(1) CHOP SHOP. Derrick Boden shares the secret of “The Revision Machete” on the Odyssey Workhops blog.
…It has become so helpful to me that I’ve permanently integrated it into my revision process, and every story I’ve written since has seen improvement as a result.
I like to call it the revision machete.
Here’s the scenario: you’ve squeezed every ounce of blood and grit and wit into producing a story packed with multidimensional characters, a gripping conflict, deeply extrapolated world-building, and heart-wrenching emotional resonance. You’ve tidied it up and sent it off to a critique group, only to discover that everyone has summarily missed the point. Rather than commenting on the story’s thematic impact, they seem to have overlooked the theme altogether. Instead of suggesting ways to make the ending more powerful, they wonder, aloud, What exactly are you trying to say? They tell you the story is too slow, too long. They tell you it didn’t win them over….
When a reader misses the point, it’s easy to write that reaction off as an impatient read. This is rarely the case. And when a reader says a story is too slow or too long, the tendency—for me, at least—is to think: I just need to cut some flab. Tighten it up. Break out the scalpel. Slice some adverbs, transplant some clauses, excise the slow parts.
The solution, sadly, is rarely this simple. Here’s why….
(2) STEP IN AND OUT OF TIME. Parade Magazine questions “Dick Van Dyke & Lin-Manuel Miranda on the Magic of Making Mary Poppins Returns”.
During a gray London afternoon last year, Lin-Manuel Miranda was in musical paradise: He was watching Dick Van Dyke, then 91, on the set of the new movie Mary Poppins Returns, singing and hoofing—on a desk!—with the energy of a man half his age.
“I was geeking out!” the Hamilton star says. As for Van Dyke? “Everyone on the set was surprised I could do it,” the iconic actor says. “And nobody was more surprised than I was!”
(3) TIRED AND EMOTIONAL. John Scalzi dries the tears of some writers who are sure their failure to make the NYT Bestseller list is unjustified: “Some Observations on Bestseller Lists, December 2018”.
* Another thing about the NYT lists these days is that in the last few years they’ve cut the number of slots on the list themselves; the lists used to go into the thirties (my first NYT bestseller ranking was #33 on the Mass Market Fiction list), and now they publish only the top fifteen in any category. There are fewer slots to go around, and thus it’s more difficult to hit the list at all. Again, that’s nothing about politics, and everything about the lists themselves becoming more selective.
* The NYT lists are targeted for complaint because they are the most famous bestseller lists, and also because, if you’re of a conservative bent, a bit of a bete noir, being that the NYT is all full of liberals and shit. But other publications track sales as well, and there does happen to be a correlation between the appearance of a book on the NYT list, and its appearance on other lists as well. It’s relatively rare for a book to show up on a Times list, especially these days in their shorter format, and not on another bestseller list somewhere else.
(4) SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN SFF DATABASE. On a Reddit thread someone was asking for Fantasy series low on violence toward women was pointed to a Google docs “Sexual violence in sff database” that has been set up. It has a Google page where people can submit information on books they’ve read — Submission form.
(5) ALIEN VISITORS TO THE FORMER SOVIET UNION. On This Day In Science Fiction History reviews a Russian movie — “’Attraction’ Might Make You Believe In Love … but Probably Not Aliens”.
Somehow, mankind always finds itself at odds with intelligent extraterrestrial life. If you believe the movies, then we’re doomed to never get along socially with whatever we inevitably find ‘out there.’
George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds (1953) showed Earthlings on-the-run from these Martian aggressors who eventually succumb to the smallest threat previously known to man in the finale. During the 1980’s, TV audiences were treated to a pair of miniseries and a spin-off series around V (aka Visitors), a Reptilian race intent upon seeing mankind used to fill the opening of their dietary requirements. Then, in 1996, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich re-invented the ‘alien invasion’ feature with their big screen Independence Day: aliens came to Earth and got their butts kicked in a rousing finale that brought all nations of the world together for the ultimate throwdown.
There have been other films – some big and some small – that have mined similar territory; but 2017’s Attraction has the unique advantage of exploring an alien encounter that doesn’t involve any other nation on Earth except the former Soviet Union. That alone was enough to pique my interest … but, sadly, what I found was much more spectacle than it was substance.
(6) THE COLLECTOR’S FRIEND. Moshe Feder pointed to this Indiegogo appeal — “Aura: Speeds & Simplifies ALL Your Scanning Needs” – saying, “An interesting scanner for bound books and magazines. Has a built-feature to renormalize curved pages. Portable! Doubles as a lamp! Reasonable price. This should have some obvious uses with old zines, pulps, and books.”
(7) JOIN THE NZ POLICE. The latest NZ Police recruiting campaign includes a shout-out to Wellington Paranormal (40 seconds in).
(8) WHO REVIEW. Camestros Felapton reviews the latest episode: “Doctor Who: It Takes You Away”.
A weird spooky episode, with a bit of a Sapphire & Steel style spooky British TV sci-fi mixed with a bit of a Neil Gaiman vibe. This one is a bit hard to review without spoilers, so click for more if you’ve seen it.
The crew are in Norway for no specific reason and spot a remote house by a lake. The exterior of the house is boarded up but there’s movement inside and possibly something monstrous outside…
(9) BERRY OBIT. Actor Ken Berry, best known for F-Troop and Mayberry RFD, died December 1. Variety notes his genre connections as well:
He also appeared in comedy films “Herbie Rides Again” and “The Cat From Outer Space” and made frequent guest appearances on shows including “The Golden Girls,” “Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island” and “CHiPs.”
Born in Moline, Ill., Berry started out as a singer and dancer. He served in the U.S. Army special services under Sergeant Leonard Nimoy, entertaining the troops and winning a slot on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”
Nimoy helped introduce him to studios after he left the Army, and soon Berry was under contract to Universal to appear in movie musicals.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
December 2, 1979 — Star Trek became a comic strip, giving new meaning to “see you in the funny papers.”
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]
- Born December 2, 1914 – Ray Walston, Actor and Comedian who is best known, of course, for playing the lead in My Favorite Martian from 1963 to 1966, alongside co-star Bill Bixby; he was given a cameo role in the 1999 reboot movie, which starred Christopher Lloyd in the titular role. Younger fans may know him for his role as Boothby, the mysterious gardener at Starfleet Academy, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a role which he reprised in Voyager. His many genre appearances included The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galaxy of Terror, Amazing Stories, Popeye, Friday the 13th: The Series, and Addams Family Reunion. In a sly callback to their earlier collaboration, he appeared in The Incredible Hulk (in which David Banner was played by Bill Bixby) as Jasper the Magician, in an episode called “My Favorite Magician”. He was given a Saturn Award for Lifetime Achievement. (Died 2001).
- Born December 2, 1937 – Brian Lumley, 81, Writer of Horror who came to distinction in the 1970s, both with his writing in the Cthulhu Mythos and by creating his own character Titus Crow. In the 1980s, he created the Necroscope series, which first centered on speaker-to-the-dead Harry Keogh. His short story “Necros” was adapted into an episode of the horror anthology series The Hunger. His works have received World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Stoker Award nominations; the short story “Fruiting Bodies” won a British Fantasy Award. Both the Horror Writers Association – for which he was a past president – and the World Fantasy Convention have honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Awards.
- Born December 2, 1952 – O.R. Melling (aka G.V. Whelan), 66, Writer from Ireland. One of her favorite authors is Alan Garner, whose The Owl Service is also a frequent read of mine. As for novels by her that I’d recommend, the Chronicles of Faerie series, consisting of The Hunter’s Moon, The Summer King, The Light-Bearer’s Daughter, and The Book of Dreams are quite excellent; the first won a Schwartz Award for Best YA-Middle Grade Book. For more adult fare, her People of the Great Journey: Would You Go if You Were Called? – featuring a fantasy writer who is invited to take part in a week-long retreat on a magical, remote Scottish island – I’d highly recommend.
- Born December 2, 1971 – Frank Cho, 47, Artist and Illustrator from South Korea who is best known as creator of the Liberty Meadows series, as well as work on Hulk, Mighty Avengers, and Shanna the She-Devil for Marvel Comics, and Jungle Girl for Dynamite Entertainment. His works have received Ignatz, Haxtur, Charles M. Schulz , and National Cartoonists Society’s Awards, as well as Eisner, Harvey, and Chesley Award nominations, and his documentary Creating Frank Cho’s World won an Emmy Award.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- How stars get their names (and whether they like them), as explained by Over the Hedge.
(13) THE JDA VERSION. Yesterday’s Scroll linked to Jim C. Hines’ post about Jon Del Arroz’ comments being taken down from a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” with Cat Rambo. Today JDA blogged his version of events — “Banned by r/fantasy” [Internet Archive link].
r/fantasy is censoring your favorite humble Hispanic author (me). This group, supposedly about books and fiction in the genre I write, is removing comments when I make them. I’ve violated no rules, I simply posted the following to this thread…
(14) FLYING SAUCER INVENTOR PROFILED. In “The Forgotten Legend of Silicon Valley’s Flying Saucer Man” on Bloomberg, Ashlee Vance profiles outsider artist Alexander Weygers, who created designs that looked like flying saucers during the 1920s and also in 1930 painted visions of San Francisco in 1985.
…Things got bad enough that Larry Fischer, the owner of a sculpture foundry, decided to auction off pieces he’d held on to for years to help make ends meet. Ahead of the auction, he invited Hunter to come see if there was anything he liked. He guided his friend through the gritty warehouse toward a collection of bronze sculptures he thought might be of particular interest.
He chose well. The first sculpture Hunter saw, Up With Life, was a foot tall and depicted an adult’s face morphing vertically into a hand cradling an infant. Fischer explained that the sculpture, made by an unknown artist named Alexander Weygers after World War II, represented humanity rising up to find hope in the darkest of times. Its beauty overwhelmed Hunter, leaving him giddy and a little dazed. “I freaking started crying,” he later said. As he surveyed the room and saw one magnificent work after another, Hunter knew he had to have them. “I bought the whole collection of 30 Weygers statues.”
The sculptures came with an incredible story. Weygers spent close to half a century as the valley’s hidden da Vinci, crafting his home over the years from reclaimed wood and junkyard scrap metal, using tools he made on the premises. In separate workshops he produced sculptures, highly stylized photos, wood carvings, and home finishings. He also wrote books on blacksmithing and toolmaking and shared his talents firsthand with youngsters willing to camp on the property. He taught them to make their own tools, sculpt, and embrace his minimalist, recycling-centric philosophy. And amazingly, Weygers was a world-class engineer who in the late 1920s designed a flying saucer, a machine he called the Discopter.
(15) THERE’S GOLD, OR SOMETHING, IN THEM THAR HILLS. While InSight’s been getting all the ink, Curiosity has been prospecting for something that might be valuable – to science, anyway: “Curiosity Rover Just Spotted This Super-Shiny Object on Mars” at Gizmodo.
Immediate suspicions are that the rock, dubbed Little Colonsay, is a meteorite, but NASA scientists won’t know for sure until Curiosity performs a chemical analysis. The rover’s ChemCam instrument, which consists of a camera, spectrograph, and laser, offers an on-the-spot chemistry lab.
That Curiosity may have stumbled upon a meteorite isn’t shocking. The rover has sniffed out several such objects over the course of its travels, including a huge metal meteorite in 2015 and a shiny nickel-iron meteorite the following year.
(16) NIGHTFLYERS. Vice reports Vice: “George R.R. Martin’s ‘Nightflyers’ Is an Imaginative, Brutal Gorefest”. Subhead: “‘Game of Thrones’ fans will feel right at home in Syfy’s bloody psychological horror show.”
Martin compared the dark, 10-episode first contact series to Alien in the New York Times. As in Thrones, the balance of power is practically a character in Nightflyers. Instead of a loose coalition of warring nation-states, the factions are a ragtag group of scientists and the residents of a colony ship called the Nightflyer enlisted to investigate a mysterious alien entity called “The Volcryn.” Earth is dying, and rugged researcher Dr. Karl D’Branin (Eoin Macken) thinks tapping into its powerful energy will save the planet.
Andrew Liptak interviewed the showrunner for The Verge: “Nightflyers’ showrunner explains why George R.R. Martin’s massive worlds are ideal for TV “.
Series showrunner Jeff Buhler explains that to bring the show to Syfy, the creative team had to make some changes to the original story. “One of the big changes from the novella that we tackled in making the TV series was to roll back the timeline that existed in the Thousand World universe.” Martin’s story is set centuries far in the future, after humanity has colonized the galaxy. Along the way, humanity made contact with numerous other aliens, and wound up nestled between two hostile alien factions. For the show, Buhler explained that they wanted to go back to the point where humanity first made contact with aliens.
(17) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman offers listeners the chance to join Jo Walton for a seafood lunch in Episode 83 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast:
Jo Walton
I don’t know what you were doing last week on Black Friday, but as for me, I was taking this year’s Chessiecon Guest of Honor Jo Walton out to lunch at the nearby Bluestone Restaurant. And, of course, recording the conversation so you’d be able to join us at the table!
Jo Walton won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004. Her novel Among Others won both the 2011 Nebula Award and the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and (according to those who keep track of such things) is one of only seven novels to have been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and World Fantasy Award.
Her novel Ha’penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award. Her novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award. Her incisive nonfiction is collected in What Makes This Book So Great and An Informal History of the Hugos. She’s the founder of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, something which we never quite got around to talking about, so if you want to know more about that holiday, well, Google is your friend. Her next book, Lent, a fantasy novel about Savonarola, will be published by Tor Books in May 2019.
We discussed how Harlan Ellison’s fandom-slamming essay “Xenogenesis” caused her to miss three conventions she would otherwise have attended, why Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside is really a book about menopause, the reason she wishes George Eliot had written science fiction, the ways in which during her younger days she was trying to write like Poul Anderson, her technique for getting unstuck when she’s lost in the middle of writing a novel, why she loathes the plotter vs. pantser dichotomy, how she developed her superstition that printing out manuscripts is bad luck, the complicated legacy of the John W. Campbell Award (which she won in 2002), how she managed to write her upcoming 116,000-word novel Lent in only 42 days, and much, much more.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Jennifer Hawthorne, Chip Hitchcock, Errolwi, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Liptak, Carl Slaughter, Moshe Feder, Scott Edelman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
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First!
(11) Ray Walston also portrayed the Devil in DAMN YANKEES, which was a huge inspiration to me when I got the part in a local production. I don’t mean I imitated him, but I was thrilled to be doing the same role. That and Poopdeck Pappy are the two things I think of first with him. Great performer! (And Altman’s POPEYE is one of my favorite comic adaptations to movie—a magnificent achievement, even with its myriad flaws. Feiffer words, Nilsson songs, and Robin Williams as an incredible special effect.)
2d click.
Sacrificial post. Also jda, man
Sigh. 2d attempt at 4th click.
Second fifth!
[click]
Did anyone see the twitter post that showed milo yannoputzopolus owes money to some familiar names? Like, that guy whose name means voice of god, and JDA, and a few others.
I … guess there is no honor among thieves. Milo was instructing his lawyer on the order in which to pay off his bills, and his sff buds are ‘low’.
Would love to know what this was all about.
11) I remember reading those Necroscope books and liked them. The vampires were really horrible kind of creatures, not the refined ones of old. It was an interesting mix of secret police, psi powers and the occult.
After Milo lost his job and lost his book contract, he started his own news media website. Various recurring characters in our shared universe wrote columns for said website (JDA, JCW, Vx, Tank Marmot) wrote columns for it…and apparently didn’t get paid.
Now, note there is only one source for these documents at the moment.
Go Read This Thread of Tweets
This shows the money owed by Milo yawhosis to various known folks we all love.
@Techgrrl1972: in fairness he seems to have largely arranged the priority of payment based on how in the shit he is with certain people/groups/companies rather than based on who he’s buddies with, which is probably the only sensible thing he’s ever done.
It’s likely his lawyer has advised him on an order of payment least likely to make his problems worse.
As for JDA, I roll my eyes.
As to Milo, his lawyers are dunning him for over $150,000. Seems the grift has run its course.
(13) jda got to jda.
(18) I wish I had been there. I really admire Walton’s work.
I had a thouhgt yesterday, seeing the trailer for Bumblebee (again). It would be eminently possible to cast Herbie (the somewhat communicative, self-driving VW Bug) as Transformer-adjacent. IN fact, it was only the third or fourth time I saw the Bumblebee trailer that I didn’t think |(initially) it was a trailer for a new Herbie remake.
(11) My Favorite Martian was a favorite of mine when I was about 5 and I always enjoyed seeing Walston turn up on Trek, etc.
“Various recurring characters in our shared universe”…
that is a disturbing bit of imagery and thought, Cam.
If you scroll, honey, gotta get the pixels right.
“You catch more pixels with scrolls than with honey, Filer.”
Cliff: If you scroll, honey, gotta get the pixels right.
Lol!
Meredith Moment: The Massacre of Mankind (Stephen Baxter’s sequel to Wells’ War of the Worlds) is $1.99. I haven’t read this one, but I did enjoy Baxter’s Time Ships, his sequel to Wells’ Time Machine.
(Having said which, what I enjoyed most about Time Ships was it’s universe-spanning (both in terms of time & space) scale, which I don’t think I’d expect to find in a War of the Worlds sequel.)
(13) “I’ve violated no rules”
Oh my god how often that appeared in the whiny modmails I got after banning someone from the sub-reddits I used to moderate.
You totally did, dude, and I have no interest in playing “show me the sub-clause”.
3) So does anybody who the conservative writer who believes that his poltical views kept him off the NYT bestseller list is? Cause I checked some of the usual suspects and found nothing, unless they’re complaining on Facebook, which I don’t use.
(6) These devices live and die by their software — how well do they flatten and uncurl pages? remove shadows? even out brightness? accuracy of OCR?
And there are a number of similar items already for sale on Amazon (search “book scanner”)
At least Milo has helped the market determine the worth of vd, tm, jda’s words of “wisdom”
3) Don’t really care which particular RWNJ is whining. The solution is simple – sell moar buks and dry your eyes with hundred dollar bills.
Elation and despair: I see a notification on Twitter that Elizabeth Willey’s Well-Favored Man trilogy is available in eBook format, then when I follow the link I learn it’s amazon.uk only. Sigh.
(13) Wow, what a persecution complex. It’s mystifying to me how people can so strenuously deny the actual facts and construct such an obviously fantastical narrative, but he seems to be really good at it. It certainly doesn’t inspire me to read any of his (other) fiction.
Recent reading: Iron and Magic, Ilona Andrews. This is a spin-off of the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series. I just read the last book of that series, Magic Triumphs, and plan to nominate it for Best Series, albeit more for the overall series than the impact of the final book. Magic Triumphs seemed a bit overstuffed and bloated when I read it, and even more so now after reading this lean, mean, fast-moving machine of a story. My two must-haves, characterization and world-building, are dealt with very well in Iron and Magic. Recommended. (x-posted to 2018 Recommended SFF thread)
Should I add this to Mount Tsundoku?
And given that he isn’t actually paying them, that would be somewhere approaching zero.
I feel like I have heard some of the Usual Suspects make the remark in passing — but I suspect it’s less a specific one conservative who can be easily cited and more a general idea in the air.
Like the way that the “Tor controls the Hugos” concept has been passed around. That is, a case where one could find a direct citation somewhere (eg, Peter Grant for the Tor stuff) but it might not be the only one (as you could probably also find reference to Tor stuff from VD, Hoyt, or Torgersen, and a variety of their commenters, and commenters on other conservative blogs, and conservative commenters on more general geek blogs, etc) such that pointing to a single source is not really showing the way the idea is perceived… or you can find several people who nod in understanding when you reference it.
Either way, you might have better luck asking Scalzi direct.
@rob_matic — I haven’t read them in many years, but I have fond (if only vague) memories.
Okay, having actually read more than the excerpt now, Scalzi *does* suggest one specific person is doing so right now (my guess would be on twitter somewhere. I sometimes red through the tweets and retweets of authors and witty people I like… I have rarely tried to go into the conservative sphere there, because conservatives trying to be pithy and brief 90% of the time means using a factually incorrect meme or a badly drawn frog). And you know what? I don’t care that much who is doing it now anyhow. Because it does smack of the ongoing grievance of the conservative writers that the liberals are keeping them down and their failures are not their own (even as, simultaneously, Scalzi is right and not being on a particular bestseller list is not actually a failure per se.)
@Bonnie McDaniel: Ilona Andrews
Am SUCH a fan! And Iron Magic rapidly became one of my favorites–it’s fascinating to see Hugh’s perspective, and I adore Elara. I’m interested in the way the the spin-off series is integrated in the main series — which is one of my favorite series. But IM is fantastically constructed — the split point of view perfectly done. And did I mention: ELARA! And the strength of interactions between and among the secondary characters both in Hugh’s people and Elara’s.
Definitely seconding your rec.
Thirding it. I got rather tired of the Kate Daniels arc, although I dutifully read the books as they came out. However, Iron Magic reminded me why I was initially so drawn to that series and once I started reading it, I didn’t stop untill I was done.
@1: “revision machete” is a lovely phrase; am I the only one getting the impression it’s more relevant for short work? ISTM a novel needs room for the reader to breathe in, which might mean allowing some detail that merely distracts in a short work.
@5: I’d love to hear from a Russian proponent of Attraction; I look at that review, think of some of the work I’ve bounced off, and wonder whether this is an issue of different cultures’ opinions about what makes a story.
@rob_matic: I was very impressed by Willey’s A Sorcerer and a Gentleman, the middle book in Willey’s ~triptych; less so with the other two, but they were still good.
@techgrrl1972 Saw that and thought about mentioning it here. You beat me to it!
@Joe H. Thanks for the heads up on the Baxter book — I’ve had my eye on that since I listened to the (Librivox of course) audio version of War of the Worlds a few months back. I had seen the movies various times (the 1950s one scared the hell out of me when I was 8 or 9ish) but never read the book — or anything by H.G. Wells. I like his prose style and plan to read more.
Let me recommend a discounted book myself: The Physician by Noah Gordon. Not SF/F – it’s a historical novel about an Englishman in the middle ages who wants to study medicine at the most advanced school in the world, in Persia. Unfortunately, the school is closed to Christians and only accepts Muslims and Jews, so he decides to “pass” as Jewish in order to study there. It’s one of those really immersive historical stories that makes you blink a few times when you drag yourself out and back to reality. I loved it, and passed it on to wife and other family members who also loved it. I have read a couple other books by the author but none comes close to this one for me. It’s on sale for $1.99 for Kindle today.
Meredith moment, both-sides-of-the-Atlantic edition: Orbit are having a sale on various of their new authors. US version. UK version.
@Mark — Thanks! I was just looking at the Tasha Suri Empire of Sand eBook yesterday, and am glad I didn’t pull the trigger …
Also, @cmm, I just grabbed The Physician as well.
And I picked up the Tasha Suri! Is that symbiosis? Or just great minds etc?
@Bonnie McDaniel @robinareid
I’ll definitely be nominating the Kate Daniels books for Best Series this year. I haven’t gotten to Iron Magic yet, but it’s on my list.
@Lenora Rose
Scalzi seems to be talking about a very specific author here. It’s not Larry Correia, at any rate he hasn’t said anything along those lines on Twitter and his blog recently.
@cmm
The Physician by Noah Gordon was a huge bestseller in Germany many years ago, but then Germans love big historical epics. There’s also a film adpatation that came out a few years ago.
Me three on Empire of Sand! And also Rosewater.
(My december resolution that I wasn’t allowed buy any more new novels until I’d tackled the magazine tbr went even worse than I’d expected)
Rosewater is definitely worth picking up… which suggests the others are of similar interests… which means…. **sigh** I wonder if there’s an academic paper to be written, on the strata of Mount TBR? Does fiction get compressed into new and strange forms when it’s been at the bottom for too long?
On a not entirely unrelated note, a whole lot of modern graphic novels (the whole of the Saga series, things like Rat Queens and The Wicked and the Divine) seem to be going for two or three quid per volume on Amazon UK just now. Of interest to some of us, I think (am downloading Monstress vol. 3 as I type.)
Me three on Rosewater and Empire of Sand, along with A Big Ship on the Edge of the Universe. As for the last book, I could not resist the title!
Hey folks, I haven’t been around much lately, partly because I’ve been obsessively following the news to the point that my reading time has been severely curtailed. Fortunately, some of the past month’s newsworthy happenings have somewhat un-clenched the obsession’s grip. This weekend I finally finished Acceptance, after a couple months of slowly working through it. Loved the series. I’d happily re-read it immediately but I want to get on to another stone on Mt. Tsundoku. Did a quick re-read of Brautigan’s So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away (TBH, not just because I love Brautigan, but mostly to increase my read count on Goodreads, as I’m way behind on this year’s goal), then moved on to oor Wombat’s Swordheart. Loving Swordheart. Anyone who’s read it – do you get any Kencyrath connections as you read? Not direct influences, necessarily, but parallels – the Wandering Hills, the protaganist’s sense of humor and method of interacting with the world… maybe that’s it. I keep getting hints of Kencyrath on the palate as I devour the book.
@Hampus Eckerman
A couple friends in high school loved that series, but for some reason I never got beyond the first couple chapters of the first book. I’ve thought about trying it again, but worry the suck fairy will have clouted it with its leaded wand.
(13) JDA is a 45 second locked groove track. Least interesting troll ever.
I read the first … some … Necrosope books back when they were first out and I was heavily into Lumley. I also think about revisiting them from time to time, but these days there are so many of them and they’re so long …
At least when I sit down and start rereading the entire Barsoom series, yes, it’s eleven books (although I should really stop at eight or nine), but they average less than two hours per.
For those discussing Iron Magic, note that it really ought to be read BEFORE Magic Triumphs, the closing book of the Kate Daniels arc.
There are specific incidents in the former that play heavily in the latter.
(3) I don’t know who Scalzi is referring to. I also don’t care, because I have endured decades of writers complaining about not making the NYT list, so yet another one is just a drop in the ocean.
However, the first piece of journalism I ever did, many years ago, was an article on how the NYT Bestseller lists were compiled. While the NYT was and still remains the most prestigious source of bestseller lists, their methods were so flawed back then that they were not the most accurate or reliable. (I am unaware of their methods today.)
The most accurate bestseller list at the time was USA Today. All bestseller lists are based on sales figures, but the difference lies in WHERE they’re getting their sales figures. The NYT list skewed in favor of drawing its figures from independent booksellers in urban areas, rather than from all bookstores, or from a cross section of book-selling outlets.
Which explains how, for example, a paperback romance novel back then could (and often did) sell twice as many copies as a “prestige” work of fiction, published in the same format, available for the same number of weeks, yet the “prestige” book would appear on the NYT list and the romance novel, outselling it 2-to-1, would not. Because most of the romance title’s sales occurred in outlets NOT included in the NYT’s survey of sales (ex. chain bookstores in shopping malls and wire-rack outlets like grocery stores).
RE The Physician, I recently went through my Kindle, title by title, to sort what I’ve read and can archive, what I forgot I bought and still want to read, and what i forgot I bought and now admit I will never read. I don’t even remember getting The Physician; I probably acquired it during a long-ago phase of compulsively downloading every FREE Kindle book on Amazon. It looks interesting, so I kept it in my e-reader, with plans to actually read it now that I’ve discovered it’s there.
RE Milo owing money to VD, I read about it in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/03/milo-yiannopoulos-more-than-2m-in-debt-australian-promoters-documents-show?
(13) JDA’s incessant whining is tiresome.
Oh wow, I remember the Necroscope books! Haven’t thought about those in years.
The only thing I remember from the first three or four was that there was a weird voyeuristic recurring theme—at some point in any given book, somebody was gonna witness other characters having sex. Also I guess there were vampires.