Pixel Scroll 12/20/17 God Stalk Ye Merry Pixel Scrolls

(1) IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR. Somebody reading this needs a ThinkGeek Steampunk Styled Tesla Analog Watch.

Tesla came up with all sorts of inventions and has sort of become the poster scientist for awesomeness now. Sure he wasn’t perfect. Sure he was a bit crazy. But he was always on time for his appointments. (Ed. note: We made that up.) And now you can be, too, with the new Tesla Watch.

The Tesla Watch goes with your steampunk aesthetic. With a weathered-brass look on all the metal parts, this analog watch features a leather strap. The highlights of this design, however, are the two faux vacuum tubes with red LEDs inside that you can turn on and off with the flick of a switch. Everybody will want to ask you what time it is so they can see your watch. Just remember to follow the answer with, “… 1875.”

(2) ACADEMY MUSEUM. The opening of The Academy Museum in 2019 is more than a year away, however, they have a website to satisfy your curiosity about what’s coming:

The Academy Museum will be the world’s premier institution dedicated to the art and science of movies. Located on Wilshire and Fairfax in Los Angeles, the Museum, will be simultaneously immersive, experimental, educational, and entertaining. More than a museum, this dynamic film center will offer unparalleled experiences and insights into movies and moviemaking.

The Museum will have huge resources to draw its exhibits from:

The Academy’s unparalleled permanent collection contains more than 10 million photographs, 190,000 film and video assets, 80,000 screenplays, 50,000 posters, 20,000 production and costume design drawings, and 1,400 special collections.

Their Rick Baker page illustrates the range of their offerings, in photos, videos, and documents.

A record-holding winner of seven Academy Awards for Makeup out of eleven nominations, Rick Baker is a lifelong “monster kid” who won the first competitive Oscar awarded in that category for his innovative work on An American Werewolf in London (1981), one of several collaborations with director John Landis. His apprenticeship under one of the industry’s greatest makeup artists, Dick Smith (including working as his assistant on The Exorcist), prepared him for a career providing cutting-edge makeup effects in many genres ranging from comedy to science fiction to horror, with titles including Ed Wood (1994), The Nutty Professor (1996) and Men in Black (1998).

(3) ONE MAGAZINE, ONE YEAR. Standback has Storified his “Favorite Stories From F&SF Magazine, 2017”:

F&SF is a magazine that always fills me with joy, wonder, and feels. A quick rundown of my favorite stories of 2017.

(4) THE REASON FOR THE FIFTH SEASON. N.K. Jemisin’s Twitter stream is filled with holiday song mashups today.

(5) SURPRISES. John Scalzi did a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” today. You never know what you’re going to learn.

Q: Do you often set out to write a book to be a series? Or do some of them just insist that you write more in that universe?

SCALZI: Only once: The Collapsing Empire, which we knew was the first installment of a series. Everything else was written standalone, and became series in when they sold well and the publisher asked for more.

(6) NEW SPECULATIVE FICTION AWARDS. Darthmouth College’s Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College has created two new literary awards, the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction and the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, For A First Book. Each award comes with an honorarium of $5,000. The deadline for entry is December 31, 2017. Complete information about eligibility and submission guidelines is at the linked sites.

(7) TOYS, FIGURATIVE AND LITERAL. While Rian Johnson reasonably says — “You Have To Take The Toys Out Of The Box.” Rian Johnson Talks Creative Risks In “The Last Jedi” (at Fast Company), not as many people are doing that literally this year — “Star Wars ‘Last Jedi’ Toy Shipments Down Sharply From ‘Force Awakens'” (from The Hollywood Reporter.)

(8) WFC PROGRAMMING SURVEY. World Fantasy Con 2018 co-chair Bill Lawhorn announces they have put up a programming survey on their website — http://www.wfc2018.org/programsuggest.php

Lawhorn says, “You do not need to be a member to suggest ideas. There are no guarantees that any individual suggestion will be used.”

One of the things they’re looking for are items that carry out the WFC 2018 themes “Ports in a Storm” and “Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Frankenstein.”

(9) U.F.O. 6. Laura Resnick has a story in Unidentified Funny Objects 6 called “Lost & Found”. That story has a backstory.

I used to work part-time at a community newspaper. It should have been a great job. The hours, the location, the work, the community, and the rest of the staff were all pleasant, and the pay was okay.

Unfortunately, though, the boss (who was the editor, publisher, and owner of the paper) was an incredibly toxic person, which made working there miserable and stressful, despite all the positive attributes the place otherwise had….

Well, at one point, the boss wanted to print some “joke” stories in the newspaper. He presented staffers with a few real news stories that he wanted us to riff on. I selected one about NASA, wrote my story as directed, and turned it in. After reading it, the boss informed me that this story was not at all what he had wanted. In fact, it was what he had asked for, but now he was asking for something else. So I wrote another draft. He sent this one back to me with some notes. I revised the material in accordance with the notes and turned it in. Now he gave me all-new feedback, stuff he had not said on any previous iteration, and had me revise it again. I did so. And then he did the same thing again.

Next, he told me to start all over from scratch. He couldn’t articulate why, he just knew he wanted something else. I pointed out that I had already done 5 versions. He said I would probably have to do 10 or 12 versions before we were done….

The sad part, so to speak, was that the pieces he kept spiking were funny, and none of them ever saw the light of day.

So when Alex Shvartsman asked me to participate in UFO6, I decided to turn my ideas  for that article into a short story. The result is “Lost & Found,” in which some surprising visitors emerge from a UFO orbiting Earth.

And apparently someone thinks I can write humor, since Imagine A Book SF gave my story 5 stars and said, “So many different layers of humor. Wonderful.”

Yep, getting published is still the best revenge.

(10) HELP WANTED. Roger Silverstein is trying to identify a story —

Tim Pratt posted this on Facebook a little while back, he is hunting for a half-remembered fantasy story.  I actually remember reading this story, but I cannot remember the dang title.  This is bugging me almost as much as it bugs him.  Would you be willing to post this?  (I emailed Tim Pratt for permission to copy and paste and he said “Sure, feel free” He has posted this in various places, but never File 770.

I’ve been trying to track down a half-remembered story for the past 25 years or so. Maybe one of you will recognize it. Google always fails me, either because it’s an obscure story with no digital footprint, or because I’m misremembering salient details. I was reading some rooming house stories by Theodore Sturgeon today, and it reminded me.

The story is set in a boarding house, full of peculiar characters, many of whom have supernatural powers. There’s one man who travels the world and fixes tears in reality; I think he’s described as having “lightning in his hands.” There’s an old woman who sees angels, or maybe just one angel, I think named Toby. There’s a man with magical mechanical aptitude; I think he fixes up an old car, and takes a left turn, and the car disappears, taking him with it. There’s someone who can make things you desire appear, maybe — they make the angel the old woman sees visible to everyone, at one point; that’s one of the hazier details. I don’t remember the plot at all. I probably read it in an anthology or SF magazine that was available at the Wayne Country library in Goldsboro North Carolina in the early ’90s, but it could be from any year before that.

Ring any bells? It’s entirely possible I’m misremembering or even conflating. It was a long time ago, but the story made a big impression on my fledgling writer brain, and I’d love to find it again.

(11) SPEAR CARRIER. “Remember That Guy Who Speared a Drone At a Ren Faire?” (Reference is to this video.) They made a runestone of his feat.

(12) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Rudyard, Montana is the only populated place in the US where if you drill through the earth you wind up on land — the Kerguelan Island in the South Indian Ocean.

(13) TODAY IN HISTORY

The remarkable Ed Wynn makes his second and final appearance in The Twilight Zone as Sam Forstmann, a septuagenarian obsessed with maintaining the family grandfather clock. Sam is convinced that if the clock stops, he will die… a belief that baffles his family and the psychiatrist he visits (William Sargent).

  • December 20, 1974 — Walt Disney’s The Island At The Top Of The World debuted.
  • December 20, 1978The Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake opened.
  • December 20, 1985  — Enemy Mine was released

(14) COMICS SECTION.

  • If this link works, it will take you to Matthew Gallman’s incredible 360-degree cartoon spoofing The Last Jedi.
  • Mike Kennedy says, “You haven’t seen that? Quelle horror!” – two Game of Thrones jokes, one in Pearls Before Swine, the other in Foxtrot.
  • John King Tarpinian knew we wouldn’t want to miss this moderately horrible superhero-inspired pun — Brevity.

(15) MYTHBOOSTER. In the unlikely event somebody thinks Game of Thrones is science fiction rather than fantasy, Live Science’s Charles Q. Choi, in “Is the Ice Wall from ‘Game of Thrones’ Physically Possible?”, summarizes a paper by University of Alaska (Fairbanks) glaciologist Martin Truffer about whether “The Wall” in Game of Thrones could exist.  He notes that ice flows over time and the only way to preserve a giant ice wall is to keep it at -40 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the wall from cracking or deforming.

(16) FOR THE BIRDS. BBC covered the annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards:

An owl dangling precariously from a branch has scooped the overall prize of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

Out of the 3,500 entries, Tibor Kercz won the overall prize with his series of images showing an owl losing its footing and trying to claw its way back on to a branch.

Other entrants included a yawning dormouse, a photobombing sea turtle and a rather shocked seal.

(17) GORMENGHAST. John C. Wright griped about Gormenghast being published as fantasy, and prompted in response this terrific essay on the subject by Tom Simon, “Gormenghast and the Great Tradition”. (Hat tip to Niall McAuley.) At the end of his tour-de-force, Simon says –

In Britain, where genre labels count for less, the books found a permanent following years before anybody troubled to ask whether they were fantasies or not. In America, they were flung on the ash-heap by the strict rules of Modernism as practised by New York publishers, only to be rescued by Lin Carter. They are the very opposite of fairy tales; but they belong to Faërie nonetheless, for no less spacious realm will claim them. What the critics call ‘Realism’ is a small and besieged principality, entirely surrounded by the empire of Fantasy. On one side, the map says ‘Here Be Dragons’; the other side could plausibly be labelled ‘Gormenghast’. But both are provinces of the same boundless country.

That, my dear Mr. Wright, is why Titus Groan and Gormenghast count as fantasy.

(18) SMITHSONIAN CATS. SJW credentials for everything: “No Kitten Around: Museum Exhibit Celebrates ‘Divine Felines'”.

Independent, graceful, agile, adorable when they’re small — if cats are where it’s at for you, the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery of Asian Art has you covered. Their new exhibition is called Divine Felines, and it features images of cats both big and small from the land that honored them as holy: Egypt.

Ever feel fearful? Or brave? Protective? Aggressive? They had a cat for that in ancient Egypt….

(19) THE INSIDE GAME. The BBC asks — “Video games: How big is industry’s racial diversity problem?”.

When Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released this year, it gained a lot of attention – not because it is the latest instalment for a popular franchise, it stood out for another reason.

The game was set in India, had two lead women, and one of them, Nadine Ross, is a black South African.

Other big releases this year include Assassins Creed Origins, which is set in Egypt with an African protagonist, while Star Wars Battlefront II used the likeness and voice of Janina Gavankar, an actress with part-Indian heritage.

But speaking to BBC Asian Network, Jo Twist, chief executive for Ukie, the trading body for the UK’s games industry, said there was still a long way to go before video games could be truly representative of the gaming audience.

(20) ABOUT FINN. Steven Barnes weighs in on “’The Last Jedi’ (2017)” – beware spoilers. (I thought this one mild enough to excerpt.)

I’m also still not happy with the amount of “Jar Jar” DNA in Finn. It is noticeable on a couple of levels, although they did allow his character to expand and grow some. When the very first thing we see with him is him falling out of bed, the first “buffoon laugh” of the film, you have a hill to climb, and they didn’t quite climb it. Finn’s treatment was an “othering” I didn’t appreciate. And if you defend it, you are, frankly, the reason I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized Marvel was seeking a black director for T’Challa’s saga.

(21) SFWA’S NEXT MEMBER? Jon Del Arroz publicly applied for SFWA membership today.

To SFWA’s leadership: You can check with all these people listed to verify payment, they are all members of your club. If you try some funky stuff to disqualify me, 10,000+ people who read this blog see it, that’s 5x the amount of members you have. I know you’ll play fair.

I guess we’re all interested to see what happens with that. My sympathy to whoever has to make the decision. I’d say it matters less whether his act is better or worse than other SFWA members’ than if there’s even more damage he could do once he’s inside the tent.

Maybe this is the answer.

(22) DRINK UP. The Daily Beast’s Max Watman hasn’t been killed by doing it, and he sets out to convince others “Why You Should Be Drinking Month-Old Eggnog”.

My friends Ford and Lisa invited me to their “Nog Salon” this year, and I was thrilled to attend. For you see, Ford and Lisa are practitioners of the mysterious art of aging Eggnog. Yes, aging Eggnog is actually a thing. No, I don’t have a death wish. I was actually very excited to taste their mature Nog side by side with a fresh batch we were going to whip up together.

…But I’ve learned that aging Eggnog—contrary to anyone’s first gut instinct—actually can make it safer. To be clear, I’m not talking about the non-alcoholic cartons you buy in the supermarket but the boozy old-fashioned treat that’s made from scratch. In fact, it’s very important that your recipe contains a sufficient amount of liquor, generally recommended at around 20 percent, since the alcohol is key to killing bacteria.

(23) NOT THE GREATEST MOVIE. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney tries to convince people to stay home: “‘The Greatest Showman’: Film Review”.

The sawdust and sequins are laid on thick, the period flashbulbs pop and the champagne flows in The Greatest Showman, yet this ersatz portrait of American big-top tent impresario P.T. Barnum is all smoke and mirrors, no substance. It hammers pedestrian themes of family, friendship and inclusivity while neglecting the fundaments of character and story. First-time director Michael Gracey exposes his roots in commercials and music videos by shaping a movie musical whose references go no further back than Baz Luhrmann. And despite a cast of proven vocalists led with his customary gusto by Hugh Jackman, the interchangeably generic pop songs are so numbingly overproduced they all sound like they’re being performed off-camera.

(24) STARGATE TEASER. The Verge reports —

After releasing a pair of behind-the-scenes clips from Stargate: Origins, MGM has unveiled its first teaser for the upcoming digital-only show. While the franchise is known for its interstellar adventures, this prequel looks as though it’s remaining firmly grounded, and taking a bit of inspiration from the likes of Indiana Jones.

 

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, IanP, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Niall McAuley, Roger Silverstein, Daniel Dern, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mr Dalliard.]

101 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/20/17 God Stalk Ye Merry Pixel Scrolls

  1. (10) Seems to me I read a story like this one in Asimovs in the 1990s – the guy with mechanical aptitude fixed a radio, but the fixed radio then could talk (and in fact was a major character in the story), and the main character (of the story I remember) had the power of command (though she didn’t like to use it, since it rapidly became an addiction for her). If I remember the title, I’ll be back with it.

  2. (21) Well, he’s really into the veiled threats, isn’t he?

    “Nice writer’s association you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

    Oh, and further down in the comments he says this:

    “I need help getting momentum for Gravity Of The Game so it can get the Nebula and Hugo it deserves.”

    Really, kiddo? Well, it’s nice to see that your selfish egotistical motives are laid bare at least. Although with all the bridges you’ve burned, I doubt most Hugo voters would touch you with a ten-foot pole. I sure as heck am not.

  3. “so it can get the Nebula and Hugo it deserves”
    Um, that’s not at all how those are awarded. But I guess JDA has never bothered to find out that stuff, because he’s such a greatly-deserving author. /s
    (I can see his stuff ending up at the bottom of the voting list, frequently.)

  4. (17)
    Even if it puts me on the same side as Wright I have to admit that I have never thought of Gormenghast as fantasy or really understood how it ended up under the label except for being republished by Carter.

    And it is not because I dislike them, though I do, since I also do not agree with calling any of the non-fantastic fantasy stories fantasy. For example The Paladin’s by C.J. Cherryh ,one of my favorite novels by her, only reason for being listed as fantasy as far as I can tell is that it’s author had written real fantasy books before.

  5. (21) I read Gravity Of The Game because I was curious about the concept (pro sports franchise expansion), and it’s actually pretty good. Has a fairly interesting narrative premise, a likeable protagonist, a believable grounds for conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist, and a satisfying resolution.

    I know the author has made a few enemies, but we should still weigh each individual work on its own merits. And I can’t find anything objectionable about Gravity of the Game.

    Still weighing what I’ll nominate for the novella category, but it would be a completely reasonable work to nominate, and utterly unlike a lot of what the puppies nominated in the past.

  6. (17)
    Even if it puts me on the same side as Wright I have to admit that I have never thought of Gormenghast as fantasy or really understood how it ended up under the label except for being republished by Carter.

    I want to categorize it as fantasy because I love Gormenghast, and want it to belong to fandom 😀

  7. Ivan Bromke: And I can’t find anything objectionable about Gravity of the Game.

    I’ve read it, too. It’s an average, unchallenging story. Someone with a Nebula vote should be able to find fifty or a hundred stories that belong ahead of it in their consideration.

  8. (4) THE REASON FOR THE FIFTH SEASON. Hehehe, some scary holiday songs, as befits the “Broken Earth” books.

    (10) HELP WANTED. This sounds like the kind of story Tim Pratt, himself, would write! 😉

    (16) FOR THE BIRDS. Mostly cute as well as funny, though occasionally “ew.”

    (21) SFWA’S NEXT MEMBER? Either he qualifies or he doesn’t, or does SFWA reserve the right to reject unmitigated jerks? 😉 If they do, then they needn’t accept him; if they don’t, then his big production is super-ultra-mega-asinine. [ETA: It’s asinine either way, of course.]

    But clearly he has no respect for and doesn’t trust SFWA, so why the hell would he want to join?! Methinks he’s taking the old “I wouldn’t want to join a club that would have me” line a bit too seriously. 😛

    Anyone going to a club function with a bodycam, expecting “hijinx” (surely only his own), probably should not bother going. He’s just spoiling for a fight, and who wants that kind of jerk around? Le sigh. Also: How well respected the people who publish you are is not at all relevant to qualifying for membership, methinks.

    Bleah, why am I even commenting about this idiot.

    (24) STARGATE TEASER. Oh, I’d forgotten this was coming up! Uh, shoot, hopefully free or not part of some service I don’t subscribe to (I totally forget what their plans are for “digital-only”).

  9. Non-Meredith Moments (but book related!):

    #1 Banewreaker (The Sundering #1 of 2) by Jacqueline Carey is available as an audiobook! This duology is a sort of inversion of Tolkien(-esque) fantasy series; Tolkien if the “bad guys” weren’t so bad and the “good guys” were, uh, total a-holes, IIRC.

    I enjoyed it in print and liked what she did with the concept, but I’m not sure I’ll get the audiobook. I’m not wild about the sample – granted, it’s from a prologue infodump; I listened to a snippet from another book the narrator did and it just didn’t grab me. He’s pretty good, but I dunno. Still, I’m tempted because it’s been many years since I read it, and I like re-reading via audiobook. Anyway, FYI in case anyone’s interested.

    #2 Random info from one of “my” authors, in case anyone else here loved the “Kangaroo” books, too. Curtis C. Chen is working on a third “Kangaroo” book and just finished the first draft of a new standalone novel! Woo-hoo! I’d love another “Kangaroo” book, but I’d also like to see what else he does, so either of those would suit me fine! 😀

  10. Oh yeah, the Stargate Origins thing – “dedicated streaming service. (deep, heavy sigh) Something, something, all-access pass, something, expires in May (WTF?), and something the Origins thing is part of the exclusive content for the all-access pass. (Does that mean I can get it free after May?! I think I’m totally misreading something there.)

  11. (21) SFWA’S NEXT MEMBER?

    Given that his horrendously harassing behavior to numerous SFF authors, especially to SFWA’s President, has thus far been so egregious that I would have expected her to have a legal protection order on file against him at this point, I think SFWA could quite legitimately deny him membership on the same basis as they did with VD. I mean, talk about someone whose behavior and bad character would bring disrepute to the organization — he is unquestionably that.

  12. 5)
    I’ve had this little bit in my head for years, based on the arcade/computer game Defender:

    You beta not shout
    You beta not cry
    You beta not pout
    I’m telling you why
    Lander Claus is coming to town.

    He knows if you’re a human
    He knows if you’ve a mutant
    He knows if you’ve rescued by Defender
    So be human for human’s sake

    17) Once again, thanks for pointing us at that essay, Niall.

  13. *GIANT KERMIT FLAIL*

    Amazon US has the Andre Norton book Catseye on special today for $1.99. If you are a Norton fan don’t miss this!

    (It’s my favorite book of hers, and now I have it in two formats.)

  14. (17) I agree that Gormenghast is fantasy, but am very much put off by his description of China. It’s simply wrong to say it was unchanging. Perhaps Peake, like many Europeans of the time, felt so but that says more about Europeans and the rationalizations they still give for imperialism than it does about China. And while the Forbidden City was an inspiration for Gormenghast, I would be surprised if that’s the only thing Peake was satirizing. Even if it were, it wouldn’t explain why it connects to readers unfamiliar with the Forbidden City, why it still feels relevant.

  15. 17) Shao Ping, I think Gormenghast connecting with people who are only guessing what Peake is satirizing comes down to applicability. FromTolkien’s remarks on the Lord of the Rings concerning applicability vs. allegory:

    I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

    Likewise the satire in Gormenghast may have been written with the Forbidden City in mind, but it is written in a general enough way that it is applicable elsewhere, and readers will apply it differently depending on their own experience.

    I have an edition of Alice with illustrations by peake, which I like a lot (Google image search knows them well).

  16. Still haven’t read Gormenghast, it is buried somewhere within Mount Tsundoku. I shall have to send out an expedition. The Gormengast Expedition to the Filers Peaks.

  17. 21) Apparently JDA aspires to be the James O’Keefe of SF. I see a similar level of competence and likability between the two.

  18. Titus Groan and Gormenghast are definitely fantasy as far as I’m concerned – they’re explicitly set within a secondary world. I don’t see that any magic or strange creatures or other trappings are needed to qualify a book as “fantasy” – although, having said that, the Thing in Gormenghast, even though she’s (technically) completely mundane, still remains one of the best evocations of wild sylvan magic that I’ve ever read.

    I’m inclined to quirk a sceptical eyebrow at Simon’s dismissal of Peake’s characters, though. Yes, they are exaggerated grotesques, and many of them remain nothing more than that… the important characters, though, always manage to step outside the caricatures, to display real human characteristics beyond the superficial role imposed on them. (Which ties in, I think, with the story’s overall theme, about Titus’s goal to be himself, to live outside the expectations that his birthright imposes on him.) The absurd but genuine romance between Irma and Bellgrove is a case in point. As for characterizing Flay as “only servile”, this is a “dude, have you even read the book?” level error – he’s one of the most psychologically complicated characters in the story, first in terms of fitting his own personality, ambitions and antipathies around that core of absolute fidelity, and then in terms of his reaction when that fidelity is abruptly and permanently rejected.

    OK, OK, rant over. But there is still a lot more to Peake’s characters than you’d guess if you just read Simon’s essay.

  19. (12)

    Pedantic nitpickery ahead…

    Perhaps that should read “only populated place in the continental US”. Hawaii has a couple folks living there. The antipode is Botswana. Also, Barrow, Alaska has a couple folks living there. Antipodal landfall for that location being somewhere in northern Antartica.

    From one resource, it looks like Rudyard misses landfall. But Fox Crossing is a hit. Perhaps these online resources aren’t so great/accurate. Or perhaps the Rudyard Chamber of Commerce has been fudging their Wikipedia entry?

    @Dex

    That’s being more than a little unfair to Mr. O’Keefe. Although I had the same general thoughts on JDA’s aspirations when I read the quote.

    To quote Kendall…Bleah, why am I even commenting about this idiot.

    Regards,
    Dann

  20. Mike Glyer on December 20, 2017 at 10:21 pm said:
    Ivan Bromke: And I can’t find anything objectionable about Gravity of the Game.

    I’ve read it, too. It’s an average, unchallenging story. Someone with a Nebula vote should be able to find fifty or a hundred stories that belong ahead of it in their consideration.

    Fair enough. IMHO, there are at least 50 or 100 works in most categories worthy of consideration every year, and probably more.

    But if GotG ended up on a Hugo ballot in the Novella category, would you put it below ‘no award’?

  21. @Ivan Bromke: when GotG made the ballot via puppy solicitation, I wrote to the director and asked him to disavow the puppy support. Unsurprisingly, no response and no action.
    I therefore had to, very reluctantly, place my number one pick (and most favorite recent SF film) below No Award.

    Further, anyone who makes the statement that they are DESERVING of an award automatically disqualifies themselves so far as I’m concerned, and continues to do so as long as they publicly maintain that position.

  22. JJ on December 21, 2017 at 2:27 am said:

    I think SFWA could quite legitimately deny him membership on the same basis as they did with VD. I mean, talk about someone whose behavior and bad character would bring disrepute to the organization — he is unquestionably that.

    He’s been trying so hard to be the next VD, and getting rejected from SFWA is the next item on the checklist. If he’s accepted, I imagine we’ll see escalating feuds and nastiness until he gets himself thrown out. At which point he proclaims victory.

  23. @steve davidson

    I parse a statement indicating that a work “deserves an award’ differently from stating that a work “deserves serious consideration for an award”. You?

    Speaking of deserving consideration….Nicholas Eames “Kings of the Wyld” is a fun and imaginative romp. I plan on putting him on my Campbell Award nomination list as a result.

    Regards,
    Dann

  24. (21) Out of curiosity: what rights and benefits does an SFWA member have?

    I know it’s a marker of having published a certain amount of paid work; I know you get to vote on the Nebulas. Neither of those seem like something I’d be intent on barring JDA from.

    I don’t think “SFWA member” is anywhere near exclusive enough for it to be equated to “SFWA spokesman,” in the sense of “Oh no why is the SFWA affiliated with somebody saying that awful stuff.”

    I assume the more volatile aspects would be internal — SFWA roles, publications, elections, etc. But I don’t know those nearly at all, or how much influence a lone SFWA member has.

  25. The thing that comes to mind with SFWA membership was the incident where a notorious former member of SFWA used its twitter account to point at a racist and divisive post against another member.

  26. @9: I have a vague memory of Julius Schwartz being said to have done that to would-be comics scripters, not from overt toxicity but with the intent (a sort of covert toxicity?) of seeing how long they would work on a project they were hoping to be paid for. (I thought it was in Delany’s Sandman intro but don’t find it there — maybe another volume….)

    @23: “Interchangeable” songs? The Boston Globe review was much less merciful:

    Overproduced, possibly auto-tuned, hitting a carotid-popping emotional climax in the first 10 seconds and staying there, the tunes by the “La La Land” team of Justin Paul and Benj Pasek are sub-Andrew Lloyd Webber schlock made bearable only by the conviction of the cast.

    @JJ: IIRC, VD was punted, not denied; however, ISTM that JDA has already established himself as an all-around jackass, where VD had to build up to it. (It was a long buildup; he showed up in Making Light in ~2008.) I don’t envy SFWA the decision on whether to let him in, given the likelihood that they’ll have cause to toss him.

  27. Related to (3): It occurs to me that I’d really like to see end-of-year reviews of individual magazines. In contrast to individual stories, or issues — and, in contrast to end-of-the-year lists of recommended stories from all over.

    I feel like that’s a format that might give me more insight about a magazine as a whole. And, the moment it occurred to me, I’m also suddenly wondering why I haven’t seen anybody do it…

    That’s not quite what I’ve done here for F&SF. Maybe I should.
    I’m even more likely to write up my impressions of Asimov’s in 2017; that’s a magazine I specifically subscribed to in order to try it out and “get a sense of it,” and now, 5 issues later, I think I pretty much have.

    Does anybody know anywhere else that does year’s-end review of individual magazines?

  28. steve davidson on December 21, 2017 at 7:51 am said:

    @Ivan Bromke: when GotG made the ballot via puppy solicitation, I wrote to the director and asked him to disavow the puppy support. Unsurprisingly, no response and no action.
    I therefore had to, very reluctantly, place my number one pick (and most favorite recent SF film) below No Award.

    That’s a fair stance to take on Guardians of the Galaxy. But it’s not one I share.

    For me, “No Award” is a last resort that I only use when there are items on the short list that are completely undeserving of the award.

    So in 2015, I was happy to vote for Anne Sowards, Toni Weisskopf, Jim Minz and Sheila Gilbert for short-form editor. No matter how they got on the ballot, any of them would have been a completely reasonable choice. IIRC, Guardians was on my ballot above ‘No Award,’ but my favourite was Edge Of Tomorrow (Which was also the only movie whose director showed up at Worldcon that year for the awards ceremony 😀 )

  29. @Paul:

    The thing that comes to mind with SFWA membership was the incident where a notorious former member of SFWA used its twitter account to point at a racist and divisive post against another member.

    Yeah, that’s kind of what’s on my mind here.

    If that’s the “bar to clear” for kicking a member out…

    …it feels like a difficult one to re-capture.
    I’m kind of assuming most SFWA members don’t get to use the SFWA Twitter account, and the odds of giving JDA access in 2017 should be way, way worse than the previous case.

  30. I was subscribed to File770’s notifications. Then they went away. Maybe I did it. I think clicking “new posts” will get me back on. My mailbox is so lonely.

  31. Gormenghast: I don’t think the fact that fans like it is enough to make it fantasy, or else Patrick O’Brien and Dorothy L. Sayers would be fantasy writers. Fans are allowed to like other things as well, besides the central object of their fannish interest.

    Whether being in a secondary world makes it so: well, there’s a lot to be said for the view that ‘fantasy’ is the whole field of works set in worlds which are in large ways not our own, with ‘science fiction’ as a specific area within that. However, since nowadays ‘fantasy’ has taken on more specific connotations, I prefer to use ‘speculative’ for the whole thing, and fantasy for a subgroup. In which case: either Gormenghast isn’t fantasy, because it contains nothing magical or supernatural, so it just has to be put down as unclassifiable speculative; or, standing JCW’s argument on its head, it is fantasy because, at a sufficient level of abstraction, it is like other works of fantasy; its world is enough like those of Tolkien, Dunsany, Cabell, Mirrlees and who have you, despite all the obvious differences, that we are justified in putting them in the same box.

  32. re:JDA:

    I’m kind of mentally comparing to a fannish organization I’m in. Where it’s very, very clear how disruptive one bellicose member can be. It’s important for the organization to be inclusive and welcoming — but on the other hand, advance notice is given to members of all new membership applications, so existing members can object if there’s cause. And there are procedures for requesting the ejection of an existing member, which any member can trigger.

    What I kind of like about that is that if somebody’s being disruptive, there’s a clear recourse, and it’s not the call of one single administrator — feedback from the membership indicates what the membership wants as a body.

    But my membership is small and local and most of them interact very frequently. I have no idea what the parallels are in something like the SFWA.

  33. A story needs a good deal more than “can’t find anything objectionable” to be worth considering for either a Hugo or a Nebula.

    JDA’s “making some enemies” has included active harassment of officers of the group he claims he wants to join.

    His announcement of an intention to wear a bodycam into the SFWA suite is an open announcement to anyone not willfully dodging it that his only reason for joining SFWA is to make more trouble.

    So, fuck him. If there are no significant benefits to joining SFWA, then they are not harming him economically or professionally by not letting him join. No reason to let the James O’Keefe wannabe into what he minimizes as just “their club.”

    No, I am not overflowing with the milk of human kindness, or gullibility, today.

  34. Meredith Moment: Tyrant’s Throne, the fourth of Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats novels, is currently $2.99. Conveniently, I already had the first three …

  35. @Paul Weimer: “So be human for human’s sake” – A heartwarming sentiment. 😉

    @Ivan Bromke: Other valid paths to No Award than yours and @Steve Davidson’s include “publicly claim you want to tear down the Hugos? No Award!” or even “unmitigated a-hole to nice people all over SFF? No Award!” JDA seems to be aiming for the latter category, and if he ever made the ballot (hahahahahaha), well, let’s just say I wouldn’t wish to stand in his way. 😛

    @Lis Carey: Yeah, what you said! I disagree slightly regarding significant benefits (it’s a private club, not a government institution mandated by law to be open to all, else they couldn’t have kicked Beale out), but that’s a minor quibble.

  36. @Dann: depends
    If you say, about your own work, “it is deserving of a Hugo”, it is the same if you say, about your own work, “it deserves a Hugo”.

    The key is “who” is making the statement. The author? Inappropriate, egotistical, unrealistic and disqualifying. Someone else (not a close friend/minion put up to making the statement publicly on your behalf) – that’s an opinion.

    @Ivan Bromke: Having a group bloc vote something onto the ballot makes those works, regardless of quality, completely undeserving of the award. Doing so destroys the purpose of the award. It is the equivalent of paying off the judges.

    Considering the unprecedented use of No Award when shilling for votes was evident and public and an expression of a desire to DESTROY the awards and their validity, I would suggest that your approach was obviously outside the mainstream of Hugo voting Fandom.

    Those who take the time to join WSFS, participate in the voting process understand that the award is supposed to be based on individual participation in order to arrive at a selection of works from that year that reflect the collective hive mind of Fandom…and that their decisions about what to nominate are not supposed to be based on friendship, sales, popularity or promotion.

    The reasons behind this are well documented within fan history, but the logical consequences of not doing things that way are obvious: publishers have more dollars to devote to promotion than individual fans do. If promotion and slating were allowed, the awards would quickly turn into which publisher devotes more dollars to given works.

    If things went the other direction, allowing individuals to shill for votes, the awards become a popularity contest, based on which authors and artists devote the most time to gathering votes.

    The Hugo Awards are unique in having established social conventions and rules that are designed to avoid either circumstance.

    Not knowing these things and supporting balloted works that arrived there by either unacceptable method supports the erosion of the intended purpose of the awards.

  37. 21) Only idiots would let a stalker inside the organization of those he stalked. And JDA sure as hell is a stalker.

  38. What did Toni Weisskopf do worthy of a Hugo and how can anyone verify that she did it? My memory was that she was rather unclear about what exactly she (and Minz, for that matter) contributed to Baen’s products.

  39. Oh, fewmets.

    This is going to sound so dumb, but I’d skimmed and missed half the point of (21) — I caught the body camera, but not that it referred to the SFWA suite. *sigh*

    I’d been trying to figure out what new hell one can raise from inside the SFWA. But of course, John’s already got big plans.

    Depressing to see the baldness of “let’s make people I don’t like suffer.”

  40. If promotion and slating were allowed, the awards would quickly turn into which publisher devotes more dollars to given works.

    The very first Hugo Awards included encouragement to lobby for your favourite works: “There is still time to organize a solid bloc of votes …” (As per progress report #4 of the 1953 Worldcon.)

    Now, I voted against most of the puppy nominees, mostly on the grounds of quality. But if and when they get something worthwhile on the ballot, I gots no problems voting for it.

    (Personally, glad that E-Plurbus Hugo will mean a wider variety on the ballot. Probably will mean one SP nominee in most categories, but a lot of other stuff as well.)

    Those who take the time to join WSFS, participate in the voting process understand that the award is supposed to be based on individual participation in order to arrive at a selection of works from that year that reflect the collective hive mind of Fandom…and that their decisions about what to nominate are not supposed to be based on friendship, sales, popularity or promotion.

    They also shouldn’t be based on enmity. You shouldn’t nix a work if it gets nominated just because you don’t like the author as a person.

    When I vote on the Hugos (which I’ve done sporadically since 2000), I read all the nominated works, and make my votes based on what I enjoyed.

  41. Regarding body-cams at cons ….. will this be a new detail for cons to consider in regard to photography and video at cons?

    Here’s the current policy for Worldcon76 (aka ConJose 2):

    Photography or videography for the purpose of sale or publication to the press is expressly forbidden unless written permission has been obtained from Worldcon 76 in San Jose.

    Individuals may take pictures and videotapes for private viewing or sharing with friends. We ask our attendees to be courteous to those they wish to take pictures of, especially if you wish to place those pictures or video clips onto a personal Web page or similar Internet archive. In this case, ask your subjects for their explicit permission to do this.

    https://www.worldcon76.org/faq/code-of-conduct

    Can an organization that might host a party at a con have different rules?

  42. James Davis Nicoll on December 21, 2017 at 9:53 am said:
    What did Toni Weisskopf do worthy of a Hugo and how can anyone verify that she did it? My memory was that she was rather unclear about what exactly she (and Minz, for that matter) contributed to Baen’s products.

    George R. R. Martin said “Toni is a solid professional with a lot of friends in fandom and prodom as well, and she’s done a commendable job with Baen Books since succeeding the late Jim Baen.”

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