Pixel Scroll 9/30 Bite Cycles

(1) Product placement. Would you like to guess what product is featured in The Martian?

Aston Martin, Omega, and Burberry will be among the brands proud to be associated with Spectre, the latest James Bond movie when it opens next month. But with product placement and promotional tie-ins now generating big bucks for movie-makers, brands eager to share a piece of the big-screen action now extend well beyond the usual suspects.

For proof, look no further than The Martian, the new sci-fi action adventure starring Matt Damon, which opens in the UK later this week complete with… an official potato. Though even this is not the most surprising in a recent series of increasingly bizarre promotional couplings.

…The end result is a promotional campaign for which the film studio used its connections with NASA to provide Albert Bartlett customers with an all-expenses-paid family trip to the Kennedy Space Center as a competition prize in a Martian-themed promotional campaign.

“They wanted exposure. They also knew that, while the film will have big appeal with single blokes, they needed a way to open it up to a wider, family audience,” Marcantonio explains. “Which means it makes sense at a number of different levels. Unlike when soft drinks companies tie up with just about any family movie they can find to reach kids, this tie-up is anything but spurious.”

Indeed. And for a more mundane reason, too. Because like the planet Mars, Albert Bartlett’s best-selling potato – the Rooster – is … red.

(2) Not all of the marketing has been a success.

Remember what I said the other day about not betting against David Gerrold when science fiction cinema is on the line?

His new Facebook post concerns The Martian.

So, here’s my review of The Martian…which I was supposed to see tonight.

The studio’s public relations department is run by idiots.

If you arrange a screening, and if you make passes available to hundreds of fans — warning them ahead of time that you have overbooked and nobody is guaranteed a seat is not an excuse. It’s a cop-out.

You don’t turn away a hundred or more people at the door and shrug it off and say, “Sorry.”

What you do is you say, “Let’s make it up to these people who came all this way and waited all this time.” You go to the management of the theater and say, “We want to schedule a second screening after the first one concludes so that no one goes home disappointed.” That not only gives you good PR with the audience but it helps generate good word-of-mouth three days before the film opens.

The movie might be good. I expect it will be. But the PR people just pissed off at least a hundred fans who waited two hours or longer in line. Not good. Just not good.

(3) Astronaut Clayton C. Anderson, who did get into a screening, wrote this review:

Having already read and enjoyed Weir’s excellent adventure, I was pleasantly surprised with the effective presentation of the novel on screen. Seeing beautiful Martian vistas, punctuated by mountainous terrain in variegated hues of orange, made it seem as if humans were already living there. The use of high-altitude and digitally accurate perspectives of the Martian surface pulled at my heart strings. And I loved that Andy Weir developed a relationship with NASA after publishing the novel, leading the push to involve the space program directly with Scott. The resulting emphasis on science provides an enjoyable balance between the film’s considerable entertainment value and its educational, inspirational, and technological references.

(4) A New Yorker cartoon contains the greatest proof yet of life on Mars….

(5) However, when Rush Limbaugh claims he’s unconvinced NASA found water on Mars, it’s not comedy, it’s tragedy.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: There’s so much fraud. Snerdly came in today ‘what’s this NASA news, this NASA news is all exciting.’ I said yeah they found flowing water up there. ‘No kidding! Wow! Wow!’ Snerdly said ‘flowing water!?’ I said ‘why does that excite you? What, are you going there next week? What’s the big deal about flowing water on Mars?’ ‘I don’t know man but it’s just it’s just wow!’ I said ‘you know what, when they start selling iPhones on Mars, that’s when it’ll matter to me.’ I said ‘what do you think they’re gonna do with this news?’ I said ‘look at the temperature data, that has been reported by NASA, has been made up, it’s fraudulent for however many years, there isn’t any warming, there hasn’t been for 18.5 years. And yet, they’re lying about it. They’re just making up the amount of ice in the North and South Poles, they’re making up the temperatures, they’re lying and making up false charts and so forth. So what’s to stop them from making up something that happened on Mars that will help advance their left-wing agenda on this planet?’ And Snerdly paused ‘oh oh yeah you’re right.’ You know, when I play golf with excellent golfers, I ask them ‘does it ever get boring playing well? Does it ever get boring hitting shot after shot where you want to hit it?’ And they all look at me and smile and say ‘never.’ Well folks, it never gets boring being right either. Like I am. But it doesn’t mean it is any less frustrating.

(6) GeekTyrant says this is the 10-foot inflatable Jabba the Hutt you’re looking for.

ilvr_sw_jabba_the_hut_inflatable

Here’s something that’s sure to piss off your neighbors: a ten-foot long, six-foot tall inflatable Jabba the Hutt, perfect for decorating your front lawn or as the centerpiece for that Star Wars-themed party you might be planning. You can bring it with you to wait in line for The Force Awakens, use it as a Home Alone-style distraction to make potential robbers think a large alien lives in your home…the possibilities are too numerous to entertain in one sitting.

“I say put a Santa hat on him and put him in the front yard,” is John King Tarpinian’s advice.

Or give him his own radio show.

From ThinkGeek for $169.99.

(7) Elizabeth Bear lets readers in on the drafting process…

(8) Rights to Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold The Moon” have been acquired by Allen Bain’s firm Bainframe. It will be developed for television.

More details on Deadline.com:

Bain (Two Men In Town, Revenge Of The Green Dragons) founded Bainframe to tell stories that have “the power to inspire people to dream of a better tomorrow.” This is the shingle’s second rights buy, following Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn. 

…The Man Who Sold The Moon tells the tale of Delos D. Harriman, a businessman possessed by a dream to take humanity off-Earth. As a young entrepreneur, he starts a private space company to colonize the moon and create the home he never had. He is driven to the brink while single-handedly ushering the entire human race to its next evolutionary step.

“This story is inspiring because the private space race is happening now and will become a reality within a decade. This is not some far flung science fiction yarn. It is something we are going to experience in our lifetime,” says Bain. The timing coincides with yesterday’s announcement by NASA of strong evidence there is flowing water on Mars. “The Man Who Sold the Moon allows us to imagine how the space race will play out, but at its core it’s really a gripping portrait of a complex character with an impossible dream.”

Bain notes that Harriman’s journey is reminiscent of the current crop of space pioneers like Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) who has credited Heinlein as an inspiration.

(9) WisCon posted a report in June about the results of the first con run under its new anti-abuse policy.

This year was the first convention where we had a formal procedure in place for what to do when individuals attending WisCon violate the code of conduct described in our anti-harassment policy. The policy is intended to be flexible to allow for different situations, but its basic idea is that if somebody reports a harassing behavior to Safety, the person responsible can be issued a warning and asked to do something differently (such as staying away from a place or person). If warnings aren’t attended to or harassing behavior escalates, the policy describes a few more options, including –– in the worst case scenario, which we hope to avoid –– that Safety and Chairs in consultation with available Anti-Abuse Team members can make a collective at-con decision to ban someone from WisCon.

Now that the convention is over, Safety has handed off their at-con reports to the full Anti-Abuse Team, which is reviewing reports that are still open post-con and evaluating how well the policy performed on- site. Here’s how things looked in our first year:

  • 11 issues relating to the anti-harassment policy were reported to Safety.
  • 4 attendees were issued warnings for harassing behaviors.
  • 1 disruptive non-member was escorted off the premises by hotel staff.
  • 1 person was banned, after several warnings, in response to reports both from multiple departments and from the hotel –– some relating to patterns of behavior going back several years.

(10) Curbed has a report on a film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise coming to film festivals.

The novel begins with a truly surreal opening line—”later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog”—and the story explores a societal breakdown similar to of-the-moment entertainment franchises such as The Walking Dead. But in J.G. Ballard’s 1975 High-Rise, the subject of a new film adaptation starting to make the festival rounds this month, the enemy isn’t some virus or the undead. The residents of a new London high-rise slowly regress and devolve into tribal infighting not due to some outside force altering their environment, but because of the environment itself. The tower becomes a character in the story, written as a symbol of the meticulous (and ultimately very fragile) class systems built up by society.

(11) Wired has interviewed David J. Peterson about his new book in “How To Invent A Language, From The Guy Who Made Dothraki”.

Some Conlangers Want to Keep Their Hobby Arcane

Peterson recognizes there are “definitely some negative aspects” to the growth in conlang popularity. He cites linguistic pioneer J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord Of The Rings as an example of the community’s instinct toward self-protection. “There were some people who reacted negatively [when LOTR was published] because they knew conlang would start to get more attention, and they didn’t want that,” he says. Until recently, the community has been a supportive niche for people with a very specific interest. But as television shows and films with created languages continue to pop up in more places, it’s no longer as heavily guarded.

His Book Aims to Codify Conlang Knowledge For Posterity

Constructed languages have existed for centuries, but the advent of the internet brought with it the listserv that created a true community of peers. Since then, the community has grown hugely—but as the internet has changed, a new generation of conlangers on various social networks has become more spread out and unaware of each other. “I’ve met dozens of conlangers on Tumblr, all new, all young, who have no idea that each other exist,” he says, “because they’re with the mass kind of shouting into the wind.” None of them know about the old conlang listserv, and now it’s an antiquated form of digital communication, so “they don’t want to bother with that.” Peterson worries about redundancies that would arise from the lack of connection. “They’re inheriting a kingdom they really don’t know the history of, and know nothing about,” he says. They’re reinventing every single wheel we already perfected.” The Art Of Language Invention is a way of bridging the gap between the old and new conlangers by becoming a codex of sorts, preserving knowledge of constructed language much in the same way ancient languages have been preserved throughout history.

[Thanks to Mark sans surname, Andrew Porter, Ansible Links, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

343 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/30 Bite Cycles

  1. Bracking:

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    Less than a week till Mercy!

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    I suspect this the round where Melanie finally buys it, but this book is my Ms. Justineau and I will follow it as far as I can. Meanwhile, Carey-voting confrères, go get The Devil You Know now. Go!

  2. Hrrm. Well, with Banks out, I find I don’t care enough about the remainder (the ones I’ve read, anyway — about half). I like some better than others, but not “best 21st century SF novel” like, I guess.

    So I will be cheering from the sidelines. Go, that-novel-by-that-author!

  3. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY

    1. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi

  4. @Xtifr: I thought Leckie did a nice job of making Breq alien while simultaneously making her understandable. (The pronouns may have had something to do with that, yes.) Freshness may admittedly be an issue here.

    @Kyra:

    I’ll try to recite this to myself the next time I am trying to think of a bracket pairing title that somehow bears relevance to both a far-future dystopian cybered cast-of-thousands MilSF epic and an alt-history character-driven drawing room mystery chamber piece.

    So lonely is the hand that throws the dice.

  5. @redheadedfemme: LOL at your “Daisy, Daisy” filk. Thanks. 🙂

    @Kyra: I’m abstaining – only read three, and they’re, whew, not opposite each other. Another five were already TBR, of course (a couple already owned).

    BTW the blog did that thing to me – next comments page link took me to (as it said) the bottom of the main page for the blog post – but of course, it had one comment on it, so I missed a bunch and had to backtrack. Stupid software, and (IMHO) should be easy to fix. There’s no reason the last “newer comments” link shouldn’t link to the page # like all the other older/newer comments links do! Sigh.

    @Jim Henley: Really great reply to the troll. Thanks for taking (giving?) one for the team! And wow, quite a personal story there.

    That said, even if folks aren’t all using the filter, when you see the troll’s name – scroll down without reading (or, if subscribed via e-mail, simply delete the e-mail, unread). As Meredith said – don’t feed the troll! (Uh, Meredith, you do feed Brian Z a fair bit. . . . 😉 Granted, we probably have different definitions of troll.)

    I’m seeing “The Martian” this weekend or Monday, yay! And I’m so looking forward to Ancillary Mercy, I’ll probably visit Barnes & Noble before the 6th, in case they put it out early. And I believe I will finish Time Salvager by the time AM comes out. (whew!)

    /not-checking-the-box-yet…be-back-tonight

  6. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Ouch. But as much as I admired Fledgling (and Octavia Butler), this book broke my heart.

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    1. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi

  7. @Kendall

    Occasionally I have a new flush of enthusiasm that Brian Z might become a reasonable person to talk to (plus the time when I was partly just keeping him neatly out of the way). Then I give up again for awhile.

    Some people get a certain amount of enjoyment from troll-baiting, so I try to leave room for them to do their thing while reminding everyone else that ignoring trolls like buwaya is always an option if your happiness would be better off that way. If I start I tend to get sucked into a spiral so I try not to start – although my mood hasn’t been great lately and that makes it harder.

  8. @Meredith: “leave room for them to do their thing” – Heh, you’re very giving! 😉 I’m only half-kidding; for me, it can be easier to resist a troll or half-troll when others engage.

    (Okay, the filter – and trying not to peek – helps, too.)

    Signing off to go read. . . .

  9. JJ, lurkertype, Lauowolf, congratulations! With a purchase of a gross of forehead cloths, you get this GENUINE limited-edition cast-plastic model of a steamroller rolling over a die! Buy seven gross and collect the whole set! (And I’m cutting my own throat!)

  10. Meanwhile, Carey-voting confrères, go get The Devil You Know now. Go!

    I read that earlier this week. I thought it kind of meandered for the first half of the book or so, with things happening in perfectly-workable prose, but no strong sense of direction — and then the last half of the book was a momentum-rocket to a very satisfying conclusion and great set-up for more.

    So even though Castor, at this point, seems very much a member of the Trenchcoat Brigade of Faux-Constantines, I’ll definitely be getting more and I look forward to seeing what he’ll develop into.

  11. @Kendall

    I end up having a weird crisis – I don’t want to talk to the troll, but people I do want to talk to are saying interesting things! Or maybe they need support! What do I dooo!? Because I am a ridiculous human being. 🙂 It’s why I’m so careful to leave the room for engagement; part of me is going nooo stop talking to them, will to resist… Failing..! and, um, I don’t want to inflict my neuroses on anyone. At least, not when I’m not trying to.

    @Lauowolf

    I’m okay with it except for the half-trolls. I get lured in by the odd normal, reasonable comment and then suddenly I’ve lost half a day and I’m hunched over my iPad chanting wrong wrong wrong to myself. I’m trying to work on that, because my mood is not usually improved by falling into that one.

    Right, now I think I have some replies to make to stuff earlier in the thread when writing anything much longer than a sentence was just not going to happen. Time to find them…

  12. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    Argh, difficult.

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    I don’t really like either of these, but I’ll go with Farthing to kick out the Stephenson. Unless I can have Fortune’s Pawn back. Or Grimspace. Or any of my other favourites that were kicked out early.

    Or keeping with the theme, make this The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    This one was difficult, but sorry, Octavia

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    1. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    Accelerando, Charles Stross
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi

    No vote for Accelerando, since I don’t like it.

  13. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    Oooh – Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie I think. If it had been Ancillary Sword versus City and The City the vote would have gone the other way. If it had been an author v author fight Miéville would have won based on sustained performance, but it wasn’t and Breq wins as they always deserved too.

  14. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie !!!

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson!!!

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    abstain

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    3 Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    1 Accelerando, Charles Stross
    2 Lock In, John Scalzi

    Aaugh

  15. @Kurt: The funny thing is, to me Constantine started life as a faux Len Deighton narrator. And Deighton was drawing on Chandler. This shit goes all the way down, man!

  16. Kyra!

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    The Leckie was more plausible, and more fun.

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    Abstain.

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    Abstain.

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    2. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    1. Accelerando, Charles Stross
    3. Lock In, John Scalzi

  17. (1) Personally I think Albert Bartlett potatoes taste really good, and well done them for taking advantage of an unusual product placement opportunity. Much better flavour than a Burberry coat…

    (5) Wow. Limbaugh is a paranoid idiot. Is American talk radio like this generally or is it just this guy?

    (9) I’m glad WisCon is taking steps to improve their harassment policy. I agree with some of the criticisms people have made above that they’re trying a bit too hard to avoid ‘policing’ and I hope that it doesn’t lead to a lack of enforcement.

    That being said, I like that they’re thinking about helping people work towards not repeating bad behaviour. Reform is a valuable thing, so long as it doesn’t come at too high a cost, and victims aren’t pressured to help.

  18. Talk about comics:

    First, a shoutout to xtifr. I don’t think I have the right to say I was Rory’s friend — I bought comics from him for something like 25 years, but there’s a distinction to be made between “friendly customer” and “friend” (litmus test: do you socialize, outside of the business relationship?) and I was always firmly on the customer side of the line. But he was an important part of my life, if in a minor way, and I miss his cheerful tenor.

    As for things in this thread:
    I’ve heard of Bilal but never read him. Since two people nominated the Nikopol trilogy, it’ll go on. I’ve also put on The Incal, so that gives Moebius some participation.

    The nonfiction work is Understanding Comics, and you’d have to put a gun to my head to get it removed. I’ve heard good things about The Cartoon History of the Universe but I hesitate to put on another non-SF/F work.

    I love Breaking Cat News but it just doesn’t quite make it. (I think The Order of the Stick would be on first.)

    Phil and Kaja Foglio are on with Girl Genius; Buck Godot gives them a little too much.

    We3 makes the cut, as does The Tale of One Bad Rat.

    I tried to read Gunnerkrigg Court but it never managed to engage my interest. Since I’m the one making the judgment, that means it gets unfairly excluded.

    At this point I have 63 items. You all have a few days to campaign hard for your favorite thing that hasn’t yet been mentioned; I’m toying with the idea of giving The Sandman or Watchmen a first-round bye.

  19. The funny thing is, to me Constantine started life as a faux Len Deighton narrator. And Deighton was drawing on Chandler. This shit goes all the way down, man!

    In this case, it’s not just narrative style. It’s the sarcastic downscale magician in the grubby long coat with the subdued and highly non-flashy powers and the guilt over spells gone wrong that harmed friends tormenting him. I don’t mind a character starting there, but they’d better go someplace else from there. That’s what Castor felt like by the end of the book, so I have hopes.

  20. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    I need one of Cally’s Official Forehead Cloths here. Or I would if I wasn’t going to opt for the easy way out and declare a tie.

    But I will probably be thinking about this pairing all night, when I should be sleeping.

    2. Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

    4. Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

  21. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    I’m going to have to be contrary and go with Embassytown: Mieville tried to develop a truly alien language system (how well he succeeded is up for argument) as opposed to tweaking some aspects of a common human one.

    And that’s the only category I’ve read both entries in.

  22. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    Haven’t ever really liked Mieville’s work, though I may have to give it another chance.

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    Seveneves, Neal Stephenson.

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    Accelerando, Charles Stross
    Lock In, John Scalzi

    1 (tie) Bujold/Scalzi
    3. Stross

  23. I was spared the worst pain this round by IRV and an easy decision wrt Ancillary.

    FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    ABstain

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    (1) Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    (2) Lock In, John Scalzi

  24. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    Technically, Ancillary Justice doesn’t have that much to do do with linguistics, But honestly, I loved Ancillary Justice, and the only Mieville I’ve liked was UnLunDon.

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    I am waiting and going to be waitng for the next book in the Steerswoman series. I mean the author can take as much time as she needs, but I just loved the series that much.

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    I’m not sure I can say I liked Farthing, because I’m not sure it’s a book to like. But I’ll take the prose of Walton over Stephenson any day.

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    Accelerando, Charles Stross
    Lock In, John Scalzi

    Diplomatic Immunity isn’t the strongest Vorkoskigan novel (nhonestly, he’s getting too settled), but Accellerando bored me to tears, and I haven’t really read much of Lock In yet.

  25. More comics… well, if Ieave out the scandinavian comics and also those NSFW…

    Mouseguard?

  26. I just found the new split-screen function on my iPad and I’m so happy. This makes composing comments on the go so much easier.

    @Ann Feruglio Dal Dan

    I’m not even sure what the Ton is!

    SF pub meet, every first thursday of the month:

    Oh, thanks! I’ll have to keep track of it and try to get there next time I’m in London at the right time. ETA: Scrach that, I just noticed it doesn’t have disabled access. Never mind.

    @Tasha Turner

    The troll might get bored and leave if not fed.

    Oh, what a terrible shame that would be… 😉

    @Jim Henley

    The idea that we’d all have sprung, fully-formed into a lefty propaganda bubble is indeed ridiculous. Your post as a whole was wonderful.

    @RedWombat

    Loved the filk. 🙂

    @Kyra

    Oh! How interesting! I bet Ness could do some seriously terrifying things with Doctor Who monsters if he’s given enough space to do it in.

    @Dawn Incognito

    Oh, that’s sad. I hope he does find a way to pull out of it, but it isn’t looking good at the moment.

    21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    1. Lock In, John Scalzi

    Seriously, split-screen thingy = A+++

  27. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    Most of the books I’ve read seem to have gone, so I can’t vote on so much:

    1. Embassytown, China Miéville

    By a nose. I like the Ancillary books a lot, but Mieville just clicks with me, and this is the best example of his writing since the Scar (Kraken didn’t quite work for me, as it took too long to work out what the book was trying to be).

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    2 Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    3 Accelerando, Charles Stross
    1 Lock In, John Scalzi

    Based purely on how often I’ve re-read these books, as there’s no other way I could split them.

  28. Mark me down as another who thinks Ancillary Justice hitting so hard has something to do with timing. I very much enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to reading Mercy, but I’m still not 100% certain it’s great. I feel like I’ll know that for sure in 5 or 10 years. I feel like Banks should be the Tolkien of the 21st Century SF brackets. And the thing is, I am the default person, so my opinion is very, very important. 😉

    That said, I wouldn’t be surprised or bummed if it wins the brackets. It does feel to me like it’s taking what came before and upping the game a bit. Or a lot. Like I said, I need a few years to know for sure. I bogged down a bit in the middle of Sword, and then really dug the last half or third. Maybe my feelings have to do with having spent so much time in Bujold’s and Banks’ worlds, but only having spent two books in Leckie’s.

    Yegads, I feel bad criticizing A{J,S,M} at all, given the ludicrous accusations that have been leveled at it by the tie-in* fetishists.

    And also, I haven’t read enough of her SF, but Cherryh has to be one of the great un-sung heroes of SF/F. Not that she’s all that un-sung. But man, I re-read the Thieves World series a few years back, having been a huge fan in my mid-teens, and a lot of what I loved about that series had been thoroughly gone through by the suck fairy and had all the joy sucked right out of it. Cherryh’s stories, particularly in The Dead of Winter (IIRC) were great. The writing went over my head as a teenager, but… what’s the opposite of the suck fairy? Whatever entity that may be, it really hit Cherryh’s stories hard.

    * Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  29. 1. Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie – made easier by not being my favourite Mieville

    3. Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    5. Unpossible! Umm, maybe Stross, Bujold, Scalzi?

  30. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold

  31. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Accelerando, Charles Stross

  32. 1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold

  33. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey

  34. @Kathodus

    Think you managed to sum up my feelings there too. Though in my case its Banks and Cherryh (the Alliance/Union books in particular). As the AJ is now the only book apart from Accelerando on the bracket I’ve read that’s me out anyway.

    Even saying that the only 21st century sci-fi book that had me saying “wow” rather than “now that’s a good book” was Altered Carbon. That would never have won here though.

  35. My votes:

    1. Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    2. The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein
    3. Farthing, Jo Walton

  36. DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    Pass

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    1. Accelerando, Charles Stross
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi
    3. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold

  37. With regard to Kyra’s observation that most high-ranked books are from the early 2000s, with one very-recent book…. Honestly, I think part of it is a lot of people started Hugo reading in the last few years (puppies, feh) so a lot of folks here have read novels from 2013-2015. And the ten-plus-year-old books have had that time to find their audience and get read. So it’s really the books pre-puppy but post-10-years-old that have the hardest time.

    Just my two cents…

  38. @Kurt Busiek:

    I don’t mind a character starting there, but they’d better go someplace else from there. That’s what Castor felt like by the end of the book, so I have hopes.

    Oh yeah, Castor has A Arc. By the end of Book 1 he has learned a thing, and in the subsequent books tries to act on it. By the end of Book 5, the full ramifications of that thing get worked out, such as the true nature of demons. I like the fact that the series goes somewhere morally and cosmologically. Much as I loved spending time with Felix – I am a sucker for the Philip Marlowe type, magical or otherwise – I can see how stopping after five books is an artistic victory for Carey. He does stuff and then it’s done.

    IIRC, I was not especially impressed with the third book. But books 4 and 5 really did it for me.

  39. Plus, Carey is just a much better stylist than Jim Butcher, who overwrites like crazy and keeps falling back on stock phrases. When I still read Dresden Files, I got to the point where I kept tensing up through each new book until Butcher got around to informing us, in the exact words, “Murphy was good people.”

    But I think there’s much more to praise the Felix Castor books for than just being “better than the Dresden Files.”

  40. Dammit, almost missed this again!

    21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Oddly, not because of the gender thing (which you don’t notice when reading unless you think lesbianism is this made-up thing that doesn’t involve mortgages and taking out the bins every week), but because of the interesting slide between singular and hive: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    I keep voting for this, even though it’s just a popcorn book. I guess good popcorn’s just good sometimes 🙂 Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    This blows away almost everything in this metric: Anathem, Neal Stephenson

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    Not that tricky if you earn your living with computers and web stuff and startups: Accelerando, Charles Stross (and the other’s orders I don’t even care about, they’re so far back)

  41. I’m not that big fan of Ancillary Justice. A bit too slow start, too many “chance meetings” with people from the past. Didn’t care much for what would happen to the protagonists. I’d give it 7/10 I guess. A bit above average, but not that much.

    My favourites have a tendency to loose out at early stages.

  42. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson
    Farthing, Jo Walton

    4. ZOMBIE VS. VAMPIRE
    The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

    5. ANOTHER TRICKY TRICHOTOMY
    2. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
    3. Accelerando, Charles Stross
    1. Lock In, John Scalzi

    And now I must get ready to go assess two not-currently-thrilled dogs whose hoomans have been littering and now have three hooman puppies under the age of four. Dogs say this is not what they signed on for; they wish to apply to adopt a new family.

  43. 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART FOUR:
    DAISY, DAISY, LEND ME YOUR NOVEL, DO

    1. DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTICS
    Embassytown, China Miéville

    2. SEARCHING FOR THE RUNAWAY
    The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein

    3. NOT OUR WORLD — OR IS IT?
    Anathem, Neal Stephenson

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