(1) James H. Burns shares his personal vision of a recent TV debut:
There is much that is wonderful, and also much that is silly, about the new Supergirl TV series.But Melissa Benoist, and so many of the cast, are simply so winning, it just more often than not, is utterly charming, For someone raised with the whole Superman mythos, particularly the Kryptonian elements introduced by DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger, there was actually something quite moving about many of the moments in the first Supergirl episode. (We all, after all, ultimately have our lost Kryptons…) But one surprise, and a small spoiler for those who have not yet seen the CBS series’ debut episode. Towards the finale, Kata receives a present from her cousin, Superman… In my mind’s eye, remarkably, I did not see any of the recent Kal-Els, but George Reeves, preparing the small package. Reeves, of course, was television’s Superman of the 1950s, and forever, really… And it’s fascinating to think how these two characters have finally been reunited, across the decades.
(2) Lenika Cruz’ article in The Atlantic about the World Fantasy Award, “’Political Correctness’ Won’t Ruin H.P. Lovecraft’s Legacy”, argues that the changing the award trophy signals that the genre is able to be inclusive to writers of color.
Starting next year, the World Fantasy Award trophy will no longer be modeled after the massively influential horror-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft.
The convention organizers didn’t offer a reason for the change, nor did they name a replacement, but the decision is notable nonetheless. Lovecraft’s rise to fame happened largely after his death, but as he received more attention, so too did his racist and xenophobic beliefs. His disassociation from the WFC after 40 years feels in line with a growing inclusiveness in the science-fiction and fantasy community of women and people of color. The author Daniel José Older, who started a petition last year to replace Lovecraft with Octavia Butler, praised the decision. “Writers of color have always had to struggle with the question of how to love a genre that seems so intent on proving it doesn’t love us back,” he said. “We raised our voices collectively, en masse, and the World Fantasy folks heard us.”
Not everyone agreed with this sentiment. In a letter to the co-chair of the WFC board, the Lovecraft biographer and author S.T. Joshi called the decision “a craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness.”
(3) At Black Gate, Jackson Kuhl puts Lovecraft in his idea of the proper context, in “S. T. Joshi Is Mad As Hell”.
Debate over Lovecraft’s racism — and let’s face it, he was a racist, and even if it blunted in his later years, he was never going to join the ACLU — generally falls into two camps: that he and his views were products of his times; or that his beliefs were particularly venomous even for the era. As usual with truth, I think it’s somewhere in the middle. Lovecraft was a naive shut-in, his head a Gordian knot of neuroses. No one will argue that Lovecraft was a well-adjusted individual; from sex to seafood, a psychiatrist would have worn out an IKEA’s worth of sofas itemizing a complete list of the man’s phobias. I contend those same anxieties are precisely what make Lovecraft’s writing so much fun. If his racism was more vile than that of his neighbors and contemporaries, then it originated in that same pool of existential paranoia from which only madmen sip. It was part and parcel with his oversensitivity to smells, his finicky eating habits, and all the rest. H.P. Lovecraft may have been a genius. He was also crazy.
Having said that, I often worry that scolding Lovecraft too harshly is to rub Vaseline on the lens through which we view early 20th-century America. For this country, those first three decades were a period of peak racism in a Himalayan history. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, by which SCOTUS granted the South carte blanche to do their worst, was the tamping of the soil upon Reconstruction’s grave; and 1915 saw the rebirth of the Klan, though this time with a more anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant bent, attracting millions of members in the 1920s. The nativism of the 19th century — which shows no signs of abating in 2015 — came to full bloom, with passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act (which was intended in large part to circumscribe Irish, Italian, and other immigrants) being its greatest successes. Somebody at this year’s NecronomiCon described Lovecraft as the last of the Victorian gentleman scientists, a man who had the leisure time to read journals and magazines about science and new discoveries and contemplate their repercussions. Alas, this was also a high time of pseudoscience, of theories about genetic memory and phrenology and racial traits; they are recurring topics in letters between Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, both of whom read widely on the subjects and included them in their stories. To say Lovecraft lived in racist times and channeled them through his writing is not to apologize for him so much as it is to confront our not-very-distant past.
(4) Lee Martindale, SFWA Director-at-Large, should have been credited for assembling the SFWA Accessibility Guidelines in yesterday’s post here at File 770. Today the SFWA Blog ran Martindale’s history of the guidelines, “Back Story: The Accessibility Guidelines Checklist”.
When I was elected to SFWA’s Board of Directors in 2010, I brought with me the desire to see the organization move toward greater accessibility at SFWA-sponsored events, particularly the Nebula Awards weekend. That desire stemmed from my own experiences at SF conventions, particularly the Nebula Weekends I’d attended. But it was largely prompted by how ashamed I was of SFWA that, at the Nebula Weekend at which she was named Grand Master, the only way Anne McCaffrey could get to spaces in which she was being celebrated involved going through a very busy kitchen and up a service elevator.
I’m proud to have been involved in the work that resulted in SFWA’s Accessibility Guidelines Checklist and a member of the Board of Directors that approved it, in January 2014, for use at SFWA-sponsored events. And I’m delighted that SFWA is sharing it at http://www.sfwa.org/accessibility-checklist-for-sfwa-spaces/
(5) British Fantasy Award winner Juliet McKenna has a guest post on Sean Williams’ blog.
I see variations on the writing process as a spectrum, with Outline Writers at one end and Discovery Writers* at the other. I’m definitely way over there at the Outline end. I’ll know the beginning, the middle and the end of a story before I begin to write it, and a whole lot more besides. I’ll have notebooks full of background on people and places and all sorts of aspects of the world that I’m writing about. (I’ve learned a wonderful acronym for these vital scene-setting elements from a panel at Fantasycon 2015, thanks to Karina Coldrick. PESTLE: Political. Economic. Social. Technological. Legal. Environmental. Isn’t that great?)
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy and Girl
- Born November 13, 1850 — Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
- Born November 13, 1955 – Whoopi Goldberg. From the Wikipedia: “According to an anecdote told by Nichelle Nichols in the documentary film Trekkies (1997), a young Goldberg was watching Star Trek, and upon seeing Nichols’ character Uhura, exclaimed, ‘Momma! There’s a black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid!’ This spawned lifelong fandom of Star Trek for Goldberg, who would eventually ask for and receive a recurring guest-starring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation (as Ten Forward’s Guinan.)”
(7) Brandon Kempner originally stated that Chaos Horizon’s mission is “predicting the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel by using statistical and data mining techniques.” How does he square that with his unsupported comment about Ann Leckie’s work in “Final 2015 SFF Awards Meta-List”?
So how did 2015 turn out? There wasn’t a single dominant book, as was the case with Ancillary Justice in 2014 (7 nominations, 4 wins, with 2 additional nominations and wins in “First Novel” categories). This year, Cixin Liu did the best with 5 nominations, but he managed only 1 win. I suspect that if The Three-Body Problem came out earlier in the year (it was published in November), it would have done a little better. Leckie won twice for Ancillary Sword, and she was the only author to win two awards. Those wins, depending on how cynical you are, could be chalked up to last year’s success of Ancillary Justice.
(8) Morgan Holmes, in “Primary Research” at Castalia House blog, starts with a good anecdote about L. Sprague De Camp, but the best part is about researching Donald Wandrei.
Second story: I was going through the listing of the Donald Wandrei items in possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. Donald Wandrei was a member of the Lovecraft circle and pulp magazine writer. One could describe a good portion of his fiction as a logical continuation of H. G. Wells’ short stories though with a Lovecraftian cosmic inclination to them. Wandrei also wrote a number of detective stories that read like Lovecraft writing for Black Mask magazine.
Going through a list of letters, one popped up that grabbed my attention. A letter from Robert E. Howard to Donald Wandrei. No one knew of this before I found it. Another case of primary research.
This past week, I remembered looking into a Wandrei story in Robert H. Barlow’s small press zine Leaves. I remember reading that Wandrei has fiction in the first issue. I found a table of contents of Leaves, Summer 1937 and “A Legend of Yesterday” did not register with me.
I contacted Dwayne Olson who is the Donald Wandrei expert on this to see if this story had been reprinted under a different name. Dwayne got back to me and this story had gotten past him for the Fedogan & Bremer collections. He did not know the story existed. So, we have another case of depending on work done before.
Take home point: Thoroughly research your subject. Go back to primary sources. Don’t depend that someone before has done the ground work.
(9) At Amazing Stories, MD Jackson discusses the “Science Fiction and Fantasy Spoken Word Recordings” from Caedmon Records.
This was back in the days of the vinyl record, of course and it was always a special, almost magical thing to have and to listen to one of these recordings. To hear the author of a famous work reading selected passages aloud was thrilling. Most particularly if it was J.R.R. Tolkien.
J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings his The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring was a record released by Caedmon in 1975. It was taken from a reel to reel recording made in Tolkien’s study in 1952. One side was a recording of Tolkien reading the chapter Riddles in the Dark from The Hobbit. The other side featured poems and songs from The Fellowship of the Ring.
I had the recording as a teen and it was absolutely marvelous to hear the words from The Hobbit read by the author himself. His “Gollum” voice was hysterical and the songs –yes, songs – Tolkien actually sings some of his poetry to old tunes. He even reads some Elvish poetry!
The recordings can be found today fairly easily on Youtube if one is so inclined to look.
[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, Dana Sterling, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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It’s the year 8320, and I still forget the ::ticky::
Mike Glyer: Brandon Kempner originally stated that Chaos Horizon’s mission is “predicting the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel by using statistical and data mining techniques.” How does he square that with his unsupported comment about Ann Leckie’s work in “Final 2015 SFF Awards Meta-List”?
I don’t know what Kempner’s background (if any) is with statistics and scientific method, but I have frequently found that his posts contain unsupported claims and suppositions — and sometimes things he says are just wrong.
Kempner’s blog, Kempner’s rules. I’m glad that someone is collating this information somewhere. If he chooses to add extra speculation, that’s his business.
Also, fifth!
Fantasy Movie bracket is on, first heat here.
::tick::
There is no need for malice if the story has no palace. The notebooks full of PESTLE shows she’s thought the background through.
Re: Joshi and the WFC
Damn. There goes my respect for Joshi. I had actually come to look forward to his curation work in the Mythos, because I knew him as a solid, knowledgeable custodian of the setting in general and Lovecraft’s work in particular. I am saddened to see him throw that reputation away in a petulant tantrum.
2 X 5
(7) Kempner believes his stats show that past winners/nominees have an advantage, which I’d guess is his source for suggesting that past winner Leckie was benefiting from previous years exposure. It seems fairly logical – the voting or judging pool for an award are more likely to have read past winners, which should be an advantage in the nomination phase if nothing else. Balanced against that is a tendency for later books in a series to have less in the way of new ideas (because they already introduced them in book 1), middle-book-in-trilogy-syndrome, etc etc.
I see four other trilogies that have managed Hugo noms for all three books: Ender’s, The Sprawl (Neuromancer etc), The Mars trilogy and the Newsflesh trilogy. I’d guess that “keeping it fresh” is a factor in each one: Mars certainly had big changes in focus and shifts in primary cast characters between books, while Newsflesh shifted narrator between books one and two. Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead were massively different books, and of course Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive were very much separate stories (so much so that I’m not sure they really count as a trilogy in the same sense as the others).
The Ancillary series has done a good job of changing focus and exploring new aspects in each book, so I wouldn’t bet against the Ancillary trilogy becoming the first-fifth!
I admit to being boggled to see a sensible, happy advocacy of primary research in something posted at Castalia House, given how often people there traffic in gross error and ignorance. But that passage…yeah, that resonates with me. It is fun and cool to discover something others didn’t yet know about, and to get to share it with the world. Really, really cool, and so even when the find might be small. It’s all bridges between us and the world.
Kind of a somber morning for here, after what happened in Paris.
PESTLE. I like that.
Re (4) — I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that Lee Martindale “should have been credited” in the piece here yesterday because there was no way OGH could have known, based on what had been posted on the SFWA site, that she is the policy’s author. My comments here were intended to provide additional information, not as a correction.
Tired and sad. Will do the fantasy movie bracket later. Here in 1705, the alliance between the USA and France, along with the birth of the USA, is still in the future, but the know it will be much cherished, even with its strains.
The causal direction of Lovecraft’s shut-in stays and his racism seems open for debate. Even in 2132 we haven’t settled the question.
The mood is indeed somber but the Lord Mayor’s Show, on its 800th anniversary, is going forward; it originated in the signing of the Magna Carta, which is the antithesis of the world view of IS.
The fireworks display has apparently been cancelled, for obvious reasons, and we held the two minute silence for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, but now more than ever we need to hold firm to the ideals which are the bedrock of our freedom, and do some heavy duty partying.
I’m not surprised at ST Joshi’s reaction. This is understanding from several thousands of kilometers away, but my impression of Joshi is that he has shaped his own self-image and career firmly to the idea that Lovecraft is one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century, but also has hardened to that Lovecraft Can Do No Wrong. Which in the long run makes it harder to appreciate and value Lovecraft for the things he actually did well, or the person he was.
Another similar case (though probably for other reasons) is Virginia Heinlein in regard to Robert A Heinlein.
Stevie, I was listening to BBC World Service last night, which was doing a much better job of covering the Paris tragedy than any of the US media I tried first, and they talked a little about the Lord Mayor’s parade. A tough decision to carry it forward, all things considered, and I hope it goes well.
RE: the Lovecraft caricature/bust being retired as the statuette for the World Fantasy Award, as I’ve already said on FB, I’m wearily exasperated by the overreaction we’re seeing to WFC’s announcement about this.
It’s a trophy which is the–with apologies to the artist–(1) frankly ugly bust of (2) a horror writer (HP Lovecraft is identified with horror more than with fantasy) whose face was chosen for this award (3) 40 years ago (a different era, in a genre that was then overwhelmingly white) and (4) who wrote many grotesquely racist things.
So… why in the world is it so hard to understand that the time has come (or has already passed, and we’re catching up) to replace it with something better suited to the actual nature of the award (it is the World Fantasy Award, not the HP Lovecraft Award) AND to the 21st century? I don’t know why the Lovecraft bust seemed like a good idea to people back in the 1970s, but it was not a choice that has stood the test of time–and since LOTS of choices don’t stand the test of time and need rethinking and updating (so the World Fantasy Award is certainly not unique in that sense), I see no rational reason for the melodrama and hysterics surrounding this particular decision to update an outdated choice.
People yammering (as they are, in this “controversy”) about how LOTS of great writers were racists, etc., is beside the point. We’re talking about this award, not all of human history. Trying to update the modern world viz all of human history would paralyze us with the impossibility of the task. Updating this award, however, is so possible it’s CURRENTLY OCCURRING.
Also, in relation to some accusations I’ve seen (on my FB wall, among other places), this was not a secret ambush by a tiny cabal. This topic has been in public play for some time now, and a publicly circulated petition to replace the Lovecraft bust was signed by 2500+ people. And replacing the Lovecraft bust as the World Fantasy Award statuette is not the same thing as –not even remotely similar to, nor vaguely related to–telling you or anyone else what authors to read or not to read. I, for example, read and enjoy MANY authors whose likeness I would never suggest as fitting statuette for the World Fantasy Award, for goodness sake.
Also, as a related matter, I disagree with the proposal to make the late Octavia Butler the face of the World Fantasy Award. I admire her, but this is not about her. I don’t believe the ANY specific writer’s likenes should be the image of the award. This is the World Fantasy Award, not an award named after or sponsored by the estate of any one particular writer.
The latest Ask Lovecraft has a point to make about the trophy before getting to the main question.
It’s easy to overstate Lovecraft’s shut-in status as an adult. (When dealing with his youth, no, it’s not.) He went by train and bus as far as Florida, New Orleans, Quebec, and Ohio; he had significant travel time every year for a decade or so. (Some of his travel writings are downright funny and informative, too. He cut loose with his antiquarian enthusiasm, often to great effect, in pieces like “A Description of the Town of Quebeck in New-France, Lately added to His Britannick Majesty’s Dominions”.)
It’s just that you can see a lot of the world and end up not actually learning much in some ways from it. Arguably, Lovecraft learned more – even if he learned very badly – from his travels than, say, David Brooks this year.
@Mark
Ooh, they have the same Lil Cthulhu vinyl toy as me. I don’t see the tiny screaming victims, though.
FWIW, “Dunning-Krugerrands” (used in the Ask Lovecraft video) is a coinage (as it were) from a regular on r/buttcoin, the satirical forum on Reddit that stands in the same relation to Bitcoin as r/gamerghazi does to Gamergate. In original usage, Dunning-Krugerrands are bitcoins (or by extension, any other cryptocurrency).
Why does File 770, which presents far more controversial news round-up material than mine without comment, feel it necessary to attack Chaos Horizon?
I think Mark in the comments above does a good job of explaining my logic for this particular issue. I also think the idea of a completely “neutral” or “reliable” SFF award site is more dangerous and misleading than a prediction site where the author makes enough comments so that any biases, shortcomings, and mistakes are clearly visible. Since Chaos Horizon is dependent on a series of assumptions, many of which could be attacked or outright discarded, it’s incumbent on me to make those visible.
That’s why I added my own microreviews to Review Round-Ups, so that people can question how my specific tastes might distort the broader statistical work I do. I also try to add enough commentary so the stats don’t come across as monolithically reliable. If you follow me, you know I clearly think the awards are too repetitive. Ergo, the Leckie comment. That’s a bias of mine rather than an objective fact.
Chaos Horizon is not interesting because it is 100% right—and I’m certainly not, and there’s plenty of space to make mistakes and errors in any predictive work—but because it opens up a conversation. Hell, I don’t think I even hit 75% right currently. Anyone who trust Chaos Horizon absolutely is thinking the wrong way. I hope anyone who reads me tries their best to think about where I’m wrong, and why I’m wrong, and how other and equally valid assumptions could be used to generate different predictions.
Taking Lovecraft off the trophy where it never made much sense in the first place will also take away the excuse for the annual Lovecraft-is-a-racist shouting sessions. Within a couple of years, that may actually help his reputation! 🙂
@Meredith
Maybe their tiny screaming victims didn’t run fast enough?
In the presence of Great Cthulhu, you don’t run screaming. He’s not some petty Kaiju. You fall to your knees as your brain melts in its socket!
I would call the statuette “grotesque”, rather than “ugly”. “Ugly” is a negative term, while “grotesque” can be perceived as a positive characteristic or a negative one, or both. Gahan Wilson’s art falls firmly into the “grotesque” camp; I like Wilson’s work, so I kinda like the gruesome little mutant spud (“Hey, this potato looks sort of like H.P. Lovecraft!“) he designed for the WFA. Other’s mileage may vary.
But, yeah, I think HPL’s time as figurehead *ahem* for the WFA has passed. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why Older, or anyone, would suggest Octavia Butler as the symbol of a fantasy award, when she was so predominantly a science fiction writer.
[ticky]
As far as Chaos Horizons go, I think Brandon Kemper is doing a good job of collecting data and looking for trends. My biggest complaint would be that he seldom shows error bars. (A lot of cool results evaporate when you look at the confidence interval and realize that random chance explains them just as well.)
I don’t see a problem with him speculating as to what the results mean, provided he labels it speculation, which I think he always does.
Laura
Well, so far, so good; most of the roads in and around the City are now open again, having been sealed off since 7am, and most of the hundreds of thousands of people who watch the procession have drifted away.
There have been lots of nice smiling visible police officers, as always, some of whom have nice smiling horses, and even more unseen security people, who may not be smiling if they are the ones who have to check and seal the 3,500 manholes along the route. Those checking and sealing empty properties can console themselves that at least it doesn’t involve sewage, which is more than can be said for the manholes.
These levels of security have been in place for decades, which explains why they went ahead with the procession; it’s not a soft target, even if there are hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets. And this evening, instead of the usual spectacular fireworks display, Tower Bridge is lit in the colours of the Tricolor as a gesture of respect, whilst people set about unsealing 3,500 manholes…
@stevie
for some reason the thought of “nice smiling horses” makes me smile
If you think one Lovecraft statuette is ugly, you should see them en masse. I had all the statues for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards at my house; before putting the plaques on them I had fun arranging them like bowling pins and constructing Howard-henge. Somewhere I have a picture of the cat sitting in a circle of Lovecrafts.
If I had to choose the replacement, I’d go with something non-representational, like a Platonic solid (although there would be heated arguments about which one). Or if it had to be non-abstract, a sword in a stone: one that only the rightful winner of the award could pull out and use as a letter opener (we should have the technology for this in the not so distant future).
I recently re-read Stross’s Equoid and just finished Aaronovitch’s Foxglove Summer: if I saw any of the horse-like creatures from those smile I’d get far away as quickly as possible.
For me, the Platonic solids are too associated with D&D, and to a lesser extend other tabletop games.
> “I’d go with something non-representational, like a Platonic solid (although there would be heated arguments about which one)”
I kind of want to suggest it be a five dimensional windowless solid now.
They are all good – except that octahedron who I can’t stand. Seriously octa-dude, get over yourself! You’re just two square pyramids stuck together and you’re like all ‘look at me I’ve got EIGHT faces’ likes its some big effin’ deal. Listen, the tetrahedron is a PROPER pyramid and could rectify your ass any day. Just my opinion mind. I guess some people may like it.
I haven’t checked it for windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-orthoplex
I have never quite gotten over my unreqited childhood infatuation with ponies, but I, too, would flee a smiling horse… And might well have even before reading Equoid. I know my folklore, and Harvey aside, most pookas are not my friends.
@LunarG: I think the pooka in Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks should have done a lot to rehabilitate the species image.
On the other hand, some of the murderous equines in the Zombies vs Unicorns anthology should add new reasons to be terrified if you see something that looks like a smiling horse.
Here in 1885, the Statue of Liberty recently arrived at Bedloe’s Island, Joseph Pulitzer has started his fundraising campaign, and children are donating their pennies to build the granite plinth.
@ Bruce Baugh on November 14, 2015 at 3:46 am, re: primary sources – archival records are such cool things sometimes, aren’t they?
—
On a completely unrelated note, I went to the New York Historical Society for the exhibit Superheroes in Gotham last week.
Show starts with summaries of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Iron Man and Spiderman’s histories and short creator biographies. Some audio & video things that would be great for kids. Even had a reading corner. Finale were a couple of interactive displays, with a quiz on your superhero personality, and take your picture as a superhero.
Limited on the comic book originals (that you could actually see rather than just look at a cover of). For example, the Steve Ditko original paperboard panels (#4 and #11) from Spiderman’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy are about it. Some original costumes from TV, like for Superman and Catwoman.
Recommended. A fun, smaller exhibit of only 3 smaller divided galleries. Good for illustrating the basics, not for specialists. And, in case you go, there’s a whole unrelated exhibit of Toys and Trains on the first floor, and a Batmobile from the TV show in the lobby.
Initially I had thought: what a bizarre trophy. I hear he was pretty extreme, so if they want to change it, that makes sense to me.
When his biographer went bananas, I wondered if I had come to a premature conclusion.
Since then, I’ve read a number of his letters. If any scholar or other aficionado of Lovecraft wants to say I’m wrong about any of this, please do so.
I’m not an expert, but Joshi may be right.
By the end of his life, Lovecraft was, based on my cursory reading, espousing the following:
1. Blind reactionary racism is wrong. He felt ashamed of aping it in his teens and twenties.
2. Whether or not one “race” is inferior to another is a question that should be considered on the basis of science.
3. The science of his day was mixed, but much of it pointed, so far as he understood, to the inferiority of some races.
4. In cases where no such biological inferiority could be demonstrated – for example, as he understood it, in the case of the German Jews – appeals to it were pathetic.
5. He understood that there were scientific findings supporting the theory of biological inferiority elsewhere.
In conclusion, if Lovecraft had survived into the 40s and 50s, he would have concluded, on the basis of empirical evidence, that there was little reason to believe there was inherent superiority of one race over another as he had been taught in his youth.
Do I have any of that wrong?
Here in 1139, as we await the arrival of Empress Maude to challenge Stephen for the throne, we feel quite certain that the unicorn, griffin or perhaps even the basilisk or the roc would be appropriate for the fantasy award.
Bruce Arthurs said
Agreed here. Octavia Butler is brilliant but not who I would choose as the face of the WFA.
I don’t think a new author should be chosen at all. Go down a new path.
There’s a really good story in the latest issue of Lightspeed: “When We Were Giants” by Helena Bell. It concerns a group of schoolgirls, their games in the forest where they become giants, and the conflicts of exclusion and inclusion that threaten this escape. Not exactly new subject matter but very well done.
Also, “Wearing the Hat” by Mike Reeves-McMillan is fun.
Don’t know. Still doesn’t make him a good choice for a prize for Fantasy though. If you were creating a new prize for Fantasy, filling a niche that had always remained empty, would a goggle eyed bust of a horror writer be the ideal choice for a prize?
@Vasha I had trouble seeing the point of When We Were Giants. That is, there appeared to be no story arc at all–not even an internal one where a character develops. Also, the magic seemed so incidental I could believe the kids were just pretending.
What did I miss?
@Vasha “Wearing the hat” was a fun read, but it doesn’t really have a speculative element to it, other than being in an imaginary country.
@Vasha I take it back; I forgot about the magic messaging machine.