(1) James H. Burns recalls the effects of 9/11 on Broadway in “Delphinus, in the Northern Sky” (posted in 2012).
It’s eleven years later, and we’re still here. Still able to perform, or write, or otherwise create, or, also wonderful, to be able to embrace those passions.
I was just thinking of the guts it took for the actors who resumed their places on the stage so soon after that day in September.
Remember the courage it took, for some of us, just to walk down the street. And these folks were resuming one of the toughest challenges, in the arts.
(2) Melbourne has a website that maps every one of its city trees. Citizens can report a particular tree’s condition and get the city to attend to it. The website has a button “Email this tree,” short for “Email the city about this tree.”
Except, as fans will do, many take the label literally, and email the tree about life, the universe, and everything.
People around the world have been e-mailing trees in Melbourne to confess their love.
As part of the Urban Forest Strategy — implemented to combat the steady decline of trees following a 13 year drought — the city assigned all of the Melbourne’s 77000 trees individual emails.
The idea was residents could use these emails to report trees that had been vandalised or were in a severe state of decline.
Only, people decided to make another use for the email and began writing love letters to their favourite trees….
Weeping Myrtle, Tree ID 1494392
Hello Weeping Myrtle,
I’m sitting inside near you and I noticed on the urban tree map you don’t have many friends nearby. I think that’s sad so I want you to know I’m thinking of you.
I also want to thank you for providing oxygen for us to breath in the hustle and bustle of the city.
Best Regards,
N …
Variegated Elm, Tree ID 1033102
Dear Elm, I was delighted to find you alive and flourishing, because a lot of your family used to live in the UK, but they all caught a terrible infection and died.
Do be very careful, and if you notice any unfamiliar insects e-mail an arboriculturist at once.
I miss your characteristic silhouettes and beautifully shaped branches — used to be one of the glories of the English landscape — more than I can say.
Melbourne must be a beautiful city.
Sincere good wishes
D
The Urban Forest Strategy will see 3000 new trees planted in Melbourne each year and since its implementation in 2012, 12000 new trees have been added to the city’s urban landscape.
(3) Step inside Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft designed to carry humans to the International Space Station and other destinations.
(4) Major league baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates welcomed back devoted Batman fan A.J. Burnett by sending up the Bat-Signal.
(5) Need a little adventure in your life? Tor.com is seeking an in-house publicity coordinator.
This person will work with publicity and editorial departments and contacts throughout all of genre publishing, developing plans for comprehensive book coverage on Tor.com and assisting with publisher and author outreach. They will also be responsible for encouraging and moderating conversation between readers on the site and on social media.
This is a full-time position working in our New York office. Ideally, we are looking for a candidate with at least 2 years of publishing experience, who is outgoing, extremely organized, and detail-oriented. Applicants should be both highly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about science fiction and fantasy across a range of media….
(6) Did I forget to mention – issue 24 of Hugo-winning fanzine Journey Planet, the Richard III theme issue, is available online. This issue contains a series of articles by Steven H Silver, Joan Szechtman, Chuck Serface, K.A. Laity, Ruth Pe Palileo and Pixie P.as welll as pieces by editors James Bacon and Chris Garcia. The cover, some interior and technical art work was provided by Autun Purser, a full-time deep sea ecologist, who has created a series of travel posters, advertising travel to destinations from unusual fiction – the “Fantastic Travel Destinations.”
(7) Kevin Standlee shares several examples that show why Hugo Administrators aren’t activists.
- 1989 and A Brief History of Time (Scroll down and click “further detail” for a bit more information.) In 1989, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had sufficient nominations to make the final ballot. The Administrator ruled it ineligible, as the definition of Best Non-Fiction Book (the title of the category now known as Best Related Work) at that time said that the book had to be about “science fiction, fantasy, or fandom,” and thus the Administrator ruled that science books weren’t eligible. This decision was controversial. There were attempted changes to the WSFS Constitution that year that were eventually rejected, IMO mainly because nobody could agree on a consistent proposal. It took several years of argument, but eventually the 1996 WSFS Business Meeting passed (and the 1997 meeting ratified) the change of the category from “Best Non-Fiction Book” to “Best Related Book,” thus:
Any work whose subject is related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time in book form during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.
Note that ABHOT would have been eligible under this wording.
(8) Naturellement !
For the record, I've always pronounced "Voldemort" correctly.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 11, 2015
(9) These Black Mouse Printing Titanium Steel His and Hers Band Couple Rings are cute as the dickens and go for only $59.
(10) Cat Valente in a comment on Jay Maynard’s award proposal at Black Gate
…Because it’s simply not right to say a good story has no message. Story and message are not separable, hostile camps demanding loyalty only to one or the other. A good story has themes. A good story is about something. A good story is not only about things that happen one after the other, but about why they happen, and how, and to whom, and how all those things interconnect. And all that can happen WITH ray guns and explosions and buxom princesses. It happens literally all the time. One does not kick the other out of bed for eating crackers.
The author always, ALWAYS, communicates their own culture and experience through their fiction. There is no writing without that cultural electricity animating it. It’s not good or bad. It just is. We cannot help it, we are human. To say that Ancillary Justice is message fiction and undeserving but Time Enough for Love is not is to say that some of those communicated experiences are good and should be promulgated and some are worthless and should be cast aside. And I don’t think there’s anything in the world that should be cast aside and never written about.
However, no one, not even the terrible, no good, very bad SJWs, has ever said that the best stories are ones where the “message” overrides the good story. Everyone wants a good story. Everyone wants to sink into a novel and get totally wrapped up in the tale. There is no need to split into camps on this topic because there is literally no argument. Everyone wants the same thing.
The difference lies in the fact that for some people, a story that communicates an experience that they are unfamiliar with, whether a gendered one, or racial, or sexual, or even literary, jars them out of the story and makes it harder to get wrapped up in it. I can even use my powers of empathy to understand that, because it jars me out of a story when I come across a message about how shitty and/or unnecessary women are, because I am a woman and I like to not feel like I am shitty and unnecessary. But unfortunately, for some people, me just writing a story that draws on my life experience IS political, because my experience isn’t theirs, and the central presence of women in a story is, for them, a political act….
(11) Ruth A. Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance, was interviewed by L. Jagi Lamplighter at Superversive SF about her interpretation of the Hugo kerfuffle. It’s part of a series – later installments will apply her theory to characters in John C. Wright’s Night Land stories, and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” as well as the larger Hugo/culture war picture.
Part One: What Forces Drive the SciFi Culture Wars?
Q: In the Afterword to your new book, you suggest that ideas about personality might help us understand “culture wars” by showing how the sides just see the world differently. What do you mean by “personality-based worldviews”?
A: The thesis of Re-Modeling the Mind is that our brains can’t process all of the information that comes at us constantly, so each brain organizes itself around more limited options, depending on the neural strengths it already has. When we talk about “personality” we mean these limitations and abilities, which are usually clearly visible when we watch each other. We know ourselves this way, too. We know there are things we simply can’t take in, or if we can take in the facts, we can’t manage them to make decisions. There are things we pay close attention to, and other things we just can’t be bothered with. Personality is this very real neural patterning that filters the world so that it’s manageable.
But this means that our personalities also limit and even blind us to things other people can perceive and manage. We’re all in the same physical world, in the sense that we agree on where the objects are, so that we can avoid running into them. But at a more complex level, we really don’t all live in the same world. Our personalities can have such root-level different views of the world that we can barely have conversations. This is what I’d call a personality-based worldview.
I’m not a science-fiction reader, and I’d never heard of the Hugos until this year. But watching the ferocity of the battles made me feel convinced that at least some of this culture war is provoked by a clash of personality-based worldviews. In other words, probably the leaders and many supporters of each faction share some personality traits so that they all “live” in a similar world. In each faction’s “world,” its values are not only sensible but the only possible ones. Or if not the only possible ones, the only morally right or safe ones. This is why it’s so hard to have a conversation. It’s self-evident to each faction that its values are right, and the arguments offered by the other faction hold no water in their worldview. A lot of people on both sides feel that if So and So wins a prize, moral right or wrong will be rewarded.
(12) David Gerrold on Facebook is working out his own communication theory to explain “the recent squabble in SF fandom.”
…We now live in a world of self-organizing subcultures. Some of them are positive — organizing around the desire to address various challenges. Some of the clusters are negative, organizing around cult-like behaviors. Some are in the business of disseminating valuable information — some are in the business of misinformation and propaganda.
There’s a psychological phenomenon about new media — we give it gravitas. The first decade of any medium is the decade of education and assimilation. ie. We have to learn how to filter the information, we have to learn how to recognize that it is not an access to truth, merely one more way to be massaged. Example: The 1938 Orson Wells “War of the World” broadcast and panic. That happened while radio was still in its infancy for most listeners.
The internet is experiencing a prolonged childhood — most of us are still somewhere on the learning curve. We still trust too much of what we’re seeing on our computer screens, because we haven’t learned how to distrust it yet.
That’s the context in which we’re all operating. We’re being assaulted by an avalanche of data — we have to figure out how to mine it for actual information.
We have built the kind of technology that gives every person on the planet access to vast libraries of information and the ability to communicate with people all over the globe. But even if we’ve built a global village, we haven’t yet learned how to live in it. We’ve brought our prejudices and our beliefs and our parochial world-views.
Here, on this continent, we’ve built a cultural monomyth that carries within it the seeds of our own destruction — the mythic hero. We believe in John Wayne, the strong man who comes to rescue us. It’s a variation on the Christ myth. Or Superman. Or Batman. We’re incapable of being responsible, we need a daddy figure to sort things out for us. (The savage deconstruction of this monomyth is a movie called “High Noon.” It’s worth a look.)
Belief in superheros is an adolescent fantasy — it’s a way of abnegating personal responsibility. Whatever is wrong with the world, the Justice League, the Avengers, SHIELD will fix it.
The counterpoint is that whatever is wrong with the world — it’s not us. It’s THRUSH or SPECTRE or HYDRA or some other unnamed conspiracy. It’s always a conspiracy. …
(13) Steve Davidson has an advanced scouting report on next year’s Retro Hugos, which will be voted by members of MidAmeriCon II for eligible work from 1940.
But when it comes to the editor’s categories, we’re going to be restricted to one, that for Short Form.
Of course Campbell is the natural choice here, but take a minute to consider everyone who is eligible:
Mary Gnaedinger – Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels (reprints)
Raymond A. Palmer – Amazing Stories, Amazing Stories Quarterly (reprint), Fantastic Adventures
Mort Weisinger – Captain Future, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories
Frederik Pohl – Astonishing, Super Science Stories
F. Orlin Tremaine – Comet
Charles D. Hornig – Future Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly
Martin Goodman – Marvel Tales/Marvel Stories
Malcolm Reiss -Planet Stories
John W. Campbell Jr. – Astounding Science Fiction, Unknown
Farnsworth Wright – Weird Tales
None of the other editors had anything approaching the budget that Campbell had, yet Pohl, Hornig and Weisinger managed to put together some very fine issues from time to time (often relying on friends for copy at cut-rates), while Malcolm Reiss practically gave birth to the sword and planet sub-genre (not to mention introducing us all to Leigh Brackett!) with Planet Stories and several of the other magazines had a material impact on the field – if only by keeping certain authors and artists barely fed.
[Thanks to Mark (wait, not that one, the other one), L. Jagi Lamplighter, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian. Title credit to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Darren Garrison on September 12, 2015 at 7:49 am said:
Here’s a link for our local Marsupial of Color:
http://io9.com/huge-communities-of-crayfish-are-living-right-underneat-1729730435
NO NO NO
(And I am never walking barefoot again.)
Wouldn’t that prevent almost every writer from talking to almost every editor? 🙂
Kyra: My bottom line is that you can run the brackets whatever way you want. But to explain how I arrived at that “non-decision”…
(1) I’m equally willing to make them posts of their own, or have them continue as comments.
(2) Anything that dilutes the tendency to spend all day deconstructing the latest Puppy thing is helpful. The way people keep coming up with things is amazing. And given the amount of preparation you have to do for brackets, they’re like a carefully-crafted gift. That’s exactly how I see them. They are not a burden.
(3) I try to read every comment every day, so I’m not somebody who is going to be affected. However, I will say it’s always seemed to me that the conversation braided its way around the brackets. There was a day we set a comment record here powered by brackets, another running gag, and the usuall puppiness — all attached to the same roundup post.
(4) It may be that a few people find it harder to follow the comments they are interested in, and that’s hard for me to evalute. I read comments on the WordPress dashboard, rather than receiving them as a subscribe-all that emails them to my phone, so maybe it’s not as easy for others to skip things as it would be for me. If I was skipping anything.
Brackets are about the journey, not the destination. A good thing, since the destination is clearly Paladin of Souls in #1!
1. Perdido Street Station
5. Deadhouse Gates
8. Night Watch
9. The Eyre Affair
10. Coraline
11. Summer Knight
15. Kushiel’s Dart
16. Paladin of Souls
So just watched Predestination.
Wow. Ok. I now think I need to hunt down the Heinlein it was based on as well.
It was good, not sure if I’ll nominate as the whole time travel thing always gives me a headache, but man….
I’ve only read 5 or 6 out of the Dark Bracket Lady’s latest offering. The only one where I’ve read both books is ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES, and I am actually going to vote for Megan Whalen Turner.
This was a close call, though, as I really enjoyed both the Chalion and the Attolia books.
(I’m tempted to vote for Declare anyway, though.)
Bracketing…..I am clearly not up on a lot of contemporary fantasy…
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Abstain: have read neither
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Abstain
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Abstain
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
Abstain
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Abstain
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Abstain
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Abstain
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abstain
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
@ Mark: Re Cedar Sanderson’s attempt at grammatical diagnosis: Her complaint about the quoted sentence? Too many colons. Number of colons in that sentence? One.
Number of “fragments” in that sentence: zero. So why is she complaining about sentence fragments (unless there are others in the opening of the story she doesn’t bother to quote). And, well, heck, sometimes fragments can work well in a narrative or poem when they’re frowned upon in essay writing.
Iphinome on September 12, 2015 at 6:06 am said:
Are your circuits registering properly?
Your ears are green.There is nothing about “The power ofChristtwo compels you” which is in any way related to the Indigo Girls. Nope. Uh-uh. Not at all.HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
No questions, doubts, or hesitation.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
Really hit me strongly at the time.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
Have not read the Nalo and thought the Hobb good and gripping but not brilliant, so shall abstain.
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Abstain. Stopped caring about Westeros long ago, haven’t read Erikson.
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford
Declare, Tim Powers
Have not read, abstain.
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Galveston, Sean Stewart
I very vaguely remember Galveston, but not well. Have not read Point of Dreams. Abstain.
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Always.
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The funny thing is, I didn’t finish this book–it was moving slow and I could see doom approaching and the anticipation got too painful. But it was beautifully written and abandoned through my fault and not its.
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Tie.
It’s funny, you know–I HATE one of the narrators in House of Leaves. Hate, hate, hate. Started skipped the dude who was the framing element for being a whiny, dreadful little snot. I know that there’s all this “Characters don’t have to be likable!” stuff going around, but I have to at least not actively want to set them on fire to spend a book with them.
The internal story about the House is still so good that I will stand it up alongside Coraline, despite the fact that I love Coraline. I would not have hated that character so much if I did not have to keep dealing with him to get to the rest of the story. It was like having to put up with an MRA reddit conspiracy theorist strung out on drugs to tell you his life story so that you can get back your lab results. HATE.
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
Tithe, Holly Black
Abstain.
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
Abstain, I know neither.
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
Brilliant, underappreciated.
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
The only vampire book I will go to bat for.
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Some books I read going “Why didn’t I write this?!” This one I read going “I know damn well why I didn’t write this!”
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Forever.
DID I MENTION THAT I HATE THE NARRATOR FROM HOUSE OF LEAVES!?
Re Jung as theory: not in contemporary literature/cultural studies these days (and was sliding gently out of date even in my days as grad student in the 80s–fer crying out loud, once you identify X as an archetype, what is left to say? Jungian/archetypal theory hung on a bit longer in “children’s lit criticism” shudder but even there more contemporary critical theories are sweeping through, mostly those that do not attempt to set up a universalist approach).
Someone should do a search/replace on “she/he,” “her/him” in Ancillary Justice so Jay Maynard can read it without requiring smelling salts and a fainting couch, the poor delicate creature.
It was based on the Heinlein short story “–All You Zombies–“, and also inspired the Heinlein short story “–All You Zombies–“.
Someone should do a search/replace on “she/he,” “her/him” in Ancillary Justice
I’d be tempted to use an editing language, so the changes could be done to only some of them.
What he said.
The way people keep coming up with things is amazing. And given the amount of preparation you have to do for brackets, they’re like a carefully-crafted gift. That’s exactly how I see them.
Yes, a gift, and thank you so much for the work involved.
So here’s my take on #1
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Though I enjoyed the Green, the Mieville has greater staying power for me.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
Close.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Loved this.
May be time to reread it.
4. EPIC STORIES
Haven’t read either, will pass.
(Throws another story on the Kindle.)
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Because nobody does this better.
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Pass
More reading.
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Galveston, Sean Stewart
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Really, not a fair pairing.
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
Pass
I guess I should give Fforde another try, bounced off it last time.
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
I’m not passing on this one, even though I only read one.
But how did I ever miss House of Leaves?
Sounds like something I will love – Real Book is winging its way here now.
Oh well, sleep is for the weak.
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Pass
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
Read the series aloud to the kid, lovely stuff.
Lovely Bones less so.
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Damn you, bracket-maker, these are HARD.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
I was surprised to realize I’d read so many of these.
I tend to be a disorganized reader, and forget titles/authors, so this is making me sort it out a bit.
A lot of oh yeah, that book, going on here.
“Look, Mommy–a puppy, up in the sky.”
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
4. EPIC STORIES
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Abstain
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Abstain
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Oh, and the Melbourne tree emails make my heart hurt.
The drought in California is hitting hard.
A young cheery tree in my yard only put out about half its leaves this spring, leaving the ends of all its branches empty.
When I started syphoning bath water out the window, the rest of the leaves emerged in August.
But the city stopped maintaining the street trees in the spring, and now many of the are yellowing and dropping their leaves, and it isn’t near fall yet.
> “Would a Carey fan like to explain why I’m wrong about these, because I just couldn’t get anywhere with Kushiel.”
Well, I’ll start by saying that if I ever emerge from the Hobbit-hole where I do vote counting to cast my own ballot in this one, I’d be leaning towards a tie there. So I’m certainly not saying you’re wrong for liking the wonderful Tooth and Claw. But here’s why I have a lot of affection for both this book and the whole of the (first) Kushiel Trilogy:
First, it’s a cracking good adventure/political intrigue story in an extremely interesting setting. It does have some plotting flaws (a bit too much information is conveyed by overhearing things) and an occasional tendency towards overwrought writing, but not so many flaws that I can’t get past them pretty easily. However, there’s a lot of fantasy which could be described as a cracking good adventure/political intrigue story in an extremely interesting setting, but having a few flaws, many of which are good but not “best ofs”. Here’s why I think it’s worth potentially considering in a “best of” range:
It does something I haven’t seen in any other heroic literature. It makes a submissive the hero. And a hero because of — rather than in spite of — her submissive nature. It explores the real dynamics of dominance and submission in a way that I’ve scarcely ever seen. If you talk to people in BDSM, they will tell you that the submissive is really the one in control. That submission is not surrender. That submission is actually a form of being in control. Most people outside of BDSM circles don’t get this and don’t understand how it works, and most people who write books about it really don’t get it. Carey not only presents this dynamic but shows (rather than tells) in clear terms how it works, why it works, and why the “ultimate submissive” would actually be someone who could save nations and change the course of history. A heroine, not a victim. Only a few of the protagonist’s enemies understand that, and those who don’t lose and lose badly.
That was a revolutionary breath of fresh air, and a deftly handled one.
6. Declare, Tim Powers
10. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. Tithe, Holly Black
16. The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
@Kyra – I don’t want to make things more difficult for you, but I’m going to parenthetically qualify some (most? all?) of my votes, so feel free to use those qualifications to disqualify my votes.
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Loved this novel, despite some flaws. Beautiful imagery, also gross and scary at times. I was on a huge Lovecraftian kick at the time, and this had the feel I was looking for.
(hadn’t read the other one in that bracket)
4. EPIC STORIES
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
I found the Assassin’s Apprentice trilogy amazing, though the end got bogged down and strange – probably should re-read.
(I’m actually not finished reading this series yet – it got too damned dark for me for a while, though I was loving it. I put it down and haven’t had a chance to get back to it yet.)
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Bounced off the first Malazan, due to confusing plot and because it seemed like a simple exercise in world-building. Well, okay, a complex and insanely detailed exercise in world-building. Someone else posted about how awesome it is earlier on in this thread, though, and now I’m eager to retry.
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Bounced off Day Watch because I wasn’t in the mood.
(I’m currently up to Hogfather, but given that Pterry’s books are continuing to improve at this point in his career, I feel safe voting for it sight unread. Hey, it ain’t the Hugos!)
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Coraline was nice. House of Leaves I really dug. Seems far more horror than fantasy to me. Also very messagey. Is it really even speculative, or is it teaching us all to be Marxist illiterati?! Ugh, sorry. Another on the Lovecraftian level, sort of. So fucking creepy. The only time I can recall a measuring difference of, what, 1.5″, creeping me the Hell out.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Really dug Chalion’s Curse.
(Haven’t read Paladin of Souls, but discussion about that series has me excited to get to the second book some time very soon.)
Unfortunately, I can only do one bracket this time around:
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
At first I thought “same reason why, when Mom went back to college for an anthropology degree, she liked hearing what I had to say about Usenet culture despite not caring about Usenet” – and then I read the rest of the thread. Sigh.
I’ve finished Star Wars:Aftermath. It’s everything I was promised in the Hugo noms but didn’t get – fast paced space opera, compelling story, interesting characters on both sides, and a droid that’s a cross between HK-47 and Gir from Invader Zim.
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE – Tie
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
There’s a HoL/Sherlock Holmes crossover fanfic that pulls it off with creative use of Livejournal comment threads: http://featherfish.livejournal.com/196763.html
Prairies also are home to tiny frogs that come out when it rains, which was the most amazing mystery when I was a kid in Lubbock (life before Google was so weird!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_spadefoot_toad
I accidentally bought the same Dresden book twice – read the first chapter in the bookstore and didn’t even recognize it. That’s when I knew it was time to give up.
@Kyra
Thanks! I’ll have to give it another try sometime.
—
Scalzi had a bit of a rant about Maynard today. He sounded unusually annoyed.
Hoa, I’m mentioned in a tweet by Scalzi! o.O
snowcrash –
That’s weird, he even put on his blog that he can respect if people dislike his narrative voice. I bounce off of it like a superball myself, I tried the sample of the book to see if my love of Star Wars would over ride my prior dislike for his style, and I don’t think it’s for me. I also wouldn’t expect him to be polite if I went and asked him why he didn’t write it like a different writer that I do like.
The idea that would translate into forcing people to read or buy is a strange one. Hell I chose not to buy or read more, unless it comes into my library then I might check it out there.
Those here who recommended Sense8 so strongly, thank you! I went through the whole season and wasn’t sure after two episodes but now that I’ve watched it all I thought it was fantastic. I’d put it up in best long form, I don’t think using a single episode under short form does it justice. Ditto those talking about Ex Machina, awesome movie. Between those two and Mad Max it’s going to be a helluva showdown for Dramatic Works.
Sigh. I must have spent this century in a cellar instead of reading.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
Caz is such a wonderful character, I just had to make the substitution.
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Voting for this even though I think I may never reread it.
3.Ash, Mary Gentle
5. A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. Declare, Tim Powers
7. (Ouch)
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
11. Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
12. Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
13. Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. (even though I hate vampires)
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. (cold forehead cloth)
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. (many cold forehead cloths)
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Jamoche –
I’ve done that with Robert B Parker books because frankly the summary on most of them sound the same. Still enjoy them even though I know Spenser is going to chase after a case, get in over his head and threatened, call up Hawk for backup, and have his girlfriend chew lettuce and give him insight. Which is a-ok to me I still have a soft spot for them, and somehow despite having what should’ve been an easy formula to duplicate those that have written under Parker’s name since he passed just aren’t the same.
It’s funny, because that’s how I felt for a lot of last century’s prelim brackets, since I wasn’t born until the tail end of 1989. Already I feel like I’ve read a much higher proportion of these newer books.
I endorse this enthusiastically! 🙂
It’s funny, because that’s how I felt for a lot of last century’s prelim brackets, since I wasn’t born until the tail end of 1989.
Since I have (low be it spoken) 41 years on you, it makes sense. I had a lot longer to read them than you did.
This may also explain why I love The Curse of Chalion so much — it’s emphatically not the traditional coming of age story. When trying to get people to read it, I have had a tendency to call it “fantasy for 40-year-olds” — but only to people that age or older!
@Matt Y:
Commaunism! 😀
Forehead Cloths! Getcher Nice Cold Bracket Forehead Cloths here! Avoid the rush; get a case! All-Natural! Organic! Carbon atoms GUARANTEED in EVERY SINGLE CLOTH!!!1!!
Cubist: I thought “the power of two” was some kind of Pitticus Lore reference. Maybe not?
Prairies also are home to tiny frogs that come out when it rains
We didn’t see those, but we had toads living in the recessed water faucets in the yard (about eight inches in diameter and 12 to 15 inches deep, with lids so they could be mowed over). Great Plains toads, IIRC: interesting symmetrical markings.
2. Flewelling
4. Hopkinson
7. Scott & Barnett (can I vote for Armor of Light?)
8. Pratchett
9. Fforde!!
15. Walton
I’m just going out to catch up on my fantasy reading. I may be some time.
On that Black Gate thread, Jay Maynard explicitly admits (once Cat Valente asks him directly) that he’s never read either Ancillary Justice or Lock In, both of which he (prior to admitting he’s never read them) criticized very harshly for being message fic that are All About The Gender.
He doesn’t seem even slightly abashed, either. He goes on to claim that it’s fair to criticize Ancillary Justice without reading it because of all the reviews which praise it and talk about nothing but the pronouns – which, someone else points out, strongly suggests that he’s never read any of the reviews of Ancillary Justice, either.
That thread does have many good comments by Alexandra Erin and Cat Valente, so it’s worth reading in that regard.
Also excellent (and, I suspect, inspired by the Black Gate thread): Alexandra Erin’s tweets about genre and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love.”
He may have been going off mainstream articles (or just their titles), like Wired‘s “Sci-Fi’s Hottest New Writer Won’t Tell You the Sex of Her Characters”. Not that this is a good replacement for actually reading the book.
Personally, I felt criticising Lock In on the basis of the reviews only talking about gender was even more odd, since so many didn’t even notice the lack of gender specificity, and besides that a robot body doesn’t need to be visually one way or the other. I wish he’d come up with a book – any book! – that he’d actually read and could criticise from a place of knowledge.
I suspect that if he’d actually read Lock In or Ancillary Justice, he might still dislike the gender aspects but he’d have a much harder time writing them off as “message fiction”.
(Although if he wanted to call Lock In message fiction for anything, I think the disability themes are closer than the gender ones.)
For the record, I feel that we have been remiss in not discussing the latest announcement that will undoubtedly change the obsessions of significant swaths of fandom.
Pokemon Go!
I hope they’ve got some great ones in Helsinki!
I just finished The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet and it was just a ton of fun. That book has a big heart and a big brain and I though I just now put it down I already miss those people something awful.
Can’t wait to see what Ms. Chambers does next.
Too many books I haven’t read! And now my reading list has grown…
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
11. Tithe, Holly Black
12. Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
13. Abhorsen, Garth Nix
15. Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
ARRRGGHHHH!!! I love both these books so much. However, since Paladin is so much in the lead, I can vote for Queen of Attolia without having to do a lot of soul searching.
Too many where I’ve only read one, or neither. Let’s see.
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Galveston, Sean Stewart
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
I make this pick even though I think the book would be better about 30% shorter.
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
What a ghastly awful choice to make, Kyra, you fiend. 🙁
About Aftermath: I know Chuck, and I know this about him – he will take seriously any criticism that’s anchored in the books he’s actually written. Tone, theme, style, specifics of composition, whatever – if you want to take up a criticism, he’ll listen. He may also listen if you make it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about, but good luck getting him to respect it the way he will an honest, informed dissent.
Another thing about Chuck is that he really, really hates bullies, in precisely the way a lot of us nerds to. He’s really happy to use his pulpit to say so, to take apart bully arguments, to offer encouragement to victims who need a helping a hand. He is secure in himself and just plain not vulnerable to a lot of manipulation tactics. Naturally, this infuriates people accustomed to shouting down and shutting up their opponents.
Cosigned. I know him mostly from online, but he is an absolutely stand-up dude and very capable of taking criticism about his craft. The abuse I’m seeing hurled is not about craft. It’s about OMG gay characters! and fury that the EU isn’t canon anymore, as if Chuck did that singlehandedly while laughing maniacally.
But it’s hard to kick the mouse, and if you do, you KNOW they don’t feel it. People seem to think that they can kick Chuck.
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
pass
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Ash, Mary Gentle
(tough, tough choice.)
4. EPIC STORIES
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
pass
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Galveston, Sean Stewart
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
(alas for the unlucky pairing on this one)
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
(arrgh. Abstain rather than pass as I can’t decide)
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Tithe, Holly Black
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
pass
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Regarding the integration of fiction brackets with other topics: I know I’ve regularly grumbled at failing to keep up with the comment threads, but it’s worth considering that mono-thematic comment threads are less vibrant than multi-theme ones. It’s the braiding together of topics that creates a sense of community. I think the dynamic would be very different if we had separate posts/threads for the bracket discussions and the news roundup discussions.
Rev. Bob
Holding down the Periodtariats 🙂
I read Lock In and when they were talking in those comments about it being message fiction I assumed it was about the disabled if anything because I didn’t notice that the main character wasn’t gendered when I read the book. You can’t not see the pronoun usage of AJ, but I really thought at some point the protagonist of Lock In was identified as being male. I asked my wife who read it as well and she hadn’t noticed that either. Subliminal message-fiction! He heard that it had a message I didn’t even know existed, so maybe it’s Second-Hand Message Fiction?
I believe Predistination is based on Heinlein’s first short story, “Lifeline.” I had wanted to watch it at Sasquan, but it turns out it was being shown in a smallish conference room with chairs on the floor onto a small screen, so I passed. That’s no way to see a movie.