Pixel Scroll 10/10 A Filer on the Deep

(1) The Art of The Lord of the Rings by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull was released in the UK on October 8. The American edition, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, will be out on October 13.

art-of-lord-of-the-rings-trial-binding

Wayne and Christina say “The final product still has 240 pages, as we reported earlier, with 192 numbered figures (including 10 details), around 100 of which were not previously published. In the last stages of production, we located further small instances of art in the Lord of the Rings papers at Marquette and had to revise how the pictures were presented.”

Ethan Gilsdorf has an early review of the book on Wired.com — “See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used To Build Middle-Earth”.

The many maps and sketches he made while drafting The Lord of the Rings informed his storytelling, allowing him to test narrative ideas and illustrate scenes he needed to capture in words. For Tolkien, the art of writing and the art of drawing were inextricably intertwined.

In the book The Art of The Lord of the Rings, we see how, and why….

Tolkien didn’t seem to care what he drew or painted on. His sketch of “Helm’s Deep and the Hornburg,” the fortress enclave of the Rohirrim people, is executed on a half-used page of an Oxford examination booklet. Drawn in perspective, the tableau nicely captures Tolkien’s final description of the castle from The Two Towers: “At Helm’s Gate, before the mouth of the Deep, there was a heel of rock thrust outward by the northern cliff. There upon its spur stood high walls of ancient stone, and within them was a lofty tower. … A wall, too, the men of old had made from the Hornburg to the southern cliff, barring the entrance to the gorge…” One can imagine Tolkien pausing in the middle of grading a student’s paper, pondering how the castle wall and mountain valley might have appeared from a distance, both in his mind’s eye and the eyes of his characters.

(2) Cinemablend has a piece about “How Star Trek’s Walter Koenig Found Out He Got the Job” based on an interview he gave to the Whine at 9 podcast. Said Koenig —

They told me it was a very serious character and that I needed to bring a lot of intensity to the role. All the while they had me dressed up in any number of different colored wigs… The most important thing was, after I finished reading this with all this great intensity, they asked me to make it funny and I had to totally reverse on the character, which in no way was part of what was written. It worked, they all laughed and as a consequence I became immediately one of the two people in the running for the role… Finally, the costumer came by, didn’t introduce himself, just asked me to follow him. I went to wardrobe and he dropped to his knees in front of me, put his hand on my crotch. I said, ‘What are you doing, please?’ He said, ‘Well, I have to measure you for a costume, don’t I?’ And that’s how I found out that I became a member of Star Trek.

 

Walter Koenig

Walter Koenig

(3) Walter Koenig’s own website features all kinds of funny confessions in his Tales From The Lunch Counter.

I phoned Mario at “Two Guys From Italy”.and ordered a turkey sausage pizza. Mario called me “Mr. Star Trek” . My order wasn’t ready when I arrived. In fact, they couldn’t find my name. Then they told me that they didn’t carry turkey sausage. I was getting upset. I asked to speak to Mario. “Mario died ten months ago” I was told. There was a movie called “Gaslight” where the husband tried to drive his wife insane. “God Damn it,” I said, let me talk to Mario!” “God, damn it”, came the reply “Mario is dead and we don’t have turkey sausage!” “Do you know who I am?!”, I shouted. “Some whacko short guy!” came the rejoiner. I grabbed the menu determined to find the turkey sausage. Before I could thumb the pages I saw the name of the restaurant on the cover “Little Tony’s” it said in bold script. I had phoned in my order at one place and had gone to another to pick it up. What an idiot! A waiter came by. “Hey, aren’t you the guy from that Star Trek show?” Not me”, I said lunging for the door.

(4) It’s not explicitly said, but I think Rachel Swirsky may have in mind Ruth A. Johnston’s comments on Superversive SF:

(5) All of the videos Kjell Lindgren recorded for Sasquan are now on the Worldcon website — http://sasquan.org/2015/10/kjell-lindgren-videos/

Unfortunately, when I tried one, it buffered so slowly I abandoned the attempt.

(6) I hope John Scalzi shares a bit more about the con that led to these acrobatics —

John Scalzi makes a dramatic entrance at #nerdconstories2015 @scalzi @nerdconstories #johnscalzi

A video posted by Amber Sweeney (@memyshelfandi) on

(7) I was unable to figure out what anyone is supposed to learn by looking at Christophe Cariou’s Hugo statistics graphs.

(8) Today’s Birthday Boy

October 10, 1924 — Director Ed Wood, Jr. is born in Poughkeepsie, NY.

(9) FUD or a real concern. YOU decide!

There are claims that Gravatar is a privacy risk.

Your email generates a unique Gravatar hash, and allegedly you can be identified by the email you registered with across multiple websites that have Gravatar enabled, even though only the hash, not the email, is displayed.

Thus, people allegedly can learn the hash ID of someone’s email and find out what the person has been saying anonymously on the internet when they register with that address on Gravatar enabled sites.

Plus there is a handy site where you can “check if someone used the email you think they did in a blog comment.” — http://lea.verou.me/demos/gravatar.php

Gravatar says there is provision made for profile privacy.

(10) “You Can Now Download Stephen Hawking’s Voice Software for Free”

The software that Stephen Hawking uses to speak via a synthesized voice on his computer has been released freely on the internet. Its creators, Intel, hope that it can now be used in research to create interfaces that similar sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can use.

The Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) system has been released on Github, complete with a user guide. It allows researchers to develop communication systems where minimal input is needed. Hawking’s system, for example, relies solely on him moving a muscle in his cheek to type and use his computer. Hawking’s latest system was installed last year, which doubled his typing rate and improved his use of other computer functions by ten times.

(11) The Maryland Historical Society will revive the tradition of the “Poe Toaster”.

The Toaster appeared by Poe’s gravesite every year until 2009. Some speculate that in more recent years the original Toaster’s son took over; others think there have been several Toasters.

Since the last sighting, there had been hope that the Toaster would return, but the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum finally declared that the tradition was no more in 2011.

“We’ve been without one of our interesting characters for four years now, so we thought it would be fun to put a new twist on it and reinvent the tradition,” Caljean said.

The Maryland Historical Society is encouraging artists to submit proposals via email to describe how they would perform the toast. Submissions are due by Oct. 23, and a handful of finalists will be announced on Halloween.

(12) Elsewhere in Maryland today….

(13) Number one on Jalopnik’s list of “The Ten Strangest Space Weapons Ever Developed” is the USAF’s 1956 proposal for a home-grown UFO:

The Lenticular Reentry Vehicle was another U.S. government “black budget” item that never had its time to shine. It was a flying saucer-like spacecraft with the power to start a nuclear World War III. Supposedly, the LRV would be carried atop an Apollo rocket 300 miles into space, then deployed on a six-week voyage of hell-raising doom, armed with four nuclear missiles.

After completing its mission, the LRV would rocket back down to Earth, deploy a multi-stage parachute and touch down on a strategically determined lakebed.

(14) Cartoon Brew has posted a six-minute short, “Giant Robots From Outer Space”–a 2014 graduation film made at Supinfocom Valenciennes by Elsa Lamy, François Guéry, Aurélien Fernandez, Valentin Watrigant, and Louis Ventre.

“In the 1950s, earth is invaded by a mechanical menace. Love emerges between a man, a woman, and a giant robot from outer space. A tribute to classic science fiction and ’50s cinema.”

James H. Burns warns, “There seems to be an odd misogynistic tone, and some other strange stuff, perhaps, but otherwise (!), there is some spectacular stuff here!”

[Thanks to James H. Burns, Will R., Mark, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

121 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/10 A Filer on the Deep

  1. “The Toaster appeared by Poe’s gravesite every year until 2009”

    It didn’t even occur to me they weren’t talking about a machine that makes toast 🙂

  2. It didn’t even occur to me they weren’t talking about a machine that makes toast 🙂

    Same here, I only realized they were talking about a person when the mentioned the son theory.

    ETA i had been wondering which story featured toasted bread, haunted or otherwise.

  3. @Meredith,
    My lasting impression on Butcher was echoed at places like Hines: http://www.jimchines.com/2015/04/10-hugo-thoughts/

    The comments circa April 6-7.

    I’ve chalked Butcher up to the Guardians of the Galaxy class. If someone’s sold 5 million books, then I can reasonably excuse him for being well above the fray at least in my mind.

    Silly but True

  4. So today, one of my favorite SF YA stories, Insignia by SJ Kincaid, is on sale on Amazon.

    I’ll buy a copy for the person who wants one.

  5. Lis,

    If you want it, I just need your email address, and Amazon will make it yours!

    EDIT: Yup, looking back it looks like I forget the word “first” after the “the”.

  6. Not a huge Butcher fan or anything, but I don’t recall him making any fuss during the puppy kerfuffle. Drafted by jerks is not the same thing as being a jerk, methinks.

    I think passively allowing yourself to be used as a pawn in a mind-numbingly stupid and entirely baseless little culture war spat is a jerky thing to do. It’s not as jerky as actively taking part in the spat, but it’s still jerky.

    I could see why a little-known author might agonize over turning down an award nomination rigged in their favor — getting started is tough and that’s a huge sacrifice in publicity and name recognition, plus ego boost. Unlike Kloos and Bellet, however, Butcher didn’t need any of that Puppy crap in the slightest. He’s regularly on the NYT bestseller lists. Saying “Hey, no, I don’t want you guys using me for that Hugo Puppies nonsense, I’m bowing out,no thanks,” wouldn’t have damaged his livelihood in the slightest, but would have made a strong statement that he didn’t need people to rig awards for him because he felt he was perfectly capable of winning them on merit alone, no political chicanery and loophole exploitation required.

    So Butcher’s still on my “jerk” list thanks to that. He’s a second-class jerk, not a first-class jerk, but still a jerk.

    I’m not advocating boycotting Butcher or anything. It’s just that when an author behaves in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, seeing one of his/her books on the shelf no longer produces a thrill of anticipation — instead, when I see the name, the first thing that comes to mind is “Oh, it’s that author who did distasteful thing X” and I just turn away. The thrill is gone.

    So here’s a toast to Annie Bellet and Markos Kloos once again. Let’s not forget without Kloos’ guts and integrity, we wouldn’t have our first non-English Hugo winner. That could have been Jim Butcher’s honor instead, but it wasn’t.

  7. @Silly but True

    Since I’m fairly certain GRRM has sold more books than Butcher, I don’t find that a persuasive argument – especially since Butcher has said he was asked and has weighed in on much later Puppy controversies such as the Gallo event. As I said, I think he’s generally in sympathy with the Puppies, but neither an ardent supporter nor unwise enough to go around loudly pissing off a portion of his fanbase (Hugo supporters).

    I’m not especially upset with him, but nor do I think his acceptance of a position on a slate and later the nomination was ethical. That it contributed to much better works being kept off the ballot is the annoying icing on the unethical cake.

  8. (9) That’s why I use my business email and not my personal email for my gravitar- I believe in compartmentalization between my various email identities.

    (14) I didn’t really see the film as misogynist, more absurdist. It was actually a bit refreshing that bhe ivyynvarff abg bayl qbrfa’g unir nal frkhny be ebznagvp vagrerfg va gur znyr yrnq, fur nyfb jvaf va gur raq. I consider that kind of a role model.

  9. @Silly But True: I think the balance of opinion is that Butcher was a witting participant in the slating, based on a combination of second-hand reports, small acts/statements of commission, and one big act of omission. The big act of omission is never coming out and saying, “Hey, I had no idea this was going on.” I’m not even talking about withdrawing, just averring that his presence on the slates was news to him.

    The various acts of omission happened on Twitter during a brief period starting a couple weeks after the nominees were announced. I’ll provide just a single link to avoid landing in moderator hell. If you browse his feed for that period you’ll find some other references, including one @-reply to a retweet of my own. It does establish both that he was aware of the controversy post-facto and also liked the idea of winning an award.

    It’s his great wealth and success that make me judge Butcher as harshly as I do. I consider him a man who has almost everything and was nevertheless willing to disgrace himself to get the last bit that he didn’t have. I hope I wouldn’t do that in his position, but I’m mindful that I can’t know for sure how I would act. I’ve been around enough writers to know that most have some conviction that they are underappreciated. My sample includes Pulitzer-prizewinners.

  10. I’ve chalked Butcher up to the Guardians of the Galaxy class. If someone’s sold 5 million books, then I can reasonably excuse him for being well above the fray at least in my mind.

    Not the same thing at all. Jim was contacted, gave his permission, and understood both what the Hugos were and what the Puppies were after (though he might not have known how thoroughly they intended to stuff the ballot, I suppose.) He consented to be a part of this. None of this is true of anyone associated with GotG.

  11. Meredith and Mark

    But the overarching power of File770 is that, notwithstanding the fact that my maritime web access was few and far between, and a lot of pedalling was required, I still managed to register that there were a lot of reccomendations for The Rivers of London which meant I needed to check it out.

    And I have to say that it’s really cool to have someplace where people recommend stuff according to what’s in it, and not whether it fits the political views of the people who think we should only read stuff which they have subjected to ideological purity tests.

    It was enlightening to visit Albania, home of the bunker builders, because they were so similar to the people currently trying to enforce ideological purity tests in fandom. Fortunately, Mike seems to have an inbuilt-armour on this one…

  12. City of Stairs on the other hand is brilliant, even if Anna slightly exaggerated the presence of dragon, and would have been a very worthy nominee. I recommend you read it if you haven’t already – great book.

    It IS a small dragon. And technically it’s not on stage. But *mumbles* it’s there…

  13. @Anna

    I was fine with and aware of the small, but the off-stage lead to a page or two’s worth of sulking. 😉

  14. @Jim Henley & Meredith,

    From my own recollection, it seemed to have been more second hand reports than anything else. Admittedly I don’t and didn’t follow his Twitter feed, so I’m missing a big part.

    I personally don’t buy the whole “act of omission” in that case as being any sort of crime. I would rather say that those who withdrew because they felt they were there unfairly went above and beyond their duty and act with commendable regard.

    Silly But True

  15. May Tree on October 11, 2015 at 3:17 pm said:
    ….
    So here’s a toast to Annie Bellet and Markos Kloos once again. Let’s not forget without Kloos’ guts and integrity, we wouldn’t have our first non-English Hugo winner. That could have been Jim Butcher’s honor instead, but it wasn’t.

    Unlike Bellet and Kloos, Butcher’s in a position where it would not have been any skin off his back to have made the ethical choice.
    He’s already “won” with bags of cash and fame and all that stuff.
    A Hugo is just a cherry on the sundae for someone of his stature – nice, but not a career changer.
    But a slate is an intrinsically dishonest enterprise, and that he apparently consented only makes it worse.
    This wasn’t a failure to articulate a position, qui tacet, and all.

    Of course, makes absolutely no difference to him if he sheds me as a reader.
    I’d stopped following a ways back.
    Endlessly long series bore me, like a house guest who just won’t leave.
    After a while, you stop remembering why you like them and just want them gone.
    He’s not the first author I’ve dumped when a series meandered into double digits: Sookie Stackhouse, and Anita Blake come to mind easily, though there are certainly others.
    It’s not something as proactive as a boycott – lots of people like and read lots of stuff that does nothing for me.
    That’s life.

    But I am lucky.
    I found two must-buys, and only lost one – already become a meh – now turned into a nope.

  16. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on October 11, 2015 at 3:37 pm said:
    City of Stairs on the other hand is brilliant, even if Anna slightly exaggerated the presence of dragon, and would have been a very worthy nominee. I recommend you read it if you haven’t already – great book.

    It IS a small dragon. And technically it’s not on stage. But *mumbles* it’s there…

    Is there ever, really, enough dragon?

  17. @Silly But True: I should clarify that on “acts of omission” there were two things Butcher could have said that he didn’t:

    1. “I had no idea I was on this slate until after the fact.”
    2. “I’m withdrawing my nomination because I disapprove of the way it came about.”

    I was first talking about determining whether Butcher was a witting participant. For that question, what matters is the lack of the first statement. If he wasn’t consciously part of the slate, it was a simple matter to say that. He never did.

    I was second talking about what Meredith was also talking about, whether it was ethical for Butcher to stay on the ballot unlike Kloos, Bellet and a couple of editors (pro and fan). Here I do find Butcher blameworthy, but that’s a separate question from whether he was like Guardians of the Galaxy – unknowing and above it all – or like JCW et al, well aware of what was going on.

    Since my first comment, people have said Butcher came out and averred that he was asked to be on the slate and consented. I personally never saw him state that in so many words, and would be interested in a pointer to it.

  18. (7) I was unable to figure out what anyone is supposed to learn by looking at Christophe Cariou’s Hugo statistics graphs.

    I give up, anyone else?
    There are grey lines linking the results for different categories, but I am mystified.

  19. StefanB sez:

    Well and the first consequence of the whole puppything in reading.
    I can’t buy the new Butcher, just lost interest (and I liked Dresden und Codex).

    I had an ever bigger problem — after reading all the puppy fiction nominees I found myself not enjoying any fiction for a while. It was as though my brain was saying, You don’t want to do that reading stuff — look what happened the last time you tried it. Fortunately I got over it pretty quickly.

  20. Silly but True: I personally don’t buy the whole “act of omission” in that case as being any sort of crime. I would rather say that those who withdrew because they felt they were there unfairly went above and beyond their duty and act with commendable regard.

    Regardless of any question of willing and witting participation in the slate, the fact remains that Butcher’s book would not even have made the Longlist if VD and BT had never published slates. His book did keep legitimate nominee City of Stairs off the final ballot.

  21. @Jim,
    I pretty much am in agreement; but in my case I’m I’m not willing to indict him — or anyone for that matter — on “people have said” things about him. He’s got his own website; if he wanted to state he supported either Sad, Rabid, or both movements, he could. And as far as I can tell when I looked into it at the time, he hadn’t.

    More here seem inclined to have wanted him to disavow something he might not care much about, or dogpile him to have withdrawn. But I think those are bridges too far.

    If one likes him, read him. I can’t see forcing oneself to read something you don’t like or by someone you don’t respect; and if he’s been given a scarlet letter over 2015 Hugos in some prople’s minds then so be it. There’s too much stuff available that you should be spending your time on than stuff you can’t stand.

    @JJ

    I also don’t think anyone’s entitled to a nom or a win. So I can’t agree with that suggestion.

    Silly but True

  22. Are there ever enough abs of steel in a graphic novel?

    Having just admired the GRR Martin Hedge Knight, second volume I think the answer is no…

  23. Annie Bellet is a succcesful author. Not Jim Butcher level successful, of course, and not a household name either. But I know her from another forum, hence I know that her urban fantasy series sells very well indeed and that she also has a couple of other series and pen names going. She’s definitely not the unknown newbie author that she’s sometimes been portrayed as, though I suspect she remained under the radar of many Hugo voters, because she’s self-published.

    As for Marko Kloos, I had never heard of him before this uproar, since military SF isn’t my thing. But his self-published debut novel was picked up by Amazon’s 49 North imprint, which published the sequel (this year’s almost Hugo nominee), so he must have been doing well at Amazon. So again, he’s not really an unknown newbie. Though an (honestly achieved) Hugo nomination would have done more to raise the profiles of Kloos and Bellet than it would have done for Jim Butcher.

    Which doesn’t change that Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet (and Juliette Wade and Black Gate and Matthew David Surridge and Edmund Schubert) did the right thing, while Jim Butcher did not.

  24. Which doesn’t change that Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet (and Juliette Wade and Black Gate and Matthew David Surridge and Edmund Schubert) did the right thing, while Jim Butcher did not.

    Dave Creek also did the right thing.

    @ULTRAGOTHA

    I have, based on File770 recommendations, and yes I liked it! DRAGONS everywhere! \o/

  25. I liked Michael Swanwick’s Dragon series. Both the Iron Dragon’s Daughter and Dragons of Babel were entertaining, although I recall Daughter being much more so.

    Silly But True

  26. For dragons, Carol Berg’s Song of the Beast is also very good. I wish there was a sequel, but as far as I know she won’t be writing one.

  27. Silly but True: I also don’t think anyone’s entitled to a nom or a win.

    I absolutely agree with you. Which is why the Puppies colluding to fix the Hugo ballot because they felt that they were entitled to nominations was so outrageous — and why all their cries about how unfair it was that they were No Awarded when they should have been given Hugos were doubly outrageous.

    City of Stairs earned a place on the ballot on its own merits. Dark Between the Stars and Skin Game did not.

  28. Stevie: Are there ever enough abs of steel anywhere?

    Butcher: Yeah, he had nothing to lose and much to gain by turning it down. And thus the opposite has happened. He got a few minutes of egoboo (but No Award), kept a truly deserving work off the ballot, and turned off a number of people who will no longer buy his books. Whereas turning it down would have gotten him all kinds of credit, vastly more egoboo, and probably even more money. And an Alfie. It was all-around stupid on his part.

    As his fellow-traveler JCW would understand, sins of omission are still sins.

  29. @May Tree
    “So here’s a toast to Annie Bellet and Markos Kloos once again. Let’s not forget without Kloos’ guts and integrity, we wouldn’t have our first non-English Hugo winner. That could have been Jim Butcher’s honor instead, but it wasn’t.”

    As we say in Texas (where I was born, but not raised):
    “Amen, sister!”

  30. @Rose Embolism
    “(14) I didn’t really see the film as misogynist, more absurdist. It was actually a bit refreshing that bhe ivyynvarff abg bayl qbrfa’g unir nal frkhny be ebznagvp vagrerfg va gur znyr yrnq, fur nyfb jvaf va gur raq. I consider that kind of a role model.”

    It’s not misogyny, just some regular sexism in her clothing. No one else has their body’s sexual characteristics emphasized. Other than that, I liked the trope warping all the way around. Cute short film. Hugo worthy? Maybe.

  31. The iO9 article on 10 strangest space weapons just sunk in. I wonder just how many people are aware there’s 10,000s of 23mm bullets and spent shell casings flying around in orbit leftover from the cannons mounted on Russian military space stations; they performed at least three live fire tests before the last station was deorbited in ’75. And now I wonder what we were doing at the same time? It’s about time those stories start leaking out.

    Silly But True

  32. Round 3 of the comics bracket has been posted here.

    (BTW, is it just me or has preview been disabled?)

  33. junego: So here’s a toast to Annie Bellet and Markos Kloos once again

    And let’s raise a glass to Juliette Wade, Dave Creek, and Matthew David Surridge as well.

  34. “And let’s raise a glass to Juliette Wade, Dave Creek, and Matthew David Surridge as well.”

    Totally agree, and the same to anyone we forgot and anyone who bowed out but never got any publicity for it, too!

  35. Lisa Goldstein –
    Your poor brain. I suspect a gentle course of rereading some old favorites might have fixed it back up, if time alone didn’t suffice.

    But the reviews were appreciated.

  36. May Tree wrote

    I’m not advocating boycotting Butcher or anything. It’s just that when an author behaves in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, seeing one of his/her books on the shelf no longer produces a thrill of anticipation — instead, when I see the name, the first thing that comes to mind is “Oh, it’s that author who did distasteful thing X” and I just turn away. The thrill is gone.

    So here’s a toast to Annie Bellet and Markos Kloos once again. Let’s not forget without Kloos’ guts and integrity, we wouldn’t have our first non-English Hugo winner. That could have been Jim Butcher’s honor instead, but it wasn’t.

    Same here. Except I also offer a toast to Dave Creek and Black Gate and Juliette Wade, and to the people who declined the nomination before the shortlist went live (aside from Larry Correia–if you organize a dump truck to dump a load of tar on my lawn, you don’t get kudos for removing one shovel full.)

  37. And just too late to edit, I realize that I should have included Matthew David Surridge and Edmund Schubert. And also discover that I am the last in the toast parade, which I should kind of have anticipated but well said, folks.

  38. Some people are clearly better able to separate the storyteller from the story than I am. For me, reading a tale is not all that far from listening to someone tell it to me. (Thanks, Dad, for the amazingly wide range of books you read to me as bedtime stories.) So the idea that one might prefer to read (and buy) books written by people who seem congenial, and who aren’t repeatedly ranting against beliefs, qualities, and characteristics that one or one’s loved ones have… seems perfectly reasonable to me.

  39. The only thing I remember Butcher for in the kerpupple is that he told people to leave Irene Gallo alone and accept her apology. Otherwise he was quiet the whole time. He wanted to keep out of everything.

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