(1) A BEST EDITOR WINNER. SFFWorld interviewed editor Ellen Datlow:
A working life spent reading SF, Fantasy, and horror short stories sounds like a dream come true. Are there down sides to being an editor? Do you have any advice for aspiring editors?
ED: I’ve always loved short stories, so working in the short fiction field is indeed the perfect job for me. It’s hard to find time to read outside the genres in which I’m currently working. I mostly read short fiction for work, so picking novels that I hope I’ll enjoy is the challenge. They usually have to be dark/horror so I can cover them in my annual Best Horror of the Year. The administration is a pain: sending out contracts, paying royalties to a hundred writers is onerous (even with Paypal). But everything else is great. I love the whole editing process, from soliciting new stories that would not exist except for me asking; working with my authors on story revision (if necessary); and even the line edit.
Advice: Read. Read slush. If you don’t love reading, you have no reason to be an editor
(2) SCIENCE ADVISOR. Financial Times profiled Cal Tech physicist Spyridon Michalakis in “’I help Hollywood film-makers get their science right’”. (Warning: I had to answer a 10-question survey ad to see the full article.)
In the article Michalakis discusses his work through The Science and Entertainment Exchange, “which connects film and TV producers with scientists.” He’s consulted on Ant-Man, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other shows.
Here’s what he had to say about Gravity:
“It’s a shame when I see films that inadvertently forgo scientific accuracy for added drama. For instance, in the movie Gravity when Sandra Bullock’s character grabs hold of George Clooney’s character while they’re both floating out in space, he tells her she has to let go of him, otherwise both of them are going to fly off and die because he’s pulling her farther and farther away from the space station. The trouble is, they’re so far away from Earth that, in reality, nothing would actually be pulling them.
“I find myself watching that scene and thinking they could have achieved the same drama just as easily with something called ‘conservation of momentum.” With this, the only way for her to get back to the station would be for Clooney’s character to actively sacrifice himself by pushing Bullock away from him. It would have been real science and it would have made the movie better. You watch these things and you say to yourself, ‘I’m just a phone call away.'”
(3) OHH-KAYYY…. The Washington D.C. public library has an idea for drawing attention to oft-challenged books. Is it innovative, or over-the-top?
Every year, libraries around the country observe Banned Books Week, to remind the public that even well known and much loved books can be the targets of censorship. This year, Washington D.C.’s public library came up with a clever idea to focus attention on the issue: a banned books scavenger hunt.
Now, readers are stalking local shops, cafes and bookstores looking for copies of books that are hidden behind distinctive black and white covers. There is no title on the cover, just a phrase — such as FILTHY, TRASHY or PROFANE — which describes the reason why some people wanted the book banned.
For those lunchin' @UnionMarketDC– we just did an #UncensoredDC drop while scoping out dreamy goods for the home pic.twitter.com/jLubu86RkW
— DC Public Library Foundation (DCPLF) (@LoveDCLibrary) September 15, 2016
(4) SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CONSERVATIVE. John Shirley, who identifies as a progressive, argues “Why Conservatives are a Necessary Component of a Vital Society” in a post for Tangent Online. I have to say it brings to mind the ending of Harlan Ellison’s “Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.”
….Every democracy genuinely needs conservatives. And not so we can have someone to argue with. We need them for their perspective; we need them for their call for individual hard work, which is always a good thing in itself, when people can find it; we need them for the reluctance at least some of them show to get engaged in wars that squander blood and treasure. And we need them to be skeptical of our schemes.
We need them to push back.….
This website, Tangent Online, relates to the science-fiction field, and so do I. From time to time the sf field has been storm-lashed by political controversies, essentially conservative vs. liberal and vice versa. Going back, it cuts both ways: back in the day, Donald Wollheim and Fred Pohl and Judith Merril and others were slagged by conservative sf writers and editors for leaning left. Now the pendulum has swung way, way the other direction and certain reasonable conservatives amongst science fiction writers and critics are sometimes being over scrutinized, even punished, for outspokenness and some fairly normal speech tropes—most recently, Dave Truesdale was actually ejected from the Worldcon for having declared on a short story panel, in the space of a few minutes, that science fiction was being unfairly truncated by politics, and free speech gagged by political correctness emanating from the left. I listened to a tape of the remarks and could find nothing that broke any convention rules. Some defending the convention fall back on claims that his use of the term “pearl clutchers” is sexist, is hateful to women. But in my experience the term does not apply to women, particularly—it’s about people who are making a drama of nothing, probably just to get attention. Underlying the con committee’s action was, I suspect, emotional fallout from the “Sad Puppies” Hugo Award controversy. But people shouldn’t let emotions dictate their interpretation of the rules.
(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- September 15, 1907 – Fay Wray
(6) RICK RIORDAN PRESENTS. Disney has announced a new Rick Riordan Presents imprint reports Publishers Weekly. Riordan will curate a line of books that introduces selected writers of mythology-based novels.
Rick Riordan has gotten a variation on the same question from his fans about a zillion times: When are you going to write about (fill in the blank): the Hindu gods and goddesses? Ancient Chinese mythology? Native American legends?
Now, he has an answer – of sorts: Disney-Hyperion is launching Rick Riordan Presents, an imprint devoted to mythology-based books for middle grade readers. The imprint, which will be led by Riordan’s editor, Stephanie Owens Lurie, hopes to launch with two books in summer 2018. The books will not be written by Riordan, whose role will be closer to curator than author.
…The plan is to launch the imprint in July 2018 with two books, though those books have not yet been acquired yet. “We’ve approached a couple of people but some of them are adult writers so they would be trying to do something completely different,” Lurie said. “The point of making this announcement now is to get the word out about what we’re looking for.”
“Rick just can’t write fast enough to satisfy his fans,” said Lurie, whose official title will be editorial director of the imprint. “I think he’s doing an incredible job writing two books a year already.”
There’s also this: ”I know he feels that, in some instances, the books his readers are asking for him to write are really someone else’s story to tell,” Lurie said.
(7) MAJOR SF ART EXHIBIT. The IX Preview Weekend Popup Exhibition will take place at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, DE from September 23-25. Tickets required.
Imaginative Realism combines classical painting techniques with narrative subjects, focusing on the unreal, the unseen, and the impossible. In partnership with IX Arts organizers, the Delaware Art Museum will host the first IX Preview Weekend, celebrating Imaginative Realism and to kick off IX9–the annual groundbreaking art show, symposium, and celebration dedicated solely to the genre.
Imaginative Realism is the cutting edge of contemporary painting and illustration and often includes themes related to science fiction and fantasy movies, games, and books. A pop-up exhibition and the weekend of events will feature over 16 contemporary artists internationally recognized for their contributions to Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Marvel, DC Comics, Blizzard Entertainment, and Wizards of the Coast, among others.
There will be workshops by two leading sf artists as well.
Sept 24 @ 7:00 pm
Workshop with Bob Eggleton: Seascapes Sept 24 @ 10:15 am – 12:15 pm and 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm During this hands on demonstration and group painting salon, Bob Eggleton will walk participants through creating a seascape in acrylic paint with a nod to the ocean as ‘character’. Incorporated into the illustration storytelling aspect of this demonstration will be construction of the ocean as narrative using elements, from the subtle to the extreme, like sea monsters, antique ships, rocks, waves, clouds, lighting, and odd bits of flotsam and jetsam debris. Bob will share his own experience as well as that of his heroes, classic 19th and 20th century illustrators and fine art Masters. Pre-registration required. Supplies: Attendees should bring preferred acrylic painting setup, including brushes, paints, and paper/panels/boards.
Drawing Workshop and Lecture with Donato Giancola: Compositional Drawing Sept 25 @ 10:15 am – 12:15 pm and 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm Donato will share his knowledge and approach to producing skillfully drafted drawings. From sketch to finish, the aesthetic and technical decisions the artist makes will be laid bare for observation and comments offering wonderful insight into the foundations of creativity of a modern artist. The four-hour workshop is for the artist who aspires to pursue further development and refinement of their skills in composition and as storytellers. Attendees of all skill levels are welcome as the focus of the workshop is upon creative problem solving, not technical execution. Pre-registration required. Supplies: Attendees should bring along their own preferred drawing utensils (pencils, paper,sketchbooks, etc) as well as a few favorite images/photos of themes they wish to create work upon. Alternative drawing supplies will also be available for use.
(8) WHAT’S A HUGO WIN WORTH? Kay Taylor Rea of Uncanny Magazine says Hugo wins are helping sales there. (Uncanny won the 2016 Best Semiprozine Hugo.)
considering the Hugo's meant we've already passed last year's site traffic at Uncanny saying awards don't drive sales? Hm
— Kay Taylor Rea (@kaytaylorrea) September 4, 2016
(9) NOT LETTING THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. Mary Robinette Kowal posted a photo of what’s in the suitcase she’s taking to the Writing Excuses Workshop.
(10) NO ONE BEHIND THE WHEEL. Matthew Johnson is the latest Filer to leave a poetic masterwork in comments:
Inspired by item 7:
My self-driving car must think it queer
To stop without a charger near.
I wonder, did I hurt its pride
When I pressed DRIVER OVERRIDE?
Whose woods these are I think I spy:
in June the Google Car went by
And so the trees, though deep in snow, are green
When viewed upon my tablet screen.
Most days I doze away the route
That my car drives on our commute
And trade the sight of forests dark and deep
For just another hour’s sleep.
This night, the darkest of the year
Some demon woke me, passing here,
And so I stopped, though home is far
Got out and left my loyal car.
A single line of deer track goes
Into the forest, deep with snow
My road, I know, was once just such a trail
Blazed by cloven hooves and white-tipped tails
Crowdsourced by deer to find the gentlest route
Through tree and mountain, lake and chute
Then followed feet, at first in leather clad
To travel where the hooves of deer had.
My car’s soft beep awakens me:
To stay longer would unreasonably
Expose the maker to liability
And besides, it voids the warranty.
Well, a contract is a contract, after all,
And speaks louder than the forest’s call
So I return, my feet no longer free,
Because I clicked on I AGREE.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have Terms of Use to keep,
And miles to go while fast asleep,
And miles to go while fast asleep.
[Thanks to Lee, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dawn Incognito.]
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@Jack Lint: evening talk shows? The Cavett I remember seeing (with the Airplane!) was in mid-to-late afternoon.
@Hampus: and when I was growing up, a Swedish social/political film had to go through a major court case to be shown; I can’t find my copy of the script, but IIRC it was approved for viewing in Sweden by everyone over a modest age. Sweden has long been synonymous with sexual ]freedom[ in at least the US and UK (see, e.g., the triggering event in Equus).
For those tired of arguments, some beautiful pictures: winners of the (BBC?) Astronomy Photographer of the Year award.
Ebook Price Watch: Periodically, a Katherine Kurtz “Deryni” book or two goes down to $1.99. I don’t post these – I’d be posting one every week or two if I did – but FYI, in case anyone’s interested in picking up her work in ebook form. I love this series of series. I’m not re-buying them in ebook*, but I’m “watching” her stuff in case a few other books of hers get ebook-ified.
* Partially because I’ve listened to the audiobooks as rereads. I’m now thinking that I should’ve picked up the ones that don’t have audiobooks, though, like the Camber trilogy. D’oh.
SF sample reading completed: I liked the sample of Moore’s Seven Forges and picked it up – ditto Planck’s Sword of the Bright Lady. I’m liking the sample of Khanna’s Falling Sky so far, despite the present tense**, so I’ll probably pick that up.
** My tolerance for present tense done well is increasing, it seems. I guess that’s a good thing (though I still strongly prefer past tense); I’ve probably skipped books I shouldn’t have, in the past (ahem), due to present tense.
Have a great weekend, Filers! 😀
@Chip Hitchcock: Wow, thanks for the astro pix link; they’re all impressive! I love the “Our Sun” runner-up (more than the winner) and the “Galaxies” ones. The “People and Space” winner looks like stuff from the movie “Inception” crossed with the sky from the book Spin. The night of meteors is impressive and kinda scary. Probably the “Our Sun” runner-up is my overall fave. What a lovely collection of pictures.
Although Uprooted is not YA by most accounts, there is quite a lot of sex in unquestioned YA nowadays.
Actually, when I was young Sutcliff and Christopher were considered children’s writers, which may explain the lack of sex in their work. One of the many sources of puzzlement that surrounds the concept of YA is that it has chopped the head off the old ‘older children’s’ age-band, which used to go up to 14; so the YA category now includes both stuff originally written as children’s books, or stuff written more recently but in that tradition, and also stuff written more consciously with older teenagers in mind.
@Kendall (and any other Kurtz fans): On the off chance you were unaware, Judith Tarr has been doing a Deryni reread over on Tor.com. She completed the original trilogy and is now most of the way through Saint Camber. It’s interesting stuff — for one thing, when I was first reading the books many years ago, I hadn’t noticed that a lot of Camber’s actions are really kind of … suspect if you stop and actually think about the implications of what he’s doing & why he thinks it’s acceptable.
Oh, and @Petréa Mitchell:
Thank you for the cognitive psychology book recommendation in the prior scroll comments, and for your review of planetarian. I will endeavour to check both of those out.
If you choose to stop hanging out here I will miss your contributions.
@Chip Hitchcock It depends on which Dick Cavett show we’re talking about. He’s been on multiple networks and various time slots. In 1972, he would have still been on ABC. The Dick Cavett show on ABC from the end of 1969 on was late night competition for The Tonight Show.
Jack Lint: Arthur Clarke’s appearance on Dick Cavett must have been near the time of the Lunacon 72, because that’s when I encountered him and talked briefly with him. I’d met him the year before at Lunacon 1971.
Talk shows, when I do bother to watch them, don’t seem to discuss much. Most of the people on such shows don’t have much intellectual background.
When you consider how much time must be filled on today’s vast virtual wasteland, good select guests are few.
I just realized that both Jemisin and Stephenson destroy the world in the first lines of their books. The difference is that it was the highpoint in the writing in Seveneves, and the novel went rapidly downhill, but was the jumping off point in TFS. How you can make the end of the world a small matter is a great piece of writing.
@robinareid – thank you for explaining why TFS works in ways better than I could ever manage. It’s not an affirmative action pick, I think that TFS is going to be regarded as a classic novel (hopefully, classic trilogy) in the near future. It’d make a great film, but too bleak for Hollywood.
am I the only one looking forward to Disney’s The Fifth Season – on ice!?
Andrew M:
Actually, when I was young Sutcliff and Christopher were considered children’s writers, which may explain the lack of sex in their work. One of the many sources of puzzlement that surrounds the concept of YA is that it has chopped the head off the old ‘older children’s’ age-band, which used to go up to 14
Yep, you are right, although even back at the dawn of history, I encountered some some confusion about the genre. “Oh you liked The Eagle of the Ninth? Here, Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy is historical fiction, too.”
I currently have an 8-year old and an 11-year old who have outgrown children’s books, but whom I am not yet ready to just turn loose in the adult section of the library/book shop. They both gravitate towards YA, but occasionally they pick up things that give me pause. I think what they both really want is new books that parallel the old-school “older children’s books.”
The 8-year old is currently alternating between Harry Potter and the Red Wombat’s Hamster Princess books, so no problems there. The 11-year old looooved Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy, but I think he would be confused or disturbed by a book with adult levels of sex and violence (or sexy violence) that just happened to have a young protagonist. It may be another year or two before he seeks that stuff out. Oh well, at least the relationships in modern YA are probably healthier than some of the Heinlein that I read as a middle schooler. (I liked Space Cadet so Time Enough For Love is OK, right?)
/delurk
I nominated both Uprooted and The Fifth Season for the the best novel Hugo.
I’d never read Jemisin before picking the The Fifth Season, and to be honest, I did find the prose style a little offputting when I first picked it up. But I was also immediately drawn in, and found the story so compelling that I couldn’t put the book down. As I read, the style seemed more and more “natural” and appropriate to the character and the story. I knew when I had finished it that it was something special.
I loved Uprooted immediately and completely, but found that for all its virtuosic fairy-tale trope-exploration, it didn’t stick with me the way T5S did.
When I reread both novels before voting, it became clear to me that T5S would be at the top of my list. Both are wonderful books — and comparing them is difficult, since they are also very different — but the scope and ambition of T5S ultimately made a deeper impression on me, so it got my vote.
Political considerations of any stripe were not a (conscious) factor in my choices. I like what I like, and I nominated and voted for what I liked best. It’s that simple.
Oh, and regarding sex in YA: there was plenty of sex in the YA novels I read and loved as a teen in the 80s — the works of Judy Blume and Norma Klein come to mind (but there were definitely others). Definitely not a new thing.
OMFG last one I swear. (Halp I am trapped in suburbia with people who think my interests are weird or childish please send an extraction team…)
Every time I think about The Fifth Season my socks fly off again and do an orbit around the room. The structure! The craft! The darkness! The social commentary! It’s like it was written specifically to push all of my buttons. Congratulations again to N.K. Jemisin for the much-deserved recognition of an amazing book.
I liked prose style of The Fifth Season in the prologue, it really drew me in. But then it continued and I hate books written in present tense. It was good enough for me anyhow to continue which says a lot about how good a writer Jemisin is and I like darkness in my books.
But I will not continue with the rest of the series. Mostly because I just want all people involed in the first book to die and I would be pissed if they survived more than a few pages. And because I’m sure it is that bloody present tense again.
Actually, all the indicators pointed to Uprooted as the winner.
Actually, they didn’t.
On both GoodReads and LibraryThing, although Uprooted was owned by more users than any of the other finalists, The Fifth Season had the highest average rating.
My survey of bloggers found The Fifth Season well ahead of Uprooted, if not quite as far ahead as the leaders in the other fiction categories. If you are actually interested in learning about the motivations of those who voted for it, the links I give there are probably a good start.
I didn’t vote for it myself – I’m an Ann Leckie fan – but I also liked it more than Uprooted.
Nicholas Whyte: I voted for the Leckie novel first, but having read The Fifth Season and Uprooted, too, I was glad that if my first choice couldn’t win, that Jemisin’s book did.
@robinareid – Fwiw, at one point in think I saw Jemisin tweet that she hadn’t read Beloved but that it was clear from people’s comments comparing her work to that text that they weren’t aware of Margaret Garner and the ways her story has been used in literature.
Despite his especially juvenile sense of humor, Craig Ferguson had the most intelligent of the (late night) talk shows. He would have guests that you never see on the other shows, and even when he had “big names”, he would ask real questions (or utterly bizarre ones, and often the guest would never even get a chance to mention the project they were there to plug.) See this compilation, for example.
Modern YA can have quite a bit of sex in it, which is why I’m always a bit confused when folks determine something is YA based on a lack of sex scenes.
Uprooted was reviewed as an adult book in all of the professional journals we use as selection guides, fwiw. The age of the characters isn’t as important as the what I’m going to vaguely describe as the sensibility of the book, which is often dependent on the intended audience. I’m sure we can all think of books that have child or teen protagonists that are in no way children’s or YA lit.
I can think of several, but people here told me they were YA.
To be honest, if there comes a YA award, then I’m not going to care how it is marketed, not going to care about “themes”, not going to care how people at Goodreads categorize it.
I’m going to think of the age of the protagonist and if young adults are going to like it.
I don’t know whether I’d call UPROOTED YA or not, but yes, sex scenes in the older range of YA have indeed gotten more explicit.
Applause for that whole post.
I’ll make a tiny defence of Paulk’s piece:
TFS: And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost-question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:
Paulk: This sentence begs for snarkage: how many selves does she have?
Paulk is trying to be snarky but I was struck by how the writing has led somebody unwittingly to ask such a key question about the book.
There are also children’s and YA books whose protagonists are adults. (The Hobbit, for a start.)
But ‘protagonist’s age’ as a criterion of distinction seems to be getting more and more prevalent, and I suspect is constraining what authors can do. (For instance, Daniel Handler’s first book, The Basic Eight, was published as adult, though it’s about teenagers; it has now been re-issued as YA.)
I really miss Craig Ferguson. The conversations there were always enjoyable and enlightening. I’d really hoped that we would see some of that on Join or Die (his History channel show), but that was played mostly for laughs.
Margaret Garner and her family passed through the town where I now live, directly across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, on their doomed escape. They met up a few blocks from my house with the slaves of the Stevenson family, slave-owners whose mansion is long gone, but there is an obelisk there marking the spot. The Garner family’s crossing of the frozen Ohio River in January 1856 is memorialized in one of the historic murals painted on our floodwall, and there is also a plaque in our village square commemorating her struggle (I think the plaque is placed where the slave auctions occurred).
This has risen in my consciousness lately because I have a part-time job guiding historic walking tours. We mostly do historical walks of Cincinnati year-round (I mostly do the Underground tour in Over the Rhine, going into underground sites, such as massive 19c lagering tunnels 40 ft underground, discovered in the 1990s after being forgotten for generations and still being dug out now). But in Sept/Oct, we add several evening “haunted” tours to the schedule, and I’m guiding the tour in my town, Covington–which is really a historical walking tour with a few ghost stories included. Anyhow, there is no ghost story attached to Margaret Garner here, but when we get to that site, we tell her story. Frankly, it was hard to get through the first couple of times without my voice breaking.
@Lela E. Buis
Hi Lela.
As is often the case, I think the truth lies in the middle. Many of the Rabid picks were genuinely bad, and genuinely belonged below No Award. (E.g. “Seven Kill Tiger, with a “Typhoid Mary Sue” protagonist.)
I personally thought “Fifth Season” was the strongest novel to win the Hugo since “The Windup Girl” in 2010, so I felt the Hugos at the novel level came through fine.
But for novella, it’s a different story. “Binti” is so bad that it’s difficult to imagine it winning under normal circumstances (I put it under No Award), and it was a close enough race with the far superior “Penric’s Demon” that I could believe politics had an effect. That is, I could believe a large number of people voted for “Binti” without even reading it solely because it was the only novella on the ballot that was untainted by the slate.
Likewise, I think anything that came out of Castalia House got voted under No Award regardless of quality. I expected that would happen; it’s just human nature. In fact, I’ll be surprised if anything from there rates above No Award for the next decade or so. I’m not sure I’d call that politics, though. “Consequences” seems more apt. Doesn’t mean I approve, but I certainly understand.
What I do not believe–not for a minute–is that the skin color of the winners made any material difference in the outcomes. Not in their favor, at least. (I know they had the puppies voting against them, of course.)
As for the supposed puppy “wins,” by my calculations, all of the actual Hugo winners would have been on the ballot even without the slates, so the puppies didn’t influence the results in any positive way. Their entire impact was in keeping certain good works off the ballot. Everything they seriously promoted failed, and almost all of it went under No Award. I’m not surprised they’re upset.
(8) WHAT’S A HUGO WIN WORTH?
I was happy to see Uncanny win (although there were some other excellent options on the ballot) and I’m very happy it’s done them some material good as well. There’s something about the balance of stories they put out that makes me really look forward to each issue.
@ Nicholas Whyte
It’s logical to interpret the data in this way, but studies (although not deeply rigorous ones) show that when books in the same genre and from the same publication/distribution segment are compared with regard to Goodreads ratings , “more readers” correlates with “lower average rating”. (I did a couple of quick and dirty blogs on the phenomenon back in May. http://hrj.livejournal.com/578239.html, http://hrj.livejournal.com/578569.html)
So I’m wary of using average ratings as a measurement either of book quality or of overall book popularity. My interpretation is that it’s a better measure of to what extent a book has succeeded in acquiring and engaging readers outside its “ideal readership”.
@Hampus Eckerman
Well, for what it’s worth, I thought “Obelisk Gate” was even better than “Fifth Season,” and I’m eagerly awaiting the conclusion.
As for present tense, I hope you don’t try to read anything in French, Spanish, or Italian! 🙂 The “historical present tense” is a staple in all three, and they’ll switch into it when they want to make the scene feel more dramatic. (Which means you have to be up for switching back and forth.)
@Mark
They seem to be getting better as well. Their latest issue was particularly exceptional. People who can afford to really should consider subscribing to magazines like this. It’s more pleasant to read the stories on a Kindle, I think, and you get some of them as much as a month in advance.
Greg Hullender:
I didn’t think “Binti” was bad. I was mostly irritated at the plot with its magical technology and too many coincidences, but I thought the writing excellent and it kept me interested all the way. I placed it second after “Penric’s Demon”. It was a lot better than “Cat pictures, please” which almost made me fall asleep.
And my guess is that more people refused to vote for it because of racist reasons than the amount of people who voted for it because of political reasons.
@JJ
Anyone who assumes that Jemisin/Jemison is a “black” surname has no idea what they are talking about.
The only person I can think of named Jemison/Jemisin besides N.K. is Mae Jemison, a black astronaut.
I look at the list of people in the Wikipedia entry for “Jemison” and she’s the only one I recognize. ( I did not study under your drafting teacher)
I don’t think of “Jemison” as stereotypically black the way I think of “O’Reilly” as stereotypically Irish, but given that the only two exemplars I know of are black, I can see why some would think of it as a black surname (and I recognize that this is as much a statement about my knowledgeability of “people whose name is Jemison/Jemisin” as anything else – but it is a relatively uncommon name).
@Aaron
Other than Senate Resolution 85 you mean.
Senate Resolution 85 did not constitute Congressional approval of a war, or of toppling the Libyan government.
I think some people are willfully misusing the term
politics. There is politics of the left/right/party affiliation variety and there’s also the politics of power and influence within social structures.
Lela Buis is painting the response to Vox Day’s slating as a liberal, anti-conservative issue. This is nonsense, firstly because he’s not a conservative; he’s white/Christian nationalist. But mostly, he’s someone who has explicitly stated that he wants to destroy the Hugos and WSFS. Of course members of that organisation will act politically against him. It’s naïve to think that his statements and actions will have any other effect.
Then, there were some of us who actually liked “Binti” rather a lot (which would be difficult if we hadn’t read it), thought it was the best entry in the Novella category, and voted accordingly. Not everyone shares the same opinions, after all. (For whatever it might be worth, I thought “Penric’s Demon” was a damn good runner-up.)
You realize that it doesn’t matter how many people talk about having voted for TFS because they loved it, or because they thought it was the best on the ballot. All those people are just lying and virtue-signaling, because the ONLY reason anyone would have ever voted for a non-Puppy entry is that it was written by a black woman. And you will never be able to convince any of the Puppies otherwise. It’s like trying to convince an anti-vaxxer with facts.
I was not very impressed by Binti. As I have said before, I did not know what story I was reading. If it was one of the stories it might have been,it had one problem, and it was another, it had another problem.
However, a lot of people clearly disagreed with me. Given that six slated candidates won, including at least one and possibly two that would not have been there without the slate, I think it’s fairly clear that ‘vote for whatever is not on the slate’ was not the guiding policy.
The first part of “Binti” was great, but right about the point she got on the spaceship, the story took a running jump into the deep end of the slushpile. By the end, I was wondering if the author got tired half-way through and had a high-school student finish it.
Anyway, I know there were people who liked it, but what I’m really trying to say is that it’s the only Hugo Winner where I could imagine politics trumped quality. Not that I’m sure of it, just that I think it possible. I don’t even think it possible of any of the other winners. So when the puppies bring up “Fifth Season” and not “Binti,” I know that (for them) it’s all about race.
lurkertype on September 15, 2016 at 11:30 pm said:
Actually, I think they did, but only after a number of Futurians were actually banned from going to the first WorldCon. Including Pohl and Wollheim.
The other stuff you mentioned, though, no.
Note that none of the puppies (whiny or syphilitic) have ever been banned from Worldcon. One was kicked out after deliberately disrupting a panel he was supposed to be moderating, but it’s patently ridiculous to suggest that’s the same thing.
Actually, Jemisin with an I is a Nigerian surname (an uncommon one). I didn’t think NKJ had Nigerian ancestry, but anyway, no author is obliged to post their family tree on the web.
Senate Resolution 85 did not constitute Congressional approval of a war, or of toppling the Libyan government.
Here, let me quote from it for you:
“Urges: . . . (2) the Security Council to take such further action to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory.”
And
“Welcomes: . . . (4) U.S. outreach to Libyan opposition figures in support of an orderly transition to a democratic government in Libya.”
Imposing a no-fly zone in concert with the U.N. and reaching out to Libyan opposition figures in support of a transition to a new government is exactly what the Obama Administration did in Libya following this resolution.
@Lee
Kropotkin’s one of the origin-points for anarcho-communism (the default form of anarchism most places outside the States), and is meant to stand for the whole system. Scaling is definitely a problem. You can see some of the pitfalls in what happens to self-organised online spaces that grow too large, (and I’ve seen it fail even on a small scale with Occupy LSX). I gather there were some more encouraging large-scale experiments during the Spanish Civil War, though, and (ObSF) LeGuin’s “The Disposessed” is probably the most persuasive picture of what a functioning anarchist society might look like.
As for what the minarchist Right want… the classic cynic’s answer is “police to protect their slave plantations”. Cory Robin’s well worth a read, though, even if you don’t take his interpretation as the whole truth.
As for the supposed puppy “wins,” by my calculations, all of the actual Hugo winners would have been on the ballot even without the slates, so the puppies didn’t influence the results in any positive way.
My math has turned out somewhat different from yours. I think it is questionable whether Folding Beijing and Sandman: Overture would have made it onto the finalist list without Puppy support. It all depends on how many Puppies one estimates there are, but even on the lower bounds of estimates, their presence on the finalist list is an open question.
The larger issue is that it shouldn’t matter to the Pups whether other people also voted for the things the Pups liked. The things the Pups claimed they were supporting won. That other people also supported those same things shouldn’t diminish their enjoyment of things they liked winning.
I was disappointed that Binti won: I felt that not only did it not stick the landing, it did not stick the middle either, though the beginning had me hopeful and the prose was good. In general the overlap between the shortlist and my nominees was minimal, though, so clearly my tastes are in the minority.
I was quite open about doing that. However, while politics is never wholly inseparable from matters of a voxatious nature, the fundamental issue is a publishing house trying to disrupt, rig and discredit the awards as a publicity stunt to the degree that CH did.
Of course, by that standard and based on the numerous complaints from the *sad* puppy leadership about the nefaious influence of publishers on the Hugo Awards, the Sad Puppy should have also been actively voting against CH.
Greg:
By the end, I was wondering if the author got tired half-way through and had a high-school student finish it.
It’s odd you should say that.
‘I’d like to thank my daughter, Anyaugo, for essentially coming up with the plot of this novella. When you get stuck, ask a plucky imaginative eleven-year-old what happens next in the story; you’ll be unstuck in no time.’
I found all the novella’s unsatisfying. I think Binti had several flaws but then so did Bujold’s, Sanderson’s, Reynold’s and Polansky’s.
I can see why any one of them was not a wholly unreasonable nominee (even The Builders) but it was a surprisingly weak category given that it had three big-name writers.
Given the competition, I think Binti won on its merits. I think if it had won against a different field, then people would have more cause to question its victory.
@Aaron
I’l publish my results in the next few days, but I get “Folding Beijing” at #4 by organic votes and Sandman at #5.
The thing is, those weren’t what they were really supporting. They only nominated those to show that fans would stupidly reject excellent works just because the puppies nominated them. By actually awarding those, we insulted the puppies. Or something like that.
I didn’t vote everything by Castalia House below NA, just the Best Related crapfest, If You Were An Award, and Seven Kill Tiger.
I thought the writing in Binti was excellent and some of the descriptions were so vivid and intense it was like being there, but the story failed to convince me in the same way Heinlein juveniles failed to convince me way back when. Optimism and overcoming terrible events are both serviceable story hooks, but they went together too conveniently to be believable. I was kind of disappointed that nothing on my nominating ballot appeared in this category, but both Binti and the Bujold story were somewhere in my top 20 so I didn’t hate voting for either one of them. Also, I was one of the people who really liked The Builders, although I no longer remember whether it came in second or third for me.
@Greg Hullender: You probably know this, but the tradition of switching into present tense at especially vivid narrative moments goes back to Herodotus and Livy. It may not be used much in English history, but it’s certainly not a new idea.