(1) THE PERFECT MATCH. Fathom Events is bringing Starship Troopers back to theaters – but only so the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 can give the movie everything it deserves.
The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000® are bringing The Best of RiffTrax Live back to select cinemas nationwide. On Thursday, January 14, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a re-broadcast of their hilarious take on Starship Troopers.
Originally riffed in August 2013, this fan favorite features the guys hurling their wisecracking humor at what has become the king of modern campy sci-fi epics.
(2) THREE BODY. President Barack Obama spent his holiday vacation in Hawaii reading these four books reports Newsweek.
His reading list includes: The Whites by Richard Price, Purity by Jonathan Franzen, The Wright Brothers by David Mccullough, and The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
(3) DEMENTO AND CRAZY-EX. Joe Blevins at Splitsider fills you in on everything from Dr. Demento to YouTube in “2015: The Year Comedy Music Broke”.
And then there are the vloggers and other YouTube stars, the ones who make their livelihoods from the site. It’s an under-reported phenomenon, but original comedic music has played a huge role in the success of many of them. Popular channels like Epic Rap Battles of History, Axis of Awesome, and Schmoyoho, all of which regularly rack up millions of views per video, are essentially delivery systems for new comedy music, even if few would think to lump them in with the acts getting airtime on The Dr. Demento Show. They’re all playing the same basic sport, though, just in different arenas. The comedy duo Smosh, long one of YouTube’s most-subscribed channels, mostly concern themselves with sketches, but they do enough songs to warrant inclusion here. Even vlogger Jenna Marbles occasionally does a musical number (usually about her doted-upon dogs) as part of her weekly video series. If there is a way to make money doing funny music in 2015, it is to partner with YouTube, nurture a subscriber base, and never really define yourself as a comedy or worse yet “novelty” music artist. Meanwhile, none of these people are getting much validation from traditional media, including pop radio. Whether that constitutes a problem is debatable.
(4) CHAOTIC NEUTRAL. Brandon Kempner has declared Chaos Horizon ineligible for the 2016 Hugos.
After careful thought, I’m declaring that Chaos Horizon (and myself) will not accept a Hugo nomination in 2016. Because Chaos Horizon reports so extensively on the numbers related to the Hugo process, I feel it would be a conflict of interest to be part of that process in any way.
Since I do reporting and analytical work here at Chaos Horizon, it’s important from me to maintain some journalistic distance from the awards. I couldn’t do that if I were nominated. This is consistent with my past practice; I haven’t voted in the Hugos since I began Chaos Horizon. Simply put, the scorekeeper can’t play the game.
(5) TANGENTIAL HISTORY. The “Tangent Online 2015 Recommended Reading List” says it contains 417 works: 355 short stories, 46 novelettes, and 16 novellas.
Its long, error-filled endorsement of Sad Puppies 4 begins with this generous rewriting of history —
Sad Puppies was the name given to a small group of fans four years ago who had become disgruntled after seeing many of the same names on the final Hugo ballot, year after year. It was spearheaded that first year by SF author Larry Correia, who decided to put forth a list of authors and works he believed were being overlooked. He recused himself from being recommended or being nominated.
The Sad Puppies name was given these campaigns by their creator, Larry Correia, who started them to stir support for his own Hugo prospects. He was successful enough to be nominated three times; it was only the third he declined. Nor did he recuse himself from Sad Puppies 3, but supported the SP3 slate with his novel on it, only at the end suprising his fans by taking himself off the ballot.
(6) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WEARY. The respected Lois Tilton begins “2015 Reviews in Review” at Locus Online with a sigh:
Lovers of SFF can only deplore the late year’s outbreak of divisiveness and animosity, with the hostile parties displaying a willingness to destroy the genre in order to deny it to the other. Calls for unity go unheard while the partisans make plans to continue the hostilities in the upcoming year. The only bright spot is that ordinary readers appear to have largely ignored the entire thing.
(6) FLICK ANALYSIS. Ethan Mills shares his picks “2015 Movies: The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre” at Examined Worlds.
I’ve been trying to decide between Fury Road and The Force Awakens as my favorite movie of the year. Both movies have ultra-competent female protagonists, although Fury Road could certainly have done better on the racial diversity front. While Fury Road gives us pulse-quickening action and a fully realized post-apocalyptic world, Star Wars gives us all the fun of a real Star Wars movie.
Click to see who wins.
(7) READY-TO-WEAR TBR PILE. And if you have a week free, Fantasy Faction will tell you about the Top 50 fantasy novels of 2015.
It’s getting harder and harder to be a well-read and up-to-date reviewer in Fantasy these days. It’s also getting incredibly difficult to order the best of the year lists. I know that complaining that too many good books are being released probably isn’t an argument I will get much support for, but wow oh wow were there too many damned good books published in 2015, right? RIGHT!?
It’s not just the quality of the books, but the diversity of the Fantasy genre worth applauding too. Take Empire Ascendant, The Grace of Kings, The Vagrant and Uprooted – these aren’t books being based on proven and familiar formulas
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born December 31, 1945 – Connie Willis
https://twitter.com/EdMcKayinFay/status/682559367087013888
(9) MURDER BY DEATH. “The Medieval Revenant: Restless, Dead, and Out for Revenge” by Matt Staggs at Suvudu. Interesting paragraph – perhaps the literati around here can tell whether it’s accurate.
Unlike us, medieval men and women didn’t make much of a distinction between various kinds of the living dead. There were revenants who fed on blood, and vampires who fed on anything but blood. Sometimes the restless dead took physical form, and other times they were immaterial spirits, like ghosts. (The zombies stayed down in Haiti, and those poor souls didn’t eat anyone.) Because of these reasons, classifying a story as one about a revenant rather than a ghost, vampire, or other restless dead thing can be difficult. That said, we can draw upon these tales for some ideas of what revenants did and why they rose from the dead in the first place.
(10) MISSING YOU. Journey Planet #27 takes as its theme “Fan History – To Absent Friends.” Download it here.
We look at the impact of those who have come before us, and what they meant to the evolution of Fandom, and of fans. Wonderful stories of legends like Bruce Pelz, Peggy Rae Sapienza, Jerry Jacks, Mikey Jelenski, Fred Duarte, Gary Louie, Robert Sacks, Poul Andersen, Mick O’Connor, Dave Stewart, James White, Ted Johnstone, Joe Mayhew, LeeH, Jay Haldeman, George Flynn, and many many more, help us understand the legacies that led us to where fandom is today.
It was lovely to learn more about so many people that we had heard of but sadly never met, and to learn about people new to us that, unfortunately, we will never have an opportunity to meet. Our experience as fans is enriched by knowledge, and we hope that you will all have a similar experience reading the issue. Produced by guest editors Helen Montgomery & Warren Buff, plus editors Chris Garcia & James Bacon.
(11) BOOKLESS. Is making these announcements a new trend? Greg Van Eekhout is another author explaining why he won’t have a new book out in 2016.
First of all, I won’t have a new novel out. That’s mostly because I didn’t complete one in time to have a novel out in 2016. From the time a novel is sold, a publisher usually needs at least nine months and often more than a year to get it ready for release. And by “ready” I mean not just editing and printing, but also positioning it with a marketing campaign and finding an advantageous slot for it in the release schedule. So, for me to have a book out in 2016, I would have had to finish writing it sometime in late 2014 or early 2015, so an editor could edit it, so I could revise it, so an art director and book designer and cover artist could make it pretty, and so on. Unfortunately, taking care of two elderly parents was more than a full-time job that didn’t leave much physical or emotional energy for new writing.
(12) EXPANSE RETURNING. Lizard Brain shares Syfy’s press release announcing that The Expanse has been renewed for a second season.
Currently airing on Syfy Tuesdays at 10PM ET/PT, THE EXPANSE has garnered strong multiplatform viewership since its December 14 debut, with 4.5 million viewers sampling the first episode on Syfy.com, On Demand and digital outlets prior to the series’ linear premiere, and an average of 1.6 million P2+ linear viewers (L3) in its first three episodes.
(13) MISTER LISTER. Black Gate’s John ONeill amusingly comments —
Fortunately, the tireless John DeNardo works much harder than me. He doesn’t go to Christmas parties, or watch movies. Ever. Or sleep, apparently. No, he read every single one of those Best SF & Fantasy of the Year lists. The ones that matter anyway…
— before guiding us to John DeNardo’s compilation of “The Best of the Best of 2015’s Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books” at Kirkus Reviews. There, De Nardo explains:
o I used 8 different sources to arrive at the aggregate, all of them specifically geared toward science-fiction and fantasy books: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and course Kirkus Reviews.
o I only included books that garnered three or more mentions. That yielded a list of seven books, which seems like a good size. That said, I also include below a list of “Honorable Mentions” that appeared on two lists.
(14) SNOPES CLEARS HARLAN. Snopes says a famous Harlan Ellison story never happened/
Claim: Writer Harlan Ellison was rebuffed after making a crude remark to a tall blonde woman at a party.
Status: False.
In Snopes’ example, Isaac Asimov spins out an entire anecdote, but the gist is —
…Harlan approached one of these giraffelike women, fixed her with his glittering eye, and said, “What would you say to a little fuck?” And she looked down at him and said, “I would say, ‘Hello, little fuck.'”
Snopes says this is nothing more than a riff off one of the jokes in Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke first published by Grove Press in 1968.
I remember hearing the joke whispered between fans in the early 1970s. It must have been freshly purloined from Legman at the time.
(15) HALLOWEEN STAMPS. Naturally, horror news blog Dread Central is more interested in the 2016 Jack O’Lantern stamps that will be issued for Halloween. I skipped over those to avoid spoiling the symmetry of the space and Star Trek theme in yesterday’s post. But they are lovely!
(16) TREK ACTORS CASH IN. “Star Trek Actor Salaries Just Beamed Up With Big Raises” at Celebrity Net Worth says Paramount will pay big to hang onto the cast of its franchise films.
…In order for the latest Star Trek film series to “live long and prosper,” Paramount needed to keep Pine and Quinto on board as Spock and Kirk…
Pine only made $600 thousand for 2009’s Star Trek, which grossed over $385 million. For 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness, Captain Kirk made $1.5 million of the $467 million gross. Before a new deal was struck, he was scheduled to make $3 million for the upcoming Star Trek Beyond. Thanks to a lucrative new deal, Pine will now make $6 million for the third Star Trek film, which is double what he was supposed to make, and will be 10 times what he made for the first film in the series!
The new deal features big raises and much better performance bonuses for the cast. Paramount only wanted to give the ship mates nominal raises, but ended up giving in for the better of the franchise. Thanks to last minute negotiations, the production house ended up adding somewhere between $10 and $15 million to the movie’s budget to pay the stars of the show. As part of the new deal, Pine and Quinto have been granted an option and will now be a part of the 4th film in the J.J. Abrams directed series.
(17) SKY TRASH. Almost 20,000 pieces of space debris are currently orbiting the Earth. This visualisation, created by Dr Stuart Grey, lecturer at University College London and part of the Space Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, shows how the amount of space debris increased from 1957 to 2015, using data on the precise location of each piece of junk. (Via Chaos Manor.)
(18) KEEP THE FAITH. James H. Burns writes:
For the end of the year, or really the start of the new, and in the spirit of the season, one of the greatest minutes ever in the history of filmed science fiction… Courtesy of J. Michael Straczynski, and the good folks at, and on, Babylon 5….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, James H. Burns, Brian Z., and Sean Wallace for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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@peace re 17. That’ll be geosync orbit…
Currently trying out a new author by accident. 🙂 Picked up a book because I thought it was by Kate Griffin (AKA Claire North), but it turns out it’s by Kate Griffin (AKA … Kate Griffin, no relation whatsoever.) All right, a historical mystery it is tonight, then!
16. I, too, shall remain bookless this year, having changed editors and had the date for the current book pushed back to 2017. On the other hand they’re already working up the brief for the cover, so things are moving along, at least. Though I suppose it’s always possible that if my US publishers pick it up (fingerscrossedfingerscrossed) they might bring it out late 2016?
Medievalist here. Staggs is right: medieval people did not engage in the sort of post-Linnaean classification of the supernatural that we’re familiar with.Their supernatural critters were loose, baggy categories. There were some distinctions made–I just finished teaching Grettir’s Saga, a text that differentiates aptrgangr (after-walkers) from haugbui (mound-dwellers). But that’s a broad distinction (mobile vs. stationary), not the fine ones we use.
If you think that’s bad, the manga adaptation started in 1994, shortly before the series started airing in Japan, and only finished in 2013.
@ Stevie – oh cmon, pick an author people have actually read! 😛
First of all, Happy New Year to you all.
Second, slightly off-topic, currently, the Delphi Classics Complete Arthur Conan Doyle is selling for .99 cents. There are actually TWO DC ACD collections-the Collected and the Complete. The Complete has all the SH works and more of the Challenger series (I don’;t know if the Challenger is complete).
I’m glad to be in 2016 and not drifting in time right now.
Rev. Bob on January 1, 2016 at 9:29 am said:
Did you look at the list of names at the bottom of that petition, though? It certainly gave me pause.
Happy New Year
Re: 18. One of the high points of the first season. Another example of JMS’s delicate and nuanced portrayal of faith is from the “Passing through Gethsemane” in season 3. It is very nice to see that sort of discussion done with sympathy in this age of subreddits and Donald Trump.
@Greg Hullender:
Hm. Huh.
Some of those signatures do not surprise me one whit and some rather sadden me.
I think I can recall seeing at some point this past summer a Puppy rallying cry aimed at (how to put this) some in the older SF generation with the gist that the young Puppies are the true heirs of Zer Old Ways and the antithesis of them annoying diverse feminist nonwhite whippersnappers who of late have put so many old fun-lovin’ girl-pinchin’ just-jokin’ noses out of joint with their new ways.
@Greg Hullender I was surprised by some of the names at the time. I’d forgotten David Gerrold and BT had signed it. Interesting to see how people can agree and work on something together and then become mortal enemies* over another issue.
*hyperbole
@Robert Reynolds: to the best of my knowledge, there are only five Challenger stories: the two novels The Lost World and The Land of Mists, the short novel (novella?) The Poison Belt, and the short stories “The Disintegration Machine” and “When the World Screamed”. If there are any others, I for one would be very glad to hear about them. (A couple of other Conan Doyle stories – most notably “The Horror from the Heights” and The Maracot Deep – are the same sort of early SF, but don’t feature Challenger himself.)
(9)
May I indulge the pedantry of pointing out that “medieval men and women” would not have had an opportunity to even consider the appropriate classification of Haitian zombies? (Nor, for the most part, vampires, but the zombie example is more egregious.)
* * *
I seem to have finished up 2015 the same way I spent much of the year: prioritizing self-care over socializing. I was unexpectedly up until 3am the morning of New Year’s Eve making an airport run to pick up my youngest brother (whose expected 8pm arrival was initially delayed until Jan 2, but through dint of getting on every possible standby list in United’s Chicago departures, was only delayed by 5-6 hours instead). So having skived off work early at 4pm when my last investigation report closed, I found myself home at 5pm deciding that 12+ hours of sleep was far more important than any party.
@Steve Wright: All five of the Challenger stories are there, as are The Maracot Deep and “The Horror From the Heights” (listed as “Danger Story V”, from the collection, Danger! and Other Stories).
Many thanks for the info. I wasn’t sure if there were more than the five Challenger pieces.
There are some interesting stuff at Chaos Horizon besides not accepting the Hugo nomination. In the tab for 2016 Hugo, Chaos is looking at 2015 data at Goodreads and Amazon and starting to weave that into his modeling. He is also looking at puppy influence. He tabulates the rankings from SP IV and finds:
Somewhither – Wright, John C. – 12
A Long Time Until Now – Williamson, Michael Z. – 10
Seveneves – Stephenson, Neal – 10
Uprooted – Novik, Naomi – 8
Honor at Stake – Finn, Declan – 7
The Aeronaut’s Windlass – Butcher, Jim – 6
The Just City- Walton, Jo – 5
Strands of Sorrow – Ringo, John – 5
The Desert and the Blade – Stirling, S.M. – 5
Ronin Games – Harmon, Marion – 4
Son of the Black Sword – Correia, Larry – 4
Ancillary Mercy – Leckie, Ann – 4
Now the obvious is the John Wright love who is also loved here as 770 (so much so that he has a quote on the front page). But the other thing is the numbers are small.
Chaos says:
“Will these recommendations operate as slate, concentrating 100-300 (or more?) Sad Puppy votes into a unbreakable voting block? Or will a longer list diffuse the Sad Puppy vote, leading to a subtler effect on the final ballot?”
So 100-300 is pretty small. And the longer list will have a more subtle effect. But I suspect it will break itself out into to sub gourps – the puppy group and the mainstream group. Then Vox will crystallize a final list based on some VD strategy. In the end, my bet will be the pups will have their marching orders.
But the Fans should see this coming, yes? There should be a real GOTV this last year before EPH goes into effect.
First novella review of the year:“Quarter Days” by Iona Sharma (GigaNotoSaurus, December 2015).
This one’s for Stevie: Sharma is an English lawyer, a lot of the story is set in the Temple, and the author obviously loves its immemorial customs. The twist is that in this world (the same as the story “Nine Thousand Hours”) magic is an ancient licensed professional of its own, with some ties to Law. The year is 1919, social change is inescapable, unease is everywhere. We follow a group of three Practitioners who are barely holding their business together: Ned, who served in the Great War and returned damaged in a number of ways and unable to use magic; Thanet, who is always threatened with loss of licence because of specializing in strictly confidential services to women, and who is distrusted because of being randomly sometimes male, sometimes female, never mind that that is a known thing in the kind of magic Thanet practices; and Grace, who should be doing the best, but has problems due to her race (especially with the ugly rlots recently), and has just taken on an apprentice. Railways, and a railway worker’s strike, are at the center of the plot.
There is a sense of historical thickness to to this story. And I really appreciate that magic has gravitas here, must be paid and worked properly. It’s a story satisfying on the level of both plot and characters. Rating: definitely recommended.
@Mike Glyer
I LOL’d at the change to the header. 🙂
I only read part of that story – I had to stop because a bird* got stuck inside the house and then life required me to not read stories and I didn’t get back to it. However, what I read did draw me into the world quickly.
*[a robin sort of looking bird – which was wholly inappropriate post-Christmas]
Yes, the header made me grin at least.
Happy New Year to all. We had a low-key night with one friend over, playing with jigsaw puzzles, Lego and colouring books, and Youtube music videos. Which all makes us sound like the deeply mature 30s-40s we are…:)
(My husband got himself the Doctor Who Lego set, and the puzzles, which were only 48 or 100 pieces, were because the 4 year old had mixed up the pieces of multiple puzzles so we needed to confirm they were correctly sorted and all pieces present. At an hour when he was asleep and couldn’t intervene.)
The perkiest one by far was the 9 month old, who was determinedly awake until 1 AM regardless of adult influence (And awake again at 2:20, so i didn’t sleep at all until 3:00).
My relevant to this crowd resolutions for the New Year are mostly to get submissions packages for 2 (unrelated) novels ready AND out the door, edit the second novel (dependent on some beta readers getting back to me), and get a novella out and submitted too. And to read more 2015 stuff: I have a few more novels on the list (Not done Shadow Scale, but started Ancillary Mercy and have been barrelling through*), but mostly it’s short works and potential related works and fanac stuff.
*I tend to have at minimum an upstairs book and a downstairs book on the go at once. And often a third on the computer,though lately l that’s been more podcasts and short fiction.
Did I say Happy New Year? If not – Happy New Year.
Like the revised header.
@Greg Hullender:
Isn’t that kind of true of Sam Tomaino? He finds something nice to say about nearly everything. Have you just been reading him long enough to be able to distinguish that from what he’s truly enthusiastic about?
Bruce:
We’re happy when readers arrive, no matter when they show up.
Very glad you liked it, and happy to have you aboard.
@Greg Hullender: “Did you look at the list of names at the bottom of that petition, though? It certainly gave me pause.”
My reaction at the time was much the same as Peace’s today:
It is worth remembering how that petition came about, and that Truesdale was not even an SFWA member when he was circulating it. Natalie Luhrs is one of several people who commented on the matter at the time, and her post provides excellent contemporaneous context. Of particular interest are the multiple versions of the petition that she has preserved; I wonder how many of the signatories actually agreed with the full final text.
Also worth noting is how the Sad Puppies campaigns fit into this timeline. The original, aka “Get Larry nominated for a Hugo,” kicked off in early January 2013. (The first use of “sad puppies” in the campaign was about a week later.) The now-infamous SFWA Bulletin #200 (Winter 2013) came out somewhere around then. May brought issue #202 and a new batch of bile in reaction to it. Sad Puppies 2 was announced in January 2014, and Truesdale’s petition – a reaction to a December 2013 SFWA notice – went public shortly thereafter.
So there was this perfect storm of controversy in 2013 that fueled divisions in the SFF pro community, particularly along political lines. That gave SP2 a lot more momentum than it might otherwise have had, because it tied right into Larry’s already strongly politicized attitude. In fact, I wonder if SP2 would ever have taken off – let alone spawned SP3 – if not for the Bulletin fiasco and Truesdale’s petition. The otherwise inexplicable conflation of SFWA and the Hugos certainly makes a lot more sense in that light…
One might argue that medieval men and women had zombies, going by modern tropes. They called them vampires (or whatever word the local folklore had for the unquiet dead who rise to devour the living).
The modern idea of “zombie” bears almost no resemblance to the Haitian folkloric creature, a drugged enslaved worker more like a golem than anything, but is a pretty good recreation of the old-style vampires of the original stories.
A happy, healthy, and successful new year to everyone. May you be surrounded by people you love, read books you enjoy, and reasons to laugh.
@Rose Embolism:
Happy Third Impact Day and thank you for linking to that article. Evangelion was the show that hooked me on anime and converted me to subtitles; Megumi Ogata screaming as Shinji and Megumi Hayashibara’s chilling Rei to be specific.
*Settles in as orange goo to watch the wacky adventures of Shinji and Asuka on the beach*
That was sorta my memory about the whole thing. People signed up to protest that the Bulletin editor job description read like it wasn’t going to have proper editorial independence. The job add could have been read as if each edition would get a final vetting before release by the review panel and that is what got people upset.
@Vasha – First novella review of the year:“Quarter Days” by Iona Sharma (GigaNotoSaurus, December 2015).
Thank you. That was excellent and I would never have seen it without your link and review.
More broadly, I’m at the state in my own reading of shorter works that I’m grateful for anyone or anything that divides them into categories. In my spare time, I’m excavating things I’ve liked on line this year and doing word counts on them.
If memory serves, a couple people involved had no idea of what was actually going on, they just had what was, in essence, an old associate ask them to sign a petition protesting censorship at the Bulletin. At least one (and again, as memory serves) was pretty pissed when they found out the real details and said they felt very much that they’d been misled and wouldn’t have signed if they knew what it was about.
Truesdale wasn’t even a SFWA member at the time, and nobody on the forums had ever even suggested having it answer to a board or whatever he was petitioning against, so my humble opinion is that it was just shit-stirring to raise his profile. But that, of course, is an opinion worth exactly what you’re paying for it.
Dawn,
I was encouraged away from dubs partially to stop hearing Spike Spencer voice the young male protagonist in every series to get translated.
I started by watching Evangelion dubbed on TV and the network ran Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 straight after. I then sought out more anime – non networked and rented the VHSs of Martian Successor Nadesico. So I got Spike as Shinji, Makie and Akito. By then I never wanted to hear him again(Not because he was bad, just I had trouble getting into new characters when I was constantly layering over another character because of the voice.)
Legman was an independent scholar without institutional affiliation, except during 1964–1965 when he was a writer in residence at UCSD, where I spent much time with him. I told him the Ellison story, well before he published it. I knew it from friends of Ellison (who is a friend of mine also). So it may well be true.
My New Year’s Even involved a Lego Star Wars AT-AT (not mine, sadly, but I helped assemble it), Mice & Mystics, and Exploding Kittens.
As far as reading, I’m currently, inexplicably, making my way through Gary Jennings’ Aztec for the first time in 25 years, and also Kai Ashante Wilson’s Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (which I’m using as something to read on my Kindle or phone when it’s not convenient to lug an 800 page trade paperback around). Enjoying them both in very different ways.
Also playing Descent, one of the Dragon Age: Inquisition DLCs, and got Brotherhood of the Wolf on Blu-ray, so 2016 is getting off to a fine start.
Scott Lynch bitch-slaps John C, Wright on his blog today: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Lying Crazypants Liars Who Lie” It’s a (rather delayed) reaction to Wright’s claims about the PHN/Lamplighter interaction at Sasquan.
@Rev Bob: Thank you for the links and the timeline!
I’m assembling sources on the Hugo Awards imbroglios (and Racefail and some of the various gender issues) for my graduate course on marginalized literatures to read next term, so it was great to see the link to Correia’s first piece.
And out of interest, I Googled that “Euro Snob reporter’s” quote and got nothing except sites including File 770 repeating it. So that exact phrase is not showing up on the internet (quelle surprise).
I think I’m going to have a warning for my students what they are likely to find if reading anything by Beale under any name (there’s no way they can read everything relating to these debates, but I’m selecting some key/representative pieces as well as overview pieces).
Back in the day, I heard at least two people (Randall Garrett and Paul Edwin Zimmer) say they were in the elevator where the “Hello, little fuck” incident took place.
Regardless, it’s one of those anecdotes that’s so perfect it SHOULD be true, even if it isn’t.
Chaos has his Hugo Predictions out. Pups get 2 spots out of 5.
https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/category/2016-hugo-award/
Vasha
Thank you! It actually makes sense, in a very strange way.
However, I can see grounds for conflict; my Christmas decorations are illuminated by the products of the Worshipful Company of Lightmongers…
I just want to say that I truly enjoyed Scott Lynch’s piece. In particular, “Holy sweet fucking corn muffins from Mars.” was a delightful turn of phrase that has put a smile on my face as a great start to 2016. Bravo!
@iphinome, Peace – your shout-out to my favorite laugh-out-loud moment in Ancillary Mercy made me snicker. I just read that page to my husband on our way to dropping the book off at the library last night; I couldn’t make it straight-faced through the last line. We both laughed until we cried. How does Leckie do that?
@robinareid – Tried a few variations of the phrase, on a whim, and still got nothing but hits of people referencing the quote. Wonder if the Euro Snob Reporter actually existed…or if perhaps the quote has grown a bit in retelling.
Robin – I think the “Euro snob reviewer” may have been me. In my write-up of the 2011 Campbell finalists, I said of Monster Hunter International:
It’s not quite “END WRITING FOREVER”, I realise, but it may be close enough for the Puppies. Also I am based in Belgium which is apparently in Europe.
I read the Scott Lynch takedown of JCW, and it left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
He responds to Wright’s claim that TNH is “the driving force behind the corruption of the Hugo Awards in these last fifteen to twenty years” with
…and I know that I’m sensitive on the subject, but as someone currently receiving the somewhat questionable benefits of modern psychopharmaceuticals, I cringe a little inside when someone uses them as a punchline. Lynch proceeds to counter the claim with actual numbers and some common-sense questions, so I guess I feel a little dismayed to see calling JCWs claims psychosis instead of sticking to calling them flat-out lies.
Maybe I was already on the back foot, but then I got to the second-last paragraph and read:
Ah, a prison rape joke too. Was that necessary?
Gahh I’m not sure if I’m saying this right. I feel like I’m being the stereotypical SJW Language Police. But both of those instances felt needlessly cruel and dismissive.
I read Lynch’s post and came over here to see what was said about it. I’m sure it’ll find it’s way onto the roundup tomorrow. I was also not fond of the prison rape reference, although it’s really not very far off from how JCW speaks of his personal deity.
That Starship Troopers thing intrigues me. I wonder if I can convince the wife to go to that.
And after failing to hit 100 books by a small margin (2 books) last year, I started this year off right by starting and finishing Warheart by Goodkind today.
Happy New Years everyone. Roll Tide.
@Bruce Arthurs,
Thanks for the link. I am glad that Hines feels better able to post longer pieces online (anxiety/depression sucks), though I am not clear how much that article adds to an event that’s been thoroughly discussed at the time.
[Sidenote: It is quite astounding just how many insults & putdowns are gendered, almost always at the expense of females. Someone pointed it out to me many years ago and once made aware of the phenomenon, I can’t help but to notice it happening seemingly everywhere.]
@RedWombat: Wonder if the Euro Snob Reporter actually existed…or if perhaps the quote has grown a bit in retelling.
With wonderful serendipity, Nicholas Whyte gave me a link to his piece and notes he is in Belgium which you know, definitely Europe! And while it’s nowhere near Correia’s paraphrase masquerading as an unattributed quote, I could see with a little hyperbolic massaging, it is in the ballpark.
Thanks, Nicholas!
Am adding your post to the link page for Correia’s solicitation piece.
Oh, Scott Lynch. He has such a way with the razor portrait.
I’ll also note that Lynch is not the only one to notice how Wright is one of those Catholics who, if you took his words and redacted his name, has views so strident that you’d think it was a caricature cooked up by an r/atheism contributor and not an actual person. I am not* questioning JCW’s faith; just observing the strange commonality of trolls.**
Again, it’s JCW’s true service to fandom: showing that a great deal of intelligence, insight, and learning don’t mean a damn if you don’t have the humanity to put it together.
*Unfortunately.
**Really, for a violent homophobe, he’s a touch obsessed with sodomy.
Nicholas Whyte – but it does say “END WRITING FOREVER” in that excerpt, if you pick out the letters and rearrange them. Which seems to be a not entirely unfamiliar Puppy approach to textual analysis.
ETA: Of course, it also says things like “HAPPY NEW YEAR” – to which I say, many thanks, and I wish you the same!
@Dawn Incognito: Gahh I’m not sure if I’m saying this right. I feel like I’m being the stereotypical SJW Language Police. But both of those instances felt needlessly cruel and dismissive.
I had much the same response that you do to both the psychosis comment (I am also receiving the benefit of modern pharmaceuticals, having recently shifted to a lower dosage and hoping to go off after the past few years of depression) and the prison rape reference, and I will add I’m side-eyeing Bruce Arthurs’ description of the Lynch post as “bitch-slaps” as well.
Lynch clearly has his own issues to deal with as he discusses at the start of the piece, but people who have mental illnesses are as capable of ableism as people who don’t. I don’t question what language people choose to use about themselves, but the use of the slurs in this way (when there are perfectly good ways of challenging Wright’s accusations) is frustrating to see no matter who is doing it.
@TheYoungPretender: **Really, for a violent homophobe, he’s a touch obsessed with sodomy.
Most violent homophobes, especially of the *RELIGIOUS* persuasion, are–Biblical stories, anti-sodomy laws, etc. etc. etc. (That, and in more recent times, rimming, or what they think rimming is).
@Nicholas Whyte
Unless you have spent years ghost writing articles for Tatler, I doubt that you are in the running for the coveted
award. Life can be tough that way, but I suspect that Larrie doesn’t even know that Belgium exists, much less that you spent time there…
ETA
Larrie probably doesn’t know that Tatlers exists, either…