(1) ONE STOP SHOPPING. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] SF2 Concatenation’s Autumn 2019 edition is up. Voluminous seasonal news and reviews page of both SF and science which includes the major UK SF/fantasy imprint book releases between now and New Year. (Many of these will be available as imports in N. America and elsewhere.)
- Newscast for the Autumn 2019. This includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films; and TV; as well as science. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
- My Top Ten Scientists – Dominic Dulley (software engineer)
- CERN – Science or Tourism? — Jane O’Reilly
- The Shoestringcon [1]: Polycon 1979 story — Pete Gilligan
- Dublin – The 2019 World SF Convention – Sue Burke
- Ytterbium 2019 – The 2019 British Eastercon — Peter Tyers
- GeyserCon – New Zealand’s 2019 national convention — Alan Robson
(2) LEM V. DICK. [Editor’s note: I apologize for what amounts to misspelling, but characters that WordPress would display as question marks have been changed to a letter of the alphabet without marks.]
[Item by Jan Vanek Jr.] Yesterday the English-language website of the Polish magazine Przekrój published (and started promoting on Facebook, hence my knowledge) the translation of a 2,700-word excerpt (not a self-contained “chapter” as they claim) from Wojciech Orlinski’s 2017 biography of Stanislaw Lem detailing what led to “the famous Lem-Dick imbroglio” with PKD’s “famous Lem report to the FBI”: “access to previously unpublished letters […] resulted in what is likely the first accurate description of the incident, as well as the ultimate explanation as to how the concept of ‘foreign royalties under communism’ is almost as much of a mess as ‘fine dining under communism’ (but not quite as fine a mess)”:
…It all began with Lem’s depiction of Dick – in the third of his great essay collections, Science Fiction and Futurology as little more than a talentless hack. Lem had a poor opinion of almost all American authors, and never thought much of the literary genre of which he himself was an exponent (think of his equally critical view of Pirx the Pilot, for example, or Return from the Stars)….
I found it a quite informative and interesting read, although “Lem’s unfortunate expulsion from the SFWA” that ensued is mentioned only briefly and I think misleadingly (I have checked the Polish book and there is nothing more about it, but it has been described in American sources, many of them online).
(3) ABOUT AO3’S HUGO AWARD. The Organization for Transformative Works has clarified to Archive of Our Own participants — “Hugo Award – What it Means”.
We’re as excited as you are about the AO3’s Hugo win, and we are shouting it to the rafters! We are grateful to the World Science Fiction Society for recognizing the AO3 with the award, as well as to the many OTW volunteers who build and maintain the site, and all of the amazing fans who post and enjoy works on it.
The World Science Fiction Society has asked us to help them get the word out about what the award represented—specifically, they want to make sure people know that the Hugo was awarded to the AO3, and not to any particular work(s) hosted on it. Therefore, while we can all be proud of the AO3’s Hugo win and we can all be proud of what we contributed to making it possible, the award does not make any individual fanwork or creator “Hugo winners”—the WSFS awarded that distinction to the AO3 as a whole. In particular, the WSFS asked us to convey this reminder so that no one mistakenly describes themselves as having personally won a Hugo Award.
Thanks for sharing our enthusiasm, and consider yourselves reminded! We appreciate every one of your contributions.
So far there are 80 comments, any number by Kevin Standlee making Absolutely Clear Everybody Must Understand Things Exactly The Way He Does. One reply says, “You aren’t doing a particularly good job of reading the room here.”
(4) ARISIA PERSISTED. Arisia 2020 has issued its first online Progress Report. Key points: (1) It’s happening! (2) It’s (back) at the Westin Boston Waterfront. (3) The headliners are Cadwell Turnbull, Author Guest of Honor, Kristina Carroll, Artist Guest of Honor, and Arthur Chu, Fan Guest of Honor.
(5) BOO! LAist primes fans for Universal Studios’ Halloween mazes: “Halloween Horror Nights: A Photo Tour Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ & ‘Us’ Mazes At Universal Studios”.
Halloween’s almost here… well, OK, it’s more than a month away, but that means it’s time for Halloween haunts — aka Halloween mazes, aka scary Halloween things at theme parks and the like, to start.
Halloween Horror Nights has been taking over Universal Studios Hollywood for 21 years, and we got the chance to take a behind-the-scenes tour of two of the brand new mazes, Ghostbusters and Us. We were guided through by Creative Director John Murdy, the man in charge of creating the stories and the scares inside all of the mazes.
He works with an art director to design every moment, writing treatments for each attraction than can run up to 100 pages.
“It’s a narrative from the guest’s POV — everything I see, hear, smell, etcetera, as if I’m going through the maze,” Murdy said. “But it also has a very elaborate technical breakdown by scene, by discipline, down to the timecode of the audio cues.”
(6) DUBLIN 2019. Cora Buhlert’s report begins with — “WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 1: The Good…”. There’s also a shorter version for the Speculative Fiction Showcase: “Cora’s Adventures at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland”. Each has lots of photos.
…On Wednesday, the day before WorldCon officially started, I helped with move in and set-up at Point Square. This involved carrying boxes, assembling shelves for the staff lounge and crafting area, taping down table cloths and helping to set up the Raksura Colony Tree model. This was my first time volunteering at a WorldCon and it was a great experience. Not only do you get to help to make a great project like WorldCon happen, no, you also get to meet a lot of lovely people while volunteering. Especially if you’re new to WorldCon and don’t know anybody yet, I recommend volunteering as a way to meet people and make friends. What is more, I also got a handful of groats (which I used to buy a very pretty necklace in the dealers room) and a cool t-shirt.
(7) MEMORIAL. Jim C. Hines tweeted the link to his post about the Memorial held for his wife, Amy, on September 8, a touching and highly personal tribute.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- September 14, 2008 — The Hunger Games novel hit bookstores. (For some reason, the bookstores did not hit back.)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born September 14, 1915 — Douglas Kennedy. No major SFF roles that I see but he’s been in a number of films of a genre nature: The Way of All Flesh, The Ghost Breakers, The Mars Invaders, The Land Unknown, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, The Alligator People and The Amazing Transparent Man. Series wise, he had one-offs on Alcoa Presents, Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Outer Limits. (Died 1973.)
- Born September 14, 1919 — Claire P. Beck. Editor of the Science Fiction Critic, a fanzine which published in four issues Hammer and Tongs, the first work of criticism devoted to American SF. It was written by his brother Clyde F. Beck. Science Fiction Critic was published from 1935 to 1938. (Died 1999.)
- Born September 14, 1927 — Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one in the Buck Rogers one as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels as well. (Died 1997.)
- Born September 14, 1932 — Joyce Taylor, 87. She first shows as Princess Antillia in Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Later genre appearances were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first English language Beauty and the Beast film, the horror film Twice-Told Tales and the Men into Space SF series.
- Born September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig, 83. Best-known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in the original Trek franchise and Alfred Bester on Babylon 5. Moontrap, a SF film with him and Bruce Campbell, would garner a 28% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and InAlienable which he executive produced, wrote and acts in has no rating there.
- Born September 14, 1941 — Bruce Hyde. Patterns emerge in doing these Birthdays. One of these patterns is that original Trek had a lot of secondary performers who had really short acting careers. He certainly did. He portrayed Lt. Kevin Riley in two episodes, “The Naked Time” and “The Conscience of the King” and the rest of his acting career consisted of eight appearances, four of them as Dr. Jeff Brenner. He acted for less than two years in ‘65 and ‘66, before returning to acting thirty-four years later to be in The Confession of Lee Harvey Oswald which is his final role. (Died 2015.)
- Born September 14, 1947 — Sam Neill, 72. Best known for role of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park which he reprised in Jurassic Park III. He was also in Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Bicentennial Man, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, Thor: Ragnarok and Peter Rabbit.
- Born September 14, 1961 — Justin Richards, 58. Clute at ESF says “Richards is fast and competent.” Well I can certain say he’s fast as he’s turned out thirty-five Doctor Who novels which Clute thinks are for the YA market between 1994 and 2016. And he has other series going as well! Another nineteen novels written, and then there’s the Doctor Who non-fiction which runs to over a half dozen works.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest ask deep questions about Pokémon.
- A Tom Gauld cartoon about The Testaments launch in The Guardian.
(11) LUCAS MUSEUM. George Lucas, his wife Mellody Hobson, and the mayor dropped by the site yesterday to see how things are going: “Force Is With Them! Construction Of George Lucas Museum In Full Swing”.
Construction of the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is in full swing.
On Friday, Lucas — along with his wife and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — watched as construction crews helped bring his vision to life.
And he thanked them for the tireless effort.
“You’re doing the impossible — thank you so much,” Lucas said.
“Millions of people will be inspired by this building. We were just in our board meeting for the museum and George said you are the artists so you’re the artists of this art museum,” says Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the museum’s co-founder.
(12) LISTEN TO LIEN. Henry Lien is the Special Guest Star on this week’s episode of The Write Process podcast, hosted by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program — “Henry Lien on Worldbuilding, Puzzle Stories, Middle Grade, & Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions”
Henry Lien teaches law and creative writing at UCLA Extension. A private art dealer, he is the author of the Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which received New York Times acclaim and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist.
(13) COSPLAY ID’S. SYFY Wire has collected all the tweeted photos — “Detroit high school encourages students to dress as pop culture icons for ID photos”.
High school can be a turbulent time for any budding teenager, but when you’re allowed to dress up as your favorite movie or television character, facing picture day isn’t the daunting challenge it once was. Per a report from The Huffington Post, North Farmington High School in the suburbs of Detroit allowed its senior pupils to assume the persona of their favorite pop culture icon for the sake of ID photographs. What followed was a parade of Woodys (Toy Story), Shuris (Black Panther) Fionas (Shrek), creepy twins (The Shining), and so many more!
(14) GUTS. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles YA graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, whose autobiographical graphic novels have sold 13.5 million copies and who attracted an audience of 4,000 to her talk at the National Book Festival. “Raina Telgemeier became a hero to millions of readers by showing how uncomfortable growing up can be”.
…Now, because her fans kept asking, she is getting more personal than ever. The Eisner Award-winning author who launched her publishing empire with 2010?s “Smile,” about her years-long dental adventures as a kid, is prepared to bare new parts of her interior world with “Guts,” available Tuesday, which centers on how fear affected her body.
“This is the reality of my life,” Telgemeier told her fans. She quickly got to the heart and GI tract of the matter: “I was subject to panic attacks and [was] worrying that something was really wrong with me.”…
(15) SIGNAL BOOST. Naomi Kritzer offers an incentive for supporting a cause that needs a cash infusion.
(16) MARATHON SITTINGS. The Hollywood Reporter considers “The Long Game: Super-Sized Movies Are Testing the Patience of Audiences”.
And there may be a financial cost. Over the Sept. 6-8 weekend, New Line and director Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two opened to $91 million domestically, a 26 percent decline from the first It, which debuted to $123.4 million on the same weekend in 2017. The sequel ran a hefty 169 minutes, 34 minutes longer than its predecessor.
“Andy had a lot of story to tell in concluding his adaptation of Stephen King’s book, which is more than 1,100 pages,” says Jeff Goldstein, chief of distribution for Warner Bros., New Line’s parent. “We strategically added more shows and locations to counterbalance losing a show on each screen.”
Adds a rival studio executive regarding It: Chapter Two, “look, $91 million is a great number. But anytime the second film in a hoped-for franchise goes down — and not up — that’s not what you wish for. And I do think the fact that it was so long didn’t help.”
(17) COLBERT. Stephen Colbert’s “Meanwhile…” news roundup includes a furry joke related to the movie Cats, and a bit on “The 5D Porn Cinema No One Asked For.” These items start at 2.02 — here on YouTube.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Cinema verite of author Liz Hand on Vimeo. A 5-minute video of Hand at work and play
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
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First!
@4: judging by the paucity of entries in ISFDB, Turnbull seems like a pretty minor author to be GoH at a major convention; does anyone recommend any of his few works?
@9: Is OST is unusual in the number of short-term actors? I get the impression a lot of people get a few gigs but not enough to make a living, and end up quitting show business; did OST prefer to call back known quantities more than other shows?
@3: “Five Times Kevin Standlee Was a Humorless Nuisance About the Hugos (And One Time Chris Barkley Did It For Him)”
That thread is kind if amazing, especially the person throwing a tantrum on AO3 because he doesn’t know what AO3 stands for.
Bill Schelly, who wrote/co-wrote a number of comics-related books, including a biography of Otto Binder, has died.
3) I’m basically in agreement with Kevin. And good for him for standing up for accuracy.
People who haven’t written anything that won the award calling themselves “Hugo Winners” is an insult to the award, and the people who work hard to maintain it.
And so the best way to persuade people not to do that is go on their site and make overbearing comments and say stuff like it cost you $50,000 to be chair of the Worldcon? Eh, no.
Weatherglass: That thread is kind if amazing, especially the person throwing a tantrum on AO3 because he doesn’t know what AO3 stands for.
That guy is a huge jerk. But there are also a couple of AO3 commenters giving him strong competition.
Clickity
2) Lem was, by and large, an honest (if rather grouchy) critic with little time for the then-current conventions of the pulp-SF genre. He took a long, hard, critical look at Dick and gave voice to his opinions. In some cases, they were positive opinions – Lem is full of praise for Ubik, for example. In other cases, as with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, his opinions were a lot less positive and a lot more caustic…. But there’s no doubt, I think, that he found Dick to be, at the very least, an interesting writer. I think Lem saw many of Dick’s contemporaries as not even worth criticizing.
A Click in Time (at about 9 (in my time zone))
I don’t think Kevin was being a jerk; in fact, I think the responses from the crowd over there are a strong argument for why they shouldn’t have gotten the award in the first place.
This problem with AO3 began with the nomination process and continued throughout; AO3 management(?) was asked repeatedly to message their people about how the award worked and they did not do so during the run up to the final voting – why? Probably, at least in part, because it would have discouraged members from joining Worldcon to vote.
Afterwards, they made a statement, but it wasn’t forceful enough. (Do it again and we’re booting you would have been appropriate.)
I deal with IP stuff every day; the mark committee is probably close to a point of having to threaten suit and does not want to, but will have to if the infringement persists and that would look even better than the comments, wouldn’t it?
AO3 themselves are in a position to inform their members of how to treat mentions of the award, and they are in a position to enforce it far better than WSFS is absent legal action. Instead, members are right back to – you are attacking fanfic, you’re just jealous, BS, immature responses to being informed that they can’t disrespect the award the website they contribute to just won.
Kevin Standlee is fighting a losing battle over there. The only people the WSFS should be speaking to are the ones advertising themselves commercially as Hugo Award winners because of the AO3 win. Addressing the whole community, including people whose personal claim to a Hugo may be tongue in cheek, is lining yourself up for a beating. Some people are being excessively harsh to him there, but overall that thread doesn’t make us in the WSFS community look good.
I didn’t expect AO3 to win but I was gratified to see how many of its contributors were thrilled by the award. I look forward to seeing how that site develops. Fanfic’s an interesting and transgressive part of the SF/F world that turns a lot of people into writers who might not otherwise put pen to paper.
The AO3 thread seems to have a lot of users who are pulling that 4chan “just joking” technique, where a user tries to get away with as much as possible until someone calls them on it. Then they turn the tables on the accuser, claiming that they were “just joking” and that the accuser “doesn’t understand.”
Kevin is doing the right thing for the most part. It’s the room that is engaging in bad faith.
Yep. And if they’re joking about claiming the honour of the award, it tells you the award is a joke to them.
@Olavrokne:
I don’t think that’s true.
There is a certain amount of celebratory whooping and good humor about this because it IS a big deal. The Hugos matter.
Some of the people on AO3 my be joking among their friends that they won a Hugo, but I don’t think most of them are making any serious claim to that status.
I agree with @rcade. If there are people who are trying to claim the individual status of Hugo winners in a commercial, professional context because they were contributors to AO3, then those individuals should be addressed and asked to stop.
But when people are giddy and goofing around among their friends and community, going on to their own site to lecture at all of them in SUCH a high-handed way just looks tin-eared and joyless.
To boot, the “joke” of an AO3 author calling themselves a “Hugo Winner” isn’t actually clever, and therefore isn’t actually that funny.
The AO3 swarm should get better jokes.
rcade: Addressing the whole community, including people whose personal claim to a Hugo may be tongue in cheek
At this point, it’s been 6 months of a lot of AO3 contributors behaving like total jerks and proclaiming themselves Hugo Award Winners all over social media, including several people making and selling enamel pins that say “Hugo Award Winner” or include the Hugo logo.
As someone in that thread has pointed out, WSFS has to defend their marks from infringement, or lose the ability to enforce them. This includes people calling themselves Hugo Award Winners publicly online — otherwise, the value of the term “Hugo Award Winner” becomes meaningless and the award is cheapened.
But of course, the AO3 people who are just “joking” don’t care that their “joke” causes problems for anyone else.
On that thread, some commenters are claiming that it’s WSFS’ fault for asking the OTW to post the note, and saying that instead they should have just hit everyone who’s publicly claiming to be a Hugo Award Winner or selling Hugo Award merchandise with an attorney’s Cease-and-Desist letter. Yeah, right, I’m sure they’d have been just fine with that. 🙄
I suspect WSFS’ request that OTW make a post about it was an attempt to be a little kinder and avoid that. Of course, regardless of what they’re saying in that thread, the AO3ers would have raised holy hell if WSFS had sent out C&Ds to all of the people claiming to be Hugo Award Winners.
The only thing that would have made them happy would have been for WSFS to let them do whatever they want — which was not a viable option for WSFS.
I know that there are a lot of good people, including Filers, who are participants on AO3, and who haven’t behaved like this — but the people in that thread and the ones I’ve seen on Twitter look like a bunch of childish, whiny babies, complaining about the fact that they’re not being allowed to engage in IP theft.
AO3 has at this point two million registered accounts; that’s more than the population of, say, Nebraska. While I wouldn’t claim it has anywhere close to that many active users, we are still talking about an enormous number of people. When people say “a lot” of AO3 users are behaving in this or that way, it would be nice to see them occasional acknowledge that even if we’re talking about a thousand people behaving badly, that’s still an infestiminally tiny percentage of the user base. Are there half a dozen people in comments on that thread behaving rudely? Sure. There are also almost certainly half a dozen people behaving very rudely in Nebraska right now; I don’t hold it against the state as a whole.
@SteveDavidson: ” I think the responses from the crowd over there are a strong argument for why they shouldn’t have gotten the award in the first place.”
What the absolute heck of a take is this.
My favorite Sam Neill genre movie is In the Mouth of Madness.
JJ: At this point, it’s been 6 months of a lot of AO3 contributors behaving like total jerks and proclaiming themselves Hugo Award Winners all over social media,
It’s only been one month since the site won. How’s it been six months of them proclaiming themselves winners?
Who is “TH” who draws the lovely water-dragon cartoons at the top of recent Pixel Scrolls? Is this going to be a regular feature? I hope so, because I’m enjoying them and wish to send kudos to the artist!
Sam Neill was also great in ‘Event Horizon’.
Demons in Spaaaace !!
I don’t think it qualifies as genre, but Sam Neill’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (directed by Taika Waititi) is well worth seeking out.
Thanks for the title credit!
There’s no obligation to engage in that defense on a public message board. Sending cease and desist letters to individuals who are commercially calling themselves Hugo Award winners incorrectly should be sufficient to demonstrate that the marks are being defended. That’s pretty much all we can do anyway, if Kevin Standlee is correct when he says that the yearly budget to defend the marks is $2,000.
Cassie B: “TH” is Teddy Harvia, I think. Or maybe David Thayer, I have problems distinguishing them.
9) I wonder how many of the actors whose careers appear brief on IMDB don’t actually have a brief career but have one that is almost entirely in theatre. I have known three actors personally. All three had (still has in one case) extensive acting careers but only a couple of roles, or none at all, in film or tv. I also regularly attend performances by a couple of theatre companies whose ensemble includes actors with a similar cv.
@Cassy B
Teddy Harvia – these appear to be from the daily newsletter at Dublin. I love them!
@Olav: “I don’t find it amusing” is a valid statement, and I don’t find it terribly funny myself–that doesn’t mean the people who were saying it weren’t joking. There’s a lot of popular humor that I don’t find funny (and not just the ones where I don’t get the references); not all of it is someone using “just joking” as a cover for an objectionable or controversial statement.
I don’t know the individuals who are making those jokes. I am on AO3 enough to have a username, which I use to sometimes comment on stories I read there, but I don’t write fanfiction (and therefore haven’t posted any) and wouldn’t call myself an active user. More to the point, AO3 active users are a larger group than, oh, Filers, and not everyone here agrees on anything (except, I hope, that they enjoy reading File 770).
“Please stop joking about this, for $specific_reasons” is a reasonable request, even if you’re sure the person really is joking rather than serious. If I was being asked that, “please don’t joke about that, because it’s a sore spot for me” or “because it encourages people who aren’t joking” would be fine by themselves. If someone included “I don’t believe you’re not joking, please stop,” I’d still probably stop, but I’d be a bit less likely to cooperate with the person on something else.
Right. The newzine staff and Teddy each sent me a set of what they thought would be surplus to their needs, however, a few ended up being published in the daily newzine anyway. So not all of these are making their maiden voyage at File 770.
@OGH, please do pass along thanks and kudos to Teddy Harvia; they’re charming and I hope you have many, many more to use in the Scrolls.
@Joe H. – I watched it for the first time last night, coincidentally. Amazing movie!
Jan Vanek: Thanks for the link to PRZEKROJ. This is a significant excerpt and I appreciate the alert. I hope someone translates Orlinski’s biography.
Ditto on the love for the little comics at the top of the files. They’re fun.
Stuart Hall says I wonder how many of the actors whose careers appear brief on IMDB don’t actually have a brief career but have one that is almost entirely in theatre. I have known three actors personally. All three had (still has in one case) extensive acting careers but only a couple of roles, or none at all, in film or tv. I also regularly attend performances by a couple of theatre companies whose ensemble includes actors with a similar cv.
Where possible, I do check their theatre CVs as well. But generally I find that they are not there either. Keep in mind though that I’m saying their video acting career is brief, not their entire acting career.. Many could well have extensive theatre careers and that’s fine, but that’s not the point of that comment as I find it interesting that many Trek performers have very short video careers.
rcade on September 15, 2019 at 9:11 am said:
And you really think that this wouldn’t get exactly the same reaction from people that WSFS is Being Mean?
Incidentally, WSFS did have to ask Etsy pre-con to take down an item from someone trying to mis-use the Hugo Award logo regarding AO3’s finalist slot. The person in question ignored our request and we issued a takedown request to Etsy, citing WSFS’s registrations in the USA and the EU, and Etsy took down the item almost immediately.
@Weatherglass: PLEASE explain to me exactly what the hell I do to get involved to get involved in this quagmire? I went through the discussion threads and couldn’t find it.
I mean, congrats to AO3 and all that but geezzz, I consider myself to be outspoken, not a “manplainer”…
It might, but approaching individuals over commercial infringement seems more constructive than trying to unofficially police the marks by taking on an entire message board.
So any link to the signal boost?
What are you guys watching on Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube? Mr Dr Science is bored. Currently watching/rewatching: ST:TOS, Highlander, The Good Place, Wu Assassins, The Librarians, but would like to see something New.
Not wanted: horror, rape, ultra-violence, zombies, grimdark.
John Fiala: It’s only been one month since the site won. How’s it been six months of them proclaiming themselves winners?
My apologies for the imprecision. At this point, it’s been 6 months of a lot of AO3 contributors behaving like total jerks and proclaiming themselves Hugo Award Nominees and Winners all over social media,
Packerchu: The links are in Naomi Kritzer’s tweets.
Has anyone read Ken Liu’s story on Slate.com from a few months back https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/thoughts-and-prayers-ken-liu-short-story.html – I liked it (not pleasant of course, but very good).
The best show nobody watched in the past two years was Counterpart. It’s incredibly well-acted, beautifully filmed, and an interesting meditation on how the choices we make impact who we become. Alternate history and parallel worlds. So good.
@OlavRokne:
It’s not streaming anywhere right now, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Seriously, no one on Ao3 is claiming to really be a Hugo winner. When the nomination and award happened we joked about sharing an infinitesimal part of it (hence silly comments like ‘0.000000432% of a Hugo Award winner’ – not because we think the award is a joke, but because we were so proud to have contributed to something that was being recognised by the Hugos.
Ao3 admin made it clear very early in the process that it was the site, and not the contributors, being recognised. When people come wandering in and start laying about them with big sticks and scolding us for something we’re not even doing … we get a little testy.
Maz Weaver:
How do you reconcile that statement with Kevin’s comment above that they had been forced to issue takedown requests to Etsy because of peoples false claims?
Honestly every time this particular fannish cultural clash comes up I end up just wanting to lie face down and cover my ears until it goes away. Maybe… maybe we could all give each other a bit of benefit of the doubt?
Maybe transformative works fen could try to understand the trademark protection thing a bit more generously? I know it doesn’t come naturally to us to respect IP, what with our whole thing, but it’s not impossible; these are fellow fans, not corporate overlords.
Maybe con fen could not take a tiny minority of people who genuinely are being right idiots about it and decide it’s Representative of both transformative works fandom (huge) and AO3 fen (slightly less huge, but still huge)? We’re not talking the Puppies here, where the leaders Were The Problem. These are just… random people. It would be a bit like me pointing to something a Filer said and deciding to let it shape my opinion of all File770.
AFAIK not of the people whose works I read at AO3 are making this kind of claim, however tickled they are by AO3 getting a Hugo. (That’s only a couple of dozen people.)
I suspect it’s being pushed by people who don’t know much about the Hugos, other than Prestigious Award in Fandom.