(1) An Al Hirschfeld signed lithograph of the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew is for sale by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.
This a signed limited edition (127 of 375) print originally owned by science fiction fan legend Marty Gear. The lithograph shows the cast of the Star Trek the Next Generation TV Series and was commissioned by cast member Brent Spiner (Commander Data) with many given to the cast and crew of the show during the show’s original run as gifts…. This hand signed numbered print was dry mounted and framed by Marty Gear in a silver frame with glass and was bequeathed to BSFS in Marty’s will. It is in perfect condition. We are offering this item for $1,495.00 plus tax and shipping.
(2) “(Almost) Every SFF Adaptation Coming to Television and Movie Theaters!” compiled by Natalie Zutter at Tor.com.
Thanks to Game of Thrones and Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, we’ve entered a golden age of sci-fi and fantasy properties being developed for film and television. It seems that nearly every network and studio has snatched up the rights to old and new classics, with a bevy of projects in production or premiering in the coming months. We’ve compiled a master list of every SFF adaptation currently in the works, from American Gods to Y: The Last Man. And surprising no one, prolific writers Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi each have a number of projects in varying stages of development.
(3) The fourth installment of Superversive Blog’s interview with Ruth Johnston, author of Re-modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance, is titled “Culture War Post 4: The War Over Archetypes!”
L. Jagi Lamplighter poses the questions in this series described as “Speculative Fiction meets Jung.”
Q: So the group that is interested in exploring gender roles and seeing them as less restrictive probably loves books like Ancillary Justice or Left Hand of Darkness, which do just that. In fact, it was probably a major factor in Ancillary Justice winning the Hugo in 2014.
A: If there’s one thing the two sides in the Hugo controversy agree on, it’s that the most important thing about Ancillary Justice is not the story itself but the way it used pronouns to obscure gender. Everyone is “she” until the narrator has a reason to identify male or female. It’s explained in the story as just part of the narrator’s native language which, like Chinese and Turkish, doesn’t specify gender in a normal sentence. The narrator, writing in English, is forced to make gender choices in every sentence, so instead just uses “she” for everyone. But I had to read some of the story to understand the thing about language, because when people talk about Ancillary Justice, they elevate the single pronoun to such importance that it’s like the story was really just about obscuring gender. If they liked the story, it’s because at last we’re disrupting mental assumptions that gender will always be visible. If they didn’t like the story, it’s because obscuring gender became more important than whatever was happening.
So that’s a great example of the wider culture battle interfering in science fiction and crowning a winner in what might otherwise just be a dispute about literary taste. Once it’s connected to the wider question of how we, in real life, see men and women, then it’s about life and death, good and evil. It’s like they’re saying, “If you don’t like this story, maybe it’s because you want to suppress the “‘other’.” Those who didn’t like the story respond in defensiveness: “well maybe if you like the story, it’s because you care more about message! You just want to disrupt society.” Now it’s no longer about literary taste, it’s about hurting people or destroying the culture, and things “just got real,” as they say. There are pre-existing political sides to take, and these sides are ready to swing into action even if they don’t care about science fiction or fantasy.
(4) From a website devoted to Joyce Carol Oates — “Into the Void: Lovecraft and the World Fantasy Award”.
Into the Void: H.P. Lovecraft and the World Fantasy Awards – a twitter conversation with… https://t.co/O6EsNLilRb pic.twitter.com/MtTBRy3ZMc
— Celestial Timepiece (@PoisonedKiss) November 11, 2015
Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Fossil-Figures” from the collection The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares won a World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her story collection Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque was a finalist for the collection award in 1995. The award itself is a bust of H.P. Lovecraft.
At the link is a Twitter conversation about the news that the Lovecraft statue will no longer be used for the award.
(5) The publisher of Castalia House, Vox Day, would like everyone to know the firm is doing well.
Two simultaneous #1 bestsellers isn’t bad, especially when you only publish one book each month.
It’s also worth noting that in the Military Strategy category, Castalia House currently publishes five of the top 40 bestsellers.
(6) Kate Paulk, never known for her economy of prose, could have distilled today’s Mad Genius Club post into this sentence:
And yet, when I pointed out that our dear anti-Puppy friends were behaving like the Nazis did, complete with examples and quotes, I was horrible, just absolutely horrible.
(7) But this is a strange field. John Scalzi wrote a post reassuring the original Sad Puppy, Larry Correia, that when it comes to book tour audiences, “Size Matters Not”.
I’ve been actively touring novels since 2007, when Tor put me on tour for The Last Colony. Since that time, across several tours, I’d say my largest tour event had several hundred people at it, and my smallest event had… three. Yes, three. I was at the time a New York Times best selling, award-winning author, and yet three people showed up to a tour event of mine. And they were lovely people! And we had a fine time of it, the three of them and I. But still: Three.
Because sometimes that happens. And it happens to every writer. Ask nearly any writer who has done an event, and they will tell you a tale of at least one of their events populated by crickets and nothing else. Yes, even the best sellers. And here’s the thing about that: Even with the best sellers, it’s an event often in the not-too-recent past. Every time you do an event, you roll the dice. Sometimes you win and get a lot of people showing up. Sometimes you lose and you spend an awkward hour talking to the embarrassed bookstore staff. Either way, you deal with it, and then it’s off to the next one.
Also, tangentially: the dude on Twitter trying to plink one off of Larry because of the size of his event crowd? Kind of a dick. …
And then those seven or eight or forty or however many people will go home feeling valued by Larry, and they’ll keep buying his books and keep recommending them to friends and others. Because that’s the point and that’s how it’s done. The value of doing a book event is not only about who is in the crowd that day. It’s the knock-on effect from there — building relationships with fans and booksellers, and benefiting when they talk you up to friends and customers and so on….
(8) It really must be National Pat Your Puppy Day, because George R.R. Martin claimed to have found a silver lining in the Hugo disaster:
Last time I talked about some possible nominees for Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. This time I want to focus on Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. In other words, best television episode. (No, not officially, but that’s what it usually comes down to, and let’s ignore the silliness of nominating an Easter Egg or an acceptance speech from the previous year’s Hugos).
I was no fan of the efforts of Puppies to game the Hugo Awards last year. I don’t think I have been shy in my opinions on that subject. But I will give the Puppies this much — their efforts did break the decade-long hold that Dr. Who fandom had on the nominations in this category. I have no problem with episodes of DR. WHO being nominated, and indeed winning, mind you… and the Doctor has won plenty of times in this category over the past decade… but when four of the six finalists are from the same category, that strikes me as way unbalanced and, well, greedy. The Doctor’s fans love their show, I know, but there is a LOT of great SF and fantasy on the tube right now. Nominate DR. WHO, by all means… but leave some room for someone else, please.
(9) Even S. T. Joshi got some love today — in Black Gate’s post “New Treasures: The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume Two, edited by S.T. Joshi”.
The reason his stock is still flying high is because Black Gate’s review of Volume 1 is quoted on the back cover…
G. Winston Hyatt wrote:
Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness serves as the inspiration for many of the authors in The Madness of Cthulhu… it’s masterful in concept and at times in execution. A fusion of Antarctic adventure, science fiction, and early-modern horror, it not only offers chilling passages with an escalating sense of dread and isolation, but also constructs a world horrifying in its implications about mankind…
The second volume contains 14 brand new stories inspired by Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.
(10) As SF Site News explains, “In 2014, SFWA developed an accessibility checklist for its internal events, such as the Nebula Award Weekend or the New York Reception. SFWA has now elected to make the checklist public and available to other events which may desire to have some guidelines.”
“Accessibility Checklist for SFWA Spaces” is now posted at the SFWA Blog.
The SFWA Accessibility Checklist is provided for the use of conventions and other gatherings who want to ensure that their event is fully accessible by all attendees.
The checklist was assembled by Matthew Johnson, Teresa Frohock, Peggy Rae Sapienza, Tanya Washburn, and Bill Thomasson.
(11) RedWombat in a comment on File 770.
Let us go then, me and you,
When the awards are nearly due,
Like shoggoths dissected upon a table;
Let us go, through eldritch winding blogs,
Muttering and wordy slogs,
Of those upset in one-line tweets
And those who pound the well-worn beats:
“PC censorship!”–a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What the hell is that?”
You behold the bust of Lovecraft.In the room the fans go fore and aft,
Talking of H. Phillip Lovecraft.
(12) Glenn Fleishman visited Amazon’s new brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle to shoot some photos – and in the process caught a labeling error in the sf section where Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is listed as the 2015 Hugo Award winner. (It won in 2002.)
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I want to thank people for adding to my already groaning TBR with recent suggestions. According to Goodreads I’ve read 236 books so far this year. This weekend I’ll be reading Ancillary Mercy Which my husband picked up from the local library. I’m also hoping to get to the just released Ilona Andrews book Sweep in Peace which downloaded while I was sleeping.
Currently I’m reading two books by Lada Ray Stepford U.S.A and Gold Train as someone kindle loaned me book two so I grabbed book one. I’m not sure who loaned it to me as I didn’t recognize the email and they didn’t include a note but I’m not one to turn down a surprise loan.
I know I have some comics/graphic novels but I’m drawing blanks at the moment. I’ve backed quite a number on Kickstarter this year. Sitting on my bed waiting to be read are Flutter volumes 1 & 2 by Jennie Wood. I’m not sure if volume 2 is Hugo eligible.
@Tom Galloway
There’s at least one female super-genius in the Marvel Universe – Valeria Richards. Who has a pretty big role in the Hickman run, thinking circles around both of her dads. I’m wondering if we’re not going to see a lot more of her in the future.
It’s hard for me to tell, since I took a long break from reading comics, but it does look as if Marvel is aiming for better representation. Including re-thinking a number of their iconic characters as women or people of color, and bringing certain characters further into the foreground.
Let’s remember the Bechdel test was originally about movies. Movies have very limited onscreen time compared to books and to pass it the movie has to show (rather than telling) a woman talking to another woman about something that is not a man.
Aside from requiring two women to talk to each other without a man being the main thing on their minds, it’s actually easy to pass: “Where’s the bathroom” or “please pass the salt” is enough to do it.
The point was how few movies could get over such a low bar.
Passing or failing the Bechdel didn’t make a movie bad or good (or feminist or not) –it was more about how the bulk of movies did with respect to the Bechdel, and how that compares to real life where women talk to other women about things that aren’t men all the time.
rob_matic asks:
I’ve declared a moratorium on translated manga for myself and am attempting to read all the way through Hunter x Hunter in the original Japanese. It’s going slowly.
BDP Short Form: I’ve got my eye on Kagewani, a largely episodic horror series. There is a bit of connective tissue, but I’d consider the episodes on a standalone basis so far.
Yes, I’m recommending something that is technically anime again. If you don’t like the typical anime art style, don’t worry, it doesn’t look anything like that. It doesn’t look anything like any well-known thing I can name, in fact.
@Jon F. Zeigler
There’s been a few – Alyssa Moy, Sue Storm (Ultimates) and Kitty Pryde, but they are pretty poorly represented thus far.
@ Iphinome
“Breq’s after a murderer.”
One of the compelling plot points of the book is that Breq *is* the murderer in one sense but is also pursuing the murderer. (And excellent point about how much more central sex/gender is to Starship Troopers than to Ancillary, although actually central to neither.)
Those who obsess about the pronouns are just ignorant.
A great list of different media tests. As well as the thinking/history behind some of them.
While the Bechdel test should be easy to pass it is sad how few books and movies do. It shows how little import we as a society give to everyday interactions between women even when we are the ones having them IRL.
No passing the Bechdel test doesn’t make a book/movie/comic/TV show feminist or less likely to punch its females viewers in the face. It’s hoped that if the author(s)/creator(s) think about the Bechdel test they might change more about their characters both male and female and possibly even open their minds to non-white/not-straight/not-binary.
@Tintinaus
re: Paulk and emmigration
Can we exchange her and Ken Ham for Crocodile Dundee? Please?
Kyra et al
Re: The Chimes
V’z abg gur orfg crefba gb nanylfr guvf, fvapr zl qnhtugre’f svnapé vf Qverpgbe bs Zhfvp ng n Pngurqeny va fbhgurea Ratynaq, juvpu cbffrffrf n irel ynetr betna, oryyf, naq crbcyr jub pna fvat rkgenbeqvanel guvatf bapr gurl’ir orra gnhtug. Jr xabj gung fghqlvat naq pbzcbfvat zhfvp erjverf crbcyr’f oenvaf, nf qbrf cresbezvat jvgu zhfvpny vafgehzragf, vapyhqvat gur uhzna ibvpr. Gur cerzvfr bs ‘Gur Puvzrf’ vf abg pbzcyrgryl vzcbffvoyr, naq sbe zhpu bs gur obbx V rawblrq cynlvat jvgu gur vqrnf, ohg vg nyy sryy ncneg; vg’f abg fb zhpu snvyvat gb fgvpx gur qvfzbhag nf jnyxvat bire gur rqtr bs gur pyvss, nccneragyl hanjner gung gur pyvss rkvfgf. Zl vzcerffvba vf gung gur nhgube nyfb yvxrq cynlvat jvgu gur vqrnf ohg qvqa’g unir n fgbel gb gryy, fb gung va gur raq vg orpnzr ‘lbhat crnfnag obl hanjner bs uvf njrfbzr cbjref fnirq ol gur frys fnpevsvpr bs uvf aboyr sevraq’ greevgbel, juvpu ernyyl vf veevgngvat orpnhfr gur vqrnf qrfreirq fbzrguvat orggre guna gung. V purrerq zlfrys hc ol yvfgravat gb shgher fba-va-ynj’f ‘Snagnfvn ba n Gurzr sebz Fgne Jnef’…
In A Hat Full of Sky (the 2nd Tiffany Aching book), there’s a woman who has two bodies. Not told from the first person though. There must be other such examples.
Quite interesting article about recent expansions in print SF. In addition to the new John Joseph Adams Books line mentioned in the last few days, Hachette have announced they are growing Orbit by 50%, which it ties into the launches of Saga and Tor.com novellas earlier in the year to conclude the genre is looking very happy indeed.
tldr: more books yay!
@Jon F. Zeigler
You are correct. I only got back into comics with the big “Marvel NOW!” relaunch in 2012 (but I have also gotten plenty of use out of a Marvel Unlimited Subscription to dig through back issues). But in those few years, it’s clear that Marvel is definitely going in that direction, and surprise, surprise, it is working out very well for them financially. First I really heard about it was with Captain Marvel where Kelly Sue DeConnick helped foster the awesome “Carol Corps” fan community. But another major character that has done well is Miles Morales as the Spider-Man of the Ultimate universe. I believe Bendis created him in direct response to the controversy over Donald Glover wanting to audition for Spider-Man. The character has taken off in popularity because not only does he lead to greater representation, but he’s a cool character. This may be blasphemous to long term fans, but easily he’s my preferred Spider-Man now. Sorry.
Now with female Thor, most teams being relatively gender-balanced, even an all-female team or two (that act like a normal team, not running around pointing out that they are all women, shocking!), Black Panther, Ms. America, and many other PoCs gaining more prominence, etc. – Marvel is wholeheartedly embracing a more balanced representation. On top of that, new characters like Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) and Spider-Gwen, from what I understand, are doing very well, and the characters are really resonating with fans (especially young cosplayers).
Marvel is really hitting that nice place where they are including far more representation, and from that using them to tell interesting stories. Who woulda thunk that more representation could lead to better storytelling?!
Well, there’s female Thor, Sam Wilson as Cap and now female Wolverine. A bit gimmicky, admittedly, but they’re good comics, except for the latter which is only one issue in. On the other hand, they’ve been packing all the extra Avengers teams that sprung up around the films with diverse characters, and have been doing it, really, since Gillen’s run on Young Avengers. In the last pre-Secret Wars issue of Mighty Avengers, Monica Rimbaud and Luke Cage were giving out yards to the Illuminati for their high-handedness and secrecy. Which was great.
On edit: Ken Marable has expanded. I think part of it is that Marvel has embraced a new generation of young writers. Now perhaps that pool of writers could be more diverse themselves, but they as writers seem downright eager to rejuvenate Marvel with a more modern and diverse cast.
Re graphic novels, one thing I read that hasn’t been noted yet is The Divine, by Israeli authors Boaz Lavie and Asaf and Tomer Hanuka. They were interested in news stories about child soldiers in southeast Asia, and created a story where CIA-associated operatives run violently up against children with magical powers and figures from Burmese mythology. It isn’t bad (vivid graphic storytelling for one thing), although I tend to feel uneasy about stories written by outsiders that mix magic into real, traumatic events; is it exoticizing, making these events more distant and safe, even entertaining, to read about as fiction? The story centers on an American explosives technician hired for what he thinks is a short-term mining job in southeast Asia; he is surprised by how the people who hired him are treating the local population. When he is captured by child soldiers (themselves very violent) he is particularly disturbed because he has just become a father himself. (My local library, whose decisions about where to shelve graphic novels are very often incomprehensible, has this one in the YA section — definitely wrong, not so much because of the level of violence as because of the adult concerns about parenthood and so on.)
Also, Emily Carroll has an excellent new short graphic story, “The Groom” — the less said about it the better, just check it out if you’re up for serious creepy (but no gore), and be prepared to read it several times to figure it out.
Re: The Chimes
When I said I had problem with the worldbuilding of The Chimes, let me clarify that it was not with the central premise of the existence of a Thing That Did The Stuff The Author Said It Did. I simply accepted this as the premise; there was That Thing, it did That Stuff, no problem.
My problems were more with the fact that, That Thing Doing That Stuff being taken as a given, NOTHING about the world made sense within that context. Why isn’t everyone simply dead? (Yes, I know there was the object memory thing and the body memory thing, they would not have kept 99.99% of the population from dying off, for so many reasons.) And what’s going on in other countries? Has no one out there noticed? Why has there been no intervention? Is everyone ELSE dead? What about Scotland? What’s the range on this thing? About every twenty pages I was struck by something that took me out of the story completely, and was never adequately explained because the concept hadn’t been thought through very well.
Add on top of this the things you have pointed out, that I also agree with (the overly simplistic resolution, the character who shows up just to Do What That Character Does), and I was left thoroughly unimpressed.
(2) I saw an ad for Lucifer last night. I believe it will not be on our TVs for long. Am interested in “Gateway”, “Lock In”, “Luna: New Moon” (WRITE NEXT BOOK FASTER, IAN), “Horrorstor”, “His Dark Materials” (if it gets a decent budget),”Ready Player One”, “Red Mars” (although, on SpikeTV? I worry),”Story of Your Life” (although I’m not sure HOW they’re going to convey its delicacy), “The Expanse” (will it be gooey enough?), and I should watch “Man in the High Castle” now.
(3) “Both sides”? There’s two sides? I thought there were 5 — Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, anti-slate, Who Gives A Fuck? and What Are “The Hugos”?
And all of them except the Sads and Rabids liked Ancillary b/c there were spaceships and intrigue and revenge and tea. Nobody except the Puppies cared about the pronoun, other than “Huh. That’s different. Oooh, pew-pew!”
(4) Even Oates’ kitteh seems to be thinking “What the hell IS that?” as Red Wombat (11) said.
(8) Yeah, GRRM, that’s nice and all — but the Puppies didn’t nominate the thing that actually won, “Orphan Black”. That was just plain ol’ fen doing things the usual way. OB has many things Puppies object to; anti-authoritarianism, a trans character, and all those women passing the Bechdel test. And he’s being modest by not mentioning HIS win for GoT before Puppidum organized.
Jamoche: That’s my problem with graphic novels of books as well. So much money, so few words. But I HIGHLY recommend the “Rivers of London” series to everyone here. Buy them all, read them all. (Also, I didn’t like the way Peter and Nightingale were drawn in the graphic novel. Just all wrong.)
I’m terribly out of it on graphic novels and probably won’t get to anything until the Hugo nominations come out, and then I’ll read the best of last year’s. Still behind!
Finished “Old Venus”. Enjoyed most of the stories, but don’t think any of them are Hugo-worthy. Anthology is greater than the sum of its parts, so, Recommended. Took a break and read Leigh Brackett’s “The Long Tomorrow” (Does not pass Bechdel, as SF of that era tended not to, even when written by women). Might hit “Uprooted” next, or something Wombatty.
@ Paul Weimer
re: Paperusnet
What killed it off was the time delay between burying your message in the jar in the sand and the retrieval. I heard some of the burial sites were actually lost! No telling when those messages will be delivered.
@Mark love the article you link to. The puppies keep saying SFF is dying. Between self-published books, hybrid authors, backlist and deceased authors ebook/reprints, and the list of new and exciting trad publishers stuff the article points to I agree it’s a growing not a dying market. Of course some is an expansion of what is considered SFF and who writes it but I’m real good with those changes. The more the merrier.
Some of the people who like Ancillary thought the pronouns were a big deal; some didn’t. I’m in the latter category, and I’ve been told by a couple of people in the former category that it must be because of my male privilege. Which well may be a fair cop, although I know people who feel the same as I do and don’t have that excuse.
On the dislike side, most of the complaints I’ve seen have been about the pronouns, but there were a few people who just didn’t care for the story. And then of course, there are people who are neutral, so we get at least six sides total: liked/neutral/disliked times pronouns were big/small deal.
—
Re. the Bechdel test, it’s worth noting that Ms. Bechdel herself never claimed it was a particularly useful test for individual works. It’s most useful as an overall bulk test: what percentage of works pass the test can be a decent first order approximation of the sexism levels of that set of works.
In the case of science fiction, though, it’s more-than-usually likely to give misleading results, since SF deals with the unusual and the alien. Aliens and robots don’t necessarily map at all well to our binary notions of gender. And in a world with Easy Sex Change*, things get even more complex. Does The Left Hand of Darkness pass the Bechdel test? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’m not even quite sure how to apply it to Gethens.
*Warning! Link goes to TV Tropes, which may suck you in for hours if you’re not careful.
—
Graphic novels: I was originally very happy when this category was added to the Hugos, but a few years in, I discover I’m just not as able to keep up with works in the category as I’d originally hoped. So I haven’t got a lot to contribute.
Tasha Turner says:
To be fair, they don’t say sf as a whole is dying, just big traditional publishers and physical bookstores. (Though as you then note, even those doesn’t actually seem to be dying.)
Today’s read: Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones. I enjoyed this greatly most of the way through, I always did have a bit of a soft spot for magical college hijinx plus assassins. The ending, though … I mean, I know it was supposed to be a Shakespearian comedy / Gilbert & Sullivan kind of deal, but I was still left feeling a bit let down by just how simply everything was wrapped up in a bow.
@Tasha
Absolutely, and indie publishing models are a welcome part of that market. The claims that trad pub is on the way out are as unnecessary as they are baseless – there’s room for everyone, especially when there’s growth going on.
Y’all are overthinking the Bechdel-Wallace Test a bit too much.
It was a joke, in a comic called “Dykes to Watch Out For” back in the 80’s, and the punch line was “Alien” was the last movie that passed the test the character set for herself.
(so genre for the win!)
But it is a good “think about what’s in what you’re watching” rule.
@Nigel
Lauren Beukes is doing a comic you say? googles Now that’s interesting. I’ve never been a huge comics/graphic novel fan with the exception of Gaiman but more for lack of time rather than interest.
(2) Do wish someone would do a good Altered Carbon adaptation. Always thought it would be interesting to have a character like Kovacs that could be played by multiple actors. For Broken Angels I always picture his custom mercenary sleeve as Wesley Snipes for example.
Peace Is My Middle Name: 4GW is actually an intriguing theory, but more to the point, it’s a theory in desperate need of a definition. Some have called it as you have seen it, a situation where the line between combatants and noncombatants is erased. Some have likened it to ‘memetic warfare.’ Others have called it ‘network-centric.’ Some refer to it as breaking the chain of observe->act->react (or something like that. Still more say it is state-less warfare. Ask five military theorists what 4GW is and you’ll get seven answers.
Roughly, the (controversial) generational model of warfare usually follows this pattern:
Zeroth Generation: The individual brave gathered into a very loose fighting group with minimal organization.
First Generation: Formation. The use of focussed fire, “grand tactics” and operational-level coordination.
Second Generation: Maneuver. The blitzkrieg, multi-layer offenses, vertical envelopment, mobile logistics, objective-based warfighting (as opposed to just killing the enemy.)
Third Generation: Asymmetric warfare — terrorists/freedom-fighters, insurgencies, COIN.
Fourth Generation: The new hotness, the Next Big Thing.
For me, my moment of epiphany regarding 4GW was when I was reading a book about it at the same time I was reading the autobiography of Grace Lee Bogs. And suddenly the two narratives meshed together disturbingly well. In short, Grace Lee Bogs focussed on internetworking on a personal scale: Where there are people who know other people, getting those people to talk to each other, to make a network of networks, on building them up, on knowing someone who knew someone who knew what to do… that is what she focussed on. The greatest strength in such a situation as she described in Detroit was, not the people who did things (though they are without argument important) but in getting people who did things to talk to each other and work together.
So, in (very) brief: Grace worked on building communities. 4GW works on destroying them.
Nestled in there is talk about super-empowered individuals, a full embrasure of fighting for “hearts and minds”, and a touch of the idea that ideals can be as lethal as bullets.
Here in the year 4121, we of course laugh at the idea of 4GW… but we’re still trying to figure out Nth Generation Warfare, which somehow involves hot dogs and hot dog buns.
@ Xtifr:
That image is going to stay with me for a while.
And, agreed, comparing people to Nazis because they Say Mean Things about her and her chums’ behavior viz a literary award, does indeed disqualify Ms. Paulk from being taken seriously. Though, in fact, I did not take her seriously, anyhow.
Don’t know if anyone’s in Paris, or has loved ones there, but hope all our friends are safe.
Aliette de Bodard tweets that she and friends are home and safe, in a sit-down Paris.
@Laura Resnick: Thanks, I think. 🙂
I actually wanted to do a whole Cyrano-like riff. “If you really wanted to insult me, you could have done this, or that, or the other….” But I ran out of steam too quickly. Which is probably why I don’t write for a living. Still, Ms. Paulk theoretically does, and if “yer a NazI!” the best she can come up with, it doesn’t say a whole lot of good about her creativity or wordsmithing skills.
Greg Hullender: The funny thing about the use of pronouns in the Imperial Radch series is that it was just a gimmick, and, truth be told, it was a gimmick that didn’t actually work. It was supposed to make the reader think of the Radch as having ambiguous gender, but what it actually did was cause us to think of everyone except Seivarden as female. Then, whenever we saw Seivarden referred to as “she,” it popped us out of the story.
I’d really appreciate it if you’d not presume to speak for other people here. I don’t agree with what you’ve said at all (and most of the things I’ve seen other people say here don’t agree with it, either). The pronoun thing was not “supposed to make the reader think of the Radch as having ambiguous gender” — it was supposed to give the reader a little nudge to think about their own personal assumptions about gender.
Which it did for me — and then after about 10 pages, I adjusted to the fact that the action in the book was simply not related to gender roles and I went merrily on my way, reading the book and enjoying the hell of what is a great space opera adventure-mystery.
L. Jagi Lamplighter: That being said: I have been involved in this field my whole life and this post here is the first time I’ve seen people state reasons that they liked AJ other than the pronoun…even when asked straight out over and over about this, most people interacting with the puppies insisted the pronoun issue was the great thing about the book.
Then I would say that the only places you’ve been reading are Puppy blogs. You certainly haven’t been reading here on File770, where people have been raving constantly about the Ancillary books for months, and people giving their reason for liking those books as being the pronoun usage has been almost non-existent.
L. Jagi Lamplighter: It is actually sadly funny that people are bothered by this one thing, because she was so careful throughout to try to make it clear that she was talking about theoretical groups, not the Puppies and those who disagreed with them. This one statement is one of the few places she strayed.
If you’ve been reading the posts by people here on File770 every time Mike has linked to one of Johnston’s interviews on your site, you’ll see that rather than being “bothered by this one thing”, people have been repeatedly bothered by the badly-researched, fallacious, and baldly untrue things she has said in all of them.
You’re not doing any favors here to her by linking to the other interviews. The more one reads of what she has to say, the more one realizes that she is just stringing together a bunch of baseless assumptions and erroneous “supporting” evidence.
As another commenter pointed out, someone who even just uses Google to do their research could not get as many things wrong as Johnston has managed to do in these interviews. She is clearly operating out of a thought bubble without bothering to do much consultation of the real world.
L. Jagi Lamplighter: To expect an outsider -– who states clearly that her statements are theoretical and just an examination of the ideas –- to have read a particular review in an obscure magazine she never would have heard of or have any possibility of finding is… well, I think your standard may be unnecessarily strict under the circumstance.
My personal standard is the expectation that someone will do at least basic-level research before opining at great length about something. It is clear that Johnston has not even done that.
I am baffled that she would expect anyone to take her seriously, given the speciousness of her work — and I am mystified as to why you would choose to degrade your own credibility by posting her work on your own site. I mean, it’s nice that you want to do a favor for your old college buddy — but I certainly wouldn’t post my best friend’s “work” on my own website if it was such poor quality.
And if her personal situation is as you describe, wouldn’t it be far nicer of you to help her get it up to a reasonable level of quality before posting it? I’m sure that she reads the reactions people have to what she posts. It can’t be helping her physical or emotional condition any to read a bunch of people (very rightly) pointing out just how badly reasoned and poorly researched her work is.
L. Jagi Lamplighter: It’s very interesting to hear all this here. My husband repeatedly asked those who disagreed with him, over and over, what they liked about the book. With one exception, nobody said anything to him, except to praise the pronouns. He would answer with “yes, I got that, but what else was good about the book?” And… nothing. This happened over and over. I am delighted to hear that you and others here enjoyed the book for other reasons.. but I can definitely attest that the pronouns was the thing that most of the people attacking the Puppies spoke about.
Where was this “speaking” done? I look forward to you posting links to actual examples of this. Because I really don’t think you can (which is almost certainly why you didn’t). I think you think that what you are saying is true. But I think that is based on your own very narrow experience of the SFF field.
If you wish to confine your web activity to Puppy blogs and your reading activity to books which qualify according to the standards of your “Superversive” Manifesto, that is of course your prerogative — but you should be aware that it makes what you say look incredibly ignorant and ill-informed.
I could take the Bechdel Test more seriously if it weren’t for the fact that pretty much all lesbian porn passes it with flying colours.
Dr. Strangelobe asked
You do know there are MANY languages that do not have gendered pronouns? At least 254 per http://wals.info/feature/44A#2/16.6/148.5
GSLamb: I could take the Bechdel Test more seriously if it weren’t for the fact that pretty much all lesbian porn passes it with flying colours.
Lesbian fiction of any kind is not the cultural default, is it?
The very point of the Bechdel Test is to examine a work in terms of how it does, or does not, conform to the cultural default.
The Bechdel Test can — and in my opinion, should — be taken seriously as a way to cross-check our cultural prejudices. Nothing more, and nothing less.
I am not well enough to speak on some days. Sometimes that’s because of spoonlessness. Sometimes (skip if squeamish) that’s because I’ve had to use my fingers to push and pull the parts of my throat back into place because they’ve slipped out of it. I’m still capable of googling before submitting articles.
I would be a little offended if someone defended an article I’d put time and effort into with ‘she’s sick’. I am sick. Things take me longer to do than they would a healthy able-bodied person. That doesn’t mean people should have lower expectations for my ability to get basic fact-checking right.
Re: Ancillary books
I didn’t go wow at the pronouns, although it was perfectly decent worldbuilding; the technical bit that stood out to me the most were the gorgeous, flowing passages about moving in multiple bodies that never once got confusing despite ample opportunity to do so. I also liked the characters and the plots and the thinky thoughts about personhood, freedom, what makes people civilised, and all sorts of other things.
Re: 4GW
I prefer the Just War principles, especially if viewing from a Christian ethics perspective.
Re: 3GW
Are these generations supposed to match periods of time? Because this one sounds an awful lot like how much of the Roman Empire worked to me.
@Bruce Baugh
Gratz on finishing the project. 🙂
Just found another for the two bodies/one mind files today: “Acrobatic Duality” by Tamara Vardomskaya. A pair of acrobats who can pull off nearly impossible feats because they are one (but the mystery is, how did they get this way?) It is first person.
They always refer to themselves as “we” — even when speaking of an experience of one body. They tried having sex, just one body since their partner didn’t know they were a unit, and found it unsatisfying:
One reason that this is different than the way Leckie depicts the experiences of ancillaries is that the ancillaries have a little bit more separation to them — they don’t feel like parts of one body.
Scalzi has weighed in on the WFA statuette discussion with a post that is, per usual, thoughtful and articulate:
… nor are the arguments of Lovecraft being “of his time” particularly persuasive when it’s obvious and evident that even in his time, he was noxiously bigoted, and in any event, it’s not his time anymore. One of the privileges of being of our time (whichever time that is) is to decide who and what should represent a genre, and in this case a genre that is increasingly diverse and full of people that it seems likely Lovecraft himself would have been horrified to see clutching his likeness as a prize.
Which is to say that I expect of all the people who would vote to have Lovecraft’s likeness removed from the World Fantasy Award, he himself would be among the first. For his own bigoted reasons, mind you. But the end result would be the same.
JJ: I <3 you in a non-gendered way. You said it all, and very civilly but firmly.
(We like civility in 3538)
Meredith: Exactly. Otherwise you’re holding us spoonies to a lower standard. “Oh, look, she’s trying, how cuuuute.” (patronizing head pats)
Meredith: Thanks. 🙂 Whew. Relief.
And like you, I’m sometimes aphasic or otherwise impaired in ability to communicate. (Not being able to type is much more of an acute handicap for me than not being able to talk, given my life.) So some things take a long, long time. But like you, I’d feel insulted or worse if it were necessary to excuse the end product with “I was sick”.
I also agree about the principles of just war, and feel that they accommodate all sorts of changing realities. And that if someone just plain feels they can’t live up to them…maybe it’s time to rethink whether that thing needs doing. (Jim Henley made this point in his blogging days about some of what’s under the counter-terrorism umbrella. If we find ourselves thinking about what we have to do to suppress a whole local population, we are probably don’t something we shouldn’t.)
lurkertype, I <3 a large number of the frequent commenters here in a non-gendered, non-sexual way. 😉
I would seriously love it if teleportation were real, and we could all go hang out somewhere in person for a weekend. I think there would be much book discussions, and laughter, and snark, and ruining of keyboards, and many Lucky 10,000s.
Until then, I guess we’ll just have to settle for the virtual hangout Mike is kind enough to let us frequent, and the occasional File770 meetup at conventions.
Until then, I guess we’ll just have to settle for the virtual hangout Mike is kind enough to let us frequent, and the occasional File770 meetup at conventions.
On that note, are any other File 770ers going to be at Chessiecon?
Relevant to #10, the SFWA Blog has a piece by Lee Martindale on the origins of the Accessibility Checklist: http://www.sfwa.org/2015/11/back-story-the-accessibility-guidelines-checklist/
Aaron: On that note, are any other File 770ers going to be at Chessiecon?
Oh, look, RedWombat and Heather Rose Jones are going to be there. You’ll have to see if you can drag them away from all the adoring fans. 😉
@Aaron – Well, I’m one of the GoHs, so–yes!
@Aaron
I’ll be out of town that weekend, alas.
I’ll repeat, there are valid reasons for a work not to pass the Bechdel test. If you stopped for a moment to think about the roles of women in your works in progress then mission accomplished.
Posting from 1087 where the under-representation of non-Norman characters is fiction is a major issue.
Bring them over to the shy fans. I saw RedWombat at the Nebula signing session and was too shy to walk over and say hello.
Aha, the time travel machine has carried me to the year 1201!
Extremely convenient since I’m in the midst of translating a book completed in 1199. Now I just need to get to Khwarezm, interview the author, have him explain why he asserts that its best to do your weeding at the dark of the moon with a bronze sickle dipped in goat’s blood—the solutions for quadratic equations were much more helpful, and get out before the war with the Ghurids escalates.
@Jim Henley:
Not to mention tea, of which almost certainly a lot more discussion in the trilogy than of gender.