Tag Archives: Jonathan McCalmont

Pixel Scroll 4/2/16 Neither a Scroller nor a Pixel be; For Pixels Oft Loses Both Itself And Friend, And Scrolling Dulls The Edge of Filery

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(1) SO SUE ME. TrekToday reports “Axanar Files Second Motion To Dismiss”.

For the second time, the lawyers working for Axanar have filed a motion to dismiss and they are again seeking clarification from Paramount Pictures and CBS Corporation regarding which copyrights the production has violated.

Axanar posted an official statement regarding the new motion, which was filed yesterday. “Yesterday, acting on behalf of both Axanar Productions and Producer Alec Peters, Winston & Strawn filed a Motion to Dismiss the first amended copyright complaint of CBS Studios and Paramount Pictures Corporation. The motion explains that in multiple respects, the deficiencies in CBS and Paramount‘s original complaint are still not sufficiently addressed in their amended filing, and that in some ways the amendments have created new defects.

“The motion provides examples as to how CBS and Paramount overreach in what they claim are elements protected under copyright, and fail to be specific as to exactly which copyrights have been infringed upon; and, in the case of the potential feature film Axanar claims of alleged copyright infringement cannot be made against a film that doesn’t yet exist….

The Axanar legal team has requested a May 9 hearing date on the motion to dismiss.

The full motion can be seen here.

(2) DIGGING DEEPER INTO GALAKTIKA. Anna Grace Carpenter documents “more bad behavior” by Galaktika Magazine, the Hungarian periodical charged with not paying a lot of people for their work.

This opened up a broader problem. By this point I was certain that the English-language stories were primarily being published without the consent or compensation of the original authors. (I have been able to confirm that work published as early as 2008 was done so without author knowledge or consent. Pintér spoke with an author whose work was published in 2006 without their consent. The full extent of the ongoing piracy is still uncertain.)

Tracking down the translators who were working for Galaktika during 2015 was a little more difficult than contacting the authors involved; all I had were the names in the bibliography and Google.

The first few I tried didn’t turn up anything immediately useful, but with a little more digging I was able to reach two of the translators who worked with Galaktika in 2015.  The first (who had translated nine stories over the course of the year) said simply that they were not responsible for the rights involved in the stories. They would receive a request from the publisher (likely Attila Németh – the fiction editor at Galaktika) to translate a specific story, and would return the work once they were done….

They told me the effort involved to get paid for their work simply became too much and they stopped working for Galaktika. (They also became aware, after the fact, that Polenth Blake’s short story – “Never the Same” (Strange Horizons Sep 8 2014) – had been taken without her permission because they contacted her about the translation.)

Another Hungarian author I spoke with said they had sold work to Galaktika in 2006 for which they had received pro-rates, but had since stopped working with the magazine due to (among other things) other authors they knew personally not being paid for their work. They said their feeling was that Hungarian authors and translators had a better chance of being paid because they could always go to the Galaktika offices to demand what was owed.

But the translator I spoke with said they had heard of other translators and Hungarian authors who had never been paid – a fact which was such common knowledge that when they told their friends about the work their first question was “And do they pay you?” They recounted calling István Burger “who was really cocky, like it was by his grace that I was allowed to work for them, because apparently it’s him who sends everyone their money. So after Back to the Future I had enough.”

It would seem that Galaktika’s bad behavior is not limited to the theft and piracy of English-language stories, but a deliberate and continuous pattern of behavior where they attempt to profit off the work of others while making as little compensation as possible to the authors and translators providing the material for the magazine.

(3) SAD BUNNIES. A British Board of Film Classification sachem says “Watership Down ‘would be rated PG today’”.

The U-rated 1978 film Watership Down would be classified PG were it released today, the new head of the British Board of Film Classification has said.

BBFC director David Austin told BBC Radio 5 live its violence was “arguably too strong” for it to be rated U now.

He added the film also contains language that would be “unacceptable” in a film rated U under 2016 criteria.

His comments followed complaints over the film’s content after it was aired on Channel 5 on Sunday.

“Well done to whoever at Channel 5 decided that Watership Down was a nice Easter Sunday afternoon film to show,” wrote one tweeter.

… The film – which features the voices of Sir John Hurt and the late Richard Briers – received a U rating on its initial release for its “very mild language, mild violence and threat”.

According to Austin, though, “standards were different then”. “The film has been a U for 38 years, but if it came in tomorrow it would not be,” he continued.

(4) PITY THE FOOL. The March 31 Scroll quoted a story about Gmail’s new “mic drop” feature. On April 1 the BBC reported, “Google April Fool Gmail button sparks backlash”.

Google has removed an April Fool’s Gmail button, which sent a comical animation to recipients, after reports of people getting into trouble at work.

The button appeared beside Gmail’s normal send button and allowed users to shut down an email thread by sending a gif of a Minion dropping a microphone.

However, a flurry of complaints about the button appeared on Google’s forums.

The firm has since withdrawn the feature and apologised.

Will R. swears, “For the record, I didn’t realize they were crazy enough to make this an actual button.” Well, if they did.

(5) MORE UNTIMELY FOOLISHNESS. Variety reported on April Fool’s Eve (or as you civilians say, March 31) that actor Tom Hiddleston delivered Chicago’s Fox32 weather report as Loki — “Tom Hiddleston Gives Weather Report, Blames Storm on Thor”.

Tom Hiddleston can add another credit to his resume: weatherman.

The “Night Manager” and “Avengers” actor dropped by a Chicago news station as Loki (though tragically not in costume) to update viewers on the terrible weather hitting the area this weekend. He blamed it all on his thunderous brother Thor, saying that his “brother from another mother’s been misbehaving.”

“The God of Thunder has brought his skill set to bare on the local weather,” Hiddleston added.

In other words, the storm-front means that “Chris Hemsworth has taken his hammer and smashed it on the surface of the sky and it’s going to rain a helluva lot,” the actor said….

Hiddleston and Hemsworth will reprise the feuding brothers onscreen again in “Thor: Ragnarok,” which is set for Nov. 3, 2017.

 

(6) LINES AT ANIME BOSTON. Smofnews has the story —

Anime Boston has posted a long statement detailing the causes of excessive lines at their con last weekend. Some of the causes are ordinary problems, like misallocated staff and the blocked shortcut. Others included a registration system provided by a third party which was found to have a serious bug right before the con started*, and a decision between the local police and the facility to use metal detectors, with the con being a bit out of the loop. It goes to show that being bigger doesn’t necessarily mean having more control of things.

(7) JAMES H. BURNS CLIPPING FILE. The Franklin Square Bulletin, which has no internet presence, but is a decades-old weekly on the South Shore of Long Island, published an item about a favorite son:

“Franklin Square Columnist Nominated For Rondo Award”

Franklin Square resident James H. Burns, a long time writer and actor, has been nominated as “Best Columnist for 2015” at the Classic Horror Film Board, the popular website administered for over twenty years by David Colton, the just-retired Page One editor of USA TODAY. Jim’s citation is for his columns at FILE 770, itself a multi-award winning website devoted to the worlds of the fantastic. It’s fun to note  many of Jim’s articles actually deal with lost elements of growing up in Franklin Square, and other unique facets of life in our community!

The columns range from “World War II and a Lexicon in Time” to man’s first landing on another world (“The Moon at Midnight”); a look at Irish folklore (“And a Moonbeam to Charm You”) to prehistoric worlds (in “My Father and the Brontosaurs” (including dinosaurs at Falaise, and the World’s Fair) and “Sons of a Mesozoic Age” (with memories of the Franklin Square Theatre!); and reflections on his friendships with some of the James Bond filmmakers (“The 007 In  My Mind”) and other theatrical personnel (“Back to Another Future”).

The best column may be a special look at our Christmas and Chanukah traditions, “The Geography of Eden.”

Burns says, “The whole idea behind some of the articles was to capture certain moments in time, experiences common to many of us who grew up in the area, but which might otherwise be forgotten.”

Burns writes about the small “farm” that used to behind Valley Caterers in “Clanky!”, and takes a look at a Franklin Square Independence Day evening, and the dawn of the Space Age, in “On This, The Fourth.”  (Some of his mainstream work for CBS-NY.COM and NEWSDAY is also reflected in the nomination, as the features were excerpted at the website.)

You can vote for “The Rondo Awards” until April 10th, by going online to:   http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/62030/s-ballot-Gasp-14th-Annual-Rondo-Hatton-Classic-Horror#.VvAfW-azkWp.

You can read some of  the articles by Googling, “James H. Burns,” File 770, or “James H. Burns,” CBS.

(8) ADRIENNE CORRI OBIT. BBC reports the death of actress Adrienne Corri on March 13, who played the rape victim in A Clockwork Orange, appeared in Hammer films, and featured in a Doctor Who (according to IMDB).

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 2, 1968 — 2001: A Space Odyssey has its world premiere in Washington D.C.

(10) TODAY IN CURRENT EVENTS

April 2 is the second annual Planet of the Apes day.

The second annual gathering (this time both virtual and actual!) to celebrate the classic 1968 film and all its sequels, remakes and re-imaginings. We’re hosting a fan meetup event at the Idle Hour Cafe in North Hollywood, CA beginning at 5pm on Saturday, April 2nd [NOTE THE NEW DATE FOR EVENT] For those who can’t attend in person, we encourage fans in other cities to join us via Skype and Facebook, of course. More details will follow soon, so RSVP now to and note if you’re attending in person to give us a human-count. Mark this date in your calendar now and prepare to GO APE with the Damn Dirty Geeks!

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • April 2, 1805 — Hans Christian Anderson.
  • April 2, 1908 — Buddy Ebsen. He missed appearing in the Wizard of Oz because the Tin Man’s makeup poisoned him. His Twilight Zone episode was written by Charles Beaumont.
  • April 2, 1914 — Sir Alec Guinness.

(12) FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. The Traveler at Galactic Odyssey thinks Rod Serling should be doing better — “[April 2, 1961] Uprooting Itself (The Twilight Zone, Season 2, Episodes 17, 19, 20, 21”.

Twenty years ago, even ten (and zero in some places), science fiction was all about the twist ending.  Aliens would seed a dead planet with life only for it to turn out…that planet was EARTH!  Or folks might spend a story in a struggle to stay alive, only to find out THEY WERE ALREADY DEAD!  And so on.  Stories would usually end with a shock sentence, often with copious slammers (!!!)

But the genre matured.  Characters, writing, and fully explored concepts appeared.  These days, the “gimmick” often takes the back seat, facilitating rather than dominating the story.

The Twilight Zone, the science fiction/fantasy/horror anthology created by Rod Serling, is generally a cut above anything else on TV.  This includes its pale competitors like One Step Beyond and Way Out.  Unfortunately, several times in the first season, and more frequently in this, the second season, the show has aped the gimmick stories of print sf.  The result is a run of predictable, sub-par episodes.  There is light at the end of this tunnel, however – the most recent episodes have returned the focus to interesting characters and genuine drama.

(13) PUPPY WAR GAMES.

https://twitter.com/ApeInWinter/status/715831997273415680

(14) OUR POET CHERRIOT. Kip W. confessed in a comment here.

This is just to say
I have eaten the Hugos
That you were saving
From destruction
Forgive me
They were just sitting there
Such sweetness
Such noms

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, David K.M. Klaus, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

Pixel Scroll 1/2 Sacrificing Poisoned Pixels While Dancing Naked in the Scrolls

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(0) APOLOGY TENDERED. Greg van Eekhout is quite right to be displeased —

https://twitter.com/gregvaneekhout/status/683387224281362434

I was so struck with the association sparked between two posts about not having a book out in 2016 that I quite insensitively plowed over the real life causes he was relating. I apologize for making light of his situation.

(1) HOW TO IMPROVE. Sherwood Smith’s post “Beginning Writer Errors” at Book View Café shares the distilled wisdom she found in an old set of notes taken during a Loscon panel by that name.

I think these lists interesting mostly because they reveal writerly process at least as much as they do beginner errors. Some of the best discussion arose out of what some considered no error at all, and others considered advice for revision, not for first draft errors, and what the difference was.

For pants writers (those who sit down and let the tale spin out through their fingers before going back to see what they have) one set of rules might be helpful and another useless; for plotters and planners, a completely different set….

Panelist’s Three’s list suggests to me that that writer works by a completely different process:

  1. Ending every chapter on a transition.
  2. Letting the narrative voice tell readers what to think.
  3. Long, clumsy sentences.

To number one, half the panelists disagreed. Note: “transitions are natural chapter breaks.” The writer defended it: “this pattern reads artificial.”

(2) HELP HELPS. “Joe Hill Calls Bullshit On The Crazy Artist Cliché” by Hayley Campbell at Buzzfeed.

“I was just really paranoid and really depressed and really unhappy and full of really nutty ideas. I would call my dad with my latest crazy ideas and he would patiently listen. He was the only person who could listen to me. And he’d talk me through and explain why my latest idea about being pursued and prosecuted and persecuted was irrational.”

Hill wouldn’t go into what he calls his “terrible, lunatic notions”, because he doesn’t like revisiting them. But eventually his dad suggested that seeing someone professionally could help him out – an idea Hill had resisted because he was convinced the paranoia and “lunatic ideas” were connected to his creativity. “I thought if I got help, I wouldn’t be able to write any more.”

It all goes back to another cliché: the crazy artist. But as a crazy artist, he got no actual work done. The three novels he couldn’t finish are testament to that cliché being bullshit.

“I got into therapy and I got on a pill, and what I discovered was getting help didn’t make me less creative. What was making me less creative was being a depressed crazy person. Figuring out how to be happy and have fun with the kids again, how to have fun with my life and work, actually made me a better writer, not a worse writer.”

(3) BEST SF FILMS OF 2015. JJ says Brian Merchant’s “The 11 Sci-Fi Films That Defined 2015”at Motherboard is “A ‘Best SF Films’ list that isn’t just a re-hash of other lists.” Part of the proof – The Martian ranks ahead of The Force Awakens – and three other movies rank above them.

The major themes that bubbled up in the year’s science fictional slipstream included income inequality, artificial intelligence, transgender rights, and the power and necessity of the scientific endeavor itself. Young adult dystopias showed signs of flagging, while classic-mold sci-fi mega franchises boomed (with one exception). There were not one but two great feminist-leaning SF films; one a bona fide blockbuster hit, another a powerful, slow-burning indie. There was an already-beloved animated short about our possible futures.

(4) THE HEISENBERG CERTAINTY PRINCPLE. Jonathan M is right, however, it is equally clear that when no one was paying attention to them, they were not starved out of existence for lack of it.

https://twitter.com/ApeInWinter/status/683318231004766208

(5) STEAMING PILE. Just one person’s opinion, but I think this logo (first posted last April) isn’t that different from the real 1988 Hugo Award base.

1988 Hugo Award base by Ned Dameron

1988 Hugo Award base by Ned Dameron

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • BORN January 2, 1920 – Isaac Asimov

(7) JASON WINGREEN OBIT. Yahoo! News reports actor Jason Wingreen passed away January 1.

The Brooklyn native appeared in three episodes of The Twilight Zone, most notably portraying the real train conductor in the 1960 episode in “A Stop at Willoughby.” …[He] died a memorable death as Dr. Linke on the 1968 Star Trek episode “The Empath.”

… On The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Wingreen auditioned for the part of Yoda. He didn’t get that role (Frank Oz did), but he was given four lines of dialogue spoken by the masked Boba Fett, the feared bounty hunter who captures Han Solo (Harrison Ford).

“I think the actual work, aside from the hellos and goodbyes and all that, could have been no more than 10 minutes,” he said. He received no credit for his work (it didn’t become publicly known that the voice was his until about 2000)…

(8) MEADOWLARK LEMON OBIT. Meadowlark Lemon, who passed away December 27, starred in a few Saturday morning outings (animated, and otherwise) as James H. Burns recalls in an appreciation written for the NY local CBS affiliate website.

In 1979, there was yet another Globetrotters cartoon, The Super Globetrotters, in which they became super heroes, but Lemon was not part of that mix. That same year, though, he co-starred in the fantasy comedy theatrical feature film, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (along with Julius Erving (Doctor J!), Debbie Allen and Stockard Channing). According to some sources, the movie–about a failing professional basketball team, saved by stocking its roster according to the players’ astrological signs–has developed something of a cult following….

(9) FIFTH! “Indiana Jones 5 Confirmed By Disney” is the headline. Tarpinian’s suggestion for the movie title is “Indiana Jones and the Rocking Chair of Gold.”

Speaking to Yahoo earlier in 2015, Spielberg said he’ll likely work on the film and that it would star Harrison Ford. Bradley Cooper and Chris Pratt were rumoured to play a younger version of the archeologist.

He said: “Now I’ll probably do an Indy 5 with Harrison, [so] it’ll be five for Harrison, four for Tom [Hanks].”

In a separate interview with French radio RTL, Spielberg said: “I am hoping one day to make it to an Indiana Jones V. I would hope to make it before Harrison Ford is 80 and I get much older.”

Spielberg’s quotes suggests that both he and Harrison Ford are on board for the sequel, though neither has officially said as much.

(10) FIRST! While you’re waiting for the new Indy film, Open Culture recommends you click on “Great ‘Filmumentaries’ Take You Inside the Making of Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark & Jaws“.

Even casual filmgoers will recognize these movies, and they’ll feel, shortly after pressing play on [Jamie] Benning’s Inside Jaws and Raiding the Lost Ark, as if they’ve just settled in to watch them again, though they’ll see them as they never have before. Serious film fans will, as the form of the filmumentary emerges, recognize the basis of the concept. Described as “visual commentaries,” these productions take the concept of the commentary track and step it up considerably, overlaying the original film’s soundtrack with the words of a veritable chorus of those who worked on it — actors (even some not ultimately cast), crew members, designers, producers, hangers-around — sourced and sometimes even recorded by Benning.

 

(11) LOGAN’S RUN AND AUTHOR APPEARANCE. William F. Nolan, co-author of Logan’s Run, will be on hand when the Portland Geek Council presents the film Logan’s Run on January 17.

(12) TWU WUV.  “Jared Weissman Made Harry Potter Fictional Wizard’s Broomstick For Girlfriend”. With DIY photos taken as he made a copy of the Nimbus 2000.

“Shelby has been obsessed with Harry Potter for a long time now and about a year ago decided she wanted to start collecting prop replicas,” Weissman told Mashable in an email. “We went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter this past summer where she bought the Sorcerer’s Stone, Tom Riddle’s diary, and a plaster scroll that says Dumbledoor’s Army with 6 wands mounted on it (Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Luna, Neville, and Ginny).”

From that point on, it was pretty clear to Weissman what the perfect Christmas gift for Shelby would be.

(13) FROSTY PERSONALITY. The Game of Thrones parody “Winter Is Not Coming” is a French commercial from Greenpeace about climate change.

(14) IMPERIAL TRAILER PARK. If you’re not burnt out on Star Wars stuff, Mark-kitteh recommends a fan-made trailer for Empire Strikes Back, deliberately aiming for a modern trailer style. Mark adds,

For reference, I found a vid of the 1979 original as well. It’s an interesting contrast – the original has a fun high-energy vide, but is a bit too breathless (and spoiler-filled!) for modern tastes.

 

[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, Will R., JJ, Nigel, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]

Pixel Scroll 7/23

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Six stories, a French rant and a video adorn today’s Scroll.

(1) “Cap’n, it’s a Class M planet.”

“Any lifeform readings?”

Described in media reports as an “earthlike planet” is the Kepler space mission’s first discovery of a world smaller than Neptune in the middle of its star’s habitable zone.

Also called the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone is the region around a star where a planet’s surface is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water—and thus life as we know it—to exist.

(2) Atlas Obscura has posted its “Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips”. I’ll bet there are some fan fund reports crying out for the same treatment.

The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times.

(3) Thunderbirds fans are very enthusiastic about the plan to combine old-fashioned “Supermarionation” with audio lifted from three original 21-minute mini-albums released in the 1960s (each was a 7″ single, but played at 33-1/3 rpm). The Kickstarter appeal to fund production, with a goal of $115,789, has already gathered $206,325 in pledges from over 2,000 contributors. The original goal would have paid for one – the current total should pay for all three.

[Director] Stephen La Rivière says: “We have shot new sequences with the puppets using the old-fashioned techniques. Whilst many of the methods used seem a little archaic and time-consuming by today’s standards, we thought that it would be very special to do a one-off project bringing Thunderbirds back to life 1960s style. Sadly, many of the original voice cast have passed away since 1965. However, thanks to the original audio footage we’ve rediscovered, we have new, authentic stories that have never been adapted for screen.”

 

(4) Being a critic is a higher calling for Jonathan McCalmont than most sf bloggers who spend a lot of energy churning other people’s advertising in return for pageviews. (Pay no attention to the man behind the file…) McCalmont inquires “What Price, Your Critical Agency?” on Ruthless Culture.

These days, few cultural ecosystems operate independently of commercial interests. The ability to artificially engineer an interest bubble means that commercial interests will always have some control over the agenda of an enthusiast press. Reviewers will request DVD screeners and ARCs of books they have been encouraged to look forward to and editors will always be happy to slipstream a wave of hype by providing content that satisfies the readership’s artificially-engineered interest in a particular subject. Money and effort devoted to creating buzz translates into traffic and so anyone who is interested in getting more traffic will always go out of their way to chase the hype.

While traffic is a significant carrot to offer in return for collaborating with commercial interests, review copies are another great way of controlling the agenda. At an institutional level, it is difficult to run a reviews department without review copies you can pass on to your reviewers and so the output of a reviews department will always be dependent upon the nature of the screeners and ARCs provided. At an individual level, a commitment to operate any kind of reviews platform means an open-ended commitment to media consumption and while you may very well be willing to pay for the media you choose to consume, the volume of reviews required to build an audience realistically means deep pockets, a relationship with publicists, or a willingness to obtain review materials for free by either borrowing or stealing.

One of my favourite recent discoveries has been S.C. Flynn’s Scy-Fy, a blog that features no fewer than 100 different interviews with book bloggers, magazine editors, podcasters and something he somewhat alarmingly refers to as ‘booktubers’. One thing that struck me about these interviews is that despite many of them warning about the dangers of writing only about new books and how setting your own critical agenda is the best way to stay productive and stave off burnout, most of the interviewees operate platforms that lavish their attention on new releases. In other words, they know that allowing commercial forces to influence their critical output is dangerous and yet they continue to let it happen.

(5) But at the very tip of the cultural pyramid is the blogosphere’s most highly evolved parasite, with an enviable track record of breaking stories before the studios’ own PR staffs ever hear about them. Alex Pappademas on Grantland tells how El Mayimbe creates those leaks.

El Mayimbe’s real name is Umberto Gonzalez, born 41 years ago in Queens, New York, of Dominican and Colombian descent, and as a self-proclaimed “fanboy journalist” and “ace scooper,” he lives for moments like these. If a studio’s measuring an actor for an iconic leotard or cowl or enchanted helm or loincloth, if a director signs up to reboot a trilogy based on an action figure, Gonzalez wants to be the first to know, and the first to trumpet that information on the Internet, via a fistful of social-media accounts and a new website called Heroic Hollywood, which went live in June. In an era when the movie business sometimes appears to be rebooting itself as a machine that cranks out nothing but superhero movies, Gonzalez is far from the only reporter whose beat includes stories like these, but no one follows it as closely or as aggressively. Gonzalez broke that Brandon Routh would play Superman, that Heath Ledger would play the Joker. He knew that Bradley Cooper would be supplying the voice of Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy, he says, before Cooper’s own publicist did.

(7) You don’t need to know French to catch the drift of this Telerama article about the Puppies, titled “Hugo Awards : le plus grand prix de SF menacé par des groupes d’extrême droite.”

Fervent défenseur des armes à feu

Cette année, le débat est autre. Un groupe de fans extrêmement conservateurs, les sad puppies (« chiots tristes »), dirigés par un fervent défenseur des armes à feu, Larry Correia, s’était déjà fait attaquer pour ses choix. En 2014, il avait mis de l’eau dans son vin, proposant aussi sur ses listes des auteurs progressistes. Trop, au goût de certains de ses membres, qui ont formé un groupe dissident, les rabid puppies (« chiots enragés »), l’ont débordé sur sa droite et ont réussi, en faisant voter en masse leurs soutiens, à faire inclure dans toutes les listes de nominés la plupart de leurs candidats. Démarche parfaitement en accord avec les règles du prix. Mais les livres ainsi proposés deviennent les fers de lance d’une percée idéologique forte. Et le prix est aujourd’hui au bord de l’implosion.

[Thanks to Steve Green and John King Tarpinian for some of these links.]

Medium Rare

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Ruthless Culture’s Jonathan McCalmont tweeted a link to the FAAn Award winners chastising them for not being available on the internet —

The 2014 FAAn Awards http://bit.ly/1q5Xxnf  None of the winners are available online. Oh Fanzine fandom… you are hopeless!

I thought that must be wrong based on what I remembered from a year ago, but what he says is absolutely true. Two of 2014’s winning zines – Banana Wings and Flag — never have digital issues. A third, Trapdoor #30, may get added to eFanzines sometime but hasn’t been yet.

Last year’s crop of winning zines were better represented online, with two of the three available on eFanzines —

2013 FAAns

Best Genzine: Chunga, ed. by Andy Hooper, Randy Byers, and carl juarez
Best Personal Fanzine: A Meara for Observers, ed. Mike Meara
Best Single Issue: Trapdoor #29, ed. by Robert Lichtman

The Theory of Everything Online

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Jason Stoddard draws some very interesting conclusions about who forms the core audience for certain types of online sf sites:

From the amount of related magazines, online pubs, review sites, and market sites like Ralans, it is increasingly evident who the primary audience for short SF is today: other writers. This is true for both Analog and Strange Horizons

Jonathan McCalmont adds, in a comment, that “the audience for review sites appears to be reviewers.”

I wonder if Stoddard’s and McCalmont’s analysis can be extended to the internet at large. Perhaps it’s true that the most dedicated audience for much of what appears online are people with the ambition to do something similar.

File 770, The Unauthorized Blog

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The inspiration for this post came to me last week, and my thoughts crystallized upon reading Jonathan McCalmont’s admission that blogging “plays in to my fondness for objectively quantified measures of success.” For that’s very much what I wanted to talk about: How I get distracted from my vision for File770.com by the urge to compete for quantifiable success in the blogosphere: more hits, higher authority rankings, longer comment chains, and the rest.

What became of my plan to conquer the Technorati universe anyway? Google Analytics’ daily count of my unique visitors, humble as it may be, is double what it was six months ago. Yet after an early takeoff my Technorati Authority — the number of blogs that have linked to me in the last six months – now has shriveled from 24 to 19.

Somebody is saying, “What the hell does that gibberish mean?” Brother, I was right with you a year ago. Now I know what it means. And other bloggers feel my pain. I’m sure my old pal Crotchety does, although his definition of winning requires having lots of revenue-generating traffic.

There are newcomers to blogging who hear that Whatever has 30,000 regular readers and say “I’ll have one of those.” Not me. My ambitions are far more modest. I analyzed the Mount Everest of sf blogs and determined its success is based on eight vital ingredients of which I have two: a computer and an internet service provider. Just the same, I believe that the cream rises to the top. I compared notes with a few other fans and decided 150 unique visitors a day and a Technorati ranking of 70 was within reach.

That didn’t happen automatically, so I helped things along with a few judicious editorial decisions. Like mentioning Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, posting about Star Trek, and dropping giant squid references where Cheryl Morgan might find them. The one thing I wouldn’t do was write about affixing pork products to felines. I could keep my self-esteem as long as I drew the line at that. (Besides, Crotchety tried that and it didn’t work.)(Also I exaggerate – all the Star Trek stuff is here because it genuinely interests me.)

Posting quanities of mildly amusing dross in a wishful desire to have internet robots show me a bigger number is probably innocent, unless it makes any of you who follow the blog wonder why you’re still reading. I enjoy getting the links some of you send me and will keep posting the ones I like. But McCalmont’s post has warned me that the competitive urge should not become a distraction from doing the writing I value most, analyzing what’s happening in sf fandom, and throwing a spotlight on the good work done by fan writers, artists and editors.

The Last Diplomat

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Jonathan McCalmont put his blog SF Diplomat in suspended animation the other day. The site is not being taken down, McCalmont has merely quit adding to it. In signing off, he made some very apt statements about blogging:

My relationship with blogging has been an awkward one for a while as I do think that the medium brings out the worst in me. Aside from bringing the confrontational and argumentative elements of my personality to the fore, it also plays in to my fondness for objectively quantified measures of success. 

Would McCalmont agree that his latest verbal duel with John Scalzi is symptomatic of the “confrontational and argumentative elements” that bring out the worst in him? While the blogosphere relishes a good cage match — Google shows lots of people linking to that page at SF Diplomat – it’s stressful on those who square off in these verbal brawls. McCalmont presented a resilient face to the world in July. Yet two months later, the cumulative effect of that and other clashes has contributed to him shaping a different course.

The pressure of controversy can only accelerate the burnout of a prolific and talented critic. McCalmont began his last post with an explanation I found strongly reminiscent of Cheryl Morgan’s explanation for ceasing production of her Hugo-winning reviewzine, Emerald City. Said McCalmont:

Regular readers will have noticed that my enthusiasm levels have been dipping of late.  My tone has turned increasingly sour, my reviews increasingly half-hearted and my general output sluggish at best. 

Morgan told SF Signal in 2006:

In addition, over the past year or so I have become very disillusioned about both the quality of my own work and the general usefulness of online book reviews.

Pretty much nobody can go on indefinitely doing consistently excellent reviews at the pace demanded for a successful blog, though it may not be the pace itself that drains our top reviewers.

A great many, like McCalmont and Morgan, are part of the sf community, which means to some extent their social milieu is composed of people whose artistic ambitions and livelihoods are affected by what they write. Reviewers who are any good (there are lots of reviewers, but how many get read?) court controversy every time they tell authors that their literary offspring smell bad and look funny. And the authors are not the only ones who take this badly, there are editors, agents, friends and fans.

Since criticism is creative, and creative work thrives in community, the unfortunate side effect of being a prolific critic is progressively alienating some members of the society he or she depends on for the joy of living.

Thankfully, McCalmont has decided to write finis to one outlet for his work without giving up criticism altogether. He says he will still write in other venues, taking the time he needs to do his best work.

Tinker, Tailor, Launderer, Spy

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I greatly enjoyed reading Jonathan McCalmont’s SFCrowsnet review of Saturn’s Children. He draws intriguing comparisons between the spy novels of Charles Stross and John LeCarre. He also supplies the language I’ve lacked to describe traits I admire in LeCarre’s stories. Never having written about LeCarre myself, my responses to his stories had never been so precisely expressed.

The review also triggered some tangential memories when, deep into the review, McCalmont made use of an observation by another writer and gave due credit:

Farah Mendlesohn talks about SF being a conversation because each generation of author picks up what previous generations have been talking about and puts their own spin on it.

The thought came unbidden, shouldn’t Kenneth Burke be getting credit here? Well, no, since Mendlesohn was the conduit. And there may well be sources that antedate Burke, so why be picky. I’m mentioning this reaction because I also associate certain ideas about literary criticism with the names of the people I first heard using them. It’s fun to remember what Penguin Dave Feldman had to say about leitmotifs when the idea was brand new to me. And the deceased inventor of the concept would have enjoyed Dave’s lecture, too.

The Wheel Keeps on Turning

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All of you who are interested this sort of thing will have found the brouhaha on Jonathan McCalmont’s site days ago. McCalmont had some slighting things to say about Tor.com and a couple of bloggers from the Tor community, including John Scalzi, tied into him. They’re collectively giving a verbal martial arts demonstration of a kind that harkens back to Science Fiction Review, the hottest fanzine of the late 1960s. Real “go for the jugular, with a kick to the groin” stuff that makes a person wax nostalgic for the days of Harlan Ellison and J. J. Pierce.

There are two important differences, however. McCalmont is a lot more resilient and intellectually sound than Pierce was — it’s a shame I disagree with him about Tor.com (finding it hard to object to another source of good writing.) And one of the (probably many) differences between Ellison and Scalzi is that Scalzi has a genuine flair for self-deprecating humor. A recent example is: It’s Official: I’m Less Intelligent Than a Worm. That sense of humor leaves room to hope that McCalmont and Scalzi, after they wear each other out, might make their peace and exit the scene like John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man.

[Via SF Signal.]