(1) If today is The Martian’s birthday remember that…
…in nine days Marty McFly arrives from the past …
(2) Can you pass HowStuffWorks’ “Real Tech or Star Trek?” quiz?
Confession: I bombed.
(3) Jeffro Johnson has completed his Appendix N survey. Keep reading and he’ll explain what that means —
So it’s all up now.
With this piece on Tolkien going up, I’ve done forty-three posts on Appendix N now. I read every book Gygax mentioned by name, at least the first book of each series, and I picked out one representative work for each of the entries that consisted of an author’s name alone. I also wrote about two thousand words on each book.
(4) A bit more from 2013 on how journalists exploited Gravatar to identify online commenters.
“Crypto weakness in Web comment system exposes hate-mongering politicians”
Investigative journalists have exploited a cryptographic weakness in a third-party website commenting service to expose politicians and other Swedish public figures who left highly offensive remarks on right-wing blogs, according to published reports.
People have been warning of the privacy risk posed by Gravatar, short for Globally Recognized Avatar, since at least 2009. That’s when a blogger showed he was able to crack the cryptographic hashes the behind-the-scenes service uses to uniquely identify its users. The Gravatar hashes, which are typically embedded in any comment left on millions of sites that use the avatar service, are generated by passing a user’s e-mail address through the MD5 cryptographic function. By running guessed e-mail addresses through the same algorithm and waiting for output that matches those found in comments, it’s possible to identify the authors, many of whom believe they are posting anonymously.
“Disqus scrambles after leak fuels Swedish tabloid expose”
Disqus is updating its widely-used comments platform after a Swedish tabloid exposed politicians and other public figures for allegedly making highly offensive comments on right-wing websites.
The Swedish daily Expressen, working with an investigative journalism group, said it uncovered the identity of hundreds of people who left offensive comments at four right-wing websites through their email addresses. It then confronted the authors of the comments, many of whom freely admitted to writing them.
(5) “Dinner and a Movie with Vincent Price featuring Victoria Price” is in Toronto on November 18 and 19. The event at the Gladstone Hotel features a four course meal created by Gladstone Chef Katie Lloyd and inspired by the late actor’s 1965 cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes. Tickets are available.
And for nostalgia’s sake, here is a video of Vincent Price guesting on a cooking show with Wolfgang Puck.
(6) Jerry Pournelle reports that the new There Will Be War collection, volume 10, is filling faster than expected:
There are still a few fiction slots open, and we are looking for serious previously published non-fiction on future war; previous publication in a military journal preferred but not a requirement.
Oddly, some of the aspiring contributors don’t seem to understand what the collection is about. Publisher Vox Day warned —
PLEASE STOP SUBMITTING straight SF, urban fantasy, SF romance, and anything that is not clearly MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION. A submission will be rejected out of hand as soon as it becomes apparent that it is not mil-SF. We’ve received a startling number of submissions that are not even remotely relevant to one of the most famous anthology series in science fiction.
(7) Mascots meet under the Hugo at Octocon.
https://twitter.com/Frazerdennison/status/653200065645907968
https://twitter.com/Teddysteves/status/652580716081999872
(8) Ah, Sweet Marketing!
https://twitter.com/APiusManNovel/status/653544755507372032
(9) Nathan Barnhart’s review of Ancillary Mercy for Speculative Herald is touted as its “first 10 star rating”:
Along the way we get a few surprises. Most noticeable for me is the humor that is present more than at any other point of the series. Breq herself gives us some lighter moments; including padding a report with results of radish growing competitions. But most of the humor comes from the translator to the mysterious Presger (an alien group that once treated humans as their own ant farm but is now confined by a treaty). Zeiat, while acting as a translator between two races provides the humor by some humorous cultural misunderstandings. In lesser hands Zeiat could have been nothing more than a cheap form of comic relief but here she serves a very real purpose within the story. Beneath the humor of the misunderstandings is the constant reminder that even a culture as expansive as the Radch are at risk. The Presger are held in check only by a treaty they signed; a treaty the Radch still doesn’t completely understand the implications of.
(10) Io9 posted a detailed infographic “Get To Know The Incredible Starships of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy” a couple of weeks ago, which is even more fun now that I have read the third book.
(11) Screen Rant presents “10 Movie Outtakes That Made It To The Big Screen.”
(12) And here is my Get Out Of Literary Jail Free card, sent by somebody who thinks I will need it, because of the way I phrase Frankenstein stories in the Scroll.
[Thanks to Will R., Brian Z., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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@Aaron – I don’t care if you like May or not. I am not fighting to make you like him. I pointed out the details of an earlier reference where May called bullshit on Butcher’s post. I pointed out and provided the basis to substantiate May’s claim – even if you state and I concede that the fraternity wasn’t closed (which I didn’t claim) you are disregarding the remaining samples of tangible impact of the false UVA rape narrative, which was fueled by an internet population read to hop onboard the outrage train. With regards to whether or not there was libel sufficient to be actionable I am not a lawyer, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night – but both the fraternity and individual members are suing the school so I imagine we will get objective proof of just how actionable the legal basis is, if we wait long enough.
I felt that Brad was trying to argue both sides at once. Unreasonable-Brad doesn’t write as coherently as reasonable-Brad.
CF : “A part of me now wants to submit hundreds of not Mil-SF stories…but ones that aren’t obviously not Mil-SF until a few paragraphs in.”
JN: “What is your exit plan if they buy one or more of your stories?”
That’s a good point, Cam – I know that anyone choosing to publish with VD is far more likely to go on my “do not bother ever buying” list.
@lurkertype–“And another sign of the fragmenting/expansion of genres is that all the overtly Christian stuff now is its own genre(s). Christian mysteries, SF, fantasy, romance… they all have explicit Jesus and are marketed as such. Some of ’em even ain’t too sure about CS Lewis, all that allegory.
Not all of them–I got kicked out of a ‘mystery’ when the main characters kept stopping to pray for guidance and part way through was a two page dialogue of how the Holy Spirit brought one character out of darkness and into this new wonderful life. Praise Jesus.
If it had been marketed as ‘Christian’ or the ever popular ‘Inspirational’ ,I wouldn’t have picked it up.
I know it’s shallow but I just couldn’t get back into the story.
(I did go back and finish it because I’ve still got a hard time just dropping books after I’ve started them. But it was more of a ‘Fine let me just finish this thing’ read.)
The other thing the comments on the Gannon guest post show is that most of the hyperventilating over alleged slights and the denunciations for being insufficiently ideologically pure seem to come from the Puppies and their ideological fellow travelers like MRAs and GGers. And like May, they are perfectly happy to make up fake things to be outraged about so that gullible people like ratseal will rally to their cause.
My copy of Ancillary Mercy has *finally* shipped. It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow.
I’d better finish “The Buried Life” tonight, then …
PW : “Which is why, expat New Yorker that I am, that I am hoping the Cubs make the World Series this year.”
We were having a nice discussion on sf until you started throwing in fantasy here!
Camestros Felapton: I followed the link to VD’s blog and saw that Chuck Gannon is getting the formal denouncement both there and in comments at Monster Hunter because of a piece he wrote on Scalzi’s blog back in September. Larry C is more generous but the comments get harsh quick.
Gannon is highly intelligent, deeply analytical, and eminently reasonable (to the point that he has been pretty generous to the Puppies in terms of his estimation of their behavior vs the reality) — so the excoriation he is receiving there was inevitable; those are not much admired traits among the Puppies.
I give Gannon credit for being willing to approach the Puppies as suggested by commenters on Whatever. I hope that he does not take the Puppy response to heart.
Brian Z on October 13, 2015 at 10:17 am said:
He’s not, though. He specifically says, “A half dozen authors would have easily been considered on par with Tolkien in the seventies.” In the seventies. That’s pretty specific.
Sure, I’ve complained about Kids These Days (More than 20 years ago, when I was one of the kids) who played Call of Cthulhu without having any familiarity with Lovecraft. Some of that was just the usual nerd-hierarchy business, but also, I felt like people without a love for the original fiction tended to play the game differently, in a way I enjoyed less — they would get into the stats and numbers and miss the spirit of the thing, or try to play it to win, as if it were D&D.
I’ve also complained about Stephanie Meyer fans being so unfamiliar with the history of vampire fiction, and tried to press copies of Dracula into the hands of Twilight-loving relatives, usually to no avail.
@RDF. What can I say? SFF Fan I am.
Indeed. Additionally, if the Puppies in general want more numbers Gannon and people who like him are who they need to convince. James May then does sterling work alienating Jim Butcher 🙂
It would be funny if the quest for group purity wasn’t quite so disturbing.
It would be funny if the quest for group purity wasn’t quite so disturbing.
The core Pups will reduce their own movement to a handful of screaming reactionaries simply by being themselves in public.
Re: Kids These Days
As a Filer Whippersnapper, I feel compelled to mention I have Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles on my bookshelves. And a bunch of Anne McCaffrey. And Heinlein. And Tolkien. Etc. I’m also deeply tired (as I’m sure most Filers are by now, Whippersnapper or otherwise) of having to point out every damn week that actually we’re talking about this stuff because we love the genre and yes actually we’ve read quite a bit of it thank you very much. Puppy assumptions about “SJW” (also known as literally anyone who isn’t a Puppy) hatred of genre classics got old in April.
Jeffro is a nice guy. I still believe that, even after the insults he’s paid to the community here. He’s also ignorant about the state of genre and of fandom and uses that ignorance to make sweeping, inaccurate and offensive assumptions about anyone who isn’t broadly in his camp. I wish he’d stick to the books and enthusiasm instead.
@idontknow
If you mean “no-one likes the Puppies all that much” that would probably be close to true, but there are even exceptions to that. If you mean politically in general, you haven’t been paying enough attention.
@Brian Z
Could you quote the specific bit where Torgersen said that?
@ratseal
The problem is you’re trying to defend May’s point, and inevitably people are going to circle around to the fact that what May said isn’t true. He didn’t say any of the things you brought up. He said it was closed down. Defending your statements by saying that you didn’t say it was closed down while still linking your statements to May is dooming you to frustration.
@McJulie
Try Rice’s books instead for the Twilight fans. They’re a much more direct relation than Dracula. 🙂
Meredith: Could you quote the specific bit where Torgersen said that?
It’s in there — buried in amongst an avalanche of false statements and spurious accusations against people who aren’t Puppies.
Okay, I gave in to curiosity and read the Correia-blog “discussion” on the Gannon post. And that was quite a tossed wordsalad of uncooked kidney beans! I feel a tad queasy now. Pretty much as JJ describes it: “… an avalanche of false statements and spurious accusations against people who aren’t Puppies.”
I agree with Aaron, who posted above: “The core Pups will reduce their own movement to a handful of screaming reactionaries simply by being themselves in public.”
Even better, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germaine vampire stories. They predate Rice and are considerably better and more interesting.
Dracula is kind of buggy-whips, I’m afraid.
To add to the Kids Today Arguments, I’m not sure anything is ever really gone. I remember complaining loudly about how Kids Today don’t play boardgames anymore because they’re so busy with their video games. Then the hip kids started playing boardgames again.
So if a particular author has fallen out of favor, they can always be rediscovered and come back. If Harry Stephen Keeler can develop a modern day following then just about any authors/books can be yanked back from oblivion.
On the plus side, I still find the Puppy obsession with Marxists quite funny. It’s the joke that keeps on giving.
If they’d start fretting about heretics, too, they’d make my day.
@Laura, Allen:
The only part of that I disagree with is “will” reduce. They’re already a relative handful of fans.
@ Rev Bob: Yes, I see your point.
The only part of that I disagree with is “will” reduce. They’re already a relative handful of fans.
True. The funniest part of the comments on the Gannon post was that they immediately jumped to talking about how brilliant VD’s book about SJWs is and how the “SJWs” will inevitably turn on Gannon, all the while viciously turning on Gannon and displaying all of the other characteristics VD attributes to the dreaded “SJWs” in his pile of drivel. The irony in those comments is so heavy it could replace plutonium in nuclear weapons.
Dracula isn’t the only vampire fiction I’ve tried — I was using it as a representative stand-in. And I did manage to lend a younger co-worker a huge bag of “vampires that don’t sparkle,” so I really have no grounds for complaint.
Recently (ish) I saw a repackaging of Fred Saberhagen’s vampire series clearly intended for a Twilight audience — although now I can’t seem to find any examples, so maybe it was Yarbro’s series that I spotted. Heck, maybe it was both.
@McJulie & Brian Z,
Mind you, Gygax isn’t talking any more, but I personally go with (“half dozen”): 1. Brooks, 2. McCaffrey, 3. Moorcock, 4. Zelazny, 5. Lieber, and 6. Le Guin.
I discount the one-hit wonders in context of multi-volume epic fantasy, so Goldman (Princess Bride) and Ande (The Neverending Story) are out.
It could be Anthony (Xanth) but that’s got a very specific humorous take that would have gotten notice I think. Maybe Tanith Lee?
Silly But True
@Harold Osler: yeah, that’s happened to me too. Screech to a halt in mid-action to pray on it, and I’m out of the book. They couldn’t wait a couple minutes? It’s the ham-handed shoving it in that’s bad. I’ve read a lot of books where characters go to church, encourage others to, engage in modesty, chastity, etc. but don’t stop to hold a prayer circle while hot on the case and discuss Jesus for four pages. They just, you know… are good people. (Best books with Christians in: The Mitford Series, starring Father Tim and the folks of his small town.)
Also, I remain baffled why devout Christians will read “Christian mysteries” where you’ve got a serial killer kidnapping and torturing girls, but it’s A-OK as long as nobody cusses and Jesus gets praised once a chapter! Whereas a cozy mystery with a genteel dead body is anathema if the plucky girl has a drink or the manly lawman says “shit”.
@McJulie: I, too, would recommend Rice over Stoker to Twi-heads. Less of a huge gap in prose style, simply because of the passage of decades.
Rev. Bob: The only part of that I disagree with is “will” reduce. They’re already a relative handful of fans.
I got a good chuckle in there when BT refers to “the takeover of fandom conventions”. The cons haven’t been “taken over” by the people who are not Puppies. The cons have always been run and attended by a majority of people who aren’t Puppies. No one has “taken these conventions away from Puppies”.
Even after the Hugo voting totals amply demonstrated this, they still just don’t “get” that they are a very small subset of fans, and that nothing has been taken from them because they were never the majority of fans to begin with.
Where they got their strange sense of unjustified entitlement that, as a small minority of fandom, they are in a position to make demands that everyone else change and do things their way, is utterly beyond me.
@ meredith
There can be a delicate line between “don’t notice” and “choose not to comment on.” Although it’s not quite weirdo-extremist, I regularly notice posts here that assign opinions to nebulous but specifically labelled groups of people and then proceed to critique those opinions as if members of the named groups had, in fact, expressed them. It’s just as unpleasant when people I agree with do it as when people I disagree with do.
In the past few days I’ve been trying to work up to a comment along those lines without making it about any specific post or poster. So here it is: I, speaking solely on my own behalf and with no authority other than desire, would prefer if commenters could make their points without assigning opinions to others, absent or present. Quoting things that people have actually said is one thing, but arguing along the lines of, “Well Group X must think such-and-such and here’s why they’re poopy-heads” just makes me wince and feel a little dirty.
SW : “I swear, these people live in a fantasy world of their own devising. I remember reading a jeremiad by some right-wing commentator about how Rudyard Kipling was being wiped out and forgotten… the same day that I got the (then) new collection of his complete short stories from the Fantasy Masterworks line. They’re just making this nonsense up.”
Well, you know how it is when you’re telling people how great “Rick and Morty” or “Sense 8” is, and they’re looking at you and you can tell they’re thinking “I’ve never heard of them, they sound weird and boring, and maybe if I just nod, this idiot will go away and stop badgering me about them.”?
Well, imagine that sort of thing, but if you’re a conspiracy-minded resentful right-winger.
“You’ve never read Kipling?” This MUST be because the evil progressives are suppressing such stellar writing!”
1. Brooks, 2. McCaffrey, 3. Moorcock, 4. Zelazny, 5. Lieber, and 6. Le Guin.
Moorcock, Zelazny, and Le Guin maybe.
Lieber was more pulp, and by the 1970s had already written most of his fantasy fiction. He didn’t put out that much fantasy in the 1970s, and what he did was mostly short fiction. I’d say he is much more comparable to Howard.
McCaffrey was never really thought of as being in the same category as Tolkien. She was sort of off on her own, and while good, still clearly of lesser stature.
Brooks, no. No one thought of him as comparable to Tolkien. He was regarded as discount Tolkien at best.
Encouraged to hear multiple opinions with no dissent that Leckie has stuck the landing. Less encouraged that I live in an allegedly big city whose public library system is still living in the “The number of novels Ann Leckie has written is two” era but I’m only ~100 pages into The Dark Forest, courtesy of the same library system, so maybe they’ll fix that before I’m free to read a new possible Hugo contender anyway. I wonder how many copies they’ll order and how stiff the competition to be among the first to place a hold on one of them will be – when I placed a hold on The Martian back in July, there were more than 50 people in the queue ahead of me. I expect movie buzz beats Hugo buzz by a mile but maybe I’ll be surprised.
Is there a link to the Chuck Gannon comments that does not give Google juice to the blog itself? I am curious to see them but do not wish to go there.
Peace Is My Middle Name: Is there a link to the Chuck Gannon comments that does not give Google juice to the blog itself? I am curious to see them but do not wish to go there.
Here you go.
ETA: You may want to stock up on brain bleach.
Meredith: “Reading the comments over at Correia’s place is a really good object lesson in in-groups having literally no idea how they appear to outsiders. I wonder what weirdo extremist things occasionally get said here that we don’t notice?”
The next time I get it in my head to go trolling over there, I’m going to post under the name “Mr. Poopybutthole”, if I can get away with it, in honor of this comment.
Thank you, JJ.
That was illuminating.
About an hour left to vote in round 3 of the comics bracket.
@JJ: “The cons have always been run and attended by a majority of people who aren’t Puppies. No one has “taken these conventions away from Puppies”.”
In fact, I’m evidence of the opposite. I opted to discontinue my con-staff activities at a con once the Puppies claimed it.
To a great extent, I do see the Puppy Fiasco as an aspect of the Great American Culture War, but not in a way the Puppies would agree with. They see themselves as holding fast to the old stuff and being attacked by a vast liberal/PC wave. However, actual measurements have shown that the opposite is more accurate: the American Right is becoming much more conservative, while the Left is pretty much standing still. There is some consolidation on the liberal side, but that appears to be mainly due to the increase in polarization as moderates feel forced to choose a side. (The Daily Kos has an article on the phenomenon here.)
I’ve seen some people point to Fox News as a propaganda channel that’s driving this shift, and that sounds pretty accurate from here. I know several people who kind of dove off the deep end once they turned to right-wing media – particularly Fox – as their main news source. The pattern I’ve observed is that they perceive the channel as either neutral or static, while I see it as reaching further and further to the right in its quest to feed the outrage machine.
The Puppies I know fit that same pattern. Their trusted news source is telling them that the Eebil Libruls (aka everyone who is Not Them) are out to get them, and they believe it.
I believe they are channeling the ‘Freedom Caucus’ in the US House of Representatives. This group of 40 or so congresspeople, representing a minute percentage of the total US population, seems hell-bent on destroying the US economy, waging unending war, and generally just pulling the temple down around our ears. And no one in the Republican Party seems capable of standing up to them and calling bullshit.
I read today that Mitch McConnell over in the Senate has chosen Medicare and Social Security as his hostages in the fight to shut down the US government. In other words, the vandals will tear down the economy again unless the 98% who aren’t the Koch Brothers give up their retirement and health care.
Peace Is My Middle Name: Thank you, JJ. That was illuminating.
Also, when I made up my list of Filers for The Hunger Divergent Maze Running Filer Games Brackets, I noticed that you’d been on hiatus. It’s nice to see you again.
“The funniest part of the comments on the Gannon post was that they immediately jumped to talking about how brilliant VD’s book about SJWs is”
They also complimented VD, defended VD, and reiterated some of his viewpoints, and VD participated there, insulting the guest blogger (calling him a coward and a liar) without (as far as I saw) any suggestion from the host that VD insulting his guest blogger was unwelcome behavior.
So this discussion on Sad Puppy founder Larry Correia’s blog is yet another instance, among many, when I completely fail to see the distance, difference, and distinctions between the Sad Puppies and VD that many Sad Puppies have so insistently asserted exists.
I find it hard to believe that anyone can tolerate James May.
There’s no need to worry about how links made in comments here affect the Google ranking of the linkee; WordPress is inserting the “nofollow” attribute into all of them automatically.
While I’m all for vampires that don’t sparkle and martial arts, I hope that cover art was free stock art.
I’m confused…where is round three for the comics bracket? I can’t find it, I guess I thought we were on round two.
@ratseal
Aaron has covered the specifics of what May claimed better than I could, but what struck me as particularly wrongheaded from May was that Butcher was talking about this specific kerfluffle, in which no-one has lost a home, job, or life, but May couldn’t resist dragging the context out into his own idiosyncratic version of the culture war. Open support from Butcher would be incredibly valuable for the SP campaign, and one of their more volable members literally called bullshit on him for not being pure enough? You couldn’t make it up.
So this discussion on Sad Puppy founder Larry Correia’s blog is yet another instance, among many, when I completely fail to see the distance, difference, and distinctions between the Sad Puppies and VD that many Sad Puppies have so insistently asserted exists.
That’s because there are no differences or distinctions between the two. The Sad Puppies are lying when they claim they aren’t affiliated with the Rabid Puppies. They are so interwoven together as to be made of the same cloth.
Thank you.
I needed to go cold turkey for a while. Was getting too worked up about things.
@Aaron,
RE: Brooks. He was transformative for fantasy literature at that time. And so for that, I think he remains a viable candidate of the half dozen.
I’m aware he’s criticized for derivative elements and lack of Tolkien’s academic bond fides.
But anyone can say whatever they want or wanted to, Sword of Shannara sold. It’s been said it sold 125,000 copies in its first month of release and was the first fiction novel on NYT trade paperback bestseller list.
He can be discounted, because “everyone” bought him regardless whether they read or liked him.
Silly But True
Aaron: That’s because there are no differences or distinctions between the two. The Sad Puppies are lying when they claim they aren’t affiliated with the Rabid Puppies. They are so interwoven together as to be made of the same cloth.
I do believe that there are Sad Puppy supporters who believe that they are not affiliated with Rabid Puppies, the same way that I do believe that there are GamerGate supporters who believe that their cause is not about misogynistic attacks on women in the gaming industry. However, both of those sets of people are being duped and used by the groups in question as cover for their real agenda.
Numerous Puppies have shouted, “You should be sending Brad and Larry a thank-you note! Before the slates were published, they talked VD down from destroying the Hugos completely!” That, and the empty 5th SP slots in both Editor categories which were set aside for VD to fill, and the Castalia House entries on the SP slate, and the refusal of SP leaders to distance themselves from the RPs, and the massive overlap of commenters from the SP blogs to VD’s blog, all pretty much puts paid to the idea that they’re not two heads of the same Cerberus.
I thought Terry Brooks’ Shannarah books were coldbloodedly calculated to be imitation Tolkien-flavored snack chips for the masses.
Wasn’t that even the official story, the selling points?
Bizarre statement about Brooks. (“everyone bought him”). I looked at a book (the1st one I think), determined what it was, certainly didn’t buy it, never picked up another.