The Snifferance Engine 6/23

aka Altered Slates

Today’s roundup comes courtesy of Adam-Troy Castro, Matt Forney, Vox Day, A. G. Carpenter, Nicholas Whyte, Brandon Kempner, Eric Flint, Melina D, Patrick May, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, and Lis Carey. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Will Reichard and  Glenn Hauman.)

Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 23

Evidence, to me, that this is an aesthetic issue and not just a political one. (Though of course it’s that as well).

Brad Torgersen pronouncing what kinds of stories he sees as worthy.

“Downbeat endings suck. They are ‘literary’ and some critics and aesthetes love them. But they suck. If you’re going to roast your characters in hell, at least give them a little silver lining at the end? Some kind of hope for a more positive outcome? Your readers will thank you.”

I…can’t even begin.

I love a happy ending as much as the next guy. But not all stories need to be geared to the “rah-rah us.” And if I started naming great works in and out of science fiction where “readers thanked” the author for going black, I’d be here all day. I do this without being a critic or aesthete. I loved the despairing endings of Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands,” of Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God,” of John W. Campbell’s “Night,” of Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream,” of any number of TWILIGHT ZONEs and of George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, before I was ten — all before I discovered film noir or got into horror or watched Von Stroheim’s GREED or even knew that stories could be *about* the things in life that aren’t fair. Downbeat endings do *not* suck. Who would dare to say that the ending of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE sucked? Or that the ending of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME sucked? Or that the ending of DOUBLE INDEMNITY sucked? Or that the ending of MILDRED PIERCE — the novel, not the much-altered Joan Crawford movie — sucked?

Downbeat endings don’t suck. Pointless endings suck. There’s a difference.

Just speaking as a writer, alone: Gad, am I happy I am not shackled to that criterion. I go downbeat about half the time, because different stories go different places, and I have gone dark with some of my most popular work. HER HUSBAND’S HANDS AND OTHER STORIES is not exactly a collection of uppers.

***

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: Brad has communicated with me about this post, and wants to make clear that in context he was speaking, specifically, of space opera, and no other genre or subgenre. I think he’s likely wrong even when talking about that limited context — I can think of a number of cases where intrepid space heroes came to grief, and have indeed written a book of them — but you know what? In the context of that clarification it is not exactly fair to paint him as being unaware of the depth and breadth of the use of the downbeat ending in literature. I want this known and recognized.

 

Matt Forney on Return of Kings

 “Backlash Against The Boycott Of Sci-Fi Publisher Tor Books Shows The Hypocrisy of SJWs” – June 23

In the past couple of decades, publishing in general—and sci-fi and fantasy publishing especially—has become increasingly dominated by leftists, who have jettisoned the genres’ focus on adventure and exploration in favor of heavy-handed social justice narratives blaming cishetwhitemales for all the world’s ills.

Any writer who dissented from the SJW line was effectively blacklisted from Tor and other major publishing houses, as well as denied nominations in the industry’s prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards.

As you would expect, sales of newer sci-fi and fantasy books have flatlined as SJWs such as Nielsen Hayden and N.K. Jemisin have become dominant voices. As it turns out, nobody wants to read “socially aware” dreck like If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love and other works that cast straight white men as the devil incarnate.

Sales figures show this: of the top ten best-selling sci-fi books in 2012, all but two of them were either Star Wars/Halo tie-ins or published decades ago. The number one best-selling book was Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, published in 1985.

Last April, SJWs threw conniption fits when the Sad and Rabid Puppies, two campaigns spearheaded by sci-fi authors Larry Correia and Vox Day, respectively, successfully nominated several non-SJW works for this year’s Hugo Awards. Beyond showing how petty SJWs are, the Sad and Rabid Puppies’ campaign showed that SJWs are a vocal-but-tiny minority, since it only took a handful of votes to swing the nomination results.

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Let reason be silent” – June 23

When experience gainsays its conclusions. Ed Trimnell argues against fighting fire with fire:….

How did Brandon Eich fail to out-argue his opponents? How did the Nobel Laureates Tim Hunt and James Watson fail to make their cases? The fact is that one cannot out-argue anyone in debates that do not take place, debates that Mr. Trimnell knows very well, from personal experience, will never take place. He can attempt to out-argue me because I am willing to engage with him, debate him, and discuss our differences in a civil manner rather than pointing, shrieking, and summoning an Internet mob to shout him down, disqualify, and disemploy him. He simply cannot do the same with the people at TOR Books, among others. He knows that.

Furthermore, Mr. Trimnell is ignoring the wise advice of Aristotle. He is appealing to dialectic in a rhetorical battle where the greater part of those on the other side are not even capable of understanding that dialectic. That is why following his advice is a surefire way to ensure defeat.

I am offering a proven way to win, one that is both historically and logically sound. Mr. Trimnell is offering nothing but certain defeat because feels. He doesn’t like not feeling morally superior to the other side, so much so that he would rather lose than give up that feeling of superiority in order to meet the enemy head-on. I dislike boycotts too, much as General Ferguson disliked poison gas. But I dislike being methodically mobbed, disqualified, and disemployed even more, I dislike being falsely accused and blatantly lied about even more, so I am utilizing certain SJW tactics even more efficiently and more effectively than the SJWs can. Everyone else of influence on the Right should be doing the same.

 

Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 23

Vox Day’s contribution is to the daily File 770 roundup what FAMILY CIRCUS is to the Sunday comics section — a guaranteed bummer often marked by the requirement that you follow the most torturously convoluted of dotted lines.

 

A.G. Carpenter

“Silence is Support” – June 23

….But, Torgersen and Correia maintain that they themselves are not racist, sexist, or homophobic. They just, don’t say anything about Beale’s ongoing rants. Maybe they laugh at his jokes or hit like on the comment window. They can argue all they want that they are not be bigots themselves, but their actions say otherwise.

Correia reached out to Beale last year. This year he reached out to GamerGate (with admittedly uncertain results when it comes to the ballot stuffing) – a group known for its sexist attitudes towards women and a radical and violent fringe. And Torgersen got in deeper with Beale by coordinating their slates under the Sad and Rabid Puppies flags. This isn’t just silent support.

This isn’t just silence that is interpreted as support. This is a deliberate alliance with those who do not hide their racist, sexist, homophobic agendas.

But I will not be silent. And I will not support the ideologies that led a young man to murder nine men and women in a church in Charleston. i will not shrug and say “That Vox Day. He’s an asshat but what can you do? It’s just one man ranting on the internet.” I do not want the others like Dylan Roof looking at the world of SF/F and thinking “See? They agree with me.”

Because I don’t.

Because we don’t.

Because silence only leads to regression.

 

Nicholas Whyte on From The Heart of Europe

“E Pluribus Hugo, revisited” – June 23

I’ve spent more spare time than is healthy over the last few days musing on the proposed new system for counting Hugo nominations, designated E Pluribus Hugo (henceforth EPH) by its designers (to whom detailed observations should be directed here). I am in sympathy with its intent, which is to prevent any group – whoever that group may be – from absolutely excluding nominees from having the chance to be considered for the Hugo Award. I think that the proposal as it currently sits achieves that aim, but at a cost of making it too easy for a group which is otherwise utterly unconnected with Hugo voters to get a single work onto the ballot by “bullet votes” (ie votes for their candidate[s] and no other). I explore this problem below, using data from the 1984 Hugo nomination ballots, and propose a partial solution, which is to use square roots as divisors when weighting nomination votes.

Detail

I’m tremendously grateful to Paul Evans for providing me with the 1984 data he described here. Having spent a couple of evenings crunching figures, I now feel huge sympathy and admiration for the Hugo administrators trying to make sense of the variant titles and spelling submitted by voters. Administering what are essentially thousands of write-in ballots is not exactly straightforward, and I am not sure that I would have the patience to do so in an RL setting myself. Not surprisingly, my tallies vary a bit from Paul’s. He has taken more time over it, so his numbers are probably right.

I’ve picked three different ballot categories from 1984 to analyse mainly because they were relatively easy to process, with less name and category confusion than some of the other options would have presented.

 

Brandon Kempner on Chaos Horizon

“Modelling a Best Saga Hugo Award, Part 1” – June 22

I find it difficult to imagine an award in the abstract, so in this post and the next I’m going to model what a hypothetical Best Saga Hugo would look like for the past 4 years (2011-2014), using two different techniques to generate my model. First up, I’ll use the Locus Awards to model what the Best Saga would look like if voted on by SFF-insiders. Then, I’ll use the Goodreads Choice Awards to model what the Best Saga would look like if the Best Saga became an internet popularity contest. Looking at those two possible models should give us a better idea of how a Best Saga Hugo would actually play out. I bet an actual award would play out somewhere in the middle of the two models.

 

Brandon Kempner on Chaos Horizon

“Modelling a Best Saga Hugo Award, Part 2” – June 23

…. Methodology: The same as last time. Goodreads publishes Top 20 lists of the most popular SF and F novels; I combed through the list and chose the most popular that were part of a series. The Goodreads lists actually publishes vote totals, so I used those to determine overall popularity. Here’s the 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards; note that these would be the books elgible for the 2014 Hugo. The Goodreads categories are a little wonky at times. Keep that in mind. They also separated out Paranormal Fantasy until 2014, so no Dresden Files or Sookie Sackhouse in the model…..

This model looks less encouraging than the Locus Awards model. I think this is what many Hugo voters are afraid of: legacy series like Ender’s Game, Sword of Truth, or even Wheel of Time, showing up long after their critical peak has worn off (if Goodkind ever had a critical peak). Series can maintain their popularity and sales long after their innovation has vanished; readers love those worlds so much that they’ll return no matter how tired and predictable the books are. A 10 or 15 year series also has 10 or 15 years to pick up fans, and it might be harder for newer series by less-established authors to compete.

Still, even the Goodreads awards were not swamped by dead-man walking series, and the Hugo audience would probably trim some of these inappropriate works in their voting. It would be interesting to see someone like King win a Hugo for The Dark Tower; that’s certainly a very different feel than the current Hugos have.

 

Eric Flint

“A DISCUSSION WITH JOHN SCALZI ABOUT THE PROPOSED ‘SAGA’ AWARD” – June 23

….But my biggest difference with John’s approach has to do with something very general—about as general as it gets, in fact.

What are the goals of literary awards in the first place? And what’s the best way to achieve those goals?

There are two ways to look at this. The first is the way John is looking at it, which runs throughout his entire argument, not just in the two paragraphs I quoted above. For John, awards should not only be a recognition for excellence, they should be designed to encourage the development of new talent by being concentrated in those areas where new talent is most likely to emerge.

Hence, he champions short fiction awards. Please note that John is not disagreeing with a point I made in my first essay and have repeated many times since—to wit, that short fiction represents only a very small slice of F&SF whether you measure that either in terms of readers or (especially) the income of authors. He simply feels that’s not very relevant because what he sees as most important is the following:

It [a “Best Saga” award] privileges the established writer over the newer writer. Almost by definition, the authors who are eligible for the “Best Saga” award are very likely be writers who are already successful enough to have a long-running series and the ability to publish in those series on a recurring basis. It’s theoretically possible to have someone toiling away on a series in utter obscurity and suddenly emerge with a knockout installment that would pop that writer up into “Best Saga” consideration, but as a practical matter, it’s almost certainly more likely than not that the nominees in the category would be those authors with perennially popular series — people, to be blunt, like me and a relatively few other folks, who are already more likely to have won the “genre success” lottery than others.

I don’t disagree with the point John makes when he says that “the authors who are eligible for the ‘Best Saga’ award are very likely to be writers who are already successful enough to have a long-running series and the ability to publish in those series on a recurring basis.”

He’s absolutely right about that. But where he sees that as a problem, I see it as an essential feature of any award structure that’s designed to attract the attention of its (supposed) audience. In fact, it was exactly the way the Hugo awards looked in their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s…..

At the moment, and for some time now, the “pendulum” of the Hugo awards has swung too far away from the mass audience. Where I differ from John is that I don’t see any way to reverse the increasing irrelevance of the Hugo awards to most F&SF readers unless the Hugos adopt one or another version of an award for series (i.e., the “Saga” award that’s being proposed). When most popular authors are working exclusively or almost exclusively in series and most of the awards are given for short fiction you will inevitably have a situation where the major awards in F&SF become irrelevant to most of the reading audience. Which, in turn, means that winning an award becomes less and less valuable in any terms beyond personal satisfaction.

If the idea of modifying an award structure to better match the interests of the mass audience really bothers you, grit your teeth and call it Danegeld. But it works.

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Hugo Recommendations: Best Related Work” – June 23

This is how I am voting in the Best Related Work category. Of course, I merely offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his 383 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.

  1. “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF”
  2. Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
  3. “Why Science is Never Settled”
  4. Letters from Gardner
  5. Wisdom from My Internet

 

Melina D on Subversive Reader

“Hugos 2015: Thoughts on Editing” – June 23

I’m not going to talk about individual nominees here, but I did want to talk about the editing awards, particularly short form editing. I’ve heard people talking about these award before and how you can’t really judge editing unless you are either the author or the editor (or someone who works with them) – usually implying that ‘regular fans’ shouldn’t be voting for these awards.

I have to disagree. When we look at the nominees for the short form editing, we’re essentially looking at editors who have put together anthologies or collections (or in one case a magazine, similar to the anthologies/collections, but with more of them over the course of a year). And I strongly believe that you can see good editing when it comes to these forms – as well as bad editing.

 

Melina D on Subversive Reader

“Hugos 2015 Reading: Best Fan Writer” – June 23

I’m not actually going to talk about the nominees individually. There’s a few reasons for this. Firstly, I think some of the nominees thrive on notoriety and get a buzz from someone talking about them. It feeds into their over-inflated sense of self-importance and I don’t feel like adding to that. Secondly, I don’t think any of the provided submissions were at an award level – in content or writing, so there’s no benefit in discussing them individually. Finally, the tone of a few of the pieces left me concerned that I would become a target for abusive behaviour if I was publicly critical of the authors. There’s probably a very slim chance of it, but events of the last couple of years has shown me that it does happen, and I’d prefer not to deal with that at the moment. So, my discussion here is going to be a more general look at what was submitted and what made me so ranty about it.

One thing that really struck me while I was reading, was that many of the pieces had little to do with speculative fiction or media or the community as fans. When we’re celebrating fan writers, I’m looking for people who are passionately engaged as fans. I want to know about the books and stories and media they love and why they love it. I want to know about the spec fic they find find problematic and why. I want to know why media inspires them and why. I want to know what kind of fan community they aspire to belong to and why.

 

Patrick May

“2015 Hugo Awards Graphic Story Category” – June 23

[Reviews all nominees in category.]

The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate

This is the only nominee not included in the Hugo packet. I asked the author on his website and on Twitter if there is an excerpt available, but got no response. Since it’s a webcomic I read a few months worth online to get a feel for the work.

This is less a graphic story than a series of loosely connected gags. Some are amusing, most are not. The artwork is decent, but neither it nor the writing make it a Hugo contender.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant” – June 23

Lightspeed Magazine is a 2015 Best Semiprozine Hugo nominee.

Lightspeed publishes a wide range of science fiction and fantasy fiction, as well as interviews, Q&As with their authors, and fiction podcasts. What I did not find is an archive allowing me to look at their 2014 issues, the relevant issues for this year’s Hugos. The only thing I’ve been able to read that they published in 2014 is “The Day The World Turned Upside Down,” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, translated by Lia Belt. I’ve already expressed my opinion on that one, and you can read it, if you wish, by clicking the link.

It’s very well presented visually, but with the Heuvelt story being the only thing from 2014 that’s available to read, I’m not prepared to rate it very high.

 

Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog

“Hugo Reading – Short Stories” – June 23

[Reviews all five nominees.]

The best story of the five by a few lengths was definitely “Totaled”, although it wasn’t perfect, nor even the best I’ve read from 2014. It was just very good. In descending order of quality I would rank “A Single Samurai”, “On A Spiritual Plain”, “Turncoat”… and then “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” a distant last. Four of the five have something to recommend them, but only one was good enough to even be considered for an award.

 

 

 

543 thoughts on “The Snifferance Engine 6/23

  1. Also, I’d like to stand up for Ulysses. I think that book is compelling and often laugh-out-loud funny. Plus, some of it is dirty, which I always enjoy.

    I’d like to recommend this free audio book, which many people who bounce off the text seem to like.

  2. Kyra: (And incidentally, I was not at all kidding about having a list of good lesbian romance SFF. It is something I post given the slightest provocation.)

    *clamors for list*

    What sort of provocation would you need, exactly? I mean, I have some very nice basil lemonade, and rose-infused gin, and I make a mean salted butter caramel, but neither of those are really transmissible through the internet, alas.

  3. bloodstone75 wrote:
    Perhaps TB is keeping his Worldcon membership on the down-low because it’s an Attending membership; that way he can conduct a “surprise attack” and cause maximum kerfuffle (cur-fuffle?).

    Perhaps he would be walking straight into the arms of the IRS if he did that, and dare not set foot on U.S. soil? (This is just another theory, of course.)

    He’s all piss and wind, like a barber’s cat.

  4. To rrede: just wanted to say thanks for long post. Will read links later — at work.

    I went to college in era when Beowulf was still required reading to earn a degree. I found LOTR tedious — but I’ve given copies of Tolkien’s translation “the legend of sigurd and gudrun” away as birthday presents.

  5. Kurt: Those are good arguments for King, yes. Though I can’t help remembering how much King fans liked, or didn’t mind, his prose even back when, and how some of his readers have declared they’re finding he’s gotten tiresome. Which explains my skepticism. Not denial, skepticism.

    David W: The Once and Future King is hardly an example of canonical modernist literature.

  6. Camestros:

    True but the Dan Brown publishing juggernaut does imply that it is possible to become a blockbuster selling writer with poor prose and warmed over plots.

    I’d quibble with the “but,” since I didn’t say that it was impossible to become an international sensation with crap. What I said was that King didn’t do it that way.

    Sweet:

    And all this talk of literary style in sff has just moved me to pull “Little, Big” off the shelf — it’s been years since I’ve looked at it and I think it’s time for another go.

    I love the prose of it, but I haven’t yet made it all the way through — I think it’s fatigue issues on my part, and not the book, but every time I put it away for a while, when I come back to it I have to start over.

    One of these days!

    Gabriel:

    What’s wrong with “Best Series” since that is literally what we’re talking about? Saga means something very different than what’s going on here.

    The more it gets defined, the less interest I have. I’d rather a definition that leaned more toward Saga than Series. Although, if asked for a real definition of Saga, I’d have a hard time articulating it, which is why I suggested it be bashed around for a while.

    But the proponents should plump for the version they want, which does sound like Best Series to me.

  7. I mean, I have some very nice basil lemonade, and rose-infused gin, and I make a mean salted butter caramel, but neither of those are really transmissible through the internet, alas.

    You could share recipes though …
    Basil lemonade – is that a single thing or were you describing a complex beverage basil-lemonade-rose-infused-gin? I’ll drink either.

  8. > “*clamors for list*”

    Well, all right then!

    And I think … I’m going to do it up right this time. Rather than just posting a list of titles and authors, which isn’t all that interesting, I’m going to make it a few posts and include comments and ratings. Because it will be fun and I’m bored!

    So … coming soon.

  9. I was the person who asked a few days ago whether Maria rhymed with Correia. I was talking about a song parody of West Side Story’s “Maria”.

  10. Kurt Busiek:
    I’d quibble with the “but,”

    I shall magnanimously concede your but-quibble.

    I like King’s artistic ethic – he strives to be better and is constructively self-critical, despite sitting on what I imagine is piles of jewel encrusted golden goblets.

  11. Great series, unlike awesome first novels, have years to build up buzz – they aren’t likely to be something one first hears about when the nominations come out. If I hadn’t found it interesting enough to pick up over those years, I wouldn’t feel guilty about just leaving it off my ballot. If I did feel compelled to read it – say, there was something about it that indicated I might want No Award above it – one book should be more than sufficient, just as reading a fraction is for the shorter works.

  12. Nick:

    I really enjoyed A Death, which is online and for now anyway, complete even for non-subscribers.

    Oo. Hadn’t read it. Thanks for the link!

    DB:

    I can’t help remembering how much King fans liked, or didn’t mind, his prose even back when, and how some of his readers have declared they’re finding he’s gotten tiresome.

    In my case, I read his first story collection in high school, didn’t like most of it, and decided never to read King again because he was a purple-prose tell-not-show guy.

    Then years later, I found myself at Grand Central Station with an awaiting train and nothing to read, so I bought what looked like the least-bad choice from a sidewalk bookseller, MISERY. As noted, the story dragged me bodily through MISERY, even though King was still doing a lot of what I would consider bad writing tics.

    But I started reading him again, here and there, and eventually became enough of a fan to go back and read all the stuff I missed. I even reread NIGHT SHIFT and found stuff I liked a lot (along with stuff I didn’t), and when I now read MISERY I find in it the stuff I like more than the tics I don’t.

    So in my case, I’m not an early adopter of King — if I had to choose between everything he’s published from BAG OF BONES on and everything that came out earlier, it would be wrenchingly hard because of THE STAND, but I’d go with the later stuff. I think the people who say he’s getting tiresome are the people who liked the early stuff for the blood and thunder and shock, and just aren’t interested in the more literary, reflective stuff that reels me in.

    I think that as his work has changed, he’s attracted new readers, and lost old readers. Not all of them, but enough so that the people saying “he got better!” and “he got boring!” are two different camps. The people who liked his work just fine back then aren’t the same people saying his writing’s gotten better since then.

  13. I was the person who asked a few days ago whether Maria rhymed with Correia. I was talking about a song parody of West Side Story’s “Maria”.

    Speaking as someone with a Mexican family, if Correia’s name is pronounced in a hispanic way (I’ve seen people say he identifies as hispanic so I will assume that it is,) then no.

    Marie is mah-REE-ah

    Correia would co-Rrrey-ah with a rolled r, ideally.

  14. Alan Ziebarth on June 24, 2015 at 2:22 pm said:
    I was the person who asked a few days ago whether Maria rhymed with Correia. I was talking about a song parody of West Side Story’s “Maria”.

    I am not Portuguese (which I think is the ultimate origin of his name, yes?) but I doubt it. In Correia, -eia has an extra vowel, because AFAIK Portuguese is like Italian in that you pronounce every letter than is written down instead of taking a while guess at what the… ahem. Sorry, old grudges. Also the double R has a different sound from the single R of Maria.

  15. @rrde So much love for that comment.

    The results at the end were that “linguistics” and “literature” ended up split, and “English” as an academic field decided not to require Anglo Saxon language/Beowulf/medieval material but to ground itself in Shakespeare as the origin point (despite my students insisting Shakespeare is Old English, it’s actually modern).

    That’s rather interesting. I’ve studied English Literature in Germany and we had not only classes in linguistics (about 50% of English Lit is taken up by Linguistics) but also had seminars on Old English (bible translations from Latin into Old English) and Early Modern English.
    The interesting part was that I was doing Modern German Lit at the same time and there we also had to do Linguistics. The parallels between Old English and Old German are impossible to miss. Knowing one helped understanding the other.

    Are there some books on Tolkien you would recommend? Especially when it comes to Linguistics and Style? (I hated Lingusitics while at university. These days I find it more and more fascinating.)

  16. @John Seavey: “Can I confess that I’m amused by Beale’s disclaimer that he’s not directing anyone to vote in lockstep with his recommendations, primarily because I think he actually thinks he’s fooling people with it?”

    Maybe we should start calling him the Bugblatter Beast of Troll.

    @Joe H.: “it seems unlikely that an author would have multiple works coming out in the same year.”

    The 1632 series routinely produces multiple volumes a year. I think the Grantville Gazette comes out every other month, edited and repackaged serials from there come out randomly, and I think there are three or four novels per year in the series.

    Here’s an idea. How about, instead of Best Saga, a proposal for Best Work in a Series? This year, the Dresden Files nomination could have gone there instead of in Best Novel, and its packet entry could have included a “high points” introduction to place the book’s continuing arcs into context. (Perhaps a nominated author would be motivated to write such a piece, but it’d have to be purely optional and possibly of no more than Short Story length.)

    To use a Dramatic Presentation example, the “Once More, With Feeling” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer could have been accompanied by a five-minute short that introduced the characters and plot threads. That would mitigate the “way too much reading” and “few visible candidates” problems, as well as those inherent in giving a series-scope award to an incomplete series.

    Speaking of which, is anyone else tempted to nominate the SP/RP campaigns for Best Dramatic Performance (Long)? 😀

  17. Kurt: “The people who liked his work just fine back then aren’t the same people saying his writing’s gotten better since then.” Well, I am. 🙂 I started with Night Shift and Salem’s Lot, got hooked, and have read most – though not all – of what he’s published since. I’ve really enjoyed watching the evolution of his style, and of what he tells stories about.

    (But I do grant that it seems a pretty valid generalization.)

    “A Death” strikes me in some ways as a refined, intensified version of the same impetus that drove The Colorado Kid.

  18. “Prose romance” would be me.

    Personally, I like both Tolkien and the works of International Modernism, but I’m also the product of Lang. (Anglo-Saxon and ME studies) plus standard Lit. New Criticism plus Greek/Latin Classics. I also got exposed to postmodern & cultural studies (especially in Grad. School at Hopkins in the early ’80s) but it’ s not a formative influence.

    These days I program in C++ for a living and look on at the criticism wars with a certain detachment.

  19. KB –

    The people who liked his work just fine back then aren’t the same people saying his writing’s gotten better since then

    Some maybe are. I liked his work just fine back then, but I picked up Carrie when I was in grade school and was hooked. However as I’ve grown and my tastes have changed he’s grown and his writing has changed. He’s a better writer now and it’s why I still read him, but I liked the rawness of his stories even with all the rough edges back then even more.

  20. Bruce and Matt:

    Yeah, I should have said those two sentiments aren’t coming from the same camp, or something.

    There’s an overlap between the camps, to be sure. But not to the point that those two sentiments have to be coming from the same people.

  21. By the by, on the off chance that signal boosting will do a bit of good for someone, Mercedes Lackey recently posted to the City of Heroes fan forum about the reasons for her long absence:

    http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10967.msg183682.html#msg183682

    Thanks for the info. I used to be a HUGE ML-fan and she’s still one of the writers who takes up the most shelf-space. I have a few of her newer works on my wishlist. Might be a good time to pick them up.

    Kyra:

    (And incidentally, I was not at all kidding about having a list of good lesbian romance SFF. It is something I post given the slightest provocation.)

    Pretty please? *puppy dog eyes* 😀

    I would love that list. I’ve read some gay romance SF but good lesbian stories are hard to find.

  22. Re Potlatch.

    A great little con, and one well worth attending: the year we made it Always Coming Home was the Book of Honour.

    Every now and then I wonder about running another Lexicon. Running a lit con with one of J R R Tolkein’s students as GOH in Tolkein’s old college was something special. And Philip Pullman was a delightful guest, who cycled in every day…

  23. I really enjoyed A Death, which is online and for now anyway, complete even for non-subscribers.

    Huh. I love King and I own pretty much all his books, and that did nothing for me. I didn’t seem to have a plot, point or ending. Very odd.

  24. Miscellaneous thots, none of them canine-related:

    About Cherryh’s Foreigner series: Extraordinarily good and well-sustained sequence that manages to deliver always-interesting developments of a fairly limited set of initial conditions. But it really does need to be read from the start, or at least from the first 3-6 volumes. And I can see that some very demanding hard-SF types might croggle at the lost travelers’ good fortune in finding a human-habitable world peopled with people who are so close to us in so many ways (human-enough appearing to be able to become lovers, at least in one case) but psychologically different enough to possess seriously different social constructions that nevertheless wind up feeling something like, say, feudal Japan. Get past that, though, and the whole thing rolls along most admirably.

    Re: Tolkien, the academy, and the reception/acceptance of SF/F. I may be part of the first cohort of Amereican grad students to see Tolkien in the classroom, as part of Mark Hillegas’s seminar on the Inklings (1968-ish?), a course that also included Lewis, Sayers, and Charles Williams. The only non-fantastic work on the syllabus was Gaudy Night. I wrote my main paper on LotR and remember how thin the commentary was back then–and I particularly recall how snotty the Wilson essay was. Mark also was interested in early SF/F, from Wells through Stapledon and David Lindsey, though he didn’t quite know what to make of post-war American SF outside the New Maps of Hell social-satiric variety.

  25. Woohoo, just received my Sasquan Progress Report #4!

    It looks like the convention is going to be great fun. The Hugos are, after all, only a fraction of what is going on there.

  26. Nick:

    I really enjoyed A Death, which is online and for now anyway, complete even for non-subscribers.

    That was nice.

    Very much a NEW YORKER story, too. Which is not something I’m ordinarily drawn to, but with the right voice, I’m in. And that was a very nice voice he gave to the story.

  27. Oneiros : Well, in related news: Beale continues to overestimate his significance, and is urging people to send physical letters now.

    Generally speaking, the point of a boycott is to get companies to notice by affecting their sales. If, for example, you have a group writing irate letters but sales for their target go UP, then you just look like a pathetic crank.

    Which is what Beale is, of course. Nice of him to confirm it in public.

  28. Lesbian Romance SFF, Part the First

    Broken Wings by L-J Baker
    Comments: I picked up Broken Wings on a whim, and was surprised and pleased to find it was a very well-written fantasy novel about a lesbian fairy, her society, and a romance that enters her life. Excellent characters, an interesting world, and strong themes about the effects of religious prejudice and the aftereffects of traumatic experiences.
    Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
    Note: If you like Broken Wings, you might want to check out, by the same author “Lady Knight” (3.5/5 stars), a quite decently done medieval fantasy-style lesbian romance and “Promises, Promises” (3.5/5 stars) a comedy fantasy lesbian romance that didn’t always work but absolutely had me laughing aloud at points. She has also written “Adijan and her Genie”, an Arabian nights style one, but I thought it was much weaker than the others (2/5 stars).

    Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
    Comment: Carey’s first venture into science fiction is excellent, a page-turner of a book that kept me wide awake through the night to see what happened next. Set in a military-run town with a permanent underclass that isn’t allowed to leave, a girl is born with a peculiar, special gift for fighting … which she doesn’t use in the way you might expect.
    Rating: 4/5 Stars
    Notes: This book has a sequel, “Saints Astray”, but while it had fun moments it wasn’t nearly as good (2.5/5 stars.) Carey is also known for writing a series of three fantasy novel trilogies (the “Terre D’Ange” books) with strong BDSM elements in which the main characters are pretty much all bisexual; many of these are excellent and I would rate some quite highly, but I wouldn’t really call any of them lesbian romance until parts of the third trilogy (the “Naamah” books), which unfortunately is by far the weakest (2/5 stars).

    The Lyremouth Chronicles by Jane Fletcher
    Comments: Jane Fletcher is an uneven author. I have heard her writing called “naive but charming”, and here’s a good deal of truth in that. The Lyremouth Chronicles, a fantasy series about a sorceress and a warrior who fall in love, is probably her most consistently well-written series. It starts slowly in the first book (The Exile and the Sorcerer), but then takes off in the second and the rest.
    Rating: 3/5 stars in the first book, rising to 4/5 stars in the subsequent books
    Note: She also has a science fiction series, the Celaeno series, set on an all-woman planet which has fallen back to about Roman-level technology. Some of these are quite good and some are mediocre. The first one is all right if a bit clunky (“The Temple at Landfall”, 2.75/5 stars) and the second one is probably the best of the series (“The Walls at Westernfort”, 3.5/5 stars). I actually get a real kick out of these, to be honest, but I do admit their flaws.

  29. Bruce Baugh : IDK: But it’s not like Beale’s boycott is going to get more than a thousand or two followers tops, judging from evidence at hand, and likely well under a thousand. Some significant fraction of that 765 or whatever it is that CC’ed him on protest mail to Tor was people using multiple mail accounts, we may be absolutely certain. Abuse like that is standard practice in their community, and all the communities they overlap with from politics to gaming to sex.

    Plus, of course, those of us who created throwaway accounts and emailed him to puff up his ego and watch him fall down in public when it doesn’t pan out. It’s even easier now that he’s demanding his toadies send in snail mail and you don’t have to fake any headers.

    Not that I’d suggest people do this, of course.

  30. Actually, one of the problems with early critical work on LoTR and Tolkien’s fiction in general may have been Tolkien’s status as a scholar–I remember one argument, very early, with an Anglo-Saxonist who never quite got over the fact that Tolkien was wasting his time with all that “fantasy trash” when he could/should have been writing the definitive book on Beowulf . . . it was an interestingly different perception of Tolkien’s career, I thought.

  31. Gabriel F. on June 24, 2015 at 2:30 pm said:

    I was the person who asked a few days ago whether Maria rhymed with Correia. I was talking about a song parody of West Side Story’s “Maria”.

    Speaking as someone with a Mexican family, if Correia’s name is pronounced in a hispanic way (I’ve seen people say he identifies as hispanic so I will assume that it is,) then no.

    Marie is mah-REE-ah

    Correia would co-Rrrey-ah with a rolled r, ideally.

    Correia is a Portugese name and as far as I understand it that is the ethnic identity Larry Correia identifies with.

    Portugese are considered white, generally, but so are many hispanics. There has been some feeling that, as with Theodore Beale’s fragment of Cherokee Princess DNA, this may be little more than a bullshit way to try to claim minority status as a whitewash for racism.

    That aside, I think “co-Rrrey-ah” is close enough to “mah-REE-ah” for the satire to work.

  32. Meh. I don’t think it’s really worthwhile wondering if Beale’s actually voting. He’s the sort of person who would think that hiding his name so people don’t know what he’s doing is super clever, James Bond level stuff. And then when someone says he isn’t, he can leap in going “HA! YOU ARE WRONG AND THAT PROVES I’M SMARTER THAN YOU!” (or perhaps “SJWS ALWAYS LIE BECAUSE I’M ACTUALLY VOTING!” depending on what they’ve got in the kitchen that day.)

    Blah blah, war metaphor, military intelligence, Beale wins the grand prize of another day of being Beale, blah.

  33. Nick Mamatas –

    Fun fact: in about six weeks, you’ll hear the name “Correia” a lot as fighter Bethe Correia is going to be beaten up by Ronda Rousey

    Wow both Big and Little Nog are fighting on that card? I’d have figured one of them would’ve hung it up. Considering the fight between Ronda and Bethe I wonder if there will be odds on how long it will take for Ronda to beat Bethe. Because that’s a foregone conclusion.

  34. @Camestros–

    Of course I can share recipes.

    Basil lemonade (including a link to the basil lemon syrup recipe) — from Epicurious. The most labor intensive part is zesting the lemons, but I think it’s worth it.

    The lemonade (or just the syrup) pairs nicely with Dillon’s Rose Gin, though also very nicely with less fancy gin, too.

    And the salted butter caramel is a Smitten Kitchen recipe

    Now, to see whether I make it out of moderation with three links.

  35. Correia is a Portugese name and as far as I understand it that is the ethnic identity Larry Correia identifies with.

    I have been so corrected. The superficial overlap between Portuguese and Spanish often trips me up when it comes to pronunciation.

  36. @rrede

    I do think that folks living in the 21st century have more of a problem with Tolkien’s prose. It takes patience and close reading to really appreciate it, but I find it difficult to believe that it could ever be dismissed as weak. He was astonishingly precise with what he was trying to do at all times. One of my favorite aspects of LotR is the manner in which the prose changes given the point in the story. I also agree with DS about the reading aloud. That’s pretty fundamental to what he was striving for. He was echoing back to far early days.

    Msb on June 24, 2015 at 1:41 pm said:
    @ rrede
    What would you recommend among Melissa Scott’s work? All I’ve read is The Armor of Light, which I adore. Marlowe survives because Philip Sidney survives to prevent his murder, and they join forces with Shakespeare to save the world. Who could resist that combination?

    I strong recommend her Astrieant books:
    Point of Hopes, with Lisa A. Barnett, 1995
    Point of Dreams, with Lisa A. Barnett, 2001
    Point of Knives, 2012
    Fairs’ Point, 2014

  37. Wow both Big and Little Nog are fighting on that card? I’d have figured one of them would’ve hung it up. Considering the fight between Ronda and Bethe I wonder if there will be odds on how long it will take for Ronda to beat Bethe. Because that’s a foregone conclusion.

    I put the over/under at 45 seconds.

  38. And of course none of that necessarily has anything to do with how Larry Correia pronounces his own name. I knew someone of that name who pronounced it to sound exactly like “Korea”.

  39. Lesbian Romance SFF, part the Second

    Nightshade by Shea Godfrey
    Comment: A fantasy novel of political intrigue. A princess is sent to enemy kingdom for an arranged political marriage, and finds herself falling in love with the wrong royal. Plots and counterplots ensue. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
    Rating: 3.5/5 stars
    Note: The sequel, “Blackstone”, wasn’t quite as good (3/5 stars), but I’m planning to keep reading the series.

    Slow River by Nicola Griffith
    Comment: One of the true greats of lesbian romance science fiction. An heiress’ life changes dramatically after she is kidnapped. The SF aspects are truly fascinating (and unusual) without ever overshadowing the human story.
    Rating: 5/5 stars
    Note: Nicola Griffith has another SF book, Ammonite, set on an all woman world, but I personally don’t think it was as strong (3.25/5 stars).

    The Adaptation/Inheritance Duology by Malinda Lo
    Comment: This pair of YA science fiction books is more properly bisexual romance than lesbian romance, but what the hey here it is anyway. After a strange country-wide disaster, a teenager comes in contact with a secret government program, and is strangely changed. Quite good.
    Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
    Notes: This author also has some lesbian romance fantasy novels loosely based on fairy tales. I liked them, too, although I didn’t think they were quite as strong. “Ash” (3/5 stars) and “Huntress” (3/5 stars).

  40. If she lasts a minute, it’ll be an achievement. If she lasts a round, it’ll be like she won!

  41. CPaca: “Not that I’d suggest people do this, of course.”. Absolutely not. Particularly not if they use ransom-note fonts and deliberate grammatical errors. No sirree.

  42. There was a suggestion that Bethe Correia had said something on social media that had deeply offended Ronda Rousey. The question might not be how long, but which bones are broken before the match is stopped.

    Speaking of MMA, did anyone see the new BattleBots on Sunday? They’re treating it very much like robot MMA now. I thought the first episode was very good and the robot technology has gotten frightening. I could use more technical details and less Up Close and Personal*, but it’s good summer TV.

    * The expression “Up Close and Personal” was made popular by ABC who are airing BattleBots so I feel it’s appropriate here.

  43. Kyra : The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway. Well this was great. At first I was a little dubious of so much of the book being structured as an extended, “Lord of Light”-style flashback, but there turned out to be an excellent narrative reason for doing exactly that. This book had So. Many. Ideas. coupled with a narrative that kept me involved.

    You’ll probably enjoy “Angelmaker”, too. “Tigerman” was a bit of a let down – but still better than most sf.

    Be warned, one of the female characters in “Angelmaker” seems to be in there deliberately as male fan service. Might be annoying if you’re not a straight male.

  44. Lesbian Romance SFF, part the Third

    The Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks
    Comment: Excellent novels of war, culture clash, politics, and reconciliation in a fantasy setting. Books with broad scope in a fascinating world. The fourth and final book in this series is taking a long time to get written, but the author assures her fans she is working on it.
    Rating: 4.5/5 stars
    Note: Laurie J. Marks has some other (mostly out of print) books that I’m slowly tracking down, but Elemental Logic so far appears to be her masterpiece.

    The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
    Comment: OK, I may be stretching things by calling this a romance, given what happens in the romantic part of the plot, but it is too good to leave off. Set in the relatively far future, it’s about a theater artist who does not fit into the world around her (and the genetically modified polar bear person she loves.) It’s odd, and fine, and like drinking a shot of concentrated clinical depression.
    Rating: 5/5 stars
    Notes: As far as I know, this is Geoff Ryman’s only book that approaches lesbian romance, except maybe for the odd book “The Warrior Who Carried Life” which is likewise not exactly a great fit for the “lesbian romance” genre but is quite good (3.75/5 stars).

    Roses and Thorns by Chris Anne Wolfe
    Comment: This author only wrote a few books before her untimely death, and this fantasy novel is probably the best of them. A retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a twist.
    Rating: 3.25/5 stars
    Notes: She has a number of other lesbian romance books including the sci-fi “Shadows of Aggar” and “Fires of Aggar” and the odd time-travel book “Annabel and I”, but they aren’t as good — I might call them interesting but flawed (2.5/5 stars each.)

  45. Kyra, very much appreciating the roundup, and passing some along to friends who feel a little intimidated by the current flood of posts here.

  46. Blah blah, war metaphor, military intelligence, Beale wins the grand prize of another day of being Beale, blah.

    <shudder> What a horrible punishment.

  47. Well if it’s going to last less than a minute then they could at least work at the presentation; channeling your inner Lady Macbeth whilst staring at the camera is all very well, but without large amounts of blood it doesn’t really work.

    Now if they both did their utterly winsome smiles for the picture promos it might give the 45 seconds some zest…

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