(1) THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MURDER. James Davis Nicoll assigned the “Young People Read Old SFF” panel a series of Hugo finalists to read. We’ve reached the end:
The final installment1 in Young People Read Old Hugo Finalists is Lois McMaster Bujold’s 1989The Mountains of Mourning. One of Bujold’s popular Miles Vorkosigan stories, Mountains is a murder mystery. Through Miles’ eyes, Bujold explores certain aspects of Barrayaran life generally kept off-stage thanks to the series’ focus on the aristocracy.
Mountains won the Best Novella Hugo, beating The Father of Stones by Lucius Shepard, A Touch of Lavender by Megan Lindholm, Time Out by Connie Willis, and Tiny Tango by Judith Moffett. I’ve not read the other finalists so I cannot compare them to the winner. I can say that Mountains was the first Bujold I read. It is the reason I have a shelf full of Bujold novels.
Fans liked it. I liked it. But did the Young People like it?…
Nicoll says the next project, debuting in 2024, is Young People Read Old Nebula Finalists.
(2) THEY LIVE! Galaxy is also being resurrected by the same company that has announced the relaunch of Worlds of IF. “Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951 (FIRST-EVER WEBZINE REISSUE + new bonus content!)” at Starship Sloane Publishing.
I am happy to announce that this magazine, like its sister publication, Worlds of IF, is also being revived and relaunched by Starship Sloane Publishing Company, Inc.
This might be a slow process, as we are wonderfully busy with the booming relaunch of Worlds of IF already, and I have no desire to make things overly frenetic. The idea is to methodically breathe new life into Galaxy. It seems only fitting that these two magazines should walk hand in hand once again. I will be keeping this celebrated magazine skinny, minimalist in style, and highly selective. The quality of work will speak for itself….
… I do this for the love of creativity and science fiction. But I also strive for simplicity. If something becomes a self-imposed, burdensome form of work, I reevaluate. I will not place stressful expectations on myself here. A strict publishing schedule? Very unlikely. But semiannually sounds about right, I suppose….
(3) GONE IN POINT SIX SECONDS. The MinnPost believes people should be concerned with “Protecting physical media in an age of streaming”.
It’s been repeated, echoed and understood ad nauseam that we live in the streaming era.
We get it. Something that streamers may not understand, however, is that nobody owns their digital media.
The $12.99 spent through Amazon Prime Video to purchase “Barbie” is not “your” copy of the film. A person only has access to it until Amazon decides it doesn’t want to support the licensing anymore. This concept is not new or nuanced, but it is lost. The constant shuffling of online media between major streaming conglomerates has resulted in physical media’s futility in the eyes of the general public. We indeed live in the streaming age, but it’s also an age where the cultural impact of art preservation is needed more than ever.
This sentiment is not a condemnation against people using services like Netflix and Spotify. The convenience factor of these platforms is undeniable. However, combing through records, DVDs and books at local businesses should become something other than ancient practice.
Art preservation is at the forefront of this streaming puzzle because of the cultural significance of owning physical media. Much like artifacts, art has been replaced, lost and not protected. Now, instead of encouraging ownership of your favorite titles, businesses that still champion the physical media medium are fighting an uphill battle.
With all the revenue that floods in through streaming platforms, physical media becomes a nuisance to the profit margins of online Fortune 500s.
So, when a seemingly neglected and inevitable problem like this presents itself, the starting point of where to spark the renaissance can get blurred. Viewers, listeners, patrons and readers should look to local shops that allow physical media literacy to return to the mainstream….
(4) REVIEWERS’ PROTEST. Courtney Tonokawa told review blog readers ”I’m Participating in the St. Martin’s Press Reviewer Boycott!” in November at Courtney Reads Romance.
This is a brief post throwing my support behind the ongoing St. Martin’s Press reviewer boycott, which started in late October (as far as I’m aware; if anyone has more conclusive timeline information, please let me know). It is in response to a few major issues, like the general favoritism of white reviewers for ARCs over reviewers of color and, more recently, the behavior of a marketing employee in response to recent escalation in violence between Israel and Palestine, with said employee spewing Islamophobic and queerphobic rhetoric on their socials. All receipts and a more thorough recap of events can be found at the “Readers for Accountability” website here, along with a list of the boycott demands, screenshots, graphics, and all other relevant information.
But until those demands are met, in short addressing the actions of their employee and their action plan for the future, I am joining my fellow reviewers in withholding reviews and any other promo for St. Martin’s Press, and invite anyone else interested to join.
As Courtney’s post says, the allegations are documented at the “Readers for Accountability” website. Their overview of the complaints follows:
The boycott of St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and other related imprints is a direct response to the publishers lack of accountability regarding one of their employees. This employee, who we will not name here, posted Islamophobic, Queerphobic, and anti-Palestinian content on their personal social media. This content was shared in Instagram stories and was brought to our attention by Palestinian activist and BookToker @vivafalastinleen. Leen noted that while she is on the St. Martin’s Press influencer list, she never seemed to receive any of the ARCs she requested. Additionally, Leen noticed that her white counterparts would receive ARCs regularly. She began to question if this was a symptom of the employee’s bigotry when she was sent screenshots of a marketing Islamophobic employee sharing racist, Islamophobic pink washing content to their stories.
Leen attempted to reach out to St. Martin’s Press when the employee’s posts came to light, but struggled to receive a response and was largely ignored. Other influencers and content creators reached out as well with similar results. However, Leen did eventually receive email from Brant Janeway. However, the response was dismissive and defensive with no action being taken to investigate.The boycott was officially enacted after ten days of radio silence from St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday books. During those ten days, content creators were emailing, DMing, commenting, and making videos to demand that St. Martin’s Press make a statement to no avail. As such, Leen created a video that provided other creators with context for the boycott. This video also included a large amount of screenshots and context into why those screenshots are so dangerous. Twitter likes were also included so as to provide evidence of how deep the employee’s bigotry runs. Demands were issued for St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books in hopes and readers will continue to boycott the publishers and related imprints until those demands are met.
(5) WHO IS NUMBER ONE? Kim Ju-sŏng tells Guardian readers “’I repeatedly failed to win any awards’: my doomed career as a North Korean novelist”.
…I believe the reason my writing received poor evaluations lay primarily in my choice of genre. All of my stories took place in Japan, or had zainichi as the main characters. In North Korea these were dismissed as “foreign works”, the catch-all term for anything about the wider world. Like anywhere, in North Korean literary circles there is a fair amount of specialisation, and each writer has his or her own style and character.
The most highly regarded genre, it goes without saying, is No 1 literature – that is, works about members of the ruling Kim family. This is not a genre that just anybody can write. In order of esteem, the genres of North Korean literature are:
1) No 1 works: stories about the achievements and personalities of the Kim family.
2) Anti-Japan partisan works AKA revolutionary works: stories set within the colonial-era independence movement.
3) War works: stories set during the Korean war.
4) Historical works: stories set during the Yi, Koguryo or Koryo dynasties.
5) Real-life works: stories about ordinary society from the postwar to the present.
6) South Korean works: stories set in South Korea.
7) Foreign works: stories set anywhere outside Korea.
I was involved with foreign works. Aside from No 1 works, writers had free choice of any genre, and we were also free to move around and experiment between genres. But only the most elite, accomplished writers were permitted to produce No 1 works….
(6) STRANGER THAN FICTION (BUT NOT FOR LONG). [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] People have seen me complain that I didn’t sign up to live in the cyberpunk dystopia we live in now, and thought I was exaggerating.
Nope.
Brian Krebs is probably the premier computer security journalist in the US. As I understand it, he had a column in the Washington Post, until the Post’s editors got freaked out by the number of what the police, and perhaps the FBI, considered “credible death threats”. My favorite story is from one of his investigations, the FBI followed the target, then suckered him to travel from eastern Europe to Guam, where he was arrested, extradited, and spent several years in US jails.
If you want to see the kind of thing he does… “Ten Years Later, New Clues in the Target Breach” at Krebs on Security.
Then tell me I’m exaggerating.
I’ve actually got a short story based on him that I’ve been trying to sell, but I guess it’s not “character-driven” enough (that I sincerely hope never happens, although he and his family have been swatted several times).
(7) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books presents episode 70 of the Simultaneous Times podcast. Stories featured in this episode:
“I Hope I Call You Back” by Tara Campbell – Music by Phog Masheeen – Read by Heather Morgan
“The Escape” by Jean-Paul L. Garnier – Music by Fall Precauxions – Read by the author
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 16, 1917 — Arthur C. Clarke. Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of one of my of all time favorite writers, however, this will be not be an all-inclusive look at him, but what I like for his films and writings. So let’s me get started now…
As regards short works, Tales from the White Hart is without doubt the stories I like above all others. Like Niven’s Draco Tavern stories or those of Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers, I adore stories told in a bar setting, and these are quite splendid.
Those are hardly his only great short stories. NyCon II would give him Hugo Award for “The Star” story which is wonderful, “The Nine Billion Names of God” got a well-deserved Retro Hugo at Noreascon 4, and Loncon 3 likewise honored “How We Went to Mars”. And I loved “A Meeting with Medusa” as well.
Which collection you pick up is your choice — The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke currently being published legitimately in ebook format by Open Road Media has somewhere around ninety stories in it and is an excellent choice. It has “The Nine Billion Names of God” in it, another story of his I should note I love.
Novels? Well let’s start with The Fountains of Paradise if only because I got to actually got to see the setting in Sri Lanka that it’s based off of. Every bookshop there had copies of it. And it certainly deserved the Hugo it got at Noreascon Two.
I also have on my reading list the Hugo-nominated A Fall of Moondust, one of the better lunar colonization novels ever written; and likewise The Sands of Mars is a worthy look at using and that planet.
Now we come to Rendezvous with Rama which won a Hugo at DisCon II. Damn that’s a fascinating novel. I re-read maybe a decade back and I’m please to say that the Suck Fairy broke her toe trying to tarnish its reputation.
So films. Well it in my mind’s eye, there is but one film only and that is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve seen it in cinema once, many times on a small screen. It’s wonderful. Yes, it got a Hugo at St. LouisCon.
That’s it for him. Have a good evening.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Tom Gauld remembers a school tradition.
- And Gauld finds an ability to predict the future can have bittersweet results.
(10) TUTTLE ROUNDUP. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” for the Guardian includes The Reformatory by Tananarive Due; The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow; Him by Geoff Ryman; and Audition by Pip Adam
(11) CURATED HORROR. Gabino Iglesias picked “The Best Horror Books of 2023” for the New York Times. The column begins:
There were a ton of amazing horror books published in 2023, and as a genre, horror delivered so much — from fresh takes on vampire stories to historical works that looked at racism and misogyny. That made selecting just 10 titles for this list a formidable task. So consider this a personal pantheon of favorites from 2023.
Some of the books on this list are easy reads and some will challenge you. Some are long and multilayered while others have a great sense of humor or unfurl at breakneck speed. Some adhere to a classic understanding of horror and others aim to redefine it. The important thing is that they are all outstanding.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is known for her ability to stylishly jump from genre to genre, and in SILVER NITRATE (Del Rey, 318 pp., $28), she goes full-blown horror. The book follows Montse, a sound editor navigating the macho culture of the film industry in Mexico City in the ’90s, and her best friend, Tristán, a soap opera star whose career is withering, as they help a horror director shoot a scene that’s really a ritual to break an awful curse. It’s a creepy, fast-paced tale filled with Nazis on the run and more. The novel is also Mexican to the core — it celebrates the country’s history, culture and films. This book pulls you in with its lovable, deeply flawed characters and gripping plot, and wows you with its eerie atmosphere and deft blend of historical fiction, horror and black magic….
(12) THE HOLE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science journal there is an interesting piece that may explain the dark matter conundrum. Could tiny, primordial black holes made during the Big Bang, hiding in stars account for the missing mass??? “Do tiny black holes from cosmic dawn hide within giant stars?”
“…Might itty-bitty black holes from the dawn of time be lurking in the hearts of giant stars? The idea is not so far-fetched “
(13) CHRISTMAS SF BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It’s that time of year again to remind folk seeking SF/F books for themselves or as Christmas presents for others that the SF2 Concatenation seasonal news page has forthcoming Science Fiction and forthcoming fantasy book listings from the major SF/F book imprints over here in Brit Cit. Back when last season’s news page was posted, these titles were all forthcoming but now, with the festive season fast approaching, most of these are now out. With just six shopping days to Christmas, there’s just time to order from your favourite genre bookshop. Happy Crimble…
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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(12) “Now we know how many black holes it takes to fill the Deneb star”
(1) Wait! That story can’t be old. 😉 (Yes, even if I read it in the … 1900s.)
(2) I hope this efforts works out, too.
(1) I went to the link, and Kris says “she’s not sure what Bujold is going for”. Um, exactly what you found – there are sometimes no good or simple answers, and the universe isn’t fair – that’s a human (or maybe mammalian) concept, and only we can do what we can to make it fair.
(2) Wonderful – hopefully, another venue that I might want to read, and actually sell stories to… and story-driven stories (please don’t talk about “plot-driven” stories, as though there’s a plot, and the characters are all moved around like puppets).
(3) Yep. Why I trust Amazon/Kindle like I trust any other megacorp – you’re only renting, not buying.
(6) As I told Mike, I would recommend that you go to Krebs’ blog – https://krebsonsecurity.com, and search for skimmers. You’ll be horrified at how your card might have the data stolen.
Birthday: Arthur C. Clarke… City and the Stars/Against the Fall of Night are one of my absolute top 10 books, ever. (And I was mind-boggled when Peter Heck, reviewing my first novel, 11,000 Years, commented that the way I dealt with religion and aliens was reminiscent of Clarke.)
But… now, I may be misremembering, because it’s a long, long time ago, but I thought he wrote a novel – this is in the fifties or very early sixties – about a teen who builds a rocket of match heads, is on a beach, lights it, and it explodes, knocking him out, and he winds up with amnesia, and what happens after. Can’t seem to find it.
I also remember a con in the eighties, I think it was, that had him as a guest… by phone. From Sri Lanka.
(12) I really hope they’re right on this one.
(12) For an alternative hypothesis on the nature of dark matter, see BAHFest London 2019 – Ed Thorne: Revamping Dark Sector Physics
mark: I recall being told that Dave Kyle got Arthur C. Clarke on the phone during a room party at L.A.con III (1996). Now I’m trying to remember the rest of the story.
The first science fiction story I ever read was one of Clarke’s novels – Islands in the Sky, a terrific sense of wonder YA novel. It’s more than a bit dated after all these decades but it’s still readable. My favorite Clarke story, which I consider the best science fiction short story ever written, is one he wrote in 1951: “The Sentinel”. “The Star” won a Hugo but this one is better. And it’s readable online:
http://future-lives.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/TheSentinel.pdf
Yes, if you only have it in electronic form, you’re renting, not buying.
Lis, Apple Books are yours. Once you download them, Apple cannot remove them. I can’t find it right now but somewhere there’s an article with Tim Cook about why this results in the ebooks they sell being higher priced as the publishers charge them more for Apple actually doing this.
@Cat Eldridge–Tor Books are sold DRM-free, meaning it’s trivial to protect them from deletion by the vendor. Also Baen.
Others, too, but as you’re aware, I am asleep right now, receiving cuddle & sleep therapy from Cider.
Lis, the entire Apple books system is firewalled so publishers cannot access anything. If they want to update a book as some do, the process requires they submit a new file to the unit at Apple that handle that and it gets put up. The reader is told the next time they open that book to read it that an updated version is available if they wish to download it but they don’t have to. (They’re told why there’s a new version,)
@Cat Eldridge–That’s something Apple is doing right. Excellent!
12) This is used as background fluff in Robert L. Forward’s Dragon’s Egg, from oh hell a long time ago now I cannot be that old.
In 1980, when Fritz Leiber was the Author GOH at OryCon, we arranged a three-way call between Leiber (Portland), Clarke (Sri Lanka) and Harlan Ellison (LA). They discussed the photos of Saturn that had just been released from the Voyager 1 probe. (Harlan has been at the JPL earlier in the day to see the photos.)
I have a copy of the audio recording from that call.
And what lies would you tell us, if we do ask Why? Im curious!
Gone in pixly seconds
Are Apple books DRM-free and I can use them on whatever device I want or am I still bound to Apple?
Found this list of best book covers of the year. Not much (if any) genre, but some covers are great:
https://lithub.com/the-138-best-book-covers-of-2023/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Arthur Clarke – nobody seems to have mentioned Childhood’s End, yet, so I will. I also enjoyed a lot of his pop-science essays, collected in things like Report on Planet Three. I can’t remember if my introduction to him came with Islands in the Sky or The Deep Range, but whichever one it was, it worked.
@John L.
Digitize it into an mp3 and DropBox it to fanac.org!
(3) Physical media aren’t a long-term solution to the preservation problem if they can’t be copied and played without limit. Eventually, our only copies of some works may be captures by cameras put in front of screens, and their quality will be uneven at best.
(12) Could tiny, primordial black holes made during the Big Bang, hiding in stars account for the missing mass???
No, they absolutely cannot. The first part of the article in Science is completely misleading about what the paper actually says.
What the authors are proposing is that, if dark matter is actually comprised of vast numbers of primordial black holes (not a new hypothesis), then some of these PBHs, if small enough, could become trapped in the cores of stars; if the mass of such a PBH is large enough (~ the mass of the asteroid Ceres), it will accrete efficiently enough to grow during the lifetime of the star, and will not only (if it gets to ~ Earth mass) serve as the star’s primary power source, but could in principle be detected by the gravitational oscillations it would produce in the star’s surface. The fraction of dark matter PBHs trapped in such stars would be completely negligible.
Interesting if completely speculative idea.
8) The White Hart stories are some of my favorites by Clarke, too.
Sonia asks Are Apple books DRM-free and I can use them on whatever device I want or am I still bound to Apple?
Yes to the first, but I’ve not a clue what the answer is to the latter as I’ve no idea how you’d export from to the Apple Books database. Someone here with a Mabbook will need to tell us if they’re treated as distinct files because on the iPad they’re not.
I’ll do that, once I can find the file. (I digitized it and cleaned it up last summer, but I’m not sure where I filed it on my computer.)
WRT #3. As I learned long ago in the Navy, if you don’t have physical control, you don’t have control.
Hard copy EVERYTHING you want to keep, preferably in a storage medium you can “read” without needing a specific set of devices.
What happened to all those giant reel-to-reel tapes that NASA used to use? Or other obsolete tech? Just as gone as a streaming service download.
I found a copy of the Leiber/Clarke/Ellison recording. Now I need to determine if this was the cleaned-up version, or the original digital file.
Happiness is a scrolled pixel.
It’s only the honest people that have to worry about DRM and things changing or disappearing out from underneath them.
Any Filers read Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library? I’m curious as to what y’all thought about it.
I read it, and liked it.
Reviewed it here
It depends on the publisher. And if a book has Apple’s DRM, you are really stuck. I’ll never buy ebooks from them.
@Cat Eldridge
I read Matt Haig’s “Midnight Library”.
I liked it. It’s got a strong vibe of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, with an equally strong vibe of this is the only life you’ve got so make the most of it, the best of it, and quit wasting your life on useless regrets.
The premise is interesting: Nora Seed has given up and attempts suicide.
She awakens in the Midnight Library and is given a chance to take an infinite variety of different paths, but all of them prove as flawed as her own, core life.
A nice touch is she meets another man also doing the same thing! (Can’t remember what he called it). Hugo is also trying out an infinite variety of lives but he doesn’t have a midnight library. He’s got a video store with an infinite number of VCR tapes to pop in and go.
I recommend it.
I’ll have a capsule review (with book covers) coming up on our Instagram feed at peschel_press for anyone who wants to see more.
A thing doesn’t have to be in physical media to be something you can own and keep – I have MP3s I have outright purchased, and often copied to multiple different machines. But it is easier with physical copies.
Part of the resurgence of vinyl is that, unlike all the CDs and DVDs and Blu-rays, you don’t need access to electronics or particular programs to read it. You need electricity for most of the record players that play at a consistent speed or for long enough, and electric speakers are more reliable than the phonograph trumpet, but the actual data reading still involves a mechanical component.
(I am not part of the vinyl resurgence, though I haven’t tossed my old vinyl, but I do recognize why THAT medium is popular).
@ Andrew, @Mark, @Jim, @PhilRM on tiny black holes trapped in stars possibly being dark matter…
I felt a little guilty passing this story on to Mike as I sensed it was a little egged up and I only read the primary research when I got home.
The reason I sensed this was that this idea does not explain why some galaxies are devoid of dark matter.
These galaxies come about having previously collided and passed through each other. The galaxies then strip each other of their dark matter — presumably leaving it in the space between the now parting galaxies. See the paper last year in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04665-6.pdf
I can’t see tiny black holes trapped in stars doing that.
Meanwhile PBS Space Time previously covered the notion of a multitude of tiny black holes in this 16 minute episode…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srVKjWn26AQ