarzan will go up against these fearsome creatures, and so begins the perilous march that elevates him from naked and unarmed castaway to the undisputed Ape-lord of Barsoom!
Written by genre giant Will Murray, Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars ultimately brings the famed Lord of the Jungle into open conflict with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ other great hero, John Carter, Warlord of Mars. In the end, which one will be victorious?
(16) DRIZZT IS BACK. R.A. Salvatore’s Timeless, on-sale September 4, marks the return of Drizzt Do’Urden, the legendary dark elf fighter that’s been a mainstay of fantasy books and the successful Forgotten Realms RPG games for over 30 years.
Not only will readers get more of the swashbuckling, sword-and-sorcery action Salvatore is known for; they’ll also get to know more of the characters who dwell in the Forgotten Realms.
Salvatore is unique, because he was one of the originators of modern Epic Fantasy—but he has continued to evolve, and to take on new fans. With TIMELESS, a master of Epic Fantasy is poised to make a huge splash in a beloved genre.
(17) SEND FOR THE MUPPET CORONER. According to Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers, “‘The Happytime Murders’ Review: Puppet Raunchfest Is Dead on Arrival”.
A few critics are calling it the worst movie of the year. Unfair! The Happytime Murders, the R-rated look at a serial killer running wild in a puppet-populated L.A., has what it takes to be a contender for worst of the decade. Directed by Brian Henson (son of the late, great Sesame Street and Muppets icon Jim Henson) and starring a painfully stranded Melissa McCarthy, this toxic botch job deserves an early death by box office….
(18) EIGHTIES UNERASED. James Davis Nicoll continues his Tor.com series with “Fighting Erasure: Women SF Writers of the 1980s, Part II”.
Let us journey onward, this time to women who first published speculative fiction in the 1980s whose surnames begin with B….
For example:
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff cannot be the sole Bahá’í author/musician active in speculative fiction, but she is the only one I know. Her body of work is small enough—eight books or so—that one could read the entire thing in a week or two. Those who might want just a taste could try The Meri, in which a young woman with great magical potential struggles against a society profoundly suspicious of magic. Alternatively, you could explore her shorter work in the collection Bimbo on the Cover.
(19) EPIC NERD CAMP. Karen Heller’s Washington Post article “‘Growing up, we were the weird ones’: The wizarding, mermaiding, cosplaying haven of Epic Nerd Camp” profiles Epic Nerd Camp, a summer camp in Starrucca, Pennsylvania where “men in kilts and women withhair stained with all the colors of Disney” can eat bad summer camp food, fight off bugs, and spend their days engaging in LARPing, cosplay, “wandmaking, sword fighting, boffer games, Quidditch, waizarding, chainmaille, escape rooms and FX makeup.”
Heller credits Dr. Seuss with originating the word “nerd” —
Nerds have been with us forever, but the term seems to have been coined by Dr. Seuss, circa 1950. (From “If I Ran the Zoo”: And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo/And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo,/A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too.) The word gained further popularity on TV’s “Happy Days,” where the Fonz applied it to almost any young person who was not the Fonz. Around the same time, geek — once the name for carnival performers who bit the heads off live chickens — came into its modern interpretation, referring to intense enthusiasts.
(20) THE WALK NESS MONSTER. A sauropod stepped in something, once upon a time: “170-million-year-old dinosaur footprint found in Scotland”.
An extremely rare 170-million-year-old dinosaur footprint has been found in Scotland. Paleontologists, however, are keeping its precise location secret until they can complete their research.
The footprint was discovered earlier this year by Neil Clark, curator of paleontology at the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum. Clark told Fox News that he had just given a talk in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and decided to “visit the Jurassic rocks” in the area.
“After about a half hour looking, I spotted the footprint and was able to immediately recognize it as the footprint of a sauropod dinosaur,” he told Fox News. “I had to do a double take on the footprint as I couldn’t believe that such an obvious footprint had not been seen previously, considering the number of researchers who visit the coast each year.”
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, and Mark Hepworth for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Karl-Johan Norén.]
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Linko: the previous story, https://file770.com/cyborg-2087/, does not link to this one.
@8 and @5 make an interesting contrast.
Early today! That’ll teach me to futz around playing Solitaire instead of sending new links in. OTOH, I again have a bow, after driving an hour each way and much discussion; I’m not sure it’s a replacement yet, but it’s not an obvious problem like a couple of others I tested.
(6) speaking of games, there’s a mildly topical recent Onion article.
15) Someone is selling a specially bound copy of Tarzan on Mars on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TARZAN-ON-MARS-COLLECTORS-EDITION-JOHN-BLOODSTONE-S-J-BYRNE-1966-BURROUGHSIAN/330950044964?hash=item4d0e28ed24:g:CMAAAMXQrNtR0wRZ
Isn’t it supposed to be illegal to own a copy of it?
7
I think these should be collected. They’d be an interesting volume, with or without illustrations.
8) And then there are the rapes. Lots of rapes, even in books written by women (she specifically calls out Dragonflight). I should go look at that list and see if I have Opinions about it that would be worth making into a blog post. (I usually do.)
But the thing that jumps out at me is how relatively quickly we’ve started noticing how women have been treated in these old classics, after decades of it being nothing unusual. And I can’t help thinking that the new wave of books in which female characters are treated like people rather than plot accessories has something to do with that. No matter how accustomed you are to things being the same old way they’ve always been, it takes surprisingly little of seeing something different to change your viewpoint. (Note: this isn’t just about fiction — it generalizes out to things like abusive workplaces and dysfunctional families as well.)
@6 – The Origins registration system was horribly flawed for several years in a row. In 2018 the problems were so severe that John Ward sent out an apology email to every person who had registered for Origins and all of the participating retailers or clubs.
For Cassandra Khaw’s birthday, Sarah Pinsker is doing microfiction for fictional band names.
https://twitter.com/SarahPinsker/status/1035255676698853377
(8) Can’t disagree with her comments, as such, but…it’s not like mainstream classics are better on these issues. She’s complaining that these older, in some cases quite old, books aren’t still groundbreaking now. They broke their ground, we absorbed their lessons, and we kept moving forward. In the last decade, we’ve had an amazing breakout of talent and achievement from ethnic and gender minorities that have not previously had much success making their own voices heard. I’m the specific point of the rape narratives, yes, this includes women finally having the confidence and power to either not tell that story, or tell it in ways that don’t objectify and de-person female characters.
And that gives me real joy.
I could have a long and passionate discussion about what’s wrong with Pern, and why I loved it anyway, while struggling with its problems, and what’s right with it, and why it enraged me anyway.
McCaffrey isn’t close to being the best of the authors she mentions, and yet I feel (not necessarily defensibly) that she didn’t give justice to what readers valued in her, or how aware many of us were of the issues even if we didn’t get have a vocabulary not yet fully invented for discussing it.
And, if she’s just discovered how sexist and shallow Piers Anthony can be, well, the charitable assumption is that she had never encountered the Xanth books, before.
(15) Hmm. Dynamite Entertainment comics have done crossovers involving both John Carter and Tarzan before. Arvid Nelson’s Lords of Mars (2013-2014) comes to mind. Fairly sure DC and Marvel did crossovers too, back in the day, although I can’t put any dates to those.
Finished Magic Triumphs
Though satisfying, socks remain firmly on my feet. Spoilerly thoughts available on request.
The Happytime Murders make me think of Theodore Rex.
If anybody else saw Scalzi’s Big Idea post with Claire O’Dell a few weeks ago, be advised that I was intrigued enough to pick up A Study in Honor and, having finished it, can now recommend it highly. Near-future AH* with the US fighting the New Confederacy, and Holmes and Watson are both queer black women. The author does what feels to me like a good job of getting down into the details of day-to-day life for an average black person, with lots of casual racism and microaggressions. And the story is fascinating; Watson, having been mustered out after losing her arm in an enemy attack, is now working at the VA hospital, and she notices that members of one particular unit are dying of mysterious causes, and goes digging for the underlying connections with Holmes’ help. One other thing that I liked about the story is that there isn’t the quick, automatic bond between Holmes and Watson that we so often see — Holmes is arrogant and evasive, Watson has a raging case of PTSD, and the trust between them takes most of the book to build. My overall rating: 4 stars, above average, and I hope there will be more books.
* At least I hope it continues to be AH!
Also, sticky information is still not sticking for me.
@Lee: I loved A Study in Honor. I found myself wishing that O’Dell had filed the serial numbers all the way off and not marketed it as Holmes fanfic, I think the characters stand on their own.
What Iphinome said. Magic Triumphs was a serviceable end to the series, but felt a little rushed.
In contrast, the second Murderbot novella (I’m behind on my reading), was just what I wanted it to be.
(8) That took me back to my teen years, exploring all the science fiction in the San Jose library system. Discovering I was tragically attracted to an abusive genre, although I kept finding bright lights here and there amongst the critically acclaimed rape tales and Piers Anthony’s YA classics like The Color of Her Panties. It was enough to keep me out of fandom until a few years ago, although the urge to to write my own version never quite left.
Happy birthday, Robert Crumb! Yet another sexist in an industry full of them … but a clever and talented one. With a wife (Aline Kominsky-Crumb) who can also draw great cartoons.
I am vastly relieved to report that my wife Hilde (aka M.R. Hildebrand) came through surgery successfully on August 28th, and is now back home. You may remember my reporting several months ago that cervical reconstruction hardware implanted in her neck back in 2001 was failing, shifting, and beginning to tear the skin on the back of her head, and that surgery to remove the failing hardware was likely to either leave her quadriplegic and breathing via machine, or kill her. Because of the high risks, we were waiting for the situation to become more critical, before taking that chance.
Between then and now, the rupture increased, and the tip of one of the implant pieces actually began to stick out of her neck. More consultation with neurosurgeons and others at Mayo Clinic Phoenix ensued.
Tuesday’s surgery was a downsized version of the original surgery plan. The new surgery opened up her neck and trimmed back the protruding piece of metal (and a second piece close to it that was coming close to protruding). The rest of the hardware and wires from 2001 is less likely to shift and cause future problems, so it was left in place. Still very risky surgery, with a number of potential complications, and there were a few alarming moments during the surgery.
But she survived, without spinal cord damage, which wasn’t at all a sure thing. So it looks like we’ll get a few more years together.
I wrote a blog post with more details here: Update to “The New Normal: Living Under the Sword of Damocles”
And thanks for all the well wishes here a few months ago.
I still read Edgar Rice Burroughs (sliding over the problematic bits) — I’m currently rereading The Return of Tarzan for the umpteenth time. But I think I’m happier rereading Burroughs than reading pastiches.
Speaking of pastiches, or reimaginings, I liked Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, and I’ll undoubtedly read another if she continues the series, but this seemed very much a first novel, clunky in its pacing and sometimes its characterization. I got tired of Watson telling us how much she disliked Holmes. Just act like it, don’t whine about it all the time. And too much of the plot got crammed into the end. This all could have been fixed; it read more like a self-published novel than one from a major house like Harper. But there was lots of good stuff in it, so as I said, I liked it. Just not as much as I hoped I would.
Bruce — so glad to hear your great news!
Wow, Bruce, the details sound extremely alarming and hard to deal with.
Good vibes in Hilde’s direction.
(8) I enjoyed the article very much and agree that what’s supposed to be a list of the “best” doesn’t look good from today’s vantage point. Shouldn’t that be the reason for a list of the best – to give today’s readers pointers to worthy material? This list seems primarily of historical value, not reading value. While reading the article, I reflected sadly that I had particularly enjoyed some of the books mentioned because things looked better for women there, than in the life around me. Maybe it’s best to take The Female Man’s approach: that the book should not mourn when it loses relevance or becomes an object of ridicule, “because on that day we will be free”.
Thanks for the great news, Bruce Arthurs!
8) Hmm. I first read Rendezvous with Rama at the age of thirteen, while I was in hospital recovering from a nasty broken arm… and even at that uncritical age, at that low ebb, it bothered me that there effectively weren’t any characters in it, that it was all about showing off the setting, and the “characters” were only there to gawp at the scenery.
So.… well, yeah, it is notably short on female characters, true enough, but pointing it out is pretty much like complaining the characters are made of the wrong sort of cardboard. It’s true… but the book’s problems with characterization don’t begin, or end, there.
(I mean… without getting the book down from the shelf, or looking it up somewhere, can you name any of the characters in Rendezvous with Rama? I know darn well I can’t, and I can see that book from where I’m sitting now – the same copy that I read in hospital, all those years ago.)
8) What bounces me of, about that article is the discription of The Final Empire.
What is true, there is a slave group of people that have no rights.
The nobels with superpowers are true also, and the Emperor seems immortal.
What is not mentioned, the protagonists work against that. They are a bunch of slaves, which have superpowers, too and they want to kill that immortal emperor.
Vin (the protagonist) has at the beginning not much more goals than survive, that chances quite a bit in that novel.
And powerless is an interesting word to discripe her. (interesting here means completly wrong)
I could go on, but I seriously doubt that Liz Lutgendorff has read the novel, because the discription is so completly of the mark.
16) I won’t swear that Weirdo #17 came out in 1986 and not 1966, but I would swear it was not in 1966. I did buy a disturbing, large-format comic in approximately 1966, but it was not Weirdo. It was the anti-Weirdo.
(17) SEND FOR THE MUPPET CORONER
Why would you bother when Meet the Feebles exists?
(11) I don’t think Weirdo #17 came out in 1966 since the first panel of the PKD story mentions his death in 1982 and the rest tells of his experiences in 1974.
Msb: I enjoyed the article very much and agree that what’s supposed to be a list of the “best” doesn’t look good from today’s vantage point. Shouldn’t that be the reason for a list of the best – to give today’s readers pointers to worthy material? This list seems primarily of historical value, not reading value… Maybe it’s best to take The Female Man’s approach: that the book should not mourn when it loses relevance or becomes an object of ridicule, “because on that day we will be free”.
I really agree with you on this.
Nostalgia is fine for us to have as individuals — within reason, as long as we’re aware that we view the things for which we are nostalgic through a rose-colored lens which obscures their problematic aspects. It’s when we expect others, who have no reason to don those rose-colored glasses, to buy into our nostalgia, that we have problems.
The problem with lists like the NPR’s is that
1) It makes no acknowledgment of the problematic aspects of the items on the list (is the author of that list even aware of them???)
2) Because of that, it appears to endorse those problematic aspects.
I am sure that this is part of why so many works by women and marginalised people are getting so much appreciation these days. These authors hated the same things I hated, and their books are the better for having that awareness. For me, it is so great to finally read works of epic space adventure — lots of them — where the woman is the kickass protagonist, rather than the damsel-in-distress (frequently raped or under threat of rape) who serves as reward for the hero…
As opposed to when I was young, and that was the only role women played in most of the epic space adventures available to me. I read them, because I was like a person in the desert dying of thirst for whatever good SFF I could get my hands on — but even very young, I was disturbed by some of their problematic elements. And years later, upon re-reading, I was horrified at just how badly some of them had been smited by the Suck Fairy.
It’s like a couple of years ago, when so many people on File 770 waxed rhapsodic about Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust, that I got it from the library and read it — and it was so full of sexism, misogyny, and racism, that I had to force myself to finish what was at one time no doubt a revolutionary story, but now reads mostly like a bad version of The Poseidon Adventure on the Moon.
With regard to the questionable usefulness of the NPR list, I would be really interested in someone who is very knowledgeable about the old novels but cognizant of their flaws — *cough* perhaps James Davis Nicoll *cough* — coming up with a “100 Best” list which leaves off the worst and includes the frequently-overlooked best.
Mister Dalliard says I don’t think Weirdo #17 came out in 1966 since the first panel of the PKD story mentions his death in 1982 and the rest tells of his experiences in 1974.
My bad.
Numbers and I have a rather problematical relationship post-dying eleven times. Paying my gas bill on the phone last week (or at least I think it was last week as temporal time is a problem as well) wasn’t any fun as I kept transposing numbers so it took twenty minutes to get everything right. It does he,p when waiting for a medical professional to show up in an exam room as I’ve no sense of time either…
Bruce Arthurs, I’m very glad to hear that Hilde’s outcome was good.
I just read Rendezvous With Rama recently, having read part of it in Galaxy way back when but not looked at it since. I don’t remember the names of any of the characters. The main character is a more or less effortlessly dominant military officer who leads the expedition. His crew includes 2 somewhat significant women: a doctor/biologist, with whom the commander ends up sleeping (he also has wives on Earth and Mars and there is a recurring sort of joke as he composes messages home that can be sent unchanged to both wives); and another female character who is very good with boats and who builds and commands a raft on the Rama “sea”. So I don’t think the author of the piece in (8) is entirely accurate in her description of the novel, which of course isn’t mainly about its characters anyway. Her characterization of Out of the Silent Planet sort of misses the point as well, I think.
Bruce, it’s wonderful to hear that Hilde’s surgery was successful. My best wishes to both you and her.
Alas, if there’s an easy way to link to my core lists, I have not found it.
@Bruce Arthurs
Good heavens, that sounds scary. I’m so glad the surgery went well. Best wishes to you and your wife.
Also, hello, fellow Arizonan! [waves from Prescott]
James Davis Nicoll: Alas, if there’s an easy way to link to my core lists, I have not found it.
If I sent you a spreadsheet with all of the books from your core lists, would you be willing to do a “100 best” from it? 😀
Sure! Never say no, is my motto!
(5) I really reccomend “Howard was a Dingus” for one story that’s both inclusive and Lovecraft adjacent. One of my tags for it is “How to make a Lovecraftian horror/monster go ‘Wait, what?'” I laughed so so much from this story. And it’s short!
What I remember about Rendezvous with Rama was that two of the male crew members were romantically involved with each other (which was considered unremarkable) and shared a wife back on Earth (which was considered unusual, but not in a negative way). I was a teenager at the time, but the message that in the future it would be no big deal to be openly gay or bi was enormously heartening.
When she says “these books have no LGBT people,” it just tells me she didn’t really read them.
Bruce Arthurs: I’m very glad to hear that Hilde’s surgery was a success, and thanks for sharing your update about it.
@Bruce A
Hurray for Hilde!
@Bruce Arthurs: cheers for a less-risky solution.
@steve wright: I didn’t see the list when it came around (wasn’t browsing nearly as much before I retired). ISTM that @8 is not allowing for the list being 7 years old (the field has changed even in that short time), but i admit I’m baffled that Rama is on it at all; as you say, it’s a tour of a Big Dumb Object rather than a story. (This from recollection of reading the magazine publication — I’ve never been interested enough to find out whether the book was less bad.)
@StefanB: I expect that Lutgendorff read Mistborn — but was so mis-struck by the mis-features (or even her misreading of them — this is another that I’m not going back to check) that she missed most of the point. (I’ve done this; it took a 2nd or 3rd reading to get past the surface to the heart of (e.g.) “The Mountains of Mourning” and “Fire Watch”.) It’s also possible that she got fed up early and skimmed from there forward; I thought the book was way too mechanical (I’m generally not fond of books with magic systems so organized that they are laid out in tables), but I agree that she missed most of what was going on. Her generalization that “fantasy novels all seemed to be black mirror distortions of the medieval period”, and specifically calling out Dragonflight‘s “unrealistic levels oppression” [sic], suggest a rosy view of history — and even if we assume unmentioned works (e.g., Pratchett) were already read and she’s talking only about what she missed, Xanth (for all its repulsiveness) does not fit that mold.
side note: I count 74/100 read (splitting count for series partially ready) and no great inclination to read any of the rest as that would get into a mix of Seriously Obese Fantasy and Why Is That On The List? (The Sword of Sha-na-na? Goodkind? Well, they admit it’s demotic….)
side note 2: McCaffrey is an interesting case; she wrote a handful of mundane contemporary ~bodice-rippers (in which even self-surviving women fell to the spell of the Forceful Man), and carried much of their tradition into early Pern. OTOH, she also wrote Restoree, whose proper cover, like the story, is an in-the-times’-face role reversal.
@Greg Hullender: I’d completely forgotten that feature in the 46 years since reading; it does suggest her reading was superficial.
@James Davis Nicoll:
The local club has a traditional greeting for new members: “Hello, sucker!”.
@ Bruce A. Good to hear!
@microtherion, I’m not able to go anywhere with your link.
Sorry to do two in a row – I neglected to refresh the page before commenting.
@Bruce Arthurs, I’m so glad to hear this. I hope your remaining time with Hilde will be long and sweet.
#8: article is from 2015, three years ago. Also, Rendezvous With Rama was published in 1973, not written then. And in A Canticle for Leibowitz, it takes place initially in a monastery—not a likely place to hold women.
I hate these retro-opinions from today’s perspective. I bet D-Day’s action on the beaches of Normandy had very few women fighting. So, the actions were obviously flawed…
2) Huh
@bruce A : Good to hear.
7) I have seen a bunch of authors do microfictions on twitter. Quite a fecund outpouring of creativity.
8) To start with, the New Republic piece is from 2015 and in response to reading through a list from 2011. And the NPR list is a crowdsourced compilation, lightly revised to eliminate items “that didn’t fit the survey’s criteria,” which was SF/F (and to my mind strangely inclusive of graphic novels). The NPR post calls this “Your Picks: Top 100”–and the nominating post calls their goal a “top-100 list of the best SF/F novels ever written” and “your favorite SF/F books”–which are not exactly the same thing.
Who in its right mind would mistake this for anything but an approximation of the preferences of the 5000 readers who felt like responding to an NPR poll? It might qualify as an indication of popular taste circa 2011, but as “best” or even “most influential,” not so much. Arguing with the contents or ranking of such a list is a variety of pig-rassling.
Which has little to do with Lutgendorff’s political-cultural-moral reactions to some of the items–though even some of those strike me as odd. (E.g., whatever one thinks of C. S. Lewis’s work, his project wasn’t the same as that of magazine SF of the period.)
8) Have to admit I kind of bounced off the article, not because I necessarily disagree with some of her specific criticisms, but because of her use of the phrase “shockingly offensive”, which I could maybe see applying to something like Thomas Covenant or, I assume, some of the later Xanth books, but certainly not to, say, Rendezvous with Rama or Sword of Shannara.
Congratulations Bruce and Hildy. May you have even more joy in the rest of your lives together.
Chip: Understood, it was just so of for the novel, that she has the scenary but misses the plot and the maincharacter and…
Books on the list that I don’t think need defending:
The Handmaid’s Tale, The Vorkosigan Saga, The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, The Outlander Series
(Okay female writers, all of them execpt partly-Vorkosigan Saga with female maincharacter)
Books which imho meet the criteria:
A Song of Ice and Fire (more than 1 female character check, Danerys, Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Briene, Cersei are all POVcharacters, could be counted as main, as much as that exists here, interesting job.
Interesting profesion/skill: Assasin, Conquerer, Knight at last one of those should count.
The Wheel of Time (more than 1 female character 3 (important in the first 3 chapters should count, right? Main yes Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve are normally considered main
Interesting profesion/skills: Ruler of a country should count, healing imposible thinks should count, treamwalking… Not of that in the beginning, but in later books)
The Sandman Series (Graphic Novel) (More than 1 yes also some are only for a storyarc, main is a bit more difficult, but Death is the second most famous character of the story
skills, well being Death should count, there are others with skills)
Mistborn (First one is a bit dificult, because execpt Vin most are secondary but Jessi is named in the prolog, Vin is the maincharacter, has all the skills the magicsystem makes posible)
Neverwhere (First Door and Hunter, at last Door is a maincharacter I would count Hunter, too, both have skills that are important)
The Last Unicorn (That one was to long, had 2 female characters, and the Unicorn was the maincharacter, for more I have to reread it)
The Way Of Kings (Has a nice interaction through Book 1 between Schallan and her Mentor, Shallan is definitly a maincharacter and has very interesting powers, has a sidenovella about a young girl)
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series (Does the empress of the Malazanempire and one of her most important armyleaders count? Main is a bit dificould for that story)
The Codex Alera Series (What ever you think of Butcher, but that one has no problems with any of the criterias)
Books were they should have picked a different one, from the writer:
Small Gods, Going Postal (I love the first one, but it has a male maincharacter, but what is bad about Terry Pratchett, more defense of some of the works on the list later)
StefanB: Books on the list that I don’t think need defending:
Remember that, just because you find many of the books on the list not problematic, it doesn’t mean that other people will feel the same way you do.
You are male; based on what you say, you don’t see the problems with the Song of Ice and Fire, or the Wheel of Time, or the Way of Kings, that I do.
That’s fine; people are not required to agree on how they perceive books. However, it does not negate the fact that there are people who find many of these books problematic for what are valid reasons.
JJ: Sorry for beeing unclear: The list that I don’t think need defending is:
The Handmaid’s Tale, The Vorkosigan Saga, The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, The Outlander Series
Perhaps I would have added strongly afterwards that there is nothing wrong with the works of Terry Pratchett.
For the rest of the works (on my list) I did look at the attack that was in Testing sexism in sci-fi and did look at where they did meet the criteria, I don’t want to take away that people find some of the works problematic (and exspecially WoIaF I completly understand it), but my point was is how does the initial critic hold.
I have no will to defend some of the iteams on the list (Goodkind or Xanth for example), and I know that the early SF and Fantasy was male and white (not having Frankenstein or Lord of the Rings on that list would not feel right)