(1) GOOD NEWS FOR A CLARION WEST STUDENT. George R.R. Martin is funding another scholarship at a writing workshop, as he explains in “Worldbuilding in Seattle”.
Every great story requires interesting characters, an engrossing plot, evocative prose, an important theme… but epic fantasy also requires a memorable setting. A “secondary universe,” as J.R.R. Tolkien termed it, a world both like and unlike our own, with its own rich history and geography and customs, its own beauties and terrors….
These days, the world is more need of wonder than ever before. To that end, I am pleased to announce that I am sponsoring a new annual scholarship at the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. https://www.clarionwest.org/ An intensive six-week course for aspiring authors of science fiction and fantasy, Clarion West is one of the longest-running and most successful workshops in the world. Its instructors and graduates make up an honor roll of the best and the brightest in science fiction and fantasy. This summer the instructors will be Daniel Abraham, Ken MacLeod, Karen Lord, Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Joy Fowler, and Ellen Datlow. The deadline for applying is March 1.
Our new WORLDBUILDER SCHOLARSHIP will cover tuition, fees, and lodging for one student each year. The award will not be limited by age, race, sex, religion, skin color, place of origin, or field of study. The winner will be selected each year in a blind judging to an applicant who demonstrates both financial need and a talent for worldbuilding and the creation of secondary universes. For further details, query Clarion West at [email protected]
(2) DWINDLING. Larque Press has compiled the “2017 Total Paid Distribution” statistics from the publisher’s statement of ownership for Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF, among others. Print circulation diminished slightly over the past year, except for F&SF. See the numbers at the link.
Dell and F&SF sell far more issues via subscriptions than newsstands. For the most part, combining the two gives you the total paid circulation. However, it’s important to note these numbers don’t include digital sales, which are likely on the rise. Below is the “total paid distribution” from Jan/Feb 2017 and 2018 of the print editions…
…Except for F&SF, the year-over-year numbers show declines of ~500–1000. Is this due to thicker, less frequent issues, general magazine publishing trends, distribution challenges, or something else?
(3) EVERMORE. If you want to see a fantastic sculpture being created for Evermore Park in Utah, click this Facebook link:
Here’s Cory Clawson sculpting while our shop dog, Woody, supervises. Have a little sneak peek at some of the talent behind Evermore’s Creative Studio.
(4) ADD TWO. John Picacio says Christopher Brown has contributed two Worldcon memberships for Mexicanx creators/fans.
UPDATE!!! VERY GOOD NEWS: Our sponsorship team is GROWING. John and I are now officially joined by ace photographer Ctein (hooray for you, man!!) who is sponsoring two more Worldcon memberships for Mexicanx. We are also now joined by Ty Franck — one-half of the James S.A. Corey writing juggernaut. He’s sponsoring one Worldcon membership for a deserving Mexicanx. Right on, Ty!! And this just in — Christopher Brown, author of TROPIC OF KANSAS, is sponsoring two more Mexicanx for attending Worldcon memberships. Too good. And this crazy train is going to keep rolling because I’m confirming more sponsorships right now, to be announced soon. This has become A THING. ‘Keep you posted.
(5) EUROCON UPDATE. The committee for Eurocon Nemo 2018, to be held in Amiens, France, has had to arrange another meeting place in the city after finding its planned facilities aren’t ready. The committee has updated its website to show the new location, and posted an explanation on Facebook. The con takes place July 19-22.
Hello everyone
It was a real commotion for the Nemo 2018 team for the past ten days. So, we had to play radio silence. We must apologise.
Indeed, last week, the news suddenly fell that, finally, because of various delays on the building site, we could not have the visa of the committee of security to organize as planned the convention on the site of the Citadel.
It was therefore urgent to find a plan B. It is now done, thanks to the University of Amiens, and in particular to its cultural service and library. Thanks to Anne-Sophie, Justin and Jennifer.
The Convention will take place as planned, with an unchanged program, but it will be at the Pôle Universitaire Cathedral, in the center of Amiens, at the foot of the cathedral, in the middle of a lively district, filled with restaurants, cafes , with exhibition halls, meeting rooms, amphitheatres, a cafeteria, theaters and cinemas all around!
And as a bonus, we will still have the right to visit the site Citadel, to admire the architectural creation of the cabinet Renzo Piano.
Finally, here is a setback that results in even more facilities and animations …
(6) FROM MOLTEN GLASS. “One Meredith goblet coming up,” says Hampus.
https://twitter.com/PhysicsVideo/status/954351449676292096
(7) PETER S. BEAGLE ON LE GUIN. SFWA’s newest Grandmaster says farewell to another: “In memoriam, Ursula K. LeGuin” at Support Peter S. Beagle.
…I didn’t know her well. She lived in Portland, and I’ve been all over northern California in the last half-century, with six years out for the Seattle area. We hadn’t yet met when I followed her by a week into the Clarion West workshop (1972, was it?), to be greeted by a note saying, “Welcome, Unicorn! Make the little kobolds work their tails off!) Mostly we ran into each other at various conventions, grabbing coffee where we could. I do like to recall a serious conversation, initiated by me in increasing alarm at having become known more and more, in the intervening years, as the Unicorn Guy. Meanwhile, Ursula’s recently-published Earthsea novels had, as far as I was concerned, put paid to dragons as literary figures: I felt – and still feel – that dragons should be off-limits to all other writers, no matter how gifted or inventive they might be. But I was younger then, and had the chutzpah to offer to trade my unicorns even-up for her dragons. “Unicorns are really easy to housebreak. They always ask to go outside.” I remember that I was even willing to throw in a utility infielder, if she insisted.
Ursula’s response: “Do you know how impossible it is to keep dragons off the curtains? And they’re absolute hell on carpets!” We never did make the deal, but not for my lack of trying. As I say, I was younger then….
(8) MORE ON LE GUIN.
- The SF Encyclopedia has added a collection of links to obituaries, memorial articles and celebrations about Ursula K. Le Guin.
- Phoebe Wagner, “A Young Writer Remembers Ursula K. Le Guin” at Nerds of a Feather.
A few years later, I entered an MFA program populated by folks whose idea of engaging with speculative fiction was trying to comprehend Harry Potter. I was also newly married, and my husband had six or seven of Le Guin’s books. Discouraged, again, about writing science fiction and fantasy, I started reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which shattered what I thought a science fiction novel could be, how gender could be portrayed, how an invented world could shape my worldview. More importantly, it changed how I encountered gender on a daily basis—one of the most empathy-producing moments in my life to date. As I closed the covers and promptly fell into a book hangover, I couldn’t understand why none of my professors had taught Le Guin or pushed one of her books into my hands. Yes, folks had suggested her, but one book deep into her work, and I’d found a complex thinker, writer, reader, teacher all rolled into one.
- George R.R. Martin “Ursula K. Le Guin, RIP”:
The Golden Age of Science Fiction is usually reckoned to have been the Campbell Era at ASTOUNDING, and its Big Three were Heinlein, Asimov, and Van Vogt. Yet as important as that era was, for me the true Golden Age will always be the late 60s and early 70s, when the Big Three were Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin. We shall never see their like again.
(9) PLAUDITS. Book View Café proudly reports Le Guin’s “No Time to Spare Is Finalist for Essay Prize”.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s 2017 collection of essays, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, is one of the five finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
This prize, one of the PEN America Literary Awards, is “[f]or a book of essays published in 2017 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.”
Many of the essays in this collection began as blog posts, some of which were published here on the Book View Cafe blog.
Winners will be announced at a February 20 ceremony in New York.
(10) HONOR ROLL. Steven H Silver’s “2017 In Memoriam” list is posted at Amazing Stories.
(Editor’s Note: Every year, Steven H Silver compiles the obituaries of those we have lost. This information is published in various locales and is incorporated into the honor roll displayed during the Hugo Awards presentations.
It’s an unenviable task, though a necessary one. Our community and our genres are built upon a foundation of people and it is fitting that we remember them.)
(11) IHINGER OBIT. Minneapolis fan Rob Ihinger (1955-2018) died of leukemia on January 27 his wife, Peg Kerr, announced at CaringBridge (more medical details at the link).
We waited for his mother and other family members who flew in from around the country, and family and friends gathered in his ICU room, sharing laughter, telling stories, and giving Rob his last tastes of Coca Cola Classic and ice cream. Rob was able to recognize and greet with pleasure the visitors who came to say goodbye. Then around midnight, we withdrew the tubes and monitors and simply stopped the medication which was keeping his blood pressure stable. Shortly thereafter, Rob slipped into sleep.
My beloved husband Rob Ihinger passed away peacefully this morning at 9:15 a.m. in the presence of his family.
(12) WALKER OBIT. Cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018), creator of Beetle Bailey and other strips, died January 27.
The character that was to become Beetle Bailey made his debut as Spider in Walker’s cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Walker changed Spider’s name and launched “Beetle Bailey” as a college humor strip in 1950.
At first the strip failed to attract readers and King Features Syndicate considered dropping it after just six months, Walker said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. The syndicate suggested Beetle join the Army after the start of the Korean War, Walker said.
“I was kind of against it because after World War II, Bill Mauldin and Sad Sack were fading away,” he said. But his misgivings were overcome and Beetle “enlisted” in 1951.
Walker attributed the success of the strip to Beetle’s indolence and reluctance to follow authority.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
- John King Tarpinian found the Star Wars translation for a contemporary faux pas in Off the Mark.
- Will R. enjoyed the Laugh out Loud Cats sending up the title of a popular movie.
(14) A PORG TWEETS. David Gerrold knows how he feels….
This is Siv. Deeply upset that his friends porgot his birthday. 13/10 would beg for porgiveness pic.twitter.com/aQjUMVlAHq
— We Rate Porgs (@Porg_rates) January 28, 2018
(15) STOKERCON 2018 NEWS. At the StokerCon 2018 Website you can find the complete program for The Second Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference —
The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is part of the Horror Writers Association’s Outreach Program. Membership to the Horror Writers Association is not required to submit or present, however registration to StokerCon 2018 is required to present.
And the full program for Librarians’ Day —
Join Stoker Con for a special day-long program of panels and presentations for librarians! Becky Spratford, author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition (ALA, Editions) and horror reviewer for Booklist and IndiePicks Magazine and Kristi Chadwick, Consultant, Massachusetts Library System and Library Journal’s Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror columnist are coordinating the event.
(16) GRAMMAR POSSE. The latest Horror Writers Association newsletter includes Anthony Ambrogio’s feature, “The Grumpy Grammarian: Ms. Speaking Speaks about Misspeaking (and Gives Me a Chance to Wax Pedantic)”.
Poet and HWA Proofer Supreme Marge Simon offered a couple of additions to those frequently misspoken phrases I talked about in my January column. I hope I do justice to her comments here.
“Hope your cold is better now.”
Marge writes, “Everyone says it that way, but, in truth, if your cold is better, then it is doing well—flourishing—and you are not! … So, to be correct, one should say, ‘I hope your cold has gone away/is over/has let up, etc., and you are feeling better now.’” However, she concedes, “That one is beyond reasonable criticism.” Doesn’t hurt to point it out, though.
(17) MONTH OF JOY. Where have I been? I just found out about the Skiify and Fanty “Month of Joy.” The latest installment is “Cooking and a Recipe by Cora Buhlert”. Learn how to make “Grandma Buhlert’s Herring Salad.”
During the trashfire of a year that was 2017, I’ve found that no matter how upset I am, sitting down in the kitchen to prepare a meal inevitably makes me feel better. To me, there is something incredibly soothing about assembling ingredients and spices, chopping vegetables, meat or fish and finally stirring the pot or pan, waiting for it all to come together.
So what sort of food do I make? For starters – and I know that may surprise some – very little traditional German food. German cuisine is too greasy and too meat and salt heavy for my tastes. And here in North Germany, traditional food quite often means “throw everything into a big pot and boil it, until it turns to mush”. There are some German dishes I like and make on occasion – herring salad, North Sea shrimp salad, pea soup, venison stew with red cabbage, sailor’s curry (which is a North German take on South/South East Asian food), apple puree, several cakes and cookies. And I suspect I could make most of the traditional dishes of my region, if necessary.
(18) THE LID IS OFF. Civilization-wide mind control is here! Bloomberg video: “Tristan Harris Says Tech Companies Have Opened Pandora’s Box”. Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist, discusses changing Silicon Valley’s culture and the fight against online extremism with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.” Says Harris:
[These social media companies] have unleashed this civilization-scale mind-control machine, and they don’t even know what thoughts it’s pushing into 2 billion people’s minds…. Two billion people use Facebook; that’s more than the number of followers of Christianity. One-point-five billion people use YouTube; that’s more than the number of followers of Islam. These products have that much daily influence over people’s thoughts.
(19) DOWN THE TUBES. The Mother Nature Network asks “Is this housing solution just a pipe dream?”
As Hong Kong continues to grapple with an affordable housing crisis of epic proportions, no potential solution, no matter how unconventional or quixotic, is overlooked. And this includes single-occupancy dwellings fashioned out of concrete water pipes.
(20) SHARP GUESSES. Author of the bestselling Outlander time-travel novels Diana Gabaldon says: “Note that this is NOT a confirmation–but it’s a pretty good bit of speculation.” — “Outlander Seasons 5 and 6 Are Almost Definitely Happening”.
”There are ten books, and we are having very productive conversations about the future of the show.
“We have joined the legions of fans of Outlander around the world. Our biggest concern is making sure that we don’t kill Caitriona [Balfe] and Sam [Heughan] along the way,” [Starz CEO Chris] Albrecht [said], noting how incredibly hard both stars work on the show.'”
(21) POTTERDIVERSE. Emeraldbirdcollector authored a delightful short fanfic on what would have happened “If Harry had gotten a less conventional, but more loving adoptive family” —
Dear Minerva,
Thank you so much for your kind letter of the 17th. It is always a pleasure to hear from you. I do appreciate your waiving the rules about familiars to allow Wednesday to bring little Homer – she dotes on that spider, and I don’t think she could consider Hogwarts home without his company.
We were delighted but completely unsurprised by the children’s Sorting. Of course Wednesday is a Ravenclaw – she has always had a brilliant mind, and it is rather traditional for the women in our family….
(22) TIME PASSAGES. In 1963, Galactic Journey has received the very latest issue of New Worlds: “[February. 03, 1963] The Freeze Continues (New Worlds, February 1963)”
I Like It Here, by Mr. James White
This month’s guest editorial is from a New Worlds regular, who I know you will recognise in the US for his Sector General stories. With characteristic humour he adeptly summarises the contradiction in the current argument in s-f, between writers who don’t care what they write (as long as it sells) and writers who do not produce the sort of s-f that readers want. In typically droll manner, the many trials and tribulations of the modern writer is recognised in this editorial, determined to amuse. For a slightly less amusing consequence of this we also have Mr. John Carnell’s ‘View from the Hill’ at the end of this issue, of which more later….
(23) ARISTOTLE. Always three movements ahead!
https://twitter.com/ScribesShade/status/957213750704054272
Novice jughead?
(24) A POSITED FUTURE. Via the Welcome to you’re “DOOM!” site.
(25) STAND BY TO FIRE HEADCANON. Scott Lynch fills in some missing pieces of Star Wars. Jump on the thread here —
CRUCIAL DELETED SCENES FROM THE STAR WARS SAGA: A Short Thread
YODA: Into exile, you must go. A strategy, have you?
OBI-WAN: I'll take baby Luke to his dad's homeworld and give him to his dad's only living step-relatives.
YODA: A small heart attack, I seem to be having.— Scott Lynch (@scottlynch78) January 27, 2018
[Thanks to Dave Doering, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Laura Resnick, Martin Morse Wooster, Will R., Lenore Jones, James Davis Nicoll, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
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“No matter where you pixel, there you scroll.”
Ask Me What You Think My Chess Rating Is.
Hmm, wasn’t there not-so-long-ago a bunch of people proclaiming “I am Chuck Tingle” – and now the exact same thing with “I am Camestros Felapton” … clearly, this can not be a coincidence.
“The Long Dark Pixel of the Scroll”
“Pixel, Devourer of Scrolls”
Nigel, what do I think your chess rating is?
In re “email” and “IP”, what will almost certainly appear in the full headers is a list of all intermediate email servers (with IP information) and if you know what your ISP’s or mail-service provider’s incoming mail hosts are (most probably spottable by looking at the relevant domain names), you can make a pretty good assumption of what country the last email server in the hand-over chain was located in.
There MAY be traces of “where was the machine that sent the first SMTP message” in there, but in the case of web mail (for example), said webmail service does not need to reside in the same city, nor in the same country. And with the every-more-frequent deployment of IPv6, and of the prevalence of mobile internet with multiple layers of address translation, GeoIP is… non-trivial.
In short, the only safe conclusion (at the moment) is to take the presence of an IP address (version 4, the maybe-familiar “dotted quad”, or version six, the one witht the colons) as fairly certain indications that the correspondent sent the email from Planet Earth, or at least from its immediate gravity well.
Source: I used to run mail servers professionally, write tooling for the abuse desk of at least one ISP, and carefull stayed out of any Geo-IP effort, because it was too fucking complex (but runnig global-scale load balancers are not that hard).
It looks like I won’t be learning more about RIchard Paolinelli’s chess rating. After I tweeted that I couldn’t find a rating for him on FIDE or the U.S. Chess Federation, this happened:
You show an interest in somebody’s chess rating and this is the thanks you get? I feel rooked.
@Cora: OK, consider the LibDems in Japan, who are all of the above and inclined to negationism.
@17: interesting essay; one of these days I’m going to have to try to reconstruct the cookie recipe that my mother replaced with something very ordinary out of a book when I asked for copies for a new apartment. (The original included a few spoons of (liquid) coffee and a dash of vinegar to set up the spices.) Also an interesting link — I had no idea how recently the UK started selling packaged sandwiches, or that an M&S exec was so wedged.
Rcade, I did a google search and this page on his tweets. It’s just the number of tweets but if I’m reading it right, he’s doing thousands of tweets a day. That sounds more like a software program than an actual human being.
(16) Smells like Prescriptivist Poppycock to me. If “[e]veryone says it that way,” then that’s how you say it in English! No matter how much you may wish that natural languages followed the rules of mathematical logic, they remain quirky and odd, because they evolved inside the minds of human beings, not Vulcans. 🙂
People who want their language to be logical, instead of evolved, haphazardly, are probably the cause of more awkward, stilted writing than just about anything else in this world.
Many good writers who offer bad advice also have a tendency to ignore their own advice while caught up in the actual writing. (Which is a good thing for their own writing.) Perhaps most famous are Orwell and E.B. White, who both told the world to avoid the passive voice, and who both used the passive voice more often than most. Because a tool which allows you to shift emphasis is useful, even if it can be abused.
@Cat – I was looking at his Twitter feed(?) last night, and saw there are a very large amount of the same tweets – ads for some site that looks like a pay-for-followers setup, and ads for his stuff he’s selling. I ended up getting bored looking for juicy tweets and closed the tab.
Ah, thanks for that, Mark. That sounds like you were right – Larque had the right numbers from the form but (while the numbers still don’t match up exactly) it does look like Analog and Asimov’s might have been wrongly including digital stuff in their print filings. (What’s weird is that Locus got corrected numbers in 2017 and yet A&A seem to be calculating the numbers the same “different” way in 2018.) So it’s not Larque’s fault, but what you said about the conflation seems to be the case. Urf. If ~13 and ~19 is really the total circulation in all formats, things are worse than I thought. (No matter how pessimistic I am, I’m never pessimistic enough.)
Arifel, Matthew Johnson, Andrew: is it something in the water? Plaudits to all.
“Is that your chess rating, or are you just glad to see me?”
kathodus on said: @Cat – I was looking at his Twitter feed(?) last night, and saw there are a very large amount of the same tweets – ads for some site that looks like a pay-for-followers setup, and ads for his stuff he’s selling. I ended up getting bored looking for juicy tweets and closed the tab.
Ok that makes sense. I don’t use Twitter so I couldn’t look at his Twitter account but there’s more than one stats related sites who track Twitter accounts at the individual level. One noted that he’d done eight thoughdand tweets today!
rcade on January 28, 2018 at 1:08 pm said:
You show an interest in somebody’s chess rating and this is the thanks you get? I feel rooked.
You’re only a pawn in his game.
Whatever game that actually is.
@Cat Eldridge, @kathodus
I also checked out his Twitter feed, when I was logged out. According to his pinned tweet, he is blocking people who have attacked (i.e. criticized) his friends. No great loss, since his Twitter feed is really boring.
I got included on that list for some reason or another. To which I say, “Eh.” and get on with life. Three weeks ago I hadn’t heard of him, and I’l get along just fine not hearing from him.
Cat Eldridge: I did a google search and this page on his tweets. It’s just the number of tweets but if I’m reading it right, he’s doing thousands of tweets a day. That sounds more like a software program than an actual human being.
That 13.9K is lifetime total. He’s had a Twitter account for around 14.5 months, so he’s averaged around 32 tweets a day. And yes, most of them are promotions for his own work, plus some quid pro quo tweeting for other indie authors with whom he has set up reciprocal agreements.
This will get you some of the tweets in question. If you’ve got a Twitter account and he’s blocked you, you’ll need to log out before reading them.
Ok, I just read a few weeks worth of his tweets. anyone who is that egotistic, not right wing and just plain demeaning is why I don’t read my such tweet blogs asthere are waste of time.
I did learn about the Ribbit Awards were are according to Hi the second most recognised Awards in the genres of fantasy and sf. H’h. Anyone ever hear of them?
Oh and I’m looking for a reviewer of the book of illustrated looks at Bull’s War for The Oaks. It sure on the title or author of one of my SJW creds is curled up beside and I don’t want to get up to go look for the book in the review pile. Anyone interested?
So I finally got to see the new Star Wars movie (it has been a very rough few weeks) and wow that was a lot of explosions and made absolutely no logical sense. What a fascinating train wreck of a movie.
Cat Eldridge: I did learn about the Ribbit Awards were are according to Hi the second most recognised Awards in the genres of fantasy and sf. H’h. Anyone ever hear of them??
Those are the awards JDA gives out to himself and his friends.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180118080021/http://happyfrogs.org
Elisa, there’s quite a bit of discussion here:
The Last Jedi – Spoilers Welcome | File 770
(23) Maybe Paolinelli has a rating in N-dimensional chess.
(3) EVERMORE. Beautiful sculpture!
(4) ADD TWO. Wow, this is growing – cool.
(6) FROM MOLTEN GLASS. Nifty; I like seeing how this stuff’s done. One of my favorite excursions on the first cruise I took was glass blowing (which, yes, wasn’t really related to the location or the cruise, but was a lot of fun, as we got to make something ourselves – with help, of course). BTW that looks a little like a cross between a dragon and a seahorse to me.
@Soon Lee: “One night in genre . . .” – Great!
@Matthew Johnson: (takes the “Chess” filk & runs with it) – Awesome!
@Christian Brunschen: “Yesterday’s Lunarbaboon comic” – This made me grin. 😀
@Various: Ahem. . . .
Cam-es-tros Fe-e-e-lap-ton
His name is my name too!
Whenever we go out
The people stop and shout,
“There goes Camestros Felapton!”
Lalalalalalala. . . .
(repeat till you get sick of it)
@Cat Eldridge: “. . . the Ribbit Awards were according to [him] the second most recognised Awards in the genres of fantasy and sf.” – ROFLMAO, especially after I see @JJ’s explanation. Thanks for that, Cat!
Oh, /Godstalk it all!
The seahorse is the larval stage of a dragon.
Heh, that explains it, thanks! 🙂
JJ – Thanks!
You know who also had a high Chess rating? Aristotle! I had multiple reliable sources give me information regarding this. I verified much of the information myself.
Paul Weimer: You know who also had a high Chess rating? Aristotle! I had multiple reliable sources give me information regarding this. I verified much of the information myself.
Aristotle also had a Nebula nomination. I know this for a fact, because Dave Freer told me so.
Cat Eldridge:
Oh and I’m looking for a reviewer of the book of illustrated looks at Bull’s War for The Oaks. It sure on the title or author of one of my SJW creds is curled up beside and I don’t want to get up to go look for the book in the review pile. Anyone interested?
Do you mean Tim Cooper’s The Reader: War for the Oaks?
Kendall, I just want to say that I ripped through Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark (David Wellington), am now a third into the sequel, Forgotten Worlds, and am immensely enjoying the hell out of these books. Smart, fast-paced military science fiction with nuanced characters, meaty stories with mysteries to be solved, aliens, AIs, and double- and triple-crossing turnarounds.
This (The Silence) may well have nailed itself a spot on my ballot for Hugo Best Series this year.
(24) Wait….what?
Paul Weimer asks me Do you mean Tim Cooper’s The Reader: War for the Oaks?
Yes.
You think that the invitation to guess Paolinelli’s chess rating was aimed at Camestros, and not at those who would reveal themselves as fellow-travelling SJW’s, so that he could block those who foolishly took him at his word to try and find out?
Ha ha ha!
You have not yet begun to plumb his expertise in nine-dimensional double-top-secret steam hockey!
Nope. Still cranky about Star Wars movie. Liked Rey’s stuff and that track, except I am still having a really hard time taking Ren/Ben seriously. The whole thing with the fleeing fleet was a hot mess of logical and tactical errors that made me crazy.
Why would the First Order need to buy ships from iillegal (?) arms merchants??? Huh?
@arifel,
*Applause*
@Matthew Johnson
*Applause*
So the link goes: JDA is a dick to Camestros-> Chess( the game) -> Chess (the musical) -> filking. Lemons, meet lemonade.
(17) MONTH OF JOY.
@Laura Resnick @Cora Buhlert,
I find cooking therapeutic too, and food writing can provide insights into history & the interactions between cultures.
I am currently reading What did you eat yesterday? which is manga by Fumi Yoshinaga. It’s about a gay man in Japan who finds joy in preparing meals. It not only includes recipes, but also in-story sequences showing meal preparations. I can see how some may find this slows the story down too much but I’m finding it authentic (frugality is one aspect; for example buying a head of cabbage on special, then trying to work out how to use it up in different meals before it spoils) & absorbing.
I had this whole conspiracy theory ready about Elizabeth Bear and Greg Bear and the Ursa Awards and Bayer aspirin and Max Baer the boxer and Max Baer Jr. from The Beverly Hillbillies and Paddington and Yogi and Bear Ears National Monument and URSula Vernon and Bear Grylls and BJ and the Bear and the Chicago Bears and the Bayer Lunar Crater. And possibly Bavaria. I’m not sure. I forgot about Michael Medved (Russian for Bear, of course) being a super conservative which sort of screws up this massive SJW conspiracy thing, but he’s probably just lying as a cover. This was all leading up to the most dramatic possible reveal of Camestros Felapton’s real name as neither Meadows nor Fieldsy nor Streamy nor Banksy nor Woodsy but possibly Bearsy. Is it a coincidence that there are at least three chess players with the last name Baer who are or were ranked in world competitions? I think not! But then I saw someone named Logic (or possibly #Logic) on the Grammy red carpet and I knew with the white-hot certainty of a thousand nutty nuggets that I was off base with the whole Bear thing and logic was the key. #Logic is the real Camestros. If there really is a Camestros. If there really is a Bear. Because there totally is a Logic and he performed on the Grammys. Congrats on your Grammy nom, Camestros!
@BigelowT: claps madly
Hm.
Someone left out that Bears Discover Fire, and the Panserbjørne [Bears Discover Advanced Metalworking], and Hoka [Bears Discover Cosplay].
Of course, Terry Bisson and Philip Pullman and Gordon Dickson and Poul Anderson are/were all left of Attila the Hun (and probably right of Yogi the Bear).
Also, half the sky is full of bears.
BigelowT, how does the Bayeux tapestry relate to all that?
@rcade: “You show an interest in somebody’s chess rating and this is the thanks you get? I feel rooked.”
Reader, I LOL’d.
@Elisa: “Why would the First Order need to buy ships from iillegal (?) arms merchants??? Huh?”
I did not get the sense that they were illegal arms merchants. If they’re legit, why wouldn’t the FO contract out to ’em?
@BigelowT: I think you’ve bearly scratched the record there.
With Matthew Johnson linking to an extensive discussion of that medieval syllogism mnemonic from which our esteemed Mr. Felapton takes his name…I want to take this opportunity to ask:
Why is it Camestros? When all the references that I can find (including Matthew’s) say “Camestres”?
@BigelowT: Also do not forget California, which has a Bear in its FLAG. And it is not an Admirality FLAG, therefore it is not, flagsomethingorother, and thus…
Camestres is an AEE syllogism whereas Camestros is AEO syllogism.
Camestros is almost but not quite valid by modern standards, likewise Felapton (EAO)
@David Goldfarb
Camestros and Camstres are different syllogisms. Camestros is the existential version, which is not often cited in discussions of Aristotolean logic because it is trivially provable from camestres: given “All horses have hooves” and “No humans have hooves”, camestres is “No humans are horses” whereas camestros is “some humans are not horses”.
I think BigelowT has nailed it.
Also, I believe these people all secretly own Bare Essentials, a lingerie maker which is, of course, a front for the Deep State.
@Cat.
Okay. I long since have a copy, so I’m out on wanting one for reviewing purposes, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t another book out there I was missing…
That would mean they own Bare Minerals the makeup brand as well, right? Perfect for undercover work!
If there are that many arms merchents ranking in that kind of cash, the First Order and the Rebellion are just a tiny side story to a much larger one. They were selling to the Rebellion too – which makes more sense to me. Where would the Rebellion base manufacturing? But you would think the First Order would manufacture their own.
And that place seemed like an awfully soft target – in most wars, cutting off supply lines is normally a significant tactic. Is that were the real shakers and movers hang out while the little people fight it out?
I know – overthinking it. This is the last one.