Within “Cul de Sac,” Thompson created a wry and whimsical suburban world partly inspired by his own upbringing in Maryland’s Montgomery County, just outside Washington. His pen-and-ink neighborhood featured outgoing 4-year-old Alice Otterloop (her surname a bit of wordplay on the Beltway’s “Outer Loop”), introverted 8-year-old brother Petey, her friends Beni and Dill and classmates at Blisshaven Academy preschool, and the Otterloop parents, who always seemed one step behind their children’s wild imaginations and antics….
MICHAEL CAVNA: How did you come to this decision now, Richard? Was there a moment that this choice became clear, or has this been a long and gradual decision — perhaps one that had a tipping point?
RICHARD THOMPSON: I’ve known for a year or more that I was working on borrowed time. My lettering had begun to wander off in 2009, but that could be fixed easily enough. But when Alice’s and Dill’s heads began to look under-inflated last winter, I figured I was losing control of the drawing, too. When I needed help with the inking (the hardest but most satisfying part of drawing the strip),well that was probably a tipping point. Parkinson’s disease is horribly selfish and demanding. A daily comic strip is too and I can only deal with one at a time. So it was a long, gradual, sudden decision.
Thompson came out of fanzine fandom. Many of his cartoons appeared in the 1980s and 1990s in such fanzines as Stephen Brown and Dan Steffan’s Science Fiction Eye, Ted White and Dan Steffan’s Blat! and the Disclave program book.
[Thanks to Arnie Fenner and Simon Bisson for the story.]
The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination presents “Time, Mathematics, and the Mind of God” on Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at 6 p.m. in UCSD’s Atkinson Hall Auditorium.
The panel discussion highlights personal perspectives from working scientists and a leading science-fiction author regarding what science has to say about some of our deepest cosmic mysteries. How did time begin in our universe? Why does mathematics work so well to describe the physical world? How does this all connect to the most ancient of theological questions?
Discussants will be:
Prof. Brian Keating (Physics, UC San Diego)
Dr. Andrew Friedman (Physics/Astronomy, MIT)
Dr. David Brin (Hugo and Nebula award-winning author)
This new issuance showcases four different stamp designs on a sheet of 20 stamps depicting Wonder Woman during four eras of comic book history: Golden Age (1941–55), Silver Age (1956–72), Bronze Age (1973–86) and Modern Age (1987–present).
On the first row of stamps Wonder Woman of the Modern Age wields a hammer with a power and determination befitting her roots in the heroic world of Greek mythology.
The Bronze Age Wonder Woman’s bold stance empowers the second row of stamps. With her fist held high and bulletproof bracelets gleaming, the Amazon princess leads the charge against injustice.
The third row of stamps depicts Wonder Woman during the Silver Age. Although she possesses great strength and speed, the world’s favorite superheroine prefers compassion to the use of brute force. With her golden lasso of truth close at hand, she compels honesty from her foes.
In the last row of stamps, Wonder Woman from the Golden Age bursts onto the scene as originally envisioned by creator William Moulton Marston.
Art director Greg Breeding of Charlottesville, VA, designed the stamp pane.
(2) SIGNATURE TRAITS. Max Florschutz continues his “Being A Better Writer” series of posts with “Giving Characters a Leitmotif”.
….Now, to some of you long-time readers, this may sound somewhat familiar. After all, we’ve spoken before of ways to show a reader character through dialogue choice or body language. Here and now, however, I’m sort of pulling all of this together into a single, overarching idea: What leitmotif have you given your character? What element of their personality, attribute of their view of the world, are you going to weave into their parts (or perhaps point of view) in order to let the reader know exactly who they’re following even before you give them a name?
No joke. With strong enough characterization to a character’s perspective, it’s entirely possible to write a piece that, without ever mentioning a character’s name, is identifiable wholly as that character’s own. Through use of specific dialogue ticks, phrasing, complexity of language, or even things like catch phrases, general attitudes, or body language, you can inform a reader exactly who your character is.
Better yet, such an action will, if varied (we’ll talk about that in a moment) bring the character to life. Because let’s be honest here: We all have a “leitmotif.” Each of us has very recognizable traits that allow others to see who we are quite quickly(an old friend of mine once—no joke—identified me in the dark, only from my silhouette, on the explained logic of “no one else walks with that much casual swagger” … and come to think of it, that’s happened more than once).
Likewise, as you sit down to create—and then write—a character, what “leitmotifs” are you going to give them? What verbal cues, what methods of thought, or what reactions will they have. Will they be fight or flight? Will they be brusque to those they don’t know? Courteous? Do they think of themselves in first or second person when thinking?
Now, I know this all sounds like character design and development stuff—and it is! But what I’m bringing to the front here is not just the act of deciding all this stuff, but of picking the ones that you’ll weave into everything about the character….
….Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, and is estimated to have lived some four billion years ago, when Earth was a mere 560 million years old….
….Genes that do the same thing in a human and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal. So by comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families. Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.
Genes are adapted to an organism’s environment. So Dr. Martin hoped that by pinpointing the genes likely to have been present in Luca, he would also get a glimpse of where and how Luca lived. “I was flabbergasted at the result, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
The 355 genes pointed quite precisely to an organism that lived in the conditions found in deep sea vents, the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor.
…Dr. Sutherland, working from basic principles of chemistry, has found that ultraviolet light from the sun is an essential energy source to get the right reactions underway, and therefore that land-based pools, not the ocean, are the most likely environment in which life began.
“We didn’t set out with a preferred scenario; we deduced the scenario from the chemistry,” he said, chiding Dr. Martin for not having done any chemical simulations to support the deep sea vent scenario.
Dr. Martin’s portrait of Luca “is all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the actual origin of life,” Dr. Sutherland said.
Josh Roby has been writing professionally for more than a decade (and writing unprofessionally for a long time before that), and has worked as an editor for curriculum development and a number of early reader titles. Nowadays, most of Josh’s time is spent as a home maker and raising two darling children.
Anna Kreider is a writer, game designer, and illustrator who spends a lot of time blogging about depictions of women in pop culture. She is also attempting to raise a toddler, despite the toddler’s best efforts to the contrary.
Here’s what they’re doing —
We started the Princess Charming book series to make children’s books that feature active, competent princess characters who do more than wait around to get rescued. We’ve already published six books across three different reading levels, but we’re far from done.
Publishing the first six books was a great experience, and we’re ready to bring out the second batch, starting with Princess Rowan Charming.
Only one thing slows down our Rowan — her friend, Prince Sundara, who insists on coming along. Something about Rowan having only one hand and that he has to protect her. But he only gets in the way! Somehow Rowan has to make the boy understand that he’s not cut out for adventuring… before he gets hurt.
And In the Wings…
If we fund all of Princess Rowan’s titles, we’ve got two more princesses lined up and ready to go: Princess Chandra and Princess Nayeli are both penciled in for three books, which we will unlock as stretch goals.
With a week to go, the appeal has raised $1,875 of its $3,000 goal.
What began as a casual Twitter conversation between two long-time friends who for years talked about writing a book together – Valynne Maetani and Courtney Alameda – has become a hot property that recently was sold to HarperCollins in a two-book, six-figure deal after an auction earlier this year in which four major publishers participated. The final contract was signed in June.
Seven Dead Gods, the YA novel co-written by Maetani and Alameda, who have both been represented by John Cusick (now with Folio Literary Management/Folio Jr.) since 2012, is scheduled to publish in winter 2018. While Cusick described Seven Dead Gods as a combination of “An Ember in the Ashes and Daughter of Smoke and Bone meets Akira Kurosawa,” Alexandra Cooper, the HarperCollins editor who acquired it, used more cinematic terms: “Mean Girls meets Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”
According to the two co-authors, it’s simply the inevitable culmination of their mutual passion for horror, anime, comic book culture, and Kurosawa’s classic Japanese epic movies. In Seven Dead Gods, which is set in modern-day Japan, 17-year-old Kira, who is the victim of bullying at her school, finds solace working in her grandfather’s Shinto shrine. After realizing that she can see and commune with demons, Kira – with her younger sister in tow – partners with seven “death gods,” or “Shinigami” in Japanese, to save Kyoto from destruction.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY
July 26, 1969 — First Moon rock samples analyzed.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
Born July 26, 1894 –Aldous Huxley
Born July 26, 1928 — Stanley Kubrick
(8) MONUMENT TO A HUGO BALLOT. Lurkertype finished voting for the Hugos and Retro-Hugos and celebrated by using the Pulp-O-Mizer mentioned in yesterday’s Scroll to make this faux pulp cover.
The Silmarillion would be an incredible successor to Game of Thrones on HBO, not least because the two would be so different. The Silmarillion is firmly set in the epic vein, in the realm of the mythic; Game of Thrones is a story of kings and princes, but has always been down to earth, even in its new epic fantasy phase. The battles in The Silmarillion are more elemental; these are wars between Elves and dragons, Balrogs, giant spiders and endless hordes of orcs, and sometimes the gods themselves intervene. But the story itself is incredibly interesting—it has the depth and complexity to carry a series, even one that’s more directly fantastical than Game of Thrones.
Could it happen? It’s not impossible. The Tolkien family still holds the film rights to The Silmarillion, and Christopher Tolkien has made it very clear that Peter Jackson isn’t getting those rights, not after the debacle of The Hobbit movies. But that doesn’t mean no one is getting them. HBO has shown itself a relatively careful steward of such properties, and it’s willing to invest in the money and talent to do such shows right.
I don’t think that any of the novel editors does a bad job (ok, maybe one of them). This is strictly a protest vote against the insane category. How can anybody who is not an industry insider come to any conclusion about who is better than someone else in turning mediocre books into great ones? I have no clue.
So when you have no clue, why cast a vote that in principal can obstruct others who don’t feel that way from giving an award?
(12) ONE TRICK. Was there any question about this being the end times?
Vogel had a visionary imagination. He wrote about air cruisers, driven by engines much like jet engines, the inventor of which was a young Jewish woman, niece of the spymaster. He envisages large irrigation schemes in the South Island, electricity as the prime source of domestic light and heat, hydro-electricity as a major source of power.
In political developments, he foresaw a global federation of financial interests that maintained world peace, taxation as the great divisive issue threatening to break up the empire, and the resolution of the issue of Irish Home Rule.
There is no limit to Vogel’s seemingly far-fetched ideas.
The Southland Times, reviewing Vogel’s book, said: “In Anno Domini 2000, it is easy to detect the hand of a beginner. The plot, if plot it can be called, is not very ingenious, the dialogue is not very brilliant and the characterisation is decidedly poor. The whole story is moreover ridiculously improbable.”
What is interesting is that Vogel, who was reminded of his Jewish identity throughout his life, whom his political opponents described as the “wandering Jew”, whose newspaper, the Otago Daily Times, was referred to as “that despicable literary dish clout”, “the Jew’s Harp”, created a positive image of Jewishness in one of the leading characters of his work of fantasy.
(15) A HUMMER. I must have missed this one the first time it came around in 2006.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Dave Doering, JJ, and James Davis Nicoll for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution for the purpose of allowing the Committee to add up to two additional finalists to each Hugo Award category, by adding a new section after existing Section 3.8 as follows:
Section 3.X: Additional Finalists. The Worldcon Committee may add not more than two additional finalists in each category, provided that such additional finalists would qualify to be in the list of nominees described in Section 3.11.4.
Moved by: Lisa Hayes, Lisa Deutsch Harrigan, David Wallace
Download, print, and fill our your site selection ballot
Mail your ballot to:
MidAmeriCon II Site Selection
5115 Excelsior Blvd #474
St Louis Park, MN
55416-2906
The ballot receipt deadline is August 6, 2016
At-Con Voting. Voting continues at MidAmeriCon II until 6 p.m. CDT on Friday, August 19, 2016. If you delegate someone to hand-carry your ballot, please either purchase your Advance Supporting Membership fee online, or give your voting agent funds to pay for it.
2018 Worldcon Membership. The “Advance Supporting Membership” fee is a 2018 World Science Fiction Society membership, and a supporting membership in the winner of the 2018 election. Voters will receive a Supporting Membership in New Orleans or in San Jose, whichever bid wins.
2017 NASFiC SITE SELECTION
When the Worldcon is held outside North America (next year it will be in Finland), the organization also holds a North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
There are bids to hold the 2017 NASFiC in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Valley Forge, PA.
To vote –
You must be a member of MidAmeriCon II.
You must pay an Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) Fee of $35.
Download, print, and fill our your site selection ballot
Mail your ballot to:
MidAmeriCon II Site Selection
5115 Excelsior Blvd #474
St Louis Park, MN 55416-2906
The ballot receipt deadline is August 6, 2016
At-Con Voting. Voting continues at MidAmeriCon II until 6 p.m. CDT on Friday, August 19, 2016. If you delegate someone to hand-carry your ballot, please either purchase your Advance Supporting Membership fee online, or give your voting agent funds to pay for it.
2017 NASFiC Membership. The “Advance Supporting Membership” fee is a 2017 NASFiC membership, and a supporting membership in the winner of the 2017 election. Voters will receive a Supporting Membership in San Juan or Valley Forge, whichever bid wins.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a 28-year veteran of Tor, a three-time Hugo winning editor, whose authors include John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow and Charlie Jane Anders.
Devi Pillai is credited with leading the US division of Orbit to its position as Tor’s fastest-growing competitor.
Tor Books publisher Tom Doherty commented in a press release:
I’ve watched Devi’s work with admiration for a long time now; her qualifications are outstanding, and she’ll be a great addition to our team. As we continue our 35-year commitment to adult SF and fantasy, Devi and Patrick will work alongside each other to oversee our numerous editors who work primarily in these twin genres.
In addition, Doherty has named Linda Quinton Publisher of Forge Books. Previously she was Associate Publisher and Vice President of marketing for Tor/Forge. Forge publishes many popular and bestselling authors, including William R. Forstchen, Eric Lustbader, Douglas Preston, Patrick Taylor and Bruce Cameron.
Doherty also said:
At a time when so many of our competitors are cutting back, consolidating imprints, and reducing staff, it’s wonderful to know that Macmillan enthusiastically supports our plan for growth.
We will shortly be announcing further additions and promotions within our editorial staff. Here’s to an amazing team that it’s my privilege to lead into a great future.
I am first hugely thrilled for Patrick, with whom I have worked for the entire length of my novel-writing career. Hugely thrilled but not in the least surprised. He’s been at Tor for nearly three decades and has had a very large role in making it the success it has been to date. He’s a natural hire here.
I’m also hugely thrilled for Devi Pillai, and for Tor that they have managed to convince her to join the team. She’s generally considered to be one of the smartest people in the field and she’s done fantastic work at Orbit, hands down. They couldn’t have picked better.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden confirmed his new title does not preclude continuing to work as an editor.
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/757961261569155072
And Teresa Nielsen Hayden elaborated in a comment on Scalzi’s post:
…“Publisher” is a standard job title in the industry. Tom Doherty is the publisher of Tor, Forge, Orbit and other lines, which is why they all say “TDA” somewhere on the cover — it stands for “Tom Doherty Associates.”
If a publishing company is a one-person operation, that person is the publisher.
Patrick is still an editor. He still acquires and edits books. Being an associate publisher means he also oversees other editors and operations, and has more executive/management responsibilities and more headaches.
In synch with the announcement, Charles Stross chimed in with news of his own —
The winner was announced July 16 at ConGregate in High Point, North Carolina. In his acceptance speech, Hartness expressed both his gratitude to those who voted, as well as his honor at being included among his fellow nominees this year.
The award is named for long-time North Carolina author Manly Wade Wellman, and the recipient is chosen by a vote of members of sf conventions held in that state: illogiCon, ConCarolinas, ConTemporal, and ConGregate.
[Thanks to Samuel Montgomery-Blinn for the story.]
By Carl Slaughter: E.D. Walker combines classic fairy tales with historical research and puts her own twist on the plots. She also puts her own twist on Greek myths and on Shakespeare’s plays. Enchanting the King came out July 24 and The Changeling Child comes out August 22.
CARL SLAUGHTER: What was the inspiration for the Beauty’s Beast series?
E. D. WALKER: I wrote the first book The Beauty’s Beast several years ago, and that story was inspired by Marie de France’s “Bisclavret” poem. I had a lot of fun writing that book, doing my own riff on the story and throwing in some fairy tale elements as well. I’d always planned for that book to be a standalone, but then readers loved it so much I started to think about what I would do if I were to write a sequel. Once I started brainstorming, I ended up having almost a dozen ideas for further books with the same characters. I wrote two of those stories last year, and I’m planning more over the next few years. The next two stories in the series are finished and out this year in July and August.
CS: What was the inspiration for each story?
EDW: One of the characters in the series is loosely based on Eleanor of Aquitaine, and I was reading several biographies about her as general research. Enchanting the King came about after reading lots of stuff on Eleanor’s time on crusade in the Holy Land. I wanted to write my own version of those events, but with my characters and set in my secondary fantasy world. Enchanting the King is also my riff on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, so I ended up combining elements of the fairy tale with events inspired by history. Writing this novel was challenging and fun.
The Changeling Child is a novella redeeming one of the slightly villainous characters from the first novel, and Changeling tackles actual fairy stories as my heroine finds herself squaring up against a local contingent of Fair Folk terrorizing her village. I’ve always loved folklore and fairy mythology, and I’ve wanted to write a story with a changeling baby forever.
CS: How many more stories will there be the series? What’s the publishing schedule?
EDW: I don’t have a set number in mind. I have almost a dozen ideas for stories right now, and I’ll keep writing them as long as they’re fun and the readers enjoy them. The next two stories have firm release dates, though:
Enchanting the King came out July 24, 2016.
The Changeling Child is out August 22, 2016.
CS: Have you settled on a plot/inspiration for future stories? Can you give us a sneak peek?
EDW: As far as future stories, well, the story ideas I have for the series are almost infinite (and I’m getting more ideas all the time), but I’m planning to start work on a fourth book later this year. That one will probably be a bridge between The Beauty’s Beast and its prequel Enchanting the King. I also have ideas for my own takes on Cinderella and Robin Hood that I’m dying to write, but those are a little way off still.
CS: Why use Greek mythology in Heir to the Underworld?
EDW: I grew up reading a Favorite Greek Myths book from Dover. It was my favorite book to check out in elementary school, and that started a lifelong love of mythology and folktales. Heir to the Underworld was my second book, and I was dying to write something that played with ancient pantheons. I’ve always loved stories that had gods walking among us bickering and cracking jokes. Witty banter and phenomenal cosmic powers.
CS: Will Heir to the Underworld become a series?
EDW: I don’t have any plans to write more books set in that world at this time, but I always reserve the right to change my mind if I get a great idea.
CS: How many stories will the Much Ado About Love series have? What’s the publishing schedule?
EDW: At the moment the plan is 3-5 books, but again if I’m having fun and the readers like them I can see myself writing more. I love the theater company in the series, and the cast of characters. I’m working on Book 2 right now, but it doesn’t have a publication date yet.
CS: Will each story be based on a Shakespeare play? Which plays?
EDW: I will probably do a mix with some books set around a Shakespeare play and some set around musicals or fictional plays I’ve made up. It all depends on what the plot demands. I’ve got ideas for a Much Ado About Nothing story and As You Like It so far.
CS: This was fun. Thank you so much for the interview.
When you play a game, you have to learn some rules, right? Well, same goes for designing a game. And here’s one rule: No idea is too wacky.
Take a game called Unexploded Cow, for instance.
“That’s a game where you’ve discovered two problems with a common solution,” says the game’s co-creator, James Ernest. “There’s mad cows in England and unexploded bombs in the French countryside, and you’re going to bring them together and solve everybody’s problems by blowing up a bunch of cows. ”
Using cows with a debilitating brain disease to get rid of leftover bombs — for most people, that’s just an absurd joke. But Ernest designs board games for a living. He and a colleague took that weird idea and came up with a card game. Each player manages a herd of sick cows and tries to make money blowing them up.
That game, Unexploded Cow, is now one of the most popular he’s created….
In light of recent discussions, I wanted to jot down a few things that come to mind when what I think about SFWA has to offer game writers, because there’s actually quite a bit.
Access to SFWA promotional resources includes a number of venues quite suitable for publicizing games. Our curated Kickstarter page, the New Release Newsletter (which can easily be expanded to include games), the SFWA blog, SFWA’s presences on Facebook and Twitter. It’d be easy to make the Featured Book section a Featured Work section to go with Authors section on the SFWA website.
Even the book-specific promotional features, such as the NetGalley program, may be of use to game writers who are doing books or stories as well, as is often the case.
SFWA has been working at relationships with a number of companies that will be of interest to game writers. Our Outreach Committee has monthly checkins with representatives at Amazon, Audible, Draft to Digital, Kickstarter, Kobo, Patreon, and more….
Get a written agreement for every transaction, even with people you love and trust. I am still trying to solve feuds stemming from oral agreements for tiny properties that wound up becoming movie/TV franchises.
Don’t ever think, “I don’t want to bother my agent with this trivial matter.” It’s not just that it might be a bigger matter than you realize, but even if it stays small, it may still have to be cleaned up some day. Your agent would rather do the work now than have to deal with a bigger problem later.
SUV: You favorite a third-person present tense which is quite different from the other books in the Star Wars fiction line. Why did you go with that? What are some of the advantages of using this?
CW: On a simple level, what’s great is that Young Adult books tend to take a present tense viewpoint to telling stories. Sometimes first-person, sometimes third-person, but a lot of young adult fiction is written in present tense. For me, a person who likes to write in that already, the great thing is that we’re speaking to young readers and to older readers who are willing to be drawn into the cinematic component. Star Wars begins as film and moves on to TV. To have the books feel exciting in that kind of action-adventure thing, present tense keeps you in the moment. I always say that past tense is like looking at a painting on a wall in a museum, but present tense is like watching the painter paint it. It’s like watching Bob Ross: You see him painting on his half-hour show. You really don’t know what’s going to happen. I love that feeling: What’s he going to paint here? Is that an ocean? Is that a rock? There’s also a component where you think he’s going to mess the painting up completely but by the end he pools it all out. To me, present tense is like watching the painter paint. When you look at the Star Wars crawls, they’re written in third-person, present tense. I want to capture that: I do think that it’s very cinematic, and that’s why we went with it.
Now, there are deconstructions of the genre that take a more cynical view, of course, and it’s possible to tell dark superhero tales where those with power lose their way and take advantage of those around them. Marvel’s superheroes are perhaps more prone to making mistakes, while DC’s might be more prone to growing remote from the concerns of the people they protect, but the end result tends to be similar: things get worse, innocents get hurt, much anguish is had, humanity seeks desperately for someone else to take on the new menace and it’s all terribly bleak…
…but, eventually, things pretty much always get better. It helps that evil is fundamentally punchable, once you figure out who/what needs punching and where the head is. It helps that violence is so often the best answer.
(6) COMIC RELIEF. This photo appears in the middle of a huge gallery of cosplayers from San Diego Comic-Con.
Nak, 13, and Fawkes, 6, have been cosplaying for a little more than a year. They’ve been ambitious. Their social media pages show off more than 50 geeky costumes: Alien, Star Trek, Fallout and Game of Thrones each make an appearance. During the year they’ve been active, they’ve gained a sizable following with nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter and 18,500 on Instagram.
Oh, and just one little thing: Nak and Fawkes are, well, cats.
Chip says, “Nobody discusses what this does to the cats’ psyches. I’m just amazed the cats put up with it; if I tried that with my part-Coon foundling (14+ pounds) I’d draw back a bloody stump.”
(8) EATING THE FANTASTIC. In Episode 14 of Scott Edelman’s podcast he is joined by Fran Wilde, the Nebula Award-winning and Compton Crook Award-winning author of Updraft, plus the host of the Cooking the Books podcast, which has a writers + food focus just like his.
Part 1, last week, examined literature from the 1950s through the 1980s.
1990s
The movement of the Baby Boomer generation into positions of power that began in the 1980s took full flower in the 1990s. This marked a significant shift (but not a real change) in the status quo, and there began the generation of much more ‘product for the marketplace’. Lots of Shuttle stories as we worked through the trauma of Challenger, but also solar power satellite and space station stories. Gen X coded the World Wide Web, while their bosses day-traded their way to enormous prosperity (oh…wait…), and the Millennials were digging Bill Nye the Science Guy. The Soviet Union didn’t so much collapse as dissolve into a new form of corruption and warlord-led tribalism, and this left writers looking for new enemies, from corporate baddies to Asians with cryptic agendas. The Space Shuttle was ramping up its tempo of flights, boldly going where it had gone so many times before, along with operations of Mir and the genesis of ISS.
Fallen Angels, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn (1991): in a future where technology is blamed for the world’s ecological ills, those trapped in orbit in the post-space age must struggle to survive. When a scoop ship is shot down, the race is on by the Fen to rescue the crew and return them to orbit. Don’t know Fen? Then this book is probably not for you. But if you’re a devotee of the science fiction writers cons then this book is entirely for you. [GoodReads: 3.49/1,937] …
There’s just one issue with the current model for social media: it’s purely virtual. The social component has been lost. That means that apart from location data and images and people becoming connected (“friended” or “followed”) or disconnected (“unfriended” or “kicked to the curb”), there’s no way of determining interactions in the real world. The difficulty has always been to integrate physical reality and virtual reality.
Enter augmented reality. Although not a new concept (it’s been used for heads-up displays (HUD) for fighter jets since the 1970s), the smartphone has given it new applications. In Korea a few years back, for example, people could hold a phone camera up and landmarks would be marked on the screen.
Then camePokémon GO.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by know that Pokémon GO has become … um … big. Really big. No, I mean huge! And it knows no limits. Players of all ages are collecting ’em all. And they’re changing the face of social media by combining the social with the media.
There are two ways that the game has, well, changed the game. The first is the reintroduction of social interaction. Not only do the catching and training of Pokémon cause interaction between players, but the competition and even the very act of searching for the virtual creatures has created peaceful gatherings that have had the feel of makeshift parties. People are meeting new people and making friends, something that was generally absent from the old flash mobs.
1. Butcher seems to go his own carefree way with many words, heedless of any actual dictionary definitions. So, for example, the characters in this world live in huge circular towers far above the ground, which he calls “spires” — but spires are tapered or pointed, not cylindrical. One of the types of airships that sail between the towers is called a “windlass,” which is actually a “device for raising or hauling objects.” (Yeah, I had to look that one up.) There are neighborhoods in the spires called spirals, which — as you’ve probably guessed by now — consist of streets in perfectly straight lines.
2. Both female leads are forthright, plucky, and kick-ass, to the point where I started confusing one with the other. One is rich and small and the other one isn’t and isn’t, and that’s about the only difference I could find between them….
But all is not lost….
(12) GETTING READY TO VOTE. Lis Carey continues her progression through the Hugo-nominated short fiction at Lis Carey’s Library.
“It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done, and I mean that in the best possible way,” Gay told the New York Times. But “the opportunity to write black women and queer black women into the Marvel universe – there’s no saying no to that.”
Her story, she promised, would be “pretty intimate. There’s going to be all kinds of action, but I’m also really excited to show Ayo and Aneka’s relationship, build on that love story, and also introduce some other members of the Dora Milaje … I love being able to focus on women who are fierce enough to fight but still tender enough to love.”
The recruitment of Gay is part of Marvel’s drive to diversify its offering, both in terms of creators and characters. “So. I am writing a comic book series for Marvel,” Gay tweeted, announcing the news. “Black women are also doing the covers and art … And no. It doesn’t make sense that I am the first, in 2016. But I won’t be the last.” She also tweeted that it was likely to come out in November.
This summer will be the summer of me learning to PLAN.
No plan survives first contact with your neurons.
Planing is defined in the dictionary as… I dunno, I haven’t a dictionary handy.
Already we’re off to a disastrous start, highlighting my failings as a planner. Had I planned ahead properly then the dictionary would be in reach. I would have overcome my laziness and inertia and fetched a dictionary from a nearby shelf. I would not have forgotten that I am typing this on a computer connected to the internet which has dictionaries in it. I’m a complete mess.
The ultimate aim of this exercise will be to have two proposals to slide onto the desk of my publisher and turn their eyes to pound signs. One will be for a big scary fantasy MG novel, the other will be for a series of MG books utilising ideas I cut from Cloak. Neither of these may be viable or publishable, but I am going to learn how to plan them and present them.
Nigel adds, “Part 2 should be up next week. I wrote it a few weeks ago and I look back now at few-weeks-ago-me and think, you poor sweet summer child.”
Revealed during a panel at SDCC 2016, as reported by THR, the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K) will be broadcast by streaming giant Netflix, with a tentative start date set for (in a reference to the series’ original theme song) “the not-too-distant future.”
Francis Hamit has won the Screenplay category at the 11th Annual Hollywood Book Festival for his soon-to-be-produced script “Christopher Marlowe”. The Elizabethan-era thriller about the poet, playwright and spy has been in development for over six years and is based upon Hamit’s stage play “MARLOWE: An Elizabethan Tragedy”, which was originally presented in Los Angeles in 1988.
It will be directed by Michael John Donahue, DGA, and produced by Gary Kurtz. Negotiations for cast and financing are ongoing.
(19) SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS. The Nate Sanders firm completed another auction on July 21.
”Peanuts” comic strip hand-drawn by its creator Charles Schulz, from 9 April 1958. The strip comments on a subject that we think is a modern phenomena, the fact that children can’t concentrate for a long period of time. Here, Schroeder reads that from a book, and Charlie Brown proves its point by watching TV, drawing, playing baseball and paddle ball in the course of four frames. Strip measures 28.75” x 7”. United Feature Syndicate label appears on third frame. Inscribed by Schulz to ”Elizabeth Vaughn and her sixth grade pupils – Charles M Schulz”. Some toning and a light paper backing affixed to verso, overall very good condition.
[Thanks to Nigel Quinlan, Martin Morse Wooster, Dawn Incognito, Cat Eldridge, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker Sirignano.]
