(1) PLAY ALONG AT HOME. [Item by Dann.] One of those question/surveys was running around on X the other day. This one seemed a bit more interesting to me. Filers might find this an interesting game to play as well.
Omitting collected works, who are the top 5 authors in your library by number of books on your shelves?
Stephen King ~15
E.E. Knight ~12
Christopher Nuttall 11
Dave Duncan 11
Miles Cameron 9
I included both physical and ebooks in my count. Most of my Stephen King and E.E. Knight books were physical, so I don’t have an accurate count close to hand.
After considering it a little longer, I would probably have to include Piers Anthony on the list. I owned a whole stack of his books before I figured out that some of his content was a little…erm…troubling. And I wouldn’t want to drop Miles Cameron off of the list in favor of Piers.
If shared universes with multiple authors are included, then Dragonlance would easily make it into the top five. Sorry, Miles. That one would bump you off.
What are your top 5 authors of books you own?
(2) EYEWITNESS TO THE ENDEAVOUR AWARD. Thanks to Ruth Sachter for sharing this photo of Sara A. Mueller accepting the Endeavour Award at OryCon on November 10.
(3) THE SHAPE OF WESTERCON TO COME. Kevin Standlee has written up two very different proposals for dealing with “The Future of Westercon” – one is a clean death, the other continues the con in a changed format.
As I hope most people following me know, Westercon has fallen on hard times. While Tonopah was successful and fun for most of the 158 people who attended, it was affected by COVID and by BayCon moving its dates onto the 4th of July Weekend, apparently just ignoring that Tonopah’s Westercon existing. The 2021 SeaTac and 2023 Anaheim Westercons dissolved, handing in their franchises to LASFS (which owns the Westercon service mark), and LASFS held both Westercons 73 and 75 in conjunction with Loscon. We once again this year have no bids filed to host the two-years-hence Westercon, although anyone could show up before the voting ends on the Friday evening of Loscon 49/Westercon 75. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the Westercon 75 Business Meeting at Loscon 49 will have to decide what to do about site selection. However, I tend to think that before that, the meeting needs to give some thought to the future of Westercon.
It appears to me that there are two scenarios: Retire Westercon or make some changes to given a chance to restart, perhaps in a different form. I therefore have prepared a Google doc with two scenarios. You should be able to read this document without needing a Google account.
Scenario 1 is to Retire Westercon, and is simply a motion to repeal the Westercon bylaws.
Scenario 2 makes five separate changes to the Westercon Bylaws to disconnect it from the US Independence Day Weekend (even loosely), removes the Westercon zone restrictions (but retains the 104°W longitude eastern boundary in North America), and changes all of the hard-coded dates to dates relative to the date of the administering Westercon. This would at least allow in theory Westercon to be awarded to various conventions in Western North America who wanted to host it, or also allow “independent” Westercons to be organized.
(4) ZOOMING INTO FANHISTORY. Fanac.org has announced four upcoming Fan History Zoom sessions coordinated by webmaster Edie Stern. The first session on the list is:
APAs Everywhere
Fred Lerner, Christina Lake, Amy Thomson and Tom Whitmore
December 9, 2023 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT
Since the first FAPA mailing in 1937, APAs have been a part of fannish life. There are topic specific apas, local apas, general interest apas, convention committee apas, letter substitutes and doubtless many more. Our panelists, all long time APA members, talk about their experiences with APA life: Why did you join the APA(s)? Did you APA live up to your expectations and why? Tell us about the APAs you’ve been part of, and tell us what makes them unique. (You can tell us about APAs you weren’t part of too!) Talk about the way the members of the APA related to each other, and the nature of that community. Compare the experience of an online community like LiveJournal or Facebook with your APA experience. The Cult was called the “13 Nastiest Bastards in Fandom”. Was it? What feels different about womens’ APAs? Are APAs now obsolete? Would you join a new APA today?
To attend, please send a note to [email protected]
The following three sessions will be:
- January 20, 2024 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT – An Interview with Joe Green
- February 17, 2024 – 7PM EST, 11 AM Feb 18 Melbourne AEDT – Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track Part 2, with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss
- March 16, 2024 – 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, 7PM London (GMT) – The Women Fen Don’t See – Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith
(5) WHEN SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN. Deadline has the quotes: “’Coyote vs Acme’ Composer Slams Warner Bros Over Pic’s Axing; Director ‘Devastated’”.
Coyote vs. Acme composer Steven Price has blasted the David Zaslav cost-cutting Warner Bros Discovery administration for axing the Looney Tunes hybrid live-action animated film.
Price, who won an original score Oscar for Warner Bros. tentpole Gravity in 2014 took to X to say “Had a lot of fun scoring Coyote Vs Acme. As no-one will be able to hear it now, due to bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans I will never understand, here is a bit of behind the scenes footage of our “Meep Meep” Roadrunner choir, with apologies to Tchaikovsky…
(6) PICK SIX. Guardian critic Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” is devoted to The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub; Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker; Saturnalia by Stephanie Feldman; Writing the Future, edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst; and She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall.
(7) GOLDSMITHS PRIZE. The winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize is Benjamin Myers’ Cuddy, a novel that incorporates poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts, to retell the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, the unofficial patron saint of the North of England. The Goldsmiths Prize “celebrates fiction at its most novel.”
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born November 12, 1917 — Dahlov Ipcar. Though primarily an artist and you really should go visit her website, she wrote three amazing young adult novels between 1969 and 1978 which are The Warlock of Night, The Queen of Spells and A Dark Horn Blowing. She lived but thirty miles north of here and I was privileged to meet her a few times. Lovely lady! (Died 2017.)
- Born November 12, 1929 — Michael Ende. German author best known for The Neverending Story which is far better than the film. Momo, or the strange story of the time-thieves is a charming if strange novel worth your time. The rest of his children’s literature has been translated from German into English mostly by small specialist presses down the years. Unlike The Neverending Story and Momo, which I’ve encountered, I’ve not read any of these. (Died 1995.)
- Born November 12, 1943 — Wallace Shawn, 80. Probably best remembered as the ferengi Grand Nagus Zek on Deep Space Nine, a role he only played seven times. He was also Vizzini in the beloved Princess Bride, and he played Dr. Elliott Coleye in the My Favorite Martian film. He also was the voice of Rex in the Toy Story franchise. SFE notes that all of his plays were at least loosely genre and one of them, “The Fever”, was filmed. So yes, he’s a writer as well.
- Born November 12, 1945 — Michael Bishop, 78 . David Pringle included his Who Made Stevie Crye? novel in Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946-1987, high praise indeed. Though slightly dated feeling now, I’m fond of his Urban Nucleus of Atlanta series. And Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas is simply amazing.
- Born November 12, 1964 — Eric Nylund, 59. His best work I think is Jack Potter/Signal sequence of Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered, though the Gods Quintet in my humble opinion tries but fails to venture into Amber Chronicles greatness.
- Born November 12, 1976 — Richelle Mead, 47. Best known for her Georgina Kincaid series, the Vampire Academy franchise and its spin-off series Bloodlines, and the Dark Swan series. I’ve only read Succubus Blues by her but it’s a truly great read and I recommend it strongly. Spirit Bound won a Good Reads Award.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- PHD Comics is a Star Wars crossover.
(10) THERE WAS A PLAN, IT JUST DIDN’T WORK. Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro’s article “Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong” has a long list of things that broke down, and this is one item on it:
…No, The Marvels meltdown isn’t about superhero fatigue. It’s about Disney’s overexposure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand on Disney+, and those moth holes are beginning to show: Keep what’s meant for the cinema in cinemas, and keep what’s meant for in-homes in the home. Meaning, this whole crossover streaming-into-film master plan isn’t working, nor is it really connected in a jaw-dropping way, and with Ms. Marvel not being one of the OTT services better series (ala WandaVision and Loki season one), there’s a whole quad of fans who either didn’t catch Ms Marvel, or who were too turned off by it that they sure as heck don’t want to see The Marvels.
But more to the point, Marvel Studios, The Marvels — with its crossover streaming series blah-blah — looks like it was built to be seen in homes, not to get audiences off the couch….
(11) AND YET… No matter what happened to the latest movie, Gizmodo remembers “How Carol Danvers Became Marvel Comics’ Flagship Hero”.
Captain Marvel was dead, to begin with. More than one Captain Marvel, if we want to be perfectly accurate about it. By 2012, the Marvel Comics hero that bore the company name had been relaunched in no fewer than six different series, and seen a total of three separate characters take on the name. More than three decades in, it seemed increasingly that Captain Marvel was the flagship character who just couldn’t manage to hoist a flag—and the Marvel powers that be were determined to change things once and for all.
What followed was a strange saga of missteps, false starts, and roads not taken, that finally landed on one of the most unexpected heroes of all: a neglected, half-appreciated, and similarly unsuccessful character called Carol Danvers. This is the inside story of how an ambitious first-time writer, a bullheaded editor, and a stylish designer created the most unexpected Marvel success of their era.
To understand why Captain Marvel was in need of saving, we need to understand something about why the character existed in the first place. Put indelicately, Captain Marvel was born as a trademark in need of a character. In 1967, Marvel Comics and its owner, a company called Magazine Management, realized that the name Captain Marvel—once held by the venerable Fawcett Comics character now known as Shazam!—had lapsed into disuse over the course of the decade. Fearing that another enterprising publisher would scoop up a name that should, by all rights, be identified with Marvel, a character was hastily rushed out by management fiat. Cobbled together by Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan (the latter of whom hated the character, and claimed no involvement in his conception), the good Captain was an alien spy of the Kree race, creatively named Mar-Vell, who turned traitor to his people to fight as a costumed defender of Earth. In such ways are great ideas born….
(12) BRONTË BIRTHPLACE CROWDFUNDING SUCCESS. “Campaigners save Bradford birthplace of Brontë sisters” reports the Guardian.
Campaigners have saved the birthplace of the Brontë sisters and are now fundraising to turn the building into a cultural and education centre – helped by a man with a link to the literary family.
Nigel West, who traces a family connection to Charlotte Brontë’s husband, made a “significant donation” to the crowdfunding appeal, which aims to transform 72-74 Market Street in Thornton, Bradford, into a tourist destination.
Around a million visitors a year travel to Haworth, to visit the house that writers Charlotte, Anne and Emily shared with their father, church minister Patrick, and their wayward brother, Branwell, and campaigners hope to transform the Thornton house, which went on sale this year, into a similar attraction….
(13) FROM BARBIE TO ASLAN? The Guardian’s Ben Childs wonders “Can Greta Gerwig bring a new kind of magic to Netflix’s Narnia Chronicles?”
You might think Greta Gerwig an unusual choice to take on CS Lewis’s Narnia stories for Netflix. And at first glance, few would argue with you. Beginning her career as an actor in mumblecore movies such as Baghead, Hannah Takes the Stairs and Greenberg before transitioning into indie cinema as a film-maker with Lady Bird, Gerwig became a household name with this year’s $1.4bn-grossing, conservative-baiting, slyly subversive comedy fantasy Barbie, a movie that will be remembered as the most topically adroit cinematic event of 2023, despite ostensibly being about a child’s plastic toy.
So what on earth might Gerwig do with Aslan, Eustace Grubb and Mr Tumnus the faun? Gerwig is down to make at least two from Lewis’s seven-book series for Netflix, and the streamer’s chairman Scott Stuber hinted to Variety this week that the films might be more traditional than we might think. “She grew up in a Christian background,” Stuber said. “The CS Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. We don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity [to license] those books or the [Roald Dahl stories] we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognise and the ability to tell those stories.” Stuber said Gerwig was currently working out the “narrative arc” of the films, but implied heavily that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would be a central focus.
This is pretty much expected, but the idea that Gerwig might zero in on the traditional religious imagery, when she’s known for a movie that went against the grain with such impish if warm-hearted attitude, is less predictable….
(14) FAN CONCEPT TRAILER. From Darth Trailer, Andor Season 2.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ruth Sachter, Lise Andreasen, Dann, Steven French, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
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First! Really it is a First and made up of the finest pixels that go into making up Firsts that one could hope to see ever so.
(1) I haven’t even attempted to try this exercise. Not with the bookshelves I have, sorted by genre and subgenre rather than by author. Eek!
(5) That score sounds so much fun. Curses to the beancounters!
(8) So does that mean the book “The Neverending Story” is even sadder when … you know? 🙁
(13) Hmm… This could be interesting. Or terrifying.
Went to Kevin Hearne’s reading here in Roseville tonight. Good turnout.
10) Interesting as I found Ms Marvel much better than Loki season 1 and I couldn’t get past the first episode of WandaVision.
1) A quick browse suggests these authors in this order:
Roger Zelazny,
Jim Harrison,
Umberto Eco,
John Scalzi,
Kim Stanley Robinson
Over the years I have done a lot of downsizing, so:
10 years ago, Stephen King would have been on this list.
20 years ago, R.A. Salvatore would have been on here too
30 years ago Charles Bukowski would likely be in the top three
40 years ago, Piers Anthony would probably have been at the top
1) I haven’t done a full count of everything, but a quick look over the most likely suspects suggests that on bookshelves alone, the winner is:
Patricia McKillip, with 23 titles
but if you count both bookshelves and ebooks, she’s edged out by:
Catherynne M. Valente, with 25 titles
and then both are followed closely by
Martha Wells, with 22 titles.
I think that probably accounts for all my authors in the “above 20” bracket, but it’s possible I could have missed someone since I did this pretty slapdash. (I’m not going to hunt around to see who’s in the 15-20 range, because it looks like there may be a bunch and the ebooks are a bit of a pain to check.)
Well, I’m just finishing a trip to Belize so I can’t run downstairs to look at the shelves. Probably Andre Norton number 1, then Edgar Rice Burroughs. Robert Silverberg, Tim Powers, Lois McMaster Bujold. All double digit titles
1). I think my top 5 number of copies are:
Tolkien
Martha Wells
Charles DeLint
Katherine Kurtz
Heinlein
(1) off the top of my head, in no particular order, and not actually checking:
Diane Duane
C J Cherryh
Georgette Heyer
James Schmitz
M A Foster
Jack Vance is the clear winner on my bookshelves, with 44. (Unless I missed one.)
Philip K. Dick is second with 23.
I think Iain M. (or not) Banks ties for third with Lucius Shepard, at ~ 16.
After that William Gibson, Alastair Reynolds are both in around a dozen.
Oops! Almost overlooked him: Graham Greene ties for 3rd also with 16.
So the most authors in my Library which these days is virtual save the quite few signed editions? Elizabeth Bear, Charles de Lint, Elizabeth Hand, Alistair Reynolds, Kage Baker, Iain Banks, Poul Anderson, Roger Zelazny, Catherynne Valente and Emma Bull.
and of course Wallace Shawn appears in “Young Sheldon” as Dr Sturgis, and while not genre, “Young Sheldon” is at least in the neighborhood.
As for authors, I would say that Agatha Christie is the author with the most books in my collection as I have ALL of her mysteries in Hardback. (There was an edition of Christie’s mystery books that was put out in uniform edition, in nice blue leatherette binding that I lucked into at a thrift store, so I bought them all)
A closer check of my ebooks finds Holly Black as another over-20 with 22. And I suspect the next one down after that is Ursula Vernon / T. Kingfisher with 18. So probably:
Catherynne M. Valente, 25 books
Patricia McKillip, 23 books
Martha Wells, 22 books
Holly Black, 22 books
Ursula Vernon / T. Kingfisher, 18 books
Counting ebooks Rex Stout must be #1 because I own the entire Nero Wolfe series.
(1) Mine tend more towards the urban fantasy surge of the aughts, as they were still coming out in mass market paperback and were more affordable:
Mercedes Lackey (27)
Yasmine Galenorn (25)
Seanan McGuire (25)
Faith Hunter (18)
Jim Butcher (17)
Patricia Briggs (16)
Top 5 authors by number of books on my shelves….
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (41)
Ursula K. Le Guin (37)
Sharon Lee + Steve Miller (writing jointly) (32)
Alexander McCall Smith (28)
C. J. Cherryh (24)
… honorable mention to Patrick O’Brian (23)
Interesting exercise. Obviously I’ve enjoyed all those authors a lot, but they also needed to be prolific.
Ahhh, Rex Stout. I spent quite a bit of my nearly four months in-hospital listening to fiction as I had a lot of time obviously. Not too challenging, but entertaining none-the-less.
10) Blah blah, talking head nonsense. As far as I’m concerned, this is all basically an edgelord/incel revenge campaign because of Barbie. I saw The Marvels today. It was fine. A lot better than many of the other Marvelverse movies, AND it clocked in at 1:45. Not a lot of fat on those bones. But they don’t like the idea of a 3 woman superhero team saving the world. That’s what it amounts to
Off the top of my head (not all sf/f genre):
John D. MacDonald
Jack Vance
Philip K. Dick
Poul Anderson
Peter DeVries
Peter DeVries was a literary writer and long-time editor at THE NEW YORKER whose novels spoke of mid-20th century suburbia, and its manners and morals, in highly amusing ways that sometimes veer into tragedy. (BLOOD OF THE LAMB was written after the death of one of DeVries’ children, and can be a pretty harrowing read.) If you’ve seen the movies REUBEN, REUBEN or PETE ‘N’ TILLIE, they were based on some of Devries’ works.
(There is a Peter DeVries connection to science fiction; his son, Jon DeVries, is an actor who appeared in a STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episode.)
(10) I’m with rochrist. I saw The Marvels yesterday, and it’s wonderful. A lot of fun, action, flerkens–not just Goose!
And of course, its great offense, pissing off the incels and edgelords who were already dismayed by their failure to crush Barbie, strong women characters everywhere. Captain Marvel; Ms. Marvel; Captain Rambeau (or, Ms. Marvel insists, Professor Rambeau); Kamala Khan’s mother; even the main antagonist, Dar-Benn.
All the major characters. Well, except Goose. The men are supporting cast.
Good story with some real depth.
I loved it.
“A three-woman-superhero groups saving the world”
sigh Sitting in the consuite at Windycon before we left (we’re in a motel room half-way home), I on and off watched some Avengers movie (no sound). It was bad enough that a flying carrier, fully staffed, didn’t see an aircraft before it crashed into it, but there’s the Avengers, after that, fighting baddies who are flying aircraft and firing missiles into buildings and cars, and…
And I had to wonder where a third of our taxes are going. I mean, where was the freakin’ US Air Force?
And you wonder why I’m not big on comic book movies?
@mark–What does some random, unnamed but not The Marvels, that you caught some of, with the sound off and you weren’t paying much attention to it, have to do with how good The Marvels is or isn’t?
I’m taking it as a given that you won’t be bothering to see The Marvels, because it can’t be good, because some random Avengers movie you weren’t paying enough attention to to identify it, and which you have no idea whether it made internal sense at all, since you have no clue, no hint, what the storyline even was, or what the background was for the random scenes you noticed.
1) OK, this is per my LibraryThing author cloud, so only includes physical books, not eBooks, and might include duplicate titles within the author.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, 113
Robert E. Howard, 83
Tanith Lee, 78
Jack Vance, 76/Lin Carter, 76
Michael Moorcock, 75
C.J. Cherryh, 59
(Extended to 6 just so I could include Cherryh. And if I actually bought & read all of the Foreigner novels, she’d probably climb high enough to bump Moorcock off the list.)
Am currently in Melbourne catching up with family who I haven’t seen since 2019 (feels like eons ago), and while here am also trying to EAT ALL THE THINGS, so food recommendations are welcome.
I tend to watch all the Marvel stuff on Disney+ even though some are less enjoyable than others. Wandavision was great, She-Hulk was unfairly maligned (it was true to its comics source taking itself less seriously) but the criticism of the original CGI being sub-par was valid. Falcon & Winter Soldier was a bit meh. All of those came free with a Disney+ sub so I don’t feel robbed not having ponied up extra money for a cinema experience.
Most books:
My top three from memory would be:
Terry Pratchett
Roger Zelazny
Connie Willis.
My top authors, based on my vague memory of my bookshelves: Phil
Dick, Heinlein, Robertson Davies, Raymond Chandler, Ursula Le Guin.
I’m in Portland for Orycon (now over), so I can’t confirm any of that.
Top five in my library:
CJ Cherryh 70+ (I may have a Cherryh problem)
A Bertram Chandler 30+
Andre Norton 30+
Jo Clayton 30+
A Dean Foster 20+
If I every organized my books I’d have a better count
8) Today’s Birthdays – Michael Bishop
Posts on his Facebook page, by his daughter, tell us he is doing poorly. I haven’t checked FB yet today, but I do hope he did make his 78th birthday.
10) The Marvels isn’t in the same league as Birds of Prey (to compare with another superhero film that flopped because of sexism) but I thought it was good lightweight fun, and all the better for being short. Not essential but I enjoyed it a lot more than Avengers Endgame, say.
1) Top-five list from my library.
First, some notes on what I am and am not including:
• Including both paper books and ebooks.
• Including co-authored books.
• Not including edited-by books. (In particular, editors of Year’s Bests aren’t included.)
• Not including comics/graphic novels. (But including children’s picture books.)
• Counting multiple copies/editions/versions of a given book as a single book.
Here’s my list:
Ursula K. Le Guin: 60
Samuel R. Delany: 30
Neil Gaiman: 23ish (I think a bunch of these are ebooks that came as part of various ebook bundles, some of which may just be a single story)
Joan Aiken: 20
Jennifer Crusie: 20
(1) A combination of both physical and ebooks. This is way more than the top 5 because I thought it might be interesting to people. Your mileage may vary.
Robert Heinlein – 42
Anne Rice – 22
John Scalzi – 20
Spider Robinson – 19
Jim Butcher – 19
Robert Asprin – 16
Tim Pratt – 13
J.K. Rowling – 12
Isaac Asimov – 11
Connie Willis – 10
1) reading everyone’s lists is fun! Mine is:
C.J. Cherryh
Ursula K Le Guin
Terry Pratchett
Georgette Heyer
Kerry Greenwood (Phryne Fisher)
10 & 11) saw The Marvels this weekend and liked it very much. Good summary by Lis Carey & rochrist. I hadn’t seen Ms Marvel, and much enjoyed Kamala and her family.
(1) I really can’t answer this. I have a history of acquiring large bunches of books at estate and book sales for practically nothing (and sometimes actually free), that I may or may not have read. I remember getting 30+ Doc Savage books for $5 years ago at an estate sale; they are still in the same box, unread. Likewise, I got a set of small books, each containing one Shakespeare play (and hopefully including all of them), years ago for free, from an eccentric guy with a huge number of books who repeatedly threatened that any books not taken by the end of the giveaway he was going to burn. I acquired a lot of books that day. I also picked up the entire Patrick O’Brien series (minus one, I think) at some estate sale, for a song. Both those sets are likewise still boxed up; not enough bookshelf space. (Yes, I do want to read some of these one day, but I do not lack for unboxed reading material.)
As for books I’ve read, the top author is probably mystery writer J. A. Jance, the only mystery writer I really enjoy. She has written a zillion books, of which I have acquired at least a couple dozen, probably more. I have gotten them onesie-twosies over the years, mostly at rummage sales and library book sales, and meter them out to myself so I don’t run out. I used to give them after reading them to my mystery-reading mom when she was alive, and now I’m trying to replace the ones I gave away (and rereading some). I enjoy them because she really develops her protagonists (the main two are an Arizona county sheriff and a Seattle detective), and her linear style gets you invested in their daily lives. Other than getting an unrealistically small amount of sleep, they are pretty much Normal Everyday People with friends and everything.
Also, much, much SFF. Zero e-books to count, though, as I prefer long-form fiction (at least) in paper form.
(3) We are fairly late as West Coasters into getting in the habit of going to Westercons, but we have really been enjoying them, probably because people we’ve known for a long time come from all over to go to them (and not just from the West). I think that releasing it from the July 4 weekend is a great idea. That frees it up to be held in touristy areas where July 4 weekend is anything but dead for the tourist trade, so hotels in those places have no incentive to give deals to cons. It also makes it possible for otherwise-very-hot areas to hold the con at more temperate times of the year. (Phoenix, Tucson, and Palm Springs sound more appealing in, say, February than in July.) It also makes it possible for a local con to become bigger for a year to expand into a Westercon, and/or for a Westercon to exist alongside another con that may be an independent draw (as in Salt Lake City in 2014).
As for Baycon changing its weekend from Memorial Day to July 4 weekend some years back, I don’t think that’s much of an issue any more. Baycon used to draw 2000+ people, all the local fen went, and there were a lot of interesting things to do. Over the years, the variety of interesting programming declined (we liked the science programming), local fen that we would want to see gradually stopped showing up (and many now go to Westercon), and things like the Masquerade and gaming areas, and parties, declined in quantity and quality. An increasing amount of con programming also became media-oriented, which is not so much our thing. We eventually switched to one-day memberships, and have not attended at all for years. (When we ceased attending, the con size was down below 750.) There was no Westercon this year, and the latest hotel to host Baycon is literally two miles from our house. We still didn’t go.
We are also in favor of freeing Westercon bids from any area rotations or restrictions (within the original Westercon zone, or a slightly-expanded one). Anything reasonable to increase the possibility of a greater number or Westercon bidders feeling it’s feasible.
(10) As for Marvel-character-related viewing, we take recommendations from our adult son Spencer, who visits us once a week for a dinner-and-TV night. He decides, on the basis of viewing ahead of time and/or scuttlebutt he hears from friends or online, what he thinks we would enjoy (or flat-out pushes something on us). He is the only one with a Disney+ subscription, so he will cast these shows or movies from his phone onto our TV. (We see far fewer movies in theaters these days, unless Spencer insists, or we expect an unusually-impressive visual extravaganza.) We do usually enjoy Spencer’s recommendations.
10) Looking forward to The Marvelz (loved the series).
About to board plane at 0-too-early in the morning.
1) My shelves are too much of a mess for anything but an approximate count, but here goes:-
First place: Ed McBain – there’s a lot of the 87th Precinct stuff, and I’ve got nearly all of it.
Second place: Terry Pratchett. Just change “87th Precinct” to “Discworld” there.
Third place: H.G. Wells. I don’t have anywhere near a complete collection (well, I do, but it’s an omnibus so it doesn’t count) but I’ve got at least thirty assorted novels, short story collections, and non-fiction.
Fourth place: Brian M. Stableford. In my youth (as I got to tell the man himself, once) I lived the sad, strange life of a Stableford completist, but had to give it up, because he was writing the books faster than I could find them in the shops. The only writer in my top five who currently still has a pulse. But then lists like these are inevitably biased towards writers who’ve had long careers, aren’t they? And the longer a career, the more likely that it’s reached a conclusion.
Fifth place: Rex Stout. I haven’t been as thorough as Mike, but I do like a bit of Nero Wolfe, and I’ve got a fair few of the bits.
Honourable mentions: Ursula Le Guin, Lois McMaster Bujold, Philip K. Dick, E.C. Tubb, Dorothy L. Sayers, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Patrick O’Brian.
10) Haven’t seen it yet, but plan to. I liked the “Ms. Marvel” series, myself. @mark – superhero movies routinely ignore the laws of physics; I think even the USAF is a less glaring omission.
Peter DeVries has one strong SF connection, in that he was a friend of Frank Herbert, and the character in Dune was named after DeVries with his permission.
Very happy to see how many people’s top five lists include a whole stack of C.J. Cherryh.
Liking the Filer lists.
I am also one with a Cherryh problem, and she would easily top the list.
Others(accuracy not guaranteed) include
Iain Banks
Ursula LeGuin
Kate Elliot
Robert Heinlein
Though I also have quite a few Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod on the shelves.
Sticking to prose, my top 5 are:
JRR Tolkien
John Scalzi & Stephen King tied for second
Anne McCaffrey
Robert Asprin
If comics collections/graphic novels are included then Charles Schultz would be tied for first, and Bill WIllingham would make it a 3-way tie for second.
1) I thought this might be a good time. Thanks for accepting my submission, Mike.
There are a few authors that are just outside of my top 5 that are also pretty good. Mark Lawrence and Martha Wells are two good examples. Inspired by some of your responses, Seanan McGuire is an author I’ve been meaning to read more frequently.
10) I enjoyed the Electra movie so much that I’ve watched it too many times to count. I also really enjoyed the first Wonder Woman movie. Wonder Woman 1984…it was…ummm…OK.
Ms. Marvel was a bit better than WW1984, IMO. But it’s not good enough to have me interested in The Marvels. They could have spent a little less time being preachy and a little more time being entertaining.
Also, superhero movie fatigue is real.
The point? Maybe it’s time to stop hiding behind someone’s skirts and acknowledge that films led by women have the same opportunity to underwhelm as films led by men. Stop granting power to a few loudmouths living in their parent’s basement; power they have never had.
Jim Butcher’s aphrosim of creativity still applies: Never preach harder than you can entertain. – Jim Butcher
@mark
Military spending is only 19% of all US federal government spending. If we count state and local spending, then military spending drops to 12% of total government spending.
Pensions [22%/18%] and healthcare [25%/22%] are much greater expenditures of government money.
Regards,
Dann
You’ve got to vote for someone. It’s a shame, but it’s got to be done. – Whoopi Goldberg
I have much better places to borrow sf/f from than I did in my youth, so the books I actually have on my shelves tend toward the oldish. Poul Anderson probably in first place. Heinlein up there, limited by his output and by his late descent into mediocrity. Maybe enough Le Guin to get on the board. One fairly unusual bit is that I have most of the sf written by the two Strugatskys together (I’m less interested in the solo works) in Russian plus at least one version of most of their English translations. Multiple works, but maybe not enough to qualify, by some Soviet or Russian sf/f writers. I also have all of sf-adjacent Patrick O’Brian’s naval stories and most of ditto Georgette Heyer’s historical romances. And other Anglophone sf/f writers, and a stray few original titles and translations in German and Spanish, but I’d have to think and count.
(10) I haven’t seen The Marvels yet, but my FB friends skew to superhero fans so a number of them saw it as soon as it came out. So far all reports have been positive.
@BGrandrath “(I may have a Cherryh problem” Yeah me too, it’s that she doesn’t write fast enough!
(10) I’m not going to watch this movie, not because of any of the particulars but because I haven’t seen a single modern superhero movie and am not about to start now.
10.) Waiting to see The Marvels on streaming, simply because I’m not going to theaters (and in any case, the nearest one is a seventy mile drive one way).
I’m not arrogant about superhero movies; I’ve appreciated the MCU but not a big DC fan. Then again, I also appreciate the literary work that Mark scorns, so that’s two things he can sneer at me about.
1.) Books–away from home at the moment so this is from memory, but…
C.J. Cherryh
Ursula K. Le Guin
Terry Pratchett
Charlie Stross
Craig Johnson (the Longmire series)
Nearly impossible to say who I have the most books by. Just taking a glance—and not in descending order by number—Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, Eric Flint (1632 books), Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Ursula Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, Clifford Simak, Greg Bear, Stephen King.
Certainly I have the most hardcovers by King, from those heady days when I was getting review copies.
I used to count how many hardcovers, paperbacks, magazines I had. I recognize this now as a counting compulsion from being on the autistic spectrum. As are so many fans…
1) The thing about being an 1) old, 2) ex-English teacher who 3) loves mysteries, historicals, and SF/F, and 4) has spent about four decades as a reviewer, my library might be considered atypical. Add to that a tendency toward completness and having 90% of the collection on inaccessible (don’t ask) basement shelves, and it’s hard to decide even the top dozen front-runners might be: Vance, Farmer, Silverberg, and Heinlein were all early research subjects; Poul Anderson was a long-time personal favorite and eventual review subject. Same with Frederik Pohl and Larry Niven. With some writers, I don’t count volumes but running feet of shelf space.
Outside SF/F we have pretty much everything by Reginald Hill (including pseudonyms), John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, George MacDonald Fraser, Tony Hillerman, Ellis Peters (Cadfaels only), and Patrick O’Brian (sea novels only); and, among still-living writers, near-complete collections of Bernard Cornwell, Peter Lovesey, Martin Cruz Smith (including pseudonyms), Lindsey Davis, and Alan Furst, among others. (I will probably not live long enough to get through the TBR stacks in the bedroom.)
Yes, at one time Poul Anderson was the writer I owned more books by than any other — probably about 20. Many of them OP paperbacks i bought at the original Change of Hobbit over the laundromat in Westwood.
1) For me it’s, in no particular order:
Bernard Cornwell
John Ringo
Terry Pratchett
Robert Heinlein
Edgar Rice Burroughs
If you include collected works, it becomes,
Kipling
Doyle
Haggard
Heinlein
Cornwell
10) Marvels is one of those movies that it’s hard to get a read on because a vocal minority are A) using it as a proxy war of sorts and/or B ) using support or opposition as a substitute for a personality. My advice, for what it’s worth, is the same advice I give for all media; engage with it and then having done so, make up your own mind for yourself.
13) Maybe not the director I would have chosen, but I’m still interested to see what she comes up with.
@mark: They ignored the plane coming in because it was one of their planes that the bad guys (who were actually mind controlled good guys) had stolen. The USAF didn’t show up because it’s a superhero movie, not Top Gun. Overall, complaining about superhero movies using superhero tropes is like complaining that it’s physically impossible for 200 foot tall fire breathing lizards to exist; it misses the point to such an extent that it makes people think you’re just looking for shit to complain about.
@Russell Letson: Ah, how could I overlook Tony Hillerman? (Well, his books are in a different set of bookcases.) I count 18, which I believe is all of his novels.
Physical books, Terry Pratchett is #1 with a bullet.
If you include e-books, Ursula Vernon will probably eventually catch him, since she’s still writing and he (alas!) isn’t.