Monthly Archives: October 2016

Apex Magazine 2016 Subscription Drive

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The 2016 Apex Magazine subscription drive starts today and runs through November 15. Their goal is to raise $10,000.

As an incentive for people to chip in, more bonus content will be added the magazine’s January 2017 issue.

Pay attention, because one of these intermediate goals will fund a new Ursula Vernon story!

As an added incentive, they’ve set up rewards that will unlock additional content for the January 2017 issue of Apex Magazine, creating a double issue as a thank-you.

We already have an impressive lineup of original fiction scheduled for January. Stories by James Beamon, Lia Swope Mitchell, Iori Kusano, and J.J. Litke. The issue will feature two poems, a reprint, and interviews with an Apex author and our cover artist. Our cover artist for January will be Aaron Nakahara.

As Apex reaches its subscription drive goals, they will add the following to the January issue, as well as a couple of rewards that will continue in every issue all year long:

  • $500 – a third original poem will be selected by our poetry editor Bianca Spriggs
  • $1,000 – a second reprint will be added to the issue
  • $2,000 – a new story by Ursula Vernon.
  • $2,500 – a fourth original poem
  • $3,000 – an interview with Nisi Shawl
  • $4,000 – a new story by Nisi Shawl.
  • $4,500 – a third reprint
  • $5,000 – a second story podcast performed by Mahvesh Murad.
  • $5,500 – an interview with John Hornor Jacobs
  • $6,000 – a new novelette by John Hornor Jacobs.
  • $6,500 – an interview with E. Catherine Tobler about her circus universe
  • $7,000 – we will add an additional 2,000 words to each issue of Apex Magazine in 2017, bringing the total up to 14,000 words per issue.
  • $7,500 – increase pay rate for original fiction to 7 cents a word
  • $8,000 – a new story by E. Catherine Tobler set in her circus universe
  • $8,500 – increase cover artist rate to $100
  • $9,000 – we will add another additional 2,000 words to each issue of Apex Magazine in 2017, bringing the total up to 16,000 words per issue.
  • $10,000 – increase pay rate for original fiction to 8 cents a word

Ways to support Apex Magazine between October 24 and November 15 include:

  • Subscribe. Yearly subscriptions through Apex and Weightless will be only $17.95 during the drive. Monthly subscriptions are available through Amazon (US) and Amazon (UK).
  • Give a gift subscription to the scifi lover in your life.
  • Become a patron on Patreon. Pledge as little or as much as you want for each issue.
  • The tip jar. Chip in one-time to help them reach their goals.
  • Buy past issues of Apex Magazine.
  • Join their Thunderclap (http://thndr.me/m0Fve2) and help spread the news.

Michael Swanwick On His (Many) Short Story Collections

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By Carl Slaughter: In exclusive for File 770, to celebrate the publication of Not So Much, Said the Cat, which came out this summer, Michael Swanwick gives us the inside story on his collections.

(The Dog Said Bow Wow.  Hello, Said the Stick.  Not So Much, Said the Cat.  Anyone else see a pattern?)

GRAVITY’S ANGELS
Sauk City: Arkham House, 1991

swanwick-gravitys-angels

Thirteen stories:

  • A Midwinter’s Tale
  • The Feast of Saint Janis
  • The Blind Minotaur
  • The Transmigration of Philip K.
  • Covenant of Souls
  • The Dragon Line
  • Mummer Kiss
  • Trojan Horse
  • Snow Angels
  • The Man Who Met Picasso
  • Foresight
  • Ginungagap
  • The Edge of the World

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Five of these stories were Nebula Nominees. One was a World Fantasy Award Nominee. One won the Asimov’s Readers Award. And one won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and was nominated for the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.

This was my first collection. Jim Turner, the editor at Arkham House at that time, called me up out of the blue one day, wanting to assemble a collection. I’d been publishing stories for a decade by then and we both agreed on which were the best, so the editing was easy. Jim was one of my favorite people. He’d begin a phone conversation by saying, “Listen, Swanwick, I don’t have time for any of your nonsense. I just need a question answered and that’s the end of it.”

“Hello, Jim. It’s good to hear from you,” I’d say. And with a harmless bit of gossip here and a comment about a hot new story there, I could keep him on the phone for hours. There aren’t many people I’d want to keep on the phone for hours, but he was right at the top of the list.

Jim’s original idea for the cover was to use Picasso’s Guernica as a wrap-around. But when he looked into it, the proportions were wrong. “I’d have to crop it to make it work,” he told me over the phone, “and you can’t cut up a great work of art!”

I will be grateful to my dying day that I resisted the urge to say, “Oh, go ahead, Jim.”

A GEOGRAPHY OF UNKNOWN LANDS
Lemoyne, PA: Tigereyes Press, 1997

swanwick-geography

Six stories:

  • Introduction: The Wireless Folly
  • Mother Grasshopper
  • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
  • The Edge of the World
  • Radio Waves
  • The Changeling’s Tale

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Five of these stories hadn’t been collected before. Of those, two were nominated for the World fantasy Award. One of these won and was also nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. “The Wireless Folly,” which imagined the science fiction/fantasy/horror genre as a rambling building, constantly being added to, was written as an introduction to the volume. “Mother Grasshopper” also appeared for the first time in this volume.

One day, out of nowhere, my friend Chris Logan Edwards said he wanted to do a slim collection of my work. Slim, he said, to keep the price down so that people could buy it on impulse. I looked at my uncollected work and realized that the very best of it all happened on strange locales – a planet-sized grasshopper, a train passing through the borderlands of Hell, a tavern on an overbuilt medieval bridge, and my own neighborhood as seen from the afterlife. So I added the previously collected “The Edge of the World,” to bring it to length, and had a collection whose stories chimed nicely. One critic said that they were all about death, and that’s possible too.

Chris put together a beautiful volume with a particularly evocative cover by Lee Moyer. It was Tigereyes Press’s first publication and not only was it nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, but it earned Chris a place on the World Fantasy Award ballot for Special Award, Non-Professional, as well. Not bad for his first book.

PUCK ALESHIRE’S ABECEDARY
Pleasantville, NY: Dragon Press, 2000

swanwick-puck

Twenty-seven stories:

  • A is for Albany (to) Z is for Zothique, (plus) 120 is for Issues

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Sometime in my first two decades as a published writer, I acquired a facility for writing flash fiction. I wrote a series of twenty-seven stories, one for each letter of the alphabet, plus one marking the magazine’s tenth anniversary, and sold them to The New York Review of Science Fiction for, as I recall, five dollars a pop. The money was nothing, but I’d written them for fun, so that didn’t matter.

David Hartwell, editor and founder of NYRSF, suggested that his Dragon Press collect the stories as a chapbook. The editing and illustration was done by Kathryn Cramer. This was an old school publication – sturdy, handsome, and economical – as suited David and Kathryn’s fannish streaks.

I don’t have any anecdotes about this one, but it made me happy and that will have to suffice.

MOON DOGS
Ann A. Broomhead and Timothy P. Szczesuil, eds., Framingham, MA: NESFA Press, 2000.

swanwick-moon-dogs

Eight stories and seven articles:

  • Moon Dogs HN NN
  • The Death of the Magus: Two Myths (article)
  • Mickelrede by Michael Swanwick and Avram Davidson
  • Vergil Magus: King Without Country by Michael Swanwick and Avram Davidson
  • Jane Swanwick and the Search for Identity (article)
  • The Hagiography of Saint Dozois (article)
  • Ancestral Voices by Michael Swanwick and Gardner Dozois
  • The City of God by Michael Swanwick and Gardner Dozois
  • The Dead
  • They Fell Like Wheat (article)
  • A User’s Guide to the Postmoderns (article)
  • Ships by Michael Swanwick and Jack Dann
  • In the Tradition… (article)
  • Growing Up in the Future (article)
  • Griffin’s Egg

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Two stories were nominated for the Nebula Award and three, including “Moon Dogs” (which was one of two stories original to this collection) were nominated for the Hugo. The introduction was by Gardner Dozois.

The New England Science Fiction Society has a pleasant tradition of creating a book, usually a collection, each year for the guest of honor at Boskone, Boston’s venerable science fiction convention. This presented a problem for me because I’d already contracted for what was by now my traditional collection-per-decade. Editors Ann Broomhead and Tim Szczesuil convinced me that by including non-fiction and some of the best of the collaborative fiction I’d written over the years, we could assemble a worthwhile book.

While there are some upbeat works in the collection (my posthumous collaboration – “Over my dead body,” I can hear his spirit growl – with Avram Davidson, “Vergil Magus: King Without Country,” is a hoot), the mood of the fiction is, overall, darker than usual for me. I have no idea why I didn’t include “Dogfight,” my collaboration with William Gibson, unless it’s that I didn’t want to look like I was trying to ride on his coattails.

During the convention, I was hobbling around on a cane, the result of a fall down the stairs and a broken toe, waving the book about and telling everybody that it was only one of three collections I had out that year.

“You know,” Marianne Porter, my wife, said, “you’ve got the makings of good murder mystery here.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning, when you’re found beaten to death with your own cane and the detective asks who at the convention would have a motive for killing you, every writer here is going to raise a hand.”

Rick Berry, the artist guest of honor, created a beautiful illustration for the cover.

TALES OF OLD EARTH
San Francisco: Frog Ltd., 2000, 2002

swanwick-tales-of-old-earth

Nineteen stories:

  • The Very Pulse of the Machine
  • The Dead
  • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
  • Ancient Engines
  • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
  • The Mask
  • Mother Grasshopper
  • Riding the Giganotosaur
  • Wild Minds
  • The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-o
  • Microcosmic Dog
  • In Concert
  • Radiant Doors
  • Ice Age
  • Walking Out
  • The Changeling’s Tale
  • Midnight Express
  • The Wisdom of Old Earth
  • Radio Waves

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Of these nineteen stories, fifteen were never collected before. The previously uncollected stories garnered three Nebula nominations, three Hugo nominations, two Sturgeon Award nominations, a World Fantasy Award nomination, an Asimov’s Reader’s Award, and two Hugo Awards. The introduction was by Bruce Sterling.

This collection was a collaboration between Frog, Ltd., an imprint of North Atlantic Books, and Tachyon Publications. It was my second major collection, gathering together all my best stories of the prior decade.

This book began my professional association with Jacob Weisman, who quickly became a good friend. Such good friends that, some years later, Marianne and I flew to San Francisco to attend Jacob’s wedding to his wife Rina. So now we have two good friends (at least) at Tachyon.

CIGAR-BOX FAUST
San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2003.

swanwick-cigar-box

Ten stories (or more, depending on how you count them):

  • Cigar-Box Faust
  • Writing in My Sleep
  • An Abecedary of the Imagination
  • Eight Takes on Kindred Themes
  • Picasso Deconstructed: Eleven Still-Lifes
  • Brief Essays
  • Archaic Planets
  • The Mask
  • Letters to the Editor
  • The Madness of Gordon Van Gelder

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Cigar-Box Faust gathers together pretty much all my flash fiction written to that point, save for the 26 short-shorts in Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary. The title piece was a short drama written in one day for a cigar-box theater and a cast made up of a cigar cutter, a box of matches and, in the title role, the cigar itself.

Marianne came home from work that day and asked, “What’s new?” I sat her down at the kitchen table, placed the cigar box between us, and said, “Watch.

MICHAEL SWANWICK’S FIELD GUIDE TO THE MESOZOIC MEGAFAUNA
San Francisco, Tachyon Publications, 2004.

swanwick-field-guide

Fourteen (or eighteen, depending on how you count them) stories:

  • flash fiction
  • The Thief of Time
  • A Matter of Size
  • Three Conversations
  • How the West Was Won II
  • The Scientific Method
  • Dueling Mosasaurs
  • Pocket Brontosaurs
  • Herbivores
  • Parallels
  • Wusses
  • Dinosaur Music
  • The Bird-Fishers
  • Proving Dr. Tom’s Hypothesis
  • Five British Dinosaurs
  • Iguanodon anglicus
  • Yaverlandia bitholus
  • Altispinax dunkeri
  • Megalosaurus bucklandii
  • Craterosaurus pottonensis

MICHAEL SWANWICK: “I don’t think you understand how many genera of dinosaurs there are,” I replied when my editor at HarperCollins suggested that as a promotional device, I should write a brief story for every genus. But I was happy to write a goodly number, which were serialized on the Web to draw attention to my paleontology novel, Bones of the Earth.

Jacob Weisman, God bless him, liked the series, added “Five British Dinosaurs,” which had appeared in Interzone, and published them all in chapbook form with lovely illustrations by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.

I had great fun including some of my pals in the paleontologist community in the fictions. Ralph Chapman got to see his Pachycephalosaurus theories tested in the wild. Bob Walters was stranded in the Campanian Age when a hadrosaur crushed his time machine. Tom Holtz got eaten by a tyrannosaur. And Tess Kissinger went for a midnight ride with Ray Harryhausen in a pair of robot theropods.

Never let it be said that I don’t know how to show my friends a good time.

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF SCIENCE FICTION
PS Publishing, 2005

swanwick-periodic

One hundred eighteen stories:

  • Hydrogen: The Hindenburg (to) Ununoctium: Now You See It Now You
  • Flash fiction, one story for every element in the Periodic Table. Introduction by Theodore Gray.

MICHAEL SWANWICK: For a couple of years in the early part of this century, I was publishing, in addition to my usual fiction, two stories a week online. For Eileen Gunn’s ezine The Infinite Matrix, I produced a series of stories, The Sleep of Reason, based on Goya’s Los Caprichos etchings. That was 80 stories for Eileen and 118 for Ellen. Writers used to turn pale and hold up crucifixes when I entered the room.

Peter Crowther, the founder of PS Publishing, liked my series based on the elements and reprinted it in a beautiful book which very quickly went out of print.

The Sleep of Reason hasn’t appeared in book form yet. If anybody is interested, I can think of the perfect illustrator for it – and his work is all in the public domain.

THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW
Tachyon Publications, 2007

swanwick-dog-said

Sixteen stories:

  • ‘Hello,’ Said the Stick
  • A Great Day for Brontosaurs
  • A Small Room in Koboldtown
  • An Episode of Stardust
  • Dirty Little War
  • Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
  • Legions of Time
  • Slow Life
  • The Bordello in Faerie
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow
  • The Last Geek
  • The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
  • The Skysailor’s Tale
  • Tin Marsh
  • Triceratops Summer
  • Urdumheim

MICHAEL SWANWICK: One story was nominated for the Nebula Award and four for the Hugo Award. Of those four, three won. Introduction by Terry Bisson.

My third decade collection arrived three years early. It was named after “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” the first Darger & Surplus story and easily one of the most popular stories I ever wrote. At the time the collection came out, there were only three stories in the series, all of which were included. Someday there will be a full collection’s worth. But that day, alas, is not here yet.

THE BEST OF MICHAEL SWANWICK
(Subterranean Press), 2008

swanwick-best-of

  • The Feast of St. Janis
  • Ginungagap
  • Trojan Horse
  • A Midwinter’s Tale
  • The Edge of the World
  • Griffin’s Egg
  • The Changeling’s Tale
  • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
  • Radio Waves
  • The Dead
  • Mother Grasshopper
  • Radiant Doors
  • The Very Pulse of the Machine
  • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
  • The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow
  • Slow Life
  • Legions in Time
  • Triceratops Summer
  • From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled…

MICHAEL SWANWICK: Subterranean Press likes to put out career-summing “best of” volumes dedicated to people like Joe Haldeman, Lucius Shepard, Nancy Kress, Larry Niven… Pretty heady company to be numbered among. So when Bill Schafer asked me to join them, what else could I do but blush and nod?

This collection was not only beautifully made but large – so much so that it was a bit of a relief to discover that I didn’t have to include any of my weaker stories to fill it up.

Bill asked if I had any ideas for the cover artist should be and I immediately suggested Lee Moyer, who had done such a bright and witty job on A Geography of Imaginary Lands. When I saw the cover (which includes a half-hidden portrait of my hirsute self), I was glad I did.

I look forward to the day when I have enough new fiction to assemble The Second Best of Michael Swanwick.

Pixel Scroll 10/23/16 Earth Scrolls Are Easy

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(1) LE GUIN HEALTH NEWS. Ursula K. Le Guin, who was hospitalized for a few days this summer with heart problems, gave a health update in a comment at Book View Café on October 22.

The kindness of these messages is wonderful.  I wish I could thank you each. I can only thank you all with all my heart.

Health update: My daily bouquet of medicines with weird names is definitely doing its job.   Am quite recovered from the bad time, and get along fine if I don’t push it. My model of behavior is the Sloth.  Can’t hang from branches yet, but am real good at moving slo o o w w l y . . .

Best wishes to all my well-wishers.

(2) STARSHIPS IN OUR LIFETIME. Starship Engineer Workshops are being offered in London on November 12-13.

For further information or to book contact the team at: [email protected]  for more details.  For the full promotional flyer: http://i4is.org/app/webroot/uploads/files/SE_A4_Nov2016%20(AM)%20Vers%202.pdf

The Initiative for Interstellar Studies in collaboration with the British Interplanetary Society will deliver an updated Starship Engineer workshop course. Two one day courses, either attend one or both, each will be different and important in their own way.

12th November: Starship Engineer.  Aims to give a grounding in interstellar studies. It starts from considering the essential requirements to giving you an overview of different spacecraft systems, then takes you on a journey through several actual starship design studies. We use examples from the literature, but focus on two specific case studies, that of fusion and beamed-sail propulsion, as plausible ways by which we may someday reach the  stars.

13th November: Science Fiction Starships.  The works of science fiction literature have fascinating starship concepts, but how realistic are they? In this day course we will examine and evaluate the laser-sails in “The Mote in Gods Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Torch Ships in “Time for the Stars” (Robert Heinlein), Quantum Ramjets in “The Songs of Distant Earth” (Arthur C Clarke) and other inspirational examples of interstellar vessels….

Principal Lecturers: Kelvin F. Longis a physicist and aerospace engineer, until recently Chief Editor Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, author of the book “Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to the Stars” and is the Executive Director i4is and a member of the Breakthrough Starshot advisory committee.

Rob Swinney is a former RAF Squadron Leader aerosystems engineer and is a Deputy Director of i4is. He, and Long, have both been involved in the creation and running of the only two modern starship design projects, Project Icarus (fusion) and Project Dragonfly (laser-sails).

(3) IN TRAINING. Kevin Standlee writes a lyrical post about taking the California Zephyr through the Sierras.

Speaking of the nice parts: the eastbound Zephyr includes some views through the Sierra Nevada that you don’t get on the westbound trip. For example, shortly after Colfax the train goes around “Cape Horn” with some spectacular views of the American River Canyon. Some of the trees have finally been cut back as well; for a while, they’d grown so thick that they cut off the vista, which was unfortunate. Eastbound you miss this because the normal eastbound track goes through a tunnel that custs off this corner with its precipitous view. I’m composing most of them while snaking our way up the mountain, but I can’t post it because on this stretch there is no cell phone signal. We’re on the opposite side of the mountains from the I-80 corridor where the cell phone towers are. Not that I mind. I’m mostly looking out the window. As a touch-typist, I don’t need to stare at the keyboard to write.

(4) NOT A TYPICAL ANALOG WRITER. Galactic Journey says Harry Harrison has finally registered on their radar screen –

Author Harry Harrison has been around for a long time, starting his science fiction writing career at the beginning of the last decade (1951).  Yet, it was not until this decade that I (and probably many others) discovered him.  He came into my view with the stellar Deathworld, a novel that was a strong contender for last year’s Hugo.  Then I found his popular Stainless Steel Rat stories, which were recently anthologized.  The fellow is definitely making a name for himself.

Harrison actually occupies a liberal spot in generally conservative Analog magazine’s stable of authors.  While Harry tends to stick with typical Analog tropes (psionics, humano-centric stories, interstellar hijinx), there are themes in his work which are quite progressive – even subversive, at least for the medium in which they appear.

For instance, there is a strong pro-ecological message in Deathworld.  I also detect threads of pacifism in Harrison’s works, not to mention rather unorthodox portrayal of women and sexual mores.  Harry isn’t Ted Sturgeon or anything, but he is definitely an outlier for Analog, and refreshing for the genre as a whole.

(5) ALMOST YOUR BIGGEST FAN. The Twitter user formerly known as Jim Henley knows how to pay a compliment.

(6) DILLON OBIT. Comics artist Steve Dillion died October 22 reports the BBC.

Steve Dillon, the legendary British comic book artist, known for his work on Preacher, Punisher, and 2000AD’s Judge Dredd has died aged 54.

His brother Glyn confirmed the death on Twitter, saying his “big brother and hero” had died in New York City.

Dillon was a prolific artist who began professional work at age 16, drawing for Marvel UK’s Hulk magazine.

He was best known for his US collaborations with writer Garth Ennis, creating classic cult comic titles.

In his Twitter profile, Dillon, originally from Luton, describes himself as: “A comic book bloke. Co-creator/Artist of Preacher. Co-founder/Editor of Deadline magazine. Artist on Punisher, Judge Dredd and many others.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born October 23, 1942  — Michael Crichton.

(8) YOUR EPIC IMAGINATION. James Davis Nicoll says it’s “Good news!” Dorothy J. Heydt’s The Interior Life (published under penname Katherine Blake) available again as a free ebook.

Go here for the download.

(9) DO YOU LIKE WHAT SMART PEOPLE LIKE? Ann Leckie keeps hitting them out of the park. Today’s topic: “On Guilty Pleasures”.

Or Romance. Romance isn’t one of my things, right, but let’s be honest, a crappy detective novel or a crappy SF or Extruded Fantasy Product is just as bad as a crappy Romance. When it’s SF we’ll protest that no, that’s just a bad one, the whole genre’s not like that, but Romance? Romance is just stupid, man.

Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things that poor people like–or tend to buy or use because it’s cheap. Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things that teenage girls like, or women. Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things we liked when we were kids.

I’m not saying that nothing can be criticized–there are surely bad Romance novels. Taylor Swift is a pretty good songwriter who has done some very admirable things, but she’s also had her less than admirable public moments. Velveeta doesn’t come out well in a comparison with really good cheese (unless its a competition for what will make the easiest mac & cheese, given only three minutes and a microwave to work with), and it’s probably not very good for you. I’m perfectly willing to criticize things I like, or consider criticism of those things, and still like them.

No, I’m talking about that weird, moral dimension to likes and dislikes. You like pumpkin spice anything? You should be ashamed. You should feel guilty, because you’re not supposed to like that, smart people don’t like that, people who like that have something wrong with them.

So much of what we like or dislike–what we’re publicly supposed to like or dislike–is functioning as in-group identifiers.

(10) HAN SOLO MOVIE CASTING. Donald Glover will play young Lando Calrissian, and YES he will wear a cape reports the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Glover is officially your new Lando Calrissian. Lucasfilm has announced that Glover will play the younger version of “Star Wars’” Cloud City administrator turned Rebel Alliance general in the upcoming standalone Han Solo film.

Glover will join Alden Ehrenreich, who was confirmed to play the young Solo during Star Wars Celebration in July.

According to the press release, the upcoming film will depict “Lando in his formative years as a scoundrel on the rise in the galaxy’s underworld — years before the events involving Han, Leia, and Darth Vader in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and his rise to Rebel hero in ‘Return of the Jedi.’”

(11) ACCELERATING HUMAN IMAGINATION IN ENGLAND. Did somebody think it wasn’t fast enough?

On November 24 and 25th on the campus of the University of Liverpool, London, the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and the University of Liverpool, London will host a workshop called Accelerating Human Imagination, bringing together a number of US and European experts in the study of imagination. They will be presenting and discussing new research on questions such as: What is “imagination?” Is there a singular basis of imagination that develops into a number of different phenomena, or do we use the word imagination to group together a number of aspects of behavior and cognition into a common category? If we can better understand imagination, we might be able to find ways of directly engaging it in order to accelerate its operation. What use might we put this accelerated imagination to?

(12) RAW SCIENCE FILM FESTIVAL. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination is a  partner of the Raw Science Film Festival, which honors films on science and technology from around the world. The screening and award ceremony will take place on December 10, 2016, on the Fox Studio lot inside the historic Zanuck Theater. Sheldon Brown will be on hand to present the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination Prize in Speculative Media. The deadline for festival submissions is November 9.

(13) INDIE SHRINKS. At Mad Genius Club, Fynbospress makes insightful speculations about the new author earnings report.

Interesting times, interesting results. After two and half years of constant growth, this time we see the first contraction for indie market share. Trad Pub’s big five showed a very slight gain in unit sales, but most of the market share went to Amazon’s own publishing arm, and a smaller amount to uncategorized single-author publishers (mostly indies).

On gross revenues, most of the lost market share went to small and medium publishers, with a smaller amount to amazon Pub.

Having the what, we’re left to speculate on the why, and how. Causes may include, but are not limited to: Amazon’s Kindle first program, pushing their own new releases; Bookbub’s increasing percentage of big and medium press slots as opposed to indies (and increased price raising the barrier to the fewer slots left); Amazon’s new promoted/sponsored search ads; consolidation of indies into small pubs; the stars being in the right configuration for C’thulu to rise from dead R’lyeh; other factors unknown at this time.

(14) SAY AHHHHH. Research shows “Migraine Sufferers Have More Nitrate-Reducing Microbes in their Mouths”.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that the mouths of migraine sufferers harbor significantly more microbes with the ability to modify nitrates than people who do not get migraine headaches. The study is published October 18 by mSystems.

“There is this idea out there that certain foods trigger migraines — chocolate, wine and especially foods containing nitrates,” said first author Antonio Gonzalez, a programmer analyst in the laboratory of Rob Knight, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego and senior author on the study. “We thought that perhaps there are connections between what people are eating, their microbiomes and their experiences with migraines.”

Many of the 38 million Americans who suffer from migraines report an association between consuming nitrates and their severe headaches. Nitrates, found in foods such as processed meats and green leafy vegetables and in certain medicines, can be reduced to nitrites by bacteria found in the mouth. When circulating in the blood, these nitrites can then be converted to nitric oxide under certain conditions. Nitric oxide can aid cardiovascular health by improving blood flow and reducing blood pressure. However, roughly four in five cardiac patients who take nitrate-containing drugs for chest pain or congestive heart failure report severe headaches as a side effect.

(15) SQUINTING. Kevin Marks discusses “How the Web Became Unreadable”. Surprisingly, he’s not talking about all the political posts.

It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go.

These hurdles have made me grumpier over time, but what pushed me over the edge was when Google’s App Engine console—a page that, as a developer, I use daily—changed its text from legible to illegible. Text that was once crisp and dark was suddenly lightened to a pallid gray. Though age has indeed taken its toll on my eyesight, it turns out that I was suffering from a design trend.

There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.

(16) HAGIOGRAPHY. Leonard Maltin interviews Stan Lee for Parade.

DINNER WITH DOCTOR STRANGE

When asked which three of his superheroes he would like to have dinner with, he takes a moment to think the question through. “I’d probably enjoy talking to Iron Man,” he says. “I’d like to talk to Doctor Strange. I like the Silver Surfer. Iron Man is sort of a classier Donald Trump, if you can imagine that sort of thing. The Silver Surfer is always philosophical; he comments about the world and man’s position in the universe, why we don’t enjoy living on this wonderful planet and why we don’t help each other.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, James Davis Nicoll, JJ and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]

2016 Utopiales Awards Shortlists

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Prix Utopiales Euorpeen

Finalists have been announced for three awards that will be presented at Utopiales, the Nantes International Science Fiction Festival.

The nominees for the Prix Utopiales Européen 2016 (Utopiales European Awards) are:

prix-utopiales-europeen-2016

  • La fenêtre de Diane by Dominique Douay (Les Moutons Électriques)
  • Futu.re by Dimitri Glukhovsky. Translation (from Russian) Denis E. Savine (Éditions L’Atalante)
  • Légationville [Embassytown] by China Miéville. Translation (from English) Nathalie Mège (Fleuve Editions)
  • Métaquine by François Rouiller (Éditions L’Atalante)
  • Sous la Colline by David Calvo (Éditions La Volte)
  • Le vivant by Anna Starobinets. Translation (from Russian) Raphaëlle Pache (Mirobole Editions)

The award recognizes a novel, or a collection, published in French during the eligibility period whose author is a citizen of a country belonging to the European Community. The prize has a cash value of 3000 euros.

The nominees for the Prix Utopiales Européen Jeunesse 2016 (Utopiales European Youth Awards) are:

prix-utopiales-europeen-jeunesse-2016

  • Les Copies by Jesper Wung-Sung. Translation (from Danish) Jean-Baptiste Coursaud (Éditions du Rouergue Jeunesse)
  • Empreinte digitale by Patrice Favaro (Thierry Magnier Éditions)
  • La source by Maxime Fleury (Thierry Magnier Éditions)
  • Les sous-vivants by Johan Héliot (Seuil Jeunesse)

The nominees for the Prix Utopiales 2016 du meilleur album de BD (Utopiales Prize for the best album of Comics)

prix-utopiales-du-meilleur-album-2016

  • L’Apocalypse selon Magda, Chloé Vollmer-Lo & Carole Maurel, éd. (Éditions Delcourt)
  • Le dernier arpenteur des sables, Jay Hosler, (Éditions Cambourakis)
  • Ex Nihilo, Stéphane Douay et Jean-François Kierzkowski, (Les Éditions Pirates)
  • Nefer, Chants et contes des premières terres, Arnaud Boutle, éd. (Éditions Delcourt)
  • Pouvoirpoint, Erwann Surcouf, éd. (Vide Cocagne)
  • Transperceneige Terminus, Jean-Marie Rochette & Olivier Boquet, éd. (Casterman BD)
  • Zita, Sylvie Fontaine, éd. (La Boite à Bulles)

The award ceremony will take place during the Utopiales International Science Fiction Festival of Nantes, October 29-November 3.

World Fantasy Con Rates Rise November 1

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The cost of World Fantasy Con 2017 attending memberships will increase on November 1 from $150 to $225. Supporting memberships will remain at $50.

World Fantasy 2017 will be held in San Antonio, Texas from November 2-5.
The guests of honor of World Fantasy 2017 are David Mitchell, Karen Joy Fowler, Greg Manchess, and Gordon Van Gelder with Martha Wells as the Toastmistress.

The convention’s Code of Conduct, accessibility policy, and other information about World Fantasy 2017 are available at the World Fantasy Con 2017 webpage.

How To Make a Spaceship at Clarke Center

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howtomakeaspaceship_carouseli

The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination invites the public to a moderated conversation between Peter Diamandis (founder, XPRIZE Foundation), Julian Guthrie (author of How to Make a Spaceship), and Brian Binnie (SpaceShipOne pilot) about the historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflight.

The event takes place November 3 in the International Great Hall at UC San Diego, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Following the discussion, there will be a book signing.

Peter Diamandis is the son of hardworking immigrants who wanted their science prodigy to make the family proud and become a doctor. But from the age of eight, when he watched Apollo 11 land on the Moon, his singular goal was to get to space. When he realized NASA was winding down manned space flight, Diamandis set out on one of the great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldn’t send him to space, he would create a private space flight industry himself.

In the 1990s, this idea was the stuff of science fiction. Undaunted, Diamandis found inspiration in an unlikely place: the golden age of aviation. He discovered that Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight to win a $25,000 prize. The flight made Lindbergh the most famous man on earth and galvanized the airline industry. Why, Diamandis thought, couldn’t the same be done for space flight?

The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne, and the other teams in the hunt, is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. It is driven by outsized characters–Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, John Carmack, Paul Allen–and obsessive pursuits. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn’t just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry and a new age.

Three Dave Kyle Moments

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Dave Kyle and 2011 Big Heart Award winner Gay Haldeman.
Sidney Coleman, Dave Kyle and James White at the 1987 Worldcon. Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter
Rich Lynch and Dave Kyle at ConFrancisco in 1993. Photo and copyright © Andrew Porter

By John Hertz: Many of us have lots of them.  Here are three of mine.

In April 2017 will be Lunacon LIX, the New York convention hosted by local club the Lunarians.  For years I was such a regular attender that some folks thought I lived in New York.  I’ve moderated Lunacon panels, I’ve taught Regency dancing, I’ve judged the Masquerade, I’ve been Fan Guest of Honor, I’ve listened to people sing “Demons in your bed will eat you up.  Do not call your mother; who do you think let the demons in?”

One year as I went looking for a seat in the Masquerade audience I found Dave Kyle ushering.  I was impressed by this modern Cincinnatus.  The original, in the days of the Roman Republic two and a half millennia ago, was plowing his farm when a group of Senators rushed to see him.  The army was trapped and in great danger.  Cincinnatus had been named Dictator, a rare position bringing supreme power.  He called up more men, defeated the enemy, and went back to his plow.  Cincinnati, Ohio, was named for him.  Dave had chaired the World Science Fiction Convention and here he was plowing away like anybody else.

His Worldcon was the 14th, New York, the Biltmore Hotel.  In those days we had a Banquet and gave the Hugo Awards there.  Dave was at the head table.  He later recounted, in Mimosa — for which he wrote two dozen articles —

As was customary, those who didn’t pay to eat could come into the room to hear the speeches at the proper time….  One of the gofers [please don’t write “gophers”, throwing away the joke of having to gofer this and gofer that – JH] told me the Fire Marshal was complaining that the stairs to the balcony were blocked by those non-eaters sitting there, waiting to take positions for the after-dinner ceremonies. “What do we do?” “Tell them,” I said, “that they can’t sit there.”

This became the catch-phrase “Dave Kyle says you can’t sit here”, a kind of Banquet’s Ghost he was never allowed to live down.  But he laughed too.

That night at Lunacon, Dave told me “Actually you can sit wherever you like.”

Here is Dave at NyCon II, sitting with bow tie and dark glasses; Larry Shaw at podium, John Campbell and Robert Silverberg to Kyle's left. Porter says, "Not my photo; I was 10 years old."

Here is Dave at NyCon II, sitting with bow tie and dark glasses; Larry Shaw at podium, John Campbell and Robert Silverberg to Kyle’s left. Porter says, “Not my photo; I was 10 years old.”

– o O o –

A while before Torcon III, the 61st Worldcon, Dave phoned asking if I was going to attend.  Yes, I said; I had written up Mike Glyer, the Fan Guest of Honour (note spelling), for the Program Book, and was to build an exhibit about him in the Exhibit Hall.  Dave asked, are you going to wear that propeller beanie?  Yes, I said, I always do at cons.  Dave asked if I’d help him with a presentation on Hugo Night.

He was going to bring the propeller beanie that had been placed on the head of Bob Bloch at Torcon II.  Bloch had been Pro Guest of Honour there and at Torcon I.  Meanwhile he had inconsiderately died so Torcon III could only make him Ghost of Honour.

Dave was going to be the Propeller Beanie of the Past and wanted me to be the Propeller Beanie of the Future.  I tried to say I felt unworthy but he was having none of that.  Then I thought of something else.  I always wear white tie on Hugo Night, I said.  The propeller beanie doesn’t really go with that costume.  It would be like running with the ball while playing soccer.  Well, he said, see if you can find a way.  Okay, Dave; for you, anything.

I thought maybe the propeller beanie would fit under my top hat, so I could by raising the hat do what some costumers call a “reveal”.  That didn’t work.  Finally I found I could get the beanie into my inside breast pocket.

At the con we managed to rehearse.  I was to stand back while Dave gave introductory remarks.  Then I should step forward, don the beanie, and retire again while Dave had a few more things to say.  Simple enough.

Came the event.  Dave took the lectern.  He spoke.  I joined him.  I took off the top hat, drew out the beanie, and put it on.  The crowd went wild.  A photo of this was put in Locus.  I guess a man in formal clothes and a propeller beanie was a One of Us moment.  Anyhow I smiled, bowed, and stepped back so Dave could go on.

John Hertz receives Big Heart Award at Torcon 3.

John Hertz receives Big Heart Award at Torcon 3.

He began speaking about the Big Heart, highest service award in the SF community.  He went on to describe the year’s recipient.  Slowly the light dawned.  He was talking about me.

The whole story, telephone, Past, Future, rehearsal, and all, had been a ruse to make sure I should be there.

Dave gave me a plaque and a rosette.

I had been snookered.

– o O o –

The North America Science Fiction Convention is held when the Worldcon is overseas.  In 2005 the Worldcon was at Glasgow and the NASFiC was at Seattle.  Monday morning in the hotel lobby after the NASFiC Dave said “Let’s go to the Science Fiction Museum.”

The Museum had just opened in 2004.  It had been designed by Tim Kirk, whom its founder Paul Allen had hired because he liked Kirk Designs’ proposal, not knowing he got a man who had won five Hugos as Best Fanartist before turning pro.  Kirk’s task was no small challenge, not least because so much of SF was, as Hamlet said “words, words, words”; if the Museum were dominated by visual-media SF that would be a serious under-representation.  Kirk had done wonderfully.

Who could be a better partner in wonder for an expedition there than Dave Kyle?

We went up to the Kyles’ hotel room.  Ruth fed us breakfast.  She was as always solicitous and helpful, but would the two boys ever be seen again?  Also I had a plane to catch.  We decided the safest plan was to get a taxi and pay the driver to come back at a set time.  In the Museum we then took turns pulling each other away from things.

The ground floor had the SF Hall of Fame, relocated from the University of Kansas.  Just added, along with Philip K. Dick, were Chesley Bonestell, Ray Harryhausen, and Steven Spielberg, the first SF artists other than writers to be inducted.

Also on the ground floor was a timeline, with Hugo Gernsback, Carol Hughes and Buster Crabbe as Dale Arden and Flash Gordon conquering the Universe, The Pocket Book of SF our first paperback collection of short stories, John Campbell, Orson Welles broadcasting The War of the Worlds, Heinlein with Rocket Ship Galileo Paul Allen’s first SF book, and Nineteen Eighty-four, just to mention a few points from 1925-1955.

Downstairs, three galleries with themes Brave New Worlds, Fantastic Voyages, and Them!  In Voyages was a Space Dock, with orbiting ships visitors could select for miniature documentaries.  Them! held an Interplanetary Lounge, variously imagined aliens, robots metal or mortal, and a Cargo Bay art gallery including Kelly Freas and Richard Powers.

I mustn’t leave out Harlan Ellison’s typewriter or the books Dave had published.

One “ship” floating past was a city, New York, New York (“What city has two names twice?”), from James Blish’s Cities in Flight; the crew that Kirk assembled, many of whom were veterans of Industrial Light & Magic, used Blish’s text, the best book covers they could find, and extrapolated views of Manhattan.  The first of these four novels came to be known as They Shall Have Stars; it was originally Year 2018! in which we now almost are, and Dave did not quite live to see.

Pixel Scroll 10/21/16 And Did Those Scrolls In Ancient Times Walk Upon England’s Pixels Green

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Editor’s Note: There will be no Pixel Scroll on Saturday because I will be away at an event all day. I have scheduled a few other tender morsels to keep the conversation rolling.

(1) POLLY WANNA SYLLABLE? Ann Leckie, one might say, expounds – “On Pretentious Writing”.

It struck me because one of the really interesting things about having a lot of people talk about my work these days is that I see quite a few folks say very straightforwardly that I obviously intended such and so an effect, or obviously intended to convey one or another moral or lesson, that it was plain and obvious that I was referring to this that or the other previous work, or to some historical or current event or entity. And often I come away from such assertions wondering if maybe they’re talking about a different book by a different author, that just happen to have the same names.

I’ve also seen quite different assessments of my sentence-level writing, which I find super interesting just on its own. It’s elegant! It’s beautiful. It’s muscular. It’s serviceable. It’s clunky. It’s amateur. Even more interestingly, it’s transparent, or else it’s emphatically not going to please the crowd that valorizes transparent writing. That’s super interesting to me.

(2) DOUBLE BILL IN HUNTSVILLE. “What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones” has started a three month run at the Huntsville Museum of Art in the Rocket City of Huntsville, Alabama.

The exhibit is laid out in seven sections, each highlighting a component of Chuck Jones’s career as an animation director and artist, and features more than 136 original sketches and drawings, storyboards, production backgrounds, and photographs.

“What’s Up, Doc?” is running simultaneously with “My Hero: Contemporary Art & Superhero Action”, the latter showing through mid-December.

Comic books and cartoons. The very essence of childhood; words that conjure up a much simpler time in life. Waking up on Saturday morning, eating a bowl of Honeycombs cereal while watching Roadrunner outsmart Wiley Coyote yet again. Not so patiently waiting for the latest issue of Superman to see how he defeats the bad guy.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

You’re an adult now.

Adulting is hard work.

Now you are expected to have a more sophisticated, refined palate. Your Saturday morning excitement should be something more like checking out an exhibit or two at the art museum.

But what if you could combine the two?

Guess what? For the next couple of months, you are in luck! The Huntsville Museum of Art’s two newest exhibits, “My Hero” and “What’s Up, Doc?” are guaranteed to excite both the kid and adult in you.

My Hero commemorates and seeks to re-envision the lives of iconic superheroes we all know and love.

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(3) AUTOGRAFACSIMILES. Someone on eBay is asking $3,100 for Morojo’s fanzine reproducing autographs obtained from sf/f pros at the first two Worldcons:

STEPHAN THE STfan.  IN 1939, THE YEAR OF THE FIRST WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION, SCI-FI FAN “MOROJO” (MYRTLE DOUGLAS) PRINTED THE FANZINE “STEPHAN THE STfan” WHICH WAS A SMALL PAMPHLET OF (I BELIEVE) 6 PAGES.  IT OFFERED REPRODUCTIONS (CALLED “AUTOGRAFACSIMILES”) OF THE SIGNATURES OF FAMOUS SCI-FI PERSONALITIES FROM THE COLLECTION OF FORREST J ACKERMAN.  I HAVE NOT REPRODUCED THE FACSIMILE PAGES.  BLANK PAGES WERE LEFT “TO SECURE SIGNATURES OF YOUR FRIENDS AND THE FAMOUS ONES ATTENDING THE CONVENTION.”  THE SCANS I’VE PROVIDED ARE ALL ORIGINAL SIGNATURES.  140+ SIGNATURES.  AMONG THE FAMOUS SIGNATURES OBTAINED AT THE 1st AND 2nd SCI-FI CONVENTIONS (AND THESE ARE ONLY A FEW) ARE:  A. MERRITT, ISAAC ASIMOV, EDMOND HAMILTON, JACK WILLIAMSON, OTTO BINDER, RAY CUMMINGS, LEO MARGULIES, FARNSWORTH WRIGHT, JULIUS UNGER, LLOYD ARTHUR ESHBACH, ALDEN ACKERMAN, MOROJO, POGO (PATTI GRAY), RAYMOND A. PALMER, ROSS ROCKLYNNE, EDWARD E. (“DOC”) SMITH & WIFE, E. EVERETT EVANS, FRED POHL (WITH HIS ZERO WITH A SLASH THROUGH IT), ROBERT A.W. “DOC” LOWNDES, DON WILCOX, G.S. BUNCH JR., RALPH MILNE FARLEY, JERRY SIEGEL, ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, DAVID KYLE, CYRIL KORNBLUTH, & SO MANY MORE!  ALMOST ALL 140+ SIGNATURES ARE SURPRISINGLY LEGIBLE, SEE THE SCANS FOR THE REST.  ALSO INCLUDED ARE SIGNATURES FROM THE 2nd RELEASE OF STEPHAN THE STfan (DATED SEPT 1, 1940).  (NOTE: ALDEN ACKERMAN WAS FORREST J ACKERMAN’S BROTHER, WHO DIED IN THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE JAN 1, 1945.  FORREST J ACKERMAN’S SIGNATURE WAS NOT INCLUDED SINCE HE WAS THE PERSON OBTAINING THE SIGNATURES.  THERE WERE ONLY 3 WORLD SCI-FI CONVENTIONS BEFORE WORLD WAR II (1939, 1940, 1941).  THE NEXT WAS #4 IN 1946.  THESE SIGNATURES WERE OBTAINED AT THE 1939 AND 1940 CONVENTIONS PERSONALLY BY FORREST J ACKERMAN.  THIS ITEM WAS ORIGINALLY FROM HIS FAMOUS COLLECTION, A ONE-OF-A-KIND ITEM FROM THE EARLY HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION.    SINCE THE PAGES WITH THE SIGNATURES ARE DETACHED, I AM NOT POSITIVE THAT ALL THE PAGES ARE HERE–BUT, AFTER ALL, THERE ARE 140+ SIGNATURES.   THE FIRST WORLD SCI-FI CONVENTION WAS ATTENDED BY 200 PEOPLE.  THE 2nd WORLD SCI-FI CONVENTION WAS ATTENDED BY 128 PEOPLE.

(4) OLD SCHOOL VIDEO GAMES. The retro gaming system, remade with modern technology: “Nintendo’s mini-NES: Everything you need to know”.

Did you hear? The Nintendo Entertainment System is back, and it’s cuter than ever.

The new NES Classic Edition (aka NES Classic Mini) is an official Nintendo product that crams 30 of the company’s most beloved games into a miniature version of the hit ’80s game system. It fits in the palm of your hand. It comes with an HDMI port so it can plug into a modern TV, and a freshly manufactured NES gamepad for that old-school feel.

And when it ships on November 11 for just $60, £50 or AU$100, it could also be an unbeatable deal: we ran the numbers, and you can’t get this many retro Nintendo games anywhere else for the money.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born October 21, 1929 – Ursula K. Le Guin.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born October 21 — Christopher Garcia, multiple Best Fanzine Hugo winner.

(7) BOGUS BOOK REPORTS. Huffington Post published a collection of these as “Donald Trump’s Clueless Debate Answers Spawn #TrumpBookReport Tweets”.

Trump’s foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn’t read the book. “Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!”
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) October 20, 2016

That crack caused #TrumpBookReport to trend as Twitter users wondered what would happen if the Republican presidential nominee ? who has said he’s too busy to read many books ? really was a teen giving a report about a book he hadn’t read.

Here are some of the best (edited by AP to include only the genre book ones; read the actual post for the full effect):

There’s a Lord-and he’s got rings. Lots of rings. The best rings. And two of the best Towers anyone has seen. #trumpbookreport
— Karl H. (@ageofkarl) October 20, 2016

It took Low Energy Harry Potter 7 books to defeat Voldermort. Sad! I would have beat him in the first book! #TrumpBookReport
— Historical Trump (@HistoryDTrump) October 20, 2016

Voldemort was a bad guy, okay. He was a bad guy. But you know what he was very good at? Killing Muggles. #TrumpBookReport @AntonioFrenchhttps://t.co/eJBMhUlCPg
— Historical Trump (@HistoryDTrump) October 20, 2016

Charlotte’s Web …Spider dies at the end… no stamina. What a loser. #TrumpBookReport
— Cora Huggins (@Rangerswife1) October 20, 2016

“So much hunger, many hungry people, and far too many games. Hard to play with so much, too much, quite frankly, hunger.” #TrumpBookReport
— Doug B (@dougbstl) October 20, 2016

Pinocchio? He’s no puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet! #TrumpBookReport
— White Rabbit Object (@audiewhitaker) October 20, 2016

Westeros is failing. Wall is okay. I could build it higher. American steel. I’d be the best King. Tremendous king. Isis.#TrumpBookReport
— Pat Rothfuss (@PatrickRothfuss) October 20, 2016

(8) INDUSTRY HUMOR. Andrew Porter recommends Publishers Weekly’s “Tales from the Slush Pile”. “There are dozens of these available, and they’re really hilarious.” “Tales from the Slush Pile” is an original comic strip that follows the trials and tribulations of a children’s book writer and his friends. Its creator, Ed Briant, has written and illustrated a number of picture books, comics and graphic novels.

(9) WELL ENDOWED. The University of Maine is creating the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature in Literature in honor of one of its most famous graduates.

The university is collecting applications from English professors to fill the position now. The appointment is set to begin in August and is a five-year, renewable term. The university says the position is tenured and designed to honor the UMaine English department’s “most celebrated graduate.” The school says the position will have undergraduate education as a central focus. King graduated from the university in 1970 with a degree in English. His first novel, “Carrie,” was published four years later, and he has been one of America’s most beloved horror and fantasy authors for four decades.

The position is partially endowed by the Harold Alfond Foundation.

(10) CUMMINS OBIT. Horror writer and musician Dennis Cummins died October 18.

As a well-known guitar, keyboard player and singer with “Beatles For Sale,” he sang and entertained many with endless cover songs of the much-loved Beatles with the band he’d been a member of for nearly 10 years. He also was an author with his completed novel, “Nesters,” and several other short stories that were published.

Dennis M. Cummins died Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 after a very short battle with lung cancer. He was 64. Dennis was born Oct. 30, 1951 in Worcester Mass.

Dennis was also a published horror author and had sold numerous short stories to various horror magazines around the country. He was a member of the Horror Writers’ Association.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Marc Criley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bruce Baugh.]

Jack Heckel’s Reimagined Fairy Tales

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By Carl Slaughter: In the Charming Tales series, Once Upon a Time becomes Once Upon a Rhyme, Happily Ever After becomes Happily Never After, and the Sword of Destiny becomes the Pitchfork of Destiny. Harper Voyager Impulse author Jack Heckel aims his sly pen at Prince Charming, Rapunzel, Beowulf, the Three Bears, Sleeping Beauty, the Seven Dwarves, Goldilocks, dragons, Robin Hood, and more. And Castle White, is that a takeoff on…

CHARMING TALES SERIES
By Jack Heckel

ONCE UPON A RHYME

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The dragon is dead. The princess has been saved. There is but one problem: Prince Charming had nothing to do with it.

In order to save his royal reputation, Prince Charming must begrudgingly enlist the help of accidental hero William Pickett. The two set out on an adventure that has them fighting trolls, outwitting a scoundrel, and drinking the foulest ale ever, collecting bruises to both body and pride along the way. Meanwhile, the rescued princess, Gwendolyn, turns out to be one dangerously distressed damsel, and an evil presence takes over Castle White in Charming’s absence …

Enter this rollicking world and discover just what happens when a fairytale leaves the well-trodden path of “once upon a time.”

HAPPILY NEVER AFTER

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Once upon, once again …

The dragon has been slain, but the problems have just begun for Prince Charming.

Disowned by his father, the King, and abandoned by his only friend, William Pickett, Charming must find a new path in life—but he’s going to need a lot of help. His love, Liz, barely survived an assassination attempt; his former fling, Rapunzel, is in danger; and William is under an evil spell cast by Princess Gwendolyn.

The fate of Castle White hangs in the balance as Charming tries to find himself, while finding new allies along the way—including an odd number of dwarfs (or is it dwarves?) and a reformed beast. But he’s running out of time to stop royally ruinous wedding bells from ringing …

THE PITCHFORK OF DESTINY

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Life in the Kingdom of Royaume has been happily ever for King William Pickett and his fiancee, Lady Rapunzel. But when Volthraxus, the Great Dragon of the North, returns looking for the love of his life, the Great Wyrm of the South, it becomes clear that some fairy tales never end.

After Volthraxus discovers his love was slain by the newly crowned king, he seeks his revenge by kidnapping Rapunzel. Once again, Will teams up with Edward Charming, the only man in all the kingdom with the skill, ego, and dashing good looks to fight a dragon. Our heroes fates depend on finding a weapon re-forged in dragon blood the Pitchfork of Destiny.

But as the two set off after the dragon, Charming s bride, Lady Elizabeth, falls into the clutches of a mysterious sorcerer known as the Dracomancer, who has his own plans for Royaume.

Pixel Scroll 10/20/16 Pixeled In The Scroll By My Own Pixel

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(1) PLAYING WITH REAL NUMBERS. Aaron tests the idea that EPH will not distort the results when there is no slate in a new post at Dreaming of Other Worlds. Find out what changed on the 2014 final Hugo ballot.

E Pluribus Hugo was passed largely in response to the results of the 2015 Hugo nomination process. I outlined the background leading up to this in my previous post about the 2016 E Pluribus Hugo Revised Hugo Finalists, and I’m not going to repeat myself here. Anyone who wants a summary of the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns, the responses from non-Puppy Hugo voters, and an outline of the mechanics of E Pluribus Hugo can go read about that there.

The E Pluribus Hugo system had several goals. One goal was to dampen the influence of bloc voting. A second goal was to create a system that presented a nominating voter with a means of voting that was substantially similar to the one that voter had under the old system. The third was to create a system that would return results that were as close to those that the old system did in a year in which there was no bloc voting. To test this third goal, the system was used on the 2014 Hugo ballots, which was a year in which there was a Sad Puppy campaign, but no slate in any meaningful sense, and therefore no real bloc voting….

(2) SUMMERTIME. Chapter 10 of T. Kingfisher’s Summer in Orcus has now been released.

When the witch Baba Yaga walks her house into the backyard, eleven-year-old Summer enters into a bargain for her heart’s desire. Her search will take her to the strange, surreal world of Orcus, where birds talk, women change their shape, and frogs sometimes grow on trees. But underneath the whimsy of Orcus lies a persistent darkness, and Summer finds herself hunted by the monstrous Houndbreaker, who serves the distant, mysterious Queen-in-Chains…

(3) RIDERS OF THE PURPLE PAGE. Max Florschutz enters the perpetual debate about “literary” vs. “genre” in “You Just Keep Pushing Me Away…” .

Granted, I could write a whole thing on how genre fiction can (and does) approach the tough questions, demands intelligent thought and reason, and present ideas (and when it comes down to it, most who disagree are either cherry picking their examples or of the mindset of “that doesn’t support the message and ideas I want,” which doesn’t help). I could talk about that, pull examples, etc. But I won’t. Not at this point.

No, instead, I’m going to tackle a different point. The idea that “literary” fiction is automatically intelligent and thought-provoking. Because this isn’t accurate. No, more accurate would be that it’s fiction that thinks it’s intelligent or thought provoking, written by someone who thinks they’re presenting something much more “intellectual” than it actually is. When it really isn’t … but they’re too “smart” to do the research to know otherwise.

… What’s sad about this is I could see myself enjoying more “literary” works.  The writing is more tell, sure, and more purple, but sometimes that’s pretty good purple. Sometimes there’s some neat ideas buried in there.

But my issue is that they are buried in there. It’s like “literary” writers can’t be bothered to do the most basic of research. And that pushes me away. Back towards genre fiction, where, despite not being the “intelligent” fiction choice, the science is real, the facts are usually real (or pretty close), and even when I’m reading about fantasy kingdom of some kind, said kingdom is actually laid out like a real government and civilization would be. As opposed to the “literary” version, which comes off feeling like Disney-mythology in comparison.

It just keeps pushing me away. Especially with all the battles over how “literary” fiction is the “superior” fiction, or the more intelligent, or the more meaningful, etc. I just can’t take a story seriously that can’t grasp basic parts of life, like how a car works. Or a TV. Or science.

(4) ANOTHER MIDDLE-EARTH TALE ON WAY TO PRESS. “JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth love story to be published next year” reports The Guardian.

JRR Tolkien’s legend of the mortal man Beren and the immortal elf Lúthien – a story that meant so much to the Lord of the Rings author that the characters’ names are engraved on the headstone shared by him and his wife – is to be published next year.

The Middle-earth tale tells of the love between the mortal man and the immortal elf. Lúthien’s father, an Elvish lord, is against their relationship, and so gives Beren an impossible task to fulfil before the two can be married, said HarperCollins, which will publish Beren and Lúthien next May. The pair then go on to rob “the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril”, or jewel.

(5) PULITZER EXPANDS ELIGIBILITY. Crain’s New York Business reports print and online magazines are now eligible for Pulitzer Prizes in all journalism categories.

The Pulitzer Prize Board announced Wednesday that entries of work done in 2016 will be accepted beginning in December for the 2017 prizes.

The board says it made its decision after two years of experimentation.

New entry guidelines are posted at Pulitzer.org.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY VAMPIRE

  • Born October 20, 1882 — Bela Lugosi.

lugosi-birthday-card

(7) HORROR READING.Ellen Datlow’s photos of the “Children of Lovecraft Reading October 16, 2016” are on Flickr.

Laird Barron, John Langan, A. C. Wise, Siobhan Carroll, Richard Kadrey, and David Nickle all read wonderfully at the Lovecraft Bar on Avenue B in NYC’s east village.

chidren-of-lovecraft-reading

(8) PLAYTIME. I got a kick from John Scalzi’s first line in one of his mallet-is-out warnings:

  1. Hey, two political posts in the same day! Can you tell I finished my book?

(9) TIME TO LEVEL UP YOUR ALIENS. Motherboard’s post “The Way We’ve Been Imagining Aliens Is All Wrong” sets us straight.

Why do we always picture aliens as distorted humans?

Science fiction has failed to creatively, or even accurately, imagine alien life, said British science writer Philip Ball in an article, “The Aeon Idea: Why our imagination for alien life is so impoverished.” Now Aeon, a digital ideas and culture magazine, just released a video called Stranger Aliens, adapted from Ball’s theory and narrated by Ball himself.

 

(10) DIVERSITY ON DISCOVERY. Otaku-kun at Haibane comments on the proposal: “A Muslim crew member on Star Trek: Discovery?”

I think including an explicit Muslim would be jarring since tehre is no other “real world” religion represented in Star Trek, at least for the Human society. It was Roddenberry’s world and he chose to eliminate religion from it. Adding a character who is explicitly Muslim complicates canon and introduces tension that undermines Star Trek’s appeal to all of humanity. Then you also need canon explanations for the status of Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc. This mess is exactly why religion was introduced to DS9 using the alien Bajoran society rather than picking one from our own.

The solution is to recognize that Islamophobia is not an intellectual reaction to a religion’s precepts, but rooted in racial and ethnic fears. Having a stand-in on the crew for a “Muslim-y” ethnic type would be great because that way when someone sees a Muslim on the street, they should be able to counter their knee-jerk stereotype by relating that person to this crewmember. Therefore, the ethnic choice of the actor is relevant to maximize that stereotype-defeating analogy. Which ethnicity works best for this purpose?

(11) WHO’S THE GEEZER? selenay articulates the cross-generational stresses affecting fanfic writers in “Regarding all the AO3 bashing” (AO3 = Archive of Our Own).

Us olds remember the old days. The days when you had to label all slash–even when it was just hand-holding–as NC17 and plaster it with warnings. The days when only certain archives accepted slash at all, and you could get your FFN account or LJ suspended if someone objected to your boy kissing fics, so everything was locked down under f-lock or posted to the adult slash-friendly archives with a thousand warning pop-ups. The days when RPF was never to be spoken of because almost no archive accepted it. The days when we all danced around carefully because at any moment, our favourite fics could be deleted and never seen again if a site advertiser threatened to withdraw funding….

Current fandom has splintered and seems to have broken into generational buckets. The youngest part of fandom is on Tumblr and Snapchat. The older part of fandom is on Tumblr a bit, but not much, and many of us have stepped a long way back from it because we’re made so unwelcome. We’re still here on LJ, DW, Twitter, and Imzy, where the youngs aren’t so much. Due to those divides, there isn’t that interaction and mutual learning, so the younger fanfolk don’t know the history. They don’t know why AO3 exists and why we’re so passionate about not censoring it. They’ve never had to creep around on the edges of fandom because they were slashers, or RPF-ers, or wrote explicit fics after FFN banned them.

The divide is also contributing to the feeling that anyone over thirty shouldn’t be fannish anymore, and I suspect that’s part of the AO3 wankery. There aren’t many people from that very young end of the fandom involved with the OTW or AO3, so it feels like the olds run it. We created it, we fundraised for it, we continue to work on it and we’re old, by their standards. We should have shuffled off to our graveyards or our adult lives or something.

Except we haven’t, because when we were the fandom babies, there were all these fans older than us who were still active and we learned we’ll never be too old for fandom. With the divide getting so sharp between the youngest and everyone else, they’re not getting that part of the fannish experience, either. They can’t imagine being thirty (or forty, or fifty), never mind being that age and still being in fandom.

You’ve also got the problem that Tumblr-style activism is very different from what we were doing five or ten years ago. It’s all about protecting young eyes not just from the content, but from knowing the content is even there. About removing it so it doesn’t need to be thought of. For them, “don’t like, don’t read” isn’t enough. They don’t want anyone to read it or see it or write it.

(12) A VISIT TO ANTIQUITY. James Davis Nicoll has posted his latest Young People Read Old SF, assigning them “Snowball Effect” by Katherine MacLean.

Although she won a Nebula Award for The Missing Man, Katherine MacLean is hardly a household name these days. Her most productive period ran from the 1950s to the 1970s. That Nebula was won in 1971; other honours (such as being a professional guest of honor at the very first WisCon in 1977) are almost all of a similar vintage. She was admired for her ability to combine character with plot, character being an element of fiction many of her contemporaries seemed willing to do without.

In her heyday, MacLean was one of the few high-profile women working in the field. In the specific context of these reviews, she is remarkable in a different way: the first author selected who is still with us: born in 1925, she is but 91. Her birthday is January 22: join me in raising a glass to this grand figure of science fiction.

(13) LARPING FOR PEACE. In a piece on Vimeo called “Bjarke Pedersen:  Becoming the Story,”  Danish LARPer Bjarke Pedersen explains what “Nordic LARP” is and how in Scandinavia, LARPers work together to come up with stories they wouldn’t be able to create on their own.  Pedersen’s video was presented at the Future of Storytelling conference held in New York City two weeks ago.

As the Creative Director of Odyssé and one of the world’s experts on LARPing, Bjarke Pedersen has spent many years exploring the power of this collaborative form of storytelling. He’s observed that by getting a chance to engage with different characters, LARPers are also able to learn more about themselves. LARPing is also particularly powerful for the ways in which it relies on building trust among people. Many individuals are able to tell their own stories within a given framework, but it is the larger output of so many different stories being told at the same time that makes LARPing so unique and powerful.

 

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Aziz Poonawalla, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Josh Jasper.]