(1) Star Wars is causing a great disturbance in the toy aisles:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other retailers have loaded up on plastic lightsabers, robotic Yodas and other toys tied to the coming movie, crowding out shelf space and inventory dollars elsewhere in the toy section. The big bets are pushing orders for toy makers, such as Mattel Inc., closer to the holidays and squeezing some smaller competitors in the $22 billion U.S. toy industry.
One property hit hard: “Peanuts.”
Iconix Brand Group Inc., which controls the license to the newest animated Charlie Brown movie, this month cut its sales outlook from “Peanuts” licenses by $24 million for the year largely because it miscalculated how many Snoopy dolls and other “Peanuts” products retailers would buy.
(2) Sean Wallace advised on Facebook:
Authors: always make sure that a year’s best allowance is in your short story contracts. If you need to see an example of what I mean, Tor.com’s contracts are pretty good on this score: “The Author will not, without written permission from the Publisher, publish or permit publication of the Work or any material based upon the Work in any form or medium until one year after the date of first publication of the Work by the Publisher. Anthologies of the year’s best science fiction or fantasy shall be exempted from the one-year restriction set forth in this paragraph.”
(3) Aliette de Bodard’s guest post on Over The Effing Rainbow deals with “Science-fiction, fantasy, and all the things in between”.
I used to be quite rigid about genre separation: in particular, though I read both fantasy and science fiction, I wasn’t very keen on “merging” them together. In recent years, I’ve found myself being more and more elastic with my definition of genre, and in particular with my definition of “science fiction”.
Partly, it’s because expectations are such a double-edged sword: they are a helpful guide, but like any guide, they can become a cage. It’s very easy–and a very slippery slope–to go from “readers expect this” to “I shouldn’t deviate from this”. Much as I like being aware of what is done and why, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the (over)splitting into genres and subgenres: I found that tropes, used too many times and without the infusion of freshness from an outside source, calcified into books that were…. ok, but not good, or not great. Books that I read to pass the time (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), but that I felt were missing something. Part of the reason why I read is to find new things, new ideas; and I wasn’t finding that in books that adhered too rigidly to expectations. Ie, a little rulebreaking from time to time never hurt anyone! (also, if you’re going to break a rule, break it good and hard. My personal motto *grin*)
The second thing that made me uncomfortable was becoming aware of the way “science fiction” was used to elevate certain works, and dismiss others altogether…
(4) Walter Jon Williams says Taos Toolbox must move its location, but is still on for 2016.
Yes, there will be a Taos Toolbox next year! I’ve had to delay the announcement due to our losing our lodging, and to the fact that there will be massive construction in the Ski Valley next year.
The master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy will be held July 17-30, 2016, at Angel Fire, NM, just a short distance from Taos.
Teaching will be Nancy Kress, Walter Jon Williams, indiepub guru Emily Mah Tippetts, and James S.A. Corey, author of The Expanse.
(5) When his bike was stolen and he was without transportation to his two jobs many miles from home, conrunner Adam Beaton turned to GoFundMe.
That’s why the money will be used for a scooter. I don’t need anything fancy, and I’m not looking for a car because I’d rather not have another bill for insurance on my plate right now. A simple scooter doesn’t require a motorcycle license and also doesn’t require insurance. It’s also far less expensive than buying a car, even a used one, which is why I’ve tried to keep the target goal as low as possible. Honestly I just need simple transportation that I can use to get me to-and-from work so I can continue being a productive member of society and not lose my jobs.
The community came through with the $600 he needed.
Wow. In less than two days, the goal was made. I’m very blessed to have such great friends and family. Especially some of you who I know are also facing some difficult times and still helped me out anyway. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you’d still like to contribute, it’ll definitely help in getting a scooter that’s say, a bit less used.
(6) Today In History
- November 17, 2008 – Twilight, the movie that launched a global teenage vampire romance phenomenon, premiered in Los Angeles.
(7) “New LEGO Slippers Will Spare Parents The Unique Pain They Know All Too Well” says Huffington Post.
Now the LEGO brand has teamed up with French advertising agency Brand Station to create some slippers with extra padding that will protect parents from this tortuous sensation.
(8) Another inventor has come up with the “Prosthetic Tentacle”.
A student designer has created a prosthetic tentacle as an alternative to artificial human limbs,
Kaylene Kau from Taipei made the remarkable invention as part of a design school project.
The limb would be able to grip many different objects by curling up with the help of a simple motor.
It’s actually a pretty simple invention. The controls on the limb tell the motor to curl or uncurl, and there is no ‘hardwire’ link to the nervous system, as seen in some of the most advanced robotic or artificial limbs in development.
(9) Daniel Dern sends links to the SF-themed comic strips he’s seen so far this week.
(10) Famous Monsters #283 sports a Star Wars-themed “variant newsstand cover” by artist Rob Prior. The issue includes interviews with Mark Hamill on Star Wars, Greg Nicotero on The Walking Dead, and Sam J. Jones on Flash Gordon.
(11) “Yorick: A Unique Life-Size Skull Carved From a Crystallized Gibeon Meteorite” at Junk Culture:
A rare and singular combination of natural history and modern art, Lee Downey’s “Yorick.” is a life-size skull carved from a large Gibeon meteorite that crashed in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia a thousand years ago. An artist who is known for selecting exotic materials with which to work, Downey acid-etched the carving to uncover the Gibeon meteorite’s singular, lattice-like pattern. “A symbol of death, of eternity, of immortality, of demise and rebirth.” he explains, “Of any material I could think of to fashion an accurate human skull out of, this Gibeon meteorite best embodies the ‘mystery’ most acutely.”
The skull will be auctioned by Bonhams on November 24, perhaps for as much as $400,000. The auction webpage explains the origin story of this type of meteorite.
ABOUT GIBEON
- Gibeon is iron-based and one of the rarest forms of meteorite.
- It originated billions of years ago from an unstable planet that existed briefly between Jupiter and Mars.
- When the planet broke apart, a section of its core traveled through space for four billion years.
- Only the vacuum of space – which provides no surrounding molecules through which heat can be conducted away from the meteorite – allows the prolonged period of intense heat necessary for the alloys of iron meteorites to crystallize.
- During its journey, the meteorite’s alloys crystallized to form an octahedral crystalline structure that cannot be recreated on earth.
- When it met the earth’s atmosphere, about 1000 years ago, it exploded over the Kalahari Desert.
- The iron rain formed a meteorite field in Great Namaqualand, Namibia, which was first discovered by the local Nama people.
- A 48,000 gram block was cut out of the heart of a complete, 280 kg iron meteorite, which Downey then painstakingly carved down to the carving’s 21,070 grams.
- Radiometric dating estimates the age of crystallization of Gibeon’s metal at approximately 4 billion years.
(12) The Doc Dave Winiewicz Frazetta Collection will be auctioned by Profiles in History on Friday, December 11 at 11:00 a.m. PST. Catalog and flipbook at the link.
(13) Winiewicz holds forth on “The Essence of Frazetta” in this YouTube video.
(14) The previous pair of news items come from John Holbo’s discussion of fantasy art and “Men wearing a military helmet and nothing else in Western Art” in “Frazetta Auction – and French Academic Art” at Crooked Timber. The post begins with a revelation about Frazetta’s source for images of fallen warriors in two of his works.
(15) Shelf Awareness editor Marilyn Dahl plugs Larry Correia’s latest book tour and adds some career history.
Larry Correia took a somewhat unexpected journey on his way to becoming a bestselling author. He self-published his first book, Monster Hunter International, when he was an accountant and a gun dealer, and discovered how fundamental handselling is, along with a bit of luck. Don Blyly of Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis, Minn., asked for a copy, read it and finished it in one night. He purchased a large number of POD (print on demand) copies for the store and handsold them. Then fate appeared. The week Uncle Hugo’s began selling the book, Entertainment Weekly ran the store’s bestseller list, with Monster Hunter International at #3. Toni Weisskopf, publisher of Baen Books, speedily signed Larry to a one-book deal, which turned into 16 in less than six years. In addition, while promoting his POD edition, Correia traveled throughout the Mid- and Southwest, becoming a bookseller favorite. He’s launching Son of the Black Sword with a tour that started in New England, continued to the Pacific Northwest, then traveled down the West Coast and across the desert, wrapping up in Scottsdale, Ariz.
(16) Stuart Starosta of Fantasy Literature scored an interview with Cixin Liu.
What was it like when The Three-Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best SF novel and was nominated for the 2014 Nebula Award? Is it exciting to discover so much interest in your works overseas? When you first wrote the series, was it intended mainly for Chinese readers or did you imagine there would be English readers as well?
I was in Chicago for the Nebula Awards in June but was too busy to attend the Hugo Awards ceremony. Yet The Three-Body Problem was awarded the Hugo Award so I was disappointed that I missed this opportunity. But I am delighted that the translator, Ken Liu, was able to receive the award. His excellent translation played a very important role in earning the award so I have always believed that we won the award together. I am of course very happy that my own work is so successful outside China. The genre of science fiction was introduced to China during the end of the Qing Dynasty by Westerners. One century later, China’s science fiction work is finally being published and recognized in the West. But from another perspective, science fiction novels are the most global type of literature compared to other translated works. These works often involve many aspects of Chinese culture that may be foreign to Westerners so science fiction in translation should be easier for a Western audience to understand.
(17) And Sasquan, in the interests of promoting peace and world brotherhood… no, cancel that story. David D’Antonio, 2015 Hugo Ceremony Director, is still chasing after people to give them souvenir asterisks.
The 2015 Hugo Ceremony is over, and we’re reminded that not every nominee could be present. During the Pre-Hugo Reception we offered all present their own 2015 Hugo Asterisk to commemorate an extraordinary year and signify the several records set (including the record number of Hugo voters). Should any of those nominees who couldn’t be present desire one, we do have extras and will be happy to send one along. Please contact us at [email protected] at your earliest convenience. Unfortunately, that email list will be closed after two (2) months so we regret that we will not be able to fulfill requests after that time.
Sasquan attendees could get their own asterisk during the convention for a suggested donation to Sir Terry Pratchett’s* favorite charity, The Orangutan Foundation. $2800 was raised and has been sent to help orangutans at Leakey Center.
(18) A photographer imagines the daily, mundane life of Darth Vader at Mashable.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, JJ, Alan T. Baumler, Michael J. Walsh, John King Tarpinian, and Paul Weimer for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
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@Peace
The Mallbeast is one of my favourite bits of pTerry’s writing, hilarious on multiple levels. Especially love the Aliens and Dawn of the Dead references.
Yeesh. This is getting as weird as some of Sarah Hoyt’s conspiracies.
Sasquan made an innocuous Facebook post motivated by somebody noticing they still had a few Asterisks. Since some nominees weren’t there to get them, they thought some of them might want one before they’re tossed.
Why would the convention organizers simultaneously offer to give nominees something while seeking to anger them? There are easier ways to anger people.
rcade: Why would the convention organizers simultaneously offer to give nominees something while seeking to anger them?
It’s a middle finger to the Puppies. It hardly requires a “conspiracy theory” to recognize that.
Why would the convention organizers make this offer in a post on a page that many nominees would not even be likely to see?
Okay, it’s going on my Best Related Work longlist, which is… pretty long this year for a change. And I’m totally meh on both the Heinlein bio and Walton’s work, but still have too much for that category.
Alexandra Erin is for sure on the shortlist for Best Fan Writer, for the body of her work this summer and fall. (“Two stars.”)
Now I need to dive into retro-Hugo land again.
@ Mark: re: Witches of Lychford
Sounds like just my cup of tea (and Kindle version was only 2.99 WOOT!).
Oh, and the issue of big chain supermarkets being more British thing–the equivalent in some parts of the U.S. is Wal-Mart, I suspect, and possibly in some areas, McDonalds. (I remember one town in western Washington that fought the big M for years, and forced them to make all sorts of compromises for “aesthetic” reasons before the approval finally got through.).
Ninja’d bu Kurt and others…that’ll teach me to read all the posts before posting. In theory….
Crap, he did? When? I had it pencilled in (I don’t read a great many shorts, unfortunately, so it was likely to make it)
It’s a middle finger to the Puppies. It hardly requires a “conspiracy theory” to recognize that.
“We’ve still got a few Asterisks. We’ll offer them to puppies nominees on our Facebook page to anger all of the puppies. Bwa-ha-ha!”
Not buying it. The Hugos were awarded three months ago. Passions have cooled. We’re all in the quiet period until next year. Nobody involved in Sasquan cleanup is going to extend a middle finger that requires them to mail stuff to people who ask for it — who are also some of the people they are targeting with their digit. Mailing stuff out is a pain in the ass.
The asterisks are just being offered to Hugo nominees, right? Not to Sasquan members who donate to charity?
Yes. David D’Antonio offered them to any nominee who wanted one, capping off the offer with this note: “Congratulations to the nominees and we wish you the best in the future.”
I believe Adam-Troy Castro also asked people not to nominate “The Totally Not Gay Last Voyage of Captain Christian White” (which someone recommended to the SFWA list!)
snowcrash: Crap, he did? When? I had it pencilled in (I don’t read a great many shorts, unfortunately, so it was likely to make it)
On his Facebook page, I think. But it was a while ago, and he posts so frequently, I doubt that I’d be able to find it. Facebook is not search-friendly in that way, unfortunately.
Excellent! I’ll have to keep my eyes open.
Vasha: I believe Adam-Troy Castro also asked people not to nominate “The Totally Not Gay Last Voyage of Captain Christian White” (which someone recommended to the SFWA list!)
Yes, that’s the one I was talking about, I couldn’t remember the official title.
rcade: Not buying it.
Sasquan posted this on their Facebook page thinking “Sure, we’ll be able to reach all the nominees who did not come to Sasquan by posting this here.”
Not buying it.
“Passions have cooled.”
Really? Have you missed the reports here of blog screaming and whining from Puppidum? I wouldn’t wonder if you had, nobody wants to read it. But no. They are still just as butt-hurt as they were, and still plotting to screw things up again this year, knowing that it might be their last chance.
I don’t think Sasquan meant it maliciously, though it’s kinda clumsy. And they may legitimately not have addresses for some people (those who’ve moved, frex) and hope their friends will see the FB posting and ask. They used to do this sort of thing in fanzines and prozine lettercols; FB is where it happens today. Now, if they mailed a pile o’asterisks to JCW, that would be malicious (and hella funny. but ill-advised.)
@JJ: My recollection is that Adam-Troy Castro specifically said he didn’t want “The Last Voyage, etc.” not to be considered awhile back as well. Perhaps he’ll post further clarifications now that Scalzi and Bellet have publicly declined.
Walton’s What’s So Great shows it was first published in 2014 and republished in 2015. Was it a limited release? Otherwise I wouldn’t think it’s eligible this year.
This Hugo stuff is hard work – which category, is it eligible, is the author accepting nominations, additional stuff for the Campbell. No wonder most of left it to the few dedicated souls over the years. It’s not just reading lots of stuff and deciding what we think is best it’s all these technical details.
What makes this book so great by Walton was on my Hugo nomination ballot earlier this year.
Yep; definitely not seeing a middle finger here.
And, let’s face it, if they wanted to put the boot in then there are a lot of much nastier things they could have done, far higher up that list, before they got to the asterisks.
I think I’m seeing manufactured outrage from Puppidum, and that it’s related to the Goodreads short list in S F totally failing to include any of Puppidum’s works. Since Goodreads has rejected Puppidum’s efforts in SF, and who could blame them, they are trying to divert attention from that embarrassing truth, hence the arrival of the latest pout and flounce.
It always seems a bit strange to me that guys who insist so forcefully that they are manly men should spend so much of their time pouting and flouncing…
JJ: Sasquan posted this on their Facebook page thinking “Sure, we’ll be able to reach all the nominees who did not come to Sasquan by posting this here.”
Not buying it.
Further to this:
People can claim all they want that the asterisks are about the record-setting totals, but the truth is that they’re about the way the nominations were artificially altered this year and were not what they should have been. I’m as pro-Hugo and against slating as anyone here, but even I’m not going to try to be disingenuous about that.
It was fine that Gerrold ran his fundraiser at Worldcon (hell, I bought one myself on the first day, and wore it on my lanyard during the entirety of the con, including to the Hugo ceremony). But making a huge production about the asterisks during the ceremony and giving them out to the nominees as a souvenir was extremely tacky and unworthy of the Hugos. This is the sort of thing Puppies do. It should not be the way fans who love the Hugos behave.
I do not believe that Sasquan deliberately intended this post to be a middle finger to the Puppies. But that is the effect of it, anyway, which is why I called it “spectacular tone-deafness”.
I also don’t believe that Sasquan stopped to consider whether their Facebook page would be an effective way to disseminate this information to the nominees who did not attend Sasquan — people who, because they were not attending, quite probably didn’t sign up for notifications from Sasquan’s page assuming that those people are even on Facebook to begin with.
I’d have started with the list of nominees and the list of the nominees who were at the ceremony, and figured out who specifically needed to be contacted and how to contact them. Sasquan slapped up a thoughtless Facebook post and was done with it.
It was a dumb move and a thoughtless one and a lazy one, not a malicious one. But it had a malicious effect.
Oh, rats, I ran out time to add that here in the City we have keenly honed experience of putting the boot in…
As part of my effort to read lots of short fiction before the Hugo nomination process begins, I read and reviewed the January/February 2015 issue of Analog. I wasn’t really all that impressed.
The missing nominees may not see the FB post directly, but it’s a very public announcement, and word can spread. (Many people here who aren’t on FB now know about it, just for example.) FB is a social network. It seems like a very reasonable way to get the word out.
Xtifr: Many people here who aren’t on FB now know about it, just for example.
They know about it now because I sent it to Mike, specifically because it was in such incredibly bad taste. If it had just been another one of the many, many Sasquan post notifications I’d received over the last few months, I would not have bothered forwarding it.
Did anyone else here who received this notification from Sasquan forward it to Mike or post it here themselves, specifically so nominees who didn’t go to Sasquan could see it?
Bueller? Anyone?
I choose to take the asterisks in the spirit they were intended; as a sly acknowledgement of and a positive spin on the unusual circumstances of this year. I therefore also choose to take any further developments in that same spirit, and I hope any nominees who didn’t attend but do want one will hear about the post so they can obtain their souvenir.
That being said, I have also been persuaded that they weren’t the best idea ever. It can’t be changed now, since the ceremony was long ago, but perhaps it would have been better for the Sasquan organiser in question to have privately contacted nominees who were known not to have received one..? But then, that option could have had at least two possible drama results that I can think of off the top of my head, so perhaps a neutral public-but-not-too-public Facebook post was the best that could have been done.
(I also think some negative Puppy responses, from what I’ve seen discussed, are based in part on the belief that Gerrold tied them to Vonnegut during the ceremony, which definitely didn’t happen.)
I didn’t like the Asterisks. I thought it was a bad idea on Hugo night and I still do, because Gerrold’s idea of what they meant was never going to be widely accepted. They’re too easily perceived as an attempt to insult or marginalize. I just stop at believing there was anything malicious about them from Sasquan — that night or now.
FB is now one of our de facto public squares. Like it or not.
It’s an eminently logical place to put the announcement of “Last Call For Asterisks”. Like I said, this sort of thing used to be in the lettercols of fanzines and prozines. Worldcon always has a note in its Progress Reports about the members they’ve lost track of, giving their names and last known state/province, asking other members to please ask those folks to file a change of address with Worldcon.
Was it a tad cloth-eared? Well, maybe. But Puppies gonna Pup anyway. Despite getting smacked with the Sunday New York Times of pre-internet days in the “elitist” Hugos, and not getting into the populist Goodreads awards (whither the silent majority now, boys?), they doggedly (sorry) continue about their flouncing.
I see Jim Butcher has front-cover blurbed Larry’s latest, which ought to clear up any confusion as to whether he was complicit about the Puppy slate and ideals.
@lurkertype
(Firstly, I want to make it clear that I’m quite certain that Butcher was at least mildly in sympathy with the Puppy aims – if not the more extreme rhetoric, which didn’t seem his thing.)
I don’t think I’d assume a blurb meant anything more than that someone liked a book and was perhaps a friendly acquaintance of the author.
I think they were meant to be a riff on the lines of Henry V’s speech to his army:
The asterisks were a compliment …
Goodreads is even more open to anyone and everyone than the Hugos are. It remains a reasonable approximation of certain segments of popular taste.
That really is an excellent point. How the dogs keep barking about a conspiracy and then losing in the market place.
@Peace: And yet Goodreads too fell to the Evil Scalzi! Oh noes! Is there no end to his
knack for writing snappy books that people enjoydemonic plans!@Meredith: Fair enough. It’s a data point, though. I am CERTAIN he doesn’t espouse Teddy’s views on things.
lurkertype: FB is now one of our de facto public squares. Like it or not.
I think that people who, like me, are very active on Facebook, and have lots of friends who are very active on Facebook, take for granted that the vast majority of people are on there. (Just as a lot of Tweeters seem to take the same for granted with Twitter.)
But it’s actually not the case. I know a significant number of people who don’t do Facebook. Some of them are Internet Luddites, but many of them use the Internet regularly and are quite computer-savvy, they just don’t use Facebook. Several of the regular commenters here have mentioned that they don’t do Facebook.
And this overlaps with accessibility concerns*: just as it’s a mistake to assume that everyone can climb stairs, it’s a mistake to assume that, just because we do, everyone is able to, or wants to, use Facebook (especially people over the age of 50). This is why people are still allowed to mail in their Hugo nominations and votes. This is why Worldcons give the option to snail mail out their Progress Reports.
Sasquan had to contact the Hugo nominees to ask whether they wished to accept their nomination. Sasquan already has the contact information for these people.
* Please understand that I am not trying to trivialize physical or mental disability here, because it makes extremely difficult so many more essential life things than the Internet and Facebook — though I know several vision-impaired people who don’t use Facebook because it’s just too difficult.
Just got an email notification – the electronic version of the Long-List Anthology has been released. 🙂
ETA: Mind you I’m currently failing terribly at downloading it.
ETA2: Figured it out!
JJ: I myself don’t use Facebook, never have, never will. But I recognize it’s a good outlet for getting info out to a wide audience quickly.
And it is entirely possible they lost track of some of them.
@lurkertype – I have only once been in the vicinity of Battle Mountain. That was close to fifty years ago, when my family moved from California to Iowa in an aging VW microbus. The car survived the experience, even after being parked there overnight. It was the family car I learned to drive on a few years later.
I have had breakdowns twice in the vicinity of Champaign-Urbana IL. Same car both times, a Ford Escort wagon that I drove for 15 years. Might have been a jinx specific to that car.
Somehow I didn’t get quite the sympathy I expected on telling people that my car broke down and I had to spend a night in Champaign.
There is a lot of nowhere in northern Nevada. Miles and miles of miles and miles.
lurkertype: And yet Goodreads too fell to the Evil Scalzi! Oh noes! Is there no end to his
knack for writing snappy books that people enjoydemonic plans!Yeah, for all of the claims by BT and other Puppies that the Hugos should be about which books are most popular, they are so very determined to ignore the fact that this includes books by Scalzi, and Leckie, and Stephenson, and and and…
I seem to remember hearing that the nominee asterisks were simply left on a table in the green room for the Hugos, to be picked up if people wanted them. If this is the case, it’s quite possible they don’t actually know to whom the leftovers belong.
@Aaron
Pretty much agree with you on the issue as a whole. I think “Usher” was really the only story in the issue I’d actually recommend anyone read.
http://www.rocketstackrank.com/p/2015-ytd-by-magazine.html#_Analog_Science_Fiction
Fantasy Movie Bracket reminder: Don’t forget to vote in the first heat of the second round! Cally would like everyone to remember that the forehead cloths work best if you dampen them before use. Less flamey and hairdo ruining.
Actually, some of us on Facebook are there under orders from our much loved offspring. My daughter regards it as an excellent way to keep track of me, so if my health is heading downhill then I will post less frequently, which in turn produces my daughter storming up here to find out what’s happening.
Since she’s a doctor its hard to fool her; but I did my best this evening. and since she already works around 100 hours a week I hope she will not be worrying about me.
The union has, almost certainly, voted, for the first time ever, for doctors here to go on strike. My daughter would not do that if she saw any signs of hope that our government does actually care about preserving the NHS….
@Cally: That would explain it without need for any conspiracies or malice.
@Anne Sheller: I guess the universe figured you were punished enough having to move to Iowa and leave California.
I use FB much less since I was hit by that truck in March 2012. Prior I was on FB and Twitter a lot. But in the accident something in my brain changed and now I find both overwhelming if I spend more than 15 minutes on either. I’ve spent a fair amount of my life learning new social media as it was the only way friends communicated. Same with a variety of instant messaging programs.
Now if the only way friends communicate is through social media neither of us has a clue how the other is doing. I have Goodreads connected to FB & Twitter so my friends know I’m alive and they can tell how well I’m doing by the number of books I’m reading. They requested I link as they were worrying after the accident as I’d disappear for weeks after being on for hours a day.
The world really has changed since I graduated high school where not hearing from friends/family for weeks or months was normal.
I’m not sure Walmart is the American parallel of a supermarket moving into Lychford. I think the parallel is “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It’s watching the traditional Normal Rockwell hometown get flattened by progress and economies of scale and large corporations. It’s not a threat to a town per se, but the threat to a symbol, a great evil coming after mom and apple pie (or, in Lychford’s case, village greens and cricket). The comparison to Walmart kind of misses out on how many versions of the threat of progress to the mythical traditional English village have been told in the past 50 years. Movies. Pop concept albums. Books. Television, over and over again. The march of bland industrial progress, often in the form of a large multinational or a major highway, coming after British identity in the metaphorical form of small village life is a big story archetype in the past half-century. Midsomer Murders alone is practically a small cottage industry of the idea of the small country village as the metaphor of Englishness.* To a British reader, that story isn’t “Walmart comes to town”, it’s part of a genre.
Come to think of it, Good Omens was in many ways a crossover in that genre, too.
*Largely English, I think, and not a universally popular or uncontroversial metaphor, needless to say. But stories about traditional English villages are rarely actually about villages.
Ooh, those are nice!
Amazon Germany recommended one of Correia’s previous books (Monster Hunter Something or Other) to me at the height of last year’s Hugo mess. No idea why, since I’ve never bought anything by Correia or something remotely similar there.
Let’s just say I was not pleased at the recommendation.
Let’s start by correcting one thing — I didn’t say their was ill intent behind the asterisks. I said it was a bad decision, and undermined Sasquan’s stated goals for the Hugo ceremony, which for the most part was carried out in a manner consistent with those goals.
Also, thanks for the vote of confidence, but nobody involved in the decision about the asterisks has shared any inside info with me.
I was up in the balcony and could hear it fine — and I wear hearing aids.
I’m starting to think the acoustics of the auditorium weren’t very good. There’s some very mixed reports on what was or wasn’t audible* from people who were (presumably) sitting in different places, and ideally you want everyone to hear as much of the same performance as possible regardless of position.
*Not just the pre-show, other stuff too.