(1) SPOILERS SPOIL. You know this. “Spoiler alert: Story spoilers can hurt entertainment” at EurekAlert.
While many rabid fans may have scratched their heads when a 2011 study showed that spoilers could improve story enjoyment, a recent experiment, conducted by researchers Benjamin Johnson (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Judith Rosenbaum (Albany State University), shows that narrative spoilers can ruin a story. Their findings show that spoilers reduce people’s entertainment experiences.
“Our study is the first to show that people’s widespread beliefs about spoilers being harmful are actually well-founded and not a myth,” says Johnson. Furthermore, in a follow-up study, Johnson and Rosenbaum found that the effects of spoilers are actually linked to people’s personality traits. Johnson: “While the worry and anger expressed by many media users about ‘spoilers’ in online discussions or reviews is not completely unfounded, fans should examine themselves before they get worked up about an unexpected spoiler.”
(2) DOCTOR VISITS HOSPITAL. Radio Times has a heartwarming video — “Peter Capaldi surprises young Doctor Who fan in hospital, stays in character the whole time”.
“There’s a new Doctor on the ward and it’s me…”
https://twitter.com/BadWilf/status/674283494982492160
(3) SATURDAY SIGNING IN GLENDALE. Mystery and Imagination Bookshop‘s Christine Bell says “Call it a mini HORROR SLAM.” This Saturday at 2 p.m. in the store’s upstairs room, Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison will read a couple of stories, talk about writing, take questions, and sign books.
Oh, the wonderfulness of being famous literary smart guys. Could this be the start of a new Saturday afternoon tradition? It’s all free and it won’t hurt a bit. After that it’ll still be daylight, so…Porto’s is just across the street! I mean, really, what more could you ask for? See you there?
The address is Mystery and Imagination & Bookfellows Bookshops at 238 N. Brand Blvd.
(4) RETRO REVIEWS. Steve Davidson has the latest installment of “Scide Splitters: 1941 Retro Hugo Eligible Novelettes” posted at Amazing Stories, which focuses on humorous stories such as “Butyl and the Breather” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1940).
Although this story can be read as a stand-alone, it is a sequel to Sturgeon’s 1939 short, “Ether Breather,” and I do think it is more enjoyable if you read that one first.
Ted Hamilton, a writer and central character in the original story, still feels guilty that about telling the Ether Breather to stop messing up color television. It has been a year since the incident and the Breather has refused to respond to any attempts to contact it. Mr. Berbelot, perfume tycoon and television hobbyist, is still mad at Hamilton for exactly that incident and refuses to speak to him. But Hamilton has come up with an idea to get the Breather to respond and Berbelot reluctantly agrees to hear him out.
(5) BROOKS OBIT. Actor Martin E. Brooks died December 7 at the age of 90. Brooks played scientist Dr. Rudy Wells in two 1970s TV series, Six Million Dollar Man and its spinoff, The Bionic Woman.
His other genre work included episodes of The Wild Wild West (1967), Night Gallery (1971), Planet of the Apes (1974 – I’d managed to forget this was also a TV series), and Airwolf (1985).
He also was in the movies Colossus: The Forbin Project, T-Force, and TV’s Bionic Ever After?
While Brooks probably didn’t think he was ending his career at the time, IMDB shows his last role was symbolically the “Man thrown off the roof” in Street Gun (1996).
(6) A NOT-STUPID. Ethan Mills at Examined Worlds poses the philosophical question “Is Violence the Answer” in “Like Avatar, but Not Stupid: The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin”.
Okay, Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest is actually not that much like Avatar, but there are similarities. Some militaristic Terrans come to steal resources from a forest planet inhabited by small, furry humanoids called Athsheans. The Athsheans end up fighting the technologically superior but numerically inferior Terrans. There’s a Terran anthropologist who comes to almost understand the Athsheans (but he doesn’t quite go full Avatar). One of the villages of the furry guerrillas fighting an imperial power is called Endtor. Maybe George Lucas owes Le Guin some royalties, not just James Cameron. But as an American book published in 1972, the real background seems to be the war in Vietnam.
(7) BLOOM NOMINATED. Rachel Bloom is a Golden Globes nominee for her work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Ray Bradbury would be thrilled.
https://twitter.com/Racheldoesstuff/status/675047096957984768
(8) THE XANATOS QUESTION. Larry Correia put his spin on last night’s game show reference to Puppygate: “Sad Puppies: The Hugos Lost On Jeopardy”.
Some Puppy supporters didn’t like how it was phrased, with “scandal” having negative implications. Personally, I like it. Especially the part where they used “Rocked”. Damn right. Rocked you like a hurricane. The scandal was the part where the CHORFs ran a lying media smear campaign, and handed out wooden butt holes, while block voting No Award to keep out barbarian Wrongfans having Wrongfun.
(9) PUPPY TIME. And coincidentally, at Mad Genius Club Kate Paulk has declared “It’s Time”.
Because yes, it is time to start Sad Puppies 4 in Earnest. And Houston. And Philadelphia. And Back-o-Beyond. You get the idea.
Nominations will open in January 2016, and probably close in March (the closing date hasn’t been officially announced). I’m planning to have The List posted mid to late February (depending, as always, on just how feral my work schedule happens to be). Recommendations have been trickling in, but we need more. MOAR!
(10) WRIGHT IN. John C. Wright, commenting on Vox Day’s post about Jeopardy!, told the Dread Ilk he is prepared to make the sacrifice of being a multiple Hugo-nominee again in 2016.
“Does anybody know if Wright is willing to be a lightening rod again? “
Lightning rod for the sputtering sparks of CHORF energy? I get a bigger shock from petting the cat on a dry day after rubbing my stocking feet on the carpet. I was pleased in a dark and evil way to see the Morlocks burn their own cities rather than allow me be elected mayor. I would have been MORE pleased had he Hugo Awards kept even a modicum of decency and honesty, and actually received the awards I earned, but I cannot expect powerdrunk patheticos to give up on power. I did not expect schoolboy wooden anus jokes, however. That was pathetic. Numbers wise, I am not sure if we can sweep the nominations again, but I would like to see the Hugos either returned to the old worth, or destroyed utterly. Leaving them in the clammy webbed hands of Christ-hating America-hating, Science-hating, Literature-hating Morlocks is unimaginable to me.
(11) HAN TALKS CHEWIE DOWN. Must have missed this in November — Harrison Ford settled his feud with Chewbacca on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
(12) IN MEMORY YET GREEN. Chris Taylor analyzes “How Star Wars Conquered the Galaxy: The economic power of the greatest movie franchise ever” at Reason.com.
…Even before the December release of The Force Awakens, the Star Wars franchise pulled in an estimated $42 billion total in box office, DVD sales and rentals, video games, books, and related merchandise. And that’s just the amount flowing into officially sanctioned channels; the unofficial, unlicensed Star Wars economy has generated untold billions more.
Some $32 billion of that staggering revenue was derived from physical stuff rather than an audio-visual experience. Like Davy Crockett, the Star Wars universe made its biggest economic impact in the realm of merchandise—clothing, accessories, food and drink, housewares (Darth Vader toaster, anyone?), and especially toys. But unlike Walt Disney, George Lucas devised a way to pocket much of that money himself. That helped buy editorial freedom, which helped this obsessive creative make the rest of his movies how he saw fit, for good and ill, until Disney bought the rights to the franchise in 2012 for $4.06 billion. Lucas and Star Wars created a category of economic activity that previously did not exist, and in so doing forever changed the face of entertainment….
(13) FOUNTAIN OF LOOT. Here’s some of that Star Wars merchandise – a series of fountain pens that sell for $575 apiece. Jon Bemis tells why he’s a happy customer in his review “Why I Bought the Cross Townsend Star Wars Limited Edition Fountain Pens” at The Pen Addict.
…While it looks like a standard brass pen body from a distance, close up the C-3PO is fluent in over six million forms of beautiful. It is gold (of course) and covered with accent lines recalling the curves and circles etched on Threepio himself. The clip is centered in a ring of concentric circles like those in the center of the protocol droids chest, and the caps finial looks like his eye….
C3PO style Cross pen.
(14) JUST PLAIN BILL. The Captain of the Enterprise is still out there hustling every day, too. Vulture has a new interview with William Shatner, who is hard at work marketing Priceline. He talks about his new book project and tells a Nimoy story he says he’s never told before.
What’s a piece of science you’ve come across lately that was particularly interesting to you?
I’m writing a novel with a writer named Jeff Rovin that will be out next year called Zero-G, and I suggested we use something in it that I had read about. I read that microbial life dries up and seems to be dead and then, with the addition of water thousands of years later, can come back to life. That’s astonishing. Thousands of years! These are scientific concepts so mysterious that they beggar our imagination. I saw a photograph yesterday of a black hole absorbing a star, and it burped energy back out! A black hole cosmic-burped dust out the other way! What is more intriguing than that? Perhaps a good pasta.
(15) SMACK BACK. For those who are fed up with Kirk there’s an alarming site — Slapkirk.com – that lets users control an animation of Kirk slapping himself, and with a kind of slap-o-meter that tracks how many slaps have been delivered, at what rate per second. Those who get it going fast enough are rewarded with the “Red Alert” sound effect…
(16) MUTANT TRAILER. A trailer is out for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, coming to theaters June 3, 2016.
(17) LET KYRA EXPLAIN. Kyra’s comment makes the taxonomy of fantasy fiction as clear as is the summer sun...
Look, it’s very simple —
Urban Fantasy: Fantasy set in a city
High Fantasy: Fantasy set in the mountains
Low Fantasy: Fantasy set in the Netherlands
Fantasy of Manners: Fantasy set in manors
Epic Fantasy: Fantasy in the form of a lengthy narrative poem
Fairy Tale Fantasy: Fantasy about fairies with tails
Science Fantasy: Science fiction but there’s an annoying pedant in the seat behind you saying that it’s fantasy because FTL travel isn’t real plus the Force, what about that
Sword and Sorcery: The party must include a magic user, a cleric, a fighter, and a thief
Weird Fiction: Like, the characters know they’re in a book and some of the text is upside down and stuff like that
Steampunk: Everyone has cybernetic enhancements but get this, they’re CLOCKWORK
Dieselpunk: Like Steampunk, but the cybernetic enhancements require diesel fuel
Mythpunk: Like Steampunk, but the cybernetic enhancements have tiny gods in them
Grimdark: When the superheroes change their costumes so that now they’re in dark colors, weird
Magic Realism: Like when your aunt actually believes that if you put the knife under the crystal pyramid, it will totally get sharper
Paranormal Romance: Fantasy with naughty bits
Young Adult Fantasy: One of the above genres marketed to a group that will actually buy itSee? Easy.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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I liked “Luna: New Moon” but it suffers greatly from being half a book. The whole thing may end up terrific, but we won’t know till the sequel comes out. The society-building is pretty swell. It does show “let the free market decide” at its logical outcome.
“Aurora” was okay, but not Stan’s best.
I am not bothering with “Seveneves” since so many people with opinions I respect have panned it so badly. Also I hated “Reamde”, so there’s that.
I liked “Uprooted” a lot, but it struck me as YA. If I was voting for a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast”, I’d go for our own Wombat’s “Bryony and Roses”.
Stevie: all two commandments
Jesus: 80% more efficient than Dad.
Stevie: all two commandments
lurkertype: Jesus: 80% more efficient than Dad.
Better at editing / summarizing.
But then, he was working for an audience that was already supposed to know the long-form version.
(1) Spoilers Spoil
I don’t usually get upset about spoilers, but I do try and avoid them if I can, especially for video games (the exception being boss fight tactics for group content). I like having that wow moment during the experience instead of before it. I’ve even started avoiding a lot of trailers because some people seem to have taken it as a challenge to condense the entire plot, all the best jokes and the most awesome set pieces into 30 seconds. That being said, I will sometimes seek spoilers either for self protection (if I have reason to believe that something may contain content that I will find triggery), or because I’m not sure whether I want to watch or read something and I’m looking for something about it to really draw me in before I spend lots of spoons on it. Case by case basis. 🙂
None of that has much of anything to do with wanting it to be easier to follow the plot, though, nor would I describe myself as a “low cognition” consumer – people I watch stuff with are more likely to complain that I won’t just switch my brain off. 🙂
(8) The Xanatos Question
Wow, is everyone who voted No Award a CHORF now? That acronym gets broader every time they use it.
(9) Puppy Time
Looks like I need to step up the pace on collating.
(10) Wright In
*sigh* Obligatory awkward declaration: Hi! I’m a Christian. Also anti-slate. Since no Puppy has ever pointed to where Jesus said “and anyone who votes No Award also hates me” I’m really not clear on why this keeps coming up. Pretty tired of it. For the record, I’m also pretty fond of both science and literature, and I have no particular reason to hate America, but I also want to point out that the Hugo’s are given out by Worldcon. Not Americacon.
(13) Fountain of Loot
I am not a pen (or pencil) person, but I always enjoy reading about them. Glimpses into nerdery for which I have little frame of reference are always fascinating, and really, those pens are pretty shiny yet understated.
(14) Just Plain Bill
Heh. Nice interview, but I’m not sure the interviewer was entirely keeping up. 🙂
(15) Smack Back
Well that’s… Weird.
(16) Mutant Trailer
I would sincerely appreciate it if they would stop making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action films until they can make the turtles look less incredibly creepy.
—
I’m currently rereading Temeraire as I got back my PIP decision and it was Not Good News and I’m in dire need of some dragony comfort reading. After that I’ll be finishing off Sorcerer and the Crown, I hope. Still a bit flopsy and spoonless (hence the recent radio silence) and finding it hard to concentrate on new books.
Re: short fiction categories, I find that they feel different to me – a short story doesn’t feel like a novelette doesn’t feel like a novella. Mind you, the lines themselves are somewhat arbitrary, but I find that the general positions of the categories feel distinct to me. I’m more inclined to split novel (Best Novel and Best Short Novel, perhaps?) than fiddle with the other short fiction categories much. Even more so than that, Kevin Standlee’s suggested changes to the Editor and Magazine categories are, in my opinion, a thoroughly good idea and I wish I could be there to vote for them.
—
@Greg Hullender
I’m not buying things at the moment so I can’t check that aspect but RSR’s instructions look quite simple and straightforward. Good idea, too. It might be worth making it easier to find, though? I might be missing something very obvious, but there didn’t seem to be a link near the top of the page either in the header or in the How to Use RSR section of sidebar.
@Nigel
The subject itself isn’t funny at all but
Made me giggle. 🙂
@McJulie
I’m still waiting for that, too.
@Camestros
Having been idling around in the British Empire bits of Wikipedia of late, any suggestion of English=Genetic Master Race fills me with horror. We’ve had far too much of that sort of thinking in our history already. Some people seemed to take it as a responsibility (If we as a people are Right, it is our duty to ensure that our actions are the Right ones) but the people who took it as a right (If we as a people are Right, then our actions are always Right), those people were bloody dangerous.
@Mike Glyer
… Huh. I hadn’t looked at it quite like that. Interesting. I suppose the challenge then for the Sads is to find a strong enough ‘new’ message sufficiently distinct from that of the Rabids, assuming of course that they want to be distinct, which is admittedly quite a large assumption. Certainly haven’t seen many signs of distancing so far.
First!
Or at leat 1/5ths!
Which just goes to show that my web skills are useless…
Weird. Suddenly I cannot see comments on this entry.
OK, came back once I commented.
@James Davis Nicoll
I’m having the same problem. If I force it to display a specific page of comments, it looks normal, but if it’s on the generic comments page nothing is showing up. No idea why, never seen that happen before and it was working fine earlier.
James Davis Nicoll: Weird. Suddenly I cannot see comments on this entry.
I’ve had that happen a couple of times in the last couple of days, including just now. I think it may be a result of having (#ofcomments DIV 50)+1 comments, with one comment in moderation.
Hi Meredith
Good to say hallo, though not for long; I really do need to get serious sleep. Fatigue poisons are not my friends, as they say…
Luna may only only half the story but A: as you know, you have to read the book you have, not the book you might want or wish to have at a later time, and B: I don’t care what happens to any of the aristos.
@James Nicoll,
It’s happened to me too, the missing comments. I thought it was a quirk of when comments reach increments of 50, but now I’m not so sure.
I missed two pages of comments day before yesterday, and had to go back later with much to and fro. Not sure what triggers it.
@ Camestros Felapton
Hadn’t seen that one specifically, but yes: similar types of data. (In fact, I used some methodological studies of word distribution as background for my onomastics analysis.)
I just finished reading “Code Name Verity”, as recommended by someone here I’ve clean forgotten (sorry), and it’s really really good. Not Hugo eligible, of course, but I took a break from Hugo reading for it, and it’s remarkable. In some ways it’s the other side of the nonfiction memoir “Between Silk and Cyanide”.
Out of context that sounds very SF.
“The onomastic analysis of the planet’s surface is complete Captain.”
@vasha: thanks for the Sunny Moraine link; I thought “Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams” was fantastic, and look forward to reading more of their work.
Those of you interested in the math of the Puppy Hugo votes might want to look at OhSweetMrMath’s posts which have just come out of moderation on the previous page: https://file770.com/?p=26524&cpage=3#comment-376070
I can’t say I understand it exactly (certainly not well enough to judge whether it holds together or not), but it does look interesting.
Further MST3K update: Having just passed $6.3 million in combined funds by the end of the Kickstarter window, they’ve thrown in another episode for a total of 14. Woohoo!
Cally
There are times when one follows advice. Or not as the case may be; it’s amazing how simple the pressing the right button is. Unfortunately it’s also simple how to press the wrong button is…
Last week, Linda Nagata did a blog post on her award eligible work for 2015. It included a story I’d read earlier in the year that reached past my bar for award-worthy. However, at the time I had no intention of nominating anything anywhere, so it got filed in my head as “great story” and more or less forgotten in the rush of hundreds of thousands of other words, loved and not. The same thing just happened with “eyes I dare not meet in dreams,” which I first read in June, when Natalie Luhrs linked to it on her blog.
I’m guessing there are at least a dozen similar cases lost in the fog that is the first eight months of the year and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. Best of lists like the two from Buzzfeed aren’t going to do it for me, because my tastes often don’t align well enough with the popular vote for those lists to be anything other than discouraging.
My TBR pile is already so dismayingly large that I’m considering a three month moratorium on acquiring new books, but even with that I’m not certain I can recreate and reread months of 2015 reading. Are the rest of you just way better organized about keeping reading lists or do you have strategies in place to make sure you don’t favor more recent work over things read last January?
Other than that, Michael Bay seems to have ruined Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles even more this time.
RedWombat:
I am reminded of something I read many years ago, in which someone started by pointing out that it would be unethical to curse people, or pray that anyone come to any harm. However, they added, there was nothing wrong with praying for people–including their enemies–to become more compassionate or generous, less judgmental, slower to anger….
On the other hand, that leads back to the idea that qualities like loyalty and persistence may be a virtue, but people can be loyal to horrible people or governments, or persist in harmful courses of action.
Cally: I just finished reading Code Name Verity, as recommended by someone here I’ve clean forgotten (sorry), and it’s really really good. Not Hugo eligible, of course, but I took a break from Hugo reading for it, and it’s remarkable.
I read this last year, and I quite enjoyed it. It’s so difficult to grasp what it must have been like living in such a different world from the one most of us know that it almost does read like SFF.
Cally: Those of you interested in the math of the Puppy Hugo votes might want to look at OhSweetMrMath’s posts which have just come out of moderation on the previous page.
OhSweetMrMath presents a couple of statistical conclusions, but I wish they’d then proceeded to apply them to the results to explain the implications of those conclusions.
It went into moderation purgatory 🙂
Thanks for the comment – it made an excellent extension to the post.
Cheryl S. Last week, Linda Nagata did a blog post on her award eligible work for 2015
I really enjoyed The Red trilogy, so I looked it up. That list is here. Thanks for calling that to my attention.
Cheryl S. Are the rest of you just way better organized about keeping reading lists or do you have strategies in place to make sure you don’t favor more recent work over things read last January?
I’m putting anything I like (which isn’t already there) out on the Hugo Nominations 2015 Wikia. (There’s also a link at that site to Renay’s Hugo 2015 Eligible Works list.) I’ll be going back through those lists as nomination time approaches, to refine my longlist and shortlist.
@Vicki Rosenzweig —
However, they added, there was nothing wrong with praying for people–including their enemies–to become more compassionate or generous, less judgmental, slower to anger….
There is always the option of wishing people conscious self-knowledge. The really thorough and complete accurate kind that Robert Burns wrote of.
Me: “9, 22, 38, 44, 7.62, 45, 223, and so on.”
@Steve Wright: “That is the weirdest Fibonacci sequence I ever saw in my life….”
That’s because it’s not a sequence, Fibonacci or otherwise. It’s an assortment of calibers. 9mm, .22, .38, .44, 7.62, .45, .223…
@Rev Bob You forgot .308 can’t get through Fallout: New Vegas without lots of .308, it works in both the Hunting Rifle and the Sniper Rifle.
@Iphinome:
I didn’t forget .308, no more than I forgot .357 – they’re covered under “and so on.” It’s an illustrative list, not an exhaustive one.
@Cheryl S.: I use a book database (Readerware) since we own so! many! books! This only helps with Best Novel, but it’s a start (and some of the books are actually novellas, methinks). ETA: One useful thing here is sorting by date added to the database, and copyright or publication date (not always accurate for some reason).
Also, I bookmarked a short story or two for probable nominating, and hope to read some more short fiction and track it the same way. I doubt I’ll nominate in Short Dramatic (I watch almost no TV, though I may nominate a short film or two I saw on the web). I watch few movies, but mostly SFF, so I just hope to remember or be reminded of what I saw. 😉 Other categories . . . hmm, see below for one idea, but the rest are tougher for me to nominate in. in general.
@JJ: Thanks for the link to the 2015 Wikia. Um, er, uh . . . I hit the “Random” button several times and then stared at my screen, showing a page for Kyra, for her Bracketses. 😀 Hmm, a filer contribution.
Looks like *someone* didn’t put enough points in Energy Weapons…
Not sure exactly what this is about, but good for the caritas in practice.
Oh no!
That’s awful. I’m so sorry!
I’ve been watching news programs about the UK, and I’m getting a sense that the policy of Tightening Other People’s Belts Until Prosperity is Forced Back Onto the Nation has been a catastrophic failure since it was implemented what, seven years ago?
Meantime, I am so, so sorry, and I only hope the people here can help provide some solace and consolation.
A college friend was aghast to learn that Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” was not intended as satire.
@ Meredith
Sorry to hear about the PIP. Wishing you extra spoons and good reading.
Energy weapons doesn’t help you use Christine’s COS rifle to pick off Leigonaries without gaining infamy.
> “Look Kyra, does it have a tavern in the snow or not?”
Genuine LOL. 🙂 Both taverns and snow are featured prominently in the book. Your logic is unassailable; it must be fantasy.
@ Stevie:
Um. By JCW’s own account he felt out of place among atheists before his conversion. I submit to you that this may have been because many atheists are not all that absolute about it. In any case, I will accept that he’s not representative of some common shortcoming of theists if you will accept that he is not representative of some common shortcoming of atheists. Fair?
Meredith, I’m really sorry to hear about the PIP. Very Serious People governance really sucks in a lot of ways. Best wishes to you and yours. I’m sure you’ve got advice and such already, but if you want to ping me on Facebook (as Bruce Baugh, cleverly enough, the one in Washington), you can look at what my UK acquaintances are talking about. Several of them are seriously disabled or caring for someone who is, so there’s news on what’s sucking and what people are managing to do around that.
Camestros: Ah, OK: but I take it that increasing the voting body will involve changing the population, because the current voting body is people who find it natural to nominate in the Hugos, and the new voters will be people who don’t. It seems likely to me that their reading habits will in some respects be different. Now this might go either way; some new voters will be people who are interested in things which fall in the regular Hugo field, but don’t read that much new stuff; they, as Vicki Rosenzweig notes, will be relying largely on recommendations, so their votes may be more focused. But others may well be people whose interests are a bit different from those of Hugo regulars, so they may make the nominations more various.
Vicki Rosenzweig; Yes indeed, but I think I was taking that into account. If I were just reading the first thing that comes to hand, I might have to read fifty stories to find five Hugo-worthy ones. By following recommendations I can bring it down to ten.
Ten short works in each category is manageable. Ten novels is a massive commitment of time and money. But I do get frustrated when people say ‘I haven’t read enough’, and other people assume they mean ‘I haven’t read six hundred things’, when they may well mean ‘I haven’t read ten things’. And then people say ‘Just nominate what you liked,’ assuming that we are all reading new stuff all the time, and so there must be some stuff that we liked and is eligible. We can change our practices, if needed; but it is a change.
Andrew M.:
Yes, that makes sense. I expect to have entire blank categories on my nominating ballot, because (for example) I watch so few movies and television programs that the odds of any of them being eligible (in terms of date of release), SF/F, and good are slim. (I will be nominating because I got a supporting membership in Sasquan, and my list of “things read” now has a “published in 2015?” column to go with author, title, when I finished it, and what I thought.)
Kyra; Regarding whether The Philosopher Kings is SF, I would say it is an example of Both: snagnfl orpnhfr bs gur tbqf, naq FS orpnhfr bs gur ebobgf.
Which reminds me: Lagoon is also on the list: is that a 2015 publication? I thought it was earlier. I haven’t finished it yet, but from what I’ve read so far it seems also to be an example of Both. It looks as if they are going with ‘when in doubt say SF’.
Ugh, Meredith, I’m sorry. Let us know if there’s anything those of us on this side of the Atlantic can do to help.
Sure but there is no reason to think that will radically change the distribution of the votes if we assume that the current nominations are fairly mainstream anyway. i.e. the small core of nominators are drawing from a representative field of quality* SF/F.
*[whatever that might mean]
@Kyra:
I helped! Yay!
Meredith: So sorry about the PIP decision. That sucks.
@Andrew M: I sort of understand your frustration, yet I keep thinking “but you don’t have to nominate 5 things.” I know you know this, but five isn’t a requirement – just a maximum. Even in these two puppy years, where many of us want to find as much eligible, worthy work to nominate as we can, IMHO if one can only read a few things and only finds one or two to nominate – great! Honestly, that’s better than most Worldcon members do, and I commend all of us!
(And, also obvious: the blanket comments that frustrate you obviously are general comments and, no matter how phrased, aren’t really aimed at everyone. Well, I hope not, heh.)
As with @Vicki Rosenzweig, I’ll have a few blank categories on my ballot.
Sadly, my short fiction nomination lists will be quite short (ahem); I don’t read a lot of short fiction. It will make no sense when I say that I don’t have the patience, but there it is. I frequently don’t. And yet I’m engrossed in a a novel 20 times the length of a short story; what’s wrong with me? 😉
Meredith, I’m sorry you are taking the brunt of stupid, stupid policies. Is there an appeal process? Although I know that, even if there is, it will be slow and troublesome. 🙁
@Cheryl J:
I’ll second JJ’s recommendation of the Hugo Nominations Wikia – I just jot it down there, and then I recognize it whenever I go back to the page (I can even see my own likes and edits, if I’ve forgotten everything ever).
@JJ, @Kendall, @Standback, thank you. The Wikia might turn out to be particularly helpful, although I haven’t yet found a listing of anything I loved and lost. I hope it acquires lots of additional contributors.
@Andrew M., I will be one of the new nominators this year, which doesn’t mean much of anything except to say that the class of new nominators isn’t necessarily easy to categorize and may not be all that different than non-new nominators. I’ve been reading SFF for decades and I read fairly widely in the genre, both novels and shorter work.
Nominating, at least for me, is a very different process than voting, because it requires me to find things I think are award worthy, understand why I think that, develop a long list, even in categories I wouldn’t generally gravitate to (Best Professional Artist) and then take that mass of data and sort it so that I have some number of worthy entries in multiple categories. Voting, for me, seems really different, a hierarchical sorting of a limited set of works, which I find much, much easier.
The reading itself, except for focusing more on new novels than my backlog, isn’t much different.
@Meredith, I don’t know if you want sympathy (when I’m spoonless, sympathy is too much), but if you do, I have a lot available.
@Greg Hullender:
I love that you have them, but I haven’t yet made use of them.
I think it takes a very strong review to get somebody to get up and buy a back-issue. A big, big problem with short fiction is that it feels so interchangable – how much effort are you going to go to in order to read one particular story, when you’ve got 100 free ones at your fingertips? You’d need to really want to read that story, and be fine with paying the full admission price for that one piece.
It’s a pretty big discoverability problem. I really like how RSR is helping out with that, and it is. But so far I’m still spending most of my time trawling my own favorite haunts, and less time following up on back issues.