Pixel Scroll 8/14 Tom Swift and His Positronic Pixels

High dudgeon, low dudgeon, and dudgeon in between, all in today’s Scroll.

(1) Liz Lutgendorff tells New Statesman readers that the books on NPR’s list of 100 best fantasy and sci-fi novels aren’t all that.

When it comes to the best of anything, what do you expect? If it’s science fiction and fantasy novels you want epic adventures and getting out of impossible situations. But what you often get is barely disguised sexism and inability to imagine any world where women are involved in the derring-do.

At the end of 2013, after a year of reading very little, I decided to embark on a challenge: read all the books I hadn’t yet read on NPR’s list of 100 best sci-fi and fantasy novels. Nostalgia permeates the list. Of the books I read, there were more books published before 1960 than after 2000. The vast majority were published in the 1970s and 1980s. There were also many sci-fi masterworks or what were groundbreaking novels. However, groundbreaking 30, 40, 50 or 100 years ago can now seem horribly out of date and shockingly offensive….

I was working my way up to a proper fannish rage when I encountered this paragraph –

In contrast to the male-dominated stories, there’s The Doomsday Book, where a woman named Kivrin is put into all sorts of danger. She’s stuck in 14th century England, with her meticulously crafted cover blown by illness, and only her knowledge, strength and intelligence to help her survive.

Why, that’s one of my favorite books. All is forgiven — what good taste you have, Liz!

(2) The world’s first science fiction convention in Leeds is chronicled by David Wildman at Tiny Tickle. (Maybe File 770 is not such a bad title!)

Attendees at the 1937 Leeds convention.

Attendees at the 1937 Leeds convention.

So to some, it may actually be more of a surprise to learn that the first ever science fiction convention didn’t actually take place until 1937, and they may be less surprised to find that it was based in Leeds, and not the likes of London or some city in the US.

And so is the controversy about whether it really was the first.

But was it really the first science fiction convention? – The Philadelphia claim

Like many great things to happen in the world, there is always contention, there is always conspiracy and like many average things, there is always disagreement born from jealousy and pride.

Unfortunately, the title to the first science fiction convention in the world is marred somewhat by a claim laid by an event held in Philadelphia in 1936 – just one year before Leeds’ own.

Indeed, the only question the article leaves unanswered is why it includes a ginormous photo of Captain Kirk clutching Yeoman Rand?

(3) More about Rachel Bloom promoting her new sitcom:

The cast of the new CW musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” are ready to take the Internet by storm with a tap-off.

In a video that was released Friday, series stars Rachel Bloom, Donna Lynne Champlin and Vincent Rodriguez III (and yes, Pete Gardner too), show off their hoofing skills and dare fellow musical theater-loving stars of shows like “Jane the Virgin,” “The Flash,” “Supergirl” and “Madam Secretary” to record themselves doing the same.

The CW is donating to nonprofit fundraising and grant-making organization Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS in honor of this video — and will continue to donate for every new video made.

(4) Crystal Huff of the Helsinki bid tells about her formal fannish adoption.

Crystal Huff adoption certNo, really! That happened!

I and a couple of others were called into the bar (the major social space of the con after the function rooms were closed down). There was some laughter, and then, along with three others, I was declared officially an adopted Finnish fan. I have framed the adoption certificate they presented to me, which was drawn by my friend Petri Hiltunen and features several Finnish SFF characters around the border.

I am apparently the alien baby at the top, wrapped in a Finnish flag. I adore this piece of paper. It hangs proudly in my dining room.

I didn’t have to learn any Finnish in order to be accepted into this group, although I have tried to retain basic greetings and courtesies such as “kiitos” and “ole hyvää” (aka “thank you” and “you’re welcome”). I am having great difficulty learning how to roll my R’s, I must say.

(5) Rachael Acks deals with Brad R. Torgersen’s latest gulag quote by inviting him to “fuck all the way off”.

All I have to say is this: how dare you, Brad. After you helped garner John C. Wright, a man who not-at-all-coyly talks about gay bashing as an “instinctive reaction” to “fags” a record number of nominations, how dare you project your paranoid fantasies of people wanting to harm you on us. How dare you wrap yourself in a blanket of imagined persecution when to this day transpeople are being murdered for simply existing. How dare you whip up false fears about people wanting you to die over a fucking literary award when right now black men and women are being killed by the police for simply existing. How dare you imagine yourself a second-class citizen when underprivileged women and girls are suffering because their male-run government has decided they have no right to bodily autonomy.

How dare you talk about people being shipped to frozen gulags when, today, gay and trans youth are still subjected to the very sort of reeducation you claim we want.

How dare you.

Real people are harmed every day by the positions those with whom you associate yourself espouse. Real people, who experience real pain, and real suffering, and all too often real death. The number of your faction that has been sent off to a reeducation camp is zero, and it will remain zero.

Rumors are that Santa Claus left a comment and, believe me, it wasn’t “Ho, ho, ho.”

(6) Kelly Robson thinks it should be possible to mediate between Puppies and everyone else – “The Hugos and the problem of competing narratives”

In just over a week the Hugos will be done. But it won’t be over. This shit storm we’ve been living through will go on. It’ll probably get worse. I’m sick to death of it and you probably are too.

There’s no end in sight because both sides are telling stories — personal, important, urgent stories, but stories nonetheless, told with apocalyptic rhetoric and elevated language, using energy that would be much better spent on fiction.

It’s not surprising. We are fiction writers. We are very good at making stirring narratives out of chaos.

But there’s the problem. These stories aren’t true. They’re important but not true….

The puppy narrative is that they’ve been discriminated against for 30 years. Nothing will move them off that narrative because it feels true to them. Our narrative is that the puppies are out to destroy the Hugos. Nothing will move us off that narrative because it feels true to us.

Many times people have claimed Vox Day explicitly said he wants to destroy the Hugos. In those words. But as I searched File 770 this is what I found Vox Day had said in comments contradicting those claims:

I don’t WANT the awards to be destroyed, I simply EXPECT them to be destroyed by the very people who claim to love them so much.

I didn’t have time to scour Vox Popoli to see if things changed later. Feel free to let me know what you find. But it’s possible Robson is right – that is the narrartive, and it may be inaccurate.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, David Doering and Laura Resnick for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist.]

381 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/14 Tom Swift and His Positronic Pixels

  1. Non-fiction: I’m very fond of John McPhee’s essays. Anyone who hasn’t read Atchafalaya in the New Yorker or collected in his book “The Control of Nature” has a fascinating treat coming. Every spring, during flood season, I look at the Mississippi and wonder….
    He also wrote an entire book just about oranges, especially the Florida Indian River orange, and made it fascinating.

  2. I’ve been putting up the whole block so that it can just be grabbed and appended to the existing style in one easy cut-and-paste, but perhaps just the Rumplestiltskin part is pithier.

    Perhaps a link to Aan’s instructions along with the new Rumplestiltskin? Or even just a link to a previous batch of code, like your own post.

  3. Now if I could just figure out how to make the magical code work on my computer….

    What browser are you using? I’m doing great with Stylish on Chrome, following Aan’s original directions. I did update the first line to this:

    img[src*=”longstringoflettersandnumbers”] + span::after {

    based on Aan’s later comments about Javascript blockers. Also, you have to replace all the doublequotes, because the comment plug-in on this blog turns them to curlyquotes, which don’t work with coding.

  4. Thank the JCW in Heaven for our Mr. Crocodile and his teary diplomacy. We may pull out of this yet.

  5. Laura, my browser is FF, and it doesn’t seem to have a way to add/attach/whatever a CSS file. (I did save it.) It’s okay.

  6. PJ, you need the Stylish extension (or similar I guess) for Firefox/ Chrome

    Create a new rule for the File770.com domain as per the original post from Aan (remeber to change the quote marks, and you should be good to go.

  7. Kathodus on August 15, 2015 at 11:22 pm said:

    Thank the JCW in Heaven for our Mr. Crocodile and his teary diplomacy. We may pull out of this yet.

    New plan:
    1. we get Mr Crocodile to bargain VD down to just one skull
    2. we get a FAKE skull and turn it into a wine goblet & send it to VD
    3. we persuade John Scalzi to run aound WorldCon with his T-shirt over his head and shouting ‘oh noes, where’s me head gone’ and wave his arms in the air like he has no head.
    4. peace in our time

  8. Camestros, I like your plan. As a refinement, if we can somehow steal one of Davis Aurini’s fake skulls to turn into a wine goblet, it will be a plan of perfection. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to I can only say that you google Aurini at your peril.)

  9. “we get a FAKE skull and turn it into a wine goblet & send it to VD”

    Are you sure there isn’t a single devoted VD sufferer follower who wouldn’t be prepared to donate their body for the cause? You know, like that chap who left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for their Hamlet productions.

    They seem such a devoted and selfless lot. What’s a cranium between chums?

  10. Ann, I am reminded of “Slings and Arrows,” especially the scene with Geoffrey and the morticians.

    If you haven’t seen “Slings and Arrows” it is possibly the best television show ever. It’s Canadian, set at a Shakespeare festival with absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the Stratford Festival, starring Paul Gross. It is very funny, very moving, and about art and life and sex and death and, um, all that noise. Also, there is a ghost. Three seasons of six episodes. You know how Henley is about God Stalk. Yeah. that’s me with “Slings and Arrows.” Go, watch, right now!

  11. Oh, my god! How much nicer the threads became without having to pay attention to the spam of Brian Z. That script was a lifesaver!

  12. PJ: userContent.css is the built-in Firefox way to use user styles (but requires a restart for changes to take effect, so Stylish is probably easier).

    For those adding new rules, there’s no need to keep copy/pasting the entire block. Just add to the first line like so:
    img[src*=”a9bea8198715ed10882ecba7c7adaf37″] + span::after,
    img[src*=”b4826f3f85672c6eb0fef5c6c681cfd5″] + span::after,
    img[src*=”1809acffb3d75c834d1d3b7b2074ec8c”] + span::after {

    @ Jim Henley

    @Buwaya: Thanks much for your review of the new John C. Wright book. Having already formed my opinion of his prose style, I’d like to hear more specifics about the inventiveness of his worldbuilding, as you praise it particularly. So did Steve Moss. But in each case only in very general terms. I’d love an example or two.

    Not much details from me, but I remember first reading his “Last Guardian of Everness” / “Mists of Everness”, and then “The Golden Age”, and thinking something akin to “This guy could be the new Zelazny”. The concepts portrayed in those books were inventive, and wide ranging. He’s not just sticking to one idea / type of world, but really exploring themes throughout fantasy and science fiction.
    A quote from the second book of that Golden Age trilogy (portraying a post singularity universe) even made it into my personal quotes file:

    Once she caught a trout with a spear she made (with some prompting from her librarian’s ring) practically all by herself. She was clumsy at the hand-eye motions needed, so she let her little ring take over her gross and fine-motor functions during the hunt. The ring also had to advise her how to scale the fish, which was a tedious business, as the nanite paste she used to remove the bones and scales had to be programmed manually, and told which parts of the fish to convert, and which to leave for her to eat. The palm stove changed shape, gathered up the fish, and cooked it for her without being asked.
    Daphne munched on the spicy golden flakes of fish, feeling like a cavegirl at the dawn of time.

    Of course his Orphans of Chaos trilogy was a big letdown (and to me personally rather ick), and the scope of Count to a Trillion e.a. which I was expecting after his Big Idea piece at Whatever hasn’t yet materialized (I have the conclusion to that on my to be read pile, but not yet started on it – with the Kerfuffle being at least partly responsible for that).
    So far I haven’t yet seen his (to me abhorrent) personal beliefs shine through in his books (in retrospect some, but only through characters where it fits their overall characterization; of course, to be fair, OSC had to get clumsy beyond belief in Shadow Puppets before _that_ made me give up on him, so probably I’m not the best judge there), and so I’ve kept buying them.

  13. @Various: NESBIT! There are audiobooks (though some of the readers are a bit precious, and the one I prefer . . . doesn’t do all the books I like best of Nesbit’s, darnitall). Definitely I have a soft spot in my heard for The Enchanted Castle and the Psammead books. I’ve never heard of Eager, though, sorry. (blush)

    For some reason, this reminds me of another childhood favorite – The Return of the Twelves, by Pauline Clarke. I need to hunt that up.

  14. @Aan: Thanks for explaining. Originally I took out pointer-events because of trouble with the CSS; W3’s check complained, so I thought that was my problem. Nope, just copy/paste issues combined with Safari not noticing CSS changes to the personal style sheets with a refresh (I have to turn it off & on). So I put pointer-events back in!

    I added a second rule with a hover to use the orange 0.1 (so: normally black 0.9, but hover orange 0.1 in case I want to read the comment for some reason). I couldn’t get span::after:hover to work, but span:hover::after works. Imperfect, but hovering over his name makes it readable if I want to.

    NOTE: Heh, now he’s changed gravitar id’s multiple times, so I’m trying out this, which works nicely (until he stops linking to his blog): a[href*=”caninedaze”]::after

  15. @Kendall:

    E. Nesbit is fun reading. Edward Eager was consciously trying to follow in her footsteps and generously names her right in his own stories as an influence. He’s fun reading too.

  16. “and the opposite view on free will to Peter Grant.”

    That poor guy. It must be weird for an author for everyone to confuse him with a character from a series that is much more well-known than he is.

    Seriously, my first thought was ‘Peter Grant? I’d better go re-read one of the Folly books, I don’t remember his views.’

  17. Continuing my record of always being behind on my 770 reading, in reference to the comedic book reccs in the 8/13 Pixel Scroll, I watched in vain for a specific book to be mentioned (illustrating the overwhelming amout of stuff “out there”—nobody can possibly be familiar with it all.) The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens. It is the closest book in “feel” to DNA’s HHGttG books that I’ve ever ran across (vastly more Adamsesque than Eoin Colfer.) In a universe where virtually everything has a corporate sponsorship, the protagonists end up on a world with no branding yet (“Yrnameer”, in case it wasn’t instantly obvious, equals “Your Name Here.”)

    Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, take it as the “feel” of Adams with a little of the story arc of Fire Upon the Deep…

  18. Re: ballad novels, I’ll speak up again for Pamela Dean’s Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary, which is similar to but less comfortable (and much less commercially successful, alas) than her Tam Lin. It’s based on the ballad “Riddles Wisely Expounded,” but the devil is a boy next door who wants to build a time machine and the focus of the book is on female friendships and family relationships, and how they help and how they’re helpless in the face of that kind of threat. It’s gradually become my favourite book by one of my favourite authors.

    Aside from the Dean and the Diana Wynne Jones, there are two other Tam Lin novels I’m peripherally aware of: Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard, which didn’t make a big impression on me but which has fierce proponents I respect, and Alan Garner’s Red Shift, which I haven’t read but know by reputation.

  19. @Maximillian

    I love the Folly books and I’m going to keep thinking of that character as the real Peter Grant. He has his imperfections but he’s waaaay more appealing than any of the Pups or their collection of apologists and allies.

    Anybody else waiting to see what Happened after the tower fell resolved?

  20. Thanks again, Aan!

    Non-programmer’s question:

    src*= works the same as id^= as long as the id^ string has the prefix “grav-” Any functional difference?

  21. Pingback: Amazing Stories | AMAZING NEWS FROM FANDO: 8-16-15 - Amazing Stories

  22. @ bloodstone75

    Theoretically yes (id attributes are supposed to be unique on the page, and the selector is more precise and more efficient with matching since we’re checking that string from the beginning of the attribute (indicated by ^=), while with the src the hash substring can appear anywhere within it (denoted by *=)), but practically no (you’re not going to notice the sub-millisecond performance difference).

  23. I’m very fond of Edward Eager, but I’ve never thought he was THAT good. His books are basically pastiche — interesting, amusing, memorable pastiche, to be sure, and I don’t want to do without him, but he’s not a patch on the originals. And the Magic or Not? books have some real WTF moments, including the black kid named Hannibal and the old lady who is basically Mrs. Bradley from Gladys Mitchell’s mysteries, crocodilian grin and all.

  24. If you haven’t seen “Slings and Arrows” it is possibly the best television show ever. It’s Canadian, set at a Shakespeare festival with absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the Stratford Festival, starring Paul Gross. It is very funny, very moving, and about art and life and sex and death and, um, all that noise. Also, there is a ghost. Three seasons of six episodes. You know how Henley is about God Stalk. Yeah. that’s me with “Slings and Arrows.” Go, watch, right now!

    I concur!

    I don’t think I’d say “best television show ever,” but very high in the rankings. Just mentioning it makes me want to watch it again.

  25. Anybody who quotes Casablanca can’t be all bad. Further evidence for buwaya being much more cool than aeou or Brian.

  26. @Lexica – Loved Deep Survival! I bought a copy of that specifically as a loaner a few years back. Fascinating.

    Summary: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do and will often lead us to confidently walk off of cliffs in the dark.

    ObSF – Huh- now that I think about it, reminds me just a tiny bit of Blindsight.

    Anyway, excellent book, I recommend it.

  27. Anybody who quotes Casablanca can’t be all bad. Further evidence for buwaya being much more cool than aeou or Brian.

    I’m shocked, shocked!

  28. Does anybody know if there is a way to use CSS on a phone? All I can find in the Safari settings menu is something about accessing the Developer menu while connected via cable to a computer, which seems ever so pre-Twenty Teens.

    In any event, thank you for crafting Device-For-Removing-Aspects-Of-Trolldom, known to the common people as Trollslayer. It is a mighty work.

  29. Re non-fiction – has anybody mentioned Sapolsky yet? Specifically, A primate’s memoir?

  30. Utterly concur on the goodness of John McPhee. Annals of the Former World is a glorious thing.

  31. “Anybody else waiting to see what Happened after the tower fell resolved?”

    Me, me! I have the next book on pre order and I can’t wait!

    I was just about to ask ‘what tower, none of the wizards had a tower…’

    Didn’t that happen at the end of the one before? Not Foxglove Summer, but the one with the public housing?

  32. @Andy: Thank you for the Pamela Dean recommendation (Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary). I had not heard of it–and while it’s out of print, I was able to order a used copy through a third party seller on amazon. *goes to see what else might be out there*

  33. I third the recommendation for John McPhee in general and The Control of Nature and “Atchafalaya” in particular.

    I think this map is a vital supplement to “Atchafalaya”. (This takes you to the map view; go to Earth and zoom in for best results….)

  34. “Ship of Gold” is a great non-fic book that has it all. Not new, but still worth reading.

    Barry Lopez is another non-fiction favorite.

  35. William Least Heat-Moon, Peter Mathiessen (especially Snow Leopard), Gretel Ehrlich. And John Muir is a highly underrated writer. Some of the most beautiful English ever put to paper. Hmmm. Seeing a theme in my own recs.

  36. As a general rule, the very best nonfiction books are about dogs. So I recommend:

    The Other End of the Leash, Patricia McConnell – fantastic ethology about general differences between dogs and humans, along with McConnell’s caution that “dogs don’t read the breed guides.” Magnificent combination of empathy and scientific acuity by a woman who has integrated dog-study into her academic (professor), professional (trainer) and personal (farmer) lives.

    Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know, Alexandra Horowitz – a more personal and discursive take on the canine weltschmerz by a Barnard psychologist.

    Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution, Coppinger and Coppinger – the oldest book on this little list. The Coppingers bring a global, evolutionary perspective to canis familiaris and its relation to wolves and humans, leavened by their ongoing passion for dogsledding. They consider the recent reclassification of domestic dogs as a subspecies of grey wolf to be a taxonomic error with genuinely bad consequences. (Think “Cesar Millan.”) They make a convincing case that dogs domesticated themselves – that the old fable of humans capturing wolf puppies and breeding them does not convince. And they explain why, if you are breeding and training a stable full of sled dogs, the last thing you want is for the dogs to fight it out over leadership (and this is the last thing the dogs want to do too).

    I see that Raymond Coppinger has a new book coming out this fall, right around the time Ancillary Mercy hits. Busy month for me!

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