Four is fantastic, two is good, but two divided by one can only be sad, all in today’s Scroll.
(1) The quartet’s comic book shut down in April. They have a movie but do they have a future? Alex Pappademas remembers the original future of the Fantastic Four at Grantland.
I am jealous of Reed Richards. I am jealous of his Thinking Room, which appears to have floor-to-ceiling tablet-screen walls on which to write Beautiful Mind–ish equations. I am jealous of his having had 100-plus ideas. But I also relate to Reed. Reed has a wife and a family, but in order to see to their safety and security, he has to absent himself from their lives and spend long periods of time in the Thinking Room. As a professional writer, I relate very strongly to all of this…..
I became a fan of the Fantastic Four and specifically of Reed Richards when I was 32, reading those Dark Reign issues for the first time. My wife was pregnant with our daughter and I was trying — in vain, it turned out — to finish writing a book before the baby came. It would be great to be able to tell you that Reed Richards inspired me to keep going even when all seemed lost, but this isn’t that kind of story. I never finished the book. But during those months when I was trying, I returned again and again to that “SOLVE EVERYTHING” panel and imagined myself as the Reed Richards of my own family, unshaven in the lab, too smart not to realize my situation was hopeless and too desperate not to keep going.
(2) SF Signal’s newest Mind Meld feature asks:
Q:Why is gaming important for the development of your other creative pursuits? Have any video games you’ve played been especially influential in your career?
And Beth Cato, James L. Sutter, Josh Vogt, Monica Valentinelli, Nathan Beittenmiller, Carrie Patel, and Jen Williams answer.
(3) Frankenstein style light switch plates.
Turn your room into a horror movie mad scientist lab! Perfect for Halloween Haunted House!
The single switchplate is $9.99
The dual switchplate is $14.99
(4) We still don’t know when winter is coming, and George R.R. Martin has once again teased the release date without actually saying when it is.
Author George R.R. Martin is just as excited as everyone else for the release of his novel “Winds of Winter.” The book is the sixth installment in the series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which is the basis for the hit HBO show “Game of Thrones.” Martin said in a recent interview he wants the book to be out as soon as possible and teased it holds a shocking twist for a major character.
Most of the material in the first five published books has now been used up and Season 6 of the TV series is already in production. Martin has constantly spoken about his desire to get the sixth book out as soon as possible, and a recent entry on his live journal Not A Blog has given fans hope the release date will be sooner rather than later.
In the blog, he spoke about traveling to a wedding and a baseball event in the East Coast. He signed off by leaving a faint hint the book may already be in the hands of his publishing house. “And while I will be travelling, my army of minions will be here at the old homestead, toiling in the paper mines,” he said.
(5) Arthur Chu, maybe the Puppies have a point about you after all.
https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/628747769453379584
(6) Yesterday’s scroll excerpted J. A. Micheline’s “Why I’m Boycotting Marvel Comics” at Comics Alliance.
Declan Finn decided to give it the Puppy treatment in “Boycotting Marvel: A Fisk” at The Catholic Geeks. Quotes from Micheline’s article are bold and underlined.
First, came your quiet decision to hand the new Blade book over to two white creators.
Um … Blade is about vampires. Not race relations, vampires. You do understand that vampires are less a #BlackLivesMatter problem and more an #AllLivesMatter problem, don’t you? Or are you one of those people who would storm the stage with outrage at such a hashtag? Yes, you strike me as a very hashtag person. Heavy on the hash — and I mean hashish, not corned beef hash. I’m saying you’re high, not fat.
To be clear, I have no reason to think either creator will do a bad job on this book,
Oh, I think you just did. You’ve quite implied already that because they’re white, this is a problem. Either their race is a problem, or it’s not — and since you went out of your way to say they’re white, this tells me quite clearly that this is a problem.
(7) Vice writer Cecilia D’Anastasio interviewed seven black cosplayers at Otakon for “What Black Anime Fans Can Teach Us About Race in America”. Chanel P. had this to say —
Were there any anime characters you identified with in particular?
I definitely identified with Sailor Jupiter [from Sailor Moon]. I was the tallest kid in my elementary school class. People would pick fun at me. She was shy, and so was I.
What do you think about the fact that there aren’t many black anime characters? Was that a barrier to engagement?
It was at first. When I first started coming to anime conventions, I was a bit afraid, actually, to cosplay any characters. I thought, They aren’t black, I can’t do that . I thought you had to actually look like the character in order to dress like her. But, I mean, I saw people of my skin tone dressing like the character they wanted and thought, I can do that too . I thought, I guess it doesn’t matter that there aren’t black characters. But I think we do need more black characters.
What’s it been like to cosplay?
The first time I cosplayed Sailor Moon was at Otakon last year. That was the first time I ever cosplayed. I got some pictures taken that were posted on the internet. I was excited, like, Hey I’m on the internet, yay! And then I read the comments. A lot of them weren’t good, at all. I got, “The cosplay is good, but she shouldn’t be black,” and “Oh, her skin is too dark,” and “Oh, her hair shouldn’t be blonde.” It was a lot of nasty stuff people should have kept to themselves.
(8) This may be the first time anyone resorted to Craigslist to dump surplus convention program books:
Did you miss taking home your copy of the WesterCon 68/2015 program? Or didn’t attend and want to pretend you did? Or really just wanna know what you missed? Three of them followed me home after the end of the con’. You can have up to three; pick up here.
(9) After reading today’s Robert Conquest obituary, Rich Lynch noted in comments that the famous Walt Willis carried on a correspondence with Conquest, and quoted from it in “I Remember Me” for Mimosa 17.
[Conquest:] Personally, I think it is clear that the Soviet system is, in all essential matters, as bad as the Nazi one, and that its theory that this system is suitable for imposition on the rest of the world is the greatest danger there is. On the other hand, I fancy that if we can solve our own problems and keep the Communist states from breaking out, while at the same time pointing out to them the advantages that would accrue if they ceased to exclude themselves from the world community, their internal tensions would finally force these states to evolve or perish.
[Wills:] As you’ll probably have noticed, I didn’t really appreciate Conquest’s importance. At the time, he was mainly known to me as an anti-Soviet polemicist, and my politics then were more pro-Soviet than anything, based on the assumption that whatever was wrong in the Soviet Union, at least their hearts were in the right place. I don’t have any recollection of further correspondence with Conquest, though I can’t say what might not turn up in the files, but as far as I know, my last reference to him was in my report of the visit of Madeleine and myself to the World Fair in Seattle in 1962:
[Willis:] “Even now there is such a cloud of fatigue in that corridor of my memory that I cannot believe there would be much of interest in it to you. Except possibly the still vivid recollection of seeing at the exit from the U.S. Science Pavilion, in great gold letters on the wall, a quotation from a Hyphen subscriber. Unaccountably they failed to mention this fact, mentioning just the name, Robert Conquest — presuming, no doubt, that his chief claim to immortality lies in his poetry and not in his letters of comment on Hyphen. Admittedly, he hasn’t written many of the latter recently, his subscription having lapsed, but let that be a warning to you. Let your Hyphen subscription lapse, and you may find yourself reduced to writing on walls in Washington.”
(10) Hollywood’s ultimate power couple has announced they’ve split!
Things got a little heated at the Television Critics Association panel for ABC’s new series, The Muppets, when Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, along with series executive producers Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory) and Bob Kushell (Suburgatory), revealed more about their upcoming series and that the felt couple’s long-term relationship is done-zo.
“Piggy and I have gone our separate ways romantically,” Kermit revealed. “I think it’s just kind of coming out in the press now. It can be tough to work with your ex, you know. And it can be tough to be the executive producer on your ex’s late?night TV show, especially when your ex is a pig.” (We’re sure he meant that in a species identification way only.)
(11) David Tormsen ranks Sad Puppies at #5 on a list of 10 Misguided Social And Political Movements Of Our Time on Listverse.
Every year, the Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy writers are voted on by paid members of Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. Popular nominee books, movies, and commentators are placed on a shortlist of five, which are then voted on. The system is relatively easy to game, but this was not previously a problem as the majority of voters simply voted on individual taste, and popular authors knew campaigning for the awards would be in bad taste. That was until the Sad Puppy movement came along.
The Sad Puppies believe the awards have been taken over by excessively progressive authors and fans. Right-wing author Brad Torgersen describes them as “niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun.” The Sad Puppies believe science fiction and fantasy have lost their way and want to return to a sci-fi golden age. They see a liberal conspiracy to promote authors who are female or minorities, supposedly alienating a fan base of primarily white males. Their vision of the future has no place for social science fiction or the influence of feminists, LGBTQ advocates, or liberals.
[Thanks to Dave Doering, Rich Lynch, Michael J. Walsh and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat.]
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Kyra — thanks for the brackets! Those were a lot of fun.
I wound up not voting the final bracket because I just couldn’t make up my mind — on the one hand, I couldn’t not vote for Tolkien taking the whole show, and on the other hand, I didn’t want to vote for him taking the whole show.
So, whew, I’m just glad I get to have everyone nestled all friendly like on my bookshelves.
Besides, it was just fun to read everyone’s reasoning, the passionate defenses and the anguished choices.
Can you expand on your thought some, @NickPheas? Is your claim in general that deliberately broadening representation on a panel makes that panel about representation?
@Aaron: One of the reasons I think Aaron James’ Assholes: A Theory is an important book is because he writes, “one of our basic moral responsibilities is to hear people out, to at least take seriously the reasons they give for wanting to be treated differently, even if we ultimately object…This is, as we might put it, part and parcel of basic moral respect–that is, respect not simply for the person’s complaint but for the person who makes it.” And a little later, “The person taking a stand against the asshole is fighting to be registered in the asshole’s point of view as morally real.”
I think the commenter, and many like him, take offense at the mere suggestion women and minorities have concerns as women and as minorities that he should take seriously. A whole lot of sexism and racism seems to me to be a willful ignorance that refuses to do that. And that’s why what seemingly doesn’t affect him, does.
Kyra, I enjoyed the brackets too. Even if I abstained on the last round.
And GOD STALK is on its way to my local library branch.
thanks Kyra for the bracketology! I know that it was an enormous amount of work … but a lot of fun!
apologies if this has been mentioned already … but
Brian Aldiss’s Hugo winning novel Hothouse is on sale today for the Kindle …
I recollect reading that years ago … but retain almost no memories of it. Look forward to re-reading.
@Stephen Granade
It was an attempt to think myself into the mind of someone who feels threatened by such things. Not something I believe myself.
Ah, gotcha. I’d missed that distinction. Thanks!
@Jack Lint You swine! I am now earwormed…
Kyra, my thanks for all the brackets! Well-done, there.
Maybe we need a bracket bracket to fill the empty space in our souls (or we have done that joke already?)
Have this internet; I’m not using it!
And that’s why what seemingly doesn’t affect him, does.
Even with that explanation, he’s complaining about things that don’t affect him. He can not go to panels he doesn’t like. He can no read books he doesn’t like. He can simply not do the things that he doesn’t enjoy. No one is making him recognize anyone else’s humanity at all unless he decides to wander into a panel about gender, and at that point, he’s responsible for his own discomfort.
@Aaron
The posters advising people not to rape might be all about the halls and reminding him of things. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was just a bit clumsy in his words and not actually standing up for rapists, but even so, people don’t like to be reminded that people like them do nasty stuff.
The posters advising people not to rape might be all about the halls and reminding him of things.
I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is not, in fact, someone prone to rape or do things to others without their consent. On the other hand, I’m not going to lose any sleep over people for whom a reminder not to rape others is off-putting.
Kyra, I’m adding my [GOD STALK!] thanks to the chorus….
(Rather than, as Red Wombat, sounding like the 1980s spaceman in The Lego Movie, I choose to sound like the dog saying “Squirrel!” in “Up”.)
Kyra, adding my thanks. That was fun. Even if the wrong books kept on winning. What were all you people thinking, anyway?
God Stalk!
About God Stalk. It’s one of the few books I bought on the basis of the cover, back in the 80s. I loved it to pieces. But I found the sequel to be not to my taste, rather grimmer and not in a good way. And I think I read the book after that, but I’m not sure. Should I try again? I’m the daughter of a Calvinist minister, and I found Jame’s god to be rather distressingly like the horror show I grew up with, so there’s a problem there. Am I missing something wonderful, or should I just stick to the first book which I still adore.
Thank you Kyra for curating this bracket-powered tour of the sf and fantasy universe. I need to read about 30 books now that I’ve neglected before and can’t any longer because people make them sound so interesting.
And then there’s the interesting question about what’s been going on since 1999. Thanks to the good people of File770, I finally got around to reading Paladin of Souls. I don’t know why I waited since last year I (finally) read Curse of Chalion and loved it. And already adored the Miles in Love sequence . . . .
Spacefaringkitten said:
I’d say Declan Finn is providing pretty strong counter-evidence to that argument here. 🙂
Thank you, Kyra!
Kyra, another vote of thanks from here. It’s been fascinating and fun.
Kyra, you are awesome!
God Stalk!
Thank you Kyra!
THIRD POLICEMAN!
Doesn’t have the same oomph, dammit.
Thanks, Kyra! And I take it that I am not the only one using these brackets as something of a remedial reading list?
LunarG –
I’m doing the same, I hadn’t realized there were some huge gaps in my reading.
My thanks as well to Kyra for organizing it all.
Thanks from me as well to Kyra, an internet treasure for many reasons, for her willingness to try to herd a bunch of cats through two bracket competitions. It was most appreciated and enjoyed.
Kyra, thank you so much for running these brackets. I really enjoyed them, and have a stack of books to read and re-read!
In my experience there tends to be a lot of zero-sum thinking going on, combined with a fear of widespread change. So a panel with gender parity is one less panel time allocated for him. Every modern novel published is one less manly-man novel that is published. And so on.
And then there’s the fear that if the change that’s happening in society continues, he will wake up in a world he doesn’t recognize, where there’s no more room for people like him. I don’t really sympathize with that fear, but I understand why he might be afraid of that change, especially if he believes in the “dominate or be dominated” philosophy.
Thanks for the brackets, Kyra!
@ LunerG
Definitely not the only one.
Thanks Kyra. The brackets have been an agonizing blast.
@LunarG:
You’re definitely not the only one. I’m 14% of the way through the omnibus collection of God Stalk and its sequel at the moment, with maybe 10(?) more books sitting in my Kindle waiting for me to begin, just from these brackets alone. I’ve picked up pretty much anything I haven’t read that made it down to the final couple rounds of a given bracket.
Regarding the Tron guy, from what he said I get the impression he doesn’t like the term “rape culture” or any of the other academic sounding terms people use when discussing gender, race, sexuality, etc.. I really don’t understand why he couldn’t just not attend the panels that don’t interest him.
I think Tron-dude’s problem with consent culture is that, in his mind, it’s entirely a response to a straw-man, which makes it itself a straw-man. That is, he thinks “rape culture” is a straw-man invented from whole cloth by us awful man-hating, sex-shaming, politically correct SJWs to demonize anyone who wasn’t sufficiently pure. This would make “consent culture” a bullshit movement, since it’s being pushed as a response to something that doesn’t exist outside of our own feverish femenazi imaginations, and I suppose has the effect of making people like Tron-dude feel undeservedly unwelcome.
At least, that’s my best effort at parsing this bit here:
The funny thing about God Stalk, I have found, is that I already own a hard copy. I discovered this only after buying a Kindle version.
Again, thanks, Kyra.
Although the wrong books may have lost in intermediate rounds, I think the final winners were right.
And I won’t join the God Stalk chorus, but could be tempted by one for Riddle-Master.
And I won’t join the God Stalk chorus, but could be tempted by one for Riddle-Master.
I pretty much love everything by McKillip.
The funny thing about Tron-man’s complaints is that for decades women and various minorities participating in fandom had to put up with not having panels and topics that were relevant to their particular concerns either…and the response from fans like Tron-man was, so don’t come…maybe (this) fandom isn’t for you. Now he’s weepy that he is no longer a 100% perfect fit with every aspect of “his” cons. Wevs.
As for the “consent culture” thing, the result for (mostly) women when that was not emphasized was the gamut that ran from costume=consent to butt- and boob-groping by the likes of Asimov and Ellison (and other con goers who saw that as a model of acceptable con behavior) or shotgun propositioning like Randall Garrett…all the way to actual sexual assault and rape. So yeah, maybe in a few decades of people being raised and educated not to rape and sexually assault people we won’t need signs like that. But for now they are definitely needed, and compared to the things women endured for years to take part in fandom, and the threats of things that COULD happen if you weren’t on your guard, taking care, dressing “conservatively” enough, and sticking with friends…well boo hoo for Tron man that a few posters make HIM feel uncomfortable.
Thank you, Kyra, for organizing the brackets, and for your several charitable mentions of KEW and Bloodstone.
Now, when will you be organizing the MilSF bracket, so we can show those puppy pikers how it should be done? 😉
Kyra, I didn’t participate (not feeling well read enough) but I enjoyed watching from the sidelines and taking notes on the many many books I need to read one of these days! Thanks for all the hard work you did!
A Mil-SF bracket would be cool!
This is the emotional appeal of “Turncoat” for the Pups who liked it, I think, and there were some. The humans who refuse to be “improved”, the holdouts, become the objects of a genocidal, progressive campaign by the New Overlords and the people who embraced them. Just why this premise would speak to the hearts of anxious conservative-minded white folks, especially straight dudes, hardly needs belaboring.
GSLamb : Though a line – by-line rebuttal of a filk would be a lute-fisk.
Although a fisk of a song can be a hilarious thing…
(Hey, Dr. Science, if you’re reading this, I ended up sending you the information in an LJ message, mostly because I’d forgotten you asked for it in e-mail. Hope that isn’t a problem.)
I continue my summer read of lightweight fiction with John Birmingham’s Dave vs The Monsters trilogy. Volume one so far, in which a Gulf rig blowout breaks the wall between universes and unleashes video game demons on Earth. Last they were here we were cavefolk and easy prey. Now where quite different. Also we seem to have a reluctant superman on our side.
So far Birmingham is approaching what would be a video game scenario with the same rigour as his alternate histories. The hero is decidedly un-heroic, and the military decidedly unprepared for orcs and the like rampaging threw post-Katrina New Orleans. Adventure fiction that deconstructs adventure fiction? It’s all meta with an axe…
Oh, Dave vs the Monsters has its deeper bits. The character of Dave is pretty much a “Take That” to the RWNJ crowd – he initially seems like their wet-dream of a super-powered MRA-type, but has to actually deal with the consequences and reasons why he’s a sexist, homophobic jerk. The supersexy Russian assassin-superhero has no interest in getting into his pants, and regards him as a boy playing at heroes – rightfully – and the people who deal with him almost consider him more a liability than an asset.
And then there’s Threshy. While it starts off as “dumb brutal monsters get slaughtered in droves by smart right-wing human heroes”, Birmingham is making a point that the monsters themselves are learning. Really fast. And they’re not content to remain punching bags for the protagonists, like the dumb mooks in so many other wish-fufillment man vs monster books.
I can’t see the comment in question (I can’t see LiveJournal from this computer) but this: “…and the posters on consent culture plastered, it seemed, on every available flat surface as well as the inside front cover of the con book.”
…sounds a lot like CONvergence. Is that what he was referring to? Because I was at that con, and those posters actually made me feel a lot more comfortable. It felt like a space where they were saying, “Hey, have a good time without worrying about creeps, because we will keep them away.” If you read those posters and find it ‘menacing’, it may say more about you than about consent culture.
And the Dave vs. the Monsters books join my… well, not the TBR stack, but the “this looks neat” wishlist.
Thanks for running the brackets, Kyra! And if you DO happen to have a special moment with your dice, a sledgehammer, and a video camera, you know where to post it….
…sounds a lot like CONvergence. Is that what he was referring to?
I believe he was referring to Penguicon.
Some years back, when Penguincon was getting off the ground, I walked into their room party at another convention, and was totally ignored, though every single male who walked in after me was talked to about their convention. As I walked out, I mentioned that it was too bad they didn’t want me to come, as I was part of their target demographic. I use Linux, and had for some years.
I’ve never seen a reason to update my opinion on whether I’d be a valued member of their convention. Perhaps I ought to, though, if they’re now acknowledging the existence of women as people who might actually have agency.
Really, a LOT of conventions have been moving this way, particularly over the last few years. I’ve certainly been noticing it here. (Karine Charlebois did comic book cosplay and fursuit versions of a Cosplay ? Consent poster, both of which have shown up at local cons at my home in Toronto and her home in Montreal.)
Some cons have had good harassment policies for years, true, but the big ‘Cosplay ? Consent’ movement really only hit major public awareness just a couple of years ago. (One of the earliest mentions I can find is an L.A.Weekly article from January 2013 referring to the harrassment policy in the Anime Los Angeles 2013 programme.) So it’s no surprise that a lot of cons are on board this year.
As someone who has run an event at PenguiCon for the last 7 or 8 years, I have zero sympathy for Tron Guy. Why? Because PenguiCon is all about open source. All you have to do to get a panel on the schedule is to say “Hey, I want to run this.”
There were panels on cheese, whiskey, and a whole series of ice creams made with liquid nitrogen. There were martial arts demo panels, panels that went off to a shooting range for some gun practice, and exercise panels. These were Urban gardening panels, robotics panels, theatrical makeup people who turn you into a zombie with latex. There were BDSM how-to’s, board game tournaments, and even a B Movie award show that spent 4 hours showing people really remarkable clips from some truly terrible movies. (Pretty darn entertaining clips, if I can toot my own horn.)
If Tron Guy wants something else offered, he can damn well step up up and offer it himself, instead of whining that no one is catering to him specifically.
Kyra, thank you so, so much for the brackets. I appreciate all the hard work!
I also look forward to a dice smashing video. Damned things deserve it.