Pixel Scroll 11/26 The Strange High Pixels on the Blog

(1) TRADITIONAL THANKS. Joe Vasicek’s “Giving Thanks” at One Thousand and One Parsecs is one of the best posts I saw that combined an sf theme with a serious reflection on the holiday.

So in the spirit of that first Thanksgiving feast, here are the things that I am especially thankful for this year:

  • I am thankful for my near and extended family. Tolstoy was wrong when he said that all happy families are alike: every family has their own quirks, even the ones that hold together. I wouldn’t give up my family’s quirks for anything.
  • I am thankful to live in a free country, where my rights to life, liberty, and property are respected and honored. I am also thankful for the brave men and women of our armed forces who sacrifice so much to keep it free.
  • I am thankful for the opportunity to pursue a career as an author, and for the flexibility and control that indie publishing provides. I have no one but myself to blame for my failures, but my successes are all my own. Even after four years, it’s still exhilarating.
  • I am thankful for my readers, who have made and continue to make this publishing journey possible. I am thankful for all that they do that supports me, from buying and reading my books to sharing with friends, posting reviews, sending me fan mail, and connecting in a hundred other little ways that together make this whole thing worthwhile. Seriously, you guys are awesome. The only thing I could ask is to have more of you!

(2) AMAZING THANKS. Steve Davidson sends holiday wishes to all in a post at Amazing Stories.

Whether you occupy the North American continent or not, and whether you celebrate “Thanksgiving Day” or not, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of myself and all of the supporters, contributors, members and passersby at Amazing Stories to wish you a few moments of happy reflection on this day.

I urge you to take a moment to think back over the year and remember the people and happenings you’re thankful for this year.

I’m thankful for my wife and her support, and of the support and well-wishes I receive from our extended family….

(3) CONTRARY THANKS. David Brin ends his post “Cool science stuff… and more reasons to be thankful” at Contrary Brin with minor key gratitude.

Okay!  That great big pile of cool items ought to keep you busy, clicking and skimming while groaning and loosening your belts on Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday)… or else however you folks elsewhere around the world celebrate Thursday.  (Ah… Thursday!)

Don’t let grouches undermine our confidence.  Star Trek awaits.  Do thrive and persevere.

(4) DAUGHTERS. Three writers who love their daughters for exactly who they are:

(5) PREMIERE CONTEST. Omaze.com’s new charity fundraiser offers a chance to “Win a Trip to the Premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. Deadline to enter is December 4 at 11:59 PST. The winner will be announced December 5.

Charity:

Africa Cancer Foundation; Arts in the Armed Forces (AITAF); Barnardos UK; Central London Samaritans; Damilola Taylor Trust; fStop Warrior Project; Feeding America; Make-A-Wish; Malala Fund; PACER: Children’s Mental Health and Emotional or Behavioral Disorders Project; Phab; St. Francis Hospice, Raheny; The Circle; UNICEF; Union of Concerned Scientists (“Charity”)

Prize Provider:

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (“Prize Provider”)

Details:

This experience includes attending the red carpet premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (“Picture”) in either Los Angeles or London. The attendance by any specific cast member, filmmakers, or such other talent from the Picture during the Premiere is not guaranteed and shall be subject to such talent’s availability and Sponsor’s and/or Prize Providers’ sole discretion. Neither Sponsor nor Prize Providers guarantee any type of meeting or photo opportunity with any specific cast member or talent from the Picture during the trip.

(6) CAPALDI IN AUCKLAND. “’Dr Who’ arrives to soothe pain” in the New Zealand Herald.

SPOILER WARNING. MAYBE.

Peter Capaldi

Peter Capaldi

Though Peter Capaldi, who plays the 12th incarnation of the sci-fi character hinted that, as it has been for more than 50 years, things in the show aren’t always clear-cut.

“My message for them would be life is tough,” Capaldi joked to The Herald about fans upset by Clara’s passing, sounding not unlike his second most-famous character, harsh spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker from political comedy The Thick of It.

“But Doctor Who is never quite what it seems. We haven’t told a lie. The story is the story but the Doctor is not going to rest. He is not going to accept that that is the last time he will be see Clara.”

(7) DAVID TENNANT. Io9 points to“David Tennant Celebrates 100 Years of General Relativity in This Clever Animation”, a YouTube video.

(8) Today In History

  • November 26, 1922 — In Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and George Carnarvon became the first humans to enter King Tutankhamen’s treasure-laden tomb in more than 3,000 years.

(9) Today’s Birthday Boy

  • Born November 26, 1919Frederik Pohl. Pohl himself had started out in sf as a teenaged fan – not without controversy, for he was one of the six Futurians who were thrown out of the First Worldcon in 1939. The scales of justice would balance later when he was named guest of honor at the 1972 Worldcon, L.A.Con I.

(10) Leah Schnelbach’s “Frederik Pohl Made Doing Literally Everything Look Easy” at Tor.com is an entertaining overview of one of the field’s great figure. One paragraph may need a small fix.

Agent. Frederik Pohl attempted a career as a specialist science fiction literary agent, at a time when that wasn’t really a thing that existed. By the early 1950s he had a large number of clients, but he finally decided to close the agency to focus on editorial work. He was the only editor Isaac Asimov ever had.

Perhaps she meant “only agent”? Asimov’s work went under the hand of lots of other editors, according to the Internet Science Fiction Database.

(11) WRITER DISCIPLINE. Marc Aplin tells “How Writing Is A Lot Like Fighting – Part 1: Introduction” at Fantasy Faction.

The key to both statements is that the speaker’s practice/training has given them a degree of confidence that allows them to enter into a familiar situation (whether opening a word document or stepping into a ring/cage) and allowing their instincts to take over. It is important that you understand here that this isn’t simply ‘willingness’ to do their chosen activity (although that will be the first step), this is instead such a strong grasp of fundamentals that the person can switch their conscious mind off (i.e. ‘enter the zone’).

(12) CELTIC EXHIBIT. “British Museum Explores Celtic Identity” by Sean McLachlan at Black Gate.

For many of us, the Celts are an enduring fascination. Their art, their mysterious culture, and the perception that so many of us are descended from them makes the Celts one of the most popular ancient societies. So it’s surprising that the British Museum hasn’t had a major Celtic exhibition for forty years.

That’s changed with Celts: Art and Identity, a huge collection of artifacts from across the Celtic world and many works of art from the modern Celtic Revival. The exhibition is at pains to make clear that the name ‘Celts’ doesn’t refer to a single people who can be traced through time, and it has been appropriated over the last 300 years to reflect modern identities in Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere. “Celtic” is an artistic and cultural term, not a racial one.

The first thing visitors see is a quote by some guy named J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote in 1963, “To many, perhaps most people. . .’Celtic’ of any sort is. . .a magic bag into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come. . .anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight.”

(13) HUMBLE BUNDLE. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced that the newest  Book Bundle will be supporting SFWA’s Givers Fund.

Pay what you want for Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire, One-Eyed Jack (Elizabeth Bear), Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Word Puppets (Mary Robinette Kowal).

Pay more than the average price to also receive Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, The Year’s Best Science & Fantasy Novellas: 2015, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird, and Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful.

Pay $15 or more for all of that plus Ad Astra: The 50th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2015, and Warrior Women.

Choose the price. Together, these books ordinarily go for up to $86. Here at Humble Bundle, though, you name the price! …

Support charity. Choose where the money goes — between the developers and three charitable causes (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Worldbuilders, or the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America–Giver’s Fund).

The bundle will be available til December 9.

(14) LETSON REVIEW. At Locus Online, Russell Letson begins his review of Greg Bear’s Killing Titan with an admission:

I should probably cop to this: I’m fascinated by military history, but I’ve never been much taken by what I think of as genre military SF, by which I mean adventure stories set in the military establishment and emphasizing weaponry, com­radeship, chains of command, career progress, and (of course) combat. As much as I enjoyed and understood Starship Troopers and The Forever War, I have found the run of routine combat or military-life series, well, routine and no match for the best of their historical-setting cousins (C.S. Forester, Bernard Cornwell, Pat­rick O’Brian, George MacDonald Fraser).

Nevertheless, it’s a positive review of Bear’s novel.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Greg.]

75 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/26 The Strange High Pixels on the Blog

  1. “where my rights to life, liberty, and property are respected and honored”

    I’ll be more thankful when everyone can say that. Happy Thanksgiving!

  2. Finished Childhoods End and it was ok. Nothing I would recommend to anyone, but still ok. Too much avoidance of explanation with “you wouldn’t understand this anyhow”, an ending that dragged out too long with lots of infodumps and some stuff about technology and medias that hadn’t aged well.

    But the idea was cool and I think it will make a great movie. This is the kind of book I wish I had read 20 years earlier.

  3. The Celts show at the British Museum is very good (as the article notes, it’s worth the price of admission for the Gundestrup Cauldron alone.) And yeah, I smiled at the Tolkien quote at the start too.

  4. Hi from the USA. I imagine many of my fellow citizens are still quietly digesting.

    In my family we do Thanksgiving on Friday so we’re about to start roasting and mulling and ironing and prepping.

  5. In trying to find reference to a certain book that I’ve forgotten on past Pixel Scroll threads, my To Be Read/Need To Read pile has gotten even larger.

    Not sure if it’s a good/bad thing.

  6. msb on November 27, 2015 at 12:02 am said:
    “where my rights to life, liberty, and property are respected and honored”

    I’ll be more thankful when everyone can say that. Happy Thanksgiving!

    Yes. That was what I thought too.

    Also at what point did “property rights” replace “the pursuit of happiness,” which is how the original Declaration went? Does that look a little odd to anyone else, or is it just me?

  7. Joe V is his own man, you can’t tie him down or force him to stick to some crazy declaration made by a bunch of dead dudes…

  8. (At which point the sarlacc woke up from its tryptophan slumbers and devastated Tattooine. When asked why, the sand monster replied, “Boba Fett disagreed with me over lunch. He took my seconds.”)

  9. Re Bear: I found the first novel, War Dogs to be good…but not Bear at his full strength. I’ve vacillated whether or not I want to read the sequel.

  10. I spent Yanksgiving writing my 300th review for 2015. That puts me one up on Locus’ 299 reviews published in 2014. Review goes live on Saturday.

    (I have some ideas about benchmarks for myself to make 2016 fun)

  11. In the context of my little potted history of the US Thanksgiving in yesterday’s Pixel Scroll: https://file770.com/?p=26214&cpage=1#comment-370815 :

    Interestingly, the illustration on Joe Vasicek’s blog post is exactly one of those sweetly sentimental late Victorian paintings mythologizing Thanksgiving in the wake of the US Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Centennial as part of the construction of a comforting origin myth which emphasized the Victorian social order, with the fellas calling the shots, the gals focused on the kids and prayer, and the extras dressed as circus Indians on their knees in the background.

    The only strange thing is the complete disinterest in depicting the food, which was the whole point of the thanks.

  12. @Cat: “Life, liberty and property” does sound off to me, too; and isn’t property covered under liberty, usually? It’s more explicit a reworking than usual, and “the pursuit of happiness” is the best and most unusual part of that. Like cutting the wings from a butterfly.

    Not that a person can’t be thankful for whatever the hell makes them thankful. Today, I had a long moment of being grateful for people who can’t stand their families, so I am minded of how unbecoming feelings can get.

    Happy postprandial bliss, everyone!

  13. I wonder if the jarring insertion of “property” into those lovely sentiments isn’t ….

    Ahhh, the heck with it. This is not a day for crankiness.

    Happy pursuit of happiness to everyone.

  14. I wrote out a long comment to reply to that entry, which bothers me for several reasons. I hope folks don’t mind if I put it here:

    Thanksgiving is one of the Big Three–Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and more people apparently celebrate Thanksgiving than Independence Day–I’d hesitate before calling that “overlooked.” Enough people travel to be with large family gatherings that it is one of the top ten busiest travel weekends in the year. In addition it might be good to bear in mind that people who cook for their families for Thanksgiving probably started planning the week before. This doesn’t seem to me to be consistent with Thanksgiving being “most overlooked.”

    By all means let’s make time for food and family and pondering the good things in our lives. Gratitude is good for all of us. Perhaps we could start by considering the efforts our family and friends and people across the US have made to join us in celebrating this holiday.

    2) Actually the Pilgrims found religious freedom in Europe, albeit at the cost of settling in the Netherlands. They found their kids were learning Dutch and picking up Dutch habits, which bothered the grownups who were having a hard time making that adjustment, and *that* was why they moved to a new continent.

    3) I think I prefer the original formulation in the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I’m not sure at what point this morphed into “life liberty and property” but associating that with the founding fathers always makes me think of my neighbors, who would have been “property” in those days. Which does not make me think better of either the founding fathers or property rights, so I stick to “pursuit of happiness” which I also consider more historically accurate.

  15. Pursuit of happiness might mean being gay which neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket and thus might be hard to argue against from founding principals.

    But property, that takes away all that happiness except for stuff that makes you happy.*

    *At least till somebody starts making sex bots and lonely gay people buy them. The time machine’s broken so I don’t know what year that will happen.

  16. Hope all who celebrated had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday. We certainly did, though I’m still not sure how I managed to explode butter in the microwave. And no, it didn’t have the wrapper on.

    We ate and watched Captain America and The Avengers and napped and ate pie. We also have many leftovers, which means no involved cooking for a few days, or at least until I make the turkey casserole.

    I am very thankful for my parents for introducing me to Tolkien and Lieber and Asimov and the library, for my brother who also enjoys F&SF, and for Mike and all the Filers for expanding my knowledge (especially of new books coming out!) in so many ways.

  17. @Cat, Peace

    “Property” was how it was described around the time of the Glorious Revolution. Very Whig, very Scientific Revolution, very much of a time when the intangibles were the rhetoric of absolutism. But in all the documents the Founding Generation read.

    By 1776, everyone is reading Rousseau, or Burke’s earlies, or whatever Enlightenment-era paens to the simple life and the noble savage. Thus happiness. More to the moment than property.

  18. The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, from 1774, included the resolution:

    Resolved, N. C. D. 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

    So the phrasing isn’t new.

  19. @Cat

    “Life, Liberty, and Property” was in Thomas Jefferson’s draft DOI given to the Continental Congress for review. Comes straight outta John Locke. Congress made the change to “… and pursuit of happiness” probably, as someone noted above, to eliminate any direct connection to slavery. Congress also cut out about 25% of Jefferson’s verbiage. Jefferson was a classical liberal, which sorta translates to a Libertarian view in today’s politics.

  20. Re: Greg Bear and War Dogs. As Letson notes it was an interesting take on the more-than-milSF trope, with an interesting look at a deep history and a first contact. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

  21. As David Shallcross and Texas Reed point out, the lineage of “life, liberty and property” is extensive. It’s also the case that its usage today signifies contemporary political commitments. It’s not a formulation anyone just randomly drops in.

  22. TexasReed:

    “Life, Liberty, and Property” was in Thomas Jefferson’s draft DOI given to the Continental Congress for review. Comes straight outta John Locke.

    I don’t think so. Here is a reconstructed draft, and here are some versions for comparison. I’d be happy to credit, say, Franklin, rather than Jefferson for “the pursuit of happiness”, but it seems to be Jefferson’s phrase. (Not that I’m unhappy to credit Jefferson, mind, just that I’m not married to his authorship.)

    There has been much debate about how or why Jefferson got from Locke’s formulation (if he did) to “the pursuit of happiness”, and where he got happiness from (Locke does mention happiness at some point, and Hobbes was fond of “felicity”). It’s unsettled. Locke’s phrase was “life, liberty and estates”, which is not exactly property, or not just.

  23. @Beth in MA:

    Butter contains a small amount of water. It’s why it sizzles when you melt it. It’s possible a pocket of water inside your butter turned to steam à la popcorn.

  24. Jefferson was a classical liberal, which sorta translates to a Libertarian view in today’s politics.

    In terms of ideals, yes, Jefferson was. In practice however, he adopted a different view. His Presidency varied substantially from the libertarian mold.

  25. A friend from college, who I otherwise like, loves saying that Thomas Jefferson was a Republican.

    Well, yes, he termed himself that. But what Jefferson meant by “Republican” was verrrry different from the Republican Party founded in 1854 to put an end to slavery.

    … Come to think of it, the modern Republican Party is itself verrrry different from the original Republican civil rights activists.

  26. Just goes to show you how things can change over time, I guess.

    Thanks for the updates on the source of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” folks!

  27. The 14th Amendment–you know, the one Trump wants to have declared unconstitutional–also specifies that the government is not permitted to deprive people of “life, liberty, or property.” In fact, it’s part of of the citizenship and due process clause:

    “Section I: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

    I think it’s also part of the 5th Amendment’s due process clause., but it’s the 14th that gets to me in this context.

  28. Peace–Thank you! I will be more cautious about melting my butter in the microwave from now on! But it does make for a fun quip!

    I used so much butter yesterday!

  29. A friend from college, who I otherwise like, loves saying that Thomas Jefferson was a Republican.

    Technically, he was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, a large portion of which later migrated to the Democratic Party with Andrew Jackson. Your friend might need to be reminded of this.

  30. There is a reason one of the classic Democratic Party fundraisers has been the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

  31. specifies that the government is not permitted to deprive people of “life, liberty, or property.”

    A Government document is highly unlikely to say it is illegal to deprive citizens of their happiness, since it would run up against it’s own laws every year come tax time.

  32. Trying to draw a neat flow diagram between the politics, politicians and parties of the Founding Era and those of today’s USA is madness, guys.

  33. Jim Henley on November 27, 2015 at 8:51 am said:
    Trying to draw a neat flow diagram between the politics, politicians and parties of the Founding Era and those of today’s USA is madness, guys.

    Yep. This.

  34. Minnesota stopped calling their JJ the Jefferson-Jackson and started calling it the Humphrey Dinner precisely because the line between those two men and the modern DFL has some Lovecraftian geometry.

  35. @TheYoungPretender:

    I needed to go Google a lot of that. Something about your comment itself seemed to have Lovecraftian geometry.

  36. I don’t mind the jettisoning of Jackson from various places he’s lodged. He was an appalling human being.

  37. @Peace,

    Oh yeah – we call our Democratic Party here the Democratic Farmer Labor party. The history of that is thoroughly byzantine as well. In politics, often the state Jefferson-Jackson gets called “the JJ” for short. But at the end of the day, the significant support of various Sioux nations for the Democrats meant having the annual dinner named for a genocidal maniac simply would not do.

    Point being, the process through which the Democratic Party has gone from something Jackson and Jefferson, to something they would have been questionable about, to something they would have despised is a long and winding road. Sorry for the rushed typing of the last comment though.

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