Gluten-free, too!
(1) SF HALL OF FAME VOTING. The EMP Museum has opened public voting on the 2016 finalists for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. The deadline to cast your vote is May 11.
In honor of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame’s 20th anniversary, we invited the public to submit their favorite Creators and Creations. After tallying up your nominations (nearly 2,000 submissions!), a committee of industry experts narrowed down the list to the final twenty nominees.
SF Site News observed:
It is the first time the EMP will be inducting a second class into the Hall of Fame, comprised of “Creations” as well as the “Creators” who have traditionally been honored.
Creators
- Douglas Adams
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Neil Gaiman
- Aldous Huxley
- Stephen King
- Stan Lee
- Terry Pratchett
- Nichelle Nichols
- J.K. Rowling
- Lana & Lilly Wachowski
Creations
- 1984, by George Orwell
- Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott
- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
- The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
- The Star Wars media franchise, created by George Lucas
- The Star Trek media franchise, created by Gene Roddenberry
- “Space Oddity,” by David Bowie
- The Twilight Zone TV series, created by Rod Serling
- A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
(2) OWN ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST SF COLLECTIONS. Ebay is asking for best offers on what is billed as the “World’s Best Science Fiction Small press and Pulp Magazine Collection – High Grade”.
The owner is willing to sell it outright for US $2,500,000.00.
Details about World’s Best Science Fiction Small Press and Pulp Magazine Collection High Grade
20,000+ Books Complete Sets Arkham House Fantasy Press
You are bidding on the most extensive, highest graded, complete set of all Small Press Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books as well as the most extensive very rare pulp magazine collection in the world. Many of the sets below are the best in the world. A few are the only ones in the world, let alone in “like new” condition. Many are also complete (or near complete as some authors were dead at time of publication) signed sets.
You aren’t just buying a bunch of books, you are buying the rarest, and you are buying the best.
There is also a long Q&A section.
How can these things be in such high grade? Are there any fake dustjackets or facsimile reprint books?
EVERYTHING IS ORIGINAL. They are in such high grade because that’s what I go after. I have bought most of the books in the small press collection (for example) 2-4 times a piece. I love to marry high grade dustjackets to high grade books. I regularly buy the highest graded copy of any book that comes up for sale online from any of a couple dozen different book sites) as well as buy from older collectors with long time private collections. My record for any individual book is having bought it 13 times before finding a very high grade copy. Virtually none of these books came from collections I bought as a dealer. I had to buy them all individually. Most of the books I bought individually several times a piece. I’ve assembled all but one of these sets personally….
How large is the collection and book store?
Imagine a three car garage completely full from floor to ceiling, front to back without walking room in between, completely full of books. It’s the equivalent of about 350 to 400 “comic long boxes”, and will take the majority of an 18-wheeler for transportation purposes….
Why sell the personal collection and store together?
There is a lot of cross over interest, and frankly if I own even one book after this auction is over, I’ll just end up buying more….
(3) HAILED INTO COURT. Rachel Swirsky conducts a “Silly Interview with S. B. Divya, Defense Attorney for the Oxford Comma”.
1. Your bio says that “S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma.” I am here to tell you that the Oxford comma has, unfortunately, been put on trial for its life. However, you are its defense attorney! Make your case.
Your honor, I humbly present the Oxford comma, also known as a serial comma. It is abastion of orderliness in a sea of grammatical chaos. This comma is an exemplary citizen, always obeying a simple rule: that it follows each item in a list until the last. Let us not create an exception to the rule! Let us not say, “It follows each item in a list except for the second to last and the last, which shall be joined by a conjunction.” Nay, let us stand fast against such unwieldy rule-making – such convoluted thinking – and embrace the simplicity that is embodied by this innocuous punctuation mark.
(4) CLASSIC FANZINE DIGITIZED. Linda Bushyager’s 1970s newzine Karass has been scanned and put online at FANAC.ORG.
They currently reside at http://fanac.org/fanzines/Karass/” Go there for a blast from the past (1974-1978). Lots of good artwork too, especially in the final Last Karass issue. If you don’t remember it, Karass was a SF fan newszine I published. My thanks go to Joe and Mark for doing this.
Basically, Karass passed the torch to File 770 at the end of its run. Wasn’t that awhile ago!
(5) CHINA PRESS COVERS HUGO NOMINEE. The South China Morning Post ran this story: “Young writer’s fantastical tale of class inequality in Beijing earns her Hugo Awards nomination”
Hao Jingfang says her sci-fi novelette ‘Folding Beijing’ aims to expose society’s injustices…
The nomination of Hao’s work comes after Chinese author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem – depicting an alien civilisation’s invasion of earth during the Cultural Revolution – won best novel at the Hugo Awards last year.
Folding Beijing is set in the future, where Beijing folds up so different groups occupy different levels. The protagonist, a waste worker from the Third Space, is hired by a student in the Second Space to send a love letter to a girl in the First Space, despite strong opposition from the girl’s family due to their class difference.
(6) FAN MAIL. Kurt Busiek tweeted a fan letter he once sent to a Marvel comic calling on them to revive the quality of their letter section.
I always liked lettercolumns. pic.twitter.com/yfuygOEI8e
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 22, 2016
(7) BOOKMARKED. Rachel Swirsky interprets her story “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” in a comment at File 770.
“If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love has the clear implication that the author desires violent justice towards people who beat the narrator’s lover into a coma over either their sexuality or their ethnicity.”
OK, author talking about their own story follows. Feel free to skip.
Desires it, sure, but then is like “wow, that would suck and leave victims like me which is not okay.” Or: “I have a base desire to hurt you despite my understanding that it is morally and ethically wrong and would have terrible consequences, and I can’t even really fantasize about it without being overwhelmed by that knowledge and returned to the reality of the real world where nothing helps, nothing changes things, and certainly not revenge.”
(To a certain extent, isn’t that the *same* point Wright makes about homosexuals and tire irons? It’s his impulse, he says, but he’s not doing it, so presumably he’s aware that it is wrong–I hope–or at least that it has social consequences he doesn’t wish to encounter.)
I’m not suggesting you didn’t understand this in your comment. Just that it is a thing that confuses and bugs me about the revenge reading that’s been put forward, since it’s specifically an *anti-revenge* story.
It is an *anti-revenge* story because one of my intimate relations had recently uncovered a history of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and fuck if I didn’t fantasize about stopping or revenging it. But the damage is done. It is incontrovertible. And there is no revenge to be had; the abuser is still around, but what’s the point? It’s been thirty years. The person who did it, and the moment when it could have changed, are gone. All that’s left is the reality of the abuse and its long-lasting damage.
Not that I realized that was the impetus when I was writing it. I didn’t put it together until a lot later, that the story, and the angst I was going through over that, were related.
(I continue to have no problem with people who dislike it based on actual literary criteria, personal definitions of SF, or for sentimentality or manipulation. I would ask the folks in category two to consider noting that “it’s sff” or “it’s not sff” is actually a matter of opinion, not fact, since there is no reifiable SFF; it’s not like it’s a platonic thing that can be identified and pointed to. It’s a mobile boundary, interacting with a lot of other things. In this case, the interaction occurs around conditional tense and storytelling, which has a long history of being considered SFF in cases like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and folklore, but I suspect there are also works that are considered realist that use the device. I don’t actually have an investment in whether it’s SFF or not, as I cannot be moved to give a damn about genres, but I think both positions are valid.)
OK, done, thanks, needed a rant.
(8) GET YOUR SECRET DECODER RINGS READY. The signal is on its way from John Scalzi —
Want to erect a huge, neon sign that says "I'm an enormous asshole" over your head? Just use the phrase "virtue signalling" as a criticism!
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 28, 2016
For those who don't know, "virtue signalling" is how you say "politically correct," when you think you're hip but actually just a schmuck.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 28, 2016
"Virtue signalling" is also a way to make clear you think someone who is trying to be decent is, in reality, as much an asshole as you are.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 28, 2016
(9) HAIR TONIGHT. King Gillette never used this for a commercial.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, and Michael J. Walsh, for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the second shift, Brian Z.]
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godstalk
@Tasha Turner: Wow, that sounds like a very impressive/scary gallstone. Congrats on your happy recovery progress! 😀
@JJ: Is godstalk working better now? (I feel like saying “Can you hear me now?”) I’m still godstalk-shy.
@Rose Embolism: Read the book “Cuisine and Empire”. It’s just what you’re looking for.
(3) Oxford Comma 4 LYFE.
(4) I have a big soft spot for Linda Bushyager as she once got me a VHS copy of a movie I wanted very very much that didn’t come out on video for quite a while. And it was good enough to run another generation off for my pals. Note that even at this late date, I am not mentioning it because studio lawyers.
I’d just like to underscore my appreciation of the typographical humor section of the earlier posts. Absolutely bang-on, everybody.
I use the serial comma (or Oxford or American) because that was what I was taught to use. It works for me, and I see no reason to stop using it. Others can go ahead and use the Other Comma as they please. I won’t tell them they’re Wrong, as long as they extend me the same courtesy. And stop coming up with dubious logic to support their position. “It breaks when you have only two items”, really?
These puns are getting a bit pica-yune.
GROUCHO: Are you Bodoni?
CHICO: At’s’a me, Bodoni the printer.
GROUCHO: Good. I need you to do some invitations for me. “You are cordially invited to a wingding –”
CHICO: “A wingding…”
GROUCHO: “You are cordially invited to a wingding at the house of –” Listen, are you getting this down?
CHICO: Just a minute. Palatino, come-a here, I need-a to write something down.
HARPO comes over and lifts up his foot. A piece of paper is glued to the sole of his shoe. CHICO starts writing on it.
GROUCHO: You’re writing it down there? It’ll get smudged.
CHICO: Sorry boss. Palatino, turn around.
HARPO turns around and lifts his coat to reveal another piece of paper glued to the seat of his pants. CHICO starts writing on it.
GROUCHO: Now it’s going to be smudged when he sits down.
CHICO: What, you don’t wanna footnote, you don’t wanna endnote, how am I supposed to write it down?
GROUCHO: How about he just keeps it under his hat?
CHICO: No, at’s’a fool’s cap, ‘at costs extra.
GROUCHO: Well, never mind. The important thing is that it looks fancy, so do it in chancery.
CHICO: Chancery?
GROUCHO: That’s right.
CHICO: Okay, I’ll take a chancery. Give me a chancery on Copperplate in the third race.
GROUCHO: No, I mean it needs to have serifs. You know what those are?
CHICO: Sure, serifs are what-a sank-a se ship. (Turns to HARPO) Good one, eh?
GROUCHO: Listen, how about you take a short walk off of a trebuchet?
CHICO: A trebuchet?
GROUCHO: You know what that is?
CHICO: Sure, at’s-a how the dairy man brings-a you the milk, the cream and the butter. One-a buchet, two-a buchet, tre buchet.
GROUCHO: Gee, you looked like such a nice italic gentleman. But I guess you didn’t want to be typecast. (Turns to HARPO.) Maybe I’ll have better luck with your friend.
CHICO: Sorry, boss, he don’t-a talk.
GROUCHO: So what does he do?
HARPO reaches into his pants and takes out a ray gun. He points it and GROUCHO and pulls the trigger: a flag pops out that reads “ZAPF”
GROUCHO: I knew I should have gotten rid of you dingbats when I had the chance.
Well played, Herr Johnson. I think all it lacks is a musical number in the key of ASDF.
@matthew Keep this up and I am going to start giving you money.
@ Rev. Bob:
Hello, I must be scrolling.
I cannot stay,
I came to say
I must be scrolling.
Just one quick pounce
and then I’ll flounce
I must be scrolling.
I’ll troll a post or two,
I’ll snark the Hugos through,
but I am telling you,
I must be scrolling.
“Virtue signalling” – from what I’ve seen, a term that at its core could be used for productive dialogue about the dangers of trying to say the right things for the sake of making yourself look good without a good understand why some things are “wrong” (ie they are harmful/oppressive) and/or a dialogue about the need to leave your ego at the door in social justice efforts, but much like the term “politically correct” and SJW, it’s been taken over by tone-deaf opponents of all civil rights efforts and mangled perhaps beyond saving. As some have pointed out, the use of the phrase itself has become a form of virtue signalling, in more of a “I’m better/smarter than you” way. I think we have more than enough of that sort of scorekeeping in social justice circles, so no thanks lol
@Tasha – all the best for a speedy recovery! That stone sounds like a real doozy @_@
@Matthew:
Pretty good, but it would be poor form of me to encourage more after making a case for utterly shunning the Pups and their antics.
tl;dr version: Beale and company are in it to make us react to them, so let’s not do that. We have better things we could be doing. Why, I understand there’s grass outside that I could watch grow!
Thanks all for the good wishes for recovery.
@Tasha: glad to hear that things went smoothly and you’re feeling good. Chiming in on the debate about post-gallbladder-surgery diet, since mine I’ve never had a problem eating anything whatsoever.
@ Rev Bob: Fair point. I hadn’t meant for the song to be a comment on the Puppies or even the Hugos so much as about Filers, but it’s reasonable that under the circumstances it might be hard to make a joke that even touches on those things.
If only Tasha’s problem could have been with her colon…
@Matthew Johnson: I never would have guessed you’d turn out to be a Marxist-Lucidist.
@Tasha: Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
@Darren Garrison If only Tasha’s problem could have been with her colon…
Nicest thing you’ve ever said to me & also good typographical humor. Well done. 😀
@PhiRM
Thanks
ETA: @Vasha thanks for well wishes & chiming in.
@ Tasha
Oh, I only meant that the reason I own a 19th century mathematics text in Finnish isn’t nearly as interesting as the mere mention of it. (Someone I dated spotted it at a used book store and picked it up for me on a whim. This is not the most peculiar thing that someone I was dating picked up for me on a whim. That would be the monkey skull spotted at a garage sale.)
When I wanted a picturesque “old looking book” it didn’t matter much what the subject was. Alas, the oldest physical book in my collection (Thomas Richards’ 1753 Antiqua Linguae Britannicae Thesaurus, an English-Welsh, Welsh-English dictionary) wouldn’t do because it long since lost its front cover and isn’t at all photogenic. (That one came to be from an SCA acquaintance who found it in his late grandfather’s attic and figured I was the only person he knew who would value it.)
The books that made it to the photoshoot were the aforementioned bible, the math text, the member of the five-volume 1881 Ordbog til det AEldre Danske Sprog (1300-1700) that was in best condition, Robert Ioan Prys’s 1899 English and Welsh Pronouncing Dictionary (do you see a trend here?), and Friedrich Ludwig Stamm’s 1885 Ulfilas: die uns erhaltenen Denkmaler der gothisch. Now that I think about it, I think my final choice was the Prys dictionary, on the basis of visual esthetics and best size and proportions relative to the rose.
@Heather Rose Jones
Now see that was interesting. And more positive than much of this weeks conversations. 😉
I understand old book collectors. The touch, the look, the feel, the smell, knowing you might have the only copy and wouldn’t it be sad if the world lost what’s inside.
Late to the party…
@Tasha, best of luck in your recovery.
If you haven’t already seen the Awkward Yeti comics about gall bladder, I present them here:
http://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/gall-bladders-day/
and
http://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/kidney-pass/
@Laurah
Thanks & tanks for the laugh. Being late to the party meant I could laugh without pain. YAY
@Tasha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGru4DrImwE
Hoping you ended up with a good stash of blue wavy lines.
NelC on April 29, 2016 at 12:35 am said:
I assume this was aimed at me, since I’m the one who referred to breaking when you only have two items. Did you miss the part where I say that I use the serial/Oxford comma myself? When I said “it” breaks, I wasn’t referring to the serial comma; I was referring to Ms. Swirsky’s “proof” that the serial comma is better because its rules are simpler.
More specifically, she said (incorrectly) that the rule for the serial comma is that you put a comma after every item but the last. That rule breaks when you have two items. So the actual rules for the serial comma are not simpler than the rules for the standard comma.
That doesn’t mean the standard comma is better, though. The other mistake Ms. Swirsky made was assuming that simpler rules are better. In fact, an even simpler rule would be: don’t use commas. But that way lies madness! 😀
@Xtifr:
Oh god yes people should use commas and other punctuation because otherwise everything starts to look like a facebook post from someone who doesn’t quite understand how English works except maybe with better spelling…!
@Oneiros: The critical difference between “let’s eat gramma” and “let’s eat, gramma”. 😀
(A particularly important distinction if you live on a world like Geta.)
I’ve noticed the comma rules have too many names for the same rule. I no longer know which comma rule I use. It’s the one I was taught in an intro to law class. Never did understand punctuation in English class. But explain to me how I might be screwed over by someone I hire due to a misplaced comma and the court would uphold them not me and I never forget.
A number of the examples used here have left me totally confused. The ex-wives one followed by a number of men’s names clearly requires knowing the full example.
I think I like the cereal comma best. I’m hungry.
/cereal-stalk 🙂
To Dara Korra’ti: I encourage you to continue scanning in Lexfanzine. It was important enough that UC-Riverside has 4 issues in their collection, and I suspect that there are, or will be, researchers who are interested in what was going on in the various local SF clubs around the country. Data about club newsletters such as Rune (http://fancyclopedia.org/rune), Texas SF Inquirer (http://fancyclopedia.org/texas-sf-inquirer), and Madison’s Janus/Aurora (http://fancyclopedia.org/janus) are worth having around, and scans of them are even better. When you get them scanned, you should look at hosting them on efanzines.com as well as LexFA.com. fancyclopedia.org likes to tell “the story behind” the fanzine; isfdb.org likes to list the contents in the zines (e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33740 for “Janus”), and efanzines.com, of course, likes full scans. If you get me the data, I can add entries for LexFanzine for either fancyclopedia or isfdb.
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