Pixel Scroll 11/21 The Incredible Linking Fan

(1) For lovers and others of giant movie monsters, “Doc Kaiju” — well known at the Classic Horror Film Board — has put together a rather remarkable compendium of such creatures: Kaijumatic: House of 1,000 Giant Monsters

Or, as he likes to put it:

Now with 1003 pages stuffed with 1670 big stars from 749 movies!

And, he updates it, constantly.

(2) Barney Evans has uploaded 50 photos taken at the 1988 Loscon, including many from the masquerade.

(3) “David Tennant Answers Our Burning Questions… Sort Of” in a Yahoo! video and profile.

As any David Tennant fan knows after years of watching him promote Doctor Who and Broadchurch, no one evades questions more delightfully. Hoping some of the mind control capabilities of his latest character, the villainous Kilgrave in Marvel’s Jessica Jones (now streaming on Netflix), had rubbed off on us, we invited him in to Yahoo Studios, handed him a card filled with questions, and asked him to answer them.

One example:

Name a book, TV show, or movie you’ve pretended to have read or seen, but you totally haven’t.

That’s a very good question. Probably in audition I’ve done that several times with some worthy director, who asked me what I thought of their latest opus.

(4) Entertainment Weekly looks on as “Stephen Colbert mocks scientists for making wrong Lord of the Rings reference”:

This week, a new species of spider was identified and given the name Iandumoema smeagol, a reference to Smeagol, the hobbit who would become Gollum after getting ahold of the One Ring. The cave-dwelling spider was given the name Smeagol because it shared a similar lifestyle with the character, who lived in a cave and stayed out of the sun until he morphed into the monstrous Gollum.

Colbert, however, wasn’t having any of it on Friday’s show. “Smeagol wasn’t a scary creature who lived in a cave,” Colbert said before recounting Smeagol’s biography, and how he killed his cousin after finding the One Ring.

Explained Colbert: “Smeagol hid from his guilt and the yellow face of the sun, by retreating into a cave, where his shame and his fear turned him into an unrecognizable creature. That creature wasn’t Smeagol anymore; that creature was Gollum. You should have named the spider Gollum. You don’t discover a venomous snake and name it Anakin. You name it Darth Vader.”

 

(5) Brandon Kempner strikes gold in “SFWA 2015 Nebula Recommended Reading List: Analysis and Prediction” at Chaos Horizon.

Table 1: Correlation Between Top 6 (and Ties) of the 2014 Nebula Suggested Reading List and the Eventual 2014 Nebula Nominees

Novel: 4 out of 6, 67.7%
Novella: 6 out of 6, 100%
Novelette: 5 out of 6, 83.3%
Short Story: 6 out of 7, 85.7%

(6) Netflix will remake Lost in Space.

The original comedy, which ran from 1965 to 1968, centered on the Robinson family as they attempted to colonize another planet in deep space — a mission that was sabotaged by a foreign secret agent and caused their ship to get knocked off course.

According to our sister site Deadline, the updated version is an epic (but grounded!) sci-fi saga about “a young explorer family from Earth, lost in an alien universe, and the challenges they face in staying together against seemingly insurmountable odds.”

(7) Laughing Squid presents the entire history of Doctor Who illustrated as a medieval tapestry.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Bill Mudron has created a “slightly ridiculous” tribute to the Bayeux Tapestry that shows the entire history of the show. It begins when the Doctor runs away from his home planet of Gallifrey and ends with “The Day of the Doctor,” the 75-minute 50 anniversary special set to air on BBC One on November 23rd, 2013. A larger version of the illustration can be found on Mudron’s Flickr, and prints are available to pre-order online.

 

Doctor Who tapestry COMP

(8) The sparks fly when Galactic Journey’s time traveler to the sf genre of 55 years ago rubs together the contemporary and historical notions of political correctness in “I aim at the Stars (but sometimes I hit London)” .

If the United States is doing well in the Space Race, it is in no small thanks to a group of German expatriates who made their living causing terror and mayhem in the early half of the 1940s.  I, of course, refer to Wehrner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists, half of whom were rounded up by the Allies after the War, the other half of whom apparently gave similar service to the Soviets.

The traveler comments on a hagiographic von Braun biopic released at the time, and provides a scan of the souvenir Dell comic book based on the film.

(9) Michael J. Martinez prepping to see the new Star Wars movie by watching the two original trilogies in their canonical order. He begins — Star Wars wayback machine: The Phantom Menace.

This is basically a movie that’s supposed to remind us of the first trilogy, but does very little to actually create an origin story for those older movies. Instead, we have attempts at nostalgia. Look, Jedi! Lightsabers! The Force! Spaceships and space battles! But even there, we have problems. Such as:

There’s no smart-ass. All the prequels were missing the Han Solo archetype — the scrappy outsider and audience surrogate who can stand toe-to-toe with these gods and monsters.

There’s George Lucas’ efforts at being cute, with the Gungans. I think George felt that he needed to appeal to the cute younger audiences, starting with Return of the Jedi, and thus we had Ewoks. Now we have Gungans, complete with silly mannerisms and catchphrases. Adults always underestimate kids’ ability to grasp nuanced entertainment, and this is no exception. We didn’t need Gungans.

The stereotypical accents and mannerisms of the Gungans and the Trade Federation folk have been covered elsewhere. But still…WTF were you thinking, man? Just no.

Wooden dialogue and stiff acting. I think I know what George was going for here — a shout-out to the sci-fi serials and movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Fine, I get it. But it didn’t work. At all.

(10) “Don’t nominate me for any awards” posts Lela E. Buis.

I don’t want to be left out of the trending commentary….

(11) “4 Beautiful Ray Bradbury Quotes That Celebrate Autumn”  selected by Jake Offenhartz at History Buff.

Though mid-afternoon sunsets and leafless trees may give the impression that winter is fast approaching, we’re still technically just halfway through fall. Which strikes us as good enough reason to look back at the work of Ray Bradbury—master of science fiction, adversary of censorship, and chronicler of all things fall. The author wrote extensively about the season, penning autumnal wisdom in various projects throughout his career, most notably in a short story collection called The October Season and a novel titled The Halloween Tree. We’ve collected some of our favorite fall-related quotes below, so cozy up and have a read:

1. The October Country (1955)

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

(12) Merlin is in Disney’s future says CinemaBlend.

If you were going to create a checklist for how to make a current Hollywood blockbuster there are a few things you want to be sure were on it. First, you want to base it on an already existing piece of fiction, preferably a book. It would be even better if it were a series of books, about a character people were already familiar with. It would need to be able to have big fantasy action set pieces too. Then you want to bring in a production team that was involved in one of the previous fantasy action franchises based on a series of books, because that stuff looks great on a trailer. It looks like Disney just checked off all their boxes as they just brought in an Academy Award winning screenwriter from The Lord of the Rings to pen the screenplay based on a 12 book series about Merlin the magician.

Philippa Boyens is known, almost exclusively, as one of the writers behind the incredibly successful films based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

(13) Guy Gavriel Kay, Member of the Order of Canada.

(14) Caitlin Kiernan, two-time WFA winner, regrets the Lovecraft bust is being retired, in her post “I have seen what the darkness does.”

You may or may not have heard that the World Fantasy Committee has voted to change the design of the World Fantasy Award from Gahan Wilson’s bust of Lovecraft, which has served as the award since it was first given out in 1975. No, I don’t approve. I don’t believe this was the appropriate course of action. I’m saddened by this lamentable turn of events, and I’m glad that I received my two World Fantasy awards in advance of this change. How long, now, before the Mystery Writers of America are pressured to abandon the Edgar Award? When we set this sort of thing in motion, where does it end?

(15) A limited TV series based on a Vonnegut book – it could happen, reports A.V. Club.

Back in April, we reported that Kurt Vonnegut’s fourth novel, Cat’s Cradle, had been optioned for TV by IM Global Television. At that point almost nothing was known about the project other than the fact that it would indeed use Cat’s Cradle as its source material, which is implicit in a TV show labeled as Cat’s Cradle adaptation. Now though, according to Deadline, a precious few details have emerged: the show will live on FX as a limited series, and be written and executive produced by Fargo creator Noah Hawley.

Vonnegut’s original work was published in 1963 and takes on science, technology, and religion with equal satirical fire. After the novel’s narrator, John, becomes involved in the lives of the adult children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional co-creator of the atomic bomb, he travels to the fake Caribbean island of San Lorenzo and encounters a strange outlawed religion called Bokononism that many of the area’s inhabitants practice anyway. Through Hoenikker’s children he also learns about ice-nine, a way to freeze water at room temperature that could be devastating if used improperly. Needless to say, destruction and dark humor ensue.

(16) On its February cover, Mad Magazine slipped Alfred E. Newman into a crowd of storm troopers.

MAD-Magazine_555x717_532_54d52a91bb51c7_86515890

(17) IGN will be ranking the top 100 movie trailers of all time in a feature that will be unveiled November 23-25.

(18) Comic Book Resources retells a bit of lore about the making of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in “Movie Legends Revealed: The Accidental ‘Star Trek’ Actress?”

It is a funny scene, but it was also ad-libbed. Notice how everyone else ignores them? The woman who answered them was also supposed to ignore them. The comedy was supposed to derive from the fact that they couldn’t get an answer (and, yes, from the way Chekov says “vessels”).

The woman in question was San Francisco resident Layla Sarakalo, who woke up one day to discover her car had been towed. She had missed the notices that “Star Trek” was filming on her street, and her car was in the way. She decided that one way to get the money to pay for the towing was to get a job as an extra on the set.

 

[Thanks to Shambles, James H. Burns, Will R., John King Tarpinian, and Lynn Maudlin for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

160 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/21 The Incredible Linking Fan

  1. Sort of like Stella Gibbons’ “Cold Comfort Farm”?

    One could be excused for missing that it was a near-future satire. It was published in 1932 and was solidly a satire of the popular rotten-old-farms-full-of-gothically-unhappy-people genre.

    But it was set somewhere around 1950 or so, rather confusing to someone seeing references not to WWII but to the “Anglo-Nicaraguan War”, and advances in personal airplanes and the science of psychology and the hobby of brassiere-collecting and other oddnesses.

  2. Every time I think about award nominations, I keep running into the time-money unfairness thing. Back when I was reading a lot of sff, I couldn’t afford to read things in hardcover, so by the time I loved a book it was too late to nominate (and in some cases, to vote). Now I have the money to buy anything I want as soon as it comes out, and so much of my book-related time is tied up in writing instead. And a lot of that reading time is spent trying to catch up on older books. (Not that I’m complaining, mind you.) At least my habit of reviewing all newly read novels on my blog makes it easier to consider my options, but just to point out my dilemma, here are the new-to-me novels read in 2015. (SFF unless otherwise noted.)

    Random (Alma Alexander, 2014)
    Cold Magic (Kate Elliott, 2010)
    Karen Memory (Elizabeth Bear, 2015)
    Petticoats and Promises (Penelope Friday, 2015, historic romance)
    Memory of Water (Emmi Itäranta, 2014)
    Rughum and Najda (Samar Habib, 2012, historic fiction)
    The Duchess War (Courtney Milan, 2012, historic romance)
    The Golden City (J. Kathleen Cheney, 2013)
    Passion Play (Beth Bernobich, 2010)
    The Blazing World (Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1666)
    The House of Shattered Wings (Aliette de Bodard, 2015)
    Rebeccah and the Highwayman (Barbara Davies, 2010, historic romance)
    Sorcerer to the Crown (Zen Cho, 2015)

    So that’s three (3) sff novels published in 2015. And I’m not sure I consider the Cho to be at nomination-level.

  3. Heather Rose Jones: Every time I think about award nominations, I keep running into the time-money unfairness thing.

    I sympathize. I’m probably really lucky in comparison to a lot of people here in that I live in a huge city with a massive library system and acquisitions librarians who pretty much order (at least one, but usually several, copies) of anything I request which is not already in the catalog or on order. Sometimes this means a bit of a delay due to the acquisitions process of shipping, binding and tagging (for instance, I just read Ancillary Mercy last week, and I was first on the list) — but it also means that I save a huge amount of money which can be spent on older books which are not available through the library.

    And even then, I have a whole lot of pre-2015 stuff on Mount File770 which I really want to read, which often takes a backseat to the 2015 releases — in addition to competing for time with real-life stuff. And then when I read 2015 things that don’t trip my trigger, I feel that I’ve deprived myself of earlier stuff that would.

    But that’s a First World Reading Problem, so I just consider myself really fortunate, and read as much as I can, and nominate to the best of my ability.

  4. Vasha on November 23, 2015 at 7:44 am said:
    I haven’t been reading a lot of novels this year (mostly shorts) but one that I absolutely loved was Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (and I highly recommend the audiobook of that).

    Seconding this.

  5. And I’m not sure I consider the Cho to be at nomination-level.

    Right now it is on my list, along with Ancillary Mercy, The Left-Hand Way, and Time Salvager. It could be knocked off fairly easily at some point in the future though.

  6. Currently on my Hugo Novels list:

    Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
    Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older
    Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older
    Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs (probably be replaced by something else as its latest in series and I’m not convinced it stands alone)

    I’ve read 34 SFF book published in 2015 according to Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7499632?shelf=read . I had to do a hand count as I’ve not been properly shelving things. Not as high a number as I expected given I’ve read over 250 books/shorts/novellas/novelettes this year. I’ve definitely not tracked many non-novels as well as review copies of novels on Goodreads. I’m too reliant on auto-linking between kindle apps & GR, FB, Twitter, and Amazon. I rarely follow-up to see if status and reviews posted.

  7. Vasha: one that I absolutely loved was Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (and I highly recommend the audiobook of that)

    Lauowolf: Seconding this.

    Another one where I seem to differ from the majority. I found the Pidgin-English-heavy text really hard reading — but I appreciated getting the insight into a different culture. Then I got to the end and thought: “Fhcreurebrf if Nyvraf? That’s where you’ve been going with this? Really???”

  8. I don’t think many people considered The Mouse That Roared to be SF or fantasy, did they, in spite of being set in an imaginary country and involving events that changed the history of the world. It was a political comedy. Not all works of non-realist imagination fit very neatly into the “genre”.

  9. Fhcreurebrf if Nyvraf – but they aren’t “vs”! And the fhcreurebrf thing was the interpretation of some Americans… To me the book was a rather long way of depicting Lagos as a vibrant place full of conflicts and possibilities, on the brink of change and growth, with conflict itself being a sign of potential because a sign of active diversity. It is an optimistic book about seeing the chance of growth everywhere.

  10. The Mouse That Roared probably owes more stylistically to Ruritanian novels than Golden Age SF, but the Quadium Bomb puts it pretty solidly in SF territory and the sequel, The Mouse On The Moon, has actual spaceships.

    Books can be more than one thing. The Mouse That Roared can be a Ruritanian novel with SF elements, or an SF novel with a Ruritanian style. Persona can be a political thriller with SF elements, or a near-future SF work in the style of a political thriller.

    The boxes aren’t neat, and don’t have to be.

  11. Kyra: Persona can be a political thriller with SF elements, or a near-future SF work in the style of a political thriller. The boxes aren’t neat, and don’t have to be.

    Of course they don’t. But I want more SFF in my SFF than so thin as to be nearly invisible. Just as with Lagoon (which had, in my opinion, an utterly lame premise), if I’d known that’s what Persona was, I wouldn’t have read it. I felt cheated, and pissed off that I’d (in my opinion) wasted a lot of precious reading time on books that were a major disappointment.

  12. I had a hard time following Lagoon. It wasn’t the Pidgin English. I was fine with that. I just never felt like I had a clue what was going on. I was prepared to love it after reading several of her short stories including Binti which is on my Hugo list.

  13. Radiance and Watchmaker of Filigree Street are the only two on my novel shortlist at the moment, although I may promote Uprooted if I don’t find anything I like better. At this point I’m pretty sure nothing is going to dislodge either Radiance or Watchmaker, but if anyone else is equally enamored of those two and wants to suggest possible contenders which would suit my taste, feel free to suggest. I’m happy to add suggestions to the reading pile.

  14. My current list looks like this:

    Likely to Nominate
    Seveneves
    Ancillary Mercey
    Uprooted
    Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
    (which I assume qualifies?)

    Stuff that may squeak in
    The Traitor
    Sorcerer to the Crown
    The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

    Stuff that was good, but not really Hugo calibre
    Nemesis Games
    The Voyage of the Basilisk
    Of Noble Family
    Last First Snow

    Still on my 2015 Hugo to-read list
    The Fifth Season
    Planetfall
    The Dark Forest
    Aftermath

    Based on the above, is there anything else that I should be adding to my 2015 list?

  15. snowcrash: Based on the above, is there anything else that I should be adding to my 2015 list?

    I recommend Dark Orbit. Also, Nagata’s The Red series The Trials and Going Dark are excellent, if you like near-future military SF with a mysterious AI influencing things. I’ve heard good things about Luna: New Moon and for Time Salvager but haven’t read them yet. Beasts of Tabat and Sorcerer of the Wildeeps seem to have a lot of support from SFWA members. And I’m really looking forward to Barsk but it doesn’t come out until December 29 (damn you, Tor, damn you!).

  16. I encourage everyone to read “Radiance”. Please please so I can talk about it.

    Also “Luna: New Moon” is good crunchy SF.

    “Wildeeps” really didn’t do it for me. I read it last week and can’t remember what it was about. There was a caravan, and scary things, and the ending was meh?

    Am waiting for “Gentleman Jole” and “Barsk”.

  17. Radiance is up next on my novel stack. (Currently in the middle of Dreams of Shreds and Tatters.)

  18. lurkertype: I encourage everyone to read “Radiance”. Please please so I can talk about it.

    Is it anything like Palimpsest? I bounced off that one hard.

  19. I didn’t read “Palimpsest” so I don’t know. Try the free sample (also at Tor) to see if it’s the sort of thing you bounce off… although the intro is much, much, super-way artsier than the rest of the book, and really you could skip that part entirely.

  20. I was going to read Palimpsest, but when I tried, I discovered that I’d accidentally copied a completely different book over it.

    Oops.

  21. Which Palimpsest?

    The one by Cat Valente (fantasy) was weird but excellent. The one by Charles Stross (sf) was mind bending. Both recommended.

  22. I seriously disliked the Cat Valente’s Palimset(I am pretty sure I summed it up with “pretentious modern lit wannbe”), and thought Stross’s novella was competent at best. But then I didn’t do well in my Hugo voting the year they were both nommed, so take that as you will.

  23. Rev. Bob: I was going to read Palimpsest, but when I tried, I discovered that I’d accidentally copied a completely different book over it.

    Oh, please. Let me send you mine. Its pixels have barely been touched, it’s just like new. 😉

  24. @JJ:

    No, that’s okay. I think I can uncover the original document with a bit of careful restoration work.

  25. Cat Valente is one of my favorite authors, but for some reason her recent works seem to only be available in the UK at ridiculously high prices. I haven’t yet gotten Radiance OR Speak Easy OR The Bread We Eat In Dreams because I can’t justify spending a zillion pounds on one book. 🙁

  26. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (which I assume qualifies?)

    Technically this isn’t being released until February 2016. I have it on my list for Hugo nominees in 2017 as right now it’s only an eArc and not considered released. I have no clue how Hugo admins would deal with this issue if placed before them.

  27. @Heather:

    No, it isn’t very pretty what a scroll without pity… naah, not finishing that one. 🙂

  28. I don’t think many people considered The Mouse That Roared to be SF or fantasy, did they, in spite of being set in an imaginary country and involving events that changed the history of the world

    In the world at large, I don’t think many people consider 1984 to be SFF; nevertheless, SFF fans are often adamant that it is. There is a powerful tendency to include all work with speculative content in the genre, though there is also a contrary tendency to exclude work which does not approach its subject-matter in a science-fictional way. While some people will be disappointed in finding that work published as SF is not very SFnal, others would be upset if the same work was published as mainstream, and would argue that the author must be ashamed of its genre content.

    I think in the end it isn’t always possible to decide genre just by content, taken in isolation; you have to look at intention, how the author sees it and what audience they are presenting it to. (For instance, alternate history is widely seen as belonging to the SFF genre, but there are plenty of political thrillers with an unreal president or prime minister that no one treats as such.) In this case, Valentine is an SFF author and is presenting her work to an SFF audience, so it has to count as SFF.

  29. Andrew M.: I think in the end it isn’t always possible to decide genre just by content, taken in isolation; you have to look at intention, how the author sees it and what audience they are presenting it to. (For instance, alternate history is widely seen as belonging to the SFF genre, but there are plenty of political thrillers with an unreal president or prime minister that no one treats as such.) In this case, Valentine is an SFF author and is presenting her work to an SFF audience, so it has to count as SFF.

    That’s a very good way to put it. A few months ago I read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Enemy Within, which just won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. I enjoyed the book — she did a fantastic job researching the events, and what the people and their relationships were really like — but it really didn’t push my “SFF button”.

    I loved Valentine’s novella “Dream Houses”, and was hoping for more of that same “wow!” factor; this no doubt colored my reaction to Persona.

    I guess my problem is finding out enough about books ahead of time to know whether I will be massively disappointed with their lack of substantial SFFness (or character development, or worldbuilding, or whatever) — without finding out so much that a book I would really enjoy is spoiled for me. It’s a hard, fine line to try to walk.

  30. Tasha Turner on November 24, 2015 at 11:21 am said:

    Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (which I assume qualifies?)

    Technically this isn’t being released until February 2016. I have it on my list for Hugo nominees in 2017 as right now it’s only an eArc and not considered released. I have no clue how Hugo admins would deal with this issue if placed before them.

    The WSFS Consitution says:

    Section 3.2: General.

    3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

    3.2.3: Publication date, or cover date in the case of a dated periodical, takes precedence over copyright date.

    Hugo Administrators rarely make prospective rulings. But I’m not going to assume the Worldcon 75 administrators will allow GJ&TRQ to appear on the 2017 ballot. It appeared in 2015 for sale to the general public.

    If I can get a copy and read it before the nominating deadline, and I think it deserves a nom, It’ll go on my ballot in 2016.

    Here in 3272 Hugo nominees are eligible for about five minutes before we must think our choices into the solar neural net.

  31. Re genre and 1984: 1984 is a dystopia, which along with utopias, are what I’d call a sub-genre of fantastic or speculative literature–whether they’re “SF” depends on whether one is using SF as a limited genre term (relating to Campbell’s and other’s claims for extrapolation from science) or the more general/marketing term (everything shoved into one big section at bookstores) (I’ve more or less stopped twitching when my younger students use “sci-fi” but I refuse to acknowledge “syfy” gargggh).

    The thing that irks me is that the English Teacher Gangs (MLA, etc.) consider utopias and dystopias (especially by dead white men) to be sufficiently respectable enough to be considered literature when they have pretty adamantly excluded large swaths of SFF generally (including but not limited to Tolkien).

  32. I’m less interested in author’s intent, which sometimes is the publisher’s Marketing Department’s intent – not always the author’s. And I can’t read the author’s mind. Then there’re authors like Margaret Atwood. . . . 😉

    No, for me, labels like SF and F are (should be) descriptive. If it’s marginal SF content, then it’s marginally SF. But if a clearly-SFal work is marketed as lit fic or the author claims it’s not SF . . . yyyyeah, it’s still SF, tough luck Atwood. 😉

    Again – just how I look at these things. I’m mostly interested in SF/F. While I put pure alternate history* under SFF, it’s not something I’m very into – I like actual SFF elements in my reading.

    * By “pure alternate history” I mean not urban fantasy/SF/steampunk/etc. that takes place on our world with a secret history, but just a historical or present-day novel where key events in the past are supposed to have turned out differently and things follow from that. To me that’s a special subset of SFF, but not usually of interest to me.

    /my take on it

  33. @robinreid: “I’ve more or less stopped twitching when my younger students use “sci-fi” but I refuse to acknowledge “syfy” gargggh”

    The SCI FI Channel changed its name to SyFy for one reason, and one reason only: trademarks. They couldn’t trademark the first name because it was too generic, but SyFy was sitting right there – different enough to carry a trademark, similar enough to bridge the gap by sounding the same. As the company’s president said at the time:

    Here’s a couple of great examples that we hope illustrate what I’m talking about in a different way. ESPN and COKE are both powerful brands. But if they were called SPORTS or SODA, no one would know why they’re different or why they’re worth checking out. They’d lose their personality, point of difference and ability to stand out in the marketplace. “Sci-fi” is the generic term. It’s not a brand name we can own or that separates our shows from all of the other sci-fi shows out there.

    It’s also impossible to effectively trademark the letters “s-c-i-f-i” anywhere in the world, which is becoming a bigger problem as we launch more and more SCI FI Channels around the globe. By the end of next year, the SCI FI Channel will be in about 50 countries.

    Emphasis mine, of course. Whether I like the change or not, I understand why SyFy exists and why some kind of name change was inevitable. OTOH, if you’re telling me that someone has started using “syfy” as a new spelling for the generic term, instead of talking about that brand… yeah, add my gargggh to yours.

  34. > “I loved Valentine’s novella ‘Dream Houses’, and was hoping for more of that same ‘wow!’ factor; this no doubt colored my reaction to Persona.”

    My favorite work by Valentine is “The Girls At The Kingfisher Club”, which isn’t really SFFnal in any way, even though it’s based on a fairy tale. And I really liked “Mechanique”, which is VERY SFFnal. “Persona”, on the other hand, left me cold; I really didn’t like it at all. I would consider it SFFnal, myself, but I considered the essential political set-up to be an SF idea — “Political Science” Science Fiction, if you will, projecting forward certain current aspects of social media, celebrity, and international relations.

    None of which means much, really. Other than that you might want to give “Mechanique” a try if you haven’t read it yet, it may hit the intersection of your interests better.

  35. > “The SCI FI Channel changed its name to SyFy for one reason, and one reason only: …”

    So that I could forever more call them the Syphilis Channel.

  36. I’d love to see some survey data and analysis around who hates the term “sci fi” and who doesn’t really care. My completely handwavey, no-actual-data impression is that it’s related to age (older fans hate it, younger ones either don’t care or recognize it as a shibboleth they “should” care about), but I’m curious about where the shift starts to happen.

    And if alt-history counts as SF, that gives me an excuse to slide in this radio sketch: John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme: Churchill and the cats.

  37. I’m not consistent in my use of SF or scifi or sci fi. I’ve gotten more consistent when it comes to SFF vs SF&F vs whatever it is I used to use before I hung out online with SFF authors and fans (5+ years). Born 1967. LOL

  38. Born in 1965, used to hate “sci-fi”, have relented thanks to good examples from people I like and trust, particularly Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

  39. Filer Whippersnapper* reporting in: “Syfy” would annoy me a bit if someone used it as a general term rather than channel-specific things, but other than that I really don’t mind. Words are fun, so why not play around and try on different ways of saying things?

    I’m also pretty relaxed about quantity and type of speculative content. So long as there is some, the work is good and is roughly to my taste in other ways, I’m happy.

    *The very exclusive under-30s club. 😉

  40. Born in ’67 and at some point someone decided “sci-fi” (Mac auto-correct: “sic-fi”) Shouldn’t Be Used, but it’s never bothered me. Every term bugs someone (sci-fi, speculative fiction, spec fic, etc.). It’s convenient shorthand for talking with non-fen – “I like sci-fi” or “I like sci-fi and fantasy” – but I use the longer words, short words, whatever works.

    I hate SyFy’s spelling, even as I kinda get why they changed it.

  41. Obligatory random trivia:

    One of the books near the top of my TBR mountain, because I’ve got all three and loved the first, is Julia Crane’s Fractured Innocence. The trilogy concerns a young woman who wakes up as a cyborg supersoldier… after her death. (Memo to self: Be very careful about checking the “organ donor” box in the future.) Anyway, the company that had the technology to rebuild her is named IFICS, and in the first book, she asks what it stands for.

    Yes, they went there. It’s a “just because” name in the setting. One of many things I liked about the book.

  42. Rev Bob: It’s true it’s midnight here, but I’m not getting it. Just what does IFICS stand for, and where did they metaphorically go?

  43. @Cally:

    Reverse the letters.

    IFICS = SCIFI

    She was literally rebuilt by science fiction; the founder named the company by spelling “sci-fi” backwards.

  44. I’m 53. I first encounter sf fandom in 1980. The fact that I still call it sf probably tells you that I don’t like sci-fi. I’ve gotten used to it, and after a very bitter experience 15 years ago, I’ve schooled myself to stop being a prude and a prick on the topic, but I do still prefer sf. My own experience suggests that people under 30 don’t mind sci-fi at all, and many strongly prefer it to sf.

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