(1) This day in history:
…in 1966, “Star Trek” premiered on NBC-TV.
Which makes it the perfect day to release Captain Kirk’s autobiography:
“The Autobiography of James T. Kirk – The Story of Starfleet’s Greatest Captain,” is to be published by Titan Books on Tuesday – 49 years to the day after “Star Trek” premiered on television in 1966.
It comes with illustrations, including Kirk’s Starfleet Academy class graduation photo and an unsent letter he penned to his son.
Fan fiction plays a popular role in the “Star Trek” universe and interest has been building since actor William Shatner, the best-known embodiment of Kirk, appeared at July’s Comic-Con International with Goodman and read excerpts from the book. A Shatner-signed copy of the book can be found on the Internet selling for $150.00.
According to the autobiography, Kirk passed over the Vulcan Mr. Spock to be his first officer of the starship Enterprise; 20th century social worker Edith Keeler, not the mother of his son, was the great love of his life; and Kirk may have another son on a distant planet – who makes what suspiciously looks like “Star Trek” movies.
(2) Now there’s an official touchscreen that can turn your Raspberry Pi into a tablet.
Two years in the making, an official touchscreen for the tiny board has gone on sale.
The diminutive Raspberry Pi – a computer on a board the size of a credit card – has been wildly successful. It was created with the aim of encouraging children to experiment with building their own devices and while the makers thought they might sell 1,000 they have now sold well over five million.
(3) The roads must roll! Chris Mills on Gizmodo says “Replacing Subway Lines With High-Speed Moving Sidewalks Sounds Terrifying”.
London has the oldest subway system in the world: great for tourism, but sometimes not-so-great for commuters. There’s all sorts of sensible plans to upgrade the city’s public transport, but here’s one particularly outside-the-box solution: a 15mph moving sidewalk, looping 17 miles under London. What could go wrong!
(4) Erin Underwood has a fine interview with Rosarium Publisher Bill Campbell at Amazing Stories.
Bill Campbell
(ASM): What upcoming book or project are you are especially excited about? Why that book/project? (Bill, this can be a Rosarium book or something else.)
(BC): All of our projects are really near and dear to my heart, and so are our authors and artists. At this level, you really get to know the people you work with, and you really find yourself rooting for their success and work yourself to the bone to try to help them reach it.
I think the one project, though, that’s nearest and dearest to my heart is Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany that I co-edited with Nisi Shawl. I don’t know if I’d have ever written science fiction if it weren’t for Chip, and I can’t help thinking how hard it must’ve been for him to be alone in the field for as long as he was. He had to carry a mighty large load for a lot of people and did it with such grace and intelligence. I told Daniel Jose Older that there are, perhaps, five people on this planet who intimidate me. Delany’s one of them. I just wanted to thank him. It took over two years to do it properly, and, thanks to Nisi and the authors involved, it turned out a lot better than I could’ve possibly hoped.
(5) Tom Knighton’s blog has a new header with a photo of the author, which really brightens the place up.
(6) Mark Pampanin of SCPR has dug a little deeper into how gay rights got its start in science fiction.
But it’s true – gay and lesbian writers and activists who wanted to connect with others in the LGBT community in the 1940s could only do so with pseudonyms and double entendre. And they were able to do it with the help of another burgeoning movement with roots in Los Angeles – science fiction….
Kepner and Ben, as Jyke and Tigrina, were both devoted members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which met weekly in the basement of the Prince Rupert Arms near downtown Los Angeles to imagine a future of technological marvels and social equality.
The society still exists. Now in Van Nuys, it’s the oldest running science fiction society in the world, and holds members just as devoted as Kepner and Ben once were, like June Moffatt, who joined the society in August 1947 when she was a teenager. She says she “only met Tigrina once” but she knew Kepner quite well.
“He was good fun,” says Moffatt. Moffatt knew Kepner was gay and an activist, but he was still just “one of the gang. I remember once sitting down next to [Kepner] and telling him he was in danger,” Moffatt says, laughing. “I was flirting with him.”
(7) Black Nerd Problems’ L. E. H. Light declares “No More Diversity Panels, It’s Time To Move On”.
What’s a convention program director to do? They want to present and represent “diversity” in their audience. They’re hearts are in the right place, or not. As others have pointed out, sometimes The Diversity Panel is an excuse for the convention to avoid actually integrating their other panels. Well intentioned or not, the recent fuss at the Hugos really proves this point: we’re here, we’re not going any where. We and our allies vote for awards and read books and *gasp* write and publish them too! The “why is diversity important” is an answered question. So what’s next?
(8) Yesterday I had a clip about a spider clock, but there is a lot more to know about mechanical spiders if you’re interested. (The two of you who raised your hands can keep reading.) One example is this video, Inside Adam Savage’s Cave: Awesome Robot Spider!
We’re back in Adam’s cave to check out his latest obsession, a robot spider with incredibly realistic movement. Adam shows off the special box and platform he built to tinker and calibrate the spider, and then sends it crawling around the pool table in his shop. It’s not for the arachnophobic!
Other recommended one-day build videos are this one building Cylon raiders and troopers from plastic model kits with Aaron Douglas:
And this one building his Kirk chair:
(9) BBC Two has optioned China Miéville’s The City & the City and will develop the novel into a four-part series based on the Inspector Tyador Borlú character. British screenwriter Tony Grisoni is writing the adaptation.
“We are thrilled to be bringing China’s dazzlingly inventive novel to BBC Two,” said Damien Timmer, managing director at Mammoth Screen, which will produce the project. “It’s a 21st Century classic — a truly thrilling and imaginative work which asks big questions about how we perceive the world and how we interact with each other.”
(10) As you already know, Soon Lee is hosting a collection of the punny variations on the title of Rachel Swirsky’s “If you were a dinosaur, my love” produced on File 770 today.
(11) John Scalzi has entered Hugo hibernation. (See last comment on this post at Whatever).
I have officially come to the end of thinking about the Hugos for 2015. If other people decide they want to, that’s their business, but as for here, my plan is let it be through the end of the year. Because, fuck me, I’m tired of them.
May I also suggest that you let it go as well? Surely the rest of your 2015 is better spent doing something else with your time. I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying you should. That goes for everyone.
(12) John C. Wright, on the other hand, is still roaming the tundra hunting for fresh prey.
If you voted, please write Sasquan, and demand, not ask, that they release the nomination data. The idea that the data must be kept private to avoid someone from deducing the voter’s identities is an absurd lie, not worth wasting ink to refute. They are trying to hide a bloc voting pattern, or a large number of votes that were entered after voting closed or something of the sort.
No, see, THE CABAL keeps certain people down, while THE CONSPIRACY boosts certain people up. Hope that helps. https://t.co/ckISAdztGr
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 8, 2015
(13) Charles Rector in Fornax #5 [PDF file] begins his editorial on the 2015 Hugos with this tantalizing hook —
Have you ever taken a firm position on a subject only to realize later that you were on the wrong side and as time went on, you got to wonder how you ever took that previous position? That was my experience with this year’s Hugo Awards. When the year started, I was on the side of the slates. It seemed that the slates were a good idea given the state of the Hugo Awards.
I bet you’ll never see a turnaround like that anywhere else.
(14) 100 Years of Robots in the Movies. (Despite the title I’m pretty sure I saw a split second of Doctor Who in there – and other TV shows…)
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Jerry Pournelle, Ita, and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist.]
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MØØse bites can be very nasti
A Møøse once bit my sister…
The first thing I did when reading through today’s scroll was to stop and watch the video of the robotic spider. Real spiders creep me out, but this is just a cute electro-mechanical toy, and doesn’t bother me at all.
“I am, in all modesty, one of the finest writers the world has ever known, but I have difficulty constructing a grammatical English sentence.”
“to avoid someone from deducing”? Really?
Today on Whathiver, the sentient swarm has Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown as The Big Idea.
I should track the number of requests for a book at my library when a Big Idea goes up. See if it has any effect. At the moment there are more than 20 requests and they haven’t received/processed copies yet.
Star Trek planets with movie technology? Besides the Gangster Planet, there were also the “Roman Empire Never Fell” planet (where Kirk actually did have a canonical liaison with a young lady) and the Nazi planet.
@Jack Lint: I might just have to make my way to Forbidden Planet in London tomorrow evening …
parents were always coming in to the principal’s office and vehemently defending their kids
Really happened: kids across the back fence were egging our house (either really good throwing arms or some kind of launching device: over a 6-foot fence and hitting halfway up the side of the house, fifty feet past the fence). Their mother said ‘Oh, we never have eggs in the house because [son] is allergic to them’. Teenagers, supermarket, parent not at home at the time.
Chocolate møøse are the most vicious of the lot.
Although the Puppies certainly seem resolutely determined to be The Trainwreck That Never Ends, But Just Goes On and On and On…. I do think there’s a lot to be said for just letting them return to the obscurity they so richly deserve.
I think the nearly-6000 people who voted at Sasquan all know that NOMINATING is important in 2016. And EPH proposers know it needs to be tested and refined. And WSFS and MidAmeriCon II members know that the measures passed in Sasquan to mitigate the effects of slates and block-nominations need to be ratified in Kansas City. If the Hugo rules are amended to eliminate the problem by 2017, when you also consider the probable surge in European voters that year, the Puppies will probably find their ability to manipulate the ballot extremely limited (or perhaps non-existent) in 2017. Which will make rallying bigger numbers (and probably retention of their existing numbers) even harder for yet another year of a doomed Puppy effort to manipulate the process in 2018.
I do think that people who’ve discovered that hate-blogging and rallying a segment of angry fandom against a chosen target makes them very visible, much talked-about, and tremendously increases their blog traffic will keep looking for targets for their rambling rage, because they seem unlikely to want to give up the attention (and may kid themselves that this is “good for their careers”). But I think the Hugos will only remain a target for as long as the pack they’ve formed is energerized about them, and I don’t think that will be indefinitely.
So I think the things for everyone else to focus on is NOT more Puppy screeching, but instead nominating in 2016 and getting the amendments ratified in Kansas City to eliminate the vulnerability to slates that has existed for years in the nominating process.
But the Puppies themselves can be ignored, IMO. They seem to be stuck in a counter-productive echo chamber, hampered by epistemic closure, extremely unlikely to alter their sure-fail tactics, and without promising prospects for increasing their voting block (Correia, who seems better equipped to attract new people than the MGC bloggers, really pushed the boat out in 2015, so I’m skeptical that Paulk/Hoyt/Green will attract crowds he did not already tap). I thkn the results of looking at Puppy blogs and activities once every couple of months from now on will be identical to the results of looking at them every day, but much less time-wasting: A brief eyeroll and a weary headshake.
@Rev. Bob: Are you turning into an ideas man? Anyway, how ’bout this:
TTTO Waylon Jennings – Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Puppies ain’t easy to please, ‘cuz they choke on their pride
They’d rather piss on the rug than take it outside
Eaten by envy and old faded outrage
Insisting they get their “fair share”
Oh, you won’t understand them, they blog all day long
Rehashing how they don’t care
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Puppies
Don’t let ’em pick fights over meaningless stuff
Make ’em read SciFi and share what they love
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Puppies
They’ll never be glad, only Rabid or Sad
Fandom will just think they’re nuts
Puppies like barking at Scalzi, and dreaming up insults
Bragging they’re humble, and fuming, and threat’ning to bite
Them that ain’t brainwashed won’t like them, and them that are
Never own when they’re mistaken
They’re so wrong it’s impressive, but they just keep humping
The fin of the Rocket for spite
@Laura Resnick
Once every other month sounds about right! Though the one thing I am somewhat interested in at this point is how their nominating process goes.
@Laura
I think you’re on the money.
I watched the business with (e.g.) GamerGate long enough to be sure that they weren’t going to come up with any new tactics to wreck things. Now I think they can be safely ignored, so long as decent people are careful to give their targets and victims the support they need.
I think we’ve reached the same point with the Puppies, or at least with the most toxic figures in that group, the ones who flatly aren’t interested in dealing with the rest of us in good faith. It’s too early to be complacent about next year’s awards or the need to ratify something like EPH, but I think we’ve seen the range of tactics they can muster, and not much is going to take us by surprise any more. So long as we follow through, and make sure to rally around any individuals that they decide to harass, the details of what they’re ranting about on any given day aren’t that important.
Laura Resnick said:
I think it’s more that it makes them feel very visible, much talked-about, et cetera. I’ve gotten the impression for a while now (especially from Peter Grant’s blog and his Tor boycott posts) that this is more about being frustrated by the fact that they don’t have any particular influence over SFF and that nobody really cares about their opinions. The end goal of Peter Grant’s boycott was, according to him, acknowledgment from Tor that he matters as a customer and that they’re sorry for offending him. That is the desperate cry of a man who knows that he isn’t even a big fish in a small pond.
As long as they’re provoking controversy, the Puppies can pretend they have impact on the lives of others. That’s all they really want, to know that they’re important. Awards are only significant in that they measure importance. That’s where it all started, after all–Larry Correia upset that people weren’t paying attention to him.
@ Jon:
Yes, I certainly agree that’s an important caveat. When they choose new targets, it’s very important to support those targets and refute Puppy attacks. If we don’t, we’re just letting bullies run rampant through the sf/f neighborhood.
@ Bruce Arthurs Side question: What’s the best way to manage reading Twitter when the number of people you’re following starts getting too time-consuming to actually, y’know, follow? I’m following about 30 Twitter accounts at the moment.
*muffled sound of near-hysterical laughter*
I think it was when I topped around 400 accounts that I was following that I bit the bullet and shifted to only paying attention to a curated “core reading” list (which I believe I’ve kept down to about 100 accounts). I fully understand people who have regular fits of only paying attention to the top of the feed and any personal @s.
The one tool I’d really like is the ability to combine a curated list with the ability to filter out re-tweets. Some of the people I enjoy following are such active re-tweeters that I don’t care include them in my streamlined reading list.
@ John — I see your point. I also think it helps explain something that otherwise makes no sense to me, which is that after all their Puppy picks losing in 2014 (and most placing dead last), and all their Puppy picks losing in 2015 (and placing behind No Award), their most frequent assumption after “vote tampering” or “miscount” seem to be that THEY WEREN’T HEARD–that they didn’t get their message out loudly enough, or that not ENOUGH people heard them, or that telling even MORE people about their platform is the solution.
They have completely rejected multiple baldly-stated and oft-repeated arguments from outside their clique about what went wrong with their campaigns (just off the top of my head: SLATING; ill-conceived platforms that alienated most of fandom; quarreling for months with fandom; choosing too many weak works for their slate; teaming up with VD), and instead seem to have convinced themselves that–apart from the corrupt corruptors corrupting the voting process–that what went wrong in 2015, a year during which the Puppies were frequently the center of attention in the sf/f community and got major media coverage on-and-off for months… is that they weren’t HEARD.
@Laura Resnick:
Well, my wife and I will be there to lend our votes — assuming 4 of 6 and EPH still on reflection seem a good idea to approve a second time without further amending them, as I think likely. But what I wanted to say is that voting outcomes at WSFS Business Meetings should not be taken for granted. The Sasquan Business Meeting, which most days was about 300 attendees, was several times larger than usual, and results depend on who bothers to put in the time and show up.
(You may be fully aware of this. I’m not sure I’ve spotted you at prior Business Meetings, but you may well have been there. Apologies if I’m repeating what you already know.)
Any full attending member — cost differs depending on when you bought it, but currently US $170 — of MidAmeriCon II is entitled to participate in the Business Meeting. Also, IIRC, Young Adult memberships and Active Serving Military ones. A vote requires actually being present – no proxies. WSFS members not present may submit motions to be considered at the meeting, but of course what the Business Meeting then does with them including amending them past recognition is out of the hands of the submitter.
So, at least, a high impulse threshold is required. ‘Freeping’ the Kansas City Business Meeting is impractical unless you know a large number of people willing to blow $170 and sit butt-in-chair for long hours at MAC2 just to take an ideological stance, which fortunately is rare.
But, even at that, outcomes are difficult to predict. E.g., I know my friend Kevin Standlee really wanted the Popular Ratification measure to get its second approval at Sasquan, but it was voted down to the surprise of many including, I believe, Kevin. Your statement that WSFS members ‘know that the measures passed in Sasquan to mitigate the effects of slates and block-nominations need to be ratified in Kansas City’ is credible enough, but them knowing isn’t enough. An adequate number who feel that way need to spend tochis-in-chair time at the Business Meeting, and that really is not guaranteed.
But yes, getting more online and in-person discussion of, and awareness of, nomination-eligible works for as many as possible of the 12 categories — that’s going to be a huge help.
Very Important Announcement!
Humble Neil Gaiman Bundle
That is all. Return to your business.
@Paul:
Song or Tam? Curious minds demand to know.
@Jack Lint:
Aha! Same as Finland, which doesn’t exist either. And this, in turn, explains the 2015 and 2017 Helsinki bids. You see, the dark conspiracy is finally getting unveiled!
@rick @paul
De Nile.
So I read that Star Trek article (by the person who watched TOS over a year or so, and her reactions), which led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on actors, episodes, writers etc…which led me to Charles Beaumont, writer of several Star Trek episodes as well as Twilight Zone and other TV shows. Which led me to this mind-boggling story by Beaumont:
“The Crooked Man” by Charles Beaumont
I had no idea stories like this were written in the 1950s. This story was published in Playboy! In 1955!
It takes place in a future where homosexuality has become the norm and heterosexuals are the hunted, persecuted minority. Weirdly enough, it’s a story where both puppies and so-called SJWs can find something to like. On one hand the viewpoint character finds much of homosexuality to be repulsive, and descriptions of obviously homosexual characters tend to reinforce that. Also, the main character speculates that the change came about because of too much equality for women. On the other hand, though, the treatment of the heterosexuals mirrors the treatment of gay people at the time — having to meet furtively, hope no one “outed” them, and have sordid hookups in sordid places. It obviously is meant to make you think about that.
Anyway, yeah. SF has always been about rocketships and blowing stuff up, until 10 — no 20 — no 60! years ago.
Laura Resnick on September 9, 2015 at 7:27 am said:
As it happens, I think it significantly harder to find patterns to trace votes back to individuals in the final ballot than it might be in the nominating ballots. I’m not a Hugo Administrator this year, but if someone really wanted to try and manually recount the Hugo Awards final ballot from the raw data (with nothing connecting the ballot to each person and no way to correlate votes in one category to votes in another), I’d be inclined to let ’em do so. The IRV counting software is pretty robust by now, so I’m pretty confident in it, and if you really want to spend a lot of time, you can recount it by hand, although goodness knows how long it would take.
Besides, the five No Awards were conclusive, first-ballot “knockouts,” in one case consisting of nearly two-thirds of the final ballots. The heck with IRV there: No Award won by the Good Old Muriken System What Is The Only Way To Count Votes By God.
Fugue on September 9, 2015 at 7:47 am said:
“First Five Past the Post” is about as technical as you need for the nominating phase.
Rick Moen on September 9, 2015 at 10:59 am said:
Nope, I wasn’t surprised at all. I didn’t expect to win, not with Puppygate and the fear that such groups would tie up the entire legislative process forever. (Well, actually, only for about eight years, after which the sunset clause would kick in.) That didn’t stop me from making my best pitch for the proposal; I just didn’t think it would win, and while I’m disappointed, I don’t reject the entire WSFS rules-making process as corrupt just because I lost my case. We were treated fairly, and the proposal was fairly debated. Heck, I even read a few people who changed their votes from No to Abstain based on my argument, which is a minor moral victory.
Someone else can carry the PR banner in the future. I was talking about it for close to ten years or so, and Warren Buff was the chief co-sponsor of the proposal and deserves the credit for prodding me into actually proposing it last year. Let the next generation decide if and when they want to allow the rest of the membership to participate. For example, allowing attending members to vote on-site only (thus supporting, no-show attending, and one-day members wouldn’t be eligible) on ratification is IMO a step in the right direction and considerably better than allowing proxies, a proposal I keep hearing people vaguely floating.
Indeed, Twitter IS a River.
Song or Tam? Curious minds demand to know.
Both. Depending on where you paddle 🙂
And make sure it’s the long form!
@cmm
People forget that Playboy has probably published as much or more award winning and critically hailed short fiction than most magazines of any type. In part because they weren’t constrained by a ‘morality’ readership, they could gamble on stories that mainstream publishing considered offensive, but also in part because they had Robie Macauley and later Alica Turner as literary editors with very limited interference. They also paid the highest word rate in the business and the least editorial demands about content, which Ellison talks about in a couple of interviews.
Oh dear. My mind went….places.
@Kevin Standlee:
Yes, I think it was the Puppy piddle that doomed it for now.
I wish more of the ‘WSFS is a corrupt puppet of Mrs. Gladys Knipperdowling, age 81, of Grand Rapids, Iowa’ (or whatever) people would read your blog post about how you must expect to frequently lose in any fair, reasonable, healthy political system. Gosh, even in the USA, which is not exactly the world’s poster child for a mature political culture, you’d think people who’ve survived to adulthood and been to the polls a few times would have gotten the point that losing some votes isn’t a sign that everyone needs to demand their $50 supporting memberships back, that there needs to be a class-action lawsuit, that the Hugo Awards are obsolete and don’t matter and therefore we-all need to (pick any one) (a) make our own awards, (b) destroy the Hugos, or (c) seize the Hugos back, and besides, that would make the SJWs’ heads explode!
But a little maturity is apparently going to be long in coming.
(I’ve just gotten through writing a mailing list what’s-happened-since-July post for some uninitiated observers, and compiling a list of Puppy online tantrums since the 2015 Hugo Award Ceremony really brought home to me how transrational a lot of them have been going.)
@Rick Moen
I think opportunism has well and truly engulfed that chance. The latest big awards thing that is circling the SP world is not only to make a new set of awards, but the main thing that will make them better than the Hugos is that they’ll have cash prizes like any respectable award.
In a classic ‘Grifters gonna grift’, not only are they feeding their fellow ideological travelers plenty of grist for the outrage mill, but they now see a way to make some money on it. And considering how many of them complain about economic troubles (despite being one of the finest writers working today), the scent of right-wing outrage cash is thick and intoxicating. I expect things to ramp up as the Patreon campaigns start rolling out and the bulk of their award funding is diverted to their leaders.
The riffs on “If you were a dinosaur, my love” are collected here (I’ve been updating).
Hugo emotional status:
1.Shock & anger
2.Pile-on/Knee-jerk reaction
3.Acceptance
4.Considered response
5.Make jokes
I too am now (mostly) ignoring the Puppies (except for the occasional eye-roll at their current ruminations). Recent posts only serve to confirm the calibre of person they are, so until something comes along that changes that, I’m going to focus on making sure I have a full set of works I can nominate for next year’s Hugo.
The piece of data I love in all this is that in the years that the Puppies have been active, more Tor material has been nominated, and more has won, than in the years previous.
Truly, proof of a conspiracy. The Puppies are Torlings.
@Laura Resnick
To be fair, this is not something isolated to the puppies. I see it frequently in any dispute from partisans of all stripes. Heck, it’s a trap I’ve fallen into many times myself: being of a fairly liberal, scientific mindset, I’ve often thought that if only we could educate people on the facts more (such as on the actual prevalence of wolf attacks on humans), we wouldn’t see people voting for certain things (such as killing wolves in order to protect their family from wolf attacks). It’s a common response when you think your viewpoint is reasonable to think that the reason you failed to convince enough people was that you simply weren’t heard enough.
the main thing that will make them better than the Hugos is that they’ll have cash prizes like any respectable award.
Curse those irrelevant Oscars and their lack of cash award!
It occurs to me that the data protection issues around the nomination ballots are more complex than I initially thought: as a significant number of nominators would have been Loncon members, and so subject to UK and EU rules directly.
Oh what a tangled web of regulations in which we live.
(and back in Putney from a meeting in the City, where in course of the journey my tube train would have passed beneath chez Stevie)
The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis. That was not an experience that led me to expect winning.
Personally, I went with “Goblin Emperor” in first place and TBP in second, but was very happy for Cixin Liu; the books both had merit, and discussing which had more could have given months’ worth of pleasant but serious bickering. That was not, unfortunately, the bickering we ended up with.
In other words: Can’t deal with losing? Don’t vote.
In 1979 I helped put election leaflets in letterboxes during a general election – I was kid at the time. The leaflets were for the Labour Party. From that point for several general elections I helped campaign for the Labour Party. I repeatedly had any expectations of ‘winning’ beaten out of me by reality.
cmm on September 9, 2015 at 11:14 am said:
So I read that Star Trek article (by the person who watched TOS over a year or so, and her reactions), which led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on actors, episodes, writers etc…which led me to Charles Beaumont, writer of several Star Trek episodes as well as Twilight Zone and other TV shows. Which led me to this mind-boggling story by Beaumont:
“The Crooked Man” by Charles Beaumont
I had no idea stories like this were written in the 1950s. This story was published in Playboy! In 1955!
Um….
Theodore Sturgeon
The World Well Lost (1953(
Venus Plus X (1960)
The first author I loved, and part of the reason I found the puppy yapping about how social issues being a new and problematic addition to scifi so very ludicrous.
Huh, so I happened to decide to watch every ST:TOS just as it was approaching its 49th anniversary. To be fair, that may have been prompted by something someone said here. A lot of my reading and watching of things lately has been prompted by something someone said here.
I found the first episode (pre-Kirk) sort of boring. Took me a couple tries to finish it. Otherwise, I’ve been surprised how much more I like the first episodes than I remembered. Shatner isn’t nearly as corny as I remember, at least not in these first episodes. And I was stoked to see that the shirtless, rapier-wielding Sulu, the dildo/stalagmite-wielding Kirk, and the tiny dog in a rat-dog-dino outfit scenes were all from the first half of the first season (I’ve probably seen all of those episodes, but mostly in my pre-teen years and out of order). The classics come fast and furious in the first Star Trek season.
Only 70 more episodes to go until ST:TNG. Oh, and before that, I need to watch the first two Star Trek movies in full for the first time *ducks, rolls behind a table, scurries off to safety*
Personally, I went with “Goblin Emperor” in first place and TBP in second, but was very happy for Cixin Liu; the books both had merit, and discussing which had more could have given months’ worth of pleasant but serious bickering.
I voted for The Three-Body Problem as my first choice, but I would have been satisfied if The Goblin Emperor or Ancillary Sword had won. That’s the way I think it is for most people when it comes to literary awards like the Hugo. You have a first choice, but there are a range of winners that would be fine with winning as well. Last year I voted for Ancillary Sword as my first choice, but I would not have been upset if Neptune’s Brood had won instead.
And I think that’s one difference between the Puppies and the rest of the Hugo voters. If my first choice doesn’t win, I’m happy to see various other novels get the nod. But to the Pups, if their chosen torch-bearer don’t win it is a travesty of justice that cannot be allowed to stand! If the “wrong” nominee wins, like, say Redshirts, or The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere then that is evidence of perfidy and corruption that they must organize to rectify! They are so focused on the idea of backing the “winner”, and being outraged when their chosen horse doesn’t, that they miss everything that makes awards like this so enjoyable.
Camestros Felapton on September 9, 2015 at 12:31 pm said:
Leslie C. on September 9, 2015 at 12:21 pm said:
The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis. That was not an experience that led me to expect winning.
In 1979 I helped put election leaflets in letterboxes during a general election – I was kid at the time. The leaflets were for the Labour Party. From that point for several general elections I helped campaign for the Labour Party. I repeatedly had any expectations of ‘winning’ beaten out of me by reality.
Ah well, every now and then something I support actually wins.
It’s always a shock.
(First election was McGovern vs Nixon.)
I think in a lot of the US, the rightwing has tended to roll over the opposition for decades now.
So, what with their gawd on their side, they’ve come to think victory is the natural state of things.
Tends to make for sore losers.
And I was stoked to see that the shirtless, rapier-wielding Sulu, the dildo/stalagmite-wielding Kirk, and the tiny dog in a rat-dog-dino outfit scenes were all from the first half of the first season
Spock’s dog is dressed as a unicorn.
I would have been strongly in favor of it, had it remained a two-year process (e.g. Business meeting approval the first year, Popular Ratification the second year). But I felt that stretching the change process out to three years would make things worse, not better.
The thought I had after Sasquan was why not combine both processes?
1) Year one–Business Meeting approves a change
2) Conduct a vote of the members during the year leading up to the next Worldcon (I have no firm suggestions on when in the year to conduct the vote–maybe the six-month mark?–just as long as the results are known prior to the start of the next Worldcon)
3) If the popular vote fails, it’s dead. If the popular vote approves it, then it’s still alive and the next Business meeting has the final vote (including the “lesser change” option) to ratify it.
That way, both parties are heard from, and it stays within a two-year cycle.
Hey, is anybody reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street? It is not sold as SF, but it is solidly steampunk, and features a mischievous clockwork octopus (in 1884) among other things.
@Aaron
Ahh, I see. He has a weird, rat-like tail, as well. Between the horn and the tail, I thought “rat/dog/dinosaur,” though dinosaur doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I have no idea why dinosaurs would be on my mind right now. Whatever that little thing is, it manages to out-cute Tribbles.
Sigh. I need help.
I have had much less luck trolling VD’s than I have here.
Its very disappointing.
They don’t even bother blanking out posts or anything.
Any suggestions ?
I’m still reading Ivanhoe, but The Fifth Season is sitting there, tempting me. Someone said something about “needs trigger warnings”; could someone who’s read it post a rot13-ed list of warnings? Topics I’d like to be warned for: rape, graphic rape, forced pregnancy, graphic violence, torture, body mutilation (e.g. FGM), horrible depressing things happening all the time with no respite. Things I don’t need warnings for: soft-R-rated violence, body horror, character death, consensual sex (regardless of age/number/gender of participants).
@Cassy B: I might! Starts Sept. 19th, right? Biggest difficulties will be remembering, bothering about getting an account, and not reading the whole thing at a go.
@Camestros Felapton I repeatedly had any expectations of ‘winning’ beaten out of me by reality.
What is this winning you talk of? I have the distinction of never voting for a winning candidate in either the General Election or the District Council / Unitary Authority elections or the winning side in a referendum. I’ve voted in every election since 1987.
@Shao Ping, yes, the hardest part is pacing oneself to the discussion and not reading the whole thing at one go… <wry grin>
Since I’ve had some interest shown in the upcoming God Stalk discussion here and via email, I’ll post details, with Mike’s forebearance:
To get to the SF Literature forum on Compuserve, go to this URL:
http://forums.compuserve.com/discussions/Science_Fiction__Fantasy/ws-sflit?listMode=all
You’ll need to get a password; if you already have one from Compuserve or AOL, those’ll work. If not, it’s a free signup.
The book discussion will be in The Reading Group subfolder; you’ll see a list of folders on the right hand side. I’d suggest hitting the “mark all as read” button the first time you enter the forum; from then on you will only see new messages. There’s a message giving the God Stalk schedule at this url:
http://forums.compuserve.com/discussions/Science_Fiction__Fantasy/The_Reading_Group/God_Stalk_readingdiscussion_schedule/ws-sflit/109889.1?nav=messages
We’ll be starting the discussion on September 19, and I look forward to lots of God Stalkers joining in! We’ll be discussion one chapter every two days, so it’ll take about a month to get through the book; no spoilers allowed but speculation welcome…