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Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom
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And, the Hugo winner and 3 stories from the longlist!
(Man, I can’t believe that “Gypsy” didn’t even make it as far as the longlist. Very sad 🙁 )
I’m particularly happy to see “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” and “The Bone Swans of Amandale”. I think I own most of the ToC already but I’m going to pick it up anyway for the two that I don’t.
@Mark:
Because that isn’t what he said. He said the decisions weren’t relevant, that the actions weren’t unconstitutional. He went on to say that the arguments in the decision helped shape his thinking and that they demonstrated he was not an outlier in such thinking.
If all that matters is the force of the decision, then we’re back to force over reason, and dissenting opinions aren’t relevant. What many of y’all seem to be arguing is the force of the decision doesnt matter. He’s clear that it doesn’t. What does matter is the reasoning of the decision.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the reasoning of the Supreme Court in opposing the Cherokee removals over Andrew Jackson’s force imposing it.
lurkertype:
Thanks, I hadn’t noticed that about Kowal! Does it happen in the Glamourist Histories, too? How unobservant am I?
A US supreme court decision on how to interpret a special case in particular circumstances really doesn’t help examine the general case in different circumstances, particularly when Feder is examining a “fannish matter” and “fannish expression” at WorldCons, none of which are beholden to US law except to the extent they’re stuck with it while on US soil.
Feder acknowledging it wasn’t directly applicable doesn’t change the fact that he then went on to try to apply the contents. If he wanted to make arguments applied to the general case in this situation without an appeal to irrelevant authority I’d have been more inclined to give it the time of day.
For those who enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog, a reminder that Jerome K. Jerome’s classic, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is available for free at Project Gutenberg. Willis’s novel was a delightful read (I recall oaky notes of Wodehouse throughout), and the best thing about it may have been that it got me to read, and re-read, Jerome’s fictionalized account of a wholly reasonable and logical river trip with two friends: men messing about in a boat. With a dog, of course.
Cally, by some odd coincidence I just started reading Ilona Andrews last Sunday. Magic Bites is the first one, then Magic Burns and Magic Strikes. Don’t know the order after that. Heroine with a Deadly Secret (which I still don’t know what is after two-and-a-half books, but I have a few guesses) is a kick-ass mercenary in a world where magic is coming back, in waves, and is gradually destroying tech. Like skyscrapers, which are mostly rubble now. The book is set sometime in the early-mid 21st century (I’d guess around 2045, plus or minus five years) and magic started coming back, at a guess, sometime around the millennium. I’m less sure about that, but there’s no mention of cell phones that I recall, but they have computers and I remember a reference to the internet (which may or may not still exist)–when the tech is up.
Our Heroine is hyper-competent — it’s competence-porn — but the books have been good beach reading so far. Nothing deep here (at least, not in the first two books); just monster-slaying for the win. Some romantic tension but no actual sex so far.
(There’s a fair amount of detailed description of the aforementioned monster-slaying; I know that won’t bug you, Cal, but I feel I should mention it. Also a rather nasty backstory of horrific child abuse for one recurring character and kids-in-peril in the second book. And she uses the Alpha werewolf trope, which I know bugs a lot of people (although she does justify it as necessary social control rather than (bad) biology).)
“That opens up the question of: If Truesdale had pitched a panel about the stuff he wanted to talk about, could he have built an interesting panel with an array of different voices and opinions and drawn in an interesting audience?”
I do not think Mr Truesdale had any interest in any voices or opinions other than his own.If he had moderated such a panel it would have proceeded much like the one he actually did lead.
Santa Olivia is a favorite work of mine by Carey, and I consider Carey a must-read author.
But yeah, the sequel is … not very good.
Ilona Andrews is a husband/wife team. they are ok books straight forward adventure with a nicely imagined and original post tech world. I think they fall off as the series progresses. Mainly because the end of level bosses Keep getting tougher. and the heroine does likewise. In gamer terms The transition from Runequest to Heroquest loses some credibility and internal consistency.
Following various links from that Facebook post about Truesdale, I ended up reading a fairly reasonable, moderate “hmm, might have worked out better if he’d done this”* Facebook post from … Lou Antonelli.
*(quotation marks here represent a paraphrase, not exact words)
Saint Olivia? All I’m finding is Santa Olivia…
My bad. That was totally the fault of my rousing and generally poor memory.
Almost finished-nearly decided to stay up and finish it, but I am old. At this point I’m not seeing how there worlds be room for a sequel, bit I’m sure that will be answered in about 20 pages.
Next up on my reading list: Mr (this time I check the spelling) Splitfoot.
Simeon Beresford, I’m sorry to hear that. I dislike it when books do that. I never read the books that the TV series was based on, but I enjoyed the TV series True Blood very much when it was a small-town story with small-town problems (and vampires). I started to lose interest when the stakes got bigger, and by the last season I just stopped watching. I wasn’t interested in apocalypses.
I have nothing against apocalypses in my fiction, but I don’t care much for what you describe — gradual levelling up as the Boss Monster gets bigger. Unless the writer is very, very good. (I suspect a case can be made for Bujold doing this in the Vorkoverse, but she gets a pass for being a Very Good Author.)
Speaking of roller derby names, I never noticed the assault portion of Veruca Salt’s name.
I feel like Phoebe who just realized that Central Perk is a play on Central Park.
@ John A.: I want you to know that I find your comparing the actions of the Worldcon committee to those of a genocidal maniac either spectacularly tone-deaf or breathtakingly offensive, depending on whether or not you intended that conclusion to be drawn. That was the inverse of a mic-drop, and very close indeed to a Magic-Word argument.
What Lee said. I only just got far enough in this thread to read that, and the polite version of what it made me think is “What the Fracking Frell?”
@Lee: I’m genuinely puzzled as to what I said that gave you the impression I’m making that comparison. Could you please hit me with the clue-by-four?
Oh, wait. Now I get it. I thought you were talking about Illinois Nazis but you were talking about Andrew Jackson.
I wouldn’t compare those actions. If I had, I’d share your disgust. But I didn’t and I wouldn’t.
So let me be explicit. I am comparing Mark’s contempt for the reasoning of a Supreme Court decision because the power of the court does not reach to Worldcon to Jackson’s contempt for the Supreme Court because it did not have the force to make its decision stick. That’s what I meant and it’s what I said.
@John A–
This is at best tone deaf. In making that comparison, you are also making the other part of it: the IRT/MACII concom to that guy that had the power, Andrew Jackson, who ignored the court’s reasoning to commit genocide.
@John A Arkansawyer
Contempt is a pretty strong word when I’ve made clear I only dispute its relevancy, both in the tight legal sense and in the applicability of its reasoning to a more general case. I also dispute the relevance of Arkell v Pressdram to the situation, but that doesn’t mean I have contempt for that most hilarious case.
I’ll try to be clearer, and then I suspect I’ll leave it there. I dispute the relevance of its reasoning because it is a discussion of a special case – the US 1st amendment, which substantially curtails the more usual balancing of rights against each other when one specific party is involved. Its discussion and reasoning is therefore not useful for application to more general cases, because the justices were prevented by the framework they were working within from engaging in reasoning on elements that would be essential in the more general case.
The general case is in Feder’s words a “fannish matter” that it seems he would like to see some general fannish principles applied to. Those general principles are not to be generated exclusively by Americans, not to be applied exclusively on American soil or exclusively to Americans, and so his special pleading of this special case isn’t relevant.
When Feder says that the case proves that he is not alone in his opinion, he is ignoring that the justices reasoning was confined by a piece of legislation that they were interpreting, and he is not so confined.
@Mark: That’s a fair answer. Thank you for expanding on your argument.
This so much. I couldn’t care less about what some “founding father” in this or that country thought or if there has been some kind of court decision in Lichtenstein, US or Bolivia on an entirely separate matter. Would americans think it was terribly interesting what Gustav Wasa thought about free speech 500 years ago?
If you want to argue for why a moderator shouldn’t have to act like a moderator and do the duty they has agreed to, then do so. And spare me the fancy speeches about totally irrelevant things.
When Feder says that the case proves that he is not alone in his opinion, he is ignoring that the justices reasoning was confined by a piece of legislation that they were interpreting, and he is not so confined.
Feder is also ignoring the fact that in the decision he is citing, the Supreme Court justices state that the decisions they hold that the government is prohibited from making are so prohibited because such decisions are best left in private hands.
As someone who listened to the panel, I think he led an interesting discussion after he gave up on his prepared remarks about 11 minutes in. If Truesdale didn’t want to hear the voices of the panelists, he did a good job of faking it. His interjections were mostly brief and he tried a few times to bring a panelist into the conversation who hadn’t spoken in a while.
If someone is telling you how he developed his core beliefs on free expression and Gustav Wasa had a formative impact on him, why not? Feder wrote in his essay, “I am trying to explain MY thinking on this subject by sharing the influences that have shaped it …” He’s not telling others they should be using the Skokie case as their guiding influence.
Simeon:
I haven’t argued that he did (or didn’t). My argument is that the disruption of the panel is what is key, not the content of what he disrupted it with.
On a panel where that content was the subject, it would have been fine. On this particular panel, it doesn’t matter if he chose to derail the panel with a speech about pearl-clutching, beanie babies or the height of the sky — the derailing was the problem.
Rcade:
So after he stole more than 20 percent of the panel time for a prepared attack speech, at least one person (who wasn’t there) thinks the discussion turned interesting.
Yes. You have restated what I wrote in your own words with a little extra math. I like in particular your emphasis on me not being there, which I can only guess means I shouldn’t have expressed an opinion even if I began it with an admission I was not, in fact, there. The nerve of me!
Simeon Beresford on August 30, 2016 at 5:56 am said:
“That opens up the question of: If Truesdale had pitched a panel about the stuff he wanted to talk about, could he have built an interesting panel with an array of different voices and opinions and drawn in an interesting audience?”
I do not think Mr Truesdale had any interest in any voices or opinions other than his own.If he had moderated such a panel it would have proceeded much like the one he actually did lead.
My annoyance with Truesdale is the weird blend of cluelessness and entitlement involved.
If Truesdale has Very Important Things to say about special snowflakes, he’s got his own venue to opine in.
He could go on at whatever length he wants on his own blog about any subject he chooses.
And if that isn’t even of a venue, maybe he needs to consider the intrinsic appeal of his message.
Or he could have employed his position as the moderator of a short story panel to nudge the discussion of the panelists along the lines that interested him, using short prompts, not an 11 minute oration (not his intended length, just how long it took the panel to shush him).
Or he could have proposed a panel actually on the subject of PC, Special Snowflakes, and the Like, and have invited a panel of like thinkers to hash it all out.
But what he went for was the Trojan Horse hijacking thing, which is just being a jerk.
Forcing uninterested people to hear him speak off-topic at length reminds me of nothing so much as the puppies cramming all their stuff onto the ballots so people would have to read them.
If I don’t like it, I won’t like it if you force me to read it.
If I disagree with your ideas, forcing me to listen to you go on about them won’t make me come around to your view of things, it will just make me crabby.
@ lauowolf: “I still say it’s spinach, and I still say the hell with it!” 🙂
The other thing is that it was effectively a fraud perpetuated on the audience, and done so with malice aforethought. If I had been there as a fan and not a dealer, I might very well have been interested in a panel titled “The State of Modern Short Fiction”. I might also have gone to one titled “How SJWs Are Ruining Short Fiction”, mostly to sit in the back and find out what the current set of talking points is. But to label it the former and actually have it be the latter is what, in advertising, is called a “bait-and-switch”. If a business does that, it’s explicitly illegal. That doesn’t apply here, and neither does the Worldcon concom or programming committee bear any responsibility for it because they didn’t know it was going to happen. However, that’s what Truesdale did, and he obviously went into the panel with the intention of doing it, and it’s just as unethical as a business advertising a product for $X and then telling customers who come in looking for it that it’s out of stock, but look, here we have this similar-but-not-identical product for $2X!
@Doctor Science: Yes! There’s a different one in every Glamourist book. In “Valour and Vanity” Wnar naq Ivaprag neevir ng Oleba’f ubhfr, jurer n ybat-wnjrq lbhat zna pnyyrq “Vy Qbggber” vf irel xabjyrqtrnoyr nobhg srmmrf. But they’re easy to miss since she puts them in scenes where stuff be happening. In that particular case, fur unq na npghny Qbpgbe Jub jevgre qb uvf qvnybthr fb vg jbhyq or cresrpg.
@Lee: Exactly. Planning to rant for Ghu knows how long, and actually managing to rant for over 20% of the time, is bait and switch. Not moderation. Spinach indeed.
Truesdale had a prepared speech. If he had asked for a room to give a speech, I presume he would not have been banned.
Let us be honest: The speech was Puppy chow, and WorldCon is in general a bit tired of Puppydom after years of their behavior, their arguments, and their literary taste. (Did anyone actually finish The Dark Between The Stars?)
But he chose to be a Puppy, *and* to act as he did. I trust he enjoys the martyrdom he chose.
“This last temptation is the greatest treason….”
*sigh* *raises hand*
I wouldn’t have been so patient this year. KJA’s prose is like being beaten with a ball-peen hammer. Also I was tempted to take a shot every time Tom Rom’s full name was used, but that way lay alcohol poisoning.
Were there any panels this year or last at Worldcon that were explicitly about puppies or their perceptions of SF/F fandom?
rcade: Were there any panels this year or last at Worldcon that were explicitly about puppies or their perceptions of SF/F fandom?
I’m pretty sure not. And that’s not surprising, because unless one was done at the request of a Puppy, it would look like persecution.
Besides which, as far as I’m concerned given their barrage of horrendously vitriolic tirades against Worldcon members (which continue to this day; I don’t care that some people claim that the Sad Puppies have changed, they haven’t changed enough), that would be giving them bandwidth and importance which they don’t deserve.
@Septentrionalis:
Ah, familiar words. First Tempter here! I was looking in my favorite used bookstore on a visit back to my home town, and found one of the scripts from our production, back in 1979 or 1980. It had a distinctive look. I forget now which of my fellow actors’ names was in it.
An unusual production. Up to then, no matter how difficult a play’s rehearsals may have been, it was always fun when I got on stage. This time, the director screwed that pooch, but good. It was as miserable in production as it had been in rehearsal.
That was the last time, though. Pretty much every show since then has been fun once it was playing to audiences. Even goddamn Dr. Steve’s all-about-me Man of La Mancha.
(Did anyone actually finish The Dark Between The Stars?)
Yeah, I did. I reviewed it too.
I listened to quite a bit of the Short Fiction Panel and it did indeed turn interesting, thanks to the people who finally managed to shut Dave Truesdale up and start actually talking about short fiction. The fact that Dave eventually quit trying to interrupt made things go more smoothly, sure, but I give the other panelists the credit for that. On the whole, that panel would have gone better if Dave had slept through it.
And it was a pretty rude thing to do to the audience, to try to yank the panel they came for out from under them and turn it into Dave Truesdale’s soapbox.
nickpheas: I too recall characters in Blackout/All Clear concluding that there was an outside force (God/Gaia/Cosmos/…) twisting events, not just that they were visiting a fixed past. You might reread the duology IFF you have a lot of time on your hands; IMO Willis was trying to turn history (and her Anglophilism) into a novel and didn’t remember to remove what wasn’t an elephant. It’s a pity; I still remember the gut wrench I got from “Fire Watch”, but her novels seem more and more self-indulgent.
@Chip and her Anglophilism (about Connie Willis)
Although there were a hell of a lot of factual errors about England (and London in particular) in Blackout/All Clear. Really simple things that a beta-reader from Britain would have noticed straight away. These were so common as to repeatedly throw me out of the narrative.
@rcade: yes, the Skokie case: Brief summary: The Klan decided it would be a good thing to hold a march through Skokie, Illinois, a town with an exceedingly high percentage of Holocaust survivors.
Ultimately, the Klan backed down. Why?
Well, one thing I know for sure: I was waiting in Philadelphia for a bus to Skokie, aluminum baseball bat in hand, to participate in the “counter protest” (yeah, the counter protest…invoking a Lovitz SNL character) and the Klan decided that discretion and court battles were the better part of valor.
I’ll read Moshe’s piece, but I really don’t find the events equivalent. Or, put another way: had I been at the panel in question, I too would have believed that verbal protest was sufficient, baseball bats not required.
Me three. Are there enough of us to form a support group?
@Laura Resnick: I agree. This is about fannish society and what fandom will and will not tolerate (should and should not tolerate).
Look. Worldcon fandom (because now it is unfortunately necessary to make the distinction), which I equate with “traditional fandom” – the group that started this whole thing, articulated (if not always performed) the ideals, ethics and culture of that which now exists, has evolved over nearly 100 years to be a particular thing. It has a set of core sensibilities that it generally operates under and a set of beliefs, many of which boil down to: do and believe whatever you want, but don’t be a jerk about it.
In my experience at conventions, “being a jerk” has not extended to particular beliefs, so much as the manner in which those beliefs are expressed. I’ve been on plenty of panels where my views are at odds with other panelists (whose profiles and influence are far greater than mine); sometimes I’ve argued my points and sometimes I’ve chosen to simply say soemthing like “so-and-so and I obviously disagree”; I’ve had another panelist tell me that my concept was “ridiculous” on at least one occasion – and I received it as a comment on my idea, not a comment on me. I’ve spoken up during a Fannish Inquisition to call out factual inaccuracies being delivered by the presenter.
I never got the sense that, despite knowing others disagreed, I was perceived as being a jerk, because I stayed on topic, respected everyone else’s position enough to listen to its presentation and tried to act professionally, engaged and respectful.
Tolerance though, only goes so far. Conventions don’t take place in a vacuum: the things that panelists & moderators have done and said prior to the event are known: if your views are generally at odds with the majority of fandom (and how could you possibly not be aware of that in this day and age), and whether it is “fair” or not, it behooves you to present yourself in an appropriate manner – at least if you want to be able to say your say and be listened to.
Otherwise, you are just being a jerk and that is grounds enough, so far as I’m concerned, to be asked to absent yourself from the proceedings.
Yes, fandom is largely a liberal bastion; the ideals it propounds are largely liberal ideas. It can’t help but be anything else. If you are not in alignment with those ideals, to whatever degree, you will find yourself at odds with fandom. But you ARE welcome to participate and carve out a space for yourself, so long as you behave (and that’s no different than what we expect from everyone else).
@Aaron, Steve W.
Count me in. The only reason I finished is because I never bounce off books, just start skimming very very fast. There was exactly one character I cared about and he will probably take the most clichéd way possible.
I feel a bit sorry for KJA. He seems to be a decent bloke and it’s not his fault that Torgersen chose to shunt him into the ballot.
For my sins, I tried to run an online discussion of The Dark Between The
PagesStars. Approximately one third of the way into the book (we take books in sections) the participants universally requested that we read something else. ANYTHING else. I’ve run scores of online discussions of books. This has NEVER happened before… (The book is still sitting in my Kobo, marked 1/3 read…)The books obviously have an audience; he wouldn’t have had a contract for so many in the series otherwise. But, alas, I’m not that audience.
@rob_matic: I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to believe that KJA is anything less than a perfectly nice guy. He’s just a mediocre (and very fast) writer.
Actually, being a nice guy is probably one of the things that allows him to continue to be published. Writers can be easy to deal with, they can be talented, and they can be able to meet deadlines. A perfect writer is all three. Being two of the three will keep a writer in work.
andyl writes: there were a hell of a lot of factual errors about England (and London in particular) in Blackout/All Clear
It’s a long time since I read The Doomsday Book, but I remember wondering why she didn’t just make all her modern characters American, since they were such very unconvincing Brits.
@Aaron:
So you’re saying I have a chance after all?
/god-stalk! (the old ways are best)