It’s a party. It’s a dog party! But don’t drink the punch. That’s the advice in today’s Scroll.
(1) Well, that was brutal. HitchBOT the hitchhiking robot met its fate in Philadelphia.
Canada's hitchhiking robot lasts just two weeks in US before getting decapitated. http://t.co/802FBRUMho #smh pic.twitter.com/0bJexW3igk
— Lauren O’Neil (@laurenonline) August 2, 2015
The now-destroyed robot hails from Port Credit, Ontario. It completed a successful 26-day journey in 2014 in which it “traveled over 10,000 km from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia.” Then in early 2015, hitchBOT moved onto a 10-day German adventure, followed by a three-week jaunt in the Netherlands.
Three countries. Zero incidents. But once hitchBOT made it stateside, it didn’t even make it past the Mason-Dixon line before getting the wiring kicked out of him.
Buzzfeed linked to a vlog recorded in Philly made during hitchBOT’s final hours.
This video from YouTubers BFvsGF shows them discovering hitchBOT Friday night. The researchers said the vloggers are the last known people to have seen hitchBOT.
(2) Nichelle Nichols may wind up the Star Trek cast member who came closest to reaching outer space, all despite her recent health setbacks.
The actress who played Lt Uhura in Star Trek is to blast off on a mission for US space agency NASA aged 82 – and three months after suffering a stroke.
Nichelle Nichols, who has been an ambassador for NASA since portraying the groundbreaking character in the 1960s, will fly on the SOFIA space telescope in September.
While the telescope – housed in a specially converted Boeing 747 – doesn’t quite go to the final frontier, it makes it as high as the stratosphere, around 50,000 above the Earth.
(3) Numerous features of Pluto and Charon are being given names from science fiction and fantasy. Kowal Crater on Pluto, just north of the right side of the heart, is not named for Mary Robinette Kowal (which would have been cool), but rather Charles T. Kowal, who discovered a new class of object in the solar system (centaur asteroids, which cross the orbits of major planets).
Showalter told BuzzFeed Charon is the first solar system body to have features named after geography and characters from both Star Wars and Star Trek. Darth Vader got a dark rimmed crater, while Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker both got lighter-rimmed craters.
Doctor Who is well-represented. Gallifrey, the home planet of the Time Lords in Doctor Who, is intersected, fittingly, by a chasm named Tardis, the Doctor’s time machine and space ship.
On the Star Trek side of things, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Lt. Uhura, Lt. Sulu, and the Vulcans all get shout-outs in Charon.
“We felt strongly as a mission team that we stood on the shoulders of giants,” Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, told BuzzFeed Science, and that they needed to “honor the missions and the engineers and scientists who figured out how to do space exploration, because we could have never pulled off New Horizons without their experience.”
(4) Some of you should plan on going to Pluto – in person! That’s Brad Torgersen’s recruiting pitch on Mad Genius Club today.
Okay, kids, wake the hell up. I know you’ve been sitting in those desks since zero-four-hundred, wondering what the hell is going on, but never forget that you volunteered to be here. Nobody is making you do this. If you want to, you can go directly out that door in the back of the room, call your mommy or your daddy to come pick you up, then go home to your comfy little beds . . . No?
Right. Good. Now, pay attention. This is your official inprocessing brief.
A few days ago, the New Horizons probe did a close fly-by of the (dwarf) planet Pluto. Did you see the news? The pictures? I know, Pluto kinda gets lost in the shuffle — what with all the politicized, hyperbolic, narrative-laden bulls*** they cram into your brains all day. If it’s not the snooze news, it’s social media — where the way you change the world is by clicking your mouse, then giving yourself a hug. Because you care so much. No, don’t bother denying it. You’re children of your era, I know that’s how the game works. Virtue-signaling. Slacktivism. Never get your hands dirty.
Well, be prepared to get some soil under your nails, boys and girls. Because Pluto is where we’re ultimately headed. And beyond. Not with robots. But with human beings.
(5) The Radchaai do not believe in coincidences, and neither does Lou Antonelli.
I'm surprised I didn't see anyone comment on the fact that the day the voting ended for the Hugo awards was also a Blue Moon.
— Lou Antonelli (@LouAntonelli) August 2, 2015
(6) Inside Out – How It Should Have Ended.
(7) Hugo voting has closed and here is John Scalzi’s valedictory to the Puppy movment.
It does seem to me that the all the Puppy bullshit ran down and out of steam there at the end; at a certain point there was nothing left to say, there was just the voting, and you voted or didn’t. The last bit of nonsense I saw from the Puppy environs was some of their nominees rage-quitting the Hugos and deciding to “No Award” themselves, and at least one of them saying that was the plan all along, because apparently when you have no idea what you’re doing, every outcome, no matter what it is, is a victory condition. At which point you just roll your eyes, pity the sad and meaningless sort of existence where being the turd in the punch bowl is a legitimate life goal for a presumably adult human, and move on.
Doesn’t “Floating in the punchbowl” scan about the same as “rolling on the river”? I won’t take that idea any farther…
[Thanks to Steven H Silver and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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1. UNICORN VARIATIONS
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
GREG: Sorry ’bout that mix-up in the last thread, Unicorn. Uh… least I can do?
(UNICORN GLARES silently at Greg, with rage.)
GREG: Hey! This is actually kind of just like your book! Where the wizard screws things up, and you’re mad at him, too?
(UNICORN nods, slowly, a cold rage filling her heart. She aims her horn squarely at Greg’s chest–)
2. THE DISPOSSESSED
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
LeGuin’s got this one.
3. FOOL’S RUN
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
I feel like Pratchett might be able to beat Tolkein. Maybe this is because I don’t actually like Tolkein this much. (Uh-oh. Heresy?)
snowcrash on August 3, 2015 at 8:07 am said:
The proposal has been officially submitted and appears in the 2015 New Business as item B.1.7.
Caution: I think it very unlikely that we’ll consider the new business in the order it was submitted, and the proposal thus is likely to have a different number in the agenda submitted to the Preliminary Business Meeting. We can’t finalize the agenda until after the deadline for submitting new proposals, which is Thursday, August 6.
Le Guin & McKillip (much as I love Pratchett…)
Honestly Thailand is the one I have the absolute least experience with. I can muddle my way through China, and I’m pretty decent on Japan (not all of it’s SFF) but for some reason Thai authors seem to completely evade me, except for Sriduangkaew.
I’ll check out Somtow – any place I should start in particular?
I’ve had a little look at some of Ken Liu’s translation work when I’ve stumbled across it online and I’ve enjoyed it all so far, so I’m going to dive right into it, thanks! (Starting with the Hao Jingfang you mentioned earlier)
I’ve decided also that I should really get the World SF anthologies that Mike kindly pointed us to earlier, as they look great and are full of what I’m looking for.
Oneiros, also, I’d be remiss not to plug Lavie Tidhar’s World SF collections.
Oneiros – crossposted plugs of the World SF!
Re Somtow, if you are interested in Thai settings, you might start with Jasmine Nights, though it is less SFF than the others. “The Bird Catcher.” After that, any and all of them.
My thought for the day: Engage Brain, not Brian.
awesome, thanks Brian 😀 *sticking Jasmine Nights up near the top of my to-read as soon as I can track down a copy. Thai setting is definitely a bonus! For some reason, all I seem to be able to find (even living in Thailand) is farangs writing about Bangkok. I’m probably just not looking hard enough, or in the right places most of the time.
*watches Brian Z, of all people, accuse Red Wombat, of all people, of being disingenuous*
*notes, out of the corner of her eye, that there is a fly in the house*
*hastily shuts mouth*
“Brain Z.” I could do it. But it would be wrong.
1. UNICORN VARIATIONS
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
2. THE DISPOSSESSED
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
3. FOOL’S RUN
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Mike, when you say “wrong”, whatever can you mean in this context?
🙂
Bracket thyme:
1. Zelazny.
2. Le Guin.
3. Pratchett.
Next round’s gonna be a killer…
I prefer Chew-Z to Brain-Z myself.
@BrianZ, regarding What I’m more worried about at present is how easy or hard it will turn out to be to no-award things going forward.
What reason, real or imagined, do you have for worrying about this? There’s no proposal for the business meeting to change the rules for counting final ballot votes, including the mechanics of works going up against No Award, is there?
One for the record books: Brad Torgersen and I are in agreement! He and I both, very heartily, want him to go to Pluto as quickly as humanly possible. 🙂
It’s been a while since I picked up a Somtow book, but I remember enjoying Mallworld. My favorite Somtow books were the Inquisition series, actually, but I figured you would prefer a standalone.
1. UNICORN VARIATIONS
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
2. THE DISPOSSESSED
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
3. FOOL’S RUN
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Fantasy bracket, Round the Fourth, my choices:
1)-Nine Princes In Amber, in the toughest bracket for me. TLU is good and I like Beagle’s work, but it’s Zelazny and it’s Amber.
2)-Swordspoint, which is an excellent novel-and has about as much chance of winning here as a mouse does of eating a lion. En garde! Morituri te salutant!
3)-Still haven’t read the Prachett, so I abstain, though I hope McKillip doesn’t get shut out. Excellent novel and an even nicer person.
Kyra will do as she pleases, as is proper with mages who possess evil dice, but I hope for there to be two brackets next round, so the hobbits can have a warmup bout against someone before the final. That way, they won’t pull a hamstring or something.
What reason, real or imagined, do you have for worrying about this?
He has none. He’s just flailing about trying to throw up anything he can to sow FUD. He thinks that if he can spew out enough bullshit, then people will vote against EPH because they will assume that what he says is true without checking. Basically, Brian thinks that people reading his stuff are stupid and won’t notice that everything he’s said about EPH in this thread is a lie.
But then again, Brian lies. It is what he does.
1. UNICORN VARIATIONS
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
2. THE DISPOSSESSED
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
3. FOOL’S RUN
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
1. Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
2. In what has come to seem more like ritual sacrifice than anything competitive, The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
3. The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
@ Exarch – The Nameless Ones must feed!
The Ballot of the Sad Sharpei
@Brian Z.: “RedWombat, OK. Maybe people pursuing me across four comment threads for a “gotcha” on Chinese novelettes only seemed disingenuous.”
“Disingenuous.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
1. UNICORN VARIATIONS
Cally, I need one of those cooling cloths. Make it two. Ouch ouch ouch.
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
2. THE DISPOSSESSED
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
abstain
3. FOOL’S RUN
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
For all of Brian Z’s FUD about EPH, it has at least served to point out what EPH will and won’t accomplish. My own opinion is that the bird in the hand of dampening the effectiveness of slate voting is better than the two in the bush of wishing for all fans to just get along. Not that I have anything against singing Kumbaya of course, and I think we can still do that while also giving EPH a try.
Honestly, if Brian’s best argument against E Pluribus Hugo is that EPH will “only” keep slates down to perhaps three or four nominees in short fiction, as opposed to the status quo of ALL SLATES ALL THE WAY NO EXCEPTIONS, then that’s actually a pretty strong argument for passing EPH.
It may not be a perfect solution, but it’s still a hell of a lot better than doing nothing but singing Kumbaya. Not that I mind Kumbaya, but so far that’s been ENTIRELY ineffectual.
Re:EPH
It’s two years for any change. I don’t think having a vote this year hurts anything. It was never a panacea for all woes
I know Brad Torgersen is in no way racist or homophobic but… I did raise my eyebrow at the people he identifies as necessary for successful space exploration: the sturdy white folk who settled America, and nobody who is ‘poofy’.
@rob_matic:
Yeah, same here. Isn’t it interesting how blue-collar conservatives are “sturdy folk” and white-collar liberals are “Speshul Sparkly Snowflakes” in his piece? (Never mind that the Puppy campaigns are one gigantic, prolonged Speshul Snowflake tantrum, or that writing is a white-collar job that doesn’t require one to be especially sturdy…)
Speaking of MGC, that latest Freer piece is darkly amusing when it comes to the Puppies. He preaches “show, don’t tell” – but the Puppies want to be trusted on what they say, not what they actually show us.
Sadly, there are some Americans who will feed proud that robots who are safe anywhere else are quickly mugged in their country.
Mike Glyer,
What, honestly, would you like me to be doing differently? The Mad Geniuses were well meaning yet unequivocally unprepared, sometimes rising to the level of befuddled, and now they are downright angry. Vox Day has a real grudge, a gaming mentality, and the constituency to back up such a threat. The worst of what the SJWs have to offer has been put on display. If not reconciliation, what? A “technical solution”? Seriously?
The Mad Geniuses were well meaning
And Brian continues to demonstrate his penchant for lying.
Brian Z: I don’t think you should shut up, if that’s what you’re really asking. You know I don’t agree with your opinions about the Puppies. And I’ve been taking my time to decide about EPH.
Yeah, same here. Isn’t it interesting how blue-collar conservatives are “sturdy folk” and white-collar liberals are “Speshul Sparkly Snowflakes” in his piece? (Never mind that the Puppy campaigns are one gigantic, prolonged Speshul Snowflake tantrum, or that writing is a white-collar job that doesn’t require one to be especially sturdy…)
And never mind that space exploration is an almost entirely white-collar affair. Or do the Pups imagine that all those engineers and astronauts at NASA are somehow just like coal-miners and steel workers?
You keep failing to explain what ‘reconciliation’ would mean (apart from not passing EPH in case it hurts feelings)
And of course the only step towards reconciliation you take yourself is… haranguing us about the need for reconciliation.
Space exploration is a white collar affair, but actual colonization is likely to be a different story. It will probably differ from other periods of colonization throughout history in that certain technical skills will be necessary on the part of the colonists, meaning that more will be required on the part of the colonists than just a desire to make their miserable lives better, but the primary characteristics the earliest moon or mars colonists will need to have will be a.) the willingness to die, most likely within weeks of arrival, and b.) a compelling reason in their lives to be as far away from the majority of the rest of the human race as possible.
Blue collar or white collar, it probably really won’t make much of a difference.
They’re not really well-meaning though. As someone who has followed Hoyt, Torgersen, et. al. for a while, those Mad Geniuses have been waging a conservative culture war in their own minds for years. Fine, whatever. I have little use for those on the left who keep whining about Obummer either. But after the Hugos become so much collateral damage for the sake of sticking it to the SJWs, their anger is unmerited and self-serving.
The EPH proposal isn’t anything to get worked up about either, since it is apolitical in how it works. Puppy or non-Puppy slates are equally affected, and it won’t prevent more fans from getting involved with the Hugos by reading more SF&F and engaging in more fanac.
As for Beale, he’s nothing more than a gadfly who hit on One Weird Trick to affect the Hugos, and he didn’t even have the wit to come up with it himself, no, he had to have Larry Corriea show him the way. The only thing Beale has going for him is his trolling, which given his family money he can indulge in as much as he likes. Big whoop.
As for reconciliation, I’m personally o.k. with it. I wouldn’t have any problem saying hi to Mike Williamson at a con, which I’ve done at cons in Iowa for instance. I do think the age of the internet is something that he might want to factor into how he expresses himself though. Hey, maybe he could start by reading the reboot of Bloom County:
Bloom County 2015
Or do the Pups imagine that all those engineers and astronauts at NASA are somehow just like coal-miners and steel workers?
The review I intend to post tomorrow touches on how unrealistic SF’s models of space resource exploitation are likely to be. Short version: robots are handy down here but that’s nothing compared to how handy they are in an environment as hostile as space. I expect the doughty space miners of tomorrow will be a collection of cubicle nerds in a building in Flin Flon, remotely controlling a flotilla of distant machines.
David W.,
All reasonable points, though whatever else, I am pretty sure they are all reading the reboot of Bloom County.
@ Brian Z
Well, speaking purely for myself, I’d like you to quit saying things that aren’t true. The Mad Genius Club hasn’t been “well meaning” since I started reading over there about May or June of last year. And it’s certainly not as if angry was any kind of new thing for them even then–their very name and subtitle “We’re not really mad geniuses*; we’re just a little miffed” is about how they’re angry.
* Every time I see that I think they are too modest; they are plainly barking mad. What they’re not is geniuses.
If the Mad Geniuses were well-meaning, I wouldn’t have been banned from Hoyt’s blog a couple of years ago for the sin of being a Marxist/Stalinist
And as far as space colonization goes: people don’t particularly want to move to the North West Territories and the NWT is much, much friendlier to human life than any other location in the Solar System. I like stories with space colonization but really, the basic idea as imagined in SF is as realistic as Harry Potter.
I expect the doughty space miners of tomorrow will be a collection of cubicle nerds in a building in Flin Flon, remotely controlling a flotilla of distant machines.
That’s about 20% of my unpublished (and probably unpublishable) SF novel right there. (For a variety of reasons, mostly dramatic, they’re actually in a ship near the machines. Do the robots ever go wrong? Why yes, yes they do.)
@James Davis Nicoll
I would suspect that before actual colonization could really occur, some method would have to be developed to actually terraform the target planet or else a planet with a suitable atmosphere would have to be found first. I just don’t see long term habitation in domes or the like being sustainable, because the living space would be tiny, meaning the colony would be tiny, and the entire arrangement would be too fragile to last for long.
There would also be the question of what are they actually doing there. I mean, setting up a lunar colony would hold some value as a novelty… for about a year maybe, but then the colony would have to start serving some sort of viable function for the agency or company or government that put it there.
@ Brian Z
As a resident of the proverbial Bloom County (Johnson County, Iowa where Idaho City, Ohio is located, home of I-Owe-A University) while Breathed was living there, I got to meet him a few times back in the early 1980s. Nice guy who was good and got a lucky break when Doonesbury went on hiatus.
Am I the only one who noticed that Neal Stephenson uses “the hoi polloi”?
@Aaron: “And never mind that space exploration is an almost entirely white-collar affair. Or do the Pups imagine that all those engineers and astronauts at NASA are somehow just like coal-miners and steel workers?”
To be fair, astronauts are closer to blue-collar than Mission Control or other support personnel are, and any colonization mission would require a big blue-collar contingent. However, I think anyone with the kind of lack of respect for one’s fellow humans that Puppidom not only displays, but takes pride in, would flunk the psych evaluation. (I know I’d much rather have a genderqueer liberal checking my seals than a disrespectful boor. The latter seems more likely to cut corners, and You Don’t Do That in space.)
In case that’s not sufficiently clear, I am explicitly decoupling “conservative/liberal” from both “blue/white collar” and “respectful/boorish.” The last of those is most important when talking about a space mission, and that’s exactly where I think most of the Pups would blow their chances. The other two pairings fade into noise by comparison; I would more happily go to space with a Felix Ungar who disagrees with my politics but triple-checks the safeties than an Oscar Madison who’s fun to hang out with but lets important work slide. I’d rather argue with Felix than die with Oscar.
EDIT: @JDN: “I expect the doughty space miners of tomorrow will be a collection of cubicle nerds in a building in Flin Flon, remotely controlling a flotilla of distant machines.”
The problem is that “distant” is really distant; light-speed lag is a killer. Compare Collins as support for Armstrong and Aldrin; he wasn’t on the surface, but he was essential due to his closer proximity.
Brad’s piece is funnier than I realized.
.
Well, that lets the Pups out right there. Stoicism has not been their hallmark.
Not heresy, no but kind of startling, since the Sad Puppy campaign was basically running around shrieking and crying when, for example, Alex Dally McFarlane suggested moving beyond binary gender in fiction or Irene Gallo correctly if briefly described the Pups on Facebook. “A complete failure of moral fiber” is an excellent way of describing that, and one I will remember for the future, but I’m startled to see you put it that way. Mr. Puppy.
Paging Brad Torgersen*; please report to the aft airlock…
*or Larry Correia or Theodore Beale or T@nk Marm0t or John C. Wright or well, would it be quicker to say which Puppy Leader *doesn’t* have a chip on their shoulder? No, no it wouldn’t, because then we’d have to think of one, and that’s going to take a while.
Again, what a shame the Pups can’t learn this.
We? Because Torgersen is totally going to help. By something more than clicking a mouse, I mean. Riiiight.
You know, given the rest of his screed and the redesign of his website I think Brad is trying to re-brand himself. He’s going for the blue collar side of class struggle–except I think he’ll make it clear that his beef is not with the rich, (now that would be heresy) but rather with the well educated. That’s why the harping on “upper middle class” instead of “upper class”–he’s thinking of people who are as poor as church mice but working on their Ph.Ds.