(1) A LONG AND WINDING ROAD TO RECOVERY. John Varley had a heart attack followed by a quadruple bypass in February, and later was hospitalized with a post-vaccination breakthrough Covid infection, all of which he’s written about in “What a year this has been” posted October 26. In the midst of that he contracted pneumonia, which fortunately can be fought with antibiotics:
…I don’t have the bottle near me here but to the best of my recollection the ones I’m taking now are Placeboxydrine, Oxyplaceboxicillizole, and Cryptosporidiosicil, which I was already taking. Added to that was my daily dose of Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pill. If those bad boys don’t KO the bacteria, nothing will.
I feel pretty confident that I will survive this. I’m much less certain that I will recover my already-depleted physical faculties. But I try not to worry about that. So in that spirit I’ve devised a little game. Since it’s beyond question (in my mind, at least) that my trials are not over, I asked my old friend Job (not Jobs) what sort of disease I might encounter next as I wend my way through this vale of tears…
(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present C. S. E. Cooney and Robert V.S. Redick in person on Wednesday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern at the KGB Bar. (Address here.)
- C. S. E. Cooney
C. S. E. Cooney lives in Queens, New York. She won the World Fantasy Award for her collection Bone Swans in 2016, and her new collection, Dark Breakers comes out from Mythic Delirium in February 2022. Her forthcoming novel Saint Death’s Daughter will be out with Solaris in April 2022. Currently, she and her husband, author Carlos Hernandez, are co-developing a TTRPG about “Inquisition and Aliens” called Negocios Infernales.
- Robert V.S. Redick
Robert V.S. Redick is a novelist, teacher, editor, and international development consultant with 30 years experience in the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. He is the author of seven novels, including The Red Wolf Conspiracy and The Fire Sacraments epic fantasy trilogy. His most recent novel Sidewinders, was published in July. He won the New Millennium Writings Award and was a finalist for the Thomas Dunne Novel Award. He lives with his partner, Dr. Kiran Asher, in Western Massachusetts.
(3) BANGED UP PUBLISHER. Wishes for a quick and full recovery to John Gregory Betancourt of Wildside Press and The Black Cat Mystery and Science Fiction Ebooks who injured himself in a fall, as he told his mailing list today in this message titled “Disaster Strikes!”
I’m afraid I tripped and took a bad fall yesterday afternoon, which injured my ankle, knee, right wrist, and some fingers on my left hand. After hours at the emergency room, I was fortunate to learn nothing was actually broken, despite the pain and grotesque swelling of my wrist, but there is a lot of soft tissue damage. I can still type a bit with three fingers on my left hand and two on the right, but it is painful and slow. Our production level is going to be down until I can use at least my hands properly again. I am hoping for under two weeks. At the very least when the wrist brace comes off.
I will be unable to email copies of Black Cat Weekly issue 10 to paid subscribers this week. Please stop by the web site, bcmystery.com, and download your copies from the paid subscribers area. It is a good issue.
All of the material for issue 11 is here, so it should be done on schedule.
I am going to take advantage of the forced down-time to try to master voice dictation software. I am using Google Voice to write this email, but it is not good enough. It does not support quotation marks, which boggles the mind. It is fine for straight text like an email, however.
(4) GENRE OVERCOMERS. Panelists Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Jherane Patmore of Rebel Women Lit, Onyx Pages, and Alex Brown will be discussing the purpose of sff genre labels and how Black authors use or transcend them in “What’s in a Genre: Black Authors and SFF” which streams on YouTube November 13 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific.
(5) HUGO UP, CLARKE DOWN. Kris V-M published the results of their survey of SF readers on Twitter, which collected 2,033 responses. Who’s read the winners of various awards? Thread starts here. People mostly don’t read Hugo winner They’d Rather Be Right, but there are six Clarke Award winners that fared even worse.
(6) WHO YA GONNA RECALL? The Ghostbusters: Afterlife “final trailer” dropped today. In theaters November 19.
From director Jason Reitman and producer Ivan Reitman, comes the next chapter in the original Ghostbusters universe. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, when a single mom and her two kids arrive in a small town, they begin to discover their connection to the original ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind. The film is written by Jason Reitman & Gil Kenan.
(7) EVERYTHING BUT THE OINK. Bad Wolf Archives shared these Christopher Eccleston memories – and it’s hard to get this last image out of my mind now.
(8) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS. The shortlist for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction was unveiled today. The titles that made the finals are at the link. None of the longlisted books of genre interest made the shortlist. The two medal winners will be announced on January 23. The Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000.
(9) JOCULARITY. “Big Money in Dead People” was the title of a news roundup that included this report from The Wrap: “AMC Networks Earnings: ‘Walking Dead’ Return Leads to 22% Rise in US Ad Sales”.
AMC Networks’ U.S. ad sales rose 22% year-over-year during the third quarter of 2021, when AMC’s “The Walking Dead” premiered its 11th and final season, the company reported Friday.
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
2007 — Fourteen years ago, The New Mel Brooks Musical: Young Frankenstein opened on Broadway. Based rather obviously off the Brooks film, with the music and lyrics, not surprisingly, by Brooks. Who helped wrote the accompanying book. The original Broadway cast was Roger Bart as Frederick Frankenstein, Shuler Hensley as The Monster, Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor, Megan Mullally as Elizabeth, Sutton Foster as Inga and Fred Applegate as Inspector Kemp / Hermit. It began previews on October 11, 2007, and opened on the date I noted above at the Lyric Theatre (then the Hilton Theatre) and closed on January 4, 2009, after 485 performances. Reception was mixed with the Times calling it a “overblown burlesque revue” but the Post calling it “very good indeed”. A few critics of course compared it unfavorably to The Producers which suggests they weren’t very good critics.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born November 8, 1847 — Abraham “Bram” Stoker. You know that he’s author of Dracula but did you know that he wrote other fiction such as The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm? Of course you do, being you. The short story collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories was published in 1914 by Stoker’s widow, Florence Stoker. (Died 1912.)
- Born November 8, 1898 — Katharine Mary Briggs. British folklorist and author who wrote A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures , and the four-volume Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, and the excellent Kate Crackernuts novel. Her The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors is a fascinating read. (Died 1980.)
- Born November 8, 1914 — Norman Lloyd. Yes, those dates are right. His longest genre role was as Dr. Isaac Mentnor on the most excellent Seven Days series. He’s been on Next Gen, Get Smart! in the form of the Nude Bomb film and visited The Twilight Zone, and in a fair of horror films from The Dark Secret of Harvest Home to The Scarecrow. (Died 2021.)
- Born November 8, 1932 — Ben Bova. He published more than one hundred twenty books, and as the editor of Analog he won six Hugo Awards. He later worked as editorial director at Omni. Hell he even had the thankless job of SFWA President. (Just kidding. I think.) I couldn’t hope to summarize his literary history so I’ll single out his Grand Tour series that though it’s uneven as overall, it’s splendid hard sf, as well as his Best of Bova short story collections put out recently in three volumes on Baen. What’s your favorite works by him? (Died 2020.)
- Born November 8, 1952 — Alfre Woodard, 69. I remember her best from Star Trek: First Contact where she was Lily Sloane, Cochrane’s assistant. She was also Grace Cooley in Scrooged, and polishing her SJW creds, she once voiced Maisie the Cat in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to School. And yes, I know she’s portrayed a character in Marvel Universe. I just like the more obscure roles.
- Born November 8, 1955 — Jeffrey Ford, 66. Winner of a very impressive seven World Fantasy Awards as well every other award given to writers of fantastic literature. Really there’s too many to list here. He’s got two Hugo nominations, one at Torcon 3 for his “Creation” short story, another at Noreascon 4 for ”The Empire of Ice Cream” novelette “. And yes, his Well-built City trilogy is amazing.
- Born November 8, 1956 — Richard Curtis, 65. One of Britain’s most successful comedy screenwriters, he’s making the Birthday List for writing “Vincent and the Doctor”, a most excellent Eleventh Doctor story. He was also the writer of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot which isn’t really genre but it’s Roald Dahl who’s certainly is one of us some of the time, isn’t he? (Please don’t deconstruct that sentence.) And he directed Blackadder which is most decidedly genre.
- Born November 8, 1968 — Parker Posey, 53. Doctor Smith on the rebooted Lost in Space series. I’ve not seen it, so how is it? She was in a film based on based Dean Koontz’s version of Frankenstein. And she shows in Blade: Trinity as well which I’ll admit I liked.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest do not discover teleportation.
(13) GUITARDIS. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Already the only Doctor Who to have earned an Academy Award, Peter Capaldi’s now set his sights on the music charts with his first album of music in 41 years. The Glaswegian actor played in a rock quartet in the 1970s, but put that aside to pursue a (highly successful) acting career. Although numerous sci-fi stars (such as William Shatner, Brent Spiner, and Milla Jojovich) have recorded pop albums in the past, I believe Capaldi will be the first lead actor from Doctor Who to have done so. So far the music critics are generally impressed with the musicianship and lyricism. The linked article includes the first single from Capaldi’s album St. Christopher. “Peter Capaldi on taking centre-stage with first album for 41 years” in The Sunday Post.
…Now, 41 years later, he has returned to his first love. On November 19, Capaldi will release his debut album, St Christopher – more than four decades after The Dreamboys put out their first and only single, Bela Lugosi’s Birthday, on the indie label St Vitus Dance.
The album was produced by his friend Robert Howard, better known as Dr Robert of hit 1980s band The Blow Monkeys and, discussing his passion for music, the former Time Lord spun back through the years to reminisce about the scene that first captured his imagination….
(14) AHH, THE CLASSICS. Iconic Marvel superhero stories are being published in volumes as part of the Penguin Classics Marvel Collection.
Calling all Marvel fans and Classics lovers! We are thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with Marvel Comics to publish a new series, the Penguin Classics Marvel Collection. This collection of carefully curated comic book anthologies presents the original stories and seminal tales of key Marvel characters, and serves as a testament to Marvel’s transformative impact on the fantasy genre and across popular culture. For the first time, these classic stories of some of the most iconic super heroes in the history of American comics, including The Amazing Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Captain America, are Penguin Classics. Learn more about the action-packed, must-read new series featuring forewords by Jason Reynolds, Nnedi Okorafor, and Gene Luen Yang!
(15) MUPPETS NEWS. Did you know that Big Bird — not the actor playing him, the character — tweeted that he had gotten vaccinated?
(16) LISTEN IN. Cat Rambo will talk about their forthcoming book release, You Sexy Thing and tell about “Three Tools For Plotting That Every Writer Needs” at the Parsec-SFF.org meeting on November 20. Register for the Zoom meeting here. It’s free. Parsec is a club in Pittsburgh, PA.
(17) REPORTING FROM THE FRONT LINES. Writer Jo Lindsay Walton, who Filers may remember as creator of the Sputnik Awards, is also a Research Fellow in Critical and Cultural Theory at the Sussex Humanities Lab, and he participated in a presentation at COP26 – “Communicating climate risk – what works and what doesn’t” – which can be viewed on YouTube.
(18) THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE LANDING. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] You may recall reports last year of a man in a jet pack near LAX — sighted on two occasions by pilots approaching the airport. This was puzzling in no small part because the altitude and duration of the flight seemed to be well beyond known jet pack capabilities.
The FBI has a new theory—call it Jack the unripper. Recent pics in the LA area have surfaced of what seems to be a Jack Skellington balloon floating around. Could the erstwhile jet pack rider have been the same? One supposes it’s possible such a balloon filled with helium could’ve reached a significant altitude without ripping. I can see it now, every Party City and Halloween Express will be asked to comb their invoices for suspicious purchases. “Jet pack sighting: FBI says ‘possible jet pack man’ spotted near Los Angeles International Airport may have been balloon”.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Olav Rokne, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(5) Data is great to have.
(11) For Norman Lloyd, I’ll consider St Elsewhere to be slightly genre, if only for the last episode.
Bova’s The Star Conquerors was foundational for me (along with The Weathermakers).
“Stars won’t you hide me?” is the Bova story that sticks with me.
The Bova story that I most remember is “A Slight Miscalculation” (which I tend to think of as “Dammit, the computer was right after all”).
(5) I wish I’d heard of this while it was running (reading since the mid-60s).
5) I not only have read the Clarke Award winner “The Testament of Jessie Lamb” by Jane Rogers, which is one of the least read winners on Kris’ list, but I actually ferried the author around Bremen while she was doing a reading here. Alas, this was before her Clarke Award win and so my copy of “The Testament of Jessie Lamb” is not signed, but my copy of one of her previous non-genre books is.
BTW, according to Kris, the second least read Hugo winner is the 1965 winner The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, which is one of the more inexplicable Hugo winners.
Cora Buhlert says BTW, according to Kris, the second least read Hugo winner is the 1965 winner The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, which is one of the more inexplicable Hugo winners.
Could someone explain the appeal of this novel pretty please? I just can’t see what made Hugo voters pick that novel over Brunner’s The Whole Man and Pangborn’s Davy which were excellent choices. I don’t know the third nominee, Smith’s The Planet Buyer at all.
5) I would read They’d Rather be Right if I could find it. I’m curious, how bad can it possibly be?
Cat Eldridge wrote
It’s a big, splashy, planet-wide disaster novel with a cast of dozens; I’ve always guessed that Leiber had an eye on Hollywood when he wrote it. Extraterrestrial cat-women, flying saucers, everything but the kitchen sink, and lots of good information about tides, which are actually a fascinating subject.
But I’ll admit I’ve never felt the impulse to read it again, unlike Davy which I revisit regularly.
bookworm1398 says I would read They’d Rather be Right if I could find it. I’m curious, how bad can it possibly be?
If you want to read it, it’s available at the usual suspects in The Second Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack for ninety nine cents. I’ve not read it, so tell me how bad it is.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch posts a different short fiction piece every Monday for free on her website. Today’s story is the novelette “Unity Con“, a murder mystery set at an SFF convention. There are lots of fannish callouts, some of which are pretty obvkous references to certain authors, without naming them.
The story will be available to read for free until next Monday.
I see this Rusch story is the third in Spade / Paladin series, all three of which first appeared the Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Does anyone know if the stories are related to each other? And do they build off each other?
11) I like to think that Parker Posey in Blade: Trinity is playing the same character she played in Christopher Guest’s Best in Show.
Cat Eldridge: Does anyone know if the stories are related to each other?
Cat, I’ve read them all, and they are related in that they are about 2 fen named Spade and Paladin solving mysteries.
There’s a collection called The Early Conundrums which contains 5 stories:
– Stomping Mad
– The Case of the Vanishing Boy
– The Karnikov Card
– Pandora’s Box
– Trick or Treat
And there are 3 more stories in addition to “Unity Con”:
– The Really Big Ka-Boom
– At Witt’s End
– Ten Little Fen (which is exactly what it sounds like, a Christie homage in which fans are being offed one at a time)
I can’t and I’m normally a Leiber fan, but The Wanderer simply isn’t very good. And at Galactic Journey, we vastly preferred Davy (which would have been my pick), The Whole Man and The Planet Buyer to The Wanderer. We actually discussed the 1965 Hugo ballot on The Journey Show and no one really liked The Wanderer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th52WOSPHcE
I think James Davis Nicoll suggested that Leiber won partly because he went to a lot of cons, was always pleasant and likeable and therefore a known quantity among fans.
I’ve had a copy of They’d Rather Be Right for a long, long time, and have never read it. As I understand it, it’s not that it’s particularly bad, just that it is so completely ordinary.
Cora Buhlert: Leiber deserves better than that. We have the vote count for the 1965 Best Novel Hugo (here). Leiber won a very narrow victory, edging Davy by four votes, and less than a third of the voters put Leiber’s book first. But whoever got a plurality would be the winner — there was no elimination runoff in the rules back then.
BEST NOVEL:
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber (Ballantine Books) 52 votes.
Davy by Edgar Pangborn (Ballantine Books) 48 votes.
The Planet Buyer by Cordwainer Smith (Pyramid Books) 34 votes.
The Whole Man by John Brunner (Ballantine Books) 26 votes.
No Award. 14 votes.
Jim Janney wrote: everything but the kitchen sink
And I completely forgot the astronaut flying his capsule through the moon. It’s a razzle-dazzle novel, and sometimes the Hugo voters go for that.
The Australian instant-runoff ballot was adopted very shortly thereafter, perhaps as quickly as the next year. I wonder if the results of that ballot were a reason?
The Lair of the White Worm is a personal favorite.
That Peter Capaldi track is pretty good.
15) I think covid19 is a mammal only disease but I trust Big BIrd is vaccinated against flu
Meredith Moment: Chris Hadfield’s debut novel The Apollo Murders is a Kindle Daily Deal in the UK. Not read it, but looks genre adjacent at the bearer minimum.
It’s better known these days as the first half of Norstrilia.
5) Which is more widely read is one thing, but which one picks better books? I’m going to subject them to the extremely rigorous, objective analysis of “which book I happened to like better during the handful of years I read both winners”:
HUGO VS. CLARKE SHOWDOWN
1987 — Speaker for the Dead vs. The Handmaid’s Tale
Speaker for the Dead is a good book I liked. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the great works of modern literature. Winner: The Handmaid’s Tale. +1 CLARKE
1990 — Hyperion vs. The Child Garden
This might be a tougher call for someone else, as Hyperion is a very memorable book, but The Child Garden happens to be one of my favorite books of all time. Winner: The Child Garden. +1 CLARKE
1991 — The Vor Game vs. Take Back Plenty
The Vor Game was great and I remember it vividly. While I read Take Back Plenty that same year, I have no memories of it whatsoever. WINNER: The Vor Game. +1 HUGO
1994 — Green Mars vs. Vurt
I’m a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson, but I didn’t think the sequels to Red Mars lived up to the promise of the first. Vurt was a mind-blower. WINNER: Vurt. +1 CLARKE
2001 — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire vs. Perdido Street Station
Oh, man. This is a hard one. But the Harry Potter books were like old school Star Trek movies to me — the odd numbered ones were a bit better. If it were Prisoner of Azkaban, this might go a different way, but as it is I’ll give it to Perdido Street Station. WINNER: Perdido Street Station. +1 CLARKE
2002 — American Gods vs. Bold as Love
Alas, I’m one of the weirdos who thought American Gods was Lesser Gaiman and a little disappointing, and also one of the weirdos who thinks Bold as Love is a classic. WINNER: Bold as Love. +1 CLARKE
2010 — The City & the City vs. The City & the City
Gonna call this one a tie. WINNER: The City & the City. +1 HUGO and +1 CLARKE
2011 — Blackout/All Clear vs. Zoo City
Zoo City was enjoyable, but I loved Blackout and All Clear in spite of their flaws. WINNER: Blackout/All Clear. +1 HUGO
2014 — Ancillary Justice vs. Ancillary Justice
I have to give this one to Ancillary Justice. WINNER: Ancillary Justice. +1 HUGO and +1 CLARKE
2016 — The Fifth Season vs. Children of Time
Children of Time is an excellent book. The Fifth Season is one of the best books of the 21st century so far. WINNER: The Fifth Season. +1 HUGO
2017 — The Obelisk Gate vs. The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a good book. The Obelisk Gate is, once again, an instant classic. WINNER: The Obelisk Gate. +1 HUGO
TOTALS
7 points to the Arthur C. Clarke Award
6 points to the Hugo Award
This extremely scientific result indicates that, uh … the Clarkes are technically the winner, but they are probably pretty comparable, as far as I’m concerned?
(Or possibly that I liked the Clarkes better before the mid-2000’s and the Hugos better after, if we want to take a close look at the numbers.)
I usually agree with 30-40% of the Hugo Finalists, and around 20% of the Clarke Finalists.
But that’s fine, I don’t expect any award to match my preferences completely, I just use award shortlists to make myself aware of works I otherwise might not have noticed. Lots of times I read the synopsis and think, nope, not my thing. But sometimes I find gems I otherwise wouldn’t have found.
2
That Sidewinders cover is all-time classic sci-fi art. I wanna buy it RIGHT NOW!
I’m going to say The Wanderer was fun, and made a slightly more indelible impression in the moment. Poor Hugo voters can’t catch a break!
Well wishes to Varley, Betancourt, and of course, Waldrop, and all the people hurting we haven’t heard about. Getting old sucks.
For all the awards received, Jeffrey Ford is another genre writer quietly and without fanfare producing an impressive and delightful body of work. There have been so many. We can’t celebrate them all, I suppose, as there are actual, biophysical limits to how much we can read, but it’s nice to take a moment to praise and be grateful. In my opinion, the last half century has been an embarrassment of riches for sf readers.
I’m kind of a simpleton, but I think it would be nice to see Ford on a late night show chatting about art and werewolves, and, oh, I don’t know, pothole repair. Raise societal awareness for a fine prose stylist. Greer Gilman. JPK. Robert Reed. Nancy Kress. John Kessel. Pat Cadigan. Paul Park. John Crowley. At least a nice profile in whatever passes for cool media these days. Harold Bloom certainly tries to give Crowley a “bloom bump.” What if Cadigan got a Colbert bump? Imagine the possibilities.
Maybe I just need a nap.
Came by this morning hoping to say kaddish with everyone for Dean Stockwell. I’ll look forward to the site’s retrospective. RIP.
Also, as someone who was a theater critic in 2007, I’ll vouch for the consensus opinion on the Broadway version of Young Frankenstein. The movie is brilliant, a classic; the stage musical was a weak copy of its source, and an attempt to re-bottle the lightning of The Producers. That show had an electricity that was almost palpable, while Young F was a safe bet, too big to fail, strictly for ticket-buyers who wanted more of the same. I recall enjoying Andrea Martin as Frau Blücher, and the actor playing Igor, but I had forgotten that Sutton Foster was even in it and that’s not a good sign!
@ Brown Robin
For all the awards received, Jeffrey Ford is another genre writer quietly and without fanfare producing an impressive and delightful body of work. There have been so many.
Other names that I would add to your list: Patricia A. McKillip, Mary Gentle, Elizabeth Hand, R.A. MacAvoy, Nancy Springer, and Karl Schroeder.
The Wanderer’s sheer structural ambition in covering so much ground so quickly would have made for a terrible story in most anyone’s hands. I imagine they admired its daring scope at the time. An A for effort, but it could only have become a classic for the ages if more interesting character studies had been chosen. The cast of dozens all seemed silly, dated and banal, and I may have read it closer to its first publication than to today. It came off like Fritz trying to sound hip.
A delightful Meredith moment is available from the usual suspects: Kristine Rusch’s The Early Conundrums which as JJ notes collects the first five of Spade / Paladin series will cost you a mere six bucks. I’m reading them now and they’re awesomely fannish. Thanks much, JJ!
I think my wife and I are in one of the Spade/Paladin stories (I know Kris put us in one of her convention-set stories).
Unfortunately, the Spade/Paladin collections are on my home computer, so I can’t check from my work computer.
They are indeed very fannish stories.
By the way The Early Conundrums were done as an audio narrative with Rish Outfield as the narrator. I purchased them off Audible to listen to in the morning as they sound quite delicious.
@ Cat Eldridge. Thanks for the tip. I bought it, I read it, I liked it. I’d put it middle of the pack among Hugo winners I’ve read.
It’s a little preachy esp towards the end, but I agree with everything it says, so that helps. Certainly the point about the importance of science communication is something very relevant today.
I seem to be a pixel short and a scroll late, again. Possibly for the same reasons that I woke up today with the TV and lights on.
Oh, well.
@Aaron G.: I recall enjoying Andrea Martin as Frau Blücher
*whinny*