Pixel Scroll 11/26/16 And Pixel,  When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Scroll

(1) ELLISON KICKSTARTER FULLY FUNDED. The Harlan Ellison Books Preservation Project Kickstarter has blown past its $100,000 goal. The total raises at this time is $102,409, with four days to go.

(2) TELL ME YOU’RE KIDDING. CinemaBlend says Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may give us more Howard the Duck.

In case you’ve somehow forgotten about Howard the Duck’s surreal appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was briefly spotted in a display case during the main movie as part of The Collector’s…well, collection. Later in the post-credits scene when The Collector sat by his destroyed museum, Howard (voiced by Seth Green) sat nearby and criticized the eccentric entity for letting Cosmo the Spacedog lick his face. Funny enough, James Gunn didn’t originally plan on including Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy because the original post-credits scene was supposed to tease Avengers: Age of Ultron. When Captain America: The Winter Soldier “stole” that, Gunn and editor Frank Raskin noticed in their existing footage that Beneicio del Toro looked to the side at a box, thus providing a way to sneak Howard in and redeem the character a little bit for that movie of his that still occasionally haunts our dreams.

With or without Howard the Duck’s participation, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits theaters on May 5, 2017.

(3) BRUCE SCHNEIER. What’s he been doing since he worked on E Pluribus Hugo? The Daily Dot reports on his recent testimony before Congress — “Bruce Schneier: ‘The Internet era of fun and games is over’”

Internet pioneer Bruce Schneier issued a dire proclamation in front of the House of Representatives’ Energy & Commerce Committee Wednesday: “It might be that the internet era of fun and games is over, because the internet is now dangerous.”

The meeting, which focused on the security vulnerabilities created by smart devices, came in the wake of the Oct. 21 cyberattack on Dyn that knocked Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and other major web services offline….

Here’s how he framed the Internet of Things, or what he later called the “world of dangerous things”:

As the chairman pointed out, there are now computers in everything. But I want to suggest another way of thinking about it in that everything is now a computer: This is not a phone. It’s a computer that makes phone calls. A refrigerator is a computer that keeps things cold. ATM machine is a computer with money inside. Your car is not a mechanical device with a computer. It’s a computer with four wheels and an engine… And this is the Internet of Things, and this is what caused the DDoS attack we’re talking about.

He then outlined four truths he’s learned from the world of computer security, which he said is “now everything security.”

1) ‘Attack is easier than defense’

Complexity is the worst enemy of security. Complex systems are hard to secure for an hours’ worth of reasons, and this is especially true for computers and the internet. The internet is the most complex machine man has ever built by a lot, and it’s hard to secure. Attackers have the advantage.

2) ‘There are new vulnerabilities in the interconnections’

The more we connect things to each other, the more vulnerabilities in one thing affect other things. We’re talking about vulnerabilities in digital video recorders and webcams that allowed hackers to take websites. … There was one story of a vulnerability in an Amazon account [that] allowed hackers to get to an Apple account, which allowed them to get to a Gmail account, which allowed them to get to a Twitter account. Target corporation, remember that attack? That was a vulnerability in their HVAC contractor that allowed the attackers to get into Target. And vulnerabilities like this are hard to fix. No one system might be at fault. There might be two secure systems that come together to create insecurity.

3) ‘The internet empowers attackers’

4) ‘The economics don’t trickle down’

The engineers at Google, Apple, Microsoft spent a lot of time on this. But that doesn’t happen for these cheaper devices. … These devices are a lower price margin, they’re offshore, there’s no teams. And a lot of them cannot be patched. Those DVRs are going to be vulnerable until someone throws them away. And that takes a while. We get security [for phones] because I get a new one every 18 months. Your DVR lasts for five years, your car for 10, your refrigerator for 25. I’m going to replace my thermostat approximately never. So the market really can’t fix this.

Schneier then laid out his argument for why the government should be a part of the solution, and the danger of prioritizing surveillance over security.

We’re now at the point where we need to start making more ethical and political decisions about how these things work. When it didn’t matter—when it was Facebook, when it was Twitter, when it was email—it was OK to let programmers, to give them the special right to code the world as they saw fit. We were able to do that. But now that it’s the world of dangerous things—and it’s cars and planes and medical devices and everything else—maybe we can’t do that anymore.

That’s not necessarily what Schneier wants, but he recognizes its necessity

(4) BIG DATA. Mark R. Kelly spent a busy day updating the Science Fiction Awards Database, that indispensable research tool —

Latest Updates

2016 Anlab, Asimov’s Readers, and Dell Magazine results

— posted Saturday 26 November 2016 @ 5:33 pm PST

More 2016 results: the readers’ polls from Analog and Asimov’s magazines, and the Dell Magazine Undergrad Awards, reported in Asimov’s magazine.

AnLab: 93 new and updated pages

Note the Analog readers’ poll now has a poetry category. Also, first page in this index for Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.

Dell Magazines Awards: 37 new and updated pages

Note these awards have a new dedicated website: http://www.dellaward.com/

Asimov’s Reader Awards: 91 new and updated pages.

Also updated: 2016 Results

Assorted 2016 results

— posted Saturday 26 November 2016 @ 3:37 pm PST

Updated today:

Big Heart 2016
First Fandom 2016
WSFA Small Press 2016
Dwarf Stars 2016
Elgin 2016
Copper Cylinder 2016

(5) REACHING A MILESTONE. Adam Whitehead celebrates a decade of blogging in “10 Years of the Wertzone: Listing the Classics”.

Occasionally I award a particularly special book, video game, movie or TV show the honour of being a “Wertzone Classic”. To be a classic, the work has to both be excellent and also to have withstood the test of time and emerged as a true defining work in its field. The following is a complete list of all works to be awarded a “Classic” award since the start of the blog in 2006. I would strongly recommend all of these works to anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy, be it in print or on screen.

The list includes 30 books.

(6) VISITS WITH ROBERT SILVERBERG. At Locus Online, “Russell Letson reviews Alvaro Zinos-Amaro”.

Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Fairwood Press 978-1-933846-63-7, $16.99, 274pp, tp) August 2016. Cover by Patrick Swenson.

Robert Silverberg’s career has spanned more than half the history of modern American science fiction: he began reading SF magazines in 1948, during the ‘‘Golden Age,’’ and by 1954 was writing for the pulps, producing the first entries in a bibliography that now runs to 600-plus items of fiction and booklength nonfiction alone. Between receiving a Hugo Award for ‘‘Most Promising New Author’’ in 1956 and attaining SFWA Grand Master status in 2004, Silverberg has been in a position to meet nearly everyone of consequence in the SF field, sell to nearly every editor (and do plenty of editing himself), and explore nearly every market niche, while also (for a while) carrying out parallel careers turning out carefully-researched nonfiction and pseudonymous, non-SF yard-goods.

(7) A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” — W. Somerset Maugham

(8) BOB FELICE OBIT. Cynthia Felice told her Facebook readers, “My beloved and much-loved husband of 55 years, Bob Felice Sr. died yesterday. While his death was sudden and swift, it was not unexpected, not even by him.”

Cat Rambo says of Cynthia, “[She] is an SF writer and was the SFWA ombudsman (currently the position’s held by the amazing Gay Haldeman) for years, solving member problems with serenity and grace.”

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 26, 1862 — Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice’s Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born November 26, 1909 — Eugene Ionesco
  • Born November 26, 1922 — Charles Schulz
  • November 26, 1926 – Poul Anderson
  • Born November 26, 1853 — William “Bat” Masterson. (John King Tarpinian sent this one in because, “The theme song from the TV show still reverberates between my ears.”)

(11) ANIMAL ASTRONAUTS. The art is irresistible and the story is cute. Krypton Radio tonight will air an interview with STEM children’s book author Andrew Rader.

Buckle up, space fans, for an intriguing conversation with Andrew Rader, author of the upcoming children’s book Mars Rover Rescue, and its predecessor, MC Longneck’s Epic Space Adventure. Andrew has a PhD in human space flight from MIT, and works professionally as an aerospace engineer. This gives him a unique perspective when it comes to creating educational children’s books that can ignite the imaginations of young budding future scientists. The new book has already blown past its goal on Kickstarter, and now the second book about the self-assured “giraffestronaut” is well into stretch goal territory….

Tune in this evening at 9 pm PT / Midnight ET for the first broadcast of this fascinating interview with Andrew Rader. Your hosts this evening are Susan Fox and Gene Turnbow….

 

(12) NEXT STEPS. Cat Rambo begins her blog post “Nattering Social Justice Cook: Prepare to Ride, My People” with a list of links to disturbing post-election news, then tells how she plans to move forward.

The world is broken. Love isn’t enough to fix it. It will take time and effort and blood and sweat and tears. It will stretch some of us almost to the breaking point and others past it. We must help each other in the struggle, must be patient and kind, and above all hopeful. We must speak out even when we are frightened or sad or weary to the bone….

In my opinion. You may disagree, and that’s fine. This is what I think and what’s driving my actions over the next four years. I am going to speak up and object and point things out. I am going to support institutions that help the groups like the homeless, LGBT youth, and others whose voting rights have been stolen and whose already too-scant and under threat resources are being methodically stripped away.

I am going to continue to insist that honesty, tolerance, and a responsibility for one’s own words are part of our proud American heritage, the thing that has often led us along the path where, although there have been plenty of mistakes, there have been actions that advanced the human race, that battled the forces of ignorance and intolerance, and that served as a model for the world. That “liberty and justice for all” are not hollow words, but a lamp lifted to inspire us and light our way in that direction.

I will continue to love in the face of hate, to do what Jesus meant when he said hate the sin while loving the sinner. I will continue to teach, formally and by setting an example of what a leader, a woman, a good human being should do, acknowledging my own imperfections so I can address them and keep growing and getting better at this human existence thing. If I see a fellow being in need, I will act, even if it means moving outside my usual paths.

(13) DOGGONE IT. Adam-Troy Castro sees no reason for feudin’ and fussin’ over awards:

I have won a few significant (if in prestige second-tier) awards at this gig, and on those occasions, I won because some folks thought that I had written the best story, and by God, that is less complicated, and more satisfying than AGITATING FIGHTING COMPLAINING CAMPAIGNING FRETTING RAGING AND DECLARING ENEMIES FOR MONTHS ON END could possibly be. It certainly was. I don’t have a Hugo or a Nebula or a Stoker, and may never get one, but by God I came close a bunch of times, and each time it was without the help of a carefully-managed campaign by hundreds of yahoos screaming bile. It was just me, putting words down, getting what acclaim I got all on my own, and that was *it*. Again, it feels better.

Since Gustav Gloom, I have gotten that feeling just being beamed at by kids.

And on top of that? Typing THE END at the close of work of fiction, and knowing, *knowing*, that it’s a superior piece of work, is where that great feeling comes first.

(14) CANCEL THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS. Now we know what the Sad Puppies are waiting on –

(15) IT’S ON THE BAG. Fan artist Jose Sanchez – who provided the back covers of my past two paperzines – announces his online shop http://www.shopvida.com/collections/jose77sanchez, which he touts as a place “where you can find my artwork on new apparel products that can make great gifts-especially now in the holidays!”

sanchez-tote

(16) RON GLASS’ TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE. You can watch “I of Newton” on YouTube. Teleplay by Alan Brennert based on a short story by Joe Haldeman.

[Thanks to Steve Green, Cat Rambo, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

62 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/26/16 And Pixel,  When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Scroll

  1. I’m glad my fridge is not a computer that keeps things cold. (I don’t see a point to computerizing everything. It makes it easier for stuff to break.)

  2. 2) One hopes they are kidding. Unless Cajun Sushi is involved. (Yes, I’ve seen Howard the Duck movie.)

    14) Uh Huh.

  3. @14 Who is “Josh Gondelman?” Why would anyone care about this person?

    And what does this mean?
    “Every time more than half a crowd doesn’t like me I console myself with the thought that I killed with the Electoral Audience.”

    Does this mean the election results?

  4. @12 Cat Rambo – I think I would put very high on the list the large number of emailed threats to murder Electors pledged to Trump if they don’t vote for Clinton.

    But in the spirit of the rest of her post. We all have an individual responsibility to be truthful, kind, and to do our duty in our jobs and life. Just doing your duty – your job right, not being a menace on the highways, taking care of your family etc…. are a large responsibility.

    And showing consideration for the less fortunate, especially in your local area where you know the good works are being carried out is also a benefit to the soul and to your community.

    On a less happy note, the latest novel in the Wearing the Cape series is not as fun to me as the first 5 in the series. But I never liked alternate universes in actual comic books either. I’ve finished about half of this.

  5. airboy on November 26, 2016 at 11:00 pm said:

    @14 Who is “Josh Gondelman?” Why would anyone care about this person?

    And what does this mean?
    “Every time more than half a crowd doesn’t like me I console myself with the thought that I killed with the Electoral Audience.”

    Does this mean the election results?

    Yes. It is a joke. The joke is about the discrepancy between winning the electoral college and winning the popular vote.

    I can also explain other jokes. However, that is why people don’t invite me to parties.

  6. (13) Yeah, Adam-Troy, but doing it your way also requires talent. So it’s not really a fair comparison.

  7. Lurkertype: (13) Yeah, Adam-Troy, but doing it your way also requires talent. So it’s not really a fair comparison.

    Yeah, the Puppy campaigns were pretty much from the start an open admission by the Puppies that their own works, and those which they like, could not get nominated for Hugos based on merit alone.

  8. @airboy:

    I think I would put very high on the list the large number of emailed threats to murder Electors pledged to Trump if they don’t vote for Clinton

    This is true. But, as has been observed, this is also one of those irregular verbs.
    I am expressing my democratic right to freedom of speech.
    You are acting unwisely.
    They are terrorists and criminals.

    The current President endured years of abuse and worse because some people appeared to believe that he was not born in America and/or a Muslim. The former Democratic candidate endured years of abuse and worse because some people appeared to believe that she was a murderer and/or massively corrupt.
    Because people behave badly. They behave particularly badly in crowds (which is why riots are so easy to start without good management) and social media firestorms are a crowd even if you can’t see them gathered.

    I won’t defend people who behave badly (perhaps because I am guilty of doing so myself sometimes.) But I will try to reserve my scorn for the people who encourage them to do so. They are the problem. That’s what needs to be fixed.
    To put it crudely: it’s the rabble-rousers, not the rabble.

  9. (3) BRUCE SCHNEIER

    This is so true. There is only a matter of time before hacker attacks will be used to empty whole office buildings, set fire to them, redirect or steal cars. Criminalitiy and blackmail will have so many new options.

  10. I’m glad my fridge is not a computer that keeps things cold.

    Neither is mine. But a computer that made things colder would make an excellent device for cooling the skin of a spaceship to the level of the cosmic background to disguise it. Somebody (perhaps a British writer) should use that as a plot point in a series of books.

  11. I am not doing politics today.

    Finally saw Arrival yesterday. Wonderful movie.

    Reading The Mystic Marriage. Also wonderful.

    Current audiobook is Between Two Thorns. At a minimum, very, very good.

    I have chosen not to remember Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I will not be reminded, no matter what you say.

  12. I have chosen not to remember Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I will not be reminded, no matter what you say.

    Yes, because including an anthropomorphic talking duck in a movie starring an anthropomorphic talking raccoon is just silly!

    They should bring in The High Evolutionary and have a whole flock of anthropomorphic talking animals.

  13. (5) has three Christopher Priest novels as classics! While I would probably add a few others (Fugue for a Darkening Island and Inverted World in particular) that’s mostly because he’s my favorite sci-fi author. Seeing him on the list makes me very happy and means I probably should read more of his blog.

  14. 5) I don’t know if I should be pleased with myself that I’ve read 25 of his list, or disappointed with myself that I’ve not read 5….

  15. (Hey, all. It’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here, so I mostly just wanted everyone to know I’m still alive, etc. Just been very distracted lately.)

  16. Darren Garrison : But a computer that made things colder would make an excellent device for cooling the skin of a spaceship to the level of the cosmic background to disguise it.

    Ooookay, I’m pretty sure that that flies directly in the face of the laws of thermodynamics, whereas any working computer is actually generating entropy and radiating heat into the wider universe.

  17. Oh my God that is one of my favourite Twilight Zone episodes. I remember having a fit of pure giddy delight when I saw it first.

  18. @Nigel: Always been one of my favorites. Even people who don’t remember anything about the show will often remember this when you describe it.

    @Lis: Personal choices regarding Howard are always that. I respect your choice.

    @David Brain: it’s the rabble-rousers, not the rabble. THIS. So well-put.

    I’m in the middle of Valente’s “Speak Easy” and wish I’d known about it in time for Hugo nominations last year. Hypnotizing.

  19. Hello Kyra (waves)

    13) Requires talent, which is in short supply in puppy farms.

    Finished “Her smoke rises up forever.” Makes Peter Watts look happy-clappy. Unrelentingly bleak and depressing, the human race is extinct/going extinct in most stories. But brilliantly written. Clearly written from a feminist viewpoint and of a time of great angst (nuclear war/climate change themes feature strongly) and some felt a little long, very glad I found the collection and read it though.

  20. “But I will try to reserve my scorn for the people who encourage them to do so. They are the problem. That’s what needs to be fixed.
    To put it crudely: it’s the rabble-rousers, not the rabble.”

    Yup. The people trotting out the uncomplimentary labels and sticking them on the forehead of anyone who doesn’t agree. It’s a tired tactic and one that gets in the way of actual communication.

  21. I’ll save some of that scorn for the so-called rabble, thank you. That is, for the willing marks who wanted to be conned, for whom the lies they were given tied in with what they were willing to believe, and who were willing to look the other way when their neighbors were dragged off. Rabble rousers don’t come out of nowhere with a message that we should suddenly hate all plumbers, or people with an R in their name. They are operating on assumptions that are already there, feeding and justifying them. They aren’t flipping hearts and minds. They’re telling them it’s okay to keep feeling what they feel, and to amplify it to actual harm to others, or indifference when that harm is practiced by someone on their ‘side.’ Good citizens, to paraphrase a term.

    Not innocent. Not.

  22. @Kip W – It’s been interesting to me that one of the biggest correlations with Trump supporters has been with the degree to which one embraces authoritarianism. (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533) I would be curious to match that up against the various Puppy parties.

    There’s so mucht at play here, actually. Fake news and heavily biased news, fears of all sorts of stuff, the dumbing down of the educational system starting at the grade school level, the addictive nature of self-righteousness, trolls & Gamergate, and on and on. I’m just appalled in so many ways, and the idea that for four years we’re going to be teaching children that sexual harassment, lying, and bullying are great ways to become President. Argh argh argh argh argh.

    I hadn’t known about the death threats to electoral voters. I would argue that while I know the Left has been organizing letter-writing campaigns to the electoral voters, they are considerably more polite in tone, and death threats should be a tactic that people don’t use. Of course, what happens nowadays is people argue that it’s Leftist provocateurs trying to stir up sentiment against the Trumpists. Every once in a great while it is, which is just freakin’ irritating. I’m waiting for there to be more and more levels to it, until we descend to Memoirs Found in a Bathtub type machinations.

  23. I hadn’t known about the death threats to electoral voters.

    Given how many Sanders supporters sent death threats to super delegates, Democratic Party officials, and even ordinary Clinton supporters, it’s no surprise to me that electors are getting the same. It’s awful and should be criminal.*

    *probably is, but rarely taken seriously

  24. Chris S:

    I also recently finished Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Some of my thoughts:

    What’s up with all the incest? Three of the stories have this mentioned. “The Screwfly Solution” gets a pass because of the horror when the main character realizes the direction his thoughts are going. “A Momentary Taste of Being” gets a label of highly questionable from me, though Aaron is portrayed as kind of a dick and his sexual obsession with his sister can be interpreted as plot-relevant. But in “On the Last Afternoon” I see no reason for the main character to think of his caughter as a “naked goddess” and view her lustfully. There’s a line about incest being discussed among the colony; I guess this is supposed to show that they’re struggling to survive? But this guy is totally “toot, toot, all aboard the incest train!” and it’s icky.

    Sexual objectification and violence like whoa. These stories are not happy fluffy reading. Several feature rape and/or murder. They’re not exactly explicit or exploitative, but they’re highly uncomfortable.

    Overall these stories are darkity dark dark dark. Humanity is on the decline or nearly wiped out in several, and even the ones where this is not the case have an extremely pessimistic tone. I recommend taking them one or two at a time, both for full emotional impact and for emotional well-being.

    (I started to get a little punchy near the end and laughed aloud at a twist tragic ending.)(Though I guess it’s not a twist considering it’s Tiptree.)

    This all sounds really negative. It’s really just a mention of the things that interfered with the sock-orbiting delight I found reading the collection. The vision and language in some of these stories is completely mindblowing.

  25. My own comments on that Tiptree collection (on LJ, a little while back now) included: “Tiptree had a unique talent for tragedy, and for empathy; she gets you under the skin of her characters, then makes you watch as it is slowly peeled off.”

  26. Oh and I just remembered, WorldCon 75 is not in US, so I CAN GIVE AWAY KINDEREGGS!!

    Happiness!! 😀

  27. Lurkertype, I thank for your kindness with respect to my personal choice on Howard.

    Kyra, good to see your pixels again.

    James Tiptree Jr.: Great writer, not happy reading. I do remember a story called “The Only Neat Thing To Do”… Very much Tiptree’s idea of neat. No incest, though.

  28. @Kyra: Hey, you! Wonderful to see you again.

    Re: death threats to electoral voters. I condemn any and all such activities; I only wish I could believe Trump supporters would be likely to condemn the death threats against Anita Sarkeesian and so many other feminists, and the primary focus on women of color online, but I am dubious about it because when women are the target, there’s a lot of denial and displacement going on at all levels.

    Tiptree: Yes too all of the above. I can only read a few of her stories in a row, and tend to have to take breaks between. I can only stand to read her work, and Charnas’ MOTHERLINES novels, at widely spaced periods because they are so brilliantly bleak.

    Tiptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” are two that can run over and over again in my brain without much prompting.

  29. @Cat Rambo: another factor that is highly correlated with support for Clinton over Trump is educational level (which does not always translate to high earnings, coffcoff humanities)–which may be why, as I pointed out bitterly the day after the election, that the wholesale destruction of public education over the past few decades has been such a cornerstone of the Republican governors and state legislatures.

  30. I just read about Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, which sounds similar to Priest’s The Affirmation (coincidentally, both were published in ’81). Are they similar and if so how? And what are people’s thoughts on Lanark? Why might one enjoy reading it (or not)?

  31. Novella rec: Found in my Facebook feed from Adam-Troy Castro, posted on Dropbox. “The Coward’s Option” was published in the March 2016 Analog. This is the latest Andrea Cort story, for those who have read her before. This story goes along a little better than average, until something halfway through bumps it to holy shit levels. Check it out.

  32. Bonnie McDaniel on November 27, 2016 at 5:56 pm said:
    Secondign that rec. (It’s one of the few they’ve published that I really remember being worth reading.)

  33. @Dawn Incognito: All writers have their personal wounds and obsessions, and Tiptree wore hers on her sleeve more clearly than some. I strongly recommend the biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon by Julie Phillips; it may help to answer some of your questions about the point of view behind her writing, but also it’s just an extremely well written book about an extremely complicated person.

  34. @Chip Hitchcock, this American got seven out of ten, but I admit several were educated guesses.

  35. The internet will continue to expand into our lives, probably paired with AI until we are outsourcing our memories, opinions, and emotions to vulnerable and diffuse systems we can barely comprehend. (breath) Okay, does anyone else think we are living pinball lives? Tech changes and we all go pinging off the bumpers. AI is set to take out white-collar jobs and we just keep bouncing. I’m no Luddite, but I can see the benefit of a society that lives deliberately, making decisions about malicious refrigerators and traitorous toilets before they turn on us.
    I know, wishful thinking. The only gatekeeper in society seems to be disaster, and by then its too late.

  36. @Chip Hitchcock – another USian. I only got 6 out of 10. The question which phrase is used almost exclusively in UK was funny to me, because the only one of those phrases that I have ever heard before was the one they said that I shouldn’t know. Scratching my head over that one.

  37. Three of the stories have this mentioned.

    “Out of the Everywhere” from the collection of the same name is another example. (And, pretty much because of this, the story’s an early example of one of her later flaws, where a bleak outlook is dropped onto a story not really constructed to bear it.)

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