(1) John Picacio’s thoughts about “The New World Fantasy Award: What’s Next”.
- THE FIRST QUESTION NEEDS TO BE THE RIGHT ONE. In this case, I would offer that the first question should not be, “Hey, World: what do you think this award should look like?” The first question should be, “Who are the best sculptors and who is the sculptor that can best elevate this award toward a new timeless icon? Who can carry this responsibility? Who can take us to a place we could not have imagined on our own?” The same respect that is given to a great novelist should be given to a great sculptor here.
The sculptor of this award needs to be an artist, first and foremost — someone who solves problems, conceives original thoughts, has unique insights, and visually communicates those thoughts, insights, emotions and intangibles into tangible form. If the plan is to take a straw poll of the most popular and familiar symbols and word pictures, or to concoct a preordained vision and then hire some poor sap to carefully sculpt to that prescription, then please hire a pharmacist, not a professional artist. However, the World Fantasy Award can do better than that, and I’m hoping it will. If I were a decision maker in this process, I would be sky-high excited about the amazing creative (and branding) opportunity ahead, and I would be vigorously searching for the right sculptor to cast a new icon, rather than casting a fishing line praying to hook an idea.
(2) Many others continue to discuss what it should look like, including Charles Vess on Facebook (in a public post).
Ari Berk (friend & folklorist) suggested this idea. Going back to the original story that it seems all cultures around the world share: the hand print on the cave wall. “I am here and this is my story”.
(3) Frequent commenter Lis Carey is looking for financial help. Her GoFundMe appeal asks for $3,000, of which $400 has been donated so far.
I’m in a major fix. I don’t have an income right now, but I do have some major expenses. The tenant’s apartment has no heat, and a leaky kitchen sink, and needs a plumber. I have outstanding gas,and electric bills, and water bills for both apartments. I’m looking for work and trying to hold things together, but I’m desperate and need some breathing space. Help!
(4) Sarah Avery delves into some reasons for the success of multi-volume fantasy in “The Series Series: Why Do We Do This To Ourselves? I Can Explain!” at Black Gate. It’s a really good article but not easy to excerpt because it is (unsurprisingly!) long. This will give you a taste, anyway:
I love an ensemble cast. Reading, writing, watching, whatever. In my imaginative life as in my personal life, I’m an extrovert. The struggles of a main character connect with me best when that main character is part of a community. The solution to the existential horror Lovecraft’s protagonists face had always seemed so obvious to me that I’d never articulated it fully, even to myself. The cosmos as a whole doesn’t prefer you over its other components? Of course not. Unimaginably vast forces that would crack your mind open if you let yourself understand them are destroying your world, and you are entirely beneath their notice? Well, that would explain a lot. So what do you do?
You take comfort in the people you love, you go down swinging in their defense, and you live your mammalian values of compassion and connection intensely, as long as it does any good — and then longer, to the last breath, if only in reproof of whatever in the universe stands opposed to them.
Or maybe that isn’t obvious. But I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.
For whatever reason, Lovecraft was not a person, or an author, who could go there.
But the man could write a shorter story than I could. I’ll go to school on anyone who knows something I don’t, including authors who stretch me beyond the bounds of easy sympathy. What could the thing that appeared to me to be a malady in Lovecraft teach me about the gap in my craftsmanship?
First, I tried sharpening the distinction between the main character and the secondary characters. Simplifying the supporting cast, making my protagonist the only one who got to be as vivid and three-dimensional as I prefer for every significant character to be, got me out of novella territory. I could get my stories down to about 10,000 words and still feel that my work hit my own sweet spots.
What about getting the count lower? Magazine editors tend to set their cutoffs at 4,000 words or 7,000 words. What kind of cast size can you fit into that length, and what can you do with it?
I really don’t think you can squeeze in much of a supporting cast, unless those secondary characters are functioning more as props than as people. At most, you can have two realized characters, but that second can only be squeezed in if you’ve got serious writing chops. More characters than that, and you’re down to tricks that, as Elizabeth Bear likes to put it, hack the reader’s neurology: one telling detail that leads the reader to do all the work filling in a character around it. Okay, that’s a cool skill, one worth having, especially if you can do it so that the reader forgets s/he did all the work and remembers the story as if you’d written the character s/he filled in for you. I think I’ve pulled that trick off exactly once. Man, that was strenuous, and not in the ways I find exhilarating.
Avery’s subtopics include “Is It Enough to Call a Novel Community-Driven When It Sprawls across Two Continents, Seven Kingdoms, Three Collapsed Empires, a Passel of Free Cities, and Two Migrating Anarchic Proto-Nations?” Her short answer is, “Nope.”
(5) Mary Robinette Kowal seeks to lock in real progress to keep pace with conversation since the World Fantasy Con with the “SF/F Convention Accessibility Pledge”.
Over the last few years, there have been numerous instances of SF/F conventions failing to provide an accessible experience for their members with disabilities. Though accessibility is the right thing to do, and there are legal reasons for providing it in the US thanks to the 25-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act, many conventions continue to have no trained accessibility staff, policies, contact information, or procedures for accommodating their members with disabilities. As Congress said in the opening of the ADA, these “forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem.”
…We the undersigned are making a pledge. Starting in 2017, to give conventions time to fit this into their planning, the following will be required for us to be participants, panelists, or Guests of Honor at a convention:
- The convention has an accessibility statement posted on the website and in the written programs offering specifics about the convention’s disability access.
- The convention has at least one trained accessibility staff member with easy to find contact information. (There are numerous local and national organizations that will help with training.)
- The convention is willing and able to make accommodations for its members as it tries to be as accessible as possible. (We recommend that the convention uses the Accessibility Checklist for SFWA Spaces as a beginning guideline. Other resources include Fans for Accessible Cons, A Guide for Accessible Conferences, and the ADA rules for places of public accommodation, which apply to US conventions.)
Many people have co-signed.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden also observed, “…When you put in the work on these issues, you find out how many people out there have been staying home.”
(6) Michael Kurland’s autobiographical essay “My Life as a Pejorative” is featured on Shots Crime & Thriller Ezine.
At fourteen I discovered mystery stories and couldn’t decide whether I was Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers or Dashiel Hammett. Or maybe Simon Templar. Not Leslie Charteris, but Simon Templar. How debonaire, how quick-witted, how good looking.
I was 21 when I got out of the Army, enrolled at Columbia University and began hanging out in Greenwich Village. There I fell into bad company: Randall Garrett, Phil Klass (William Tenn), Don Westlake, Harlan Ellison, Bob Silverberg, and assorted other sf and mystery writers. This was my downfall, the start of my slide into genre fiction. I wrote a science fiction novel, Ten Years to Doomsday, with Chester Anderson, a brilliant poet and prose stylist who taught me much of what I know about writing, and followed that up with The Unicorn Girl, a sequel to Chester’s The Butterfly Kid, a pair of fantasy novels in which the two main characters were ourselves, Chester Anderson and Michael Kurland. These books, and The Probability Pad, a continuation written by my buddy Tom Waters, have become cult classics, known collectively as the Greenwich Village Trilogy, or sometimes The Buttercorn Pad.
(7) Today In History
- November 18, 1963 – Push-button telephones made their debut.
(8) Today’s Birthday Boys and Girls
- Born November 18, 1928: Mickey Mouse
- Born November 18, 1939: Margaret Atwood
- Born November 18, 1962: Sarah A. Hoyt
(9) John Scalzi makes “An Announcement Regarding Award Consideration for 2015 Work of Mine”. He asks people not to nominate him, and in comments indicates he will decline nominations that come his way.
But this year, when it comes to awards, I want to take a break and celebrate the excellent work that other people are doing, and who deserve attention for that work. My year’s already been, well, pretty good, hasn’t it. I’ve had more than enough good fortune from 2015 and I don’t feel like I need right now to ask for another helping…
But for work that was put out in 2015, please look past me. Find the other writers whose work deserves the spotlight you can put on them with your attention, nomination and vote. Find the works that move your heart and your mind. Find the writers whose work you love and who you feel a nomination can help in their careers and their lives. Look past your usual suspects — including me! — and find someone new to you whose stories and effort you can champion to others. Put those people and works on your ballots. 2015 has been genuinely great year for science fiction and fantasy; it won’t be difficult to find deserving work and people for your consideration.
(10) Bigger than your average bomb shelter. “Czech out the Oppidum, the ultimate apocalypse hideaway” at Treehugger.
We do go on about the importance of resilient design, the ability of our buildings to survive in changing times and climates. We are big on repurposing, finding new uses for old buildings. And if the greenest brick is the one already in the wall, then surely the greenest bomb shelter is the one that’s already in the ground. That’s why the Oppidum is such an exciting opportunity; it’s a conversion of a classified secret facility built in 1984 by what were then the governments of Czechoslovakia and The Soviet Union. Now, it is available for use as the ultimate getaway, deep in a valley in the Czech Republic. The developer notes that they don’t make’em like they used to:…
It has a lovely above-grade modestly sized 30,000 square foot residence, which is connected via secret corridor to the two-storey, 77,000 square foot bunker below, which has been stylishly subdivided into one large apartment and six smaller ones for friends, family and staff, all stocked with ten years of supplies.
(11) Former child actor Charles Herbert died October 31 at the age of 66. The New York Times obit lists his well-known roles in movies like The Fly and 13 Ghosts.
Mr. Herbert was supporting his parents by the time he was 5. He appeared in more than 20 films and 50 television episodes, in which he fended off all kinds of adversaries, from a robot to a human fly.
He shared the limelight with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and James Cagney. He played a blind boy in a memorable episode of “Science Fiction Theater” in 1956, and appeared in a 1962 “Twilight Zone” episode in which a widowed father takes his children to choose an android grandmother.
(12) SF Signal’s latest Mind Meld, curated by Rob H. Bedford, asks Andrew Leon Hudson, Stephenie Sheung (The BiblioSanctum), Richard Shealy, Michael R. Fletcher, Mark Yon, and Erin Lindsey —
Q: Who is your favorite animal companion (pet, familiar, etc) in SFF?
A significant number of genre stories features character’s pets or animal companions. From Loiosh of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos books to Snuff from Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October to Hedwig from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, animals can be companions, pets, or near equals to their “owners.” Who is/are your favorite(s)?
(13) Bruce Gillespie invites fans to download SF Commentary 90, November 2015 — over 100 contributors and 70,000 words.
- The landscape version is at http://efanzines.com/SFC/SFC90L.pdf.
- The portrait/print version at http://efanzines.com/SFC/SFC90P.pdf.
(14) A Christopher Reeve-worn Superman costume is available for bid until November 19 at 5 p.m. Pacific in a Nate D. Sanders auction.
(15) Heritage Auctions reports a menu from the Titanic fetched a high price in a recently closed auction.
Ironically, the top two lots related to a major disaster and a national tragedy. The first was a first class dinner menu from the last supper on the R.M.S. Titanic, the evening of April 14, 1912. Five salesmen and retailers shared a meal, each signing a menu with their place of residence. Of the five, all but one managed to survive the sinking which occurred in the wee morning hours. We believe this to be the only signed example and the only one from the “last supper”. It sold for $118,750.
The second lot was the license plates from the limo President Kennedy was in when he was shot — which went for $100,000.
(16) And this weekend, Heritage Auctions will take bids on Neal Adams’ original cover art for Green Lantern #76, “one of the most important and influential comic books ever published,” as part of the company’s Nov. 19-21 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction where it is expected to bring $300,000+.
Adams’ iconic cover is striking and symbolic. This issue broke more than just the lantern on the cover! Adding Arrow’s name to the title and logo of the book was genius. It created the first “buddy book” in the comic industry… the equivalent to the “buddy movie” genre. It also allowed writer Denny O’Neil to launch into a 13 issue run that dove into political and sociological themes like no comic had before.
(17) Lovecraft’s mug has already been saved from awards obscurity (or permanently guaranteed it, depending on your view) by the administrators of the Counter Currents and the administrators of its H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature. (Which can also be reached using this handy Donotlink link.)
Last year, we at Counter-Currents saw this coming. Thus we have created the Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature, to be awarded to literary artists of the highest caliber who transgress the boundaries of political correctness. Our first laureate is novelist Tito Perdue, who received the award at a banquet in Atlanta on March 7, 2015.
The prize bust is by world-famous porcelain artist Charles Krafft, whose own defiance of political correctness has just led to the cancellation of an exhibition in London.
Wikipedia has an entry on Tito Perdue.
More details about Krafft’s exhibit being pulled by a Whitechapel art gallery from Jewish News:
A fashionable Whitechapel art gallery has pulled the plug on an exhibition by an artist who has been described as a “Holocaust denier” and a “white supremacist,” after complaints and threats were made.
Charles Krafft, who denies both charges, was due to show his work at StolenSpace for the second time, but gallery bosses said they pulled out after receiving “both physical and verbal threats”.
Krafft’s controversial ceramics include busts of Hitler, swastika perfume bottles with the word “forgiveness” emblazoned upon them and plates covered in drawings of Nazi bombings. His work and attributed comments has led to him being labelled a white supremacist, a Nazi sympathiser and a Holocaust denier.
(18) Triple-threat interview with Ken Liu, Lauren Beukes and Tobias S. Buckell at SFFWorld.
Ecotones are the points of transition that occur when two different environments come into contact, and almost inevitably conflict. Can you describe for us an ecotone that has had personal significance for you?
Ken Liu: We’re at a point in our technological evolution where the role played by machines in our cognition is about to change qualitatively. Rather than just acting as “bicycles for the mind,” computers, transformed by ubiquitous networking and presence, will replace important cognitive functions for us at an ever accelerating pace. Much of our memory has already been outsourced to our phones and other devices—and I already see indications that machines will be doing more of our thinking for us. Not since the invention of writing has technology promised to change how we learn and think to such an extent.
The transition between the environment we used to live in and the environment we’re about to live in is going to be exciting as well as threatening, and we’re witnessing one of the greatest transformations in human history.
Tobias Buckell: Last year a deer walked on down through Main Street and then jumped through the window of the local downtown bar. They got it on security camera.
Lauren Beukes: The shared reality of overlapping worlds I live through every day – the schism in experience between rich and poor where everything works differently, from criminal justice to the food you eat, how you get to work, schooling, the day-to-day you have to navigate.
I saw this most clearly and devastatingly when I tried to help my cleaning lady get justice for the scumbag who fatally assaulted her daughter. The cops didn’t care. The hospital put it down as “natural causes”. The prosecutor had to throw the case out because there was so little evidence. This compared to an incident when a friend’s motorbike was stolen at night in the nice suburbs and five cops ended up on his balcony drinking tea, having recovered the vehicle.
(19) Sarah Chorn at Bookworm Blues wonders if her conflict of interest should bar her from reviewing two books.
I feel pretty weird about doing this, but I also think it has to be done. This year I was a beta reader for two books that are currently published (a few more that have upcoming publication dates). I have struggled a little bit with how to approach these novels. While I feel obligated to review them (and I want to review them), I feel like being a beta reader for them takes my objectivity out of it, which is a problem for me. Is it really a review if I can’t objectively judge it?
Am I pondering my navel?
I’m surprised her desire to ask the question didn’t lead to a built-in answer.
(20) The Ant-Man Gag Reel has a few bloopers, though it’s not all that funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m05juc9CYM
(21) Marvel’s Agent Carter Season 2 premieres January 5 on ABC.
[Thanks to Kate Savage, Will R., Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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Speaking of Lovecraft, The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft is available for free on epub, mobi and pdf here, thanks to CthulhuChick.
fifth minus three?
I like that drawing in (2).
P J Evans: I like that drawing in (2).
I know, it’s pretty powerful, isn’t it? “I am here and this is my story”.
My only issue would be that it’s not really fantasy-specific.
Oh, Lis, I’m sorry things still aren’t looking up. 🙁
Fifth!
Just a quick one: Don’t forget to vote in the Fantasy Movie Bracket – Round 2, Heat 1!
Calling GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW an influential book is certainly accurate; calling it the first “buddy book” in the comics industry is nonsense.
Even if you limit it to superhero series, Superman and Batman started teaming up regularly in WORLD’S FINEST in 1954. If you don’t, well, Mutt & Jeff, Abbot & Costello and others had their own books. Even if you demand a buddy duo that debuted in the comics, there are plenty the predate 1970.
Yeah, (2) says “storytelling” in general (heck, even including journalism and graffiti). And do people want an award that features a dude’s naked butt? It would seem to not represent half the human race, as well as maybe give grandma the quivering fantods.
NaNoWriMo update for the curious.
31232 words, as it is after midnight, none yet today.
For where I am in the story it feels like it should be 40k, I don’t know what it’ll be yet but there’s a missing thread that needs to be woven in.
Iphinome: NaNoWriMo update for the curious. 31232 words
I applaud you. When I was young, I wrote stories and poems, and thought I would perhaps want to be a writer.
When I got older, I realized that I was probably far better at satire, parody, and pastiche than at original composition, and that my intellectual imperative was to read others’ stories — as many as I possibly could — rather than to write my own.
Rock on. I hope someday that you are able to make a post here like the one Jonathan Edelstein just made. 🙂
Mike, thank you for the visibility boost.
@JJ A kind thought, not gonna happen. I enjoy the anonymity of the Iphinome handle so unless you’re one of the unlucky beta readers…
PS. Last year’s story was better, it had pancakes, this one only has pizza and bad star wars jokes. I’ve already used these aren’t the droids you’re looking for, the sand people are easily frightened, do or do not, and adventure excitement.*
*Star trek II, God Stalk, The blue brothers, the Bechdel test, happy days, star trek voyager, war games, harry potter, the cthulhu mythos, and man of la mancha also got referenced, it’s like letting everyone else do the writing for me.
I wonder if the File770 Time Machine is working for others and not me, which led to these scroll title ideas:
“Scroll considered as a helix of semi-precious pixels”.
“Let’s do the Scroll Warp again”
Because it seems to me that we are relitigating The Troubles from earlier this year…
(1) God/The Devil is in the detail. Is the new trophy envisaged to be like the Nebula (the same every year) or like the Hugo base which changes annually? If the latter, there will be an added ongoing administrative overhead. Would it be better to invite sculptors interested to submit design ideas that an appropriate judging panel can choose from (my preferred option), or to choose a sculptor and accept what they come up with (a potentially riskier option)?
(9) That’s a neat idea & credit to Scalzi for doing it. And I see that Annie Bellet has also recused her stories from award consideration for the coming year.
Time keeps on scrollin’ scrollin’ scrollin’, into the future…
Soon Lee: Time keeps on scrollin’ scrollin’ scrollin’, into the future…
Some people call me the Pixel Cowboy, some call me the Pompatus of Scrolls.
What’s scroll got to do, got to do with it?
Scroll to my pixel, click inside and read by the light of the moon.
Scalzi’s move neatly cuts out the usefulness of any attempts by hydrophobic canids to add him to their slate. If they do, they waste a spot on somebody who has already said he’s declining, and they don’t even get the warm feeling they’d get from making him choose whether or not to accept a “tainted” nomination.
(9) Great to see Scalzi encouraging readers to consider other work, but getting hard to keep track of who’s asking you to do what.
Gaiman, Correia intend to decline future Hugo nominations. Will MZW? Torgersen? At this point it’s a blur… but all fair enough. But when MRK took herself out of the running for a year, it inadvertently created the appearance of a campaign for 2017. Everyone can sympathize with Annie Bellet, but “please look past me”? She can decline those nominations without an internet appeal. If The End of All Things is definitely Scalzi’s best, why “please look past it”? He doesn’t want a Hugo for his best work? It is more important to have them spaced at strict five year intervals? It’s a good sentiment, but still authors with megaphones influencing a fan-run award. Guess there’s no way out of that any more.
::tick::
Winners for the first heat of the second round of the fantasy movie bracket can be found here. The second heat is open for voting here.
Q: Who is your favorite animal companion (pet, familiar, etc) in SFF?
Lots of favorites either aren’t animals or have so much agency that they can’t be said to be pets or familiars. I’m going to go with current pet crush Lying Cat. Funny and cynical and sometimes sweet and entirely a cat.
Brad J: Scalzi’s move neatly cuts out the usefulness of any attempts by hydrophobic canids to add him to their slate.
Yes, but look for the Puppies to complain about that, too. No doubt they will claim that recusing oneself from the Hugos is somehow “campaigning” to get one. Intelligence and logic are not the Puppies’ strong suit.
I think that the first of the 4 stories in The End of All Things, “The Life of the Mind”, is a worthy Novella entry, and I was going to nominate it. But I’ll honor Scalzi’s wishes and find another worthy entry. It’s not as if there aren’t way more than five worthy entries in any category.
Really? If Scalzi’s move is a recusal, what part does he play in the judging process, and what’s his conflict of interest?
Proty.
Don’t have it to hand to check names, but the cats from Tuf Voyaging are pretty sweet.
I hereby remove myself from consideration for a 2016 Hugo award.
Now let’s see how many millions of words are dedicated to figuring out what my angle is.
Re: #19, Mike, its Sarah Chorn herself who is talking about beta reading and conflict of interest, not Emma Newman.
Having beta-read pieces of things for people, this is something that some day I may have to come to terms with, myself.
@iphinome: 58859. Get back to work, you.
(Mine probably should have a Lovecraft bust, eyes goggling at it in sheer disbelief and disgust. But never mind, it’s still making some sort of progress.)
Favourite animal companion… does the familiar from The Bridge count?
(1)
Excellent, excellent points by John Picacio. This is a work of art we’re talking about here. We should pobably give the artist, whoever they may be, the respect and space to create.
The real question is what dark conspiracy is afoot to drive these writers out of the running for the Hugos to clear the way for… who? or is it whom? I can never remember. Are the Puppies or the SJWs clearing the decks for their appointed winner? What evil mind lurks behind these dark doings?
(Rains of Castamere begins to play. Who let these musicians in her
I wouldn’t call holocaust
denial“revisionism” defiance of political correctness, but I’m not overly surprised that criticism of hatespeech is framed as censorship of free speech. Not only is it a popular trope with the Breitbart crowd it’s been used as a get out of jail free card by holocaust deniers for decades (with varying measures of success).(2)
Just a minor quibble.
If you wanted to depict a “typical” cave artist, she would probably be a woman.
There is evidence that the majority of those prehistoric cave handprints in French and Spanish caves belong to women.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131008-women-handprints-oldest-neolithic-cave-art/
Also, the substantial number of footprints preserved in the mud in the caves of Lascaux include none, not any, of adult males. The prints are all identified as children or “adolescents”, which is odd, because you might think there could have been a category of accomplished adult cave artists with feet smaller than men’s that French archeologists might have thought of.
They really seem to prefer to try to come up with some torturous explanation for the presence of teenagers among all that glorious art than even hint that non-males might have made it.
If one were presenting an image of a general cave artist, it should probably be a woman …
Well I certainly refuse myself from the HE Lovecraft Prize for Literature. Who’s with me?
Take two of horrible disability assessment is today. Wish me luck, please?
@Iphinome
I expect progress on that missing thread by the time I get back! Hop to it!
It’s still better than the narrative that the footprints were left by teenage boys who were “naturally” adventuresome and thus explored caves and left detailed, intricate and astonishingly accomplished pictures of their “natural” obsessions, women and (frequently) pregnant wild animals, grumble grumble …
Just visited the coffee shop where London publishers leave proofs to be picked up and read: scored a copy of The Roboteer and a hard cover of Karen Lord’s The Best Of All Possible Worlds.
That plus breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings makes this a *good* day.
They are all battling a shadowy force known as “fans capable of thinking for themselves without any more helpful advice from authors with big internet platforms.”
And now some news from the swedish suburbs:
Not to mention the ravening hordes of ‘eejits who will put a negative spin on literally everything they do, seriously they’d set PETA on Francis of Assissi, these feckers.’
At least some of them have started to acknowledge it.
Others drift on heedless.
I have it on ‘good’ authority that those authors who are recusing themselves from award consideration this year are angling for a Retro Hugo slot in 2040, 2065 and 2090.
Which displays a tremendous (and welcome) amount of optimism on their part as it assumes that the FANWARS 2012-? will have ended prior to one of those dates.
Of course, Scalzi will be entirely ineligible since the awards were renamed in his honor in 2025 (following a persistent campaign by the Wollheim Group to replace the non-paying Gernsback with “someone, anyone, else” and this despite Scalzi’s signing of a second ten book, multi-million dollar deal. This also led to the inception of FANWARS 2025-?, the conclusion of which remains in much doubt.)
Meanwhile, over at the Holocaust Museum….
Finally finished Shadows Of The Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I would have finished it a lot sooner if I hadn’t sunk 100 hours into Dragonage Inquistion.
It didn’t break new ground but I enjoyed it, although I did find he relied a bit too heavily on cliffhanger endings to chapters.
But he did a great job with the characters, they were unique and believable, and the ‘villain’ was also very nuanced.
Next up: toss up between Ghost Brigades, The Martian or Ancillary Justice.
Picacio sounds…incorrect. At the very least you call for submissions from multiple artists. Otherwise, because strong artists have strong styles, you’re kind of baking the results into the artist-selection cake. Like, if you have a choice between Rodin or Brancusi or Henry Moore, it’s not a simple question of “Who is greatest?” Picking any one of them forecloses a whole bunch of stylistic – and very possibly semantic – options. John LaFarge or Georgia O’Keefe? Apart from the question of raw greatness, they come bundled with two only partially overlapping sets of potential works.
There is a reading of the rules that if all categories get No Awarded, then the year is available for Retro Hugos. But it would have to be all Hugo categories, and you’d have to trust that the future administrator reads it this way.
Think of it! We’d be united in a common goal.
“Picacio sounds…incorrect. At the very least you call for submissions from multiple artists. Otherwise, because strong artists have strong styles, you’re kind of baking the results into the artist-selection cake.”
Indeed.
@David Shallcross
According to the current constitution a full no award would allow a Retro Hugo 50 years down the line, but that’s a long time and statutes so I wouldn’t bank on it 😉
[ticky]
@Brian Z
It doesn’t mean much for Torgerson or Correia to decline future Hugo nominations since they are not going to win one anyway. I have read Correia’s stuff. He isn’t that good. After this year it will be harder for the puppies to freep the nomination process.
Goodreads is safe from pup attack. It is too big for them to freep so they pretend it isn’t there.