Pixel Scroll 9/20/19 Pixels Are Finite, Scrolls Are Infinite

(1) TIPTREE BIOGRAPHER COMMENTS FURTHER. Julie Phillips, author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon blogged about “On Tiptree and naming” on September 17.

A number of people are reading the manner of Alli and Ting’s Sheldon’s death as an instance of caregiver murder, in which a person with a disability is killed by a person responsible for caring for them. There is a pattern of murders like this being downplayed or dismissed as “understandable” because the caregiver “must have been under such strain.” This is extremely upsetting and hurtful to people living with disabilities. You can read more about this here and here. (Content warnings: suicide; Americans’ appalling lack of access to heath care.)

Mostly I’ve been asked for factual answers: Did it happen? Did it not happen? It may be that a name that calls up painful associations should be changed in any case. But I believe it matters to talk about what we know and don’t know, and here are some thoughts about Ting’s and Alli’s choices.

(2) GETTING WARMER. Andrew Liptak chronicles sff’s track record with other issues before asking “Does Science Fiction Have a Moral Imperative to Address Climate Change?”

… Topics such as pollution, overcrowding, and a warming Earth began to appear more frequently within the genre. Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! (later adapted—and firmly embedded in pop culture consciousness—as Soylent Green) examined the plight of an overcrowded Earth, though today the main drivers of climate change are far less attributable to rising populations in less developed areas of the world and far more to do with mass consumerism in the developed world.

J.G. Ballard’s 1962 novel The Drowned World specifically imagines a post-apocalyptic 2145 in which global warming (caused by solar wind heating the atmosphere, rather than specifically fossil fuel emissions) lead to sea-level rise, ruining London. Even nearly 60 years ago—long before “climate change” had become a source of widespread anxiety, it was a stark vision; reviewer Peter Brigg noted, “Ballard created in this novel the most pervasive demonstration of the frailty of ‘technological’ man.”

(3) NEW SFF COMPETITION. The Clarke Award is publicizing “A New Science Fiction Competition For Young People”. 

The Rumble Museum, in association with the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is delighted to announce a national science fiction competition for young people who would like to see their ideas turned into a short story by a professional science fiction author.

Anyone 15 years or younger can enter, and full entry details can be found here. Deadline for entries October 31.

HOW TO ENTER

To enter, please submit a premise and opening lines for a science fiction short story. We would like to see a description of the world or society your story is set in, an outline of the main characters and plot, and first 350 words or first page.

(4) SIXTY-FOUR ON THE FLOOR. Galactic Journey contributors assemble! A trio of reviewers comment on the latest (in 1964) novels from PKD, Leiber, Bulmer and Farmer in this omnibus post: “[September 20, 1964] Apocalypses and other trivia (Galactoscope)”. Jason Sacks begins —

…Like many fans, I first became really aware of Philip K. Dick after he won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel for his remarkable The Man in the High Castle. That book dazzled in its chronicle of an alternate history in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II (which opened up many areas of thought and conversation for me and my friends) as well as in its brilliant world-building and the fascinating, multifaceted characters at the heart of Dick’s award-winner.

High Castle was also an amazingly tight novel, packing a dense plot into its mere 240 pages. As many of us Dick fans have learned, not all of his works are quite so tightly plotted. I adored his Martian Time-Slip and Dr. Bloodmoney from last year, but those books tended to both delight and annoy in their meandering, nearly stream-of-consciousness styles.

The newest Philip K. Dick novel, The Penultimate Truth (just out in paperback from Belmont) fills a bit of the gap between his ’62 masterpiece and the challenging ’63 books. This thoroughly delightful book wanders a bit but always held me in its comforting grasp.

(5) LID O’CLOCK ROCK. Alasdair Stuart’s newest Full Lid embraces the profoundly weird career of Gerard Butler, examines the Hot Zone and attends the Battle of Big Rock: “The Full Lid 20th September 2019”

(6) IT’S THE PITTS. NPR’s Chris Klimek reports that “‘Ad Astra’ Soars”

With its austere surfaces and jaundiced view of humanity’s interplanetary destiny, James Gray’s stirring sci-fi epic Ad Astra can’t help but evoke Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the paterfamilias of all “serious” space movies. But in fact it’s a closer cousin to another long-delayed, wildly over-budget spectacle that initially fared better with ticket-buyers than critics, only to be revealed in time as a masterpiece: Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Like Coppola’s surreal Vietnam War movie, Ad Astra is told to us by a haunted man on a mission into the unknown. After a thrilling set piece involving an unplanned high-altitude skydive from the “International Space Antenna,” Brad Pitt’s Major Roy McBride is dispatched to investigate the cause of a series of destructive cosmic ray bursts emanating from Neptune.

McBride is given the task because his superiors believe these disruptions might somehow have been caused by his father (Tommy Lee Jones), commander of an exploration mission that was presumed lost some 16 years earlier. In the event the old man has somehow survived and gone all Colonel Kurtz on them, they’re hoping his baby boy might be able to talk him down.

One needn’t have seen 2001 — or for that matter, last year’s undervalued Neil Armstrong biopic First Man — to grok that emotional availability is the one area in which McBride is seriously deficient. (His heart rate has never risen above 80, his dossier says.) In space, no one can hear you cry…

… though they are sometimes privy to your internal monologue. “We are the world-eaters,” McBride laments in voiceover as he takes in the Applebees and Hudson News shops that pimple the near side of the moon in the mid-to-late 21st century. The only thing Ad Astra shares with the comparatively upbeat adventure The Martian is a notion we might be wiser to leave space exploration to our robots. We see McBride file a psychological self-evaluation each time he’s getting ready to launch; only if the A.I. concurs with his assessment that he’s fit to fly is he permitted to go.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • September 20, 1979 — The film version of Buck Rogers was edited for television as “Awakening” to serve as the very first episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It would last two seasons.
  • September 20, 2006 Jericho aired its pilot episode on CBS.  It was cancelled after its first full season, because of poor ratings. A fan campaign persuaded the network to bring the show back for another season, of seven episodes, after which it was cancelled again. IDW has done two seasons in comic book form. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 20, 1935 Keith Roberts. Author of Pavane, an amazing novel. I’ll admit that I’ve not read anything else by him, so do tell me about other works please. (Died 2000.)
  • Born September 20, 1940 Jonathan Hardy. He was the voice of Dominar Rygel XVI, called simply Rygel, once the royal ruler of the Hynerian Empire, on Farscape.  He was also Police Commissioner Labatouche in Mad Max, and he had a one-off in the Mission: Impossible series that produced in his native Australia in the “Submarine” episode as Etienne Reynard. (Died 2012.)
  • Born September 20, 1948 George R. R. Martin, 71. I’ll admit that I’ve only read the first two volumes of ASOFI.  I loved The Armageddon Rag and think that he’s a wonderful short writer.  And no, I’ve not watched A Game of Thrones. 
  • Born September 20, 1955 David Haig, 64. He played Pangol in “The Leisure Hive” a Fourth Doctor story. He also showed up on Blake’s 7 in “Rumours of Death” as Forres, and was Colonel Bonnet in The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Tales of Innocence. He’s also General Vandenberg in the 2006 film remake of A for Andromeda. Finally, I should I should he’s The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead done at The Old Vic a few years back. 
  • Born September 20, 1959 James Blaylock, 69. One of my favorite writers. I’d recommend the Ghosts trilogy, the Christian trilogy and The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives whichcollects all of the Langdon St. Ives adventures together as his best writing, but anything by him is worth reading. 
  • Born September 20, 1986 Aldis Hodge, 33. He plays Alec Hardison on Leverage. Ok, I know it’s not SFF but if there’s a spiritual descendant of Mission: Impossible, this series is it. Both the cast and their use are technology of that series are keeping with MI spirit. He’s also had one-offs on CharmedBuffy the Vampire SlayerSupernaturalThe Walking Dead, Star Trek Discovery’s Short Takes and Bones (which given that it crossed over with Sleepy Hollow…)
  • Born September 20, 1989 Malachi Kirby, 30. He shows up on Doctor Who as Gastron in “Hell Bent”, a Twelfth Doctor story, and he’s on Black Mirror as Stripe in their “Men Against Fire” episode. 

(9) MAKER MAKES NEWS. In the Washington Post, Patti Restivo profiles cosplayer Kyle Wilhelm, whose crosstitiching on his costume as “Wolf Shaman” at the Maryland Renaissance Festival was so good that he got an apprenticeship at Outback Leather, whose clients include  the Renaissance Festival, Medieval Times,  a nearby horse racing track, and several motorcycle clubs. “A costume wizard brings his skills to Maryland Renaissance Festival”. Photo gallery here.

…Like Sargent, Wilhelm describes himself as mostly self-taught. He said he trained as a blacksmith and in animal care-taking, and previously worked part-time gigs as an actor, model and stuntman.

For at least a decade, the 29-year-old said he did leather crafting in his basement before landing at Outback Leather with Sargent and finding his calling.

“Ron’s like my second dad,” Wilhelm said.

(10) HUGO LONG LIST. David Steffen says his “Long List Anthology Volume 5” Kickstarter has now raised enough money to acquire all the stories he could get the rights to.

After the Hugo Awards each year, the World Science Fiction Society (who administer the award) publishes a longer list of works that fans cast nomination votes for.  The works on the ballot get a lot of attention, the purpose of this anthology is to get more readers for these other stories that were also loved by so many fans.  The result each year is a big and ecclectic collection of fiction very different in tone and theme that can act as a sampler for work enjoyed by the Hugo voting audience.

This project is not endorsed by nor affiliated with the Hugo awards, WSFS, WorldCon, or any associated entities. The Hugo name is used with permission.

(11) ALL WET. LAist shows why it’s only natural that a 20-minute theme park show would be more successful than the namesake 3-hour movie: “What Universal Studios’ Waterworld Got Right About A Stunt Show, Wrong About Climate Change”.

“It’s a really odd situation where I think the attraction is far more popular than the movie, in most ways,” Shawn Marshall of theme park site Parks And Cons said. “Probably for a lot of theme park fans, when you say ‘Waterworld,’ we’re all thinking of the Universal show moreso than the movie at this point.”

If you haven’t seen the show, it simplifies the movie’s story and packs it into 20 minutes of pure action. After a pre-show getting the crowd hyped and explaining/showing that you may get very, very wet if you’re in the splash zone, a deep voice comes on over the loudspeakers to explain the story.

(12) THIS IS GENIUS. Richard Paolinelli sent a DMCA takedown notice to the Internet Archive requiring them to remove all saved copies of pages from his blog. And they did. What a hack! Who would have thought he had it in him.

(13) HUNGER GAMES FOR ADULTS. NPR’s Jason Heller finds that “‘The Divers’ Game’ Depicts An Unimaginably Unjust, All Too Believably Cruel World”.

Dystopian stories are, in essence, thought experiments. And few come as thoughtful as The Divers’ Game.

The latest novel from acclaimed author Jesse Ball depicts a world both unimaginably unjust and all too believably cruel: Society has been split into two distinct halves, the pats and the quads, with the former group given unchecked supremacy over the second. It isn’t the most original premise in dystopian fiction, but Ball clearly isn’t trying to reinvent any genre tropes. Rather, he’s plumbing the depths of a familiar conceit, attacking it from a fresh angle, and constructing a parable that’s jarring in its subtle complexity and profound, horrific revelation.

…Ball’s bombshell is undisguised and unapologetic: He’s taking dead aim at current U.S. policy in regard to immigration and the detention of asylum-seekers, and the repercussions he speculates upon leave no doubt as to his standpoint on the topic — even as he expresses them in nested sequence of vicious satire. But his series of modest proposals culminates in the second section of the book, in which the titular’s divers’ game is unveiled. It’s a game played by quad children, and it’s as much of a Shirley Jackson-esque premise as it is an exquisite probe of liminal zones and psychogeography between the privileged and the oppressed.

(14) “…WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS”. “Remake The Princess Bride? Inconceivable!”

Another week, another set of divided opinions online about, well, almost everything.

But this week one thing seemed to unite most people – if Twitter is anything to go by, at least.

Remaking the classic 1987 film The Princess Bride is a bad idea. An even worse idea, in fact, than getting involved in a land war in Asia.

The debate was started by an interview by Variety with Norman Lear, the film’s producer.

He said “very famous people, whose names I won’t use, but they want to redo The Princess Bride.”

Even that tantalising hint was enough to make many fans reach for the gifs.

(15) SHE’S A WONDER. SYFY Wire pens “An ode to Robin Wright, from princess to queen”.

Robin Wright’s breakout role as Buttercup in The Princess Bride left a mark on a lot of childhoods, and it would be difficult to dismiss the importance of that role in her film career going forward. While she’s gone on to play a wide variety of complicated characters, it is also true that the no-nonsense and self-possessed attitude of Buttercup would be a defining characteristic, not just of Wright’s career, but of Wright herself.

More recently, Wright had the chance to play a new icon of feminine power for audiences of all ages with her role as General Antiope in Wonder Woman. In many ways, these are two incredibly different characters, but they both carry with them that sense of sustained defiance that audiences have come to admire in many a Robin Wright role.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Liptak, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

76 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/20/19 Pixels Are Finite, Scrolls Are Infinite

  1. @Patrick : re: the bullet – I agree. There may have been an alternate ending originally planned (more when I’m at a better keyboard)

  2. (14) Remaking the Princess Bride?
    There are two (among other) versions of The Prisoner of Zenda, the 1937 (with Ronald Colman) and the 1952 (with Stewart Granger) films. The second is a scene for scene copy of the first, with equally accomplished actors in all the roles. If they did something like this with The Princess Bride, my head might not explode, though casting would be crucial. The ‘very famous people’ who want this remake would have to find actors to match the first set, though I doubt they could. The chemistry of that first cast was amazing.

  3. @Patrick: V jbaqre vs Znegva bevtvanyyl vagraqrq bhe ureb’f ershfny gb sver ba gur snyfr Uboovg gb gevttre n punatr va gur gvzryvar, raqvat gur obbx va n shgher va juvpu gur fcvevg bs gur 60f jnf abg qrfgeblrq ol gur nsgrezngu bs gur qrngu bs gur gehr Uboovg (V guvax V ernq n erivrj juvpu cbfvgrq gung gurbel onpx jura gur obbx jnf arj).

  4. I would rather see a new adaptation of THE PRINCESS BRIDE as a longform TV project, or something, where they could add back in the stuff that they left out of the movie.

    But then, I’m a fan of the book more than of the movie.

    Still, it’d be fun to see a different take on it, rather than an attempt to recreate the existing take we already have.

  5. Kevin Harkness: There are two (among other) versions of The Prisoner of Zenda, the 1937 (with Ronald Colman) and the 1952 (with Stewart Granger) films. The second is a scene for scene copy of the first, with equally accomplished actors in all the roles.

    Not to disagree completely with the “equally accomplished actors” part of your comment, since that’s at least partly a matter of personal taste–and certainly Steward Granger does okay in the starring role (he’s not as funny or self-sacrificingly noble as Ronald Colman, in my opinion, but he’s okay), and Deborah Kerr is better than okay as Princess Flavia, also in my opinion–but James Mason as Rupert of Hentzau? As contrasted to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.??? No. Just no. Miscasting of the highest order, and I will duel to the cinematic death on that one!

    I also think that Raymond Massey made a much better–more sincerely vicious–Black Michael, but again, I’m willing to listen to allow for the vagaries of taste there . . .

  6. @Lis, Jayn
    Twice today I have started a comment addressed to individuals (you two), and as the comment progressed, changed (in my own mind, at least) the intended audience to Filers at large, instead of you two as individuals. I was using the word “you” in its second person plural sense, instead of its second person singular sense.

    So, Lis, when I wrote “if you are still feeling contentious”, I meant “if any of you reading this comment are still feeling contentious”. But I see now how it would naturally have been read by you, Lis, to have been specifically addressed to you. Bad writing on my part, and again, I am sorry.
    The first time I said that I’m sorry to you about the post, I still didn’t realize that you were reacting to being personally asked if you were feeling contentious (because in my mind, it never occurred to me that you were reading the post that way.) That apology would have been more direct and would have better addressed what I did wrong if I had realized then how I had specifically given offense. Thank you for making that clear.

    Jayn — same thing — when I wrote “Whether or not you think it was morally or ethically justified”, I didn’t intend “you” to mean “you Jayn”, but rather “you, the Filers who might read this post”. But I wasn’t at all clear about that, and the post was initially addressed to you, so again my poor writing gave you reason to think I was saying something that I didn’t intend to say. I am sorry for implying anything about your ethics or morals; I am in no place to do so.

    To both of you, again, I apologize. I will try to be conscious of the possibility of making this mistake in the future; no doubt I have done it in the past and wronged others similarly.

  7. It’s a small thing, but, as someone who for long years participated in mock juries for Hastings Law School, I wish to advise that the correct spelling is actually “M’Naghten rules”, when referring to the traditional English jury instructions in murders cases about innocence by reason of insanity — which rules were named for Daniel M’Naghten, a Scottish assailant acquitted in 1843 of trying to murder PM Robert Peel with a pistol.

    The rules were formulated in the House of Lords after M’Naughton’s trial, and the short version is: Did defendant know what he/she was doing? If so, did he/she know it was wrong?

    Some variant of those rules are still used in many British-derived legal jurisdictions, including some but by no means all USA states. Some jurisdictions ban the insanity defence entirely. Some substitute “guilty but mentally ill”.

    Over the many decades the M’Naghten rules were applied in British and US (and, I infer, other) jurisdictions, quite a number of problems emerged including the recurring farrago of lawyers putting psychiatrists on the stand and expecting them to opine about Victorian moral concepts, and the psychiatrists usually sidestepping said questions as completely outside their wheelhouse, hence poorly conceived, basically.

    ETA: @bill: Good on ya. Well stated.

  8. (14) It’s not that I always necessarily object to remakes,

    but you do start out several million points in the hole if you go “remake!” without any hint at how the remake might be new/interesting/different.

    If they went “Princess Bride, but with robots” or “Princess Bride, but as an allegory for the decades-long deterioration of the Simpsons franchise”, or whatever, then I’d go “OK, weird, but let’s see.”

    “Princess Bride, but with new famous people” sounds like a money grab and/or a vanity project for those famous people. ::shrug::

  9. 1) There is much terrible about the Tiptree situation.

    It’s disturbing that there’s no direct evidence that Huntington Sheldon actually consented to the suicide pact.

    By direct evidence, I mean that there is no word from him, whether written or attested to by any of their friends or relations, that he ever actually said yes to it. All reported statements about the suicide pact being an agreed-upon thing lead back to Alice Sheldon and only Alice Sheldon. Friends and family members say they assumed Huntington agreed to let her kill him, but no one seems to have been willing to ask him about it and he reportedly never spoke of it. The only statements directly attributed to him are that he did not want it and was not ready for it.

    (Furthermore, as has been pointed out, even if there were an agreement, there is evidence that Huntington did not agree on the night Alice killed him.)

    In every other particular Alice Sheldon’s murder-suicide of her husband and herself fits exactly the depressing pattern of caregivers murdering the disabled in their care, up to and including the erasure of the victim, sympathy extended to the killer, and a focus on speculation about potentially mitigating circumstances. This happens with shocking regularity. Around 1500 disabled people were murdered by their caregivers in a single year the last time someone counted.

    It’s not surprising how badly this story has angered and upset the disabled people in the science fiction community.

  10. @Peace Is My Middle Name

    It’s disturbing that there’s no direct evidence that Huntington Sheldon actually consented to the suicide pact.

    By direct evidence, I mean that there is no word from him, whether written or attested to by any of their friends or relations, that he ever actually said yes to it.

    You’ve said that before, IIRC, and I don’t think it’s true. Julie Phillips has attested that both her friends and his friends and son said this was something they both agreed on.
    https://mobile.twitter.com/jcfphillips/status/1168267581708546049
    Have you got some evidence showing that all these people saying that they had heard both of them speak of this pact as something they’d agreed on were lying about what they’d heard?

  11. @Jayn:

    Person A has reported that persons X, Y, and Z who are not person H say that person H agreed to a suicide pact, with no direct evidence to be found from person H and numerous statements to the contrary from person H.

    The evidence is ambiguous enough to be alarming.

    A common feature in caregiver murders is endless parsing of how each particular case in turn is justified and easy to excuse. What the excuse is varies from case to case, but there are always excuses. The caregivers are treated with sympathy and the disabled are treated as better off dead and their voices erased.

    This was a disabled person murdered by his caregiver who then committed suicide. There is no record of his stating willingness to die, only second- and third-hand hearsay from other people. There are multiple reports of his not being ready to die, of his enjoying life.

    That’s a valid interpretation of the facts. And it’s reasonable for disabled people to be horrified and upset about it.

  12. “I also think that Raymond Massey made a much better–more sincerely vicious–Black Michael, but again, I’m willing to listen to allow for the vagaries of taste there . . . ” (Mary Frances)

    I stand firmly behind my vagaries. Thank you for listening.

  13. @Peace

    You said:

    By direct evidence, I mean that there is no word from him, whether written or attested to by any of their friends or relations, that he ever actually said yes to it.

    I then provide a link to you (not for the first time) to precisely such attestations made by friends and relations to Sheldon’s biographer. You then brush them aside as ‘hearsay’, as if we were in a court of law. Would it suffice you to hear those friends and relatives testify to it in a court of law under oath? Is your implication that the friends, relative and/or the biographer are lying?

    You also say:

    Person A has reported that persons X, Y, and Z who are not person H say that person H agreed to a suicide pact, with no direct evidence to be found from person H and numerous statements to the contrary from person H.

    ….without providing a link to the “numerous statements” you say Ting Sheldon made that he was NOT in a suicide pact. This is not the first time I’ve asked you for that citation. If you want to meet the standard of courtroom evidence, the least you could do is provide it.

    I absolutely agree that the facts as they stand are horrifying for people with disabilities, both mental and physical. And I agree that at this point the possibility remains that Alice Sheldon did in fact kill her husband while in full possession of her faculties, knowing he didn’t want to die, and was therefore a murderer. It is also possible that she was not in full possession of her faculties and in psychotic depression
    sincerely believed he was agreeing to enact their pact that night when he wasn’t, or sincerely believed that his agreement was wholehearted when it may have been given under the duress of not wanting to face her suicide, not because he genuinely wanted to die…and in that case she would not be guilty of being a murderer. We simply don’t know.

    Maybe a courtroom-style forensic inquiry would clarify things. Maybe it wouldn’t. The fact that the possibility exists that she was a murderer is enough to justify removing her pseudonym from the award; it’s done, it was the right thing to do.

    But I don’t think it’s justified to dismiss HER forever with absolute certainty as nothing more than a murderer when she may not have been that. And if you want to impose that narrative of simple wickedness on her, I think saying that the biographer and/or her sources must have been either deluded or deceptive without proof isn’t enough.

  14. I suppose one could do a version of Princess Bride that leans more on the actual book, where the main chatacter is really a depressive, neurotic, annoying author who has a dismal family life.

    In which case, most likely the unknown person who proposed a remake was Woody Allen. Just imagine “Woody Allen’s Princess Bride”.

  15. Peace is My Middle Name says This was a disabled person murdered by his caregiver who then committed suicide. There is no record of his stating willingness to die, only second- and third-hand hearsay from other people. There are multiple reports of his not being ready to die, of his enjoying life.

    That’s a valid interpretation of the facts. And it’s reasonable for disabled people to be horrified and upset about it.

    You’ve been offered more than ample evidence that they indeed an agreement to end their lives in this manner.

    It strikes me that what you’re doing is trying make a cautionary tale of what might happen to disabled people if their caregivers should decide to commit murder suicide. You cannot extrapolate from one situation like this to a larger population.

    You’re also making a generalisation of disabled people. What precisely do you mean by that term? I’m disabled with a type three head trauma and I’m not horrified by what she did. So you’re acting like you’ve got the right to speak for all disabled which you most emphatically do not.

  16. I suppose one could do a version of Princess Bride that leans more on the actual book, where the main character is really a depressive, neurotic, annoying author who has a dismal family life.

    I’d watch that!

    I’m not sure “William Goldman” is really the main character, but I love those parts of the book, too, and I would only hope they could hire Dan Hedaya to play Kermit Shog.

    I don’t think it’s a remotely commercial idea. But as long as it’s not my money at stake, I say let’s see it!

    I can’t imagine Woody Allen’s Princess Bride, though. “William Goldman” may be annoying, but he’s not very Woody Allen.

  17. @Rose Embolism: Just imagine “Woody Allen’s Princess Bride”. I like a number of things he’s done (separately from the discussion of whether/how-much he came on to an underage ~ward), but — eewwwww!

  18. Rose Embolism: Just imagine “Woody Allen’s Princess Bride”.

    Oh, now, that’s just plain cruel. 😉

    I would be interested in a version which brought something new to the story (as long as it’s not a Woody Allen “much older man has gorgeous young women falling all over him” riff), but if it’s just, as Standback says, “Princess Bride, but with new famous people”, then no.

  19. @Kurt Busiek: I would only hope they could hire Dan Hedaya to play Kermit Shog.

    Shut up and take my money.

  20. The non-fiction book I’m currently reading, Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness by Lisa Appignanesi, also goes into some detail on the history of insanity pleas, if people want some further reading.

    (I think I’ve said everything I think and feel re: the Sheldon’s and the Tiptree in previous threads, and I don’t have the spoons to wade in again at this point in time. But the book is interesting, at least so far; I’m about 20% in. Katherine Addison wrote a brief review of it here. Also, not a bad price on Amazon UK for a non-fiction book: currently £3.99. Possibly a sale price.)

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