(1) Arthur C. Clarke’s papers came to the Smithsonian Institution earlier this year. Patti Williams, acquisition archivist for the National Air and Space Museum, blogged about the steps in bringing the materials from Sri Lanka to the U.S.
I have been the Museum’s acquisition archivist for almost 26 years, and during that time over 3,200 archival collections have been entrusted to us. Most of these materials have been personally delivered or shipped, but it has sometimes been necessary for me to travel to obtain a collection, whether to California, New York, or South Dakota. Sri Lanka has certainly been the furthest I’ve travelled for a collection.
Martin Collins, a curator for the Space History Department, gave an overview of what’s in Clarke’s papers, accompanied by many photos.
What emerges from a first review of his papers is a deeply thoughtful man shaped by and creatively responding to his time—with World War II and the first decades of the Cold War as critically formative. From his early 20s through the rest of life he possessed a remarkably consistent vision and purpose of what was important to him: to make sense of a world experiencing tremendous advances in science and technology, the result of which, in his view, augured potentially radical changes in the fabric of social and cultural life. In the years after the war, this dynamic seemed especially insistent, making the idea and reality of the “future” a critical problem in need of understanding. Through his career, this challenge led Clarke to advance his three laws of prediction (easily found via an internet search), an attempt to make serious the future as a shared, collective human concern but do so with a light touch.
From this vantage, Clarke’s interest in science fiction, as is evident throughout his papers, was not merely incidental but central: It was his essential tool, perhaps the best one, for sorting through and understanding this condition and educating readers about the time in which they were living.
(2) In a podcast for Creature Features, Walter Murch, writer and director of Return to Oz, “discusses the long genesis of the 1985 fantasy film, how personal a project it was for him, how tumultuous it became at times, and how happy he is with it after 30 years.”
Soundcloud – Pod People Episode 4 – Walter Murch
(3) The PBS documentary about cosplay aired in 2013 can be viewed online.
(4) The Golden Age Site’s post about “New York Comic Book Conventions ~ 1966-1978 ~ The good old days when Comic Shows were about comics” shows many many fans in those days were involved in both comics and sf, inspiring Andrew Porter to comment, “Gosh, there’s my name at the top, along with a bunch of [now] old pharts!”
I also ran off the program — about 250 copies of a single page, as I recall — for Dave Kaler’s NY Comic Convention, held in 1965 at the Hotel Broadway Central (an impressive pile in Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie”) on my Ditto machine.
(5) The University of Oregon Libraries will celebrate the acquisition of the James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) literary papers with a two-day symposium at the Eugene, Oregon campus on December 4-5, 2015.
The acquisition of the Tiptree Papers enriches Special Collections and University Archives’ growing collection of feminist science fiction manuscript collections, which include the Ursula K. Le Guin Papers, the Joanna Russ Papers, the Sally Miller Gearhart Papers, and the Suzette Haden Elgin Papers.
The symposium will kick off with a keynote talk by Julie Phillips, author of the biography: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon (St. Martins, 2006), and will also feature a panel discussion with other writers who carried on lively and engaging correspondence with Tiptree, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Suzy McKee Charnas and David Gerrold.
(6) Emily Hughes conducts “Updraft: A Q&A with Fran Wilde” at Suvudu.
SUVUDU: Updraft has some of the most original worldbuilding I’ve ever come across – could you tell us a little bit about your process for creating the details of this city built out of bone towers and its residents?
FRAN WILDE: That’s wonderful to hear! The city of bone towers was born late one night at a writing workshop following many cups of coffee. I realized that I wanted to write a story set in a living city with a focus on engineering and flight. (I wasn’t drinking Red Bull, I swear.)
What emerged from that writing session was a short story that had elements of Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Codex Seraphinianus, China Mieville’s short stories about living cities in Looking for Jake, and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as ancestors. The story contained the man-made wings, bridges, and bone towers that exist today, but the characters and conflict were different. After reading it, Gordon Van Gelder of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine wrote me to suggest I look at other high-altitude megastructure stories like Steven Gould’s “Peaches for Mad Molly” and K.W. Jeter’s Farewell Horizontal as well.
So my process from the first draft involved a lot of reading. In the end, when the short story had grown into a novel, and the very spare sketch of bone towers and wings had grown into a world, the process also involved getting into a wind tunnel to go indoor skydiving, and talking to cloud and weather experts about wind shear near steep, high-altitude objects, and to biologists about bone growth. I also researched scarcity societies, high-altitude food production, and cephalopods, among other things.
(7) John Plotz recalls A Wizard of Earthsea in “Le Guin’s Anarchist Aesthetics” on Public Books.
Le Guin’s peculiar gift, though, is to make the ordinary feel as important as the epic: mundane questions about who’s cutting firewood or doing the dishes share space with rune books and miscast spells. Her Earthsea has less in common with Narnia, Hogwarts, and Percy Jackson’s Camp Half-Blood than it does with medieval romances and Icelandic sagas, where dragons and death keep company with fishing yarns, goat-herding woes, and village quarrels.
Plotz also interviewed Le Guin for Public Books in June.
JP: And has it always been clear to you which category your books fall into?
UL: Oh no. When I started it was all mushed up together! My first three novels are kind of science fantasy. Rocannon’s World (1966) is full of Norse myth barely disguised. But I began to realize there was a real difference between these two ways of using the imagination. So I wrote Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness. From then on I was following two paths.
In Left Hand of Darkness I was using science fiction to come at a problem that I realized was very deep in me and everybody else: what is gender? What gender am I? A question we just hadn’t been asking. Look at all the answers that are coming out now. We have really deconstructed it. We really didn’t even have the word “gender” back then. Just, “What sex are you?” So in some respects we really have come a long way, and in a good direction, I think.
(8) Gregory N. Hullender says, “No one seems to have commented on it yet, but I think the December 2015 Analog is unusually strong. After a really weak year, maybe they’re getting their act together.” He has more to say on Reddit.
(9) Irish children’s laureate Eoin Colfer (“Artemis Fowl”) and illustrator and writer Oliver Jeffers have joined forces to create an imaginary friend.
They decided to collaborate on ‘Imaginary Fred’ due to a chance meeting in New Zealand.
“We were there for the Auckland book festival and we met up at a story slam competition,” Mr Colfer said.
“We were giggling like schoolboys at each other’s stories, and at the end of the night we said let’s do something together.”
‘Imaginary Fred’ tells the story of Fred, who becomes the imaginary friend of Sam, a boy in need of company.
The two embark on a series of adventures together, but when Sam meets Sammi, a girl with an imaginary friend of her own, Fred has to move on from Sam.
The story, unusually, is told from Imaginary Fred’s point of view.
“I like to do that with my books,” said Mr Colfer.
“To take what is often a secondary character and make them the main character because they’re a lot more interesting to me.”
(10) An event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Marion E. Wade Center on October 29 at 7 pm Central time will be livestreamed. The Wade is a focal point of Inklings scholarship. Featured speakers will include the Wade’s former director, Dr. Lyle W. Dorsett, poet Luci Shaw, and Dr. Leland Ryken, who is currently at work on a book length history of the Wade Center. The dedication of the new Bakke Auditorium will be part of this special evening. Watch the proceedings online via WETN.
(11) Bradbury-inspired art! Vroman’s Art on the Stairwall presents George Cwirko-Godycki on November 14 at 2 p.m. at the main store in Pasadena.
Join us as we celebrate our newest Artist on the Stairwell! Illustrator George Cwirko-Godycki presents a limited edition poster show inspired by the works of Ray Bradbury. The show is the first in Vroman’s Artists on Authors series in the stairwell where visionary artists interpret the works of renowned authors. The first 25 attendees will receive a signed catalog of the exhibition that details the process of creating this unique show from start to finish. George is based in San Francisco where he provides concept illustration for the entertainment industry and teaches figure drawing at the Academy of Art University.
(12) Frequent File 770 contributor James H. Burns’ writes about the Tri-State losing a major supermarket chain, Pathmark, in a piece for the Long Island Press.
Ultimately, the neatest feature at Pathmark for a youngster may have been a huge paperback section featuring an amazing array of bestsellers and non-fiction books. Pathmark was where I bought some of my very first books on the history of movies, including, in my monster-loving youth, a biography of Boris Karloff!
From its inception in Franklin Square, Pathmark had tried to be unique. At the back of the store was a section invoking the classic Horn and Hardart cafeterias in Manhattan, famous for all the food, sandwiches and cakes and the like, being offered through slots in the wall protected by a glass cover. If you put coins in the apparatus, you could lift the cover and take your treat. Horn and Hardart was famous for the quality of its offerings, and for being a very affordable place for any New Yorker to put together a decent meal. More than one location also became known as a writers’ hangout, with some of the best-known reporters and talent of the era sitting for a long while, sipping their coffee, and enjoying the conversation.
Beginning in the 1970s, Pathmark also had a long running series of television commercials, starring James Karen. Most of us probably presumed he was a Pathmark executive, until he also began popping up as an actor in horror movies like “Poltergeist” and “The Return of the Living Dead.”
(13) Pee Wee Herman’s blog features a gallery of photos of work by the “’Picasso of Pumpkin Carving’ Ray Villafane”.
Until October 31st, the town of Carefree, Arizona is hosting the Enchanted Pumpkin Garden, a one-of-a-kind event conceived by master pumpkin carver Ray Villafane! The Wall Street Journal calls him the “Picasso of pumpkin carving.”
(14) Ray Bradbury is all over the place in this documentary about Charlie Chaplin, first at the 40 second mark
(15) The Nitrate Diva links to “Fear You Can Hear: 31 of the Scariest old Time Radio Episodes for Halloween”
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but, when it comes to the best old-time radio horror, each word is worth a thousand pictures.
By using voices, sound effects, and snippets of music, masters of radio terror turned what could’ve been a disadvantage of the medium—we can’t see what’s happening—into their greatest asset.
Radio writers and actors spawned monsters that the technology of the time couldn’t have realistically portrayed on film. They suggested depravity and gore that screen censorship would’ve banned. And they could manipulate the imagination so that listeners themselves collaborated in the summoning of their worst fears.
In case you can’t tell, I adore old-time ratio (OTR) horror. After countless hours poring over archives of old shows, I’ve selected 31 bloodcurdling episodes, from 1934 all the way up to 1979, for your pleasure.
(16) Oh noes! “William Shatner Isn’t a Huge Fan of the New ‘Star Wars’ Trailer”.
Millions of Star Wars fans may have eagerly devoured the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, due out on December 18, but William Shatner—captain of the starship Enterprise and star of the original Star Trek series—wasn’t among them. “To me there isn’t a controversy,” the actor tells Newsweek. “Star Trek is far superior to Star Wars.”
(17) Would Dr. Sheldon Cooper agree? He certainly has plenty of reason to be happy with Star Trek.
Fans of The Big Bang Theory and Star Trek can rejoice because an upcoming episode the geektastic TV sitcom will feature a guest appearance from the son of Mr. Spock himself, Adam Nimoy! Plus, we have an exclusive first look at the episode, which airs on Thurs., Nov. 5 at 8/7! In “The Spock Resonance,” recurring guest star Wil Wheaton will appear alongside Adam, an accomplished writer and director in real life, who asks Sheldon Cooper to be in a documentary about his beloved father, Leonard.
(18) Natalie Luhrs has a terrific post about “World Fantasy’s Harassment Non-Policy” at Pretty Terrible.
The final progress report from World Fantasy was emailed to members this evening. It included the harassment policy, which is legalistic and is essentially useless. For posterity, here it is…
[Thanks to Bill Menker, Michael J. Walsh, Andrew Porter, Bill Burns, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Re: BBT – Any sitcom starts out with a new premise and eventually slims down its perspective to standard sitcom tropes. For example, That 70s Show started out about the 70s with references to the period and gradually just became a teen comedy show with outdated clothes. I would say the first two seasons of the Big Bang Theory started out about nerds with physics jokes and gradually pushed those references to the side as the characters became established with their regular set of jokes. (Plus it’s a Chuck Lorre production so 59% of all jokes are about sex.) At one point they actually had a physicist they consulted, but now most of their physic references seem to be about Schrödinger’s Cat.
If we’re doing the ‘reduced but not actually appearing on any of the daily deals/special offer pages’ game then
Two hundred and Twenty one Baker Streets, which includes an Emma Newman story which once the BFS prize the other day, reduced to 99p.
Or $1.52, if you’re on the US store
Just momentarily delurking (I really do love all of the reading suggestions I get from here) to gently note that comparing BBT to blackface and minstrel shows really elides the structural racism that they grew from. They are not even close to being the same thing.
Bruce Arthurs:
Thanks for the recipes! Here is my own favourite Halloween-recipe:
Kitty Litter cake.
As a highly technical nerd/geek, I’d have to agree. There’s no technical depth to the characters. Much of the nerdiness is mostly fandom with a veneer of babble. But then again it’s a comedy, not a documentary. My spouse likes it, but I’m usually coding or soldering something when it’s on.
As for all the Code of Conducts, they are missing one of the most important sections: smell. Encourage participants to bath, use some sort of breath odor reduction and limit body perfume. If your funk causes me to sneeze, wheeze or gag, (and my sinuses are half dead and not that sensitive), I’m going to consider it a macro-aggression.
I like BBT too. It makes me laugh, which always leads me to give things and people more slack.
I envy you – and everybody who got a letter from her – so much. SO MUCH.
@Chris Newman – While my sniffer no longer works, my friend once described a comic con as “like someone left an unwrapped slim-jim in their car for the month of August.”
The Sorren-Paxe romance matters to the plot, as does the fact Arre and Paxe were once lovers. My review is here.
Re Melissa Scott: None of her books that I’ve read are strongly focused on romance, but they do often include some sort of love story for the main character. Trouble and Her Friends is a particularly likable one, with Trouble reuniting with a lover from the time she as a young outlaw hacker, and both of them taking stock of how they’d changed; it was very nice to see this story dealing with themes of maturing and growing older.
Night Sky Mine has a very low-key romance between the two main characters, teenage friends-developing-into-more.
Thanks so much for (7), Mike. That’s an excellent essay, and interview.
Jeff Smith:
Wow!
And Letters to Tiptree sounds fascinating.
Wow again, but much less earnestly this time. Do (young) people really not write private email anymore? Love letters? Gossip?
Lydy Nickerson:
Me too. It’s not a policy at all, it’s some badly written waffling about why there isn’t a policy. And that “No one wants to behave in a way that would draw police attention”, which I take to mean “don’t make trouble for us”, I don’t want to think about how that would read if I were in the already vulnerable position of wanting to report harassment.
I wouldn’t have thunk “judicial cosplay blanket-fort” would be a (delightful) phrase that I would read and nod vigorously.
Halloween food: pumpkin soup, from roasted pumpkin, because the first pumpkin I got was too hard to actually scoop out (I’m still recovering from the quinces). This happens every year. Sometimes more than once.
The recipe is take any orange or red food that’s in the kitchen and simmer with the roasted pumpkin, puree, add cream. Beat a fresh egg yolk into couple-three servings just before eating, dollop of sour cream. It smells delicious, but I didn’t actually use the dehydrated strawberries, so I guess I cheated.
Kyra says: Melissa Scott seems like kind of a glaring omission, but nothing I’ve read by her really qualifies, even loosely, as romance. Does she have anything that would, that I should check out?
I’m not sure if any of this qualifies as lesbian romance. 🙂
1. The Silence Leigh books, starting with Five Twelfths of Heaven. Silence enters a polyamorous marriage of convienience with two men that turns romantic. It’s a romance, but not a lesbian one.
2. In Point of Hopes, the main POV characters are two men who become interested in each other. The actual getting together happen off-screen between this book and the next. Later books have more exploration of the relationship. Also not lesbian romance.
3. Trouble and Her Friends – The book starts out with two women, Trouble and Cerise, as an established lesbian couple. Just before the book starts, Trouble walks out on Cerise and completely disappears. The action of the book is largely Cerise tracking Trouble down and dealing with the problems that Trouble had gotten herself into and was fleeing. They do end up back together. This might be your best bet for lesbian romance.
4. Night Sky Mine – The protagonist is Ista, a teenage girl. She does have romantic interest in another girl, but at this remove, I am not remembering if they ended up together or not. I’m thinking not, but I’m not sure.
5.Mighty Good Road – The main character, Reverdy Jian, is in an established lesbian relationship. Her partner spends most of the book on another planet, but they have some interaction in the last several chapters of the book. It’s a sweet relationship, but does not markedly change over the course of the book.
@ Kyra
It’s been a very very long time since I read The Northern Girl, and I suspect I’d have to re-read to answer the question, though more on the “is this a romance” side than the identity side.
Melissa Scott definitely has lesbian(-like) characters but I don’t recall any plots or sub-plots that would fall in the “romance” category. (She’s much stronger on gay male romantic elements.)
Nickpheas
Thank you for the Sherlock link; there’s definitely stuff I’m looking forward to there.
Silly But True: The University collections have a bunch of great stuff, if one ever had the time to visit them all…
I’ve always loved rooting around in Special Collections, when I get the chance. Even just reading the catalogs can be fun–Northwestern University in Evanston has what I believe is a pretty decent comic book archive, both mainstream and underground, that I’ve always meant to try to look into one of these days. They did a special exhibit based on it, back in–2010, I think?–that I still regret missing.
I’ve been pretty loose with my definition, allowing in “does a main character have a lesbian romance which is important to the book’s plot”, rather than keeping it strictly to “is this a lesbian romance story, per se”. That’s why I’m thinking of getting the page a little more organized by category, to make that more clear so people don’t get tripped up.
Given what people are saying about The Northern Girl and the resulting memory jogs on my own part, I think I’d allow it in, in a “not a romance, but has some romance in there” category. Possibly subdivided into an “… and they eventually break up” section.
For Scott, it’s sounding like “Trouble and Her Friends” and “Night Sky Mine” might be the best possibilities, if there are any … but I remember bouncing pretty hard off of “Trouble and Her Friends”. Hm. Maybe I’ll give “Night Sky Mine” a try sometime.
Ah, well, it was never intended to be a comprehensive list. There are other notable books that aren’t on it simply because I didn’t like them all that much. I just have … completionist impulses …
I find the excuse given by the World Fantasy Convention worse than their policy, if harassment at their convention isn’t their problem than attending isn’t my problem.
Night Sky Mine – The protagonist is Ista, a teenage girl. She does have romantic interest in another girl, but at this remove, I am not remembering if they ended up together or not. I’m thinking not, but I’m not sure.
They do, probably–it’s an unspoken attraction that becomes spoken at the very end.
Lydy Nickerson said:
1) This is an awesome comment.
2) “Judicial Cosplay Blanket-Fort” is my new band name.
@Matt Y:
The problem is that the World Fantasy Convention, despite its innocuous name, is a major, major industry professional convention. It’s where deals actually get made, where the publishers and agents and biggest name pros rub elbows and trade business cards.
It has no masquerade, no films (at least when I attended), and a very serious panel track. I had never seen so many original book cover paintings in any art show as I did at WFC.
Fandom and industry in general: “This WFC anti-harassment policy is cowardly, irresponsible shit. Basically they’ve declared themselves a free and open hunting ground for harassers and stalkers. A lot of people won’t feel safe there. This is important and awful.”
Chris Nelson, raising the level of discourse in his own, unique way: “Yeah, and what’s worse, their policy doesn’t even mention body odor! Hur hur.”
—
Peace, I’m not sure what you mean by “despite its innocuous name,” but I agree that WFC is absolutely an important event from a networking and professional standard. The times I have been, I have enjoyed the paneling from the perspective of both fan and aspiring professional. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to meet the professionals that I both fan-squee over and that I hope to begin interacting with as a professional. What WFC 2015 has done this year is turn itself into yet another professional environment in which the usual victims of harassment (women, for example) are made to pay a higher entry fee than are the usual perpetrators of harassment. “If you want the same business opportunities as the men, ladies, you just have to have a better sense of humor about being groped and stalked! No one is forcing you to attend, you know. If you can’t stand the heat, better stay out of the kitchen! Or better yet, just go back to your own kitchens and make us some sandwiches.”
@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little:
By “innocuous” I meant that the name “World Fantasy Convention” sounds like just any other fan-run convention such as the “World Science Fiction Convention” or a myriad of others, and not like the industry’s premiere serious professional meeting ground, which it is.
Meredith asks:
“Unlikely” is putting it mildly, unless your problem with Anathem is that it’s too science-fictiony. Reamde is a harder slog with a much smaller reward.
Lydy Nickerson, Peace Is My Middle Name, et al:
“Minstrel show” is precisely the analogy that sprang to my mind when The Big Bang Theory premiered too.
Peace Is My Middle Name:
The only other World (X) Convention in the sf arena that springs to mind is the World Horror Convention, which is similar to WFC. Worldcon is the odd one out.
Having worked a WFC…
World Fantasy is a (mostly) fan-run convention for the benefit of the industry.
And, in this case, it suffers in spades from the “we’re better than them, harassment isn’t a problem.” Regular conventions in denial think “geeks are better than mundanes, we couldn’t possibly have those harassment problems the normal world does, ‘cuz we’re all friends!” WFC adds on top “pros are better than fans, because we behave professionally, and wi’re all friends!”
Nevermind that we’re a microcosm of the rest of the world, we have the same problems. Nevermind that just because we like the same things, we’re not actually all friends.
Nevermind that sexual harassment is a problem in all sorts of different professional conference venues.
And nevermind that prominent genre professionals have been outed as serial sexual harassers.
World Fantasy and World Horror are both much younger events.
Peace Is My Middle Name –
Shouldn’t be a problem to have a policy that with what those professional expectations are and what recourse a con-goer has when those expectations are crossed.
I have come to really dislike WFC, partly because it bills itself as a convention for Professionals. It is a hierarchy I really don’t appreciate, and it’s not as if your general SF convention is SO crowded by the hoi polloi that you can’t do business at it.
Last year’s WFC had a policy; it’s still posted on the website. We are going this year; the art show heads in Saratoga helped staff the one we ran last year in DC, so we need to pay back. I am not feeling optimistic about the convention though.
Oh, but don’t you know WFC is anti-hierarchy? You’re not allowed to identify pros status or use fan names on badges, so there’s no hierarchy, now move along…
Jeff Smith:
The letters between Tiptree and Le Guin are awesome. (They’re a slightly different selection from the ones that were in F&SF a while back.) They’re so playful, and funny, and incisive, and caring, and, well, just brilliant… And I thought, while reading them, that no one takes the time to write like that anymore, it’s all just quick emails back and forth. Ah, well. [Picks up cane, shakes it at the kids on the lawn]
Meridith,
Just re-read Snowcrash. I am pretty sure that was the tone Stephenson was going for in Reamde but since he is unable to finsish a book in less than 1000 pages these days…
Re Halloween food:
My standard fare is candy skulls (using a candy – corn recipe) and a hearty fall stew with all the root vegetables carved into bones, skulls, and eyeballs.
I tend to think a Hugo nominee should be a potential classic…. maybe this is too high a bar
Delurking to add to the chorus of people who aren’t BBT fans. I couldn’t get past the first episode. To me it seemed like it was laughing AT us and not laughing WITH us.
OTOH, I did really enjoy The IT Crowd, which occupies a similar niche.
That WFC harassment policy, though–I don’t think anyone finds *that* amusing or entertaining, or even very useful.
To be fair, the atmosphere at WFC is very different from other conventions.
For one thing, I noticed the pros were a lot less wary of other congoers. They seemed more relaxed, more open. I suspect this was because there was less risk of being gushed at or cornered by a feverish fan.
I’m sure business can be and is conducted at many or most conventions. But I suspect it is a lot easier at a relatively small convention where almost everyone is a professional.
So, a while back, there were some people saying, “So, this Patrick Ness fellow sounds like a good author, but does he have any books that *won’t* make me want to claw my eyeballs out lest I look once more upon the pain of the world?”
Having just finished “The Rest of Us Just Live Here”, I will say that, unless you feel you would be triggered by depictions of anorexia, obsessive compulsive disorder, or suicidal ideation, it is really quite funny and good and not at all a downer.
(If you would be triggered by such things … well, hey, “The Crane Wife” is only mildly depressing.)
Possibly…
My criterion is, “would this look out of place in a line-up of Hugo nominees?” It makes it easier for me to nominate because I usually struggle to fill my nominating ballot in several categories.
@BBT,
Are we to be shocked that Leonard Nimoy was merely a human actor and not really a Vulcan?
Now, a really, legitimately geeky show was How to Lose A Guy In 10 Days. I don’t know who the Babylon5 fan was in that production but it’s one step more esoteric than the average reference; a non geek would’ve just stuck with One of the Stars, either Trek or Wars.
Silly But True
My criterion is, “would this look out of place in a line-up of Hugo nominees?”
My criteria is “was this one of the best five things I consumed last year that fits this category”. I may be more forgiving than some other nominators.
Re: “professional” conferences and harassment policies
At BayCon this year I was riding in an elevator with several non-fans who noticed my membership badge and commented, “I’ve seen all these posters around the hotel talking about how harassment won’t be tolerated at your convention. What kind of crazy people come to your conventions? You don’t see posters like that at conventions for lawyers or accountants!”
To which I replied: “No you don’t. That doesn’t mean conventions for lawyers or accountants don’t have harassment; they just don’t have policies against it.”
(This is, no doubt, an aspersion against well-run legal and accounting conventions. But it was a more useful response than something more nuanced would have been.)
nightengale –
I don’t care for that either but I’d still probably enjoy it only the writing is so lazy on that show that most jokes fall in the exact same pattern every time. Set up, someone gets confused, explanation leads to punchline. If it’s Sheldon it’s something about basic human nature. If it’s Penny it’s anything scientific or nerd. If it’s one of the others it’s woman or social interaction related and most of the time the punchline it leads to is masturbation related or how they got beat up as a kid. And it’s always harvesting the lowest hanging fruit possible.
@JJ,
I think it’s more complicated than Scalzi’s take. IIRC, New York Supreme Court tossed the State’s “aggravated harassment” law last year as being unconstitutionally overly broad and too vague: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-appeal-raphael-golb-gets-jail-nyc-dead-sea-scrolls-n155676
And I think some fed judges may have reached the same conclusion in other cases.
I have no idea what the disposition of any fix is now; legislature may not have filled the void yet.
So, it may actually be a matter of “it’s all up in the air right now” leaving different bodies to formulate their own different standards.
Silly But True
I find BBT tends to inspire strong emotions from people. Personally, I watch it and generally find it to be amusing, but at the end of the day, it’s an American sit-com. It follows a well worn formula of comedy reasonably well and it gets into topics that I’m more interested in than, say, Modern Family or Two and a Half Men. Is it a Community or Arrested Development? No.
At least one thing it has done is put competent female scientists as main characters in the highest rated sit-com on television. I mean, the science might be flawed, but I think there’s some worth there.
@Soon Lee —
Possibly…
My criterion is, “would this look out of place in a line-up of Hugo nominees?” It makes it easier for me to nominate because I usually struggle to fill my nominating ballot in several categories.
I think “is this the best stuff I read this year?”, with maybe a “was this year a bad year?” caveat filter, ought to do it. The Hugos really are a beauty contest.
“Classic” is trying to know something about the future; “on par with the others” is trying to know something about other people’s judgement, which is only theoretically easier than the future. I think that’s making decision making more difficult than necessary to get a good result, and it would tend to keep people from nominating, which isn’t a desirable outcome; the Hugos are a better award as more people nominate their sincere and personal delight.
Yes, I think i need to lower the bar a bit, though not too much. A story needs to be exceptional, but my “potential classic” criterion was unrealistic.
@Kyra
I’ve been pretty loose with my definition, allowing in “does a main character have a lesbian romance which is important to the book’s plot”,
Have you considered Daryl Gregory’s
“Afterparty”? While I’m not sure it really counts as a classic romance, the lesbian relationship in the book is very important, and I thought, very well done. Given that these are two individuals with profound neurological and spiritual issues, it could have been handled very badly, but I thought the portrayal had a lot of empathy and nuance.
Also I don’t see the WFC’s choice as actually being somehow any “weaker” than NYCC. NYCC is an administrative solution; its relief will likely be more immediate and far less severe. At the most commonly experienced worst, someone’s likely to get ejected without reimbursement and maybe be barred from attending. And that may be more than enough to satisfy the harassed.
But now look at it like this: anyone who has been determined to have harassed at WFC is going to face a whole lot of hurt. They will have a day in court several weeks/months later which will be a massive hit for travelers. At the very best, even if they parlay the case into a dropped charge, they’re also looking at a bill for court costs that’s probably into several hundred dollars. And if they are convicted, then tack on the fine for it too; and the weakest misdemeanor harassment looks to carry a max penalty of up to 1 year in jail. That’s not even getting into legal fees for the harasser. If arrested and jailed, their life and career will have taken an immediate fork: “Sorry hon, I’ll be 11 months late coming home from the convention unless you can wire me some bail money, and you need to get a guardian here immediately to pick Johnny up from child services.”
That might be a bit more satisfying to the harassed that simple eviction.
So I think it’s a matter of satisfaction versus justice. NYCC is likely to satisfy nearly everyone involved. WFC will ensure absolute justice is given to those having to suffer the worst harassment, something unlikely under NYCC.
There’s also the burden of proof issue; as an administrative not legal solution, NYCC is free to call it as they see it, provided the rules are clear, fairly and equally applied, and set in advance. It has much less burden of proof; it pretty much falls on the opinion of the administrator. WFC will require the legal burden to be met; and if so woe unto the harasser. ( If not then the harassed might not find satisfaction.)
And then there is also the drain on the harassed; if travelers, then _they_ might not wish to return to a New York court for the harasser’s trial; but at least they have that choice.
Silly But True