In response to a suggestion I am adding subtitles to go with the item numbers. Some feel that will make cross-references to Scroll topics less confusing when they are talking about, say, item 8 from two days earlier.
(1) Royal Treatment. File 770 doesn’t get a lot of press releases, just the quality. Today I received the announcement of a second round of tickets for sale to those wanting to attend the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday in May 2016.
(2) Radio SFWA. Henry Lien’s instructional video, demonstrating the choreography for his anthem “Radio SFWA”, is rockin’ and ready for you to witness in this public Facebook post.
(3) Read The Comments. The New York Times published a feature about some of its most valued regular commenters. One of them is 95-year-old sf writer Larry Eisenberg.
Larry Eisenberg. Photo by Chad Batka.
Mr. Eisenberg has made a name for himself by commenting in poetry.
“Today the kind of poetry you see is primarily a prose form of poetry, you rarely see anything of a rhyming nature that’s published,” Mr. Eisenberg said, citing hip-hop music as an exception. “My own feeling is that people like rhymes. There’s something attractive about them.”
He said his poems were inspired by the fight against racism and inequality. “That’s something that really disturbs me,” he said. “The killings that are taking place, that are primarily racially directed.”
“I do get people who say they love what I wrote,” Mr. Eisenberg, who served as a radar operator in World War II, added. “They found it very enjoyable, or they got a laugh out of it. That’s of course very pleasant for me to read.”
Intelligence failure my eye!
A Cheney-Bush-Condi baked Pie!
Media abetted,
The lies weren’t vetted,
And boy, did this mess go awry!
Larry Eisenberg was an active sf writer in the 1960s-1970s who had a story picked by Harlan Ellison for Dangerous Visions (“What Happened to Auguste Clarot?”), 20 published stories in his “Emmett Duckworth” series, and had his story “The Time of His Life” (1968) included in The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction edited by Silverberg and Greenberg.
(4) Loscon 42 is this weekend in LA. The full program is now online.
(5) Once More With Joshi. S.T. Joshi restates his arguments at greater length in “November 24, 2015 – Once More with Feeling”.
It appears that my recent blogs have been somewhat misunderstood: I suppose in this humourless age, where everyone feels at liberty to be offended at anything and everything, satire and reductio ad absurdum are dangerous tools to employ. (How I wish more of us could adopt Lovecraft’s sensible attitude: “I am as offence-proof as the average cynic.”)
Here are three of his 11 points – I suspect many sympathize with #7, if none of the rest:
7) It would help if the World Fantasy Convention committee had presented some—or any—explanation as to why the award was changed. The secrecy with which this matter was handled has done a disservice to the field.
8) No fair-minded reader could say that my discussion of Ellen Datlow in any way constituted “vitriol.” I was raising a legitimate query as to why she has turned against Lovecraft after profiting from anthologies that could only have been assembled because of Lovecraft’s ascending reputation. Similarly, my comment directed at Jeff VanderMeer was in no way insulting to him. It is simply the plain truth that his offhand comment does not begin to address the multifarious complexities of this issue.
9) I do not question the sincerity of those individuals (whether they be persons of colour who have been the victims of race prejudice—as I have been on a few occasions—or others who are concerned about the continuing prevalence of prejudice in our society today, as I certainly am) who genuinely believe that changing the WFA bust might have some positive results in terms of inclusiveness in our genre. I happen to think they are mistaken on that particular issue, but that is a disagreement that I trust we can have without rancour or accusations of bad faith. (I am, however, not convinced that Mr. Older is one of these people.)
(6) Carrie Fisher. CinemaBlend knows “The Blunt Reason Carrie Fisher Returned To Star Wars”.
Leia, who we now know has traded out the Princess tag for General, is one of those roles that is difficult for an actor to escape—much like Luke Skywalker, it casts a long shadow—and this played a part in Fishers decision. But her choice also had a lot to do with a bigger issue in Hollywood, the lack of quality roles for aging actresses. When Time caught up with the 59-year-old actress and asked if her decision making process was difficult, she said:
No, I’m a female and in Hollywood it’s difficult to get work after 30—maybe it’s getting to be 40 now. I long ago accepted that I am Princess Leia. I have that as a large part of the association with my identity. There wasn’t a lot of hesitation.
(7) Attack of the Clones. Michael J. Martinez continues his Star Wars rewatch reviews in “Star Wars wayback machine: Attack of the Clones”.
…No, my issue is Padme, as in…what the hell are you thinking?
Anakin is utterly unstable. It’s apparently widely known that Jedi aren’t supposed to get romantic or emotional. So there’s your first tip-off. The stalkerish leering and horrid attempts at flirtation aren’t helping, either. But then, right in front of Padme, he confesses to slaughtering an entire tribe of sentient beings — women and children, too! Sure, the Sand People killed Anakin’s mom, but do you really just sit there and say, “Hey, Anakin, you’re human. We make mistakes. It’s OK. Hugs?”
Hell, no, Padme. You call the Jedi Council on Coruscant and let them know they got themselves a massive problem….
(8) We Missed A Less Menacing Phantom. Meanwhile, we learn “Ron Howard could have saved us from The Phantom Menace, but chose not to” at A.V. Club.
Way back in the mid-’90s, George Lucas apparently exerted some mental energy trying to decide whether he’d rather create a trilogy of bloodless films in order to experiment with his new computer-imaging software, or hire some real filmmakers and make some decent Star Wars movies. He ultimately went with the former option, but—at least according to Ron Howard—it could have easily gone the other way.
“[Lucas] didn’t necessarily want to direct them,” Howard explains in a recent interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “He told me he had talked to Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, and me. I was the third one he spoke to. They all said the same thing: ‘George, you should do it!’ I don’t think anybody wanted to follow up that act at the time. It was an honor, but it would’ve been too daunting.”
If this story is true, that is some criminally negligent counseling from some of Lucas’ supposed friends.
(9) Theme v. Message. Sarah A. Hoyt works on a practical distinction between theme and blunt message in storytelling, in “Threading The Needle” at According To Hoyt.
Theme, plot and meaning in your work.
Yes, I know, I know. You’re out there going “but aren’t we all about the story and not the message.”
Yeah, of course we are. If by message you mean the clumsy, stupid, predictable message you find in message fiction….
So:
1- Figure out the theme and thread it through WHERE APPROPRIATE.
2- Figure out the sense of your novel and thread it through WHERE APPROPRIATE and not in people’s faces.
3 – If your sense of the novel fits in a bumpersticker, you iz doing it wrong.
4- most of 1 and 2 come down to building believable characters that fit the story you want to tell, and then not violating their individuality.
5- if you end in a line saying “the moral of this story is” it’s likely you’re over the top and turning off readers. Also it’s possible Sarah A. Hoyt will come to your house and hold your cats/dogs/dragons hostage till you stop being a wise*ss.
(10) Today In History.
- November 25, 1915 — Albert Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity
(11) Supergirl, Spoiler Warning. Polygon reports “Superman to finally be introduced on Supergirl” —
Audiences have gotten quick glimpses of the superhero, but there’s never been an official first look at the man of steel.
Now, however, Superman is set to make his official first appearance on the show, according to a new report from TV Line. Casting has already begun for the character, although some may be surprised to find out that CBS isn’t looking for a handsome, leading man to fill the role, but a 13-year-old boy.
(12) Game of Thrones Spoiler Warning. The Street asks, “Did HBO Just Tease That Jon Snow Is Alive in This Awesome ‘Game of Thrones’ Promotion?”
APRIL. #GoTSeason6 #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/DSK2xZi9i9
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) November 23, 2015
GoT left off in the Season 5 finale that Snow had been killed by his brothers of the Night’s Watch who rebelled against him as the commander of the group. Avid fans across the world cried and took to social media in outrage.
But since the season finale last June, fans have tossed around lots of theories on whether Jon Snow is actually dead. A prominent theory — at least in the TV series – is that Snow’s eyes change color just before the camera cuts off in the episode’s last scene. Could it mean that while Jon Snow may be dead, he will emerge as a new person, ahem, Jon Targaryen? Or was the eye color change just a trick of the camera?
As well, Game of Thrones blogs and various media articles have noted that Kit Harington, the actor who plays Snow, was seen on the show’s set while filming earlier this year for Season 6.
Still HBO hasn’t confirmed that the character will be returning. And following the season finale in June, HBO insists that Jon Snow is indeed — dead.
(13) Rex Reason Passes Away. Actor Rex Reason died November 19.
Rex Reason, the tall, handsome actor with a lush voice who portrayed the heroic scientist Dr. Cal Meacham in the 1955 science-fiction cult classic This Island Earth, has died. He was 86.
Reason died November 19th of bladder cancer at his home in Walnut, California, his wife of 47 years, Shirley, told The Hollywood Reporter….
In This Island Earth, distributed by Universal-International and directed by Joseph M. Newman, Reason’s Dr. Meacham is one of the scientists recruited by a denizen of the planet Metaluna to help in a war against another alien race. Russell Johnson, the future Professor on Gilligan’s Island, also played a scientist in the Technicolor movie, which at the time was hailed for its effects….
After a few years at MGM and Columbia, Reason landed at Universal and worked alongside Rita Hayworth in William Dieterle’s Salome (1953). He later starred as another scientist in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), appeared with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in Band of Angels (1957) and toplined Badlands of Montana (1957) and Thundering Jets (1958).
(14) Blue Origin. Yesterday’s Scroll ran a quote about the Blue Origin rocket test, but omitted the link to the referenced Washington Post story.
(15) Hines Review. Jim C. Hines reviews “Jupiter Ascending”.
I’d seen a bit of buzz about Jupiter Ascending, both positive and negative. I didn’t get around to watching it until this week.
The science is absurd, the plot is completely over the top, and about 3/4 of the way through, I figured out why it was working for me.
Spoilers Beyond This Point
(16) Cubesats. “United Launch Alliance Reveals Transformational CubeSat Launch Program” reports Space Daily.
As the most experienced launch company in the nation, United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced it is taking CubeSat rideshares to the next level by launching a new, innovative program offering universities the chance to compete for free CubeSat rides on future launches.
“ULA will offer universities the chance to compete for at least six CubeSat launch slots on two Atlas V missions, with a goal to eventually add university CubeSat slots to nearly every Atlas and Vulcan launch,” said Tory Bruno, ULA president and CEO.
“There is a growing need for universities to have access and availability to launch their CubeSats and this program will transform the way these universities get to space by making space more affordable and accessible.”
(17) Nazi Subway Ads. The New York Post article “Amazon Pulls Nazi-Inspired Ads from Subways” has more photos of the subway cars, inside and out.
Andrew Porter’s somewhat Joshi-esque comment is: “The concept of a USA under German and Japanese occupation is apparently beyond the comprehension of most subway riders, and politicians. Note that no actual swastikas appeared anywhere! Next: toy stores will be forced to remove World War II German model airplanes….”
(18) Testing for Feminism: The dramatic title of Steven Harper Piziks’ post “The Impending Death of Feminism” at Book View Café obscures his finely-grained account of a classroom discussion. The comments are also good.
Every year my seniors read Moliere’s Tartuffe. In that play is a scene in which Orgon orders his daughter to break off her engagement with the man she loves and marry the evil Tartuffe. She begs him not to force this and asks his permission to marry the man she wants.
“Haw haw haw!” I chuckle at this point. “Tartuffe was written in the 1600s. Nothing like this happens today!”
Or . . . ?
I bring up a web site on my SmartBoard that asks questions and lets the students text their responses so we can see how the class as a whole answered. The answers are always a little shocking
(19) Mockingjay 2. Tom Knighton reviews Mockingjay Part 2:
…Now, let’s talk about performances. Jennifer Lawrence is phenomenal, like she always is. Personally, I like her better as Katniss than Mystique, but mostly because I prefer rooting for her characters and I just can’t with Mystique.
This is the last film we’ll ever see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in, and that is truly a tragedy. So much talent, but he had a demon he couldn’t tame and it cost him his life. To get political for a moment, this is something we should be discussing how to prevent. Frankly, the threat of prison didn’t stop him, so maybe we should figure something else out for a bleeding change. </politics>
Liam Hemsworth is great as well. He’s a young actor I can’t wait to see do more. My hope is that someday we’ll get a great action movie with Liam and his big brother Chris. Gail and Thor on the big screen…yeah, I can see it….
(20) Bottled In Bond. James H. Burns recommends, “As folks are celebrating Thanksgiving, they could have a drink, like that other JB….!“ He means, of course, James Bond. For ideas, consult Burn’s article “007’s Potent Potables”.
The virtual explosion of surprise over James Bond drinking a beer in Skyfall was a bit absurd, and played almost like some practical joke from one of the spy’s arch enemies seeking to display just how gullible the media can be. (“Is that a SPECTRE I see over your shoulder?”) Call it a vast victory for product placement: The kind that not only gets the brand a major slot in a movie, but gets folks–including “The NBC Nightly News”–buzzing to the tune of MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of free publicity, for both the film, and the endorsement. But Ian Fleming’s secret agent 007 has been having the occasional brew almost since his very beginnings in the author’s bestselling series of espionage novels, which commenced in the early 1950s!
(21) Trivia. J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, was one of the seven people that Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote to in the final hours of his life during his ill-fated return journey from the South Pole. Scott asked Barrie to take care of his wife and son. Barrie was so touched by the request that he carried the letter with him the rest of his life.
(22) Gratitude. “The SF/F We’re Thankful for in 2015” at B&N Sci-FI & Fantasy Blog.
Andrew: Space opera seems to be coming back in a big way. Books such as Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey, Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie, The End of All Things by John Scalzi, and The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers have been earning acclaim from all corners of the internet. I’ve always been a big fan of stories about expansive galactic empires, ragtag starship crews, and adventure far out into the cosmos, and the genre’s recent resurgence is both exciting and terrifying: there’s not nearly enough time to read all of them!
(23) Scalzi’s Thanksgiving Prayer. John Scalzi has recorded an audio of his science fictional thanksgiving prayer – text first published on AMC in 2010.
… Additionally, let us extend our gratitude that this was not the year that you allowed the alien armadas to attack, to rapaciously steal our natural resources, and to feed on us, obliging us to make a last-ditch effort to infect their computers with a virus, rely on microbes to give them a nasty cold, or moisten them vigorously in the hope that they are water-soluble. I think I speak for all of us when I say that moistening aliens was not on the agenda for any of us at this table. Thank you, Lord, for sparing us that duty….
[Thanks to James H. Burns, Jim Meadows, rcade, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Credit for this holiday travel-themed title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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[ticky]
Message fiction is message fiction because it has a message that Sarah Hoyt thinks is the kind that appears in message fiction.
Put your message in appropriately and you’ll know you did it the appropriate way because it will be good and not bad.
In short, my advice to you, writers seeking to learn the craft, is to write good books that I like and not bad ones.
At a glance that image looks like it’s from the First World War. Exhorting people to spend early during a wartime economy is its own thing (also “early” could just as well refer to the weeks immediately after Thanksgiving rather than at the last minute).
Largely it was a mercantilism-vs.-culture thing. Any display of Christmas merchandise or suggestion of Christmas buying before Thanksgiving was frowned upon, with harsh social consequences. Shifting Thanksgiving a little earlier gave merchants a little more time and room.
US holidays that aren’t strongly associated with particular songs outnumber ones that are.
NOT:
Thanksgiving
Veterans Day
Halloween
Columbus Day
Labor Day
Memorial Day
President’s Day
ARE:
Christmas
Independence Day
Easter
I’m curious: Do British folks have songs for Whitsunday and the August Bank Holiday? Do Germans have songs for Walpurgisnacht and Zweiundneunzigthesentag?
However, the impulse to sing a traditional American Thanksgiving song to a colleague was generous and kind, and I can only urge you to make one up on the spot. 🙂
Testing for Feminism: My husband teaches college English and says a lot of his freshman students feel the same way. He thinks it is a regional thing (USA Bible Belt (South).)
Theme vs Message: As far as I can tell, whether Puppies think a theme is “appropriate” or “message fiction” depends heavily on whether the theme is conservative or liberal, rather than anything about how deftly it is handled. If the theme is “guns are good and liberals are bad” you can be as clumsy as you like: have your hero whine about paying his taxes while people are starving in breadlines, have your other hero say she killed 200 people but it’s okay because all of them are evil, whatever, and it’s great. If the theme is how to seek a fair way out of the effects of colonialism, or that vengeance always grieves the innocent, it’s a clumsy gimmick.
I’d say Aristotle! except I think Dignity Culture! might be a better catch phrase for that sort of un-self-awareness.
“Over the river and through the woods” is explicitly a Thanksgiving song. Its author, Lydia Maria Child, is a fascinating character who wrote one of the earliest anti-slavery books and one that seriously analyzed the phenomenon. She also agitated for Native American rights.
Given the horror of Thanksgiving in general, the song is one bright spot.
@Cat: Yeah, Courtship culture is very big in the Bible Belt and its influence probably extends well beyond Courtship-practicing families themselves. Plus, while much is made of the relative progressiveness of the Millennial generation, I’m pretty sure the crosstabs show this to be purely a function of Millennials being less white than previous generations. White millennials are not themselves substantially more liberal than their elders.
The one true Thanksgiving song is Alice’s Restaurant.
I’d argue there’s a fair number of songs that get a lot more airtime on Halloween–Monster Mash, Bloodletting, Bela Lugosi’s Dead, and the soundtrack to Nightmare Before Christmas, but our only really singy holiday is Christmas. It’s not like people go door to door singing for Memorial Day.
@Redwombat:
Christmas is so singy its gravitational field has absorbed almost all English-language winter songs, leaving almost nothing seasonal for the rest of the long months of winter.
I wouldn’t mind a rousing chorus of “Winter Wonderland” or “Sleigh Ride” or “Jingle Bells” in the dark days of early February once in a while.
(5) Once More With Joshi:
Well, really, more “Once More Responding to the Discussion of the Item about Joshi,” I suppose. I do seem to remember that David Hartwell announced at WFC last year that the board was considering the possibility of changing the statue; didn’t one of the winners thank him and the WFC for taking her concern seriously? That doesn’t sound like secrecy to me. Otherwise, and speaking personally, while I’d be curious (I’m nosey about things like that) to hear the WFC’s deliberations, I don’t think they owe anyone anything besides “We decided it’s time for a change.” (That’s especially true if there was any disagreement–I can’t blame them for wanting to avoid public divisiveness.) Did they take a vote? Consult–well, who would they need to consult? Not the general public, or even the WFC attendees, like WorldCon has to consult WSFS members. Lovecraft experts? Why? His racism is kind of in the public domain, not deeply hidden. I suppose they could have added “We aren’t casting aspersions on Lovecraft’s fiction or contributions to the field; we just don’t want his face on the award any more” to the announcement . . . but I thought that was kind of obvious, myself.
(18) Testing for Feminism: One of the reasons that I find that particular exercise worthwhile is that it tends to encourage students to examine their own unacknowledged attitudes–they are often more surprised than the instructor. Once upon a time, years ago, it came out in a college freshmen class I was teaching that many of the young men thought it was “wrong” for women to work because “they were taking jobs away from men who needed them.” They said this to a working woman (me), in a classroom half-filled with young woman who were working towards degrees and careers . . . and didn’t realize what response they would get. (I seem to remember one response was: “And who are you planning to marry? No one in this room!”) Most of the young men simply hadn’t thought the implications through–wherever they’d gotten the idea, it was simply something they accepted without thinking about it. It seemed to me that some of them hadn’t even realized that their opinion might be considered sexist. Once they started examining their own assumptions and considering other people’s points of view, many of them were surprised at themselves. They didn’t necessarily change their minds in any fundamental way, but at least they started to understand that the issues weren’t that simple . . .
(22) Space opera hasn’t gone anywhere, so how can it be “back” ?
Jim Henley on November 26, 2015 at 6:39 am said:
The last time I checked, Easter wasn’t a US holiday. And, having lived a relatively sheltered Jewish life, I genuinely don’t think I know any Easter songs. And Christmas is a worldwide religious holiday, not really a US holiday, in spite of a botched Supreme Court decision.
I also can’t think of any songs that Indepence Day is particularly associated with, other than generic patriotic tunes that also pop up on Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, and other patriotic occasions. I say this as someone who has played too many patriotic outdoor band concerts, and marched in too many parades.
Unless you count the ludicrous association of Independence Day with Tchaikovsky’s overture celebrating the Russian defeat of the French.
US friends, have a great Thanksgiving. Here’s a photo I took a while back of all you need, in one place:
https://flic.kr/p/8Y3heH
I certainly don’t know any secular Easter songs, but there are plenty of hymns. Which I can see why you wouldn’t know, but of all the annual festivals it’s the one that remains religious. In these parts anyhow. While people probably don’t go to church, the Bunny has not yet eclipsed the Resurrection.
@Jim Henley You’ll find a lot of British folk songs over the last century dealing with works holidays and the like, events that were formalised as Bank Holidays. So I guess they’d count…
re Courtship culture and (18)
I think younger millennial are a bit more complex than simply more non-white people means less of the toxicity of the old mores of courtship. What they are, as someone who is millennial adjacent, are people whose grasp on that tradition is much more fragile, and for lack of a better word, far more tactical, than the prior generations. That toxic masculinity is there – just look at the Gamergaters, or the common biography of so many spree shooters. But…
It’s fragile in that even though they the assumptions of a great deal of more toxic masculinity, they’ve also received a value set on gender that says that the should at least pay lip service to gender equality. In my experience, it makes young men more open to a sort of “conversion event” that leads them to be genuinely respectful of women and not just the lip service. They get the toxicity while at the same time getting the road out.
As for tactical, well, it’s perfectly common for people to solemnly assure their parents they are living apart until marriage… and even have the separate addresses to prove it! They have a one bedroom…. an a studio. They live in the one bedroom; the studio is an expensive storage unit for their elders piece of mind. These are people raised to take account of everyone’s feelings: they deal with their own, and then lie their asses off to give their elders the sense that all is as it should, even when it isn’t.
re: (22) SPACE OPERA
Nails it, because the new stuff is just so fresh. Instead of thinly veiled Tolkien in space with grizzled manly mercenary in place of Numenorean king, Expanse and Ancillary use the setting as more than just a fantasy kingdom write large. There’s a “theme” (har, har) of ideas to go with the laser guns. Space Opera as books one cannot tell by their covers…
@Simon:
(If this works)
For example, a nice song about a works outing to Margate
youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGYOjkXILDw&w=420&h=315
ETA: No, embedded YouTube didn’t work. What’s the trick?
@Morris Keesan: There are many fewer Easter songs than Christmas ones, but there’s “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” and “Easter Parade” from a Broadway show. Most of the Easter hymns lack the “breakout hit” quality of the popular Christmas ones, it’s true. Easter isn’t nearly as musical a holiday as Christmas for US Christians. As for Independence Day, it’s associated with just about any patriotic song, but especially the Star-Spangled Banner at some point during municipal ceremonies. All these songs exist outside of the July 4th celebration, but that day is a locus for their use.
At bottom, though, I was being generous in my listing: only Christmas is strongly associated with singing a lot. Thanksgiving isn’t unusual for lacking songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3TGbKfkwGA
“SIT DOWN, John!
SIT DOWN, John!
For god’s sake, John, SIT DOWN!”
“I say VOTE YES!”
“NO!”
“VOTE YES!”
“NO!”
“Vote for independency!”
“John, you’re a bore!
We’ve heard this before!
For god’s sake, John, SIT DOWN!”
Plenty traditional in my family …
In today’s “living in the future” news, I bought a magazine that came with a free computer on the cover. The new Raspberry Pi Zero came out today, and the MagPi came with a free one where we used to see CD-ROMS and the like.
Sure, it’s a $5 computer, but the fact that I can now buy a computer that runs Linux for that little makes 2015 feel a little like 6241.
JJ: You do realize your explanation for WFC using the busts this year is headcanon? As well as being a speculation I made myself here in comments before?
I want WFC’s explanation, I already have our guesses.
Maybe WFC’s change is a Foucault’s Pendulum situation: they knew only that change must come, for reasons not yet fully realized in this cislunar world of dark iron walls and shackled souls. So they acted as they must, and scour the world for signs of explanation granted to some illuminated soul, somewhere in the world, with hope and Google on their side.
Or not. But let’s not rule out things hastily.
::godstick::
It’s always odd to discover just how conservative the young can be; my five year old niece announced one day not so very long ago that she would like to grow up to be a nurse, and when we suggested “or a doctor”, she laughed and said firmly “girls can’t be doctors!”.
Now, to this day I have no idea where that notion came from – her reading books and TV viewing were pretty much equal opportunity. And neither did she, because as she readily admitted when questioned that every single doctor she had ever met was a girl – including her own aunt and mother!
9) It’s funny but the reason I only read one of Correia’s MHN books and one short story by Hoyt was because it was constantly hammering their message over and over again. With Hoyt it was ‘America is great and the people who question that destroyed it’ and Correia was some kind of contrived situation every ten pages to show how awesome guns are, how stupid and dangerous any kind of gun control is, and libtards suck. The character development was non-existent and most of the elements were cardboard cutouts.
@Jim Henley
I think that’s asking too much. I’ve read over 500 short SF stories so far this year, and I can’t think of a single one with a blatant message that actually works. If the story was obviously progressive (or obviously reactionary), then it failed. The successful ones are the ones you remember for something besides the message, and that makes it hard to come up with a list.
In fact, some of the very worst stories I’ve read this year had messages that I agreed with wholeheartedly. But to deliver that message, they used cardboard villains, stretched science to the limit, and dispensed with a plot. “The Myth of Rain,” by Seanan McGuire is a good example of this type.
My problem with the puppies was that they nominated stories based on the politics of the authors, rather than the content of the work–and as a result they nominated mediocre stuff (at best) which I don’t think most of them even bothered to read.
This hasn’t ever really been about progressivism, conservatism, or any other ism. It’s not about good vs. evil. It’s about good vs bad.
@Peace: Thanks, I’d forgotten about “We Gather Together”; I haven’t sung/heard that in many, many years. Wow, I can’t even remember where/when. I’m feeling nostalgic, and I don’t even know for what. 😉 I find myself buying it in iTunes. 🙂
@James & @Peace: I never knew “Jingle Bells” was originally written for Thanksgiving! In fairness, a lot of the country isn’t getting snow (or not much) by Thanksgiving, so riding through snow in a sleigh doesn’t really fit, IMHO. Looking over the lyrics to make sure I remember them right, it really just sounds like a generic winter song, not for any holiday, though. Pretty soon the Chrismas season will stretch from Veterans Day to Memorial Day, absorbing most other seasons. . . .
@Amina: News to me, thanks! I’d only ever heard the Christmas version, and I didn’t realize (presuming Wikipedia’s correct; always risky) originally it was “to Grandfather‘s house.” Technically a poem later set to music, not written as a Thanksgiving song, but that probably applies to plenty of other holiday songs.
@Morris Keesan: I’m believe Jim Henley’s list was “holidays celebrated in the U.S.” – not (as you seemed to interpret it) “exclusively-U.S. holidays.” 😉
I wouldn’t call Easter a holiday, since it’s on a Sunday; I tend to think “Federal holiday” when I think “holiday,” and those are all on weekdays. Maybe I’m too work-focused.
Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it or like the sentiment!
@Clyto
Maybe someone’s been reading her work by classic science fiction authors?
/s
If you could find a copy…
20 years ago I moved to Cambridge to work for Acorn. A year or two later I used staff discount to buy one of our desktop ARM based Risc PCs. Making an allowance for the fact I got a monitor, keyboard, mouse and PSU with it, it cost me about 700 quid. The Pi Zero is 30 times quicker, has 8 times the memory and will drive around 4x as many pixels on the screen for 4 quid. My brain has been off doing the “But, but, but…” bogglement intermittently since reading the first news story this morning.
Regarding Thanksgiving songs…
I’ve been listening to Doctor Demento for more than 37 years, so I know there have been hundreds of songs written about Thanksgiving.
It is true that very few of them were serious or traditional.
I hadn’t heard that “Jingle Bells” was a Thanksgiving song. I thought it was one of those comedic Victorian whooping it up songs.
It’s one of the songs where the later verses are taught to the children of my family because they are so laughably awful. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is another.
@Cheryl S: I share your reading of the mansplainer on feminism above. I may or may not Fisk it depending on how grading and fun goes over the Thanksgiving break. But I was less than impressed .
There is ‘Ding, Dong, The Banks are Closed’, ‘Today We Shall Not go a’Banking’, ‘Save Up Your Loose Change Lads – The Banker are Having a Rest’ plus the perennial musical hall favorite ‘When the Bankers Sit by Seaside’*
I was thinking less of genuinely deep traditions and more like some sort of Irving Berlin tune – something manufactured from 1930 to 1960 that is now deeply embedded. It is fair to say that Thanksgiving is a big-deal holiday in a way that the August Bank Holiday isn’t (it’s a day-off so lacking in any significance that the most that can be said about it is that the banks are closed).
Halloween has lots of tunes – but I guess they are all fairly recent.
Bonfire Night (UK) doesn’t have a song but it does have a rhyme “Remember, remember the fifth of November…”
May Day/Labor Day has the Internationale 🙂 but that is probably just aging communists
When you are driving off on your summer holiday your dad will sing part of Cliff Richard’s “We’re all going on a summer holiday…” much to everybody’s embarrassment
Australia Day people* will sing Waltzing Matilda but then that is such a great song it doesn’t really need much of a pretext to sing it.
*[four of those aren’t true]
*[Australian people]
There are Advent songs. I quite like them – they’re full of quiet anticipation, unlike the incessant forced cheer of Chrismas songs. Alas, they were first to fall when Christmas declared war.
Of course Whitsun has songs. Its a Christian thing, they all have their own songs. See also: Easter (which also has songs specifically for Palm Sunday, Good Friday…). Also, a good chunk of the rest of the sundays, too. Whether people who don’t go to Church know the songs is an entirely different matter, but they all have them. Gotta accessorise your seasonal vestments and altar cloths with the right tunes.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November has been set to music, too! Probably more than once, but the version I know is by John Rutter – it doesn’t seem to have made it onto YouTube yet.
A Song for a Bank Holiday.
Ding, dong, the banks are closed
Which old banks?
The stupid banks,
Ding, dong, the stupid banks are closed,
Where will we cash our cheques?
Well, we just won’t,
‘cos the banks are closed,
Ding, dong, the stupid banks are closed,
They’ve gone off and shut the doors
today, today and then
Tomorrow they all be open again,
Ding, dong, the stupid banks are closed.
Peace is my Middle Name: I do sing all the verses of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to my kids, but not because I consider them “laughably awful”. (Whereas I would agree re: Jingle Bells). It’s outdated, in that we are rarely anywhere these days where starlight is necessary to make headway in the dark because the moon is new, or even where steering by the stars is asked for, but other than the twee verse about stars peeping through curtains, which is as far as I can tell unrelated to the rest of the song, the others aren’t horrible. They’re not a Shakespearean sonnet but not much is, and I spend enough time with traditional music and children’s music both that I can cite vastly worse things than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star if I dig.
Any display of Christmas merchandise or suggestion of Christmas buying before Thanksgiving was frowned upon, with harsh social consequences.
/me sighs wistfully… The stories about people “protesting” the Starbucks cups by telling the barista their name is “Merry Christmas” made me want to go in and tell them my name is “It Is NOT EVEN THANKSGIVING YET”.
Regarding the “impending death of feminism”, in addition to the points discussed by Mary Frances and TheYoungPretender and others, these are high school students we’re talking about, apparently. Speaking as someone who used to be a teenage girl, there’s a huge difference between what you think and believe while you’re still living at home and what you come to think and believe once you’ve been living away from home for a while. I know there were plenty of things that I’d had in the mostly-unexamined “that’s the way things are” category, because they’d never come up overtly and so my opinions were based on what I’d picked up from context and osmosis from my parents and the things I’d read. Once I was living on my own, things happened that made me say “…wait, why exactly do I believe that? Where did I get that information?” and reevaluate what I’d previously thought.
@Greg Hullender:
You’ve shifted the goalposts here. Jim didn’t ask for stories with “blatant messages”, he asked for “stories with progressive themes”.
If simply having a progressive theme is enough, for some people, to say a story “has a blatant message”, that in itself says something about the standards they’re using.
Brad’s quite fond of “crybully” at the moment (as in people who try to bully others into doing things by crying about how victimized they are)- in another display of lack of self reflection.
A headcanon would be a great idea for a trophy
Theme may not be something the writer puts in on purpose. Le Guin wrote years ago that someone had asked her what the theme of all her work was, and spontaneously and to her own surprise said “marriage.”
Another writer I knew, Robert Shea, was surprised when someone asked whether the fact that all his protagonists had lost their fathers in early childhood reflected something in his life. He hadn’t consciously noticed that pattern, which was in fact based on his own life. That he didn’t do it on purpose doesn’t mean that “growing up without a father” or “a boy’s relationship with his stepfather” wasn’t a theme in those books.
On the other hand, I would argue that (a large part of) what The Left Hand of Darkness is about is right there in the text: “the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.” Genly asks “will this world be part of the Ekumen five years from now,” gets an unambiguous yes—and still has to do his work, be imprisoned, and almost die crossing the Ice.
(Here is 3135, we’re still arguing over what family means.)
Since Camestros Felapton mentioned Irving Berlin, I figured there had to be a Thanksgiving song in (or written for) Holiday Inn and there is: Plenty to Be Thankful For. Of course White Christmas was the movie’s hit song..
@Camestros: Cute Bank Holiday song! But I feel a “headcanon” trophy would be better for fan fic awards. 😉
Traditional August Bank Holiday Songs contd. (trad arr.)
The bankers have gone to the seaside
The bankers have gone to the sea
The bankers have gone to the seaside
Oh who’ll cash this cheque now for me?
Who’ll cash,
Oh, who’ll cash
Oh who’ll cash this cheque now for me? for me?
Who’ll cash,
Oh, who’ll cash
Oh who’ll cash this cheque now for me? for me?
3 more ebook sales I wanted to mention ‘cuz they interest me, two of them have come up here before, and maybe they’ll interest someone else. These are probably U.S.-only sales (definitely Amazon.com and iTunes [iTMS]). More sample reading for me over the long weekend. 🙂 #3 is the one I’ve heard the least about it.
#1 Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, which I’ve heard lots of praise for, is on sale for $2.99. This is a book I’ve gotten the impression One Should Read, which makes me fear I won’t care for it. I realize how absurd that is.
#2 The Bees by Laline Paull, which I’ve heard slightly mixed but mostly good things about, is on sale for $1.99. This sounds a little on the literary side, which isn’t a bad thing – just not my usual thing.
#3 Trailer Park Fae (#1 in a series) by Lilith Saitcrow, which I’ve heard little (but good) about, is on sale for $1.99. I love the cover! I’m not a big urban fantasy reader, but one of my fave series is Pratt’s Marla Mason series, so I’m not morally opposed to it. 😉 I’m a bit nervous this’ll turn into a dozen books, but the second one’s not quite out yet. Orbit’s weird habit (?) of shoving lists of books by the author into the description is a bit annoying (we can click the author name for this info; that’s not description of the book at hand!).
ObThanksgiving: We’re off to a nice restaurant in a couple of hours. Yay, low stress! Many thanks to the stalwarts working today, allowing us to avoid cooking.
AH! I can’t remember if I mentioned Holiday Inn (I did see it once but I didn’t pay attention) and of course I associate it with Christmas for obv. reasons. Back to the theory that there aren’t many stand out Thankksgiving movies (and hence no associated songs) because in the 30s, 40s, 50s people didn’t go to the movies around Thanksgiving.
Calling people names who cry when bullies torment them is, oddly enough, not proof that one is not a bully.
I do believe it is possible to look at a situation objectively and determine who, if anyone, is bullying whom.
@Camestros: Those bank holiday songs all sound great!
“vigilantes comin’ out to follow me…”
WHA-at?!
@David: I sing along with Mr. Guthrie everytime Alice’s Restaurant comes on the radio. Whaddaya mean it’s a song just for listening to?