(1) THE MUSIC OF HEAVY METAL. Maya St. Clair remembers “When Heavy Metal Magazine Made Playlists” at News from the Orb.
When I worked at Heavy Metal magazine, people in my life inevitably assumed it was a publication about heavy metal music. My usual response was “not really,” and I’d describe how Heavy Metal was a comics magazine focused on experimental, adult-rated sci-fi/fantasy. I’ve since realized that a better response would have been “fuck it, probably” — since Heavy Metal, like cosmic background radiation, seemed to presuppose and pervade everything, including music. Name a thing, and Heavy Metal had it: yellow, cyan, black, magenta, rectangles, circles, pterodactyls, Homer, Shakespeare, love, death, superheroes, hamburgers, Jane Fonda, H. P. Lovecraft, boobs, dicks, God, jazz, rockabilly, and (inevitably) heavy metal music, lower case….
St. Clair has compiled playlists at Spotify that emulate some Heavy Metal writers’ Eighties recommendation lists. Including two by my old friend Lou Stathis! Here’s the first —
In 1980, as it reached the height of its influence and circulation, Heavy Metal introduced music criticism by SFF editor/music nerd Lou Stathis and others, in the “Dossier” section. The contrarian Stathis was a fearless advocate for the experimental over the conventional (he hated the fucking Eagles, man, and Bruce Springsteen’s normie-ism was a running joke). Alternative icons like Brian Eno, Genesis, the Cure, Grace Jones, Gary Numan, Laurie Anderson, and Tangerine Dream got their recognition in Heavy Metal, plus uncountable niche bands.
Anyway, the HM squad would occasionally throw together a DJ set, album recs, or mixtape. I’ve consolidated them into playlists on Spotify, linked below….
The Metal Box: Lou Stathis’ 1983 Singles Picks
Stathis sometimes compiled lists of his “heavy rotation” singles and albums. In April 1984, he listed his top picks for the previous year. Some, like Michael Jackson and Eurythmics, are recognizable. Others are supremely obscure.
(2) ON A TANGENT. Dave Truesdale introduces the “Tangent Online 2023 Recommended Reading List”, once again targeting SFWA as the reason “real world politics” have intruded on the science fiction field. Not because Truesdale is unaware of the history of sf, but because he argues that somehow the Thirties political activism of young sff writers and editors didn’t really count.
For the most part, the literary aspect of the science fiction field proceeded as usual in 2023; the general machinery operated well enough to keep the magazines and books appearing on reasonable schedules, and SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, formerly for decades since its 1965 inception the Science Fiction Writers of America) the field’s one and only member-funded 501(c)(3) tax exempt administrative organization, was still alive and kicking, though to my mind and due to external “real world” politics, took a wrong turn that gave the outside world an entirely misleading picture of the organization as a literary organization, but instead revealed its political advocacy (or lack thereof) on any given issue.….
…Politics has entered the SF field directly but sporadically over the past 97 years, since its official birth as a genre began with the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories. Early readers became fans when they corresponded with others through letter columns, and small SF fan clubs began to sprout all over the country. The first SF worldcon was held July 1-4, 1939 in New York City, to coincide with the World’s Fair in the same city. Attendance was in the dozens and many of the members were in their teens. Sam Moskowitz (later to become SF’s premiere historian) chaired, with a few of his friends, this first worldcon at the ripe old age of 19. A group of SF fans known by their club name of the Futurians, led by Donald A. Wollheim (later founder of DAW Books), Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Doc Lowndes, and a few others were at odds with Moskowitz’s group and wanted to attend the worldcon. Many of these young SF fans were fashionably members of the local socialist or communist branches; it was the cool thing to do at the time. Without getting into the details (there were many different accounts given from both sides) the Moskowitz faction turned the Wollheim, Pohl, faction (the Futurians) away and were thus excluded from the convention. This became known in fandom and the early fan press as “The Great Exclusion Act.” Wollheim and Pohl, among others were either in their teens (C.M. Kornbluth 14 or 15, Pohl 19) or early twenties (Wollheim 24, Doc Lowndes 22) and full of headstrong piss and vinegar. That the feud between fan groups and the turning away of some from the worldcon was primarily because of politics was downplayed by Pohl when he wrote in his autobiography The Way the Future Was, “We pretty nearly had it coming,” and then, “What we Futurians made very clear to the rest of New York fandom was that we thought we were better than they were. For some reason that annoyed them.”
So in essence what amounted to an early fan feud between SF fan clubs whose members were still in their teens or early twenties and had little to do with politics, has somehow become the one size fits all go-to argument that supposedly proves politics has always been a part of SF and SF fandom and is thus nothing new….
(3) STAY OR GO? Catherynne M. Valente’s post “On Recent Developments at Substack” at Welcome to Garbagetown analyzes the dilemma of persisting in using that platform.
Many people have reached out to me to discuss Substack’s not-always-stellar history of managing a diverse breadth of opinions and/or policies on monetization.
Let me make it clear: This was always an issue, and I have always been aware of it. It’s gotten worse of late. And now I just feel like Marc Maron trying to figure out what to do with his friends who voted for Trump….
…Yes, Substack has and does allow dipshit fascist transphobic and otherwise morally-cancerous fuckgiblets to post freely and make money from their platform. They also allow a lot of marginalized creators to flourish and make a livelihood here. Like every other site I’ve ever known, all of whom have been incredibly reluctant to crack down on extreme right-wing content despite that very policy allowing it to proliferate wildly and bring us to a very bad historical place. Do I want them to kick out anyone making money on hate? Yep. Do I understand the slippery slope argument about free speech? That it’s much easier to take no stance and allow everything, trusting the users to sort it out, than to take the step of defining what opinions can be allowed to be heard? Yep.
I do not know if I’m going to stay here. I just don’t know. I came to Substack because of the Twitter diaspora. I managed to build a small audience, built mostly on hating fascism and idiocy. I like the community I and all of you have built here and I’m reluctant to migrate and lose people. But I don’t want to support the Badness by being here. And yet, if I go, does that not just abandon another space because bad people are also here, handing them control of yet another hugely-recognized platform, control they could never achieve on their own just on numbers and popularity, while the people who have any moral compass whatsoever have to continually start over from scratch?…
(4) AWARD-WORTHY APPAREL. The “Costume Designers Guild Awards 2024 Nominations” include two sff-specific categories. (See the full list of finalists at the link.)
Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film
- Barbie – Jacqueline Durran
- Haunted Mansion – Jeffrey Kurland
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – Trish Summerville
- The Little Mermaid – Colleen Atwood & Christine Cantella
- Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Stephanie Porter
Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television
- Ahsoka: Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord – Shawna Trpcic
- Loki: 1893 – Christine Wada
- The Mandalorian: Chapter 22: Guns for Hire – Shawna Trpcic
- What We Do in the Shadows: Pride Parade – Laura Montgomery
- The Witcher: The Art of the Illusion – Lucinda Wright
(5) OCCIDENTAL OCCULT. Former Horror Writers Association President Lisa Morton will teach a three-part online course “Confronting the Spectral: A History of Ghosts in the Western World With Lisa Morton” beginning January 22 through Atlas Obscura Experiences. Full details including schedule and prices at the link.
What We’ll Do
In this three-part lecture series, explore how people have thought about ghosts through time in the Western world.
Course Description
In this course, we’ll trace the history of ghostly encounters reported across the Western world, both friendly and nefarious. We’ll begin with ghosts from the classical world who haunted heroes like Gilgamesh and Odysseus, and look at the Biblical story of Saul and the Witch of Endor. We’ll meet medieval necromancers, Victorian spiritualists, and finally, the modern ghost-hunter. By the end of our time together, you’ll not only have a deep understanding of how cultures have conceived of the most common supernatural entity throughout history, but also ideas and suggestions for engaging in your own supernatural investigations.…
(6) SEA DEVILS SPINOFF? “Doctor Who Spinoff Series Seemingly Confirmed, Will Feature Classic Villains” says CBR.com.
A production listing on the Film and Television Industry Alliance website confirmed pre-production has begun on a spinoff series of the massively popular sci-fi series Doctor Who, which is scheduled to begin filming in March. The listing also provides a brief summary of the project, describing it as a fantasy-action adventure featuring the Sea Devils, an old villain from the classic Doctor Who series.
The listing does not provide any further details about the show’s plot, but it does reveal some of the crew members involved in the project, such as Doctor Who showrunner Russel T Davies set to return as the series’ writer. Other names include producers Phill Collinson, Vicki Delow, Julie Gardner and Lord of the Rings TV series producer Jane Tranter….
…As for when the spinoff series may see a premiere, the listing does not provide any concrete information, though it does confirm the projected filming date of March 4, 2024. …
(7) NEEDS WORK. The Mary Sue’s Charlotte Simmons would like to be a Zack Snyder fan if only the auteur would make that a little easier: “’Rebel Moon’ Proves That Zack Snyder Needs To Grow Up, and I Say That With Love”.
…Sure, it would have given the infamously obnoxious Snyder cult some more ammunition, but more good movies is a win for everybody. Sadly, whatever remotely interesting set dressing Zack Snyder cooked up here was woefully undermined by incoherent storytelling at its most relentless and suffocating character development—nay, the bare essentials of characterization—behind a mountain of formulaic sci-fi battles and dialogue that not even an amateur could be proud of.
Indeed, Rebel Moon is proof in the pudding that Snyder has some serious work to do, and that’s a damn shame, because the nature of his raw creative pursuits is stupendously important in the genres he occupies, which perhaps makes his failures all the more depressing….
(8) OCTOTHORPE CENTURY. John Coxon, Alison Scott and Lis Batty receive a telegram in episode 100 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I Don’t Have Show Notes or Alcohol”.
We celebrate with a bevy of special segments, including ”letters of comment”, “talking about the Glasgow Worldcon”, and “aftershow involving games”. PRETTY ADVANCED STUFF.
(9) GLYNIS JOHNS (1923-2024). Actress Glynis Johns, best known to fans as Mrs. Banks in Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) and as a forest maiden who assists Danny Kaye’s character in The Court Jester (1955), died January 4 at the age of 100. She also appeared in several episodes of Sixties TV’s Batman as Lady Penelope Peasoup.
…Johns won a Tony for her role as Desiree Armfeldt in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” introducing the song “Send in the Clowns” — written for her by Sondheim. In addition she was Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in 1960’s “The Sundowners.”…
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 4, 1958 — Matt Frewer, 66. I encountered Matt Frewer the same way that I suspect most of you did when he was unrecognizable as Max Headroom almost forty years ago. That character debuted in April 1985 in the Channel 4 film Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. It’s virtually identical to the premiere of the American television series, though there might be a bit of foul language if I remember correctly. Or not.
Two days after it was broadcast, Max hosted on the same channel The Max Headroom Show, a program where he introduced music videos, made pointed comments on various topics, and conducted rather off the wall interviews with guests before a live studio audience. These would eventually be aired in the States on Cinemax.
Max would become a global spokesperson for New Coke, appearing on way too many TV commercials with the catchphrase “Catch the wave!”. You can see one of those commercials here
Now we come to the Max Headroom series which on ABC from just March 31, 1987, to May 5, 1988 with just a total of fifteen episodes. Damn it seemed like it lasted longer than that. He, like everyone on the series, was spot on in creating a believable future. I consider it one of the best SF series ever done.
He’s got way too many genre roles to list them all here so let me focus on a few of my favorite ones.
He was Dr. Jim Taggart on Eureka. On screen for a total of eighteen episodes, his Aussie character was the Eureka’s veterinarian and “biological containment specialist”, which means he catches whatever needs to be caught. If it moved and it did something weird, he was after it.
And then he was Dr. Aldous Leekie, the primary Big Bad on the first season of Orphan Black. He was in charge of the handling the clones as if anyone should trust him.
Though I find it hard to believe, the Hallmark Channel produced the Hallmark Sherlock Holmes films. And he was Sherlock Holmes in four of these films — The Sign of Four, The Hound of Baskervilles, The Royal Scandal and The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire.
My final role for him a silly one indeed, it’s in In Search of Dr. Seuss where he is the Cat in The Hat. This thirty-nine-year-old film is a delightful romp — Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Hunch, Patrick Stewart is Sgt. Mulvaney, and the list goes on far too long to give in full here.
And yes, he’s been in a lot of genre films, go ahead and tell me your favorite.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- The Argyle Sweater finds an enterprising use for generative AI.
(12) WHO IS YOUR HOST. All you Tennant fans pay attention: “David Tennant To Host 2024 BAFTA Film Awards” reports Deadline.
Former Doctor Who actor David Tennant has been set as the host of the 2024 BAFTA Film Awards, which take place February 18 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London….
…Jane Millichip, CEO of BAFTA, added: “We are over the moon that David Tennant will be our host for the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards. He is deservedly beloved by British and international audiences, alike. His warmth, charm, and mischievous wit will make it a must-watch show next month for our guests at the Royal Festival Hall and the millions of people watching at home….
(13) SEMI-MANDATORY VIEWING. Dylan sang “Everyone Must Get Stoned” but never mind that, CBR.com insists you see these 10 “Must-Watch Sci-Fi Movies For Fans of The Genre”. Or heck, maybe you already have! In the middle of the list comes the film that gave us Ripley.
5. Alien Combined Science and Horror Perfectly
Alien (1979)
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating an unknown transmission….
Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s biomechanical designs for the alien artifacts and creatures helped turn a great movie into an incredible one. With a story that starts out similarly to Forbidden Planet, in which a space crew investigates a distress signal, the film is transformed into an intense thriller with a horrifying Alien Xenophorph stalking and killing the crew. With stunning visuals and a premise too good for just one movie, Alien spawned a multi-media franchise that has entertained for more than four decades.
(14) MORE PICKUP. And it’s arguably appropriate to follow a mention of the Alien series (“Get away from her you bitch!”) with Giant Freakin Robot’s news item “Exoskeletons Take Huge Step Toward Becoming Common”.
Science fiction would appear to be becoming nonfiction in Europe. Indeed, in Italy, a groundbreaking pilot project involving real-life exoskeletons achieved exciting results. The Port System Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea and the Livorno Port Company reported marked advantages using the exoskeletal tech, developed by IUVO and Comau (a subsidiary of Stellantis)….
…The workers regularly undertook strenuous tasks: loading and unloading goods, relocating heavy loads, and securing containers onto ships. Without the sci-fi-reminiscent exoskeletons, these activities are notoriously exhausting. They also pose genuine risks of introducing musculoskeletal disorders.
The initial evaluations conducted by IUVO and Comau involved measuring muscle activity and gathering feedback through questionnaires–all to assess the perceived drop in fatigue. The findings were overwhelmingly positive. Laborers reportedly adjusted well to the novel technology, additionally recognizing the exoskeleton’s significant impact on their efficiency and physical well-being.
Based on the data, utilizing MATE XT and MATE XB technologies can potentially lessen the effort required by workers.
By how much? As much as thirty percent….
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The How It Should Have Ended crew knows “How Batman Should Have Ended” – meaning the version where Michael Keaton is Batman and Jack Nicholson is The Joker.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(2) Thank you for providing a shorter version of that. I kept bouncing off it last night.
(10) I still think of Max Headroom when people ask about series that were cancelled too early. (That and Frewer’s sitcom, “Doctor, Doctor.”) I also love his voice work in Gargoyles (another show that was cancelled too early.)
(1) I barely recognized any of the songs.
(2) I have a desire to perform unpleasant physical acts to Truesdale, none of them legal. It was “cool” to join socialist and communist organizations? You mean, during the Great Depression, when capitalists had crashed the world economy it took a world war to get out of it? And there were no political novels after (we’ll ignore, say, Stand on Zanzibar, or Bug Jack Barron, or…)?
He’s going to hate my upcoming novel, Becoming Terran (that I finally have a pub date for – 27 Feb!).
Oh, and SFWA as an “administrative organization”? What does he think it is, that it “administers” published sff? Not that it’s an authors’ guild (oh! Socialist!)?
And I’ve read other accounts of the first Worldcon, that the Futurians, or some of them, though that sf should have political overtones/themes, and others didn’t (gee, like Truesdale, who think it should be limited).
(3) Free speech. How’s this: you get free speech until you start threatening others, and I mean physical threats (jail, death, etc). Then it’s not free, its threat speech.
(10) sigh 20 min into the future… and not a good one.
(11) Ok, it’s a month late, but… the last office job my late wife had, she complained she had a major annoyance who, on 1 Dec, started playing Christmas songs. The usual. Over and over. In response, she came up with a new party game, like charades. You write Christmas songs on pieces of paper, then people draw them… and have to perform them in the manner of William Shattner. Like…
“Play! They told me! Upon my drum! PA-RUM-PA-PUM!”
(13) And no Day the Earth Stood Still? Really? No Trek (or Galaxy Quest)?
Anne Marble says I still think of Max Headroom when people ask about series that were cancelled too early. (That and Frewer’s sitcom, “Doctor, Doctor.”) I also love his voice work in Gargoyles (another show that was cancelled too early.)
Gargoyles which I think needs a write-op someday just because of the Trek voice connection if for no other reason has been tossed about for rebooting at least twice, once so grim that it made me cringe.
He’s right about this statement but for the wrong reason, “I seriously doubt magazine editors would publish any story professing a viewpoint contrary to what is considered Woke or Progressive, for the backlash would be immediate and enormous.”
Magazines, all magazines, reflect their readers. So their editors select the contents those readers expect to be there.
Vegnews isn’t going to run a story picking the best bacon, the Objectist Newsletter on the best national health care system and F&SF conservative SF. Why would any of these do this?
(10) Very worthy of mention is Frewer’s appearance in the TV miniseries The Stand (based on the Stephen King novel of the same name), as Trashcan Man, a demented firebug.
Perhaps less worthy, but still worth mentioning, is his role as the next-door neighbor in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Not functional.
Read mark’s book. Liked it. Will review when slightly more functional.
No, Truesdale won’t like it.
LisC: well, really, really simple question. SF has been defined as “what if”, and specifically “if this goes on”. Why would politics be out of bounds? And would, say, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, or Revolt in 2100 not be in bound?
10) Does “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” count as genre?
Excellence in costume design? Rebel Moon? Seriously? The only costuming detail that stood out for me was that Ed Skrein’s character has the only clean shirt in the galaxy; otherwise, it was just generic peasant grunge meets generic military grunge. Maybe there are nuances to the grunge that I’m not getting….
(9) The Court Jester is such a great movie.
Looking forward to reading Mark’s book.
“10) Does “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” count as genre?”
It certainly should.
10) Frewer-as-Headroom was also in the most excellent “Paranoimia” video by the Art of Noise:
@mark–
Um, what? The only comment I made is that I like your book, and Truesdale isn’t likely to.
A work of fiction should tell a story, not be a political lecture, or so bound by its politics that you have to buy into the author’s real world politics for the characters’ behavior to make sense. We’re still having periodic arguments about Starship Troopers because Heinlein gave us characters and a story we can care about, even as we have strongly divergent views on whether the political system in the book would really work as presented, and whether the arguments presented for it are corrected.
Whereas the Puppies gave us steaming piles of excrement where the stories didn’t make sense if you don’t completely share the author’s politics.
Every writer of any substance is going to have beliefs and ideas that underpin what they write even when that’s not their intent. Sometimes, making a certain political or moral point will be part of the intent for the story.
Where it goes wrong is when the politics overwhelms character and story, and you can’t really care about the characters and the story without sharing the author’s political worldview.
The Puppies promoted bad writing.
2) To echo Lis, Bad Writing is a very good reason why a lot of puppies don’t have such great success like they belive they should.
There are 3 reasons why a non rightwingreader will pick up less of rightwingwriting.
1. We have been getting less tolerant of bad behaviors from writers and since in the past some people get away with horible crimes that is not exactly a bad think.
2. (and this may be looking at the past with a too found eye) I think that certain rightwingwriters have got more offensive than religious or conservative writers in the past. There was always a fringe, that I don’t think was very easy markable outside certain circles but this part got larger and it is stronger worldwide.
3. More choice(at last in Germany) and information. When I was younger(Pre-Internet my choice of reading materlial was limited to what I found in the local bookstores today I can buy what I want from the internet. I can also get information about writers very fast (what I do because I don’t want to read bad books by bad people) so I at last can make more informed decision about the next work to read.
To further StefanB’s point:
Some people put humans first, others put their agendas first. The way to tell the difference is by how they respond when one of their own behaves in a horrible way.
Most fans and writers on the left, when it became clear that the accusations against Marion Zimmer Bradley had at least some plausible merit, condemned her, while a whole lot of fans and some writers on the right still make excuses for the behavior of the Puppies.
Conclusion: we (lefties) care about people first. They (righties) care about their agenda first and damn the human cost.
@Dan’l:
I have unfurtunatly seen people on the left behave like you discripe also, what was quite a shock. (It is rarer in my opinion but it happened)
Second and this is to further the point about caring about people first.
I am not sure of certain people that they realise that there oponents are people or care about it. A very telling example was when some group refered to others as NPCs (a term from computer or roleplayinggames). That was such an selfown that is not funny.
@StefanB: You are right; I painted with too broad a brush. I should not have said “people on the right do X, while people on the left do Y,” but “people on the right tend to do X, while people on the left tend to do Y.”
2) Years ago, I wrote a handful of reviews and what-not for Tangent. I stopped because real life intruded (i.e. I got married and had kids) and because I wasn’t getting paid and it didn’t seem worth my time and effort to do something for free that was going to end up only being seen by tens of people.
3) These things always seem to boil down to ‘how dare these platforms that are freely available to the public allow people I don’t like/disagree with to use them.’ You’re never going to find a platform that passes your purity tests, so either get used to having to constantly ‘start over’ or make your peace with the fact that, to coin a phrase ‘there are minds that work just as well as yours, only differently.’
7) Few things are more entertaining that watching some blogger or culture war YouTuber or general societal kibbitzer tell a best-selling author or stadium selling out musician or a director with multiple million dollar blockbusters under his belt what they need to do to really be successful. I think they’ve got a handle on it dudes, but thanks for the advice.
14) Not a bad list, but I’d replace 2001 with Demolition Man on the basis that the latter is both more entertaining, more prescient, and has aged better.
(2) Only skimmed this so far, but I saw at one point he suggests a special issue of his magazine called “Straight White Honkies Destroy Science Fiction”, and my dude what other kind of straight honkies do you have.
Just a note from the literary-nerd corner: narrative fiction can be agenda-driven, or even agenda-generated. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” will likely depend on the set of values involved and whether a given audience shares them. Allegories like The Pilgrim’s Progress fail pretty badly as, say, portraits of actual human psychology or social behavior, but they’re not designed with that in mind. And it has been enormously popular for more than 300 years. Then there’s Animal Farm, in which recognizable human social/political tendencies are assigned to farm critters in ways that Orwell clearly intended to make very particular social/political points. (Which went over my head when I read it at 14 or so. Though I recognized it as a fable.)
An allegory–or parable or fable or propaganda piece–can deliver the pleasures of “story” right along with whatever political/moral payload the writer includes (consciously or not). Chances are that a badly-executed agenda-driven story will not deliver those pleasures, or will interfere with them. But then there’s the preaching-to-the-choir effect, in which agenda trumps aesthetic response. And there remains in many audiences a kind of bottom-line response: “the moral of this story is. . . .” (Getting past that is an important part of an intro-to-literature course.)
1) Thanks for this – will have to read the article to find the second Lou Stathis list. Lou’s taste and mine plainly overlap quite a lot. (Some of the songs and groups he has on this list are among my favorites.) But he was also into cutting edge stuff of a more experimental nature, and I’ll bet the other leans in that direction.
2) I wonder if Truesdale is aware of the market forces working here; if an editor or publisher has a choice between works that appeal to
a) emotionally fragile white male bigots, or
b) literally everybody else in the world,
well, they’re going to think to themselves, “which of these is a better market to sell to?” and, since b) is very much a bigger market, and hence has more money, they’re likely to go with b).
Right-wing publications are generally not profitable; they’re propped up by right-wing millionnaires/billionnaires with an axe to grind and the money to make sure it’s ground in public. (The propaganda channel GBNews, over here in Crazy Island, made £3.6 million in revenue in its first year, set against operating costs of £31 million. Its directors remain satisfied by its progress, apparently.)
LisC: I’m sorry. I wrote that as though I was talking to them, on a panel or in the hallway, and thought that would be obvious. That wasn’t addressed to you.
Quartermain: “purity test”? You run a social media, and you have a choice of “this is free speech, and nothing else is”, or censor everything? I mean, are you suggesting that literal Nazi and fascist speech, which always threatens other groups, is equal to the older arguing over, say, US poliitics, or whether Asimov was bad, are equal.
They’re NOT. This is the test I suggested above: your freedom of speech ends where others are physically threatened.
10) Matt Frewer, birthday —
Matt Frewer had an ongoing arc as one of the time machine scientists in the TV series “Timeless” (2016-2017). He was kidnapped into Time Machine #1 by Goran Visnjic’s villain character in the first episode. Later it turns out Frewer’s character was working in concert with the villain; still later he does something good and gets killed for it.
Sorry to be so vague here. I enjoyed many of the individual episodes of “Timeless” but the through-arc was very flippy-floppy — are these bad guys or good guys? I didn’t finish the series. Anyway…
StefanB on January 5, 2024 at 8:47 am said:
I have described what I consider to be the normalization of sociopathy in modern society as promoting the idea that “everyone else is a non-player character.” A whole lot of bad behavior from certain politicians and major business leaders makes more sense if you think that’s how they look at the rest of the world, and that they consider themselves the Only True Human Being.
@mark: An ironic tack to take, considering your remarks about Truesdale above.
@@Quatermain–Truesdale is one who called my attention to him by being virulent, aggressively political about everything, and aggressively intolerant of different views.
Nazis likewise, except with advocacy for eliminating those they consider inferior, which is most of us, and a track record of having actually tried.
That’s a lot different from merely disagreeing.
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