(1) A sweet new image for science fiction loving dogs!
Cool Corgi Dresses Up As All 13 Doctors From ‘Doctor Who’ —
(2) What brand of cigarettes did Godzilla smoke? I never wondered before. See behind-the-scenes photos from the Japanese movie productions, including the fellow who wore the monster suit taking a smoke break. At Dangerous Minds.
Actor Haruo Nakajima (pictured above) spent nearly 25 years inside the rubber Godzilla suit that he gleefully trampled over mini-Tokyo in for various Godzilla or monster-themed films from the early 50s through the 1970s.
(3) James Lileks’ satire for National Review, “The Twitterverse Strikes Back against the Phantom Menace of Anti-Star Wars Racists!”, begins –
According to my Twitter feed, gullible people are complaining –
I should just stop right there and wrap it up, right? After breaking news like that, where could I possibly go?
…Anyway. If Luke comes out in the new film wearing the Leia slave bikini; if Chewie marries Groot; if Han makes a big speech about how the end of the Empire means they can rebuild the galaxy along the lines of, say, Denmark; if the main villain is named Ben-Ghazi — then you might complain that you’re being Force-fed some political drivel. Even then it wouldn’t matter.
(4) A pretty fancy bookmark. A map of Middle-Earth annotated by J.R.R. Tolkien for illustrator Pauline Baynes is being sold by Blackwell’s for 60,000 reports the Guardian.
A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.
The map was found loose in a copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own colour Map of Middle-earth for Tolkien, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970. Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.
Blackwell’s, which is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for £60,000, called it “an important document, and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least”.
It shows what Blackwell’s called “the exacting nature” of Tolkien’s creative vision: he corrects place names, provides extra ones, and gives Baynes a host of suggestions about the map’s various flora and fauna. Hobbiton, he notes, “ is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford”; Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.
David Doering argues, “I feel that such artifacts need to be in public, not private, hands. This is a critical piece of our cultural history and is of immense value. It should not allowed to disappear into private hands.”
(Fifth 4) John C. Wright explains how “My Elves are Different; Or, Erlkoenig and Appendix N”.
When calculating how to portray the elves in my current writing project (tentatively titled Moths and Cobwebs) I was thinking about Erlkoenig and Appendix N, and (of course!) about GK Chesterton. There is a connected train of thought here, but it meanders through some ox-bows and digressions, so I hope the patient reader enjoys the scenic route of thought.
First, Erlkoenig. I had noticed for some time that there was many a younger reader whose mental picture of the elves (those inhabitants of the Perilous Realm, the Otherworld, whose ways are not our ways) was formed entirely by JRR Tolkien and his imitators. They are basically prelapsarian men: like us in stature and passions, but nobler, older, and not suffering our post-Edenic divorce from the natural world. This is not alien to the older themes and material on which Tolkien drew, but there is alongside this an older and darker version.
(5) Nancy Fulda outlines “What To Expect When You Start An Internet Kerfuffle” for the SFWA Blog.
And so you write a blog post.
It is the most difficult and most magnificent thing you’ve ever written, pure words of truth sucked directly out of your soul. You feel triumphant. Liberated. (Terrified, too, but that doesn’t matter now.) You have said the Thing That Must Be Said, and you have done so with courage and clarity. You click a button, and send your words winging toward humanity.
And then, of course, the internet does what the internet does best.
It starts kerfluffling….
Day 2: Negative feedback.
Your post has reached people with opposing viewpoints. Many of them. Blog posts pop up across the internet, criticizing and often misrepresenting your stance. Angry comments multiply like weeds. Email conversations ensue. You become embroiled in a number of difficult and confrontational exchanges, often with people who seem incapable of understanding what you’re trying to say.
You may get hate mail. Depending on what you’ve said and who you’ve said it to, the content of those emails may be very, very ugly indeed. Your hands are trembling by the time you click the delete button.
By the end of the day, you’re afraid to check your email. Comments are still rolling in, and somehow, even the positive messages only make you more aware of the bad ones. You wonder whether this was all a mistake. At the same time, you can’t stop refreshing your screen. The rest of your life has ground to a screeching halt; deadlines missed, meals skipped, loved ones neglected. Even when you’re not online, your thoughts are spiraling around what’s happened there.
And people are still retweeting your post.
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy
- October 23, 1942 – Michael Crichton
(7) Last weekend the Iron Hill brewery chain in Pennsylvania offered Harry Potter-themed fare reports Philly.com.
The pub will serve Dumbledore’s Dubbel, a sweet Belgian ale; and Voldermort’s Wrath, a West-Coast style IPA with an intense bitter hop flavor. In addition to the limited brews, a Harry Potter-themed menu will be served for those hungry wizards. Items include:
- Aunt Petunia’s Mulligatawny Soup
- Slytherin Smoky Pumpkin Salad
- Ron’s Corned Beef Toasts
- Hogwart’s Express Pumpkin Pastry
- Dumbledore’s Cauldron Beef Stew
- Butterbeer-Braised Pork Loin
- Pan-Seared Chinese Fireball (salmon)
- Mrs. Weasley’s English Toffee Crumble
For the non-beer drinker: Butterbeer and autumn-themed mixed drinks will be available.
(9) Details about J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter play are online. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will pick up 19 years after the seventh book, and it will focus on Harry and his youngest son, Albus. Here’s a brief about the plot play’s website:
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.
While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
(10) Here’s some artwork from the forthcoming production.
(11) The pilot and second episode of Amazon’s original series The Man In The High Castle can be viewed for no-charge here through 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, October 25 in the U.S. and UK.
The season launch of all episodes will be November 20.
(12) Andrew Liptak recalls the history of science fiction in Playboy magazine at Kirkus Reviews.
(13) Alastair Reynolds covers his trip to Russia on Approaching Pavonis Mons.
My wife and I are big on art, and we’d long wanted to visit the Hermitage. I can safely say that it was everything we’d hoped it would be, times about ten, and although we went back for a second day, you could cheerfully spend a month in the place and not see enough.
(14) Zombie George R.R. Martin will soon be on the air:
For all you Z NATION fans out there, and those who aren’t (yet) too, my long-anticipated guest starring role as a rotting corpse is scheduled for the October 30 episode, “The Collector.”
(15) At Teleread Chris Meadows pays tribute to prolific Amazon reviewer Harriet Klausner, who was an important part of the growth of online book sales via Amazon.
Harriet Klausner, at one time one of the most recognizable names on Amazon, passed away on October 15, at the age of 63. Klausner was a speed-reader who was one of the most prolific customer reviewers on Amazon, with over 31,000 reviews to her credit at the time of her death. According to a 2006 Time profile of her, she read an average of 4 to 6 books per day. Although the details of her death were not disclosed, it must have happened fairly quickly—the last review on her Amazon.com reviewer page is dated October 12.
(16) Jonathan R. Eller speaks about Fahrenheit 451 at Wisconsin Lutheran College on October 26.
(17) The wisdom of the Fred!
https://twitter.com/FredKiesche/status/657600422794915841
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Robotech Master, Phil Nichols, Steven H Silver, David Doering, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day the indefatigable Will R.]
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I note from others comments that that Brian Z is back, and appears to be up to his usual antics of misrepresentation and trolling.
FYI/A, Tegans compilation of the various killfile / highlight codes are here.
If you’re using the Stylish extension, you can use the following link in Userstyles.org to install the killfile automatically. Note that you may want to review, and remove or add to some of the names included on that list. Personally, a couple have made it out for me.
Stevie
I’m happy to report that Exiles Gate was chuffing brilliant. It took me a while to get through as the dense prose and stream of consciousness style didn’t work well with my commuting reading (45 minutes each way and the first of those at 7am) but the wait was worth it.
Plus I’ve managed to finally get my hands on a copy of Cyteen too…
The No Awards themselves were the primary issue anyway, from a Puppy perspective. The cheering was the insult to injury only. Removing the cheering would not have removed the injury, and so the cheering is something of a red herring to belabour WSFS members with. I don’t appreciate the attempt to police the emotions of the people at the ceremony or at home who cheered, to be honest.
Personally, while I can see the point of those who were disappointed in the cheering – a group that includes quite a few non-Puppies – either (or both) because they felt that the need to No Award was a tragedy rather than anything to celebrate or because they felt that it was just disrespectful, I think that it was inevitable as an expression of relief. Until the ceremony people didn’t know whether the supporting members were Puppies or not. The cheering was a release of tension as much as it was a celebration that the Hugo’s had been defended from slates.
@ Greg Hullender
re: Beyond EPH
IIRC the recommendation of our voting expert to make EPH more effective was to increase nominations to 7 or 10 out of which 5 would be picked and, obviously, to increase the number of nominators.
I think he originally suggested just turning nominations into a form of IRV. Rate your noms from 1 to 5 or 7 or…, and then I don’t remember how the votes were tallied to keep a slate from dominating, but there was something! :-9
Any of these would be more in line with Hugo culture and much more palatable than judges, imo.
@junego: for what it’s worth, I thought that Gene Mapper was an excellent first novel.
Back in the late 70s I stumbled across a book -can’t recall the title – by Neil Hancock, that was one of the early Tolkclones (at least from the half I read). Brooks’ Sword of ShaNaNa is the canonical example, but since I tend to judge books by their covers I’ve skipped a lot of clones. (I also avoid books with maps depicting the ocean on the left: not always an indicator of extruded fantasy but it’s one of my filters.)
I certainly looked at extending IRV to the process of drawing up the final ballots – there is a well-established methodology for using preferential voting to elect more than one position, and in general it is my preferred system for public elections. But for Hugo nominations it doesn’t really work; it’s a system that really needs as many voters as possible to rank as many of the options as possible. Also I felt that introducing ranking at nomination stage as well as at final ballot stage changed the nature of the process too much. EPH responds much better to the problem without much change to the way voters form their input, especially if the number of nomination allowed is increased a little.
There is precedence for adding works to the shortlist as a response to slating, but I believe that only required adding one work in two or three categories. I’m not sure it would work quite as well as a response to a five or nearly five candidates in most categories slate.
The idea of having a ballot where I got to choose between Three Body Problem, Ancillary Sword, Goblin Emperor, Lock In, and City of Stairs (plus the various Puppy picks) holds a great deal of appeal… But the length of the shortlist would have been ridiculous if you kept including more works until you had five that hadn’t been on a slate. 🙂
(Plus I’m pretty sure the Puppies would complain about it very, very loudly.)
On recs of Filers, I’ve bought Valente’s _Radiance_ (one thing and another in the past had led me to eschew her work, but could not resist what you all were saying!).
Nthing the love for _Watchmaker of Filigree Street_ including (vaguely remembered from earlier thread), horrible fears of terrible bad awful no good very icky ending element that was completely averted in a way which worked beautifully, whew.
LeGuin and Leckie!
I’m teaching a class in the spring (graduate online) in which I will be assigning both books. The course is “Marginalized Literatures” — different people teach it, with wildly different emphases (we have a number of courses that allow for that approach, and students can take them twice when the genre changes). A colleague of mine recently taught Hispanic Literature, and I’ll be teaching Women SFF authors, with the following assigned texts (these are the ones they’ll buy–we’ll be reading LOTS of stuff on the internet because I take a cultural studies approach rather than aesthetic approach in my literature courses):.
The Secret Feminist Cabal Helen Merrick (one of the two best intellectual histories of feminisms in sff, the other being Justine Larbalestier’s Battle of the Sexes which I’m not teaching only because we’re trying a “flex term” schedule in which this course will start two weeks past the regular start date and run for 14 weeks and not 16 don’t ask why it will lead to an ugly ugly ugly ugly nasty rant about the vagaries of state fucking formula funding and gaming the system and grrrarghhulksmash and luckily Merrick has a superb summary of the main points Larbalestier makes and heck I’m focusing on more recent works so it’s not that much of a bad thing…).
The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. LeGuin (1969)
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie (2015)
The Female Man Joanna Russ (1975)
Sister Mine Nalo Hopkinson (2013)
Ammonite Nicola Griffith (2002)
The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin (2015)
And this was decided weeks ago!
But it was too good to miss — so many people focus on the pronouns in both works (and ignore so much else), and despite the apparent similarity, choosing one pronoun as the generic/neutral/only pronoun to be used, the multitudinous differences in the two are so amazing that I think it will be great, especially given all the current debates over pronouns and non-binary gender.
LeGuin’s narrator protagonist is a cis man who is unable throughout (it’s been a while since I read it, and this is just my memory who I think is also straight) to acknowledge/deal with Gethenian biology and who uses ‘he.’ And as others have noted here, it was hotly debated at the time of publication and after with LeGuin herself deconstructing/analyzing the choice later (but yeah, 1968, and she got to write “The King was pregnant” which is pretty awesome), as well as the problematic way that Gethenians who preferred same-sex relationships were treated in the novel.
I just recently reread Leckie’s whole trilogy because I want to write a review of it as a whole (haven’t read the thread on the novel here because I want to write up my own thoughts, plus toobusy), and what struck me re-reading the first two is how often I laughed out loud at some of the moments where biological sex and or gender roles were foregrounded in ways that highlighted the gap between the Radchai language which has only one pronoun and the gender markers in other languages, and the breaks between my expectations as a reader in a culture which still has a gender hierarchy which was until recently reflected in pronoun usage (“he” as universal/neutral/human HAH–the pronoun wars of the 1970s in the U.S. at least were long, prolonged, and involved a lot of ridiculous claims about the fall of western civilization). The penis festival, and the backstory to that (which as I recall was one leader’s assumption, not the whole culture’s response to the Radchai), is funny when seen through Breq’s eyes.
I loved the usage of “she” throughout, as well as the incredibly sly way that it acted to comment on both a certain strand of feminist thought about gender and power (the one that women are naturally less oppressive/controlling/etc.) and on sexist thought about gender and power. And the ending of the third book, and what i now see as brilliantly crafted narrative arcs throughout (I’m not sure I can think of any other trilogy that is so tightly woven and plays out so beautifully in the final novel), emphasizes how much this story is about power in general and hierarchies including but not limited to sex and gender–all the ongoing commentaries about the different status given different ethnic groups on colonized planets despite Radchai rhetoric is so well done (and I’ve not seen that talked about too much). I may just say to heck with it and go read the thread because current schedule does not have much free time.
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to teaching the two books back to back and having students research online reviews and fan commentary and discussion of them.
Ian P.
I envy you so much; you’ve got Cyteen ahead of you!
Damn; I’ll just have to pretend, in a very laid back way, that we cosmopolitan travellers do pretty well, provided, of course, we keep track of immortal minds in the hives which may result in us coming to a sticky end…
@Meredith — the sad rabid position is “we’re not winning, so someone’s cheating”.
(The less charitable interpretation is “We should win. Start having our stuff win”.)
Neither of those positions deserve consideration. (“here is the material evidence of impropriety in the voting” would, but that’s not at all what the sad rabids are bringing to the party.) So I don’t think it matters how much they complain.
The Hugos are a beauty contest; what matters is the number of people nominating works out of a personal and sincere affection. In that respect, more is better.
And, really, if there were more, EPH wouldn’t be required. (It won’t hurt, and helps with the traditional relatively low numbers of nominations and in categories where there are sort of inevitably low numbers.) So I think the only really important thing is a cultural change where “do you care enough to spend 40 USD? great! nominate!” is a normative position.
@rrede
I love your wall o’ texts. I always feel like I’ve learned something. 🙂
@Graydon
Yes indeed, and luckily that seems to be happening! So long as that continues to spread – and I hope it will – the only minor adjustment needed will be to make sure people know that its okay not to have a full list. If you only want to nominate in abc categories but not xyz, that’s okay! If you only have one or two candidates fir a category, that’s okay too!
I still think EPH will be worthwhile on the basis that I doubt nominations will increase enough to resist a Puppy slate any time in the next, say, five years, and that there’s no guarantee that if they did increase enough they’d stay at that level and never dip.
In case anyone’s interested, I’m keeping a running list of noteworthy short fiction on my BookLikes page. If it’s on the list, I thought it above average; boldface means that if it gets on the ballot, I will heartily agree it’s worthy to be there. (1 novella, 5 novelettes, and 13 short stories so far; I think I know which 5 stories are at the top of the list, but it’s certain to change before the deadline.) It’s not nearly as useful as Rocket Stack Rank because there are no descriptions or reviews.
IanP
And that was a reference to Serpent’s Reach, which is really not a good place to be if you are scared of hive minds…
Meredith, may I suggest the the lists of these-are-what-Filers-said-they’re-looking-at-putting-on-their-ballots be organized in some completely random order, like order that they were mentioned on this site? I don’t like alphabetical, because it privileges authors who happen to have early-in-the-alphabet names.
If that’s too difficult to keep track of, maybe alphabetize by title rather than author?
Just a thought….
Cassy B: “early-in-the-alphabet names.”
As someone whose last name begins with R (and who has a pseudonym that begins with A planned for a novel), totally!
In my grading, I try to vary (i.e. do not always start with students at start of alphabet) because I worry about it affecting grading. That was easier when I had hard copies and could either grade the random stack as they came in or start in the middle, etc. (I tended to alphabetize then grade because otherwise it bugged me–according some some theories, it would be best to grade without seeing any name).
Meredith: Thank you!
It never *feels* that long when I’m writing it, but wow, sometimes when I proof it (and hastily shove in a few paragraph breaks), it looks long!
Re: Gilligan’s Island earworm.
It’s possible to sing a number of Emily Dickinson’s poems to the theme song (also to the music of “Yellow Rose of Texas.”)
One theory I read is that the metrical pattern of her poetry (similar to the hymms popular at the time) is the same ‘beat’ pattern as the songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssfYCrRe7lE
I’ve actually done this in intro to poetry units (less cruel than making students do it, though they did have to suffer through my singing) to convey the concept of metrical patterns (and emphasize orality of poetry).
@Cassy B
It can’t be too random – partly because that ends up being a nightmare for me (have a look at the pre-sorting version of the 1941 list in that thread and you’ll probably understand why). I’m not sure whether alphabetising by title would do anything except shift the favour onto titles in the earlier part of the alphabet, but I’m not really fussed which one I use. Either of them are fairly simple for me to administrate.
I don’t want to use the order they were mentioned because it seems to me that would privilege things published earlier in the year, and those already have an advantage. I suppose I could reverse it but either way it would be hard to administrate – that pre-sorting list linked above was done using that system, and it was um. There was a lot of scrolling up and down and double-checking. And a couple of duplicates that I almost didn’t catch. Basically: A total pain.
What say everyone? Any preferences for sorting method for best compromise between no undue favour conveyed and not driving me completely batty? I favour alphabetical but if there’s a better option I’d love to know.
rrede: It’s possible to sing a number of Emily Dickinson’s poems to the theme song (also to the music of “Yellow Rose of Texas.”)
Basically, anything in rough ballad stanza will work with “Yellow Rose of Texas.” Here’s another one to use as an example (I have): Frost’s “Stopping by Woods” to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway.” If you can bring yourself to do it with gestures, or dance steps, it can really change the students’ concept of rhythm and meter . . . 🙂
>> I favour alphabetical but if there’s a better option I’d love to know. >>
Alphabetical but with the alphabet randomized by dice.
So, for instance, your list might start with authors whose last name begins with J, then Y, then E, and so on.
Within each letter, it would be alphabetized normally, because leave us not be cray-cray.
rrede: Indeed, that syllable pattern is so common in English poetry that it’s got a name: Common Meter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_metre
And that’s why you can famously sing (almost) anything to Greensleeves. Common Meter.
@Kurt Busiek
Huh! That’s not a bad idea. I could keep it straight right up until publishing and then it would only be a matter of some copy-pasting to scramble it. Simple for administration and less predictable in the influence.
Although I’m resenting any and all implications that I might have benefitted from my early-alphabet privilege, of course. (Disconsolate Dragons time?) 😉
I think alphabetized by title (after all it is focused on works not authors).
Luckily, I can spurn the idea entirely, in my case, since I work in a business where things are largely alphabetized by series title (and sometimes by publisher).
I’m a middle aged woman who reads widely and almost indiscriminately. I read mysteries, sci-fi, histories, how-to’s, biographies, politics, you-name-it. But Ancillary Justice was the first book I’ve read since the early 70s that actually gave me that little blinking, shift-in-perspective that we used to call the “click” moment. Perhaps other readers here can read a description of a crowd and immediately assume half of it is female and half of it is male. But the default for most of us is, unless described otherwise, male. Ancillary Justice turned that default around AND was a fine story as well. And even though she points out again and again, that specific characters are male, her use of the feminine pronoun over and over made me pay attention to the details of her world building in a way I hadn’t bothered to in years. I found the challenges to my own assumptions to be incredibly refreshing.
I stopped quoting here because otherwise I’d be quoting the entire darn comment because YES. I remember, as I was reading Ancillary Justice, looking up and remarking to nobody but the cats, “OOH, this is good, I love the way it’s making my brain work!”
Dear rrede, please write (at whatever length you find sufficient) upon your current musings and then give us a link to it. (Speaking from a selfish perspective: I want to read your thoughts on this!)
@Kyra: Re: Far-too-specific playwriting guidelines:
I suspect you have probably seen this, but it’s one of my favorites in the genre. The genre of collections of fake play submission guidelines:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/submission-opportunities-for-emerging-playwrights
AAARRRRR!!!! I read that article and now I have the words to the Australian national anthem running through my head to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun.
You cannot unhear it!
I’m trying to remember why I went with author for the 1941 list. I think it was just that so many authors was represented with multiple stories, and people tended to suggest in author-related chunks due to being particular fans of that author. It was just easier to keep them straight and stick with that order, but I don’t think that reason would apply to the 2016 Hugo’s (my gut feeling is that people are less prolific, plus people aren’t usually suggesting things by author in chunks) nor is it particularly challenging (just time-consuming) to change the 1941 list to sorted by title.
So – currently thinking titles and alphabetical, then scrambled as in Kurt’s suggestion. Still open to suggestions.
Kurt Busiek, yes, I had to ask a librarian to find “Through Open Doors” for me, because although I knew it was somewhere on the shelf, I simply couldn’t figure out the way the graphic novels were organized. <rueful> And I thought I was an expert at navigating library stacks, too….
(He reassured me that the shelving system for graphic novels could be confusing… and then spent five minutes looking before he found it, which made me feel perversely better…)
So I’ll be reading it sometime in the next three weeks….
Camestros: It’s not Common Meter, but I often sing the US national anthem to the tune of “The Ashgrove”. It works really surprisingly well.
@Kurt Busiek
Since I’ve only been in a competitive/merit environment for, hm, about eight months of my lifetime, I can’t really say it would have had much impact on my life so far. 🙂
Aaand reminder – the live-action television bracket nominations are open! Read the rules (that bit is important) and pick your five.
The Machete order of viewing the Star Wars films. A very interesting read about story structure (and almost no Jar-Jar). I’ll have to try this some day.
Hat tip, @courtneymilan
http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/
You couldn’t hear any cheering (for No Award) and certainly no booing at all on the live webcast of the Hugos. So Puppidum has found yet another thing to blow all out of proportion and twist to their stupid agenda.
And certainly no SJW sets up a “friend” to serve their own agenda and pays for them to watch his Xanatos Gambit. That’s truly sadistic.
@Mary Frances: “whose woods are these/I think I know… you look mah-velous!”
Also, I just sang “Advance Australia Fair” to “Yellow Rose of Texas”, and “Casey At the Bat” to “House of the Rising Sun”.
The late 70’s and early 80’s were FULL of MMPB of Extruded Fantasy Product; thankfully most of it has probably rotted away into vinegary piles of paper in landfills. The memory of it lives on in the great “Tough Guide to Fantasyland”. (Stew. Horses.)
Can people name or ID some others?
Dennis L. McKiernan’s books are pretty derivative of Tolkien.
@lurkertype
I watched on livestream and I heard both cheers and boos – but the boos were very quiet and only audible for about a second. The cheers were audible every time, but particularly for Wesley Chu’s Campbell, the first indication that the Puppies didn’t have a majority, and of course particularly for the first No Award – Related Work – because it confirmed the lack of a sizeable Puppy faction. Mostly the cheers were quite brief for the later No Awards, which I think is evidence of the cheers being primarily a cathartic release of the tension of not knowing for certain who had the numbers.
Incidentally, while I was quickly fact-checking this I came across a comment of mine from just before the first NA:
So, I continue to be strangely unbothered that moderates might have turned against the Hugo’s because of the ceremony. Surely most of them would have seen what I did?
PS. Has the video disappeared for anyone else? http://livestream.com/worldcon
ETA: Also worth noting that the hosts prompted people to clap for the Puppy nominees at the end of the nominee announcement list and prior to the No Award announcement. That’s right: The hosts got people to clap. Worth remembering.
Also that the very sad memorial list immediately followed, in what I assume was to puncture any too jubilant responses to the No Award. Perhaps that also contributed to the more perfunctory applause for the later ones.
Meredith,
I can watch the Hugo ceremonies here.
@Soon Lee
The ustream versions are always so shakey and unreliable for me.
My only problem with the Jackson interpretation is it was all very sudden, when to me reading it her Scariness was a slow build up starting of sweetness and light and getting darker and darker. Then when she drops it for the simple elf maiden guise, saying she will diminish and sail to the West, you can feel the pain of what she is giving up, the strength of will she posesses to forego the temptation, and the loss to Middle Earth when the elves leave.
@Jayn
{Face palm} You are right of course.
@Meredith
How about alphabetical by author, but start with N (NOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLM).
I have gotten to the point I don’t care what *any* puppy thinks about anything. The ones who blog (at least from the links I’ve read here) seem to create their own reality and are immune to facts.
For tough, macho gun-loving white guys, they sure are pathetically sensitive to any minor slight or insult. And they *purposely* read insults into anything a SJW might say or write.
Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar trilogy was very Tolkein derived. But not extruded. Even then he was very good, and he kept getting better.
@Ita
I will make a note of that idea! I’m going to leave the floor open to the people smarter than me who will hopefully know whether that or Kurt’s idea is the most neutral.
ETA: I don’t especially care what Puppies think, but their whining is terribly annoying to listen to and I’d rather not have to. On he extension of the shortlist, I think they could actually make the complaint look legitimate: Authors getting a leg up because the Puppy nominees are considered “second class”. Although, since one of those authors would have been Scalzi, they probably would have ruined it by SCAAAALZIII Khaning all over the place. Nothing destroys Puppy credibility like Scalzi being a topic of conversation. His work is too close to the stuff (the not-superversive majority of) Puppies claim to like – fun and snappy milsf.
Your only argument so far has been that it doesn’t matter whether JCW’s fans voted in lockstep since that is unrelated to them being outraged by accusations made against them. Do you have another point, or would asking you put words in your mouth again?
That’s an excellent summary of our disagreement.
On the subject of Tolkien derivatives, the Brothers Hildebrandt wrote a book called Urshurak back in the 70s that was extremely Tolkien-imitative and generally crap otherwise. Lovely art though.
As Brian would surely note if presented with an answer like that from someone else…
He’s just admitted that yes, he does expect people to give awards to the tools of a vandal who foists his choices on us, and demands, ‘Let me have my way, or you’ll be really sorry!’
What an excellent summary.
As you know, Kurt, I ranked No Award first in many categories.
On a previous topic in this thread – I don’t think I’ve ever been unexcited enough by sf/f to need a book to make me excited again. There’s still so much great stuff I haven’t read and more is published all the time. There have been times when I couldn’t afford much in the way of books, and during those times I spent a lot of time either at the library or reading fanfiction, but I never needed something to excite me.
I do have a video game that got me excited about gaming again, though, and that’s World of Warcraft. It has its flaws, there are certainly things about the recent design direction that make me grumpy, and my hands get in the way of playing it much these days, but its a great game. It has storylines large and small that moved me, or made me laugh, or made me angry (in a good way). It has characters who make me smile every time I see them or mourned when they died, or love to hate. 😉 It provided some great social opportunities and amazing friends, and it got me back into gaming at a time when I was feeling pretty bored of it. Its also one of the most accessible games out there for people with disabilities. 🙂 (Plus transmog is pretty great. The ability to dress my characters the way I want to = best design change ever.)
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On the Hugo lists subject – a minor thing, but it was making me sad that I can’t put in the usual “suggested by [name(s)]” because I like acknowledging the people here, since without you all there’d be no reason to compile one. But! It occurred to me that there shouldn’t be a problem with putting a list of Filers whose comments contributed underneath without connecting those names to any particular item. 🙂 So I’m happy about that – I think it will work as a compromise.
@Nicholas Whyte
re: EPH
We were discussing alternatives if EPH didn’t work as hoped. I was offering some incremental changes that could be implemented to strengthen the nominating process as opposed to a more culturally radical change such a judging panel for nominees.
IIRC most people who commented at the time emphasized that it would be best to keep the nominating process as little changed as possible. I’m pretty sure, though, that Jameson said having some permutation of an IRV would have been a very strong system we could implement to reduce the power of slates. Although it’s a really clever system, EPH was a somewhat weaker compromise. That’s how I remember it anyway.