(1) The stars came out for White House Astronomy Night.
Watch live as the @WhiteHouse hosts #AstronomyNight at 7pm ET. Here's what to expect: https://t.co/3B56ANr3oe pic.twitter.com/MCnBJRjbNi
— NASA (@NASA) October 19, 2015
Why are moon rocks tastier than earth rocks? Because they're meteor! #astronomynight pic.twitter.com/ZYKV96MZT3
— MythBusters (@MythBusters) October 19, 2015
This #AstronomyNight, @POTUS called the @Space_Station! See our Tumblr blog for a breakdown: https://t.co/MYIV9j822y pic.twitter.com/GSWGOvzqHK
— NASA (@NASA) October 20, 2015
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/656273938650021890
(2) New interview with Liu Cixin conducted by Yang Yang for China Daily.
When, in a telephone interview, China Daily reminds him of that comment, he replies: “It’s not a joke. Aliens may arrive at any time. When it happens, everything, social and economic reform, educational problems, international conflicts or poverty, will become much less important, compared with the alien crisis.”
Big countries such as China and international organizations such as the United Nations need to be ready for such an eventuality, he says.
“It does not necessarily involve a lot of money and human resources. But we should prepare, in the fields of politics, military, society and so on. The government should organize some people to do related research and preparations for the long term.”
Unfortunately, he says, “no country seems to have done this kind of thing”.
In the postscript for the English version of The Three-Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu, Liu Cixin says: “I’ve always felt that extraterrestrial intelligence will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future. Other great shifts, such as and ecological disasters, have a certain progression and built-in adjustment periods, but contact between mankind and aliens can occur at any time. Perhaps in 10,000 years the starry sky that mankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent, but perhaps tomorrow we’ll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the Moon parked in orbit. … The appearance of this Other, or mere knowledge of its existence, will impact our civilization in unpredictable ways.”
(3) Bob Byrne’s “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special” at Black Gate has a lot of good information.
Back in July, what seems to be the most popular ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ post appeared here at Black Gate. I looked at what I think went wrong with season three of the BBC’s Sherlock. I included the just-released ninety-second, ‘first look’ video for the upcoming Special, to be aired around Christmas. And I pointed out it seemed to be full of the “Look how clever we are” bits that I lamented in my post.
Now, just about everyone, including myself, loves that the Special is set in Victorian times; unlike the episodes in the first three seasons. Cumberbatch and Freeman would be given their first (and quite likely, only) opportunities to play Holmes and Watson in the Doyle mold. I view it as a chance for the show to get back on track and reclaim the multitude of fans it lost during season three.
(4) Brad Torgersen, in a comment on Kevin Trainor’s blog, now says:
I had multiple conduits for suggestions, and the comments section was just one conduit.
But he doesn’t identify what those sources for the majority of slated Sad Puppy 3 fiction were.
(5) Francis W. Porreto does not approve – “Really Quickies: From The Garbage Heap” at Bastion of Liberty.
If you’d like a gander at “how the other side emotes,” take a look at this post at this hard-to-describe site, particularly the comments that follow commenter “alauda’s” citation of this bit of dark foreboding. These past two days a fair amount of traffic has come here from there.
Note the complete lack of rational analysis. Note the immediate and unconditional willingness to condemn me, as if the scenario I wrote about were something I actually want to happen.
(6) Alyssa Rosenberg, while commenting on “The downside of cultural fragmentation” in the Washington Post, touches on a familiar topic —
Debates over what kinds of books, movies, television shows, comics and video games get awards are often a proxy way of debating what our cultural values ought to be. The alternative slates that attempted to wrest control of Hugo nominations were based on the idea that awards voters had over-prioritized identity politics over the quality of writing and plotting; GamerGate erroneously asserts that there’s a movement afoot to ban or stop the production of video games with certain themes or images. While I don’t agree with the premises of either of those two cultural movements, I do think left cultural criticism has sometimes asserted political litmus tests for art in recent years, and that elements of the right, spurred by the sometime success of this approach, have fallen into the same patterns (for a good example, see the suggestions that the action movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” was anti-male).
(7) After Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories picked apart the Trek-related fanhistory in Kevin Trainor’s post on Wombat Rampant, Dystopic followed with his own critique of what Davidson had to say about Trainor on Declination.
As my readers probably know already, I consider myself somewhere on the Puppy spectrum of the Science Fiction community. There’s quite a bit of difference between the Sad Puppies, who one might call the reformists, and the Rabid Puppies who are mostly of the opinion that Worldcon and the Hugos should be burnt to the ground and set on fire by their own Left-wing, Social Justice proponents.
Either way, though, both camps agree that the existing community is hopelessly corrupt, cliquish, and prone to a particular animus against Conservatives and Libertarians. This prejudice is such that their works are repeatedly voted down from awards, publishers like Tor Books are run by individuals openly hostile to alternate political affiliations, and backroom deals are made to secure nominations for authors based on political backgrounds and special interests.
Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories confirms this for us in a ridiculous post, so loaded up with Strawmen that he might as well be the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Let’s allow him to hang himself with his own rope, shall we?
(8) Workaholics actor Blake Anderson appears in the Halloween episode of The Simpsons:
“Well, you know, we kind of feel a little disrespected by Homer and we show up at his doorstep basically looking for revenge,” Anderson explains. “So it turns into a full onPanic Room situation, where he’s kind of stuck in the attic and looking for him. We’re out for blood for sure.”
In the vein of the Treehouse episodes, Anderson says this one is not necessarily “piss your pants” scary, but, he assures, “me and Nick Kroll definitely brought our creepy to the table for sure.”
(9) Is this a clue to the future of Game of Thrones?
@livingston_tony Jon Snow from Game of Thrones passed me in Belfast City Airport tonight looks surprisingly healthy
— Tony Livingston (@livingston_tony) October 19, 2015
(10) Today’s Birthday Boys
- October 19, 1903 — Tor Johnson is born Karl Oscar Tore Johansson in Sweden. Especially known for his appearance in Plan 9 From Outer Space, although he had credits in all kinds of things, from the movie musical Carousel to Walter Cronkite’s You Are There nonfiction TV show.
- October 19, 1945 — John Lithgow is born. Acted in Twilight Zone, Third Rock from the Sun, Buckaroo Banzai…
(11) Today’s Birthday Book
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is 62 years old today. Phil Nichols explains:
FAHRENHEIT 451 was deposited for copyright at the Library of Congress on October 19, 1953. Both the first edition hardbound and mass market paperback carry this publication date, although the paperbacks actually reached the market a month earlier.
The McCarthy era’s climate of fear lingered beyond 1953, however; in spite of the book’s initial critical success, the first paperback printing took seven years to sell out.
(12) Diana Pavlac Glyer was very pleasantly surprised to find her forthcoming book Bandersnatch mentioned in a recent Publishers Weekly post, “Exploring C.S. Lewis’s Lasting Popularity – 52 Years After His Death”.
Coming in November, Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings (Kent State University Press) by Diana Pavlac Glyer and James A. Owen shows readers how encouragement and criticism made all the difference in books written by the Inklings. A companion coloring book by Owen is expected next spring.
(13) Learn how to make your pumpkin look like a galaxy nebula.
(14) Io9 says “The Glorious Poster For Star Wars The Force Awakens Has A Giant Planet Killer On It”. Almost needless to say, you can also see the full, high resolution poster there.
(15) This collection of “13 Creepy Bits of Bookish Trivia” at BookRiot lives up to its headline. Here’s one of the tamer entries.
- J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, is rumored to have been quite the odd character. However, after his brother died in a skating accident, Barrie would routinely dress up in his dead brother’s clothing in order to ease his mother’s grief. The tragedy of his brother’s death would come to inspire the character of Peter Pan.
(16) Tonight was the Terry Gilliam talk at the Alex Theatre. Crusading photojournalist John King Tarpinian snapped a picture of the marquee.
(17) Chuck Wendig in “About That Dumb Star Wars Boycott” begins…
Let’s imagine that you are, as you are now, a straight white dude. Except, your world features one significant twist — the SFF pop culture you consume is almost never about you. The faces of the characters do not look like yours. The creators of this media look nothing like you, either. Your experiences are not represented. Your voice? Not there. There exist in these universes no straight white dudes. Okay, maybe one or two. Some thrown in to appease. Sidekicks and bad guys and walk-on parts. Token chips flipped to the center of the table just to make you feel like you get to play, too. Oh, all around you in the real world, you are well-represented. Your family, your friends, the city you live in, the job you work — it’s straight white dude faces up and down the block. But on screen? In books? Inside comic panels and as video game characters? Almost none. Too few. Never the main characters.
It feels isolating, and you say so.
And as a response you’re told, “Hey, take what you get.” They say, can’t you have empathy for someone who doesn’t look like you? Something something humanist, something something equalist. And of course you can have that empathy because you have to, because this is all you know, because the only faces and words and experiences on-screen are someone else’s so, really, what else are you going to do?
Then one day, things start to change. A little, not a lot, but shit, it’s a start — you start to see yourself up there on the screen. Sometimes as a main character. Sometimes behind the words on the page, sometimes behind the camera. A video game avatar here, a protagonist there. And it’s like, WOO HOO, hot hurtling hell, someone is actually thinking about you once in a while. And the moment that happens, wham. A backlash. People online start saying, ugh, this is social justice, ugh, this is diversity forced down our throats, yuck, this is just bullshit pandering quota garbage SJW — and you’re like, whoa, what? Sweet crap, everyone else has been represented on screen since the advent of film. They’ve been on the page since some jerk invented the printing press. But the moment you show up — the moment you get more than a postage stamp-sized bit of acreage in this world that has always been yours but never really been yours, people start throwing a shit-fit. They act like you’re unbalancing everything. Like you just moved into the neighborhood and took a dump in everybody’s marigolds just because you exist visibly.
(18) Amy Sterling Casil recommends The Looking Planet.
During the construction of the universe, a young member of the Cosmos Corps of Engineers decides to break some fundamental laws in the name of self expression.
[Thanks to Will R., JJ, John King Tarpinian and Amy Sterling Casil for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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rob_matic asks:
The Marmalade Shore has stayed with me for a long time.
Microtherion : “And 1.11 meters deep?”
Lightyears.
Put this near the top of your Mount 770 if you can find a copy – http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Eater-David-Langford/dp/1930997795
Rcade
Please note that your ‘we’ does not include me. I strongly objected to Puppidum stuffing the ballot but I read as much of the Hugo packet as my liver could survive, and I voted for Sheila Gilbert notwithstanding the fact that she was on a slate.
This may seem odd to you but I object to all slates, just as I object to people claiming to speak for me. Please stop doing it.
Speaking of recommendations, some more current ones: Charlotte, School-Live!, and Gatchaman Crowds insight are all likely to appear on my list of anime from the second half of the year that Hugo voters should check out. They’re all 12-13 episodes, and about 24-minute episodes at that, and of course you’re free to give up after an episode or two if they don’t grip you.
Huh, now this is how you have a proper literary spat on twitter.
Re: Sherlock (3)
I loved the pilot episode, and I enjoyed the rest of S1 but felt nothing equalled the pilot. S2 was a bit shakier, but still mostly enjoyable. S3 mostly annoyed me. I haven’t got my hopes up for future episodes. It felt increasingly like indulgence by the writers with no-one to pull it together into a coherent whole. Too Big To Edit syndrome in television form.
(4) Torgersen is in fine evasive form.
Honestly that whole thread is rather depressing. Ordinary Puppies have facts bouncing off their chests, one of them basically just pulled “is it cos I is white?” which is bizarre, and Torgersen… Remember when mostly Torgersen seemed fairly decent and reasonable, at least in comparison to certain other Puppies? I miss that. Now Puppy-Mode-Torgersen spews insults, inaccuracies, baseless accusations, conspiracy theories, evasions, war rhetoric, and general nonsense constantly. I wish he’d take a break. I don’t think this is good for him.
(7) Did anyone else get the odd feeling that Dystopic read a different version of Davidson’s post? He seemed to me to be responding to things that weren’t there. (Also, the unintentional hilarity of someone complaining about strawmen while merrily strawmanning the left.)
(12) Congratulations to Diana Pavlac Glyer!
@Martin Wisse
For the sake of the poor innocent company in question, that greatly predates the hoohah, Gamergate is the group that likes harassing women in video games. Gamersgate is a video games shop. 😉
@Mark-kitteh: That thread is great.
@Microtherion
I balked at the word “disappeared” for the same reason, but I’m not sure how else to characterize it when someone is detained and questioned without being officially booked or allowed a phone call and refused access to counsel. I feel like it’s a difference of degree, but not of type. Without proper booking or records, anything could happen and nobody would know about it. Isn’t that why due process exists? (Real, not rhetorical question.)
Without proper booking or records, anything could happen and nobody would know about it. Isn’t that why due process exists? (Real, not rhetorical question.)
Yes.
@Cassy, Dawn:
I heard about Homan Square on MSNBC several months ago. Rachel Maddow covered it in some detail.
Microtherion: While this is really bad, I hesitate to characterize a detention of a few hours or even 2-3 days as “disappearing” someone. As far as I can tell from that article, there’s no suggestion that any of the detainees are actually never heard from again (which is what DID happen in e.g. the South American flavor of disappearing people).
Dawn Incognito: I balked at the word “disappeared” for the same reason, but I’m not sure how else to characterize it when someone is detained and questioned without being officially booked or allowed a phone call and refused access to counsel. I feel like it’s a difference of degree, but not of type. Without proper booking or records, anything could happen and nobody would know about it. Isn’t that why due process exists? (Real, not rhetorical question.)
My professional work has touched on similar situations in other countries. I think that the word “disappeared” for people who are detained and questioned without being officially booked or allowed a phone call and refused access to counsel is absolutely appropriate. For those it happens to, there is no foreknowledge that they will ever be allowed out or that their family will ever find out where they are.
I don’t like softening the definition of “disappeared” by using it to apply to an unlawful detention of a few hours or days.
Holding someone like that is unconstitutional and should be condemned, but it does not compare to the horror stories of the disappeared under Pinochet’s Chile. A person held for several days and set free can tell the story of what happened. Someone disappeared forever cannot.
Holding someone like that is unconstitutional and should be condemned
Legally, when a police officer detains someone unlawfully, even for a short period of time, that is kidnapping.
“I used to be a neutral
adventurerlike you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.”https://youtu.be/vncIBREXCwU
(4)
https://youtu.be/G2y8Sx4B2Sk
And by “word”, I mean “phrase”:
I also see Brad decrying “cultural Marxism,” which is a phrase I’ve heard on twitter, from similar folks . . .
I also see Brad decrying “cultural Marxism,” which is a phrase I’ve heard on twitter, from similar folks . . .
The truly hilarious thing is that Brad thinks that he and his fellow Pups are convincing bystanders of the rightness of their cause with their ranting and raving.
a detention of a few hours or even 2-3 days as “disappearing” someone
No records of them being arrested, no phone calls to family or lawyers, no news at all – it might be temporary, but until they’re out of Homan Square, they’re effectively disappeared. They aren’t even booked until they get out of there.
(I’ve seen coverage at Daily Kos and Raw Story.)
rob_matic on October 20, 2015 at 7:56 am said:
Rosemary Kirstein is self-publishing e-editions of her Steerswoman books. They are sooooooo good and ought to be enjoyable both for Fantasy and SF fans. They’re also inexpensive. Wonderful characters, excellent world building, the reveal of the [spoiler] is delicious to experience. Great relationship between Rowan and Bel. Even minor characters aren’t cardboard. Really well done.
S.L. Huang’s Zero Sum Game. I haven’t read the sequels yet, but I nominated that one for a Hugo this year. They are self-published. Maths as a superpower!
I read Annie Bellet’s Justice Calling out of curiosity and because it was free. I am NOT a fan of Urban Fantasy, but I liked that book. It’s the first book in her 20 Sided Sorceress series. I think book 6 is due out soon. They are also self-published. I went to her Kaffeklatch at Sasquan and she’s really interesting to talk to.
Here is a second recommendation for Heather Rose Jones’s Alpennia books published by Bella Books. Very small publisher. I understand the font in The Mystic Marriage trade paperback is tiny so you probably want to get e-books. I love Fantasy of Manners and this is Fantasy of Manners with fantastic characterization and people who love learning and figure stuff out using books and the law. Also some derring-do with swords. Love them.
This probably isn’t what you had in mind, but the earlier Vorkosigan e-books and “Penric’s Demon” (e-novella) are self-published by Lois McMaster Bujold. As she gets her e-rights back from Baen, she’s self-publishing the e-books. She is giving them all new cover designs even as I type (though I will be SO SAD to lose the UK e-cover of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance).
Someone must have told him about China Mieville.
That is the distinct impression I’m getting from the whole thing, too.
For those keeping score, it appears Jim Butcher has moved from semi-neutral to minor Puppy camp. His comment on a thread at Antonelli’s Facebook: “You know, I really wanted some kind of rapprochment between the various interests in WorldCon. I honestly did. Now… well. Maybe I’ll just spend my energy writing more books and not worry about it. They seem to have made very clear in their voting and the response to the voting that they don’t want any new folks showing up. And that’s cool.” I’ll note that I don’t recall seeing/hearing of any comment he made on Antonelli’s pre-Sasquan letter, which I’d say lowered the odds of folk singing kumbaya considerably.
I’m reading Kowal’s Of Noble Family and had to giggle when in the middle of a rather fraught chapter (our protagonists are dealing with notably toxic family and the terrible realities of slavery in the late 1700s in Antigua) I read this exchange:
Nice shout-out to The Princess Bride there, and perfectly in character for the characters…
It was, indeed, a bipartisan effort, fueled both by religious hysteria and extremely questionable, way more than borderline abusive theories of child psychology that have left a number of deeply damaged individuals and wrecked lives in their wake. The McMartin preschool Satanic panic is probably the most well-documented example: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_mcmar.htm
….As well as the longest criminal trial in the history of American jurisprudence.
In an appalling sidenote, the psychology practice — Children’s Institute International — at the center of all this apparently learned nothing from the experience and spent a good chunk of the early Oughts declaring their ability to detect incipient sexually predatory tendencies in children as young as two.
@Tom Galloway
And that is just, as Jim Butcher made it clear with the quality of the characterization in Aeronaut’s Windless that he doesn’t want many new folks showing up to read his books either.
McJulie:
Yes, in sweden this was mostly toted by progressives (but not only). There were aftershocks up to this year when an innocent was released from jail after 16 year and over 30 confessed murders (convicted of over 10 without any physical evidence).
Note that we had the same kind of panic around satanic murders and pedophilia, but in a secular country where those furthering the theories weren’t religious by themselves.
Satanic scares against heavy metal and such mostly came from the evangelic christians.
I’m pretty sure this Star Wars boycott is not a joke.
Because comparing John Boyega to a man in a planet of the apes monkey suit is just not funny.
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/20/racists-trump-fans-and-chuck-c-johnson-join-together-in-boycottstarwarsvii-crusade/#more-18518
A campaign so derisory that it truly beggars belief.
TheYoungPretender wrote
I just finished reading that. I thought it was better than his most recent Harry Dresdens. His tendency to drag sexuality in where it doesn’t apply is less than usual, but not entirely gone, unfortunately, and very little of the plot wraps up at the end of the book, which cost it points in the “stands on its own” department as far as I am concerned, but characterization… well, I didn’t tend to get the characters mixed up with each other, but some of them seemed a little–broadly drawn, perhaps? Like, if they had such and such a trait, then that trait would show up more than I would expect–as if Butcher was saying “don’t forget, she’s confrontational.” Was that what you were thinking of?
If you’re looking for great fantasy including a lot of urban fantasy, Charles de Lint has been self-publishing in digital form both his new fiction (as he now has no American publisher for his adult works) and a lot of older works that are out of print now.
See charlesdelint.com for all the details.
@TheYoungPretender And that is just, as Jim Butcher made it clear with the quality of the characterization in Aeronaut’s Windless that he doesn’t want many new folks showing up to read his books either.
Thanks for that. This was yet another book I wasn’t able to finish this past week. I may skim through to the end, just to see what happens (because some part of me really dislikes not knowing how things end), but I didn’t care who did what or why or, really, anything. I didn’t much care about his last Dresden novel, either, now that I think about it.
Anyway, I thought it was just me.
@Hampus
Well, that’s appalling. I had no idea the phenomenon (minus satanism) was so international.
A couple of years ago we had two people released in Texas after serving 21 years.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/texas-couple-kellers-released-prison-satanic-abuse
@Nate Harada
You’re right, that is appalling. But not, sad to say, surprising. The hysteria dies down, but nobody ever formally admits to being wrong, and only the innocent suffer any consequences.
On a note completely unrelated to anything, tomorrow is the beginning of my favorite convention of the year, Illuxcon — a small and focused convention of fantastic art in traditional media, with exhibitors from the US, Europe, and Australia. We go almost every year. It is an absolutely heady experience, interacting with the top artists in the field and seeing what they have come up with.
If there is anyone who can reach Allentown, PA, there are one-day admissions available for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday has some programming and demos; Sunday is just exhibiting and sales.
McJulie:
The scandal I’m refering to has an english wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall
But most cases were during the 90:s when there seemed to be an epidemic of satanic murders in Sweden and Norway.
Sigh.
Hugo voters love new people, Jim Butcher. They hate the tactic of stuffing the ballot to put them there.
They seem to have made very clear in their voting and the response to the voting that they don’t want any new folks showing up. And that’s cool.
Except for Cixin Liu, I suppose.
I’m also not sure how Butcher qualifies as “new”. He’s not really a secret. People just didn’t like his books enough to nominate them.
Jim’s gone full puppy.
Katherine Addison’s a fairly new person as well. OK, so she’s got the other name, which isn’t as new, but I’d not read her before.
Not boycotting the “new” Star Wars, I just don’t go to the movies anymore due to it not being a enjoyable experience due to the smart phone mis-users and small children of all ages. (And I still haven’t recovered from the Ewoks or JarJar.) When you can view a lifetime of known good movies at low cost in the comfort of your home, there’s no economic incentive to waste money just to say “First” or “Fifth” or “2^29th” at the multiplex.
As for the whole racial tension portrayed on the media, most of that is sensationalized for ratings. Nothing like a domestic struggle to increase viewing and take folks minds off the actions of the big men behind the curtains. There are still serious issues, but often the facts get overlooked for what maximizes the emotional noise. That being said, domestic gun sales are still increasing and no one in the local working class has any faith in the federal government. (Locally we do have a good leadership that’s working hard to build a great community of all the diverse “cat herds” of varying interests.)
No good new fiction at the local library, most of the recent sci-fi has been duds. And the free online stories are mostly yada-yada-yada. Maybe today authors need to take some psychotropic drugs since most of what is coming out is kinda grey. Or I’ve just read too much and can spot plot device #23 within a chapters worth.
(Switching to reality mode and working on some new software and gear for the next storm season. As for astronomy, a local guru has a cool idea for tracking night cloud coverage based on stellar visibility and seeing. Also we have figured out a semi-cheap way to visual track and identify the incoming aircraft to the local airport without radar/lidar, via image recognition and ADS-B in realtime. The optics are a pane though. 😛 )
rcade –
New folks like Cixin Liu or Katherine Addison?
That’s a special interpretation he’s got there. But I like his books so I’m glad he’s more concerned over writing the next one than worry about that nonsense.
Good Glob, some of that stuff, it is to weep.
@Cheryl S.
It’s currently hovering at the 47%, advancing by around 6% whenever I get done with a book I liked. And it’s not just us high-falut’in sway-do intellectuals who don’t like it; several people I know who love 1) Butcher, 2) Steampunk, and 3) Victoriana-inspired fashions have bounced hard.
Evidently a fair number of people share the puppy view of things. I don’t understand this but it seems to be a fact.
My comment was a generalization, not an assertion of absolute fact about every single Hugo voter who objected to slates. Obviously some people voted for nominees in spite of an objection to that voting tactic. But not enough for any of them to win except for Guardians of the Galaxy, and most of them lost by huge margins.
In general we showed that we hate slates. We didn’t even set aside our objection for the small number of Puppies-imposed nominees who were well-qualified to win.
You will have to break my legs to stop me seeing The Force Awakens at the cinema, mind you we are lucky to have a small family run cinema in our town, and they enforce a strict “shut up and behave or get out” policy.
@rob_matic:
I’ll second @ULTRAGOTHA’s recommendation of S.L. Huang’s “Russell’s Attic” series, starting with Zero Sum Game. The main character has super-math, so is deadly accurate with firearms and can figure the weak point of structures with aplomb. She’s not so good with people or morals, but begins to stumble towards understanding both as the series goes on. The series is also good about recognizing the damage the protag is doing to people around her and not letting her get away with it scot-free.
James Nicoll has reviewed all three books in the series.
Mark on October 20, 2015 at 9:59 am said:
Careful–you know how puppies react when accused of being not says.
On the Kindle side of things you could try my wife Mary Branscombe’s Cassidy Smith stories, a series of almost real life tech mysteries with more than a little humor on the side. She’s published three novella-length works so far…
Re the Chicago black site: I learned about the police in Chicago and the media’s utter disinterest in denouncing them from John Conroy’s Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: the Dynamics of Torture, which will be mandatory reading in every school as soon as I become World Dictator.
One of a series of Great Books About Terrible Things I own, subset Great Books About Torture.
John Conroy is a terrific journalist and writer, covered some of this stuff going back to the Eighties, and could not make ends meets as a journalist. I think he deserves credit for trying to cover police brutality in Chicago and writing about it so beautifully.
I USED TO BE NEUTRAL UNTIL …
…I woke one morning to find aliens had pithed me while I slept.
…Behavioural psychologists strapped me into a chair, forced my eyes open, and made me watch Fox News for days on end while classical played in the background.
… room 101.
… I read Atlas Shrugged
> “I like his books so I’m glad he’s more concerned over writing the next one than worry about that nonsense.”
Me, too. I own sixteen of Jim Butcher’s books, six of them in hardcover.