(1) Ernie Hudson has filmed a cameo for the new Ghostbusters. All was forgiven sometime after gave this interview (quoted on The Mary Sue)….
Back in October of last year, Hudson told The Telegraph, “If it has nothing to do with the other two movies, and it’s all female, then why are you calling it Ghostbusters? I love females. I hope that if they go that way at least they’ll be funny, and if they’re not funny at least hopefully it’ll be sexy. I love the idea of including women, I think that’s great. But all-female I think would be a bad idea. I don’t think the fans want to see that.”.
Rumors r true. Was asked not to talk about it at all but when director @paulfeig tweets it himself… #Ghostbusters3 pic.twitter.com/pxEfk5G7YF
— Ernie Hudson (@Ernie_Hudson) September 20, 2015
(2) Mashable has the story – Astronauts on the International Space Station got an advance screening of The Martian.
Watched @MartianMovie on @Space_Station last night! Today working towards our #JourneyToMars during my #YearInSpace! pic.twitter.com/rIEBjFxRIr
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 20, 2015
Duncan Long asked, “Isn’t this a little like showing The Poseidon Adventure on a cruise ship?”
(3) Lincoln Michel in “Is It Time for Literary Magazines to Rethink the Slush” on Electric Literature.
Last month, I got entangled in a long twitter conversation about submission fees. The author Nick Mamatas took issue with The Offing magazine—an exciting new offshoot of the LA Review of Books focusing on promoting marginalized writers—deciding to charge a $3 fee for submissions. You can read Mamatas’s storify plus this follow-up blog post to see his side of things. Here’s a defense of fees from Nathaniel Tower for the other side. In general, the literary world is far too shy about talking about money, and publishing can be quite closed to marginalized voices who can’t afford unpaid internships, reading fees, and other entry barriers. This is a conversation we need to have.
Overall, I agree with Mamatas that there’s an ethical issue in charging submission fees. We never instituted them at Electric Literature for Recommended Reading, Gigantic, or any other magazine I’ve worked on. Plenty of journals barely take any work from the slush, but even a magazine that only publishes slush is likely only taking 1-2% of submissions. So the majority of unpublished writers are funding the minority of published, which isn’t a great foundation. Imagine if every worker had to pay to get a job interview? (Or, since most magazines don’t pay, maybe the analogy is paying to get an unpaid internship.) The defense of submission fees is that the fee is pretty small, perhaps only as costly as snail mail postage. But $3 adds up quickly. I’ve often heard the average story gets rejected twenty times before an acceptance. 21 x 3 = $63. The Offing pays $20-50, meaning you’d expect to lose between 13 and 43 bucks per story. Literary writers can’t expect to make much money from quiet short stories about cancer and obscure poems about birds, but surely we don’t need to actively lose money to get published!
I’d like to note here that The Offing is hardly the only magazine to charge a fee. Missouri Review, Sonora Review, Crazyhorse and so many others charge that when I asked about this on Twitter, I was told it would be easier to make a list of those who don’t. And the fact that The Offing pays $20-50 already puts them ahead of the vast majority of lit mags who pay nothing at all…
Could it be that The Singularity is not engaged in some kind of literary war crime but, in comparison to other magazines that don’t pay contributors, deserves to be commended for not charging a submission fee? (Rocks incoming in 5…4…3…)
(4) Yoon Ha Lee in “Outlining a Novel” —
[First 3 of 8 points.]
- I use parts of Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method for writing a novel. If you haven’t looked at this (I’ve mentioned it several times in the past), it’s worth a look–it probably takes only a few hours to figure out whether or not it’s something that’ll work for you.
The parts I use are the first few steps:
– The one-sentence summary of the novel. I want to nail the core conflict and the protagonist. Ingermanson suggests fewer than 15 words. I use that as a rough guideline–sometimes I have to go a little over because the plot needs some sf/f setting setup. But not much over.
– One-paragraph summary. You can use three-act structure or similar if you like that. Ingermanson suggests “three disasters plus an ending.” It’s not a bad starting place.
– One-page summary. At this point I’m just expanding things out. I sometimes skip this step.
- I write down an unsorted list of elements and events that I want to make sure to include. Key scenes, particular relationships, cool tech toys, whatever.
- Determination of POVs. Mostly I base this on:
– Characters who are going to have growth arcs.
– Coverage of plot events.
– Information control. For example, some characters can’t be POVs because they spoil the entire damn book to the reader.
There are other considerations that come into play sometimes but they tend to be edge cases.
(5) Michael Cavna of the Comic Riffs blog on the Washington Post reports women swept the Small Press Expo’s Ignatz Awards given for outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.
I JUST want to know, cartoonist C. Spike Trotman joked, how she’s going to get those three bricks through airport security.
Trotman, as emcee of the Small Press Expo’s Ignatz Awards ceremony Saturday night, was quickly finding the funny as Sophia Foster-Dimino hit the brick trifecta, picking up three trophies — which are an inspired nod to George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” — and leading the field for the esteemed indie award.
The night felt like a coronation for Foster-Dimino, who dazzled voters with her “Sex Fantasy” comic and was selected best Promising New Talent. At the lectern, the cartoonist looked genuinely moved by the moment. And how better to build a young career than brick by brick?
Sophie Goldstein also picked up multiple awards; her work “The Oven” was voted Outstanding Comic and Outstanding Graphic Novel. When Goldstein kept her remarks brief upon her second win, she warmly joked that she was following Foster-Dimino’s humbled lead.
And just two years after every presenter at the Ignatz ceremony was a woman, now, at this year’s event, every winner was a woman.
The voting deadline nears: The official @SPXcomics 2015 Ignatz ballot: #SPX2015 pic.twitter.com/M0gQYI9kpW
— comicriffs (@comicriffs) September 19, 2015
(6) Don’t miss out on the current membership rate for the Helsinki Worldcon!
42 is a magical number in #fandom! There are 42 days left before the 1st membership rate rise for our #Worldcon! Do you have a membership?
— Worldcon 75 (@worldcon75) September 20, 2015
(7) On Startalk Radio Neil deGrasse Tyson holds A Conversation with Edward Snowden (Part 1)
In this week’s episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with whistleblower Edward Snowden via robotic telepresence from Moscow. The two card-carrying members of the geek community discuss Isaac Newton, the difference between education and learning, and even how knowledge is created. They also dive into the Periodic Table and chemistry, before moving on to the more expected subjects of data compression, encryption and privacy. You’ll learn about the relationship between private contractors, the CIA, and the NSA, for whom Edward began working at only 16 years old. Edward explains why metadata tells the government much more about individuals than they claim, and why there’s a distinction between the voluntary disclosure of information and the involuntary subversion of individual intent. Part 1 ends with a conversation about Ben Franklin, the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the CIA’s oath of service, and government Standard Form 312, which is the agreement Snowden violated.
(8) David Gerrold wrote on Facebook
I’ve had the name “Noah Ward” registered as an official pseudonym with the Writers’ Guild since the late 70s. (I’ve actually used it twice.)
In the planning for the Hugo award ceremony, one of the gags in the script was that if No Award won, I would accept the trophy as “Noah Ward.” Tananarive would protest, and I would whip out the letter from the Writers’ Guild to demonstrate the official-ness of my pen name. Tananarive would then explain the difference between No and Noah and I would grumpily give up the trophy.
If a second category came in as No Award, I was prepared to do “You like me, you really like me.”
But …
As it became clear that we might be looking at as many as 5 categories with No Award and that the voters seemed to be heading toward a massive smackdown of the slates, that joke had to be jettisoned.
In retrospect, that was the right choice. No Award in any category is an uncomfortable moment, even if that’s the result you voted for. So any attempt to add a joke to the moment would have been in very bad taste. And as much as I love a tasteless joke, this wasn’t the place for it.
It was fun to think about, it was the kind of gallows humor that people indulge in to release energy and frustration, but when it came down to the final moments, it was obvious that it wouldn’t play.
Even when explained by somebody who thought the asterisks were a good idea, it’s impossible to see why it was a hard choice to cut this gag….
[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 would-be contributing editor of the day Nigel.]
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Are we missing Daughter of Mystery here? That’s set in post-Napoleonic Wars mainland Europe (Alpennia).
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, His Majesty’s Dragon, and Shades of Milk and Honey are the three Napoleonic Wars/Regency UK.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Do Ruritanian settings count? I think we’ll need an umpire’s ruling on this one….
Mark – Kyra counted the OTHER 15 settings. Alpennia totally counts!!!
Daughter of Mystery should have been listed as having European setting yes. I left it off because the country in question is fictional, but in retrospect, that was a mistake. I counted other alt-history countries, so Alpennia should count too. (I did not count “based on” countries; i.e. I did not consider Range of Ghosts to be set in Asia or The Lies of Locke Lamora to be set in Europe.)
Adjusted round 1 should be/include:
Books set at least partly in
Europe: 26.1% (17/65)
…
— Post-Napoleonic Mainland Europe: 1.5% (1/65)
…
And round 2 should be/include:
Books set at least partly in
Europe: 33.3% (11/33)
…
— Post-Napoleonic Mainland Europe: 3% (1/33)
…
The Ross thing could certainly have been handled much better. The thing that depressed the hell out of me as a ‘not having at that point ever gone to a worldcon’ neophyte was the immediate assumption of ill will. There was no willingness to consider whether it might work, it was in minutes being denounced as a vile attempt to humiliate nominees because why would you possibly want someone to do a job other than to ensure that they abused people.
Kyra, thank you. I feel better now. 😉
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Abstain
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out how Ross got a job as a TV presenter. He is entirely incomprehensible.
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
abstain
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Arghhhhhh!!!! Cally, Cally, help.
Tie. Totally voting for both.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Declare, Tim Powers
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
No, no, no, no. Ouch.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Oh, thank god, an easy one.
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
Bold and Love, dammit.
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
Don’t care. abstain
Thanks for the stats Kyra. They were interesting to see. I loved the “blue hair” counted with unicorns and dragons.
NickPheas on September 22, 2015 at 7:54 am said:
IIRC, I got onto Twitter that day after Ross had already withdrawn and I was backtracking through my timeline to see what the heck had happened. But my recollection was not that Ross was “a vile attempt to humiliate nominees” but that he was hugely controversial in Britain and not the face WSFS members, especially British WSFS members, felt would well represent the Hugos.
And part of it surely was a big concern that Ross would showcase his Laddish insulting persona on that stage (where, mind you, we’d not too long ago had an award recipient with an asshole persona grab the breast of the Guest of Honor). Ross certainly didn’t try alleviate that concern when he called at least one fan who objected “stupid” to his millions of followers and referred to others as “haters”. (Something he might easily have decided not to do if the Chairs had bothered to prep him even a little.)
I don’t think anyone thought the Chairs did this with the intent to humiliate nominees and winners. I think most people thought the motivation was to have this Big Celebrity do the Hugos, wahoo! Humiliation was just a totally foreseeable objection to a thoughtless decision.
And it certainly was a decision where apparently almost no thought was given. Which is a great pity because I think if the Chairs had used even a modicum of common sense and made a plan, prepped Ross and the rest of the committee, and announced this with care, it might have been a good thing, Charles Stross’s concern about muckraking tabloid “journalists” aside.
They booed Short Story, I think. That’s certainly when Gerrold asked for no booing (unless I got completely turned around while trying to track down the dratted asterisk presentation yesterday).
Re: Jonathan Ross
As I’ve said before, the problem was the terrible handling of the announcement, and that Ross’ Obnoxious Chat Show Host persona is considerably better known than his Movie And Geeky Stuff Presenter persona. If Loncon had put together a presentation of Movie And Geeky Stuff Ross, and mentioned discretely that they knew that he also did the chat show stuff but what we were going to get was Movie And Geeky Stuff Ross, not that other Ross, they’d made sure of it… I think it would have gone a lot better. Well enough? Maybe not, but certainly better. Not knowing whether we were getting Obnoxious was the big problem.
(Full disclosure: My mother is friends with the committee member who resigned, although I’ve never actually met her.)
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
(I gave up on TBR mountain when I fell asleep on my iPad. Literally. Locke Lamora and Jonathan Strange are going to have to duel it out without me…)
Meredith
I gave up on TBR mountain when I fell asleep on my iPad.
A variant on “she died with her boots on.”
We could ask no more.
Actually, it could be argued that blue hair is a product of a Canadian Setting – de Lint is intentionally vague about which side of the border Newford is on, only that it’s near the Great Lakes in geography highly similar to Ottawa’s.
Yeah, no. That’s a pretty serious misreading of a) what the trope you’re complaining about is, and b) Kizzy the character.
> “Actually, it could be argued that blue hair is a product of a Canadian Setting …”
According to the web:
“Canadian readers tend to think of Newford as an American city, while Americans usually think of it as Canadian, as it incorporates elements of both. However, de Lint has stated that he chose to definitively give it the American legal system.”
So, I feel all right with putting it in the U.S. Which was totally intentional and not at all because I somehow forgot that de Lint was Canadian and didn’t double check.
(Casually slides de Lint over to join Tanya Huff and Guy Gavriel Kay in Round One.)
(Authors who are from The U.S.: 65.2% (43/66) … Canada: 4.5% (3/66) …)
(*whistles, looks nonchalant*)
Kyra: I saw what you did there.
I fficially hate typing n this keybard nw. And I’m leaving this pening screed as is t explain why.
I have t cpy and paste t put in any f ne particular letter, and the prblem with this is, if I hld dwn the cntrl key t paste just a bit t lng, and type anther letter, I can errneusly clse the tb r refresh the screen, and my whle cmment ges up in smke. S either I type the whle thing sans “0”s, and add them all in at the end, r I risk lsing everything. As I ahve dne TWICE with this attempt t vte in the brackets already.
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
Forehead cloths right out of the gate! I just finished reading Kowal a bit over a week ago, and knowing there’s more — and that the “more” expands the world rather than just repeating itself — I wanted to devour the rest of the series on the spot. But I think Coraline will stick with me as a unique standalone much longer than Kowal will.
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
I liked the Scar well enough that I thought I should read Perdido , but I haven’t, because I did not love the Scar, and I am not that into what sometimes felt like newness for the sake of newness, and definitely not grotesquerie. By contrast, I want to pounce on all the sequels to Three Parts Dead. So maybe unfairly, I am judging Mieville by not being that enthused about a related book.
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
More forehead cloths. But Paladin is that much more mature and breakout a work.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
Abstain. Haven’t read this Powers, and while I only liked the Anubis Gates, My impression is the two Powers books are sufficiently different to make them hard to judge, where the Mieville I have read is in the same world and by reports has a similar feel to Perdido. So here it seems is the border: I’d have changed my stance if it were a more distant Mieville.
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Neither of these, TBH, is on my shelf of top fantasy ever, though they’re both decent reads. But despite its bulk (And long books make me hesitate these days), I’d reread Clarke more readily. (I’m currently watching the mini-series)
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
… I think i broke my forehead cloth on this one. They’re not supposed to shatter under stress.
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
abstain. NEver read any Stross yet.
*So why do I still use this keyboard? well, I can’t supervise both kids upstairs at my own computer; this one is attached to the entertainment centre in the living room, where they mostly play, and with easy “Set down the keyboard and run to the kitchen” if that changes.
I’m pretty sure some of the Newford stories assume the Canadian medical system,* though it’s either never been a big enough plot point for me to recall or sure right now. But that’s a fair argument. I was one of the exceptions, incidentally; I assumed Newford was Canadian until told it was even a question. Partly because the police trick of driving an alleged perp or a drunk — of Native ancestry — out of city limits and making them walk home, even in deadly weather, hit the news here because it happened this side of the border, and he’s used it as a plot point.
*or at least that the people have the money/insurance. But since one of de Lint’s weaknesses is the Phantom Income, it could be of a piece.
I have not read any of the paired sets this round. However…
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
I love the Laundry stories, particularly the early ones. As a sysadmin, they speak to me. Some of the consequences, in those stories, of typical luserian refusal to be sensible or to ever care at all about security, even in the most important matters, are hilarious and oh-so-accurate. I haven’t read Night Watch (I just finished Hogfather in my sequential reading of the Discworld books), but extrapolating a continuing rise in quality, or even assuming a flatline, I have to vote for Pterry. As good as The Atrocity Archives is, it just isn’t in the same realm.
And clicky, dammit.
@Andrew M: ‘Norrell’ according to the TV series, is pronounced NORRell
That’s how Clarke pronounces it too.
Len0ra R0se, I understand y0ur pr0blems with y0ur keyb0ard. Can y0u d0 this, and put in zer0s instead? It’s readable en0ugh to get by 0n….
@Lauowolf
Now I’m trying to hastily trying to read The Martian and City of Stairs so that I’ll have an excuse not to put Three Body Problem on my alternate universe Hugo 2015 top five (I wasn’t a fan). Preferably without falling asleep on my iPad (again) and missing the deadline.
Lenora Rose: H0w ab0ut typing like this? A similar issue is why my br0ther-in-law is called “Miqe”.
I don’t know if it’s a dedicated keyboard that can’t be swapped out, but if it can be, I’ve found many a replacement keyboard at Goodwill for a buck or two. Both USB and DIN.
–Cal
It’s a cheap wireless keyboard we haven’t replaced because… well, it evidently hasn’t annoyed me ENoUGh yet. 😉
I could swap in zeroes (I do in the o-less paragraphs above, the one place I needed an o) but it’s not MUCH harder to just copy and paste — so long as I’m willing to add them in at the end, or willing to risk the occasional deletion of a lot of typing. (I’ve noticed, too, that accidentally refreshing and losing it all happens more often when the 6-month-old is actually sleeping on my lap and the keyboard is in a funny angle, not when he’s awake and earning the name rugrat. Though of course while he’s asleep is when I have the best reading-and-responding time… )
> “This is obviously some strange usage of the word “rhyme” that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
There may have been some alcohol involved in that particular choice.
I’m planning on closing voting in about an hour.
One word for not-quite-rhymes which may be useful is “assonance”.
@ JJ: …”as Lis Carey pointed out, those who didn’t know who he was, when they Googled him, what did they find? An avalanche of past misogynistic comments and behavior. In what universe would exactly this result not have been expected?”
Yep, my thoughts exactly. By the time I read the Tweeted announcements that he was host, he had already stepped down–but I read online for about an hour before I got to that news. Upon reading that he was the host and then seeing people (in the UK, hours earlier) express dismay, I wondered who he was and googled his name…. and immediately came up with about 10 google pages (not hits; pages) of UK news and tabloid articles listing one professional mess after another after another after another that he headlined. The most recent one was (wait for it!) a televised awards ceremony which he’d hosted in such a way that the network was flooded with letters of complaint. (I say “flooded” without having any idea of the number–just that multiple media outlets found the whole debacle worth writing up and they made it sound like a lot of complaints.) That was only one of many, many on-the-job incidents that got him into minor headlines for offending people or generating complaints about his behavior onstage or on camera, and that incident occurred only a couple of months before LonCon chose him to host the Hugos.
So I was dumbfounded that LonCon had thought a simple Tweet saying he would be the host was a good PR plan. (blink) I mean… HUH?
If they really felt THIS was the Right Choice for Hugo host, how did they not see that they’d have to put some thought into how to present this–such as a mainpage website announcement and press release that included a statement or interview underlining the information that only got underlined AFTER he stepped down (such as: he’s a big sf/f fan, he was excited about hosting the Hugos and intended to be resectful, his wife is a Hugo winner, he has hosted other sf/f awards and done it well, etc.). Why did that information only get presented after he stepped down… and why was it presented in (it certainly seemed to me) a you people should have been psychic and known this stuff already manner?
Additionally, Ross seemed unprepared for negative reaction and quickly descended into exchanging insults on Twitter with people. How did he or LonCon think THAT was going to steer the ship anywhere but straight into shoals?
I also found it ludicrously disingenuous when defenders of the LonCon decision claims that Ross’ only “scandal” was a notorious incident that had occurred 6 years earlier. ALL I DID WAS GOOGLE HIS NAME, and I immediately pulled up loads of more-recent incidents, including the one I’ve described above. So are those people too stupid to use Google, or do they count on the rest of us being too stupid to use it?
I say all this as someone who had no pony in this race. I wasn’t a LonCon member, I didn’t get involved in the discussion, and (like most people in the US), I didn’t even see all this until after Ross had already stepped down.
OK, closing up voting. Results coming shortly …
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
In addition to the ritual vote for Bold As Love, there were the following results:
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
WINNER: Coraline, Neil Gaiman – 26 votes
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal – 22 votes
As works start to get pared down to the last few, all of them have supporters; every single book this round got double-digit votes. This match was a particularly close one, but Coraline edged out Shades of Milk and Honey.
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
WINNER: Perdido Street Station, China Mieville – 20 votes
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone – 16 votes
Another extremely close match, with Perdido Street Station managing a slight lead over Three Parts Dead.
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
WINNER (seeded): Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold – 32 votes
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin – 19 votes
Jemisin did impressively well against Bujold, but Paladin of Souls remains unstoppable.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
WINNER (seeded) The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison – 43 votes
Declare, Tim Powers – 11 votes
Likewise, Declare does relatively well against The Goblin Emperor, but not anywhere near well enough to stay in the running.
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
WINNER: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke – 29 votes
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch – 11 votes
And again, The Lies of Locke Lamora is popular, but JS&MN nonetheless beat it handily.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
WINNER (seeded): Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton – 31 votes
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin – 15 votes
Tooth and Claw surges forward, bettering its own score with each successive round. In previous rounds, it bested two other dragon books and ate their innards. Now it beats Martin’s best-seller.
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
WINNER: The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner – 25 votes
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik – 20 votes
This round had more votes for a tie than any other bracket pair to date (in any of the brackets), but Kushner’s Ruritanian-style tale managed a small but real win over a book combining two popular topics, The Napoleonic War era and dragons.
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
WINNER (seeded): Night Watch, Terry Pratchett – 39 votes
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross – 11 votes
Stross did better than anyone yet against Night Watch, but Pratchett’s powerhouse will be the one moving forward.
One hopes that future Worldcon committees learned something from the Ross mess:
1. Pick your GoH and award presenters carefully. People will judge based on what they find using Google.
2. Do proper PR and prepare people if controversy is a possibility.
3. Do not invite someone who can’t handle online controversy with some level of class. This means check their last year of social media to see how they behave.
The whole Ross thing was such a tempest in tea cup. From my reading, the executive had to make a quick decision(a nationally famous person isn’t going to keep his calander open forever waiting on a decision about an unpaid gig), and critics went way over the top when it was announced.
The Ross issue was sufficiently tempestuous that a committee member left because of it, but the public reaction was a bit histrionic, especially on Twitter. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of Worldcon attendees literally don’t get out much, and have no idea that you can hire a media figure and they’ll do what you tell them to do every time instead of going into business for themselves on stage.
Just realised I don’t know if Ross was going to get paid or not(as I stated above). But I am pretty sure it he was to be paid it wouldn’t be at his normal rates.
Regardless, media figures don’t go into business for themselves at gigs like Worldcon.
Really? In what way do you mean they don’t get out much? Everyone I know involved in or who regularly attends Worldcon gets out quite a bit. Again depending on how you define “much”.
Tintinaus: The whole Ross thing was such a tempest in tea cup. From my reading, the executive had to make a quick decision(a nationally famous person isn’t going to keep his calander open forever waiting on a decision about an unpaid gig), and critics went way over the top when it was announced.
It wasn’t that there was a huge deadline, it was that the chairs deliberately chose to do an end run around the proper procedure. They asked Neil Gaiman to ask Ross as a favor, because they knew the two have been friends for a long time, but they did it without going through the concom for agreement first, as they should have (quite possibly because they knew that there would be objections raised if they had).
Hugo ceremony host is not a paying gig; it’s typically something done by fairly big-name authors who are frequent Worldcon attendees and who are known to have good public presentation skills. (Ross actually would have been an exception to tradition.) Often the person(s) chosen will have special ties to that specific con location (such as Garth Nix for Aussiecon, George Takei for Nippon, Julie Czerneda for Anticipation and Spider Robinson for Torcon [Canada], Neil Gaiman for Noreascon).
2015: David Gerrold and Tananarive Due
2014: Justina Robson and Geoff Ryman
2013: Paul Cornell
2012: John Scalzi
2011: Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
2010: Garth Nix
2009: Julie Czerneda, with translation by Yves Meynard
2008: Wil McCarthy
2007: George Takei and Nozomi Ohmori
2006: Connie Willis
2005: Paul McAuley and Kim Newman
2004: Neil Gaiman
2003: Spider Robinson
2002: Tad Williams
2001: Esther Friesner
2000: Harry Turtledove
Also depends on exactly what he means by “get out.”
There’s also a bunch of unexamined assumptions:
That fans ought to have been thrilled and flattered to have the Hugos hosted by a “major celebrity” who was largely unknown to fans on the other side of the Atlantic.
That “reasonable” or possibly “sophisticated” people would have assumed that this celebrity would do something other than his usual act, without any information about him other than his name and what was all over Google.
That the fact that the celebrity’s time is normally very expensive means people outside his normal audience should value his time equally highly, so highly that they shouldn’t expect people theoretically acting on their behalf rather than on behalf of the celebrity to rush through a decision, not consult anyone else, and assume the job was done when the name was announced without any supporting information about why this was a good choice.
Because, sorry, here on this side of the Atlantic I don’t spend much time watching British talk shows, didn’t know Ross from a hole in the wall because he is in no way relevant to me, and what Google told me is that he’s highly paid to be a professional asshole.
Armed with the information that he was himself a fan, very familiar with the Hugos, and had performed quite creditably in presenting the Eisner’s and in other fannish venues, I’d have had a different reaction.
But the Loncon chairs didn’t think I needed that information, and Nick apparently agrees.
@Kyra:
I gotta read JS&MN one of these years; I wonder how the audiobook handles the footnotes (disrupting text, or at the end when all context is lost? neither seems good). Maybe someone’s explained this here before (Audible reviews mention the footnotes, but not how the audiobook handles them).
I’ll never understand why so many people loved Lies; it did nothing for me – I didn’t even finish it. Like Spin (which I actively disliked), it’s one of those “it must be me” books.
Somewhere, right now, someone’s cursing my favorite book, and the circle of life is complete. 😉
Anyway, thanks for all the bracketting, Kyra, as always! 😀
Actually, Lis, what I am saying is that people who get out into the world would know generally how media figures approach corporate/non-profit gigs, whether it’s cutting a ribbon at a new grocery store, speaking at a university commencement, or hosting the Academy Awards. And they’d handle it professionally. It’s international news when they fail to do so.
I’d also hope that most adults wouldn’t depend on a quick Google—though incidentally a quick Google doesn’t tell me that Ross’s usual act is that of a professional asshole at all. A lot of so-called quick Googlers decided that Ross was some sort of stand-up comedian: he’s not. A quick Google tells me that he frequently hosts award shows though, which is frankly all I need to know with regards to the idea that he would roast Hugo nominees or winners in a way unflattering either to them or to the award. Simply put, had he done it once, he wouldn’t be a frequent awards show host.
The issue really seems to be that members of the concom were starstruck—”Ooh, I get to ask Neil Gaiman to ask his close personal friend Mr Ross to host the Hugos!” and didn’t go through proper procedures to determine a host. Frankly, we know much more about Ross and how he might behave as a host than we know about any of the writers who have recently hosted, because there is years of evidence backing Ross as an awards show host. Quick Google shows me that the third hit of his name, is IMDB, after Wikipedia and his own Twitter feed, and IMDB describes him in part as an “awards show compere”.
How many awards shows did Jay Lake or John Scalzi host before hosting the Hugos? I know Jay was a toastmaster at a World Fantasy Convention as I happened to be there that year. We just generally make the assumption that hosts chosen from “in community” for lack of a better term won’t do something like arrange for a lagniappe* designed to humiliate the nominees that have been so annoying on his Facebook page (whoops!), or won’t appropriate a sacred religious practice for a gag (double-whoops!). Smart money is on the actual professional not committing such boners. Where’s fan money? Well, if fan money was on the table, it would be gone now.
*Hey, an asterisk! Incidentally, I had no problem with the asterisk, and was pleased to collect one for Edge of Tomorrow to send down to LA. But I have no problem with it because the Puppies spent months tearing down the Hugos—the Hugo people had every right to tweak them from the stage. But let us not pretend that it was designed to do just that.
PS: Frankie Boyle is hilarious and razor sharp. Would that one day that Hugos would be prominent enough to be worth his attention.
Nick Mamatas: A lot of so-called quick Googlers decided that Ross was some sort of stand-up comedian
I imagine that a lot more of them decided that he was a TV shock-jock host. I happened to have some idea who he was when I heard about the fiasco. But when I Googled him, the first few pages looked very different than they look right now; they were filled with articles about him making abusive remarks to and about Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Boyle, Heather Mills-McCartney, and many other women, and being forced to quit the BBC after he and Russell Brand made abusive phone calls to Andrew Sachs bragging about shagging Sachs’ granddaughter.
Nick Mamatas: I’d also hope that most adults wouldn’t depend on a quick Google
Why should they be expected to do more, to evaluate a presenter with whom they are not familiar? Why would the onus be on Worldcon attendees to go out and do a bunch of research?
It was the Loncon chairs’ jobs to provide con attendees with more — something they, for some unfathomable reason, chose not to do.
The whole fiasco was totally predictable and probably, to a great extent, preventable. It’s not Worldcon members’ fault for being upset after being blindsided in this way.
Quick correction: Ross was suspended, not forced to quit.
JJ,
My opinion was based on the version of events as I understood them at the time, which is different to how you outline them.
The version I heard was Gaiman aproached the con exec with a ready to go proposal and so they needed to respond quickly. If it was how you outline, yeah, they did the wrong thing across the board.
I imagine that a lot more of them decided that he was a TV shock-jock host
You can imagine what you like; I’m just reporting what I actually saw.
But when I Googled him, the first few pages looked very different than they look right now
Really? Doing a Google search that ends on 2/15/2014 shows some of that stuff, but amazingly, all the basic information is also still present. Did any of the sexist commentary happen at award shows, btw?
Why should they be expected to do more, to evaluate a presenter with whom they are not familiar?
Because most adults know that a quick Google doesn’t always lead to accurate information.
Why would the onus be on Worldcon attendees to go out and do a bunch of research?
You mean, like clicking through the Google results and seeing what the links actually say?
At any rate, why should Worldcon members evaluate this or that host? Did you evaluate any other Hugo host with a quick Google, or did you just depend on what you knew of their writing or blogging? Could you predict which Hugo speaker would take a nice dump on the religion of 800,000,000 people from it?
It was the Loncon chairs’ jobs to provide con attendees with more — something they, for some unfathomable reason, chose not to do.
Which Worldcon chairs provided more information for their hosts than Loncon provided for Ross?
Quick reminder that it was originally British fans that were loud in their disapproval, that British and not USAmerican fans were the ones involved in the backlash that lead him to quit, and I assure you British people know exactly who Ross is and what his schtick involves. Arguing about whether USAmerican fans, who hardly even knew about it until it was mostly over, did their research properly seems a bit pointless.
that British and not USAmerican fans were the ones involved in the backlash that lead him to quit
Not so. Several Americans, including fans who were also writers, were a significant part of the backlash.
Arguing about whether USAmerican fans, who hardly even knew about it until it was mostly over, did their research properly seems a bit pointless.
It also wasn’t actually the point. The point is why decide that someone who makes a part of his living hosting awards shows without incident was going to roast nominees and winners at this particular one?
But, Meredith, we make a much nicer target, because “everyone knows” Americans are both stupid and parochial. It’s an evergreen stereotype, renewed, for those who love it, with every instance of Americans not loving all the same things as the subset of nonAmericans who love the stereotype.
So it’s much easier and more satisfying to ignore the British fans who actually caused Ross’s withdrawal, and blame the Americans who didn’t know about it till it was over or nearly over, but who can be implied to be stupid and unsophisticated.
Nick Mamatas: Not so. Several Americans, including fans who were also writers, were a significant part of the backlash.
I’m sure you’ve seen the timeline that shows McGuire’s tweets didn’t take place until after Ross had already offered to step down. So don’t be claiming that the majority of the cause — or even a significant part of it — was from Americans.