247 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/20 Grandma Got Run Over By a Filer”

1. Today is my Fifth(tyth) birthday. In best Filer tradition I shall be reading books and writing words…

2. Hmm. Did I just break the comments? Sorry!

   (Phew, they came back. I was worried I got a little too self-referential there…)

3. Happy birthday, Simon!

4. Happy Birthday Simon !

5. (15) Pulled over for driving while brown, typical.

6. Happy birthday, Simon!

   Also +1 Johan P

   (1) Harry Potter casting: excellent news! Jamie and Noma are fine stage actors, with considerable experience with Shakespeare. I suppose I’ll have to see the show (if I can get tickets) …

7. In just book stuff I want to throw out a general recommendation for A Crown For Cold Silver. Picked it up randomly at the library and haven’t really seen it discussed much, but I thought it was a great fantasy book. Great characters and world-building, interesting magic system, etc. For those looking for fun sword swinging action it has that in spades, plus it has strong female characters (as in they have their own agency, though some are physically strong as well) and characters of various sexual preferences which since it’s considered normal in that world it isn’t really remarked on it just exists.

   Only thing some people might not like is that it’s of the dark humor style of fantasy. I overlooked it and hadn’t heard much about it and now it’s one of my favorite fantasy books of 2015 so I wanted to rave about it somewhere. The Battle of the Extended Pinky alone makes it worthwhile.

8. Happy birthday, Simon!

   I’ve read the first half of The Rim of Morning, the novel To Walk The Night. I enjoyed it a lot, and will have more to say when I finish the second half.

9. Peace Is My Middle Name: I don’t know if my perceptions are off. It just seems jarring to me how often money comes up in Puppy statements.

   Ultimately, that is really what it is all about with the Puppies. It’s about getting trophies for them and their buddies that they think will garner them the respect and the sales that they believe that they deserve.

   Remember how, when asked what they liked about the works they nominated, Puppies said, “He’s sold a ton of books! He deserves a Hugo!”

   Remember Rolf Nelson’s comment about how he didn’t see the point of writing if he wasn’t going to make good money off of it? How many real writers have you ever seen say something like that?

   And for all that they complain about what a worthless award the Hugo is, notice how many microseconds it took VD, JCW, LA, KB, et al to post on their websites and Amazon book listings “Hugo Award Finalist”?

   Puppies think that having a rocket will get them the respect and the sales that they believe that they deserve. They don’t understand that the Hugo Award comes after they’ve actually earned the respect and the sales.

10. 10, Cheap Shot, reminds me that the more I hear about GoodReads, the more it seems GoodReads isn’t as good as one might wish. I’m sorry for Strauss.

    14, Annual Review: I am glad Ann Leckie’s books are widely admired and enjoyed and I also think a book about the further adventures of Sphene and Translator Zeiat would be a fine thing.

    And the Puppy preoccupation with sales as a mark of excellence always strikes me as combining oddly with their attempts to diddle Amazon bestseller rankings to increase sales. I don’t mind that they try to increase sales–but the fact that they *know* it is possible to do so without making the book any better means they must at some level realize that sales don’t measure excellence.

11. I fifth fifth the request for The Further Adventures of Sphene and Translator Zeiat.

    and Happy Birthday, Simon.

12. Historically, supporting memberships have only barely covered their own marginal costs. (For members of a US Worldcon outside of the USA, they may have actually lost money due to higher mailing costs.) However, an increasing number of members are not receiving publications, which lowers the marginal costs of a Worldcon membership. This has allowed Worldcons to lower the cost of supporting membership while still having a reasonable proportion of the supporting membership help cover some of the Worldcon overhead costs. (WSFS also changed the rules to ease a structural restriction that was forcing supporting membership costs to go higher than they really needed to be.) Also, there were an unprecedented number of supporting members this year, which changed the budget dynamics markedly.

    Worldcons aren’t meant to be profit-generating enterprises. They’re not supposed to lose money (and it’s a bad thing when they do, given that each Worldcon is legally and financially independent of every other Worldcon, so there’s no way to “make it up next year”). A Perfect Worldcon would have exactly zero surplus, so that every bit of money taken in was spent on that year’s members. That of course is unreasonable, so Worldcons budget to have an expectation of a surplus. This includes prudent reserves against unexpected expenses. Consequently, most Worldcons have surplus funds. But having too much surplus is also considered a bad thing, contrary to those people for whom Profit Is The Only Measure Of Success. A Worldcon with an unreasonably large surplus will be pilloried by fandom for having overcharged its members and/or not spent enough on the members at the convention.

    One way of dealing with the “too much surplus” issue is the “Pass Along Funds” (PAF) agreement. This is a voluntary agreement among Worldcon committees dating back to 1989. PAF signatories agree to divide at least half their surplus among the next three Worldcons, as long as those Worldcons also agree to participate in PAF. If you agree to participate, you get donations from your predecessors and you are obliged to donate money to your successors if you have a surplus. Sasquan had a surplus of approximately $150,000 and has distributed $25,000 each to its three successors, as they announced at SMOFCon 33. The remainder will be distributed to various causes as decided by their parent non-profit organization, and they are obliged to present financial reports to WSFS annually until they’ve spent their entire surplus.

    Note that a measure of success of a Worldcon committee is not making a large surplus, but how fast you can spend it on fandom and stop having to make reports to WSFS. The accumulation of personal profit is not a success factor for Worldcon committees.

    Sasquan had both higher than expected revenue (more members) and lower marginal costs per member, partially because a change to WSFS rules allowed them to default members to electronic publications. (Previously, the default had been paper publications.) This did help them run their Worldcon. There were a number of places where they were able to “buy their way out” of a given situation where most Worldcons would have had to cut something or burn up volunteers. Sasquan was also able to spend more resources on its members at the convention.

    In my own area, the WSFS Business Meeting was able to have sign language interpreters, the CART real-time captioning system, enhanced AV tech that allowed the business meeting video recordings to have decent sound, and a coffee/tea/pastry service (the cost of which is not trivial).

    (Note that the camera and associated tech with which we recorded the meeting, which cost around $5000 including necessary accessories, was my wife’s personal purchase, not paid for with Worldcon money.)

13. @JJ Regarding how many real writers believe the point of writing is making money, I think Robert A. Heinlein said something of the sort… Not that he is necessarily the epitome of the “real writer” group, but I’d have to include him among them. Indeed for some people the definition of “real writer” is “makes a living writing.”

    Personally I have no problem with people writing for the love of writing, making art for art’s sweet sake. But I wouldn’t go so far as to claim other motivations disqualify one, or at least must not be mentioned.

14. @Simon Bisson: Happy Birthday!

15. @Cat: I would think that there is a difference between saying “a professional writer should get paid”, and “the worth of a professional writer should be measured by the size of their bank account”. I think Heinlein probably tended toward the first, and the Pup rhetoric seems to lean heavily towards the second.

16. (4) I grew up in the NJ suburbs and used to jump at any chance to go to New York. We would penetrate so deeply into the City on a quest to see some unknown band that we would almost come out the other side, or on a whim, would drive into Spanish Harlem for a slice of pizza, or would take the train to Hoboken and then the PATH into the Village to browse at Tower Records.

    Now that I’ve lived here for years, I was like, “That warehouse sale looks cool! I should go. But it is all the way in Brooklyn… And not even Williamsburg or Greenpoint, but south of Park Slope? It might as well be in Staten Island! And I’d have to change subway lines once, and it’s the weekend, so I might have to wait up to 12 minutes for a train… 12 minutes! Am I a clock that I should stand around for 12 minutes marking time? Man, just contemplating this absurd journey is so tiring that I now fully comprehend the arduous weeks at sea my immigrant ancestors endured.”

    The “Warehouse of Wonders” is less than 10 stops from lower Manhattan, so don’t let my confession of epic laziness dissuade you from going to the next sale.

    (14) I also request The Further Adventures of Sphene and Translator Zeiat. Zeiat’s arrival on the station was superb. Or awesome? OK, I’ll go with awesome.

17. The Economist‘s summary of 2015 in 10 obituaries includes Sir Terry Pratchett, part of an interesting mixed bag that runs from Yogi Berra to Mullah Omar.

18. Cat, as I recall, based on his statements Heinlein certainly started out as being in writing (which he started doing relatively late in life) primarily for the money. But I also recall reading a bit where he’d reached the point, fairly early on, where he’d paid for everything he needed to pay for, and had stopped writing. But he kept getting this feeling of, let’s say unsatisfaction with things, that went away when he started writing again. So he’d turned into someone who needed to write every so often, and certainly did some writing that wasn’t done primarily for money.

19. @Aaron: I don’t think we disagree all that much. I’m pretty sure a lot of us are on the “professional writers should get paid” bailey (as are many Puppy arch-nemeses, I think.) JJ’s comment (roughly “a real writer wouldn’t say such a thing”) about Rolf Neilsen’s comment (roughly “what’s the point of writing if I’m not going to make money”) struck me as approaching a “real writers don’t care about money” motte.

    But perhaps I misunderstood what JJ meant to say.

    @Tom: I didn’t know that about Heinlein’s later life, and was going on a vague memory of some fairly pointed comments that writing for any reason other than money was the kind of thing one didn’t admit to in public. It’s cool to learn more about it; thanks for the observation.

20. I … kind of wouldn’t mind a panel on the Puppies at Worldcon. Of course the panel I’d imagine would have non-Puppies as well as the Sad variety on it, would have well-spoken, polite panelists (Eric Flint was a good suggestion, or — dare I mention him? — Scalzi) and would have a ferociously strong moderator. I do agree with those who said the need for fact-checking might swamp the whole thing, though.

21. Oh, I think there is definitely more to be said about Sphene, unsolved mysteries. It must have been in contact with the Presger, mustn’t it — that incredible stealrh technology that keeps making it invisible isn’t standard issue.

22. “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”
    – Samuel Johnson

23. @Vivienne So there’s Johnson out on that opposing “money is the ONLY reason” motte… And through oversight making an exception for slightly over half the human race in addition…

24. HARRY POTTER ON STAGE: I admit my first thought was “what, a black actress playing Hermione?” But hey, why not. Now I’m wondering: Where’s Ginny? Why is she not a main character in a play about Harry’s family life as an adult?

    ***
    In completely other news, I thought I’d share this article from a Norwegian site, about two journalists who snuck a camera onto the set of “The Empire Strikes Back” (The Hoth scenes where filmed in Norway.)

    And the City Hall in Oslo have had a petition for songs to be played by the carillon on the hour strikes in December. Most of the suggestion was for Christmal carols – but every night at 8 PM, the carillon now plays the Main Theme from Star Wars. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a recording.

    ***
    And since (parts of) the readership here have shown a strange fascination with lutefisk, some might enjoy this video from the US Embassy in Norway about Norwegian christmas food.

25. `Correia remains as classy as ever with his HEY LOOK WE’RE BIGSHOT WRITERS AND WE DIDN’T WANT YOUR STUPID AWARDS ANYWAY fan fiction

26. Johan P: The linked story doesn’t actually say ‘main cast’; these are just the first three to be announced. (Presumably Albus counts as one of the main cast as well.)

27. Re: Writing, money, and professionalism. A professional 1) gets paid at something approximating professional rates and 2) comports him or herself in a professional manner (pitches projects and/or responds to offers, meets deadlines, turns in competent copy, deals with editors/fact-checkers, and so on). There is no guarantee that “professional rates” (that is, what the markets dictate) will lead to a living wage or even a secondary income that couldn’t be matched by hitting a few shifts at down at the mall or moving boxes for UPS.

    About Heinlein and money and writing: My strong impression from the Patterson bio is that Heinlein needed to keep writing up through the success of Stranger–he had a nice life, built a house, traveled the world, but he wasn’t so flush as to be able to coast. In the last quarter of his life he might have been able to retire, but by that time what he was was a writer. I’ve known several writers who could have retired and lived on their backlists but kept at it until age or health forced a stop. (And I know writers who keep at it despite the often pitiful compensation–see paragraph above.)

    BTW–How does Allen get any work done with so much open floor space in his office? And no cats!

28. Happy birthday, Simon!

29. On reasons for writing:

    Years ago I read a piece by Asimov in which he drew a distinction between writers (who write regardless of whether they get read, let alone paid) and authors (who get their names on books) – and stressed that the two categories overlapped (he regarded himself as a writer first and foremost, however many books his name was on). From what Tom Galloway says above, it would seem that the later Heinlein fell into the same camp.

    And, since we’ve had the inevitable quote from the other Good Doctor (Johnson) – I wonder what he would have made of the internet? – I feel I should point out that writing for money does not necessarily a guarantee that someone isn’t a blockhead.

30. Vivienne Raper and Cat: Welp, but Johnson made that comment at the very birth of the idea that writers should be paid anything at all for specific works. Prior to that, more or less, writing “for money” was gauche, at best, and actually impossible, in some senses; one wrote for fame, for reputation, for immortality, to please a patron (who then supported one with gifts of money and goods and a place to live, but nothing so–so lower class as direct payment, such as one would offer a tradesman). (Tsk.) Oh, there were edge cases: professional playwrights like Shakespeare clearly got “paid” for their work, but even then the real money was in having a piece of the theater. And the writers who wrote for the theater were often, well . . . not exactly serious writers, now were they? After all, they wrote “plays.” (Seriously. Ben Johnson evidently caught some flack for publishing a collection of his plays under the title The Works of Ben Jonson. Literary works were poems, not plays–not even prose fiction, until we’re into the 18th century.)

    Yes, I know I’m oversimplifying literary history. But the modern use of that particular quote has always made me roll my eyes–it really isn’t all that relevant to a modern writer’s situation, or to a modern writer’s possible motivations for writing. The world is just too different.

31. Peter J: And, since we’ve had the inevitable quote from the other Good Doctor (Johnson) – I wonder what he would have made of the internet?

    Well, I think maybe he’d have loved Twitter, at least.

32. @BGHilton, belated thanks for mentioning the Read it and Weep podcast a few days ago – I hadn’t known about it and now it’s helping me pass the time more enjoyably at work, even though I’m not normally a big fan of the “people hanging out and having a witty conversation for an hour and a half” type of podcast. (I still have to skip over their dramatic skits, though.)

33. ‘Will someone get these motherfucking snakes off my motherfucking plane.’
    – Samuel L Jackson

34. Cats generally don’t have long, happy lives where I live, Russell. Too many coyotes and owls in the surrounding woods. The few who do live around here tend to be agoraphobic indoor kitties. Besides, I’m more of a dog guy.

    The nice thing about living in a house with an open floor plan is that it’s easy to communicate with your spouse. If I’m at my desk and I need some more coffee, all I have to do is raise my voice a little to be heard by my wife in the downstairs den.. And it’s also easy for me to hear her say, “Get it yourself, you lazy asshole.”

35. “Many Internet quotes are unreliable.” – Abraham Lincoln, in his review of A la recherché du temps perdu.

36. “What I worry about is that people are losing confidence, losing energy, losing enthusiams, and there’s a real opportunity to get them into work.”
    — Boris Johnson

37. There are many ways to write and reasons to do so. Love of writing and for money are a couple. I think starting out writing expecting to be an award winning number one bestseller with millions of books in print in multiple languages is unrealistic. Too many classic authors have died penniless. We should remember success, or lack there of, during our lifetime doesn’t indicate how the future will see us. But one is not owed an audience.

    When someone wants to publish your work expecting to get paid is not unreasonable. Being asked to write for free … Well Harlan Elllison has strong words about that. As do many other writers. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills.

    So many quotes without context can lead to lack of understanding what an author meant.

38. Hey, Mike, one for the Scroll? Tickets available for a live recording of an adaptation of Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes by BBC4 with the BBC Philharmonic. http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/er9gwh

39. ‘“Many Internet quotes are unreliable.” – Abraham Lincoln, in his review of A la recherché du temps perdu.’
    – Bruce Baugh

40. “‘“Many Internet quotes are unreliable.” – Abraham Lincoln, in his review of A la recherché du temps perdu.’– Bruce Baugh”
    – Nigel the Filer

41. ‘Dammit the comments are caught in a recursive self-referential meta vortex again! Last time this happened we lost the entire continent of Spromosia! Nobody even remembers it existed outside my tortured memories! Summon Doc O’Pedia and his brave Quotonauts, and may God have mercy on us all.’
    -Mike Glyer, probably.

42. Sheesh, guys. The last letter in “Recherche” has no accent, at least in this context. Such an elementary mistake!!!

43. Happy birthday, Simon Bisson.

    I join the chorus calling for The Further Adventures of Sphene and Translator Zeiat

    More maybe when I’m not at the vet getting a health certificate for the new foster dog.

44. “SUCH MONEY
            VERY WORDS
        SO REMUNERATION
                WOW!”

    — Ben Johnson

45. Happy Birthday, Simon!

46. I think–at least in my case–there are books I write for love and books I write for money. But I also think a lot of writers, who sometimes write a book mostly because they’re under contract for it, are dedicated enough craftsmen that they take pleasure in doing their job well. I might not write some of those books without money, anymore than a stonemason would build a wall for free, but having been hired to do a job, both the stonemason and I want to make sure it stands together and is solid work with all the bits coming up true.

    Making art for a living is complicated. I think we get too hung up on the white-hot-fire-of-creation joys and often overlook the quieter “I am paid to do a thing that I am skilled at, and I take pride in my work” pleasures.

    Which probably goes back to the whole artist-starving-in-a-garret thing and so forth.

47. Nicholas Whyte on December 21, 2015 at 12:01 pm said:

    Sheesh, guys. The last letter in “Recherche” has no accent, at least in this context. Such an elementary mistake!!!

    I’m sure it has a heavy French accent

48. Allen–Our cats (all rescues for the last couple decades) are indoor creatures with minimal interest* in the outdoors in which we found them. I suspect that the experience of shivering & starving in Minnesota changed their attitude toward the great outdoors–and with our mouse population, they don’t even have to give up hunting. But yeah, dogs are cool, too.

    * Not counting window-sitting and squirrel & bird watching.

49. Re (14)

    I’ll never cease to be impressed by the grace, wit, and poise that Ann Leckie finds to give the most humble and most gracious year end post of “I’m the freaking greatest and here’s why” and have it seem to come from the heart. And as far as why people write, well, I assume being on the bestseller list covers many bases – hadn’t I heard something about book sales determining the relative worth of a book from some quarters?

    As to written work, I think Greg Hullender deserves a note of thanks for putting together his collection. It’s much easier to read the stories – and hasn’t that what this year has been about? Reading good stories? In particular, I thought So Much Cooking was amazing. I like stories where the fear creeps up slowly – in the past I think that has been a real selling point of Kritzer’s fiction. Everything seems okay, but…

    Currently reading Gene Mapper. Positive so far.

50. What the hell is a Christmas Noun and why should I care?

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