Atlas Barked 7/4

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aka Time Enough To Read Even The Puppy Nominees

Today roundup hors d’ouerve includes Tim Hall, Adam-Troy Castro, Vox Day, Patrick McCulley and Jon Zeigler. (Title credit goes out to File 770 contributing editors of the day Will Reichard and Daniel Dern.)

Tim Hall on Where Worlds Collide

“Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths” – July 4

There’s an interesting post by David Chapman about the life-cycle of subcultures. He identifies three types of people who enter a subculture at different stages. First there are the “Geeks”, the creators and hardcore supporters. The come “Mops”, the more casual supporters whose numbers are necessary for a scene to grow big enough to be economically viable. Finally there are the “Sociopaths”, who want to exploit everything for profit without caring about the subculture itself, taking a short-term slash-and-burn approach that destroys the thing in the process…..

I certainly don’t agree with him on the necessity of gatekeepers to preserve the purity of a subculture; that smacks too much of elitism, and gatekeeping is one of those things that can so easily turn toxic. This is especially true when you have what amounts to a turf war between competing subcultures over a disputed space; the whole Sad Puppies/Hugo thing, and the ongoing Gamergate culture war are prime examples.

 

Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – July 4

Wright is outraged that I would imply anti-Semitism in this language, and wants us to know that he loves the Jewish people and indeed angrily bans any holocaust deniers who show up on his blog. Well, bully for him. So what we really need to take from this is that he wasn’t targeting Jews, with those words, but simply and clumsily doubling down on his previously stated hatred for homosexuals. That’s much different.

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Hugo Recommendations: Best Editor” – July 4

This is how I am voting in the Best Editor categories. Of course, I merely offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his 388 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.

Best Editor, Short Form

  1. Vox Day
  2. Jennifer Broznek
  3. Bryan Thomas Schmidt
  4. Mike Resnick

Best Editor, Long Form

  1. Toni Weisskopf
  2. Anne Sowards
  3. Jim Minz
  4. Vox Day
  5. Sheila Gilbert

 

Jon Zeigler on Sharrukin’s Palace

“My 2015 Hugo Ballot” – July 4

My sole motivation here is to read and appreciate genre fiction from (almost) any source. The dispute certainly motivated me to become involved with the process for the first time, but I’ve done my good-faith best to evaluate nominees as if the dispute was not taking place. In particular, for individual writers or editors I’ve deliberately avoided reading blog pages or social media, concentrating instead on neutral sources and the body of work.

[Lists everything on his Hugo ballot.]

 

https://twitter.com/panther_modern/status/617352254409043968

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270 thoughts on “Atlas Barked 7/4”

  1. @Matt Y…

    Gustaf looked at the massive creature that was trudging its vast muitilegged way towards the gates of Vatican City. Since the beginning of Armageddon the Holy See had been attacked by both flying demons and satans footsoldiers – the Christ Hating Crusaders for Sodomy. But this was the greatest threat yet.

    He drew his pontifical swiss guard knife – never dishonoured since the day in 1512 when Pope Julius II had dubbed them “Defender’s of the Churches Freedom”. He knew what a Pontifical Swiss Guard must do…..

  3. @ Amoxtli

    I’m surprised that more people aren’t discussing the fanfic angle of “A Single Samurai”. Surely it’s “Shadow of the Colossus” fanfic, a Japanese game in which a young man with a sword faces a series of kaiju who must be climbed to find the glowing sigils that show the weak point at which to attack them. Does that meet the basic expectation of being original work, or is the door now open on nominating fanworks from Transformative Works Fandom for the Hugo? That’s a game-changing shift for everyone, if TWF is now Hugo-eligible.

    Actually, I’ve never seen this story discussed here without SotC coming up.

    Also, TWF fanwork has always been eligible. It just isn’t nominated.

  4. @Will: I’ll be interested to hear Brian’s explanation of what Brian wrote.

    @Jamoche:

    *googles* Huh, I’m one of the 10,000 today. But then, haiku is one of the many words that have been mugged, Nicoll-style; an English 5-7-5 poem almost never has anything to do with nature, which I already knew was part of a Japanese haiku.

    Yeah, there are all kinds of issues. Briefly, Japanese words average a lot more “syllables” (on/onji, really, including a syllabic ‘n’) than English words do; Japanese on tend to be quicker to pronounce than most English syllables; Japanese is more of a syllabic language while English is more accentual; Japanese kireji (“cutting words”) tend to divide classical haiku into two parts, not three – it happens that the kireji typically appears after the 5th or 12th on; idiomatic translations of classical haiku tend to end up in the 10-12 syllable range rather than 17; and…well, it all adds up. You end up with a solid case (made by people like Cor van den Heuvel) that the “true” English-language haiku is…

    * seasonal
    * about 5-7 accentual beats long
    * across 1-3 lines of verse

    I personally would plump for two lines of about 6-7 total beats, with one line substantially longer than the other. But I wouldn’t hold this claim so firmly as to exclude John Wills’ one-line

    dusk     from rock to rock a water thrush

    For way too much more see The Haiku Anthology and The Haiku Handbook.

    Yes, my first poetry publication was a haiku. I made a dollar! The editor put an actual dollar bill in the envelope with the acceptance letter.

  5. Still grinding through TDBTS and I am left wondering if English is Anderson’s first language. He just referred to a katana as a spear.

  6. The story begins
    With a tavern amidst snow
    How is this sci-fi?

    Bravo. I had to think about this for a second before I remembered that discussion regarding Leckie’s introduction not being science fiction because there was a tavern and snow.

    Reading Linda Nagata’s The Red. It’s off to an excellent start.

  8. @Brian Z.: Thanks. Tenar Denali and Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag have explained what the tweet means already.

    “Invocation serves only to make you look foolish.”

    Invocation of what?

    “Of McCarthyism or witch hunts.”

    To what end?

    “In defense of #Gamergate and #SadPuppy lunacy.”

    There is literally zero ambiguity in what McCulley wrote.

  9. Me neither. Decoding tweets is not my strong point but ‘that’ is beyond the standard enigmatic threshhold.

    In other news, I am bidding a poignant farewell to my view of the Gherkin; the scaffolding already almost obscures it, and I think by tomorrow it will be gone. l had not realised how much I had come to believe that the proper state of affairs included seeing the Gherkin when glancing out of the windows, but so it goes.

    My daughter grew up assuming that everywhere has sky scrapers because the Barbican has three 40 story towers, visible from the other windows, and thus it’s natural. I think there may be a point in there about what we perceive to be ordinary, and normal, and natural…

  10. I’m just hoping that we’re all about to watch it when they finally get the engines installed and the Gherkin lifts off to begin her journey to the stars.

  11. In other news, I am bidding a poignant farewell to my view of the Gherkin; the scaffolding already almost obscures it, and I think by tomorrow it will be gone.

    I feel for you. I work in downtown Seattle and slowly but surely my view of Lake Union is disappearing. It’s down to a tiny sliver that I have to angle myself just right for, and will disappear completely after one or two more Amazon towers.

  12. This is getting a bit off topic, but my favourite haiku was composed in Dutch by Herman Van Rompuy, former prime minister of Belgium and first full-time President of the EU Council:

    Haren in de wind
    Na jaren is er nog wind.
    Helaas geen haren.

    This translates roughly as:

    Hair blows in the wind.
    Years later, the wind remains.
    But the hair has gone.

    Slapheads unite!

  14. Working my way through The Three-Body Problem right now.

    It’s surprised me so far by its “pull-you-in” factor. It is a bit dry, and definitely concentrating more on the world-building and the plot than the characters, but it has a definite pull, and it’s interesting so far.

    But (rot-13 for spoilers) gur svefg gvzr Jnat ragref gur tnzr naq Xvat Mubh trgf pbasvezngvba bs n ybat Fgnoyr Crevbq, V pna’g ohg urne uvz va n Qnyrx ibvpr “Er-ul-qengr, er-ul-qengr!”.

  15. Nicholas

    I think that the off topic discussions here are a feature, not a bug; I was well aware that the God of Moses, so beloved by Wright, directly ordered that a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath should be stoned to death in front of all the tribe (see Numbers 15.35) but in the absence of the barbecue thread I would never have made the connection with Wright’s willingness to ignore God’s express command when it suits him.

    After all, people gather sticks and barbecue things with gusto on the Sabbath, but Wright isn’t hysterically demanding that they should be all stoned to death because God expressly ordered it..

  16. Ah, the Gerkhin. I have a half-written story in which a group of survivors are holed up in an East End pub after a hard Vingean singularity has kicked off, trying to avoid being absorbed by the group mind that’s spun off a risk management AI in the basement of the Gerkhin.

    Think of it as a zombie story with very smart, very very careful zombies. And bunch of cabbies armed with The Knowledge trying to plan an escape to Weymouth.

  17. (Tomorrow I leave the beach and take the ferry home. Normal service will be resumed shortly)

  18. Guardians of the Galaxy viewed, enjoyed, and reviewed. Viewed with popcorn, which I do not share with readers of the review. Make your own popcorn!

  19. Simon

    That would directly impinge on my own semi-written story about an even smaller group of survivors hiding in the tunnels underneath the Barbican, following a global catastrophe.

    Naturally, the City would be an excellent place for survivors if an attack happened during the night because the hundreds of thousands of people who work here all go home in the evenings, leaving a lot of resources to be looted, sorry, shared, amongst those who live here. And there are a lot of tunnels.

    Also, I have to work out some way of despatching alpaca to you…

  20. bloodstone75’s Gift of the Rage-i is pure genius. The expression of its genius is fractal. “Gee-WYSIWYG” is a faceted gem that should be set in a ring of gold and worn ostentatiously to the Hugo Awards.

  22. @stevie I’ve been writing apocalyptic Singularity stories set in the UK for a while now – two are in the small collection of my small press SFF that I put up on Amazon a while back. I’ve put it on the back burner (along with the related novel The Ruins Of Breakfast) while I work on more of my Silicon Valley Magic stories, about the magic that we brought to California and how it underpins tech culture. My current favourite character I’m writing is the Angel Investor. And yes, she is.

  23. Amoxtli on July 5, 2015 at 9:24 am said:

    That’s a game-changing shift for everyone, if TWF is now Hugo-eligible.

    Gotta really start pushing a friend to finish her latest fanfic, then, so it can be eligible for next year.

  25. Stevie on July 5, 2015 at 1:53
    Naturally, the City would be an excellent place for survivors if an attack happened

    And handy for a film version as it is empty at weekends 🙂

  26. Transformative works have ‘always’ been acceptable for awards if they’d been transformed sufficiently, or at least had the serial numbers successfully filed off enough to be saleable without legal difficulties. Not having read it or played the game, I suspect A Single Samurai falls into that territory with regard to Shadow of the Colossus. (As another example: “The Political Officer”, 2003 Novella Hugo nominee by Charles Coleman Finlay, began as Vorkosigan fanfic.)

  27. Camestros

    It’s not quite as empty as it used to be at weekends but it is still fairly spooky; you get used to seeing very familiar bits in films purporting to be elsewhere but there’s an element of it being ours once everybody goes home…

  28. GSLamb : *Truly, this haiku could be a shorter form for any of JCW’S recent fiction writing.

    Only his later works?

    “Titans versus Gods
    Seems like fun, but to sell books,
    Let’s spank this schoolgirl.

  29. …began as Vorkosigan fanfic.

    And Shards of Honor, of course, began as Star Trek fanfic.

    (I’d never heard of Shadow of the Colossus, and without being told would not guess that A Single Samurai was based on anything specific.)

  31. Stevie on July 5, 2015 at 2:27 pm said:
    Camestros

    It’s not quite as empty as it used to be at weekends but it is still fairly spooky; you get used to seeing very familiar bits in films purporting to be elsewhere but there’s an element of it being ours once everybody goes home…

    Apart from catching a bus in the City to Whitechapel (after walking over the river from the Tate) last year, I havent been in the City this century.

  33. Can’t pass up this chance…
    There was a man from Limerick
    Who never quite got the trick
    Of writing two lines
    And three more besides —
    His rhyming was too far from slick.

  34. @Amoxtli – I bring it up every time, but that horse has clearly left the barn, fallen off the cliff and appeared, limping, in the credits.

  36. Stevie:

    After all, people gather sticks and barbecue things with gusto on the Sabbath, but Wright isn’t hysterically demanding that they should be all stoned to death because God expressly ordered it..

    To be precise, though, the Sabbath commandment has never been observed by most Christians (the early Jewish-Christian churches being the exception). Sunday was viewed as the “ogdoos hemera”, the eighth day, and not viewed in any way as a continuation of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath commandment was discontinued as “ritual law”. (Since Wright professes a Catholic faith, the sabbath riant views of various Protestant denominations are somewhat beside the point.)

    Note that as a traditionalist Catholic, Wright will not be making an unmediated appeal to the Bible, but to the teachings of the Church mediating the Bible (and unwritten tradition). (Not that Wright seems to be the sort of person who would have devoted a lot of detailed attention to Denziger.)

  37. @Stevie- Hamilton’s nickname of “World Wrecker” is well deserved

    Literally:

    “Who are these crazy people, anyway, who explode worlds as weapons? It’s sheer madness!” World of the Starwolves, 1968…

    Reread that recently after about 20 years. Still enjoyed it.

  40. @Jim

    Not surprising. I’m seeing an outrageous spike on my blog today too. Possibly the biggest one I’ve ever had, which strikes me as kind of weird given the subject matter. There must be a lot of lurkers reading Mike’s roundups.

  41. Jon F. Zeigler: There must be a lot of lurkers reading Mike’s roundups.

    I’ve read estimates that a blog or forum with the level of commenting activity which goes on here will have 10 readers / lurkers for every commenter.

    Which is why I don’t like leaving lies and misrepresentations sitting here uncontradicted, even if it means have to make the same debunking posts over and over.

    I would imagine that Mike has access to numbers on how many unique visitors he gets each day.

  43. @JJ

    Guaranteed – it’s a WordPress blog, so he probably manages it through the same interface I use.

    Appreciate your efforts to keep things straight, by the way. Including for a few moments over in my patch . . .

  44. James

    Wright devotes his life to insisting that he worships and fears the God of Moses; I am pointing out that if he is being truthful about that then he should fear the consequences of failing to follow the explicit command of God, and be doing his best to follow that explicit command.

    I do not know the practise in the US but here in England my father, excommunicated Catholic, and my first husband, lapsed Catholic, at no point suggested that they had been brought up to worship and/or fear the God of Moses.

    There was, in fact, a total absence of Moses when it came to theological or any other matters; the only person mentioned whose name began with an M was Mary, which probably explains why my middle name is Mary.

    Of course, they were cradle Catholics, who are somewhat different to converts, but I am fairly sure that converts are also supposed to notice the existence of Christ. I have yet to read Wright commenting on anything Christ said, hence my suggestion that his bible has all the references to Christ tippexed out.

    But if he wants to carry on telling people that he worships and fears the God of Moses then he’s going to have to own it, however much you may wish it otherwise…

  45. Jon F. Zeigler: Appreciate your efforts to keep things straight, by the way. Including for a few moments over in my patch…

    I appreciate your rational blog posts. It’s good to be able to read people whose writing reflects serious thought and care in using language, rather than irrational shouting. 🙂

  46. The increasing influence of fanfic on SFF lit is an interesting topic, which —

    CARLI LLOYD SCORES TWO GOALS IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES!

    … sorry, what were we talking about?

  47. It’s an unfortunate truth in the U.S. that the Christians who live their faith, treating other people well and being kind to all without feeling the need to constantly trumpet and flog others with their beliefs, are not nearly as noticeable as the people like JCW who scream loudly about their faith while continually demonstrating horrible words and behavior which are the antithesis to their claimed belief system.

  48. Kyra

    It’s Wimbledon. Even more obsessive compulsive because they’ve got multiple matches being covered simultaneously and tv, laptop, and iPads aren’t enough!

  49. @ Mark Dennehy

    Gabriel F.:

    Actually, I’ve never seen this story discussed here without SotC coming up.

    *ahem*
    😀

    Huh?

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