(1) THEY LOOK ALIKE, THEY CAW ALIKE. …You could lose your mind! In “A Tale of Two Covers: Alan Baxter’s Crow Shine and Sarah Remy’s The Bone Cave”, Black Gate’s John O’Neill comments on the remarkably similar cover art on two disparate novels published within a month of each other.
(2) SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS NOT A CIGAR. Maya Kaathryn Bonhoff deconstructs another cover trend at Book View Café: “There’s a Bimbo on the Cover Verse 4: Rocket Power”.
This is the fourth verse of the song “There’s a Bimbo on the Cover of the Book.” If you’re collecting the lyric and singing along, it’s sung to the tune of (TTTO) “She’ll Be Comin’ Around the Mountain When She Comes.”
There’s a rocket on the cover of the book.
There’s a rocket on the cover of the book.
It’s a phallic and a stout one, but my novel was without one.
There’s a rocket on the cover of my book.In this case, the lyric really doesn’t do justice to the …er… attributes of the rocket in question, which is from the cover of BVC author Deborah Ross’ print novel Jaydium (under her Deborah Wheeler nom de plume).
As it happens, I’ve read Jaydium and, while there is a rocket involved briefly in the story (my recollection is that it is part of a flashback), the scene shown on the cover does not actually appear as such in the novel.
(3) SOCIAL MEDIA MOURNING. Ann Leckie shares some wisdom in her post “On Mourning”.
It gets weird, with public figures. These are people that might be very, very important to us, might have formed our childhoods, given us inspiration, been constant companions in one way or another, and yet we’ve never met them, and they never had any idea that we existed. It’s not the same as a close loved one dying. But it’s not nothing. And what do you do, when someone not exactly family dies, but you had some sort of relationship with them? Well, if you were in the same town you’d put on nice clothes and comb your hair and go to the funeral parlor and tell the family how sorry you were, how important the deceased was to you, maybe tell them about some time they really helped you out. And then you move aside for the next person, maybe talk with some folks, and go home. Maybe you send flowers, that will sit there in the funeral home and in the church as a conspicuously visible token of your tie to the deceased, or their family, or a particular member of that family.
We aren’t any of us going to Carrie Fisher’s wake. Her family doesn’t want to slog through thousands of cards or letters, and there’s no mortuary large enough to hold the flowers we might all send. But we can blog or tweet. And yes, it’s performative. Like all funeral customs and public mourning it’s performative. It’s meant to send a message. “I am a member of this community, and this person was important to us. This community recognizes their loss. This community wants the deceased’s family to know how important this person was to us, and how sorry we are to hear they’ve left us.” And maybe her family doesn’t see most of it, but they likely know it’s there. I suspect that, like “I’m sorry” at the funeral home, it helps.
(4) LIFE IMITATES ART. John King Tarpinian saw this cartoon and admitted, “I do this all the time. I have the CD set, the DVD set, and the Blu-ray set of Twilight Zone, yet I watch the marathon on the Syfy channel.”
(5) GROSS NEWS. Natalie Rohamed, in a piece called “Scarlett Johansson is the highest-grossing actor of 2016” on Forbes.com, says that Scarlett Johansson with $1.2 billion in film grosses this year edged out Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., each of which had $1.15 billion. All of the top ten actors starred in superhero movies.
Scarlett Johansson has had a good year at the box office. Between a top role as the Black Widow in blockbuster hit Captain America: Civil War, which grossed over $1.15 billion worldwide, plus an ensemble part in the much less commercial Hail, Caesar!, Johansson is 2016’s top-grossing actor, bringing in $1.2 billion at global ticketing booths.
Martin Morse Wooster, who sent the link, comments: “I once read a profile of Robert Downey Jr. in Esquire where I learned that if you really want to irritate the guy, asking him, ‘You’ve created two billion-dollar franchises in Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man. How does it feel?’ will do it.”
(6) THE ROBOTIC HORROR. BBC mix of blue-skying, looking-with-alarm, and data on “The rise of the robots?”
“Your bones will turn to sand. And upon that sand a new God will walk.” Dolores in the latest sci-fi TV blockbuster, Westworld.
It may not quite be that bad. But a wall won’t keep them out, a new work permit scheme won’t stop their freedom of movement.
The rise of the robots could be next year’s big story. Ever since the Luddites smashed their first loom, mechanisation has been putting people out of work. But the process is speeding up, accelerating all the time and the next wave could be crashing down, near you, soon.
(7) UPDATE: DEBBIE REYNOLDS OBIT. The mother of Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, passed away today.
BREAKING: Actress Debbie Reynolds, star of the 1952 classic 'Singin' in the Rain' and mother of Carrie Fisher, has died, son says.
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 29, 2016
Her death was reported shortly after the Scroll was posted with news that she had been hospitalized —
Debbie Reynolds, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and 1960s, was taken to a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday, one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Reynolds, 84, complained of breathing problems, an unidentified source told The Times.
This might fall within the sphere of science fiction news not only because of the Fisher connection, but because Reynolds’ signature film Singin’ in the Rain was regarded as science fiction by at least one authority. Patton Oswalt told the story to io9 —
And I love the part about what happens to human beings. Ray Bradbury pointed out that Star Wars is not science fiction, it’s an adventure story set in space. Singing in the Rain is a science fiction film, because you have the world as it is, then sound is introduced. What happens to people now that this new thing is there? That’s all science fiction is.
(8) TWO WASHINGTON POST TRIBUTES. Michael Cavna, in “As iconic Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher was a life force to be reckoned with”, looks at how Carrie Fisher “long had a love/hate role with the Princess Leia role,” and how her “joy and swagger” at the part was combined with a fear that if she screwed up she would be replaced by Jodie Foster or the many other women George Lucas rejected in favor of her.
When first casting his “Star Wars” films, creator-director Lucas seriously considered such other budding teenage talents as Jodie Foster and Terri Nunn. Yet Carrie Fisher, still barely an adult at the time, had a silly, fun-loving presence that melded well with future co-stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford during auditions. She also had a precocious sense of self — a quick mind and a feisty steeliness of spine. In short, Fisher reminded Lucas of his own younger sister.
Alexandra Petri, in “Carrie Fisher: So long, Princess, and thanks”, says that “Until Carrie Fisher, ‘princesses’ was a dirty word” and how “a lot of what I learned about how to be a person in the world came from Princess Leia.”
(9) SURVIVED BY. CinemaBlend reports “Carrie Fisher’s Dog Gary Has Already Found A New Home”.
Carrie Fisher’s adorable French Bulldog Gary could often be seen at his owner’s side during interviews and other events. So it’s no surprise that fans of the Star Wars star were concerned about Gary’s wellbeing in the aftermath of Fisher’s death. Rest assured, Gary has already secured a new home.
TMZ reports that the 4-year-old Gary will be in the care of Carrie Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd….
https://twitter.com/Gary_TheDog/status/813957854596136961
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- December 28, 1865 — French film pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed the first commercial motion pictures at a Paris cafe.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born December 28, 1932 – Nichelle Nichols
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born December 28, 1922 – Stan Lee
(13) THE SECOND IS NO. Thomas Vinciguerra confides to readers of the Columbia Journalism Review, “Want me to write for free? I’ve got two one-syllable words for you”.
An ostensibly professional journalist this spring told me he was on the prowl for freelance editors for his new investigative website. Intrigued, I eventually broached the question of payment.
He responded by rattling on about the great people who worked for him, how they came from all walks of life, that inevitably his site would grow, and that at some point he might possibly—no promises, I had to understand—be able to toss me a few coins.
After silently fuming for a few days, I politely told him that this was simply not viable. In retrospect, I should have responded with two one-syllable words.
The long-chronicled decline of print has gored many a writer and editor. It’s hardly a secret that magazines and newspapers are now leaning mercilessly on their dwindling staffs, unable to pay outsiders as much as they once did or take them on at all. Fair enough; as Hyman Roth stammered in The Godfather, Part II, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
But there is something fundamentally obscene about expecting anyone to work gratis. And that applies even to us ink-stained wretches.
The fiction writer Harlan Ellison—a master of what our mutual friend (and science-fiction writer) David Gerrold calls “the literature of amazement”—once tore into the idea of giving away your words for nothing. “I get so angry about this because you’re undercut by all the amateurs,” he explodes. “It’s the amateurs who make it tough for the professionals.”
(14) DEITIES IN SF. Leah Schnelbach’s fine post for Tor.com – “19 SFF Stories That Take a Positive View of Religion” — rounds up an uncommon set of stories.
Of all the genres, science fiction and fantasy are the ones where humans can tackle their deepest societal problems and thought experiments. Because of this, it’s a natural place for people to explore ideas about religion, faith, and the meaning of life…
Religion can also be an emotional and contentious topic for people. For people who choose to leave a religious tradition, science and science fiction can become the home they didn’t find in a church or temple, and can also provide a way to critique the life they left. For others, the flexibility of the genre allows them to express their faith, or their questions about their faith, in deeper ways than any other medium would allow.
I thought it would be interesting to look at some examples of books and short stories that have tackled religious questions in respectful and positive ways. While these stories sometimes go to uncomfortable places, they each take faith seriously, and would be worthy additions to the TBR stacks of believers and non-believers alike…..
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light is set in the far future, where colonists from “vanished Urath,” or Earth, have set up shop on a planet full of understandably hostile indigenous people. In order to survive, they use their ships tech to mutate themselves and eventually to MacGyver a type of reincarnation by repeatedly transferring their souls into new bodies. They use this tech against the planet’s native population, setting themselves up as a pantheon of “Hindu” gods, and instituting an ironclad caste system. Obviously, they have to keep the tech out of the wrong hands in order to stay at the top of society… which is where Sam comes in. Originally named Mahasamatman, he prefers to go by just Sam, but before that he was Siddhartha. The Buddha. And now he’s decided to ally with the pantheon of the native people, reincarnate repeatedly, and generally go full trickster god to make sure everyone has access to technology, and end the tyranny of the caste system once and for all.
(15) BOX SCORE. John Scalzi draws back the curtain on “2016 Top 10 Whatever Posts + Social Media Stats”.
Time for my annual nerdery about the most visited posts here, and the state of my social media presence. Ready? Sure you are, that’s why you’re here! This and cat pictures.
First, here are the top ten posts on Whatever f0r 2016, ranked by visits. Posts with asterisks were originally posted in years other than 2016….
Atop the charts is “The Cinemax Theory of Racism”.
(16) CLOUDS OF WITNESS. History’s post “Human Computers: The Women of NASA” includes a group photo from 1953.
Graduating in 1953 with a degree in chemical engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, Janez Lawson had the grades, degree and intelligence to get any job she wanted. The problem? Her race and gender. She responded to a JPL job ad for “Computers Wanted” that specified “no degree necessary,” which she recognized as code for “women can apply.” While it would not be an engineering position, it would put her in a lab. Macie Roberts and Helen Ling were already working at JPL, actively recruiting young women to compute data and Lawson fit the bill. Lawson was the first African American to work in a technical position in the JPL lab. Taking advantage of the IBM computers at their disposal, and her supervisor’s encouragement to continue her education, Lawson was one of two people sent to a special IBM training school to learn how to operate and program the computers.
(17) REWARDING DIVERSITY. Slate says the British Academy of Film and Television Arts is adding a diversity requirement to its award rules. Note that this only applies to the BAFTAs for Outstanding British Film, and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer — “Starting in 2019, if Your Film Isn’t Diverse, It Won’t Be Eligible for a BAFTA Award”.
In an incredibly bold move, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced last week that, beginning in 2019, works that do not demonstrate inclusivity in their production practices will no longer be eligible for the Outstanding British Film or Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer awards at the annual BAFTAs, often considered the U.K. equivalent of the Oscars.* Eligible projects must showcase this in two of the following ways, as the BBC reported: On-screen characters and themes, senior roles and crew, industry training and career progression, and audience access and appeal to underrepresented audiences. BAFTA will also remove the requirement that newly admitted voters be recommended by two existing members.
(18) EYES YES, CHICKEN FEET, NO. Another BBC story — “Why I want my home to watch me”.
As I step into the hallway in Simon Daykin’s New Forest home, his smartwatch goes into overdrive.
He is receiving messages from the house itself, warning him there is somebody inside it doesn’t recognise.
“As you come in, you’ve already been spotted by some of our tech,” he says.
“There are cameras in the burglar alarm sensors, and a facial recognition system in the house.
“If it’s someone it ‘knows’, it will tell me. If it’s someone it doesn’t know, it will tell me.”
He selects one of the CCTV images he has received and adds my name to it. That seems to satisfy the house – for now.
(19) TZ ON METV. Get a list of “8 books any fan of ‘The Twilight Zone’ should read” from MeTV.
3. Richard Matheson – ‘Nightmare At 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories By Richard Matheson’
In his introduction, Stephen King describes Matheson’s influence on the horror genre in the 1950s as “a bolt of pure ozone lightning.” The master also confesses that without Matheson, he “wouldn’t be around.” This modern collection largely draws from the 1950s, with some 1960s shorts thrown in as well, keeping it contemporary with Twilight Zone. Matheson was the mind behind other classic episodes like “Third from the Sun,” “Nick of Time,” “The Invaders,” “Night Call” and more.
John King Tarpinian says, “They left out Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, which is the book that Ray Bradbury gave to Rod Serling as TZ was being formulated.”
(20) BEHIND THE IMAGINARY SCENES. ScienceFiction.com recommends — “Unleashing The Power: Check Out Video From ‘Science Of The MCU’ Event!’”
Recently, the Science and Entertainment Exchange, along with Marvel Studios and The Great Company put on a truly amazing event called the ‘The Science of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’ which highlighted how some of the more fantastic elements of the MCU could actually work. At the events, real scientists discussed how some of the pseudoscience and superpowers of the MCU could potentially work, and how close we are to accomplishing some of the scientific discoveries fictional characters in the MCU have made…
[Thanks to JJ, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]
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Ticky
[click-stalk]
And ticky makes three.
(16) CLOUDS OF WITNESS
The JPL section of this story is covered in more detail in “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars” by Nathalia Holt, which I recently read and enjoyed.
Just a patent but one of the coolest things I’ve seen this year:
Dirigible Drones of the Amazon
(Sacrificial fourth?)
ETA: Fifth!!!
Today I realized that “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands” have the exact same metrical pattern in their lyrics.
(7) Sadly I’m just listening to BBC Radio 5 Live which is reporting Debbie Reynolds has passed away.
Arwel Parry: Sad news, but thanks for telling us. I’ve updated the Scroll, too.
1) Also, somebody at Harper Voyager squishified the image–by which I mean hit “resize” on the horizontal at about 15-25% which becomes glaringly obvious when you see it alongside the first one.
First one’s a substantially better cover, if you ask me. They were subtler and cleaner with the font outlines, the texture on the second one’s title is overkill and since it isn’t mimicked in the author name, looks weird, and I’m not keen on the A’s in that font…and I’ll shut up now, sorry, I’ve been mucking around with covers recently and it’s on the brain.
Didn’t see that the new thread was up, but RE: Debbie Reynolds death… I really have no words:
BBC obit: US actress Debbie Reynolds dies, a day after daughter Carrie Fisher
I just watched Turner Classic Movies’s In Memoriam for the year. Carrie is now in it, near the end, between Zsa Zsa and Gene. Perhaps tomorrow at this time, her mom will be there as well.
This parade of mortality of people whose names and faces I knew is inevitable, at my age, but I get so tired of going through it.
The challenge isn’t to get a story that takes a positive view of religion but rather one that takes a positive view of Christianity. Many, many people grew up with Christianity, we’ve had it shoved down our throats at one time or another, and we don’t react well to it. Others take Christianity so seriously that they’re likely to get upset at any but the most anodyne references to it.
The article mentions The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell (a truly wonderful story) but it doesn’t emphasize how remarkable it is that Cornell produced something this good in which Christianity is a powerful, positive force.
I drafted a post the other day linking to an Onion article from January, then deleted it because it was too depressing.
Depressing seems…appropriate(?) today:
You To Still Die One Day
(That being said, I just caught the thought that I’m glad both OGH and my father made it through their health emergencies okay this year. Don’t worry, Mike, I knocked on wood for ya!)
Clicky.
Still here.
Scrolling in the Pixel Rain
“oops my hand slipped”
https://twitter.com/what_eats_owls/status/813851251553112064
(“What would Carrie do 2017”)
I’ve pretty much run out of words to say what I think of 2016.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears singing in the rain
@Greg Hullender: It’s been many years since I read it, and I only have the vaguest memories, but James Blish’s A Case of Conscience and its sequels are SF with an interesting (even to an outsider) take on Christianity.
As someone who grew up in SF fandom, though, I never really developed strong feelings about the religion one way or the other, aside from thinking it odd that a God would be so concerned with this one measly little planet–which is one of the issues Blish looks at, if I recall correctly.
(1) Similar Covers:
I ran across this example in my own purchases: Supervillains Anonymous by Lexi Dunne (Harper Voyager) uses the same stock art as Apathetic Avengers by J. Rose Alexander and Aurora Zahni (indie, I think). In trying to recall the name of the second book, I stumbled across a third example (which I didn’t scribble down) as well as a notation of a cover design award (for one of the three – again, didn’t note which).
Yes, it’s stock art, and yes, it’s good, but when the usage is absolutely identical…
Addendum/correction:
The art usage in the two cited titles isn’t precisely identical. The latter cover’s image is shifted down with respect to the former’s, to make room for the book title at the top. My point is that there’s no change to the orientation, color scheme, or anything else; I had to see the images side by side to notice the vertical shift.
7)
Singing in the Rain as an SF film? That’s a real stretch,IMO, but Reynolds was also on the Disney channel series “Halloweentown”, so that’s less stretch for a Scroll item, after all.
(1) THEY LOOK ALIKE, THEY CAW ALIKE.
The Norwegian public broadcaster ran a piece a while ago about a cover designer who had discovered that 25 other cover designers had used the same stock photo as she had. Article in Google Translate here:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrk.no%2Fkultur%2Fbok%2Ffant-25-boker-med-samme-omslagsbilde-1.13081453&edit-text=
There’s a slideshow of most of the covers here:
https://www.nrk.no/kultur/bok/fant-25-boker-med-samme-omslagsbilde-1.13081453?index=0#1.13085465.c556b0ff
There is some variation – many of the covers have placed some other object or person into the picture, and some have changed the colours a lot – but the tree and the birds from the original stock photo is clearly identifiable on all the covers.
Gallery of Clones
same stock cover image
another same stock cover image
One Image, Many Covers
One line stood out to me in Ann Leckie’s piece: We aren’t any of us going to Carrie Fisher’s wake. I wonder, will there be one? I know that “wakes” are traditional in some regions, but I don’t think that there are many around here. Here, the traditions seem to bifurcate: for white people, the tradition is that 1 or 2 days after a death there is visitation at a funeral home (with or without open casket) that lasts for maybe 2 to 4 hours, with the actual (relatively simple) funeral and burial the next day. For black people, things seem to be much more elaborate, with the burial put off for around a week, and includes a printed, multi-page program to go with the funeral. I’ve been to many visitations and funerals, but never anything that fits what I google up a “wake” to be like, nor have I heard of anyone I’ve personally known to have had/held one.
@Greg Hullender
It may be relevant that Paul Cornell is married to a CoE vicar. (She has written for Dr Who audio, which is how they met.)
(14) So, Lord of Light is specifically about the way certain groups use religion as a tool for social engineering (such as the explicit suppression of scientific progress) — including Sam, who “weaponizes” Buddhism precisely to counter the prevailing Hindu system. The main Christian character is an outcast and a crank who raises armies of zombies. I’m having a hard time seeing the positive — which is probably why it’s my favourite SF book. Doesn’t make me want to read the article, though.
@Darren Garrison
No, I never have either. At least around here, the funeral home visitation is often referred to as “the wake.” I’ve never been to, or known anyone who has been to, a “real” wake. I was using it the way I’m used to hearing it–as a general term for the pre-funeral ritual.
14 and @Bloodstone75: I was going to write essentially the same thing; it’s an argument that floats around SF from time to time – and always prompts the same response from me: its really only the religiously inclined who manage to find positivity towards religion in the story. Those not bitten by the bug usually see it as belief systems being manipulated (and mostly in a not-so-positive way).
Manipulating belief systems all by itself is an indictment IMO; if the believers had stuck to reality, they’d not be so vulnerable.
c4c
The late Bud Webster’s delightful “Sci-Fi Hi-Fi” slide/tape/talk presentations used to deal with a number of congruencies between SF-themed album covers of the 50s–70s, which often used the same props or the same backgrounds. One wishes there were video of the thing (which likely changed with his mood and as his collection added pertinent items). It’s been so long—I’m not sure I’ve seen one since the 90s, at the very latest, so I’m short on detail. I think the last one he gave was when he was using my little Sony suburb blaster for his sound track, and it stopped working a few minutes in (to my consternation, as it had been a wonderful device).
Tangentially re: (14) — Someday, I will go to the Amazon Kindle store, look up Roger Zelazny and find a listing for Lord of Light that’s not a medieval romance written by Kathryn Le Veque.
At least, that is my hope.
Just read: The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden
Wonderful story. The publisher describes it as similar to Uprooted, which is not wrong but I’d say it has more in common with T. Kingfisher’s The Raven and the Reindeer.
I have received an ARC of the book, the publication date is sometime in January 2017, but I already predict that this will be on my Hugo nomination ballot in 2018.
The story is set in a medieval Russia where pagan household spirits still exists – although their influence is dwindling as faith in them (and habits of giving them gifts) are gradually being pushed out by Christianity. The protagonist, Vasya, is the daughter of a local lord, and is among few people who can still see and talk to the old spirits.
The novel draws a beautiful, believable, and as far as I can tell historically very accurate (except for the fantasy elements) picture of its world. Both the protagonist and the secondary characters are well fleshed out, and act believably based on their knowledge, beliefs, values, and the social expectations placed on them.
When Ruth Stuart died in the summer, we had a “celebration of life” in lieu of a funeral at the funeral home and then a party in her honour at a local pub that was playing the final Tragically Hip concert that night.
Another friend of mine passed away last year and his ex had a wake for him at a different local pub. KW does not lack for local pubs.
My biggest fear now is we get a (New) Twilight Zone ending where 2017 laughs at us and says the younger years always thought that 2016 was too nice.
Haven’t looked at Charles Strosseses blog lately. Apparently, he has started writing Laundry Files fanfiction.
@Darren Garrison: No matter where it’s posted, IMHO it’s not fanfic if it’s written by the actual author. 😉
@Anyone: A cute Library Comic (sequel to the recently ended “Unshelved” comic) for you; apparently even library users can go overboard on books. (Overboard? Is such a thing even possible?!)
Oh, BTW, #1 & @JJ & @Rev. Bob – I love those examples of cover duplication. Especially the second one JJ posted; at least in some of the others, they tried to make things look a little different (including the one in #1). But that second one, some of those publishers barely even tried!
A very cool tribute to Carrie Fisher: Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary
ETA: BEWARE ROGUE ONE SPOILERS.
Darren wrote:
It’s not fanfiction, they’re offcuts from the forthcoming novel that required a massive rewrite after the Brexit Referendum upheaval. (Basically the politicians broke his background (in much the same way that Bernie Madoff wrecked the sequel to Halting State by running a Ponzi Scheme that exceeded the one in his plot by a couple of orders of magnitude (if not more)).
So he’s posting bits of abandoned sub-plot that are far to good to discard but have no possible way of fitting the new story arc.
Well worth reading, and apparently there may be more extracts at some point.
Whoops! I just realized the link I posted has some Rogue One spoilers. Mike, if you could edit in a warning I’d be grateful.
Nancy Sauer: Spoiler warning added IN BIG SCARY CAPS!
Mike
You are the man!
I was wondering if you could go back to some of my earlier comments and make them more intelligent. I have a list here.
Odds are I’d be a lot more successful adding typos and misspellings — sure you wouldn’t rather have that?
I’m pretty sure someone has already been doing that. (It’s the only possible explanation.)
Professionals that are working for free are not undercut by amateurs, they turn to amateurs. “Professional” means “being payed for the work”…
Pixel prices up 42%!
Darren Garrison says I’ve been to many visitations and funerals, but never anything that fits what I google up a “wake” to be like, nor have I heard of anyone I’ve personally known to have had/held one.
You need to know Irish whose families immigrated relatively recently to the States, say great-grandparents being the first generation here, as they’re very keen on wakes. A first generation Irish-Amercan friend told me today that she was going to a wake tomorrow for a father and son who died within days of each other this week (dad was eighty nine and ailing, son had skin cancer that took him in weeks). H’h — I’ve not heard of them being held outside of the Irish and Scots who emigrated to the States.
Wakes: there was something like a wake at Making Light, when Mike Ford died.
After my father died, his surviving siblings (those who came) spent an evening telling stories – some of which were actually true. Not exactly a wake, but similar.
I’ve been to plenty of funerals that have had a wake directly afterward. At a guess, I’d say more than half. Generally at a reserved venue (home, bar, etc), where drinking (and eating) occurs in honour of the departed.
This had no correlation with cultural/racial* descent or religious persuasion, though we are talking mainly “small town” New Zealand, so there is that.
(*well, other than being of NZ European and/or Maori ancestry)
All the funerals, cremations actually, I’ve been to in Scotland have been followed by a gathering at a function suite in either a bar or hotel with food being laid on by the family.
Been binging Stranger Things this afternoon, really enjoying it. It so totally captures the 80’s look and feel. The casting is first rate, with the kids in particular looking someone you’d swear you remember from the Breakfast Club/Goonies/Wargames and so on.