Pixel Scroll 12/21/16 Ancillary of Green Gables

(1) MARS’ VIRGIN FIELD EPIDEMIC. Nautilus writer Christopher McKay, in a piece called “Make Mars Great Again”, says that Mars has life because of microbes sent aboard non-sterile Mars probes, and if the planet gets warmer in a century these microbes can be used for terraforming.

Mars is currently inhabited by an estimated 1 million microbes. They coat the surfaces and crowd the innards of our robotic landers and rovers, which international policy requires to be cleaned, but not fully sterilized. The bugs are dormant, but viable. If Mars warmed up and water began to flow again, these microorganisms would revive and reproduce. And it is within our power to make that happen.

The concept of terraforming—making a barren world suitable for widespread life—is well developed in science fiction. The term was first used in a science-fiction story published in 1942. It implies the creation of a copy of Earth, which need not be the goal, but the word caught on. (It is definitely more euphonious than the suggested alternatives of “ecopoiesis” or “planetary ecosynthesis.”) In the ’90s the award-winning science-fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars centered on the science and ethics of terraforming. But terraforming is no longer just science fiction.

(2) DIFFERENT CURRENCIES. Sarah A. Hoyt raises compelling points in “Some Hard Thinking About Our Business”. Why doesn’t everybody go indie? And how much money is it costing them to go with traditional publishers?

So I am continuously puzzled watching indie authors who are doing better by an order of magnitude than any traditional writer I know succumbing to the lure of a traditional contract.  I’m not disapproving, mind you — who the hell am I to be disapproving of other people’s business decisions? If I had my time again, I doubt I’d have made most of the ones I made.  I’d still want to write for Baen, but that’s about it — I’m just jaw-dropped shocked.  Because they’ll be giving up 90% of their income or so.  But perhaps they want the respectability.  And perhaps they think it will give them further reach.

Is the reach thing true?  For now.  For a time. More on this later.

Is the respectability that important?  Sure, if you want to have some sort of job as a “real writer” such places are starting to choose indies, but not really.  Some conferences too (though we’re not absolutely sure, in this new era how much attendance of conventions contribute to sales, with the remarkable exception of hard copy books [more on that later.]) expect you to flash your “real writer” credentials in the form of  contract.  I even understand it from the social point of view, where when you’re at a party and people ask what you do, the question after you answer “writer” is “so have anything published?” (Or maybe that’s just to me, because of the accent.)  Mind you, you can answer “Sure” and  list your books and not say “indie” but I also know that when I say “Sure, x books with Berkley, x with Bantam and x with Baen” people’s attitude changes completely.  And I can see that when people suspect you’re indie they say “So you published yourself” and dismiss it.  I know that’s a stupid reason to give up 90% of your income, but humans are social animals and I can see “not being embarrassed at parties” making a difference.  I can even see the velveteen writer thing, wanting to be a “real” writer in your own eyes, the way you envisioned it.

(3) LONG RELIEF. At MLB blog Cut4, “Superfan Sean Doolittle reviews ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”‘. Doolittle is a pitcher for the Oakland A’s.

Big Star Wars fan Sean Doolittle was kind enough to take some time away from his rigorous offseason sock-throwing regimen to write a film review of Rogue One … yes, really! Enjoy it all below, and don’t worry — there are no major spoilers, as Sean knows what he’s doing. 

What really separates this movie from any other episode in the Star Wars franchise, though, is how dark and harsh it is. Rogue One is as much a war drama, with real, raw emotion, as it is a sci-fi adventure movie. This movie drops you into the middle of a brutal galactic civil war, one that’s taken everything from these characters and turned them into soldiers willing to fight for the Rebellion.

(4) NOT THE REASONS FOR THE SEASON. I thought Tor.com had a great discussion-generating post idea in “The Non-Holiday Movies We Always End Up Watching Over the Holidays” but they had more misses than hits as far as my tastes are concerned. (Anyone else watched Rocky II this month? I did.)

And it’s a discussion you can have on more than one level. I decided to watch Tracy and Hepburn in Desk Set the other night I’d long since forgotten that most of the climactic events happen at the office Christmas party. So can I count it as “non-holiday” or not?

(5) GHIBLI AND GRAVY. The YouTube video “Studio Ghibli in Real Life” is a charming YouTube video in which Studio Ghibli characters are placed into real-life Japanese settings.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 21, 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood, California. It was the first animated feature-length film with sound and color.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born December 21, 1937 – Jane Fonda

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born December 21, 1957 — Tsutomu Kitagawa, a Japanese actor and stuntman best known for playing Godzilla in the Millennium (or Shinsei) series. He also played the costumed actor for the Blue (and occasionally, Black) Ranger in many of Toei Company’s Super Sentai Series in the 1980s, better known in the US as Power Rangers.

(9) BRAIN CANDY. John Scalzi did not write an incisive political commentary today.

Me: I want to write a long piece on politics today!

Brain: Sorry, man. Not up for it. Too much thinking involved.

Me: But I have important things to say!

Brain: You should have thought about it before you decided to fuel me exclusively on Christmas cookies for three days straight….

(10) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #22. The twenty-second of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for a set of autographed books from Pamela Dean.

Today’s auction is for a set of books from Pamela Dean, including signed hardcover first editions of THE DUBIOUS HILLS and JUNIPER, GENTIAN, AND ROSEMARY, along with a signed mass-market paperback set of the reissue of the SECRET COUNTRY trilogy. That’s a total of five autographed books for you to enjoy!

About THE DUBIOUS HILLS: Centuries after a group of warring wizards eliminate war from the Dubious Hills, the Hills are a place where knowledge and ability are parcelled out in strange ways. Only the group known as the Akoumi understand death, only the Gnosi know how to teach, and only the Physici can know pain. Dean weaves a strange and compelling examination of knowledge, responsiblity and death.

About JUNIPER, GENTIAN, AND ROSEMARY: Three sisters live comfortably with their parents: Juniper, 16, who likes cooking and computer chats; Gentian, 13, who likes plays and astronomy; Rosemary, 11, who likes Girl Scouts. Enter Dominic, handsome as the night, quoting poetry, telling riddles, and asking help for a complex and fascinating science project. Gentian isn’t interested at first–she has her own life. But gradually her life, and her time, belong more and more to Dominic and his project, and her father begins to fear that the lad may be more than a charmer…

About THE SECRET COUNTRY: Each vacation for the past nine years, cousins Patrick, Ruth, Ellen, Ted, and Laura have played a game they call the “Secret”—and invented, scripted world full of witches, unicorns, a magic ring, court intrigue, and the Dragon King. In the Secret, they can imagine anything into reality, and shape destiny. Then the unbelievable happens: by trick or by chance, they actually find themselves in the Secret Country, their made-up identities now real. The five have arrived at the start of their games, with the Country on the edge of war. What was once exciting and wonderful now looms threateningly before them, and no one is sure how to stop it… or if they will ever get back home.

(11) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MENTIONING RACE. Foz Meadows engages a recent controversy involving YA commentators — “YA, Race & Assimilation: A Response”.

Which is why, returning to the matter of QOP and Whitney Atkinson, pro-diversity advocates are so often forced to contend with people who think that “separating races” and like identifiers – talking specifically about white people or disabled people or queer people, instead of just people – is equivalent to racism and bigotry. Whether they recognise it or not, they’re coming from a perspective that values diverse perspectives for what they bring to the melting pot – for how they help improve the dominant culture via successful assimilation – but not in their own right, as distinct and special and non-homogenised. In that context, race isn’t something you talk about unless you’re being racist: it’s rude to point out people’s differences, because those differences shouldn’t matter to their personhood. The problem with this perspective is that it doesn’t allow for the celebration of difference: instead, it codes “difference” as inequality, because deep down, the logic of cultural assimilation is predicated on the idea of Western cultural superiority. A failure or refusal to assimilate is therefore tantamount to a declaration of inequality: I’m not the same as you is understood as I don’t want to be as good as you, and if someone doesn’t want to be the best they can be (this logic does) then either they’re stupid, or they don’t deserve the offer of equality they’ve been so generously extended in the first place.

Talking about race isn’t the same as racism. Asking for more diversity in YA and SFF isn’t the same as saying personhood matters less than the jargon of identity, but is rather an acknowledgement of the fact that, for many people, personhood is materially informed by their experience of identity, both in terms of self-perception and in how they’re treated by others at the individual, familial and collective levels. And thanks to various studies into the social impact of colour-blindness as an ideology, we already know that claiming not to see doesn’t undo the problem of racism; it just means adherents fail to understand what racism actually is and what it looks like, even – or perhaps especially – when they’re the ones perpetuating it.

(12) APOLLO 11 ON YOUTUBE. Ars Technica helps relive history – “Heinlein and Clarke discuss the Moon landings as they happen”.

Thanks to documentaries and YouTube, the younger set can experience some of the flavor of the late 1960s today, as well as what the Moon landing meant at the time to America and the world. The zeitgeist of hope and possibility might perhaps best be captured in a CBS News discussion on July 20, 1969—Apollo 11 landing day. Hosted by the inimitable Walter Cronkite, the great newsman interviewed science fiction authors Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein about the implications of NASA’s achievement. The program featured a discussion just after the landing, with a second segment following the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

“Time just stopped for me, I think it stopped for everybody,” a 51-year-old Clarke said, describing how it felt to watch the lunar module touch down. “My heart stopped. My breathing stopped.”

(13) CURSUS HONORUM. James Langdell raises a good question:

How do you become a Ghost Of Christmas Past? Do you work your way up after starting out as Ghost Of National Pickle Day Past?

(14) THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS LAUGHS. Curator John King Tarpinian delved into the archives for these Stan Freberg Christmas parodies —

  • Green Christmas

  • Christmas Dragnet (1953) / Yulenet (1954)

  • The Night Before Christmas (1955)

[Thanks to Rich Lynch, Mark-kitteh, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

109 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/21/16 Ancillary of Green Gables

  1. (2) Why isn’t every lawyer a solo practitioner? Why do doctors join practices and take jobs in hospitals rather than simply hanging out their own shingle? Why do people work for other people rather than just working for themselves?

  2. (2) Lots of business reasons. The number one reason being, to expand their market.

    There are still plenty of readers who are bookstore-only, print-only shoppers. A writer is still much, MUCH more likely at this point in time to build audience among such readers by licensing some work to a traditional publisher. If those readers become fans, then they will (or at least, are more likely to) add that writer’s indie works to their book buying habits, in ebook or POD format. That’s audience which is less accessible to indie writers if they -only- publish indie.

    There are also more targeted or specific reasons. One extremely successful indie writer, for example, made a multi-book deal with Harlequin to get her name into foreign markets, where her indie work wasn’t doing well. Hq has its faults (and they are legion), but it also has very well-established marketing and distributions in 20+ overseas markets. The strategy worked–this writer saw her indie sales improve in foreign markets after releasing 3-4 Hq novels in those markets.

  3. No 11 got me thinking (again) about something Id like to hear your opinions on:

    If I read a Star-Trekish Space Opera I dont expect to read that character X is a Latino or black or white, or even describtion on his skin colour. Simply because in this setting I imagine a future where these things doesnt matter (The same might go for various other settings, like a type of Fantasyworlds, where its more important to distinguish between an Elf an a dwarf then between an white and a black human). I dont assume all these people are white, just because the author didnt specificly indicate that they are not.

    Am I naive in this way? What do you think? Should SF authors put more emphasis on the diverse characters, even if these characters themselves dont see the ethnic backgrounds?

  4. Peer Sylvester: I dont assume all these people are white, just because the author didnt specificly indicate that they are not. Am I naive in this way? What do you think? Should SF authors put more emphasis on the diverse characters, even if these characters themselves dont see the ethnic backgrounds?

    I can only speak for myself. But one of the things I’ve noticed is that when race and/or gender of characters are not signalled in any way, I tend to default them to match my own.

    But I’m white. So often there is nothing in the narrative which will cause me to question the race of the characters — until I read a random detail about their skin, or their hair, or their heritage, and suddenly it’s as if the story has changed to glorious Technicolor where everyone doesn’t look like me or have the same cultural background, and it’s all much more vivid and varied and interesting.

    Most of the stories I read growing up didn’t feature women as protagonists. So I had to mentally pretend that I could be them anyway (which often did not work so well). And now when I read SFF stories with smart, competent, kickass women protagonists, it’s such a joy to encounter this — to actually see myself as the hero. So maybe I can understand a little of what it feels like when a person who is POC or LGBTQIA suddenly sees themselves explicitly portrayed in stories, after decades of knowing that the people they were reading about were never like themselves.

  5. 2) Mostly, this post regurgitates the same pro-indie and anti-trad-pub arguments that I’ve been seeing in various indie publishing blogs since before I stopped reading them. Her points in favour of ghost writing, house names and book packagers are the only arguments that are not exactly common in indie publishing circles. I also find it vaguely disturbing that she considers such practices as a possible future for traditional publishing, but then I’m still angry that Francine Pascal did not exist and that V.C. Andrews was long dead by the time I read her books.

    I’m not against indie publishing at all, especially since I do it myself. There are reasons why it is the best fit for me, but I understand that other people have different reasons for what they’re doing. And coincidentally, before deciding to go the indie route, I took a long hard look at what I’d be giving up.

    Ironically, I’m also one of those people who mainly reads print books (both indie and traditional), even though I have two e-readers. However, when I really enjoy a book, I get a print copy.

    @Peer
    I think as Germans/Europeans, we have a hard time understanding how crucial the concept of race is in the US, because in Europe, ethnicity, class, etc… are far more important. That’s also why – as discussed on the other thread – I dislike forms which ask for your race (and such forms are pretty common in the US, though I’ve also seen them in the UK).

    However, I also think that futures populated entirely by white people are unrealistic, as are futures populated entirely by Americans of any race (yes, these exist and no, they’re not diverse). And if no descriptions of characters are given, I don’t necessarily picture them as all white, which has led to some confusion when I insisted that a certain character was black (e.g. I was utterly convinced that Gregory Powell who shows up in some of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories was black, even though Asimov never specifies his race), when the story or novel in question never mentions their race.

    Of course, using current definitions of race and ethnicity in the far future usually doesn’t work either. However, names and/or physical descriptions can create diversity of characters without using any of today’s terms and definitions that may not have any meaning in the future described.

    Also, as JJ said, everybody deserves to see people like themselves as heroes. I think most Germans can sympathise with that, because for years we only saw people with our ethnicity and with names like that of our parents and grandparents (because it was never modern names) as villains. And the few heroes of our ethnicity we had – Nightcrawler and Maverick from the X-Men comics and Mystique, whom I decided to claim as German, as well as the lone German guy in Star Trek OS – were often downplayed and ignored and played by American actors in film adaptations.

  6. [2] When Hoyt says indie authors are giving up 90% of their income, does she mean 90% of their income, or does she mean 90% (or thereabouts, since that doesn’t work mathematically) of per-unit profit, which is a very different thing?

    Because if it’s actually 90% of their net income, you’d figure they’d flee right back to indie publishing once the deal was up. But if it’s a percentage of their unit sales, and trad publishing results in higher unit sales for those authors, they might like the results fine.

  7. (14) I’m well-acquainted with the first two of these – enough to be fairly sure that the correct first title is “Green Chri$tma$” – but hadn’t heard the third. In fact, this scroll catches me between Christmas tunes by the Brian Setzer Orchestra and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the latter’s rendition of “Mr. Heatmiser” being a personal favorite:

    Setzer’s versions of “‘Zat You, Santa Claus?” and “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” are also worth the listen.

  8. re: 14

    No time is a bad time for Stan Freberg. Anyone else think of “St George and the Dragonet” every April 12? (or for you European folks, December 4)

  9. 4) For me and mine MST3k is very much, due to the Turkey-Day Marathons, a Thanksgiving tradition that lasts until nearly Christmas when we break down and suffer through Santa Clause Conquers The Martians and that weird Mexican Santa Claus film they riffed on before burning out on it for a while.

    As a confirmed misty my favorite carol is of course Let’s Have A Patrick Swayze Christmas.

  10. (11) I think there is some serious tension between the ideals of diversity and universality.

    And a lot of that is because “universality” is often conflated (intentionally or not) with a “default” identity. White, straight, cis, athiest, etc. Given that there exists the conception a “default” identity, it’s really hard to write “universally” without leaning heavily on that default.

    So I can see both sides here. In some ways, an idyllic “universal” story would be more empowering and significant to the diverse groups of readers, than a story focused tightly on a few particular identities — but, as a trend or a culture, assuming universalism will naturally erase or obscure diversity, which is a huge blow to all those same readers.

    Bottom-line, I think we need both — we need stories that are universal, and stories that are fully aware of the specifics and the distinctions. (Sometimes those can be the same stories, and sometimes not.)

    This reminds me that I really want to read Speculative Blackness, and particularly the chapter on Sisko. Hard to get more universalist than Star Trek; the discussion there could be absolutely fascinating.

  11. (11) Having just read Babylon’s Ashes, this immediately made me think of how the approach to character description in the Expanse books makes it pretty clear that most people are some variation on medium-brown without ever really saying so, just by the choice of details that a narrator will notice: on meeting someone new, they’ll pick out any distinctive facial features, but will only mention skin color if it’s a lot darker or a lot lighter than everyone else. At the same time, there are very serious ethnic, cultural, and class divisions among the characters— but those don’t map onto skin color in any way that a 21st century person would recognize, so it’s treated as a minor detail except to subtly remind us that the future isn’t default-white. I’m not sure where this kind of thing would fall on Standback’s proposed “diversity vs. universality” axis. On the one hand you could argue that it’s a form of the “color-blind” fallacy, but on the other hand it’s pretty far from Star Trek land since the characters are constantly judging and stereotyping each other in all kinds of other ways and there aren’t any innocuous mainstream institutions that they all have access to.

  12. 12)
    I suspect, absent a V-like appearance of an alien ship in orbit, a nation, a world sort of caught in that sense of wonder over a single, singular event is not going to happen. And with social media tools as they are today, there would of course be people live-tweeting as the saucers appear.

    …but now thinking about this, in the not yet caffeinated haze of an early morning, I think I now understand even better about a plotline in THE MEDUSA CHRONICLES.

    Va Gur Zrqhfn Puebavpyrf, gurer ner synfuonpxf gb na nygreangr 1960’f, eribyivat nebhaq na nfgrebvq qrsyrpgvba. Znlor, whfg znlor, guvf jnf chg va nf n zrgubq bs rafhevat creznarag rssbegf gb ernpu fcnpr, engure guna bhe “Pbyq Jne Fcnpr cvffvat zngpu.”. Gur cevzn snpvr rivqrapr bs na nfgrebvq gung pbhyq qrfgebl uhzna pvivyvmngvba jbhyq or n fche gb xrrc rkcybevat naq qrirybcvat fcnpr pncnovyvgvrf rira nsgre gur nfgrebvq vf fgbccrq.

  13. Hampus Eckerman on December 22, 2016 at 2:36 am said:

    (4) NOT THE REASONS FOR THE SEASON.

    Movies that I associate with Yuletide.

    I agree on the Bergman Magic Flute – I also associate it with Christmas. Maybe because it has a sort of very classy Pantomime feel to it.

  14. When I was growing up, the local Metromedia/Fox station played Yellow Submarine in December. It was definitely a beloved part of my holiday festivities.

  15. If I read a Star-Trekish Space Opera I dont expect to read that character X is a Latino or black or white, or even describtion on his skin colour.

    When I’m reading, i pretty much skim over any physical description of what a character looks like or what they are wearing and almost immediately forget it. So I usually don’t really have an internal image of the characters at all and think of them in a more abstract way. And I really, really, really, don’t give a damn about reading about someone’s heavy-handed identity politics agenda (and this calls back to yesterday’s complaint that if there are minority characters in a book, then there need to be characters hurling slurs at them) unless the story is specifically about identity politics.

  16. Both Hoyt and Meadows are addressing issues of identity.
    Perhaps my impression of Hoyt’s piece is colored by her puppy affiliations, but I read it to contain “complaints” that indie authors “get no respect” – or, rather, ought to be as entitled to fame, fortune and recognition at conventions as trad authors.
    When I can visit Amazon and find the names under “also recommended” (incidentally leading authors in their categories) are actually authors I’ve heard of, we’ll be getting close to what Hoyt is looking for. (For the past several months I’ve seen names associated with “Best selling SF author on Amazon” that always prompt a “who the heck is that?”.)
    I think Andy Weir is a perfect example of the fact that some indie authors have already achieved parity with traditionally published authors. Whether that continues will be based on the strength of his next book. If it achieves even “decent” review levels, he’ll remain among the pantheon of well-recognized SF authors. If not, it will be his first book that we recognize, but not the author.
    Significantly, Weir achieved that status AFTER taking his indie book traditional. Why? Probably because some smart PR type person recognized that the whole Mars thing was about to explode and made the right connections.
    The other problem with indie genre publishing is – most of the authors involved DO NOT seek out the traditional field/do not come from the traditional field and so each has their clade of readers, separate and non-communicative with others – the very people who A: might know someone in the field B. are likely to be able to say “oh, if you liked X, you will certainly like Y”.
    Foz makes very good points, but I think her discourse fails to really take into account one glaring trait of those who will make the anti-diversity arguments she posits: these are people who want the world to be “black and white”, yes or no, do or not do. There is no “try”
    How science fiction can have an anti-intellectual element is beyond me (but then they’re also the people calling for more ‘splosions in their fiction), but it is there.
    Its a broad brush, but these folks just do not want to have to think about issues. The modern world is just too stultifyingly confusing for them, they can only handle so much decision-making, so anything that can default to an easy meme or be dismissed outright and never worried about again, that’s the path they’ll take.
    The people Foz was addressing will not read her argument past the third or fourth multi-syllable word.
    We’ve no problem with variously described aliens, but the ethnic background of a human character is an issue?
    I’ve been re-reading some Piper lately and he obviously gave some thought to the issue of races out amongst the stars. The species has largely become homogenized, which he signals by giving characters ethnic-sounding names that are at complete odds with their physical presentation.
    Which points out (in light of Foz’s discussion) that it is not the physical appearance true diversity addresses, it is the background and cultural differences that these characters bring to the table – foods they eat, clothes they wear, familial structures, sensitivities and experiences (that should inform the story and in capable hands usually do).
    When a reader “sees someone like them” in a story, its not skin color they’re looking at, its shared background and experiences.

  17. …skim over…don’t give a damn about heavy-handed identity politics.

    when one is the default, it’s easy to skim over defaults.

    But if the character is a well-developed character, their identity-politics background matters, informs their decisions, colors the way they look at things

  18. @JKT:

    Louis Armstrong’s “‘Zat You?” is also on my playlist, along with the annoyingly hard to find “This Year’s Santa Baby,” Eartha Kitt’s sequel to her more famous original. (But I did find it! Mine, all mine!) Then there’s an album’s worth of classics as performed by the Brat Pack, and AFAIK the entire Bob Rivers holiday catalog, both of Weird Al’s Christmas songs, a little X-Files Xmas radio skit performed by Ducovny and Anderson, and…

    Well, you get the idea. I prefer swingin’, silly, and strange to sappy and saccharine when it comes to my seasonal songs. 🙂

    On other topics:

    Pretty much my only Christmastime movie tradition is to scoop up a bunch of inexpensive movies on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and watch them over the next few weeks. Thanks to Perk and Viggle, this year was no exception, save that all my shopping was online and paid for with free $25 gift cards bought with points. (My one cash purchase was a $35 Android tablet that doesn’t work nearly as well as I’d hoped it would, but it’s servicable – and I’m getting a $20 rebate in the form of gift certificates, so I considered $15 a permissible splurge.) The only movie remaining from that stack now is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was cheap enougn that I just had to get it. It’s still sitting atop my Blu-ray cabinet, patiently waiting for its slot on my dance card…

    I’m really getting sick of the phrase “identity politics,” almost as much as “political correctness.” The American Right loves to slather both terms over pretty much anything the American Left likes, but “WASP” is just as much an identity as any minority category and the Right very definitely has its own form of political correctness. (Prime example: the insistence on using the precise phrase “radical Islamic extremists.”)

    With that out of the way, I definitely know why some authors prefer indie publishing. The turnaround from final manuscript to buyable book can be blindingly fast, and the author can see a high percentage of whatever money comes in fairly quickly, but that’s only one aspect. The freedom to write the story you want to tell, without marketing people wringing their hands about how to package it, is a very powerful motivator.

    When J.B. and I were talking about their first novel, tradpub was only considered for as long as it took to say “no publisher would touch that.” This does have its drawbacks – specifically, we’ve had to make some compromises on cover art because PoC representation in the stock photos I have affordable access to is rather limited – but the lack of “editorial” direction that’s really Marketing saying “we don’t think this aspect will sell” makes up for it. The first novel’s three MCs are white, Latina (Puerto Rican, specifically), and black, and the second book deals with body image, aging, and fear of acceptance. Neither volume really trumpets those themes, but they’re in there…

  19. D’oh! Stupid morning brain – that should read “fear of rejection,” not “fear of acceptance.”

  20. Rev. Bob, If you’ve not yet seen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s EXACTLY what it says on the tin: Pride and Prejudice, now with added zombies! And (in my own opinion) it manages to nail the elusive quality of “camp” perfectly. It’s just exactly bad enough to be good.

  21. I never picture characters or scenes in a book. I listen to them. If I have to “see” the action, I generally have to turn back a few pages and re-read with a level of attention that I generally reseve for things that I have to study. Therefore I have always skimmed over character descriptions as I never care unless it’s pertinent to the plot. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy more variety in my stories than default handsome white American. I just won’t notice if the diversity isn’t more than skin deep.

    I have never had a visual imagination. I never thought of this as odd. It might have something to do with poor eyesight and not getting my glasses until age 11.

  22. Not everyone can picture a book’s characters anyway

    When you said that, I was assuming that you would link to this post that “went viral” earlier this year.

    Myself, I can see those details in my head, I just don’t care enough about them to try. Unless someone’s physical appearance is a featured plot point in the story, to me it is just irrelevant fluff–I care about the ideas. (I feel the same way about on-line conversations–ideally, I would not know the age, sex, race, etc. of anyone I communicate with on-line so that the ideas themselves are all that matters.)

  23. (4) I don’t really consider It’s a Wonderful Life to be a Christmas movie, yet the only time it’s shown anymore is before Christmas. I’ve wondered why Capra’s Meet John Doe, which also concludes on Christmas Eve, hasn’t become a Christmas movie. You might say it’s too dark, but so is the critical moment in It’s a Wonderful Life.

    Back when home VCRs were a newish thing, we used to watch the Life of Brian on Christmas morning. It seemed appropriate to us.

    There’s an ad running currently where the instant expert avers that Die Hard is indeed a Christmas movie. Does any movie that falls in December become a Christmas movie? Three Days of the Condor? Tora Tora Tora? Maybe it’s the Santa hat that makes it.

  24. Jack Lint: There’s an ad running currently where the instant expert avers that Die Hard is indeed a Christmas movie.

    That’s funny — because when I was drafting the post I thought to myself that Die Hard is, indeed, an arguable Christmas movie that I better pick another example as a non-Christmas movie I’ve watched.

    Die Hard
    starts with an interrupted Christmas party, involves a cop who’s estranged from his family (making it, in a very general way, parallel to It’s A Wonderful Life), incorporates lots of intentional Christmas references throughout. and references Christmas music in the score. The filmmakers intended a Christmas connection.

  25. steve Davidson: Perhaps my impression of Hoyt’s piece is colored by her puppy affiliations,../

    Yes, it very plainly is, and you should consider whether you’re doing yourself a disservice that way. When I see something at Mad Genius Club that includes substantial insights and useful information and skips the awards snark I don’t feel I have to shut my eyes or utter a preemptive curse just because I may have an issue with them later, depending on what Sad Puppies 5 actually does.

  26. I don’t have any non-Christmas related movies that I traditionally watch on Christmas. (I tend to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Halloween movie, anyone go the other way?)

    My favorite “Christmas movie” is Tokyo Godfathers, even though it takes place over a number of days (two? three? something like that) and Christmas is barely mentioned.

  27. I just discovered in the “Meadow Run” entry at TV Tropes, under the “real life” section, this entry:

    Isaac Asimov was once invited to an apparently-tedious US/Soviet diplomatic event, without his wife. When it was done, they were to meet outside the venue. Seeing each other at a distance, they simultaneously ran at each other in a Meadow Run. It was, Asimov later found out, caught on film by a Soviet cameraman, and was shown often on Russian TV for a while.

    Has anyone seen this? Or have a link to it?

  28. We usually view The Ice Harvest this time of year. It is certainly a Christmas movie however.

  29. I have never had a visual imagination. I never thought of this as odd. It might have something to do with poor eyesight and not getting my glasses until age 11.

    First glasses at 8 – and my imagination is solidly visual, to the point where I needed pictures for some classes in college. I think in pictures and sound – so I read rather than watch videos.

  30. Maybe Brazil could become a Christmas movie in the same way as “Fairytale of New York” has become a Christmas song in the UK.

    Have we discussed the TV commercial with the writer who keeps struggling to get published and then uses software to self-publish and becomes a best selling author?

  31. (2) DIFFERENT CURRENCIES

    Her claim that any self- pubbed author is doing an order of magnitude better than any trad published writer means she knows no successful writers of the second kind. Scalzi was reported by the trade papers to have a ten year, around five million dollars contract from Tor for the next ten books.

    Does that mean her typical self-pub ed writer is pulling down fifty million dollars? Oh gonak goma (Sinhalese for bullshit.) I’ve do doubt such an author keeps more of the unit price, but the number of units sold are drastically lower without the publicity efforts of some publisher like Tor.

    Of course a successful trad published writer almost always has an agent that makes sure every possible revenue stream is made possible from book publication in every form possible including foreign rights and film/tv rights. Can a self- pubbed writer do this on their own? I doubt it. So they’d be needing an agent who sure as Hell would want to approach trad publishers….

  32. (12) Apollo 11

    I’d hadn’t realized that the discussion with Clarke and Heinlein was available to watch on YouTube. I haven’t seen that since it was on live, having stumbled across with while watching the coverage of the Moon landing. (I know what I’ll be watching this weekend…)

  33. I haven’t seen that since the night of the landing either. I was only about 13 and a great admirer of Heinlein but as I recall he came across as a raving crank. I’ll view it again. It will be very interesting to see if that impression holds up.

  34. Have we discussed the TV commercial with the writer who keeps struggling to get published and then uses software to self-publish and becomes a best selling author?

    There is a commercial currently airing that targets (and yes, I mean “target” with a negative connotation) Christian writers specifically.

  35. (2) DIFFERENT CURRENCIES

    As someone who is published by a small press, and therefore gains neither the massive reach of a major trad publisher nor the nimbleness of being independent, I have a few possibly pertinent thoughts on this topic.

    Not everyone has either the technical nor psychological skills to bridge the gap between “self-published” and “successfully self-published. In the circles I run in, I see a lot of DIY self-published authors. Many of them sell an extremely small number of copies. In some cases, it’s because their DIY skills aren’t enough to create a saleable product. In some cases, it’s because identifying and connecting with their target readership is beyond their skill-set or comes with an immense emotional expenditure. A brand new author that has no existing fan base of any sort can make a decent showing if presented and promoted by an established publisher. Doing it on their own…not so much. Vastly more authors in this category sink without a trace, having sold a dozen e-books to relatives and immediate friends.

  36. Rev. Bob: Then you must appreciate Louis Prima. I bought the brink in his honor at the Jazz Bakery, soon to be reopening in downtown Culver City.

  37. “I feel the same way about on-line conversations–ideally, I would not know the age, sex, race, etc. of anyone I communicate with on-line so that the ideas themselves are all that matters.”

    The thing is that a person’s perspective is part of what they have to contribute, and you won’t always understand that until they talk about who they are. Moreover, many interesting conversations are to be had about age, sex, race, etc. I don’t mind hearing what a 25-year-old thinks about being 80, but I’d want to know they had no personal experience of being same (though they might have known some cool 80-year-olds).

  38. On the other hand, one does on occasion and in various situations find one’s observations questioned or even dismissed on the basis of constellations of traits over which one has no control. I write this as an old straight white man (or sometimes an old white straight man, which isn’t exactly the same thing), and in some circles even making the above observation gets the side-eye.

    And of course I realize that my collection of unasked-for traits (along with others that may or may not result from them) also insulates me from much of this kind of critique. As would having the sense to avoid situations where such prejudgments are common, but where’s the fun in that.

  39. (4) In a similar discussion recently, I suggested that Hollywood should do a remake of “Se7en” for the Twelve Days of Christmas.

  40. (13) this week I was wondering how one becomes Grand Moff. Are there Assistant Under Moffs? Associate Moffs? Temp Moffs? Moff Interns?

    (My apologies if this has been covered—to undoubtedly tedious detail—in some SW universe writing)

  41. IanP on December 22, 2016 at 6:43 am said:
    Not everyone can picture a book’s characters anyway : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34039054

    Thinking of even family the best I get is flashes, for characters in a book the best I can do is what actor might play them in a movie. To me everyone in an imagined crowd looks the same, non-existant.

    Interestingly, I scored pretty middle of the road on that test, but as it turns out I never visualize scenes in books I’m reading. I read Lord of the Rings over a hundred times, and until Peter Jackson came along, I had no pictures in my head of any of it.

    I read very very quickly, measured at around 1200 WPM, perhaps I’m able to read that quickly because I don’t slow down to make pictures. (*shrugs*)

    Recalling real life stuff doesn’t seem to be a problem — I just don’t conjure stuff up out of whole cloth. And recognizing faces isn’t a problem, either. So, who knows.

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