Pixel Scroll 11/21/16 Pon Far. Squa Tront.

(1) FOR LONG DISCUSSIONS ABOUT SHORT STORIES. Standback and Levana Taylor have launched the Short Story Squee & Snark website. It began as a Facebook group and all of the 50+ discussions from the existing group have been imported to the new site.

But it’s safe to assume the real action will be around the newest, most recent story selections. For our first few weeks, we’ve got story suggestions from Chinelo Onwualu, from Charles Payseur, and Abigail Nussbaum. Our first discussion begins tomorrow.

After that, we’ll be pressing on with selections from your humble hosts, Standback and Levana – and suggestions from you. You can follow us on RSS or on Twitter to join along.

(2) OCCASIONAL TIRADER. Julie Phillips profiles “The Fantastic Ursula Le Guin” ini The New Yorker.

To talk to Le Guin is to encounter alternatives. At her house, the writer is present, but so is Le Guin the mother of three, the faculty wife: the woman writing fantasy in tandem with her daily life. I asked her recently about a particularly violent story that she wrote in her early thirties, in two days, while organizing a fifth-birthday party for her elder daughter. “It’s funny how you can live on several planes, isn’t it?” she said. She resists attempts to separate her more mainstream work from her science fiction. She is a genre author who is also a literary author, not one or the other but indivisibly both.

Le Guin can be polemical, prone to what one close friend calls “tirades” on questions she feels strongly about. I once watched her participate in a panel discussion on gender and literature at WisCon, an annual gathering of feminist science-fiction writers, readers, and academics in Madison, Wisconsin. Scowling like a snapping turtle, she sat waiting for illogical remarks, which she then gently but firmly tore to bits. Yet a conversation with Le Guin is often full of comic asides, laughter, and—a particularly Le Guin trait—good-natured snorts. Humor seems to be her way of taking the edge off the polemic, as well as an introvert’s channel of communication. Behind even the lightest remarks, one is aware of a keen intelligence and a lifetime of thought, held back for the purposes of casual conversation.

(3) DEMON WITH A BRASS BAND. Omni’s Joshua Sky interviewed Jason Davis, editor of many Harlan Ellison collections, about the project to digitize and preserve all of Ellison’s writings, in “To Preserve A Demon”.

Writer/editor Jason Davis has a special ambition — to catalog, digitize, edit, correct, annotate and re-publish (or publish for the first time, in some cases) all of Harlan Ellison’s writings. Twenty-six four-foot-wide drawers of typescripts, over 100 feet of paper if stacked, the lifework of a man who is easily one of the most influential and cantankerous authors of the 20th century. Jason is spearheading the Harlan Ellison Books Preservation Project, a grand undertaking “To create definitive versions of all Harlan Ellison’s writings, fiction and non-fiction, to preserve in print for posterity.”…

JS: How did this project come about?

JD: I took over HarlanEllisonBooks.com in 2012. For the most part, I’ve been limited to publishing the previously uncollected, and un-reprinted stuff. His other works were with other publishers. I could do a new collection, like Harlan 101, which contains stories that you’ll find spread across many other Ellison collections. I can do that as a unique volume, and it did very well.

Certain economic factors were built into the original business model before I took over, and — as previously noted — the rights to most of the iconic collections are tied up elsewhere, so because of the need to sell X copies of a given book to make a return, I’ve concentrated on material that wasn’t available in any form elsewhere, with a few exceptions — like Harlan 101 or 8 in 80 by Ellison — where there was some unique aspect to the book that made it worth releasing.

For the Preservation Project, I’m working at the story/essay level, so I’m not stepping on anyone else’s toes. The entirety of Harlan’s work will be digitized and corrected to make sure it’s as the author intends it. In the future, if a publisher comes to him and says, “I want to put out a new edition of Shatterday in hardback,” it will be a simple matter of pushing a button, and a complete text of that collection goes off to the publisher in electronic form after the contract is signed. As it currently stands, that publisher would receive a large box of photocopied typescripts which would have to be scanned or typed into a computer for publication, which leads to inputting errors and a lot of back-and-forth between the publisher’s employees and Harlan’s office via phone, fax and e-mail. One of the goals of this project is to make republishing Harlan’s writings more appealing to publishers — who have their own economic pressures to deal with — by front-loading a lot of the editorial work.

To date the Kickstarter has raised $78,375 of the $100,000 goal.

(4) THE CALCULUS OF ONLINE BOOK SHOPPING. After Max Florschutz sells you the book, he’ll try to sell you on reviewing that book on Amazon.

Now, there’s some truth to why we think this way, after all. I’m not saying that those that pass over a book with only three reviews are being subconsciously manipulated. Rather that the reasoning for such is so valid and ingrained that we as consumers tend to let it subconsciously spill into all sorts of areas.

So, getting back to that review number, it turns out that it’s really important, because people recognize that a higher number of reviews is a good thing. It means a wider variety of readers purchased the product and then left their opinion. And if the book was poor, even with a few outliers that enjoyed it immensely and gave it high reviews, the average rating would reflect that. In this manner, a book that has five stars at ten reviews is, to many, less trustworthy and less likely to be a truly good read than a book that has three stars but three hundred reviews.

And this compounds. The higher the number of reviews, the greater the variety among those leaving them, and the greater chance that the average rating is, the way a prospective reader sees it, accurate. Which therefore increases the chance that they will then seriously consider purchasing the book.

(5) NO TWO SNOWFLAKES ARE ALIKE. Camestros Felapton reviews the reviewer: “MetaReview: Dave Truesdale Reviews Diabolical Plots #21”.

That the reviewer frames his review around a comment by the author—the “unjust violent death of Michael Brown”—and then gives the reader of Truesdale review a totally different narrative that is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. Truesdale’s review fails on literary grounds (the shift of focus from a fictional story about emotional pain in the face of perceived injustice and violence to Truesdale’s evaluation of whether the author is justified in feeling angry about a real-world event), and from an error in judgment by Truesdale in attempting to justify a judicial killing, which not only reveal the weakness in the review itself, but which highlights how the reviewer’s own strong prejudice in the matter clouded his thinking, and obstructed his capacity to give a professional review.

(6) TREVOR OBIT. Irish novelist, playwright and short story writer Sir William Trevor (1928-2016) died November 20 reports The Bookseller. He won the O. Henry Prize four times and the Whitbread Award three times; he was also nominated for the Booker Prize five times.

The Internet Science Fiction Database lists his genre work as:

Novels

The Children of Dynmouth (1976)

Shortfiction

Miss Smith (1967)
The Only Story (1971)
The Love of a Good Woman (1972)
George and Alice and Isabel (1973)
Visions of Hell (1974)
Mrs. Acland’s Ghosts (1975)
The Death of Peggy Morrissey (1975)
Broken Homes (1977)
The Raising of Elvira Tremlett (1977)
Autumn Sunshine (1980)

(7) CLOWES OBIT. Jonathan Clowes, Doris Lessing’s agent, has died at the age of 86. The Bookseller published a tribute:

After founding Jonathan Clowes Ltd. in 1960, Clowes assembled a select and high-powered client list including international bestseller Len Deighton, novelist, poet and playwright Maureen Duffy, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, novelists Sir Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Jane Howard and Brian Freemantle.

His clients also included television writers David Nobbs, Carla Lane and Dr David Bellamy.

Clowes took an unlikely path to become one of London’s most renowned and respected literary agents, having left grammar school aged 15 and worked in a number of different trades, from gardener to decorator, even going on to serve time in prison for his stance as a conscientious objector.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 21, 1942: “Tweety Bird” debuted

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born November 21, 1924 – Christopher Tolkien
  • Born November 21, 1944 – Harold Ramis

(10) BEASTLY CAPITALISM. ScienceFiction.com has a question: “Weekend Box Office (11/18-11/20): ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Did Fantastically… But Fantastically Enough?”

It’s no surprise that ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ topped the box office charts this weekend, with $75M in the US and $218.3M globally.  This film kicks off a series of five projected movies– with the first sequel already scheduled to arrive on November 16, 2018– all penned by J.K. Rowling, the creator of ‘Harry Potter’, but did studio Warner Brothers bite off more than they could chew?  That’s what some insiders are wondering, as this movie’s opening is below that of other franchise players like ‘Doctor Strange’ ($85M opening weekend) and WB’s own ‘Suicide Squad’ ($133.6M… and that was considered a disappointment).

(11) ATTENTION BAKER STREET REGULARS. Sherlock Season 4 is almost upon us. Reportedly, for the first time shows in the UK and the US will be broadcast on the same dates.

Sherlock will return in “The Six Thatchers” on January 1, 2017 on MASTERPIECE on PBS.

Coming in 2017, Sherlock will return with three brand-new episodes that promise laughter, tears, shocks, surprises and extraordinary adventures.

Season four begins with the mercurial Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch), back once more on British soil as Doctor Watson (Martin Freeman) and his wife Mary (Amanda Abbington) prepare for their biggest challenge yet: becoming parents.

(12) ANOTHER ITEM FOR THE WISH LIST. Dread Central is making a list and getting it wet.

Leave it to Mondo to tug on our nostalgic heartstrings just before Christmas. They’re releasing a vinyl version of the soundtrack to Joe Dante’s Gremlins, and the packaging literally changes when exposed to water and sunlight… just like the titular creatures.

gremlins_front%20cover_uv%20lightgremlins_sleeve%201gizmo_dry

(13) THREE STOOGES AT THE ALEX. Glendale’s Alex Theatre hosts the 19th Annual The Three Stooges® Big Screen Event this Saturday at 2:00 & 8:00 p.m.. Order tix online here.

The LA Weekly has named The Affordable Curly Care Act: Poking Medicine in the Eye Since 1933 their “Pick of the Week.” What more can we say? How about, “Buy your tickets early to avoid the lines at the box office.”

A special surprise bonus will be shown in addition to this lineup of five classic Stooges shorts:

  • FROM NURSE TO WORSE (1940 – Jules White)
  • CASH & CARRY (1937 – Del Lord)
  • SOME MORE SAMOA (1941 – Del Lord)
  • SCRAMBLED BRAINS (1951 – Jules White)
  • ALL THE WORLD’S A STOOGE (1941 – Del Lord)

(14) WHAT TOOLS THESE MORTALS BE. Mark-kitteh writes: “A performance of The Tempest with a live motion-capture Ariel on stage? I’m sure some will say the Bard will be spinning in his grave, but I suspect he’d just be updating his list of stage directions to include ‘exeunt stage upwards’,” — The Tempest review: Real-time digital avatar brews storm in a teacup” at ArsTechnica.

(15) ANYTHING YOU CAN DO. ScreenRant knows “Everything Supergirl Can Do That Superman Can’t”.

Supergirl is more than a chip off the ol’ Krypton block. While her younger cousin gets all the credit for bench-pressing the earth and saving the universe, Supergirl’s individual strengths have been sorely undervalued….

  1. She Can Shapeshift

Superman is dead. This is the reality of the post-Crisis “pocket universe” where Lex Luthor was a good guy who bet the ranch on recreating his long lost love, Lana Lang. Lex’s advanced form of AI was called the “protoplasmic matrix,” or just “Matrix” for short. Indeed, Luthor’s weird science led to the recreation of his lady love, now called Matrix– an unholy hodgepodge containing the memory of Lana with the Kryptonian specs of Superman (whom he knew about thanks to his otherworldly technology).

In addition to being almost as strong as Kal-El, this new creation had the powers of invisibility, telekinesis, and shapeshifting, which she took full advantage of by morphing into Supergirl 2.0. In a battle against General Zod, Faora, and Quex-UI, Matrix/Supergirl held her own but ultimately had to call on the support of Superman to take down the triumvirate. Though the pair defeated the Krypton criminals, the pocket universe was basically destroyed, and the new shapeshifting Matrix was taken back to the mainline DC Universe where she became the first post-Crisis Supergirl.

(16) ANOTHER MILLION BRICKS IN THE WALL. How many LEGO bricks does it take to build these various science fictional structures?  This infographic from earlier in the year has the theoretical answers.

How Many Lego Would It Take To Build Sci-Fi Megastructures
How Many Lego Would It Take To Build Sci-Fi Megastructures Created By: Ebates

[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker Sirignano.]

58 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/21/16 Pon Far. Squa Tront.

  1. Are all these calculations based on 2×2 legos? So the death star could be as little as 100 trillion using larger pieces?

  2. @4 – I’ve read about information customers glean from the type of reviews, quality of reviews, etc… both in the SF writer community and in the academic press. Over the last 2 years I’ve tried to leave reviews on Amazon when I finish anything that has less than 100 reviews.

    But I’ve found that Goodreads is poor in identifying things I like while Amazon reviews are better in signaling things I will and will not like.

  3. I’ve found that Amazon reviews for a book are collectively a more accurate indicator for me. Lots of people on GoodReads will put stars on books that haven’t even been released yet, and lots of those who leave ratings don’t leave reviews. However, I often will check GoodReads if I want to see some more reviews, as the lengthier ones are always placed up front, so they are easy to find.

    I also try to leave Amazon reviews for works I enjoyed, especially for works which don’t already have a lot of reviews yet.

  4. The Lego chart has me smiling and laughing on a day that’s been way short on both. Thanks, Mike.

  5. 10) Just curious what Filers thought of Fantastic Beasts…

    Bookworm1398, I thought that the “standard” lego was 2×3. But I could be wrong.

    <edit to add>Accidental Fifth!

  6. Fifth?!? edit: nope.

    The Lego charts seem to have scale issues; the Helicarrier is at least twice the size of the Space Shuttle in each dimension (and I’d guess a lot longer), so it should take >3x as many pieces….

  7. The details in #10 don’t necessarily support the headline; Strange revenues in week 2 were ~20% of week 1, where Beasts may have legs due to the upcoming holiday in the US. (I wonder how many parents deliberately put it off in order to have something to do this Friday? cf a recent visit to the Air & Space Museum’s Big Things (officially, Udvar Hazy) annex, where we found that Black Friday is their biggest day. I also wonder how much merchandise revenue Beasts will generate. It would be … interesting … if the Beasts sequels got dropped after all the worldbuilding that reviews have said eats up screen time.

  8. @Cassy B.: My other half and I enjoyed “Fantastic Beasts…” a lot! I told my boss today that I felt it was a better movie than the “Harry Potter” books were turned into. I theorize that’s ‘cuz it was actually written to be a movie (as near as I can tell, anyway, there’s no book it’s based on). It doesn’t have the choppiness the movies frequently do, nor the problem of trying to condense far too much story into two hours and doing it poorly (trying to squeeze in too much and/or leaving out the wrong things).

    Note: I loved the HP books (overall; some better than others, of course), while I liked the movies a lot (but didn’t love them).

    Anyway, I recommend “Fantastic Beasts…”! FWIW, I also enjoyed “Doctor Strange” (which I gather wasn’t a big hit??? long-time fan of the comic, BTW, though I haven’t read it in some years) and “Arrival” (which folks here loved).

    ETA: “Accidental Fifth” – is that like “Accidental Tourist”? 😉

  9. @Cassy B

    I haven’t seen Fantastic Beasts yet, but my 13yr old’s review is that it was wonderful and she loved the new characters and the cute beasts.

  10. I don’t put much faith in Amazon reviews. They’re too easily manipulated by being purchased or astro-turfed by accomplices.

    I tend to be more guided by Amazon showing my what else purchasers have bought – if it’s similar taste to mine then I am more likely to give it a go.

  11. What I usually do on Amazon is:
    1) look at the cumulative star rating
    2) click on the 3-star reviews, and search for and read those which are substantive (ignoring those that are only a line or 3). These will almost never be grudge-downvotes or family-member-upvotes.
    3) ditto for the 1-star reviews (will check 2-star if reviews are scarce), discerning which are “valid” and which are grudge-downvotes.
    4) ditto for the 5-star reviews (will check 4-star if reviews are scarce), discerning which are “valid” and which are family-member-upvotes.

    By this time, I’ve usually gotten a feel for whether there are a lot of genuine reviews which give me a good sense of how well-liked the book is, or mostly just positive fluff reviews from friends and family, or whether there’s a hate campaign of jerks who have it in for the writer/work which is artificially lowering the book’s rating.

    But that “also bought” is a decent idea — although, bear in mind that people who go through their Recommended Works list and click “I own this” on everything they’ve read, or maybe just what they’ve read and liked (as I do), also show up in this list, even if they didn’t obtain the books from Amazon.

  12. For me, both Goodreads and Amazon are wildly imperfect guides to a book. Goodreads reviews are full of aspirational ratings for books not yet read, and Amazon’s reviews are full of complaints about price and other quotidian details.

  13. I also enjoyed “Doctor Strange” (which I gather wasn’t a big hit??? long-time fan of the comic, BTW, though I haven’t read it in some years)

    It’s doing pretty well — higher takings than most of Marvel’s films introducing a new lead. There’s been a pattern where most of their sequels have done better than their intro films, so I’d guess they’re happy with that.

  14. Thanks for the boost, Mike! 🙂

    @JJ re: reviews: Yup, that’s my system too.

    It’s annoying to have so much noise, but it’s pretty easy to scroll past vague generalities and find the reviews with some real meat to them. The ones that don’t just say whether they liked the book, but rather what about it they liked and disliked. They’re really fairly easy to pick out (even if there are far too few of them.

  15. There was one person on Amazon that I looked into, and had hundreds of reviews, and they were all negative all snotty and he was the lowest rated reviewer in terms of “helpful”. That’s ambition.

  16. I honestly don’t pay much attention to either Amazon or Goodreads reviews and ratings. I do read them on occasion, but Amazon has a massive problem with fake reviews, nonsense reviews (the packing was bad, the price too high, there is no e-book) and general puffery, which drown out the in depth reviews, while Goodreads has ratings for books that aren’t even out yet and reviews full of flashing gifs (which can sometimes be surprisingly detailed, once you get past the flashing gifs). I also find that reviews aren’t all that useful to me, unless I know the reviewer has similar tastes.

    In general, I pay far more attention to reviews and recommendations from trusted sources, especially if I know that our tastes run along similar lines. Occasionally, if I knew a reviewer’s tastes are completely opposite to mine, a negative review can also be a recommendation or vice versa.

    I find that I’m far more likely to check out random Amazon and Goodreads reviews, if I’m undecided about a book such as Too Like the Lightning (where I eventually decided to wait for the paperback and reactions to the sequel).

    For things that are not books or movies, I pay no attention to consumer reviews. For restaurants, they’re flat out useless, and for electronics, etc… we have magazines that review and compare products, whose ratings are usually more reliable.

    In other news, the mailman (and ours is a man) just brought me Remnants of Trust by occasional filer Elizabeth Bonesteel. Now the first book in the series didn’t get stellar reviews, but I quite liked it, at least enough to buy the sequel.

  17. Just finished Ian Douglas’ Altered Starscape. Very much in the vein of much of his recent space opera and exploring various forms of technological Singularity, this one drops a million or so humans four billion years into the future, in the middle of the collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Written, it seems, with a copy of Larry Niven’s essay “Bigger Than Worlds” to hand, it’s a travelogue of megastructures that include a Dyson Swarm Matrioshka Brain, an Alderson Disk, and not one, but two, Topoloposises.

    A fun bathtime read that bundles a whole lot of cosmic speculation into what could easily have been a run of the milSF space opera…

  18. Of possible interest:
    the BBC discusses/summarizeswhy we fear the headless.
    NPR: Hamilton creator talks about Moana.

    A side note for the people who’ve noted gronked links in my previous posts: I see that when I copy the entire line in the current-URL window at the top of Firefox, it doesn’t show the “http://”, but when I paste it (even in Notepad, not just here) the “http://” appears. A little \too/ helpful — but now that I know it’s happening I can forestall it.

  19. My book research is pretty close to JJ’s.

    Step 1 is that the book description has to have a good hook. Sometimes that is all it will take!

    Step 2 is to check Goodreads. A large number of reviews with a 3.5+ star average is a positive push towards buying the book.

    Step 3 is a check along the lines of JJ’s.

    Regards,
    Dann

  20. Probably won’t see Strange because I’ve seen a sufficient number of Mighty Whitey movies. Plus I don’t care for Cumberbunch (unjustly: it is because I hate Moffatt’s take on Holmes).

    My impression of Fantastic Beasts is that despite it being set during the Harlem Renaissance one is still more likely to encounter a unicorn than a black person in Rowling’s New York.

  21. Ticky.

    Current reading: The Family Plot by Cherie Priest. A salvage business arrives at an old estate to, well, salvage whatever they can before the demolition team arrives to finish the job. Unfortunately they were not warned about the ghosts. Decent so far…I found myself a little spooked (heh) while reading it alone at night.

  22. IMO, the BEST reviews are the ones that list out the table of contents for anthologies/collections. I don’t know why publishers refuse to include that information in the book description.

  23. bookworm1398, I don’t know that those are the best reviews, but I too find it frustrating that book descriptions on Amazon don’t include table of contents info for story anthologies and collections.

  24. @James Davis Nicoll – I thought that I was the only one not on the Cumberbatch train! I don’t know if he’s seriously overrated as an actor or just typecast but so far all I’ve seen him play is arrogant a**hole. He completely phoned in his performance as Khan. I’ve only really enjoyed his performance as Smaug.

    @Bookworm1398 and @Stephen from Ottawa – I also don’t understand why the table of contents is not included at Amazon. I look at it in the bookstore before deciding whether or not to purchase a collection. Why can’t I see it online?

  25. My other favorite thing on Amazon is when I’m checking out a book, I go into the sample, and it only shows part or all of the scholarly introduction without ever getting into the actual text of the book.

  26. @5 – I agree with Camestros Felapton that a review should focus on the actual work. A good review should identify what the work is (description) followed by the reviewer’s opinion of the work itself. I’m on quite a few editorial review boards in my profession and executing a good review takes a lot of time and effort. Likewise, a good book, movie, or game review requires describing what the work is followed by the reviewer’s opinion. It can be hard to separate the description from the opinion when the reviewer either falls in love with or loathes what is being reviewed.

    The author decided to provide what inspired them to write the story. The reviewer according to Camestros Felapton spends more time on the discussion of what inspired the work rather than the work itself.

    To take the current politics out of this idea consider Starship Troopers. Heinlein was inspired to write the book because he thought the communists were holding American and allied POWs in violation of the armistice at the end of the Korean War. Heinlein was very angry with President Eisenhower over the POW issue. Starship Troopers was a result.

    Since the internal records of the North Korean and Chinese Communists have never been reveled, we don’t know if Heinlein’s beliefs which inspired Starship Troopers is right or not. Many could not believe the evil done by the Soviet Communists until their internal records were disclosed. Likewise for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Some still close their eyes to many of the horrible actions by all three of these fallen governments.

    If an author discusses the inspiration behind a work, then reviewers could take to task the validity of the author’s opinion of the situation behind the inspiration. That would be a poor review IMHO. I doubt if many modern readers of Starship Troopers would be aware that the inspiration was the Korean War POW issue. But if the author chooses to disclose the inspiration of the work critics will sometimes latch onto it. If the author does not wish this to happen, they can withhold what inspired them to write the work.

    I’m not going to comment on Camestros Felapton’s interpretation of the political issue at hand nor the interpretation of the reviewer he criticizes.

  27. My approach to reading reviews on Amazon (I don’t do Goodreads):

    1. Read the description
    2. Read the highest-rated “Most Helpful” review
    3. Read an informative middle-rated (two or three-star) review
    4. Read an informative one-star review.

    I judge the reviews on insight and experience with the author’s works, and I usually end up with a feel for the book and whether I’d like it or not.

    [godstalk, hopefully]

  28. On Goodreads, I generally only pay attention to reviews/ratings from friends, as I normally can gauge how our tastes are similar or dissimilar. But, I also have access to and read a lot of professional book reviews as part of my job, so I never feel overly dependent on reviews there or at amazon unless the professional reviews aren’t available for whatever reason.

    And I, too, would like to see lists of works in an anthology. It’s so, so frustrating when that isn’t available.

  29. Speaking of tables of content, I have been terribly spoiled by ISFDB. I wasted a fair amount of time looking for a TOC for the third volume of George Orwell’s collected letters, essays and journalism. The best I could find was the titles of each volume.

    I then took a closer look at the copy I had and realized I didn’t want to do a chapter by chapter review of something with over a hundred chapters. Not for free.

  30. @James Davis Nicoll (re Fantastic Beasts): how many black people did the Harlem Renaissance bring to midtown or lower, where the story happens? And what would we have seen them doing? (We do see entertainment, but only in a nightclub for goblins et al; we don’t see blue-collar workers (except at factory that I suspect would not have hired black people.) The president of MACUSA is not white, but we’ve already seen some diversity among wizards.
    Yes, I just saw the movie; I disagree with the critics who complained about too many things/people being introduced (maybe they just aren’t used to SF (or at least Potter) that isn’t spoonfed?), but there were logical holes galore. (For a non-spoiler: Central Park ponds are iced enough to support skaters in November?)

    @JJ? (from previous thread?) Your spoiler re _Arrival_ is pointed to in the trailer. Still a trigger, but not much of a spoiler, I think.

  31. Chip Hitchcock: @JJ? (from previous thread?) Your spoiler re _Arrival_ is pointed to in the trailer. Still a trigger, but not much of a spoiler, I think.

    You mean for Passengers? Yeah, if you’ve seen a lot of movies and/or read a lot of SFF, it seems pretty obvious, but I was trying to err on the side of not spoiling it for anyone who wasn’t one of the people like me who would say “Oh HELL NO”.

  32. @Chip Hitchcock: not sure of the historical period for Fantastic Beasts, but I grew up in Connecticut and remember stories about people driving horses and wagons to Block Island in the late 19th century, which would not have been possible any winter after WW II. Not sure when the transition happened.

    Re (4) I find the focus on Amazon and other on-line reviews bizarre. I have never looked at those kinds of reviews except occasionally on non-fiction books, trying to judge if the book is a) factual and b) readable.

    Re (14) Shakespeare used every special effect available to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he and his colleagues invented some to try to keep ahead of their competition…

    semi related: just hit 40K words on this year’s NaNoWriMo effort (Festival of Unmasking) and realized last week that in a city with a population including magical octopus people who are illusionists, all the most popular non-MardiGras/Carnivale floats will of course have Sea People doing special effects.

    I was surprised when the first octopus guy made a cameo appearance in last year’s book, but man, are they turning out to be fun! (Shakespeare would use them every way he could)

  33. @JJ: Correct, and a fair point.

    @emgrasso: I think Beasts is set in 1926 (IIRC, Kowalski has been back 2 years after being in the army until 1924). Block Island is probably colder than the middle of Manhattan, but I also wonder how long each winter driving across the ice was possible; November seems early for anywhere in southern New England.

    @Stoic Cynic: fascinating link on the Apollo landing — I had no idea they had something like a fault-tolerant computer.

  34. I don’t look at Goodreads at all. Amazon reviews, I read all the 1, 2, and 3 stars. This lets out the puffery/paid reviews/relatives. Also, you get to read some very excellent snark when someone completely fisks a bad book. Bad reviews also tend to have trigger warnings, plus the rants against a book often tell you whether it’s worth reading. If the 1-star reviews are nearly illiterate, don’t get it. If it rants about the politics, you’ll know whether it’s for you or not. You do have to filter out all the people who are horrified by any “bad language” or hint of sex.
    The Most Helpful review both bad and good are often actually helpful.

    Anthologies should list the table of contents.
    Scholarly works should give you some of the work in the sample, not just the table of contents and preface. I’ve looked at samples that didn’t even get through the whole ToC. No bueno, I agree with @Joe H.

    @James Davis Nicholl on movies: Heh. Yeah. That.

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