(1) NOT MY CUPPA. The Traveler at Galactic Journey found the January 1961 issue of Galaxy filled with well-done short stories that didn’t personally appeal to him. Of course, he was younger in those days.
[Jan. 12, 1961] Will *you* like the new Galaxy? It's a matter of taste… https://t.co/tvEqQ1C6n4 #sciencefiction pic.twitter.com/nBOpxWDp0O
— Galactic Journey News (@journeygalactic) January 13, 2016
(2) MISS FIT. Liwella at Astounding Yarns was enjoying the Cosmonauts exhibition at the Science Museum right up to the moment she discovered their souvenir t-shirts weren’t available in a women’s fit.
I loved the exhibition so much that I wanted to take home some souvenirs. Particularly one of the range of awesome tshirts that were for sale, given that I love wearing geeky tshirts. I wear them round the house with jeans. I wear them with skirts and funky tights when I’m out and about. Perhaps I should buy one featuring the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. Or one inspired by those glorious Russian propaganda posters, with their instantly recognisable design aesthetic. But it turns out that the Science Museum only offered one tshirt in a woman’s fit – a rather dull design based on a spacewalk motif. When I asked the assistant on duty if there were any woman’s fit tshirts available he seemed surprised I’d even asked.
(3) KEEP YOUR MONEY HANDY. “Hasbro, Disney Launching new Rey ‘Star Wars’ Toys” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“One of the biggest surprises that filmmakers wanted to keep under wraps was that the Force awakens in Rey and she carries a lightsaber,” said Paul Southern, head of licensing for Lucasfilm. “We always planned a second wave of product after the movie’s release that would include secrets revealed in the movie.”
Hasbro’s new Rey toys will be based more on her action scenes later in the film, including a climactic one in which she wields a lightsaber.
There have been products including toys, T-shirts and costumes featuring Rey available for months, but to date virtually all have featured her only as she appears in the movie’s earliest scenes.
Nonetheless, some fans were upset about three toys in which the Rey character was notably absent, including the Monopoly game and a set of action figures, sold exclusively at Target, that excluded her entirely.
The movie’s director, J.J. Abrams, has supported those fans.
“It seems preposterous and wrong that the main character of the movie is not well represented in what is clearly a huge piece of the ‘Star Wars’ world in terms of merchandising,” he said that the Television Critics Association’s press tour Saturday, according to Entertainment Weekly.
(4) BALMORAL-ICAN GRAFITTI. J. K. Rowling celebrated the ninth anniversary of finishing Deathly Hallows with a tweet, says Mashable.
Rowling placed the finishing touches on the seventh Harry Potter book at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, the city where she lives. After finally completing her manuscript, she indulged in a little friendly vandalism to commemorate the occasion, a photo of which she tweeted Monday.
Finished Hallows 9 yrs ago today. Celebrated by graffiti-ing a bust in my hotel room. Never do this. It's wrong. pic.twitter.com/HsqQKydY68
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2016
(5) AXANAR UPDATE. Now Alec Peters has written his own FAQ – “Captain’s Log – Jan. 7th, 2016”.
Q: How can you be non-profit and pay salaries?
A: Non-profit does not mean “volunteer”. Just like the CEO of The Red Cross gets $400K a year in salary, non-profits can pay salaries. Payroll is an expense.
Q: Why did Alec Peters get paid $ 38,000 as noted in the annual report?
A: Because Alec (as well as Diana) worked full time at Axanar, certainly 60 hours a week not including conventions on the weekends. That means Alec and Diana probably got paid minimum wage. And Diana deferred all her salary. Now go compare that to any Hollywood studio exec putting out medicore content, and tell us Alec and Diana were paid too much! That doesn’t even cover their expenses. We don’t expect full time employees to work for free.
Q: Is Ares Studios a for-profit studio?
A: Ares Studio is the term we use to describe the warehouse we have built our sound stage to make Axanar. There is no profit being made, and in fact Alec personally guaranteed the 3 year lease, so the last two years are a $ 250,000 liability he is responsible for. Axanar Productions has been paying for the building while we build sets and prepare the make the movie. Would we like to make movies after Axanar? Sure would, but that is all speculative. We don’t have any revenue from the studio and so such talk is nonsense.
(6) MAJOR TOM. Bowie lyrics on the marquee of the closed Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena.
(7) DANGEROUS. Forbes writer Ron Salkowitz analyzes “David Bowie’s Dangerous Visions: Sci-Fi Touchpoints For The Thin White Duke”.
Much of Bowie’s work throughout his career is a dialogue with New Wave SF, refracting it through his own sensibility and bringing the concepts to a mass audience via the medium of rock and roll. As I’ve been listening to the Bowie catalog for the past day, I’m reminded of a few specific connections and patterns of inspiration.
The Jerry Cornelius Novels (Michael Moorcock). Moorcock, the quintessential New Wave author, is better known for his sword and sorcery character Elric, but in 1968, he unleashed the sexually ambiguous secret agent Jerry Cornelius on an unsuspecting public in a novel called The Final Programme. An acid-drenched mashup of James Bond and Doctor Who, the dapper Cornelius hopscotches around space and time foiling plots against reality, assuming new identities and dazzling people with his avant gard aesthetics as he goes. Three further novels followed, each stranger than the next. Jerry Cornelius is less a specific inspiration for Bowie’s work than a template for his entire persona.
(8) GREETINGS GATES. The passing of David Bowie prompted Mental Floss to remind fans that “Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher) Choreographed ‘Labyrinth’”. A photo and video clips there, too.
Most geeks like me know Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But before her Trek role, McFadden was Director of Choreography and Puppet Movement on a bunch of Jim Henson films, including The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and even The Muppets Take Manhattan. As a choreographer, she’s typically credited as Cheryl McFadden — Cheryl is her first name, Gates is her middle name.
(9) DRAWN THAT WAY. The Slipper says farewell to David Bowie the comics reader and reproduces many images that characterized him or were influenced by his appearance.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 12, 1966 — Batman made its television debut. James H. Burns remembers.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born January 12, 1628 – Charles Perrault, early fairy tale author.
In 1695, aged 67, he wrote Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, a series of moral tales designed to prompt the reader to reflect on the dilemmas presented to the protagonist, which were well-known from folklore even then.
The volume contained the story now known as Mother Goose, alongside perrenially recognised titles such as Puss in Boots, Blue Beard and Cinderella, and less famous stories Ricky of the Tuft and Little Thumb
(12) MEESA QUITS. You won’t have Jar-Jar Binks to kick around anymore. Try not to let it get to you.
Issa bad news from Naboo… Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar Jar Binks will never return to the ‘Star Wars’ movies, even if he was asked, adding ‘I’ve done my damage’.
Binks, perhaps the most reviled character in all of ‘Star Wars’ history, was the Gungan soldier know initially for his cack-handed clumsiness, and then, appropriately, his latter career as a politician in George Lucas’s prequel movies.
But in a rare interview, Best said that he has no intention of ever reprising the character.
(13) HUGO CAMPAIGNER. Robin Wayne Bailey would hate for you to miss a chance to vote his story a Hugo. On Facebook, he’ll tell you how to get a free copy.
Last month, November, saw the release of the very excellent science fiction anthology, MISSION: TOMORROW, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. The anthology is chock-full of great stories, and my own “Tombaugh Station,” I’m honored to say, leads it all off.
I believe strongly that “Tombaugh Station” is one of the best science fiction stories I’ve ever written, strongly enough that I’d love to see it make the 2016 Hugo Awards ballot next August right here in my own hometown.
However, that November release, late in the year and only a month before the ballot was released (a week ago) is the very definition of what’s known in this business as an “end of the year handicap,” that is, few voters will have had the chance to see the story before voting begins. Now, I don’t particularly want to quietly fall victim to that handicap.
So I’ve just asked and received permission from Baen Books to give my story away. That’s right — I’m actively campaigning for a place on the 2016 Hugo ballot. I used to frown on such shenanigans, but that stigma obviously has melted away.
LOL! Sure, it’s understandable why a Baen Books author might think that…
(14) AFROFUTURISM & OTHER TOPICS. “The State of Black Science Fiction Convention” will be held June 11-12 in Atlanta, GA.
Early Registration for #SOBSFicCon is now open! https://t.co/wY1KmGisab #afrofuturism #blackscifi #scifi #Atlanta pic.twitter.com/hxND23sqt0
— Balogun Ojetade (@Baba_Balogun) January 11, 2016
(15) SHERRY’S LONGLIST. Joe Sherry has posted “My 2016 Hugo Awards Longlist Recommendations” at Adventures In Reading, which is both interesting in its own right, and as an index of where recused creators and works might belong.
With all of the shenanigans regarding groups putting together slates to directly influence what gets on the final ballot, what I’m going to do instead is post a growing long list of stuff I thought was awesome in 2015. This list will likely grow and change as I continue to discover stuff published in 2015 that I likewise think is awesome. I’m listing everything alphabetically either by title or author, so don’t view anything listed at the top of a category as being my ranked order. It’s not.
(16) INSIDE BASEBALL. Lesley Conner’s guest post at Far Beyond Reality tells how several stories got selected for Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1.
From Slush Pile to Magazine to Anthology: The Making of Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1
I came on board as the managing editor of Apex Magazine in October, 2014. I’d been involved with Apex for a while before that, but it wasn’t until then that I was let into the shadowed world of the slush pile and started sifting through to find stories to bring into the light. Because of this, and the fact that Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1 covers the first six years of Apex Magazine, I missed that magical moment of discovery for many of the stories that ended up in the anthology. But not all of them.
Today I’d like to give you a peek behind the publishing curtain and share the journey that some of the stories in Best of Apex Magazine took from the slush pile to the anthology.
(17) IT’S A MYSTERY. Vox Day says the count is now up to four of people following his author page who have been banned from Goodreads. What the rest of their Goodreads activity consisted of he doesn’t say.
(18) BB-8. Here are two videos starring science fiction cinema’s latest Small Cute Robot.
Unlike some, BB-8 is too shy to come out of its shell…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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Ordering and stocking T shirts in a variety of sizes and cuts is clearly a complex issue for small and mid-scale cons.
It shouldn’t however be all that taxing for a national museum which boasts 3 million visitors a year, 48% of which are female.
Jenora Feuer — MidAmeriCon II has polo shirts available on order, through Off World Designs. Sizes S,M,L,XL, 2XL,3XL,4XL,5XL. I suspect embroider-by-machine-on-demand. Ladies version only through 3XL.
I have found opera a very inspiring source of clothing that makes larger women look gorgeous.
I read and reviewed Tombaugh Station, by Robin Wayne Bailey, but unfortunately I didn’t care for it. I thought the dialogue was unnatural, but the worst was the scientific inaccuracies. For example, there was a lubricant called “synthetic mercury” which worked down to fifty degrees below absolute zero.
What’s the anthology? I’d read that in a heartbeat.
Cally on January 13, 2016 at 9:23 am said:
I haven’t received any e-mail. I don’t think any have been sent yet. I *presume* everyone will get an e-mail once they’ve consolidated the lists from Sasquan MAC2 and WorldCon 75 (no trivial task). I’ll be cranky if I don’t also get an e-mail. Keeping track of an envelope is not something I’m good at.
Still on t-shirts, when I saw TFA, they were selling T-shirts in the lobby. I don’t even really look anymore, having thrown in the towel for myself a long time ago, but I was really struck that they had a black T-shirt labeled “Youth” and a purple T-shirt labeled “Girls.” If I were selling t-shirts, I would have labeled them both “Youth” or “Kids.” Why can’t boys wear purple and girls wear black? It’s not like there’s any body type differences in prepubescent kids. They were gendered only by color. Haven’t they heard that colors are for everyone?
http://www.pigtailpals.com/coareforev.html
@ cmm, Johnathan Olfert:
That State Of Black Science Fiction convention looks really interesting. They’ve got a panel and a workshop on african martial arts, for example. It’s very inexpensive–I suspect in part because it is being held in an arts center rather than a hotel. I have a friend in Atlanta I might be able to stay with so that’s pretty tempting.
@Greg Hullender
I read it last night, and had a similar impression, though I thought the synfu sebmra ersyrpgvba seemed fantastical. Also, the fcnpr-vaqhprq znqarff, naq cnegvphyneyl gur jnl vg znavsrfgrq, fgehpx zr nf haoryvrinoyr. Na boivbhfyl zrgncubevpny fgngrzrag gung pbhyq bayl or gnxra yvgrenyyl ol fbzrbar jvgu n, jung, 15gu Praghel? haqrefgnaqvat bs gur nrgure va juvpu Rnegu sybngf. That kind of ruined the emotional impact of the resolution.
I did enjoy gur zrpunavpny fcvqre punfr fprar, though.
Totally missed gur negvsvpvny zrephel thing, though, and don’t have enough knowledge for an opinion about it.
That geek feminism site was an eye-opener for me. I had never heard of “women’s fit” tee-shirts before today. Though TBH, the reasons I don’t wear tee-shirts seem to apply even more to the “women’s fit” ones than to the old-style.
Just a mini Amazon UK ebook sale today, since most of the interesting stuff has already been flagged in the last couple of days of sales comments:
The Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge (This doesn’t quite meet my usual threshold of 20%, but since there’s been quite a bit of buzz about it on File770 lately and it’s Hugo-eligible I thought I’d best flag it anyway.)
When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind closed doors. In a quest find the truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family – before it’s too late…
Winnipeg Folk Festival only ever makes their volunteer shirts in the straight cut style (though they ask you your size right in the volunteer application so they’re ordering for theperson, not for the generic). Their solution,such as it is, is to encourage everyone that, while they must have the logo and the words volunteer (And the crew, when applicable) still visible, people are not only allowed but outright encouraged to alter the shirts in any way they can. Sometimes there are even contests. I’ve seen a few very discreet re-sewings of seams (Only a few either because discreet or because less common), and a lot of very wild re-dying and shredding, added beads and mirrors. (I tend to just cut the neck-piece out and sometimes trim the sleeves shorter, and that’s mostly for protection against the heat, because they’re sturdy fabric.)
Not exactly universally applicable, but makes sense for a folk music crowd with a heavy craft-fair undertone.
(The Fringe Theatre festival also allows it, but encourages it less and fewer people do it. Though the volunteer base has significant overlap, so they couldn’t ban it if they wanted to, which they don’t.)
Anecdata: I’m also an hourglass of slimmish build (despite one of my medications best efforts *grumble*) and the typical unisex fit looks awful on me. I can get away with slim fit mens tees in small sizes sometimes, but by and large I stick to women’s cut because I like to look good (and I’m already running at a disadvantage because short+hourglass+sitting down(wheelchair)=looking like a lump, so I need all the help I can get). I’ve found that the t-shirt a day websites (questionable copyright drive-bys aside) tend to have quite long t-shirts, which is pretty great because while I’m not tall or long-waisted my hourglassishness is much happier and less midriff bearing in a longer top than a short one.
I haven’t received a Hugo PIN yet.
(13) Hugo Campaigner
Most of Bailey’s post seems fine, but those last couple of sentences are pretty eyebrow raising…
@Tasha Turner
I’m sorry you had to cancel your trip.
@Lenora Rose
That sounds like a very cool solution to the problem of ordering unisex shirts. 🙂
I assume MAC II will email out the PINs when the online voting form is up, no point in doing it beforehand.
On the flip side of t-shirts, the official Hilary Clinton campaign store has a t-shirt that isn’t Clinton-specific and had a nicely-designed slogan that I liked (a looping circle saying “…women’s rights are human rights are women’s rights are…” [repeat]). I would have considered buying a shirt with that slogan.
Whoops! It’s only available in “women’s fitted” versions.
(Full disclosure: I wouldn’t have bought it, even in a unisex size, because it’s poly-cotton. I can only wear those in cool or cold weather. In warm weather, the synthetic blends make me sweaty, itchy, and occasionally break out in a rash. I’ve had to pass on buying some faunchible t-shirts because of this. 100% cotton for me.)
– – – – –
It’s been about a decade since I managed to make it to Bubonicon in Albuquerque (dammit! One of my favorite conventions), but they always did t-shirts with art by that year’s Artist GoH. I think I’ve got about two dozen of them. I should dig them all out and do a photospread one of these days. (And maybe see about getting them made into one of those “t-shirt quilts” I’ve seen on occasion.)
@Matt Y,
Thanks, that is good information. Based on your numbers it certainly does look like Rey is under-represented. I certainly hope Hasbro really does has extra Rey variants for release as they say they do, since given her importance she should be on level pegging with Finn and Poe(quite a ridiculous number!) at least.
@Greg Hullender – I am but a simple illustrator and reteller of fairy tales, and my physics is very poor, but isn’t absolute zero sort of…uh…absolute? Like, it means the electrons have stopped wiggling? So presumably that’s the bottom limit, unless we’re postulating an antiwiggle* or something.
*Also a small group of racist Narnians.
It is, I understand, possible to have temperatures in negative degrees Kelvin, but you can’t pass through absolute zero to get there, and such measurements are for very (colloquially) “hot” systems. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature .
@RedWombat
Oh, right. All the things I learned years ago are slowly draining out of my brain. Was I thinking this was a Celsius vs. Fahrenheit thing? Was I thinking?
Another David Bowie tribute, this time from St Alban’s Cathedral, where the organ scholar arranged and played Life on Mars in an impromptu gathering.
I don’t think he expected over 3 million views on YouTube.
From James’s link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature
To which I can only say that physics as a WHOLE DISCIPLINE is clearly just trolling us all now. Stop it physics, you are sounding like a badly written scientist character in a badly written SF novel. 🙂
…
(No, wait physics! I’m sorry! I didn’t be mean to you! Come back!)
RedWombat: unless we’re postulating an antiwiggle*
*Also a small group of racist Narnians.
Never mind the physics. That’s just laugh-out-loud worthy. Thank you, RedWombat. It’s been a lousy day and I really needed that . . .
Just a reminder, Kelvin doesn’t come in degrees. It just is.
Plus Rankine doesn’t get enough attention.
Tintinaus: Re: Rey action figures.
You have and many other people have been pointing at a problem you say exists but expect to believed even though you can’t be bothered to do a 10 minute Google search(about the length of time it took me to find the 8+ various types of Rey toy I have spoken about) to back it up.
I know that one issue for me in this whole discussion is the sordid long history of not creating collectibles/etc of female characters in a whole range of media/genres. So when one is a woman who has experienced ongoing problems, this issue looms larger than it may for you. Now, arguably, the scope of this problem is more on the microaggression level–but recent scholarship shows that a lot of microaggressions add up to a whole shitload of stress and hassle over time because they are so omnipresent, and everybody in the dominant culture is all “oh it’s such a little thing why are you so upset” about one’s response.
For example: The Political Economy of the Mysteriously Missing Black Widow.
And Hasbro fucking imposing a sex change on the velociraptors from Jurassic World (YES I am REALLY PISSED off about that–I adored Blue and the others, and woulda bought them, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Hasbro made them male, so fuck off Hasbro).
Gamora missing
The list goes on.
And even if it’s true that there were SOME but they’re selling out because not enough were made or ordered, that still shows the problem of not taking the existence of women fans/consumers seriously.
And after decades of this shit in all sorts of venues, not just collectibles, it’s bloody tiring, and yeah, we’re gonna complain. You can google sexism in designing and selling cars, and hell, even the issue of crash test dummies and safety issues, and a whole lot of other stuff. But that’s the background for many of us in commenting on this *single* case.
And trying to be all “I have disproved your point through a Google search” isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference (to me at any rate).
@RedWombat
Yup. It’s not the only scientific problem with the story, but it was definitely the most spectacular. Technically, the quote was “. . . layer after layer of synthetic mercury, capable of withstanding temperatures as low as minus five hundred degrees.” But absolute zero is minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius).
There’s another bit where it says that owing to Pluto’s orbit, there wouldn’t be a relief ship for more than 200 years. But Pluto doesn’t get THAT much further away (48 vs. 30 AU), and given the implied date of the story, it would have been over 40 for the first ship anyway.
The author just didn’t do his homework, and in a piece of hard SF, that’s hard to forgive.
Wow. Between Rey, the Marvel characters, and the JW raptors, Hasbro‘s really earning that name.
Robinareid
Yep. My daughter took a male friend with her when she bought her last car, simply because then the salespeople don’t try the sort of bullshit they try on a woman buying a car. She’s been there, done that, and sees no reason to waste her time listening to the bullshit.
Whoa… something where confusing the difference between signed and unsigned ints will give you the *right* answer.
@Jack Lint: I recently read Randall Munroe’s What If? book, and in it he devotes some attention, but no love, towards the Rankine scale.
(I have a certain sneaking fondness for it, myself. It awakens nostalgic memories of John Rankine, writer of bottom-of-the-barrel SF and purveyor of Space: 1999 novelizations to the discerning gentility.)
Rev Bob I saw what you did there.
T-shirts – it’s an issue unfortunately one which needs to be taken up with manufacturers. I’ve backed a number of gender bending clothing campaigns over the last couple of years on Kickstarter as well as geeky/cool clothing for plus sizes and the projects hit problems with manufacturers time and time again. Extra charges once you hit XL+ for women, cheaper/lighter weight material for girls/women than the ones used for boys/men (samples sent), not being willing to use different patterns for different sizes. Projects end up delayed or severely limiting what they can offer because initial bids were incorrect as manufacturers didn’t really expect them to mean quality, size, as designed. New manufacturers are starting up just to handle these small jobs – clothing now being ordered by target but no one thought kids/parents would want…
I leave my husband at home so I can Call. The. Man. I forget who I called when I was young and single buying my 1st new car. My mom or boyfriend since clearly I couldn’t know what I was doing…
@Jack Linton
Some of us are old enough that when we first learned about Kelvins, it was “degrees Kelvin”, and it’s hard to remember that the usage has changed.
Of course, some of us are also old enough to still think of Pluto as a planet…
Salesman on the last one greeted my husband. He said “She’s buying the truck.” Salesman recovered, barely, but made small talk with my husband the whole time, clearly didn’t know what to say to me.
It worked out well, though. Saleman had bad eyesight and his monitor was set huge and he had it at an angle. Now, I have freakishly good eyesight, so by leaning back and putting my feet up, I could read the instant messages he was sending the manager. I did not pay too much for that truck.
Jack Lint said:
On a similar topic, everyone still needs to work on removing references to the Richter scale from their sf. Earthquakes these days have magnitude directly related to the estimated energy released. (The Richter scale is specifically based on measurements made on a paper seismogram with a ruler; the tools of geology have moved on.)
@Tasha Turner
Ditto what @Meredith said. Sorry you had to cancel your trip to Arisia this year. At least you’re able to rollover your membership(s) until next year.
——-
So, anyone else for an Arisia meet up? I will keep an eye out for my nym & Arisia in the comments & I’m also on the Twitters.
Re: Temperature I’m switching over to Wedgwood scale. At least when company comes over.
Last night I was watching iZombie and the main character visited the set of a television show called Zombie High. Then an add came on for Pride + Prejudice + Zombies*. Somewhere a part of my brain was screaming, “They’re not zombies! They’re undead!” But no one was around so I just bit my tongue a little bit.
* That’s the notation they use for the commercial
I stopped going with the wife to the dealership because the service manager would only respond to me – even when she was the one talking to him.
It was two months later that he finally crossed a line* and she had him fired.
*Yelled at her to stop bringing a perfectly good (it wasn’t) car in to be looked at (they never did).
On earthquake reporting: since aftershock reporting post-Christchurch increased the volume of events covered in NZ, it has as evolved to giving magnitude, depth, and shaking/intensity in most cases (certainly in the official GeoNet App).
@JRLawrence: how many T-shirts does the museum sell in a year? (I’ll bet the fraction of attendees buying shirts is much smaller than at a genre convention.) How many of those are specific to this exhibit (which gets how many attendees)? Maybe they could have done fewer different images and more of them in women’s cut — but (as comments here show) it would have been a crapshoot.
@Tasha: Extra charges once you hit XL+ for women. Men’s sizes cost extra (when I was paying attention) at least down to XXL, and maybe XL;
John Lorentz: Some of us who are even older still think of Pluto as a dog…
(We probably don’t have anyone old enough to still think of Pluto as a god…)
Plus Rankine doesn’t get enough attention.
Neither does Reaumur.
Hi from MidAmeriCon II! Tammy Coxen, WSFS Division Head here. The paper Progress Reports (PR 2) were mailed in Dec and included a mail-in Hugo Nomination Ballot (complete with Hugo PIN) for those members who requested paper publications. For those who chose electronic publications, we made the decision to delay sending emails concerning their Progress Report 2 and PINs until the Hugo Nominations were live online. We know from previous years’ data that the majority of people use the online/electronic ballot process rather than mailing a paper ballot. We anticipate that we will begin sending Hugo PINs sometime next week (note that the process will take place over up to 5 days to avoid being tagged as spam), and a link to Progress Report 2 will be be included in that email. But if you’d like to read it right away, it’s available at
http://midamericon2.org/publications/progress-reports/
PR 2 also contains all the information regarding convention housing. Room bookings will open by January 25, with the exact date to be announced several days in advance.
If you have any questions about the Hugos, please feel free to email our team at [email protected].
@Chip Hitchcock
I believe for men the extra charges don’t kick in until XXL depends on manufacturer. The difference IMHO is higher % of women wear XL than men wear XXL. Why should it be different for men than women?
Anecdotal but the last few times I’ve been handing out t-shirts there was less call for S & XL was most popular option. Kickstarters have had requests to add XL-5XL sizes as well as women’s cut if offering shirts.
@Mike Glyer
I remember Pluto the dog, Pluto the planet, and was big into mythology so read about Pluto the god as a kid. He doesn’t show up in much modern work/retelling. I’m only 48 so I might be young to remember this stuff when it first came out/was named 😉
ETA: Pluto the philosopher?
I take my Dad along as the designated “car buying/fixing dude”, because the salespeople treat me better and don’t try to cheat me (like the guy who told me I had to buy some kind of extremely expensive oil if I wanted to my car to last, when I took my very first car to be serviced at the age of 19), when he’s around. They also take complaints about problems with the car a lot more seriously, when I’m with a man. Though the look on the mechanic’s face was still priceless when he had my car jacked up and was explaining a problem to my Dad and I just walked underneath the jacked up car to look at whatever he was explaining, because apparently women are not supposed to walk under jacked up cars.
Coincidentally, the most dismissive people working at my current car dealership/servicing garage are the female receptionists.
@RedWombat:
Now, I have freakishly good eyesight, so by leaning back and putting my feet up, I could read the instant messages he was sending the manager. I did not pay too much for that truck.
You are sneakily efficient, and I like that in a person.
Tammy Coxen: Thank you. I figured that was probably the case, but since the paper Progress Reports had been sent, there was a possibility that you’d also sent the email. It’s good to know that you haven’t. I’m looking forward to the con!
Tasha Turner: I’m only 48 so I might be young to remember this stuff when it first came out/was named
Did you miss it in 2006 when Pluto, which had been designated the 9th planet in our solar system since it was discovered in 1930, was demoted to “dwarf planet”, reducing the number of planets in our solar system to 8?
There was quite a ruckus about it. Some of us still have a bit of resentment over Pluto’s loss of planetary status. 😉
What. WHAT. Blue was the best female character in that movie.
*facepuppy*
Back before my partner and I decided that going to the [Brand] dealership wasn’t working out for us (we now go to a local independent mechanic for our car maintenance needs), both times we went for a minor issue they came back with a massive list of things they told us absolutely needed to be done. Now, we weren’t up for the price tag so we said no to most of it the first time, thank you, we just wanted them to fix the windscreen wipers. The second time they came back with another massive list… Only the list was different.
Now, I happen to have a good memory (this was also pre-effective pain medication, so it really was good at the time), so after listening for awhile while they ignored me (female) to talk to my partner (male) I pointed out exactly what had been on the last list, that we hadn’t had fixed, and that it didn’t match anything they’d just said. Cue open-mouthed expressions of shock and a long pause followed by hurried scrambling through the paperwork and yep, I was right, and no, there wasn’t a good reason for the discrepancy. After that we didn’t trust them to be honest about what needed to be done so that’s why we switched – but I do wonder whether those particular staff members were less likely to discount female customers in future.