(1) BRAITHWAITE RESTORES CLASSIC ARTWORK. Gracing the cover of Warp #93, the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association clubzine, is this superlative painting —
The Doctor and his Companion, by Claude Monet (oil on canvas, 1875), a painting dating from a most fertile phase of the renowned French Impressionist’s career, was recently discovered in the attic of a house in Argenteuil in which Monet lived in the 1870s. Little is known of the subjects depicted as the artist left no notes as to their identity or relationship to him. No particulars on the gentleman or lady are to be found, either, in the local historical records of the time and the odd structure beside which the gentleman is standing remains a puzzle. Civic records offer no indication that such a structure ever existed, as if this curious blue box simply appeared out of thin air, and then disappeared just as mysteriously. The title of the work gives us our only clue as to the two subjects, suggesting that the gentleman was, perhaps, a medical doctor travelling with a female relative, Fiancée, or mistress. MonSFFA’s own Keith Braithwaite worked on the restoration of the painting.
(2) BLUE PEOPLE BEWARE. Yahoo! Movies reports “’The Force Awakens’ Barreling Toward ‘Avatar’Record”.
The space opera sequel is moving up the all-time domestic box office charts at a record clip and now is poised to overtake those pointy eared blue aliens as the top grossing film in history. Avatar earned $760.5 million during its stateside run and Star Wars: The Force Awakens has generated $740.4 million domestically after picking up $88.3 million over New Year’s weekend. It should take the crown from Avatar early next week.
(3) AXANAR DECONSTRUCTED. (There’s that word again. I hope I know what it means…) John Seavey at Mightygodking has created a FAQ about the Paramount/CBS lawsuit against Axanar Productions:
Q: Then why are they being sued? Paramount allows lots of these things, don’t they?
A: Oh, yeah. “Star Trek Renegades”, “Star Trek: Of Gods and Men”, “Star Trek Continues”…basically, it seems like as long as nobody’s making any money, Paramount turns a blind eye to these fan films.
Q: But this one they wouldn’t? Why?
A: Well, there is the fact that, in an update on Axanar’s Indigogo campaign, they said, “EVERYTHING costs more when you are a professional production and not a fan film. All of this and more is explained, along with our budget of how we spent the money in the Axanar Annual Report.”
And in that latest annual budget report, they said, “First and foremost, it is important to remember that what started out as a glorified fan film is now a fully professional production. That means we do things like a studio would. And of course, that means things cost more. We don’t cut corners. We don’t ask people to work full time for no pay. And the results speak for themselves.”
And:
“Please note that we are a professional production and thus RUN like a professional production. That means our full time employees get paid. Not much honestly, but everyone has bills to pay and if you work full time for Axanar, you get paid.
Also, no other fan film has production insurance like we do. We pay $ 12,000 a year for that. Again, a professional production.”
Also, in their Indiegogo FAQ, they had this little gem:
“Q: What is Axanar Productions?
Axanar is not just an independent Star Trek film; it is the beginning of a whole new way that fans can get the content they want, by funding it themselves. Why dump hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on 400 cable channels, when what you really want is a few good sci-fi shows? Hollywood is changing. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other providers are redefining content delivery, and Axanar Productions/Ares Studios hopes to be part of that movement.”
Which kind of contradicts the “fan film” statement.
(4) WILL SMITH’S CHARACTER IS LATE. John King Tarpinian imagines the conversation went like this: “You want how much? Sorry but your character just died.” In a Yahoo! News interview, “Will Smith Says It Was Terrible When He Found Out His Independence Day Character Died”.
Will Smith found it unpleasant to learn that the fat lady had sung on Steven Hiller, the character he played in 1996’s Independence Day. “It was terrible when I found out my character died,” Smith told Yahoo.
Hiller’s death was revealed on a viral site for Independence Day: Resurgence. “While test piloting the ESD’s first alien hybrid fighter, an unknown malfunction causes the untimely death of Col. Hiller,” the site’s timeline reads. “Hiller’s valor in the War of ’96 made him a beloved global icon whose selfless assault against the alien mothership lead directly to the enemy’s defeat. He is survived by his wife Jasmine and his son Dylan.” You can see an image of Hiller’s fiery death by clicking here.
(5) ALL KNIGHT. Admiring Fred Kiesche’s Damon Knight quote in a comment here, Damien G. Walter tweeted —
https://twitter.com/damiengwalter/status/683681839463022592
(6) HE FIGURES. Camestros Felapton forays into toy design with his new “Hugo” brand “Stage Your Own Kerfuffle” figures….
(7) JEFFRO MOVES UP. Vox Day is delegating management of the Castalia House blog to “The new sheriff in town”, Jeffro Johnson:
As Castalia House has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to balance my responsibilities as Lead Editor and as the manager of this blog. Because Castalia House shoots for excellence across the board, I have decided that it is time to step back and hand over my responsibilities for this blog to someone else.
And who is better suited to take it over than one of the very best bloggers in science fiction and gaming? I am absolutely delighted to announce that the Castalia House blogger, author of the epic Chapter N series, and 2015 Hugo nominee for Best Fan Writer, Jeffro Johnson, has agreed to accept the position of Blog Editor at Castalia House.
(8) ARISTOTLE. That leaves Vox Day more time to orchestrate his winter offensive. His first target is File 770 commenter Lis Carey.
Even I occasionally forget how fragile these psychologically decrepit specimens are. Anyhow, it’s a good reminder to ALWAYS USE RHETORIC on them. They’re vulnerable to it; they can’t take it. That’s why they resort to it even when it doesn’t make sense in the context of a discussion, because they are trying to make you feel the emotional pain that they feel whenever they are criticized.
Day is developing a Goodreads author page, and Carey mentioned yesterday she had already seen early signs of activity:
Ah, this may explain a recent comment on one of my reviews of last year’s Hugo nominees–and means maybe I can expect more.
The particular comments were on her review of Castalia House’s Riding The Red Horse.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 3, 1841 — Herman Melville ships out on the whaler Acushnet to the South Seas.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born January 3, 1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien, honored by Emily Asher-Perrin at Tor.com:
But of course, the world remembers Tolkien for changing the fantasy genre forever. By penning The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien set a framework for fantasy literature that countless authors have attempted to recapture over the years. The creation of Middle-earth, from its languages to its poetry to its rich cultural history and varied peoples, was an astounding feat of imagination that no one had managed before with such detail and ardent care.
(11) SEMIPROZINES. Camestros Felapton continues moving through the alphabet in his “Semiprozine Round-Up: Cs and Ds”.
Keeping on going in the Cs and Ds of semiprozines.
- The Cascadia Subduction Zone
- The Colored Lens
- Crossed Genres Magazine
- Daily Science Fiction
- The Dark Magazine
- Diabolical Plots
(12) PARTS NOT TAKEN. “Leonardo DiCaprio Reflects On Turning Down Anakin Skywalker And Two SuperHero Roles” at ScienceFiction.com:
And it’s a philosophy that has led to him turning down parts in some guaranteed smashes and lots of cha-ching. He recently revealed that he actually met with George Lucas, but ultimately passed on playing Anakin Skywalker in the ‘Star Wars’ prequels.
“I did have a meeting with George Lucas about that, yes. I just didn’t feel ready to take that dive. At that point.”
Around this time, DiCaprio instead chose to make ‘Gangs of New York’ and ‘Catch Me If You Can’, the latter of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Still he must be kicking himself. The role instead went to Hayden Christiansen and look at how his career took… oh, ahem. Nevermind.
(13) REMEMBERING BAEN. While researching another post, I rediscovered David Drake’s 2006 tribute to the late Jim Baen, who had just recently passed. Shortly before Baen’s death the two were on the phone and Baen asked, “You seem to like me. Why?” The answer is rather touching.
And then I thought further and said that when I was sure my career was tanking–
“You thought that? When was that?”
In the mid ’90s, I explained, when Military SF was going down the tubes with the downsizing of the military. But when I was at my lowest point, which was very low, I thought, “I can write two books a year. And Jim will pay me $20K apiece for them–”
“I’d have paid a lot more than that!”
And I explained that this wasn’t about reality: this was me in the irrational depths of real depression. And even when I was most depressed and most irrational, I knew in my heart that Jim Baen would pay me enough to keep me alive, because he was that sort of person. He’d done that for Keith Laumer whom he disliked, because Laumer had been an author Jim looked for when he was starting to read SF.
I could not get so crazy and depressed that I didn’t trust Jim Baen to stand by me if I needed him. I don’t know a better statement than that to sum up what was important about Jim, as a man and as a friend.
(14) PEACE IN OUR TIME. In “The Stormbunnies and Crybullies”, John C. Wright devotes over 2,000 words to making his closing offer irresistible in that special way only he knows how.
But I am a forgiving man, jovial and magnanimous. I make the following peace offer: Go your way. Cease to interfere with me and my livelihood, do your work, cease to libel me and meddle with my affairs, withhold your tongue from venom and your works from wickedness, and we shall all get along famously.
Otherwise, it is against my self interest to seek peace with you. Peace is a two sided affair: both parties must agree. So far only Mr. Martin has even expressed a desire for it.
(15) WHAT KEEPS YOU FROM WRITING? Nandini Balial at Pacific Standard helps writers name their fears — “Gremlins and Satyrs of Rejection: A Taxonomy of Writers’ Foes”
THE SATYRS OF MOUNT OUTLET: Like its cousin Olympus, Mount Outlet stretches far beyond human sight into luxurious billowy clouds. The work its satyrs produce is sharp and daring. Vast networks of bloggers, freelancers, and even reporters churn out viral but self-aware listicles, personal essays that make me cry more than they should, and short stories so good I’m inclined to simply put my pen away. On Twitter, their satyrs (editors) trade barbs and witticisms with the speed of a Gatling gun. A poor peasant like me may approach the foot of the mountain, but my tattered, unworthy scrolls and I will soon turn around and head home.
(16) PUBLISHING STINKS. Kristen Lamb, in “The Ugly Truth of Publishing & How BEST to Support Writers”, says don’t bother reviewing her books on Goodreads, because that’s where the trolls are:
Tweet a picture of our book. Put it on Facebook. People in your network ARE noticing. Peer review and approval is paramount in the digital age. And don’t support your favorite author on Goodreads as a first choice (AMAZON reviews are better). The only people hanging out on Goodreads for the most part are other writers and book trolls.
Support us on your regular Facebook page or Instagram or Twitter. Because when you post a great new book you LOVED your regular friends see that. When they get stranded in an Urgent Care or an airport? What will they remember? THAT BOOK. They won’t be on Goodreads. Trust me.
(17) DISSONANCE. After reading Kristen Lamb’s discouraging words, I encountered M. L. Brennan calling for everyone to get up and dance because “Generation V earned out and what that means”. That’s not the next post I’d have expected to see, straight from leaving Lamb’s black-crepe-draped explanation of the publishing industry.
One thing to bear in mind, because it’s easy to lose sight of it when you look at that last paragraph — if I hadn’t received an advance, I wouldn’t have made more money on this book. I would still have earned $7615.78 on the series — except earning that first $7500 would have taken me two years, rather than being entirely in my pocket on the day that Generation V hit the bookstores. And that $7500 paid my mortgage, my electric bill, and other bills, which made it substantially easier for me to write. Without that advance, it would’ve taken me longer to write Iron Night, Tainted Blood, and even Dark Ascension, because I would’ve been having to hustle other work elsewhere and spend less time writing.
(18) NONE DARE CALL IT SF. Whether Joshua Adam Anderson styles himself an sf fan I couldn’t say (though he did take a course from Professor James Gunn), but his LA Review of Books article “Toward a New Fantastic: Stop Calling It Science Fiction” is a deep dive into the abyss of genre. His attempt to define (redefine?) science fiction is precisely what fans love.
LAST JULY, Pakistani science fiction writer Usman Malik published a clarion call for his home country. In it, he made the claim that “[e]ncouraging science fiction, fantasy, and horror readership has the potential to alleviate or fix many of Pakistan’s problems.” While it would be difficult to disagree with the idea that science fiction is a positive force in the world, many of Malik’s reasons for championing the genre are problematic. To begin with, Malik — along with just about everyone else — still, for some reason, calls “science fiction” science fiction. His essay actually contains a handful of reasons why we should stop calling it “science fiction,” and it also inadvertently addresses how and why we need to liberate ourselves from genre itself — and how “science fiction” can help us do just that.
(19) PLANNING BEGINS: Paul Johnson’s early word is that the event to honor his father, the late George Clayton Johnson, might be in February at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., Paul Weimer, Brian Z., and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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Hampus, a thrift store is a shop that sells donated used goods, usually to raise money for charity. Oxfam and Red Cross are the ones I noticed most in Britain, where I think they’re referred to as charity shops? Not sure what Sweden does.
That’s probably the word you wanted.
Five minutes to edit, and six minutes to see typos. I blame the Martians!
What series did Tor lose to S&S?
Speaking of S&S, what does it say that they felt the need to launch their Saga line of books?
here
Also a compendium of good stuff here.
@Kip W:
While I understand your passion, I personally would prefer if you refrained from calling people names.
I really love the idea of a drift store, especially one that sells books.
@Peace Is My Middle Name – But Pratchett came recommended, so I read the first Discworld book, which was … a bog-standard parody of some fantasy tropes, failing to stand out from the fashionable mob of “humorous” fantasy flooding the stores at that moment, starring a really unlikeable whiny and cowardly main character (who is still my least favorite Discworld protagonist).
That pretty much describes my experience as well, although I think I persisted through three books. I’ve never gone back, even with the latterday love and admiration expressed for the series.
Those Baen covers are astonishingly bad, making me very glad I have an e-reader (because I have at least one of those books). I also used to have a sizeable collection of DAW paperbacks, with many of the covers not giving much of a clue as to contents.
Must be Halo, which changed publishers in 2014 from Tor to Gallery/Pocket.
For Pratchett, it was “The Sea and Little Fishes” in Robert Silverberg’s Legends anthology that finally convinced me to go back and give Discworld another try.
The 1970s gave me prodigious powers of cover-ignoring.
Growing up in 1970s Britain, I cut my teeth on paperbacks from imprints like Panther, Arrow, Corgi and NEL, and I long ago lost count of how many of them had covers by Christopher “Enormous Machinery With Windows” Foss – or looked as if they wanted to have Foss covers.
Now, I yield to none in my admiration for Mr Foss’s artwork*, but the fact remains that his covers don’t often relate to the content of the book, except in a very general sense such as “there might be a spaceship in it”. In fact, I actually did a double-take at his cover for James Blish’s Fallen Star (Arrow edition). When I found that the scene on the cover was actually in the book, my astonishment knew no bounds.
(I suppose his covers for the “Cities in Flight” novels did feature something that looked like a city against a starscape… and there is a scene in “Doc” Smith’s Triplanetary where a spaceship shoots at an asteroid, and that’s broadly what Foss put on that particular cover… other than that, though, well, no one is going to look at a Foss cover and shout “spoilers!”, believe me.)
Of course, before Foss, Panther Books especially seemed to go in for abstract curvy lines. I remember seeing an edition of Asimov’s The Currents of Space where the cover was just a black background with a loop of yellow across it. At least Foss’s enormous spaceships were more interesting to look at.
*We shall not mention the other artistic project Mr Foss is known for. I mean, we’ve already had links to Jim Hines and John Scalzi topless in this thread, and I wouldn’t want anybody overheating or something.
Oh, sure. The one day I write something decently Scroll-worthy and it’s a Puppy day. 🙂 Does anyone else picture Rorschach writing in his diary when Beale delivers statements like, “Once it is publicly confirmed by a future SFWA President that I remain a member in good standing, I intend to run for a single term as President on a platform of cleaning out the pedophiles from the organization. All other matters will be left to the Vice President. Then I will resign from it, as I have no wish to belong to it or otherwise be associated with it”?
@Cheryl S/Peace Is My Middle Name: I have always recommended reading the Discworld books out of order–Pratchett’s first two novels were his juvenalia, and the third (while better than the first two) was still him trying to figure out what to do with the universe. I would start with ‘Wyrd Sisters’, which is technically the sixth book but it stands alone, and which is an extremely funny inverted ‘Macbeth’ where the witches are trying to stop the evil king.
If you don’t like that one, then Pratchett may legitimately not be for you. If you do like it, go ahead and read the next two (‘Pyramids’ and ‘Guards! Guards!’), then skip ‘Eric’ (which is a direct sequel to a book I’ve advised you to skip, even though it is a pretty funny ‘Faust’ parody) and go on from there to read ‘Moving Pictures’, ‘Reaper Man’, ‘Witches Abroad’, ‘Small Gods’, ‘Lords and Ladies’, and ‘Men At Arms’. At that point, you’ll probably be hooked enough to read the ones you skipped at least once, just to find out what you missed, and then you can read the rest in order.
Or not. Obviously, you are not required to read any of them if you feel you’ve already given them all the chances you want to give. But I feel like once Pratchett hit his stride, he was genuinely one of the finest writers working in the English language, a satirist right up there with Swift, and I’d hate to think of someone missing out on his best work because they only knew him from his worst.
Thinks: Does Chris Foss of himself render the whole Brad R. Torg “That book has a spaceship on the cover, but it’s set on a planet!” incomprehensible? I too grew up expecting a pretty cover to bear no resemblance to the content.
—So basically VD is a lying idiot. Which you probably knew already.—-
And this is why I don’t bother commenting here. You can hide behind technicalities and call me all the names you like. Perhaps it makes you feel better.
All it does is further motivate my supporters, who are growing at a faster rate than ever. Just remember, you brought this on yourselves. Every single time you strike at us, there are 466 VFM and thousands of Dread Ilk just waiting for the chance to strike back at you.
None of this was necessary.
@Cheryl S.
The tragedy was that was just when Pratchett started improving.
The first two books were meh, mediocre fantasy parody.
The third was wibbly-wobbly, but at least had new ideas and new main characters.
The fourth book, “Mort”, showed a lot more promise, but I missed it.
But the fifth book brought back the awful main character and had the worst cover that killed my interest in the Discworld for long years.
Which is a shame, because starting with the sixth book, “Wyrd Sisters”, the series becomes mad genius.
There is no need whatsoever to read any of the first five books (except maybe “Mort”) before reading any of the later ones.
I know I shouldn’t feed the troll but
https://youtu.be/UdN0HcSbLSc
@Peace
I’ll try to do better.
And this is why I don’t bother commenting here.
You don’t bother commenting here because you’re a coward and a buffoon who can’t stand when people point out your lies, distortions, and misrepresentations. You don’t do well when confronted with things like facts and evidence, so you run and cower in the corner.
Just remember, you brought this on yourselves.
Isn’t that the mantra of cowardly abusive bullies everywhere?
Just keep on wailing and screeching impotently. That will sure show everyone you have your big boy pants on.
Teddy, since you’re here:
Weren’t you going to unleash a whole new ePublishing paradigm which would set the whole world to rights while destroying the established hierarchy by the end of 2015. How’s that going?
A grown man who try to threaten people with failed trolls that are all too scared to show their faces. Ridiculous.
Kevin
Thank you; it’s always good to see you bringing calm rationality to refuting VD’s bizarre ramblings.
And on that happy note I shall make a start on The Dark Forest, secure in the knowledge that, thanks to Marko Kloos’ very honourable behaviour, VD’s ballot stuffing antics failed to deprive Cixin Liu’s novel of its Hugo last year.
ETA
I do wish VD would make his mind up. One moment the world is imperilled by the population growth of people without white skins, and the next his supporters are explosively increasing in numbers.
@VD: Since you’re still around, please do point out the sentence or sentences wherein Lis Carey directly attacks you and not your authorial or editorial skill (or lack thereof.)
Please go ahead and share, don’t mind the trolls.
I know I could use a break from 4G mustache twirling.
@Steve Wright, I’m pretty sure I had a ’70s British edition of a Cities in Flight novel and I’m also pretty sure that – as covers often had little to do with contents (because that’s not new) – I bought it because I liked the first three pages, because that’s how I used to do things.
My non sequitur of the day: That’s twice now I’ve seen that parody cover and thought, huh, Patrick Rothfuss needs to work on his backbends.
@John Seavey, @Peace Is My Middle Name, thank you for the thoughtful responses. I’ll try Wyrd Sisters, which might be in the basement already anyway.
@Peace and John
Thank you for those recommendations on reading order for Terry Pratchett. I fall into one of those folks that read the early works and just set him aside as an author not to my taste.
Years later I read Going Postal (I thinks that was the title) and really enjoyed it but I never knew where to go back to find his other strong works.
Thank you, everyone, for the kind support.
I’m another who bounced off early Pratchett, puzzled by the enthusiasm of some of my friends, only to later rediscover him and love his work.
I would read novels with Chris Foss covers as a kid and try to figure out how they related … eventually I gave up ! Glad to know I was not alone.
I do really love his artwork. If you have not seen it the documentary on Dune by Sony Pictures has some interviews with him and shows some of his conceptual art that he was doing for the ultimately failed attempt before David Lynch’s interpretation hit the theatres.
@Shambles: It was in the Scroll. 🙂 The Axanar FAQ, which I should really amend to grab the actual salary Alec Peters was drawing during two years of failing to make Axanar (he’s apparently making $38K a year as producer, which is not bad for a “labor of love”).
@VD
Don’t let the door strike you on the way out, toddler.
Good morning! Happy New Year!
…(reads scroll and comments)…
Lis, you have my absolute support!
My favorite Pratchetts are Hogfather and Small Gods.
I recently read Sunset Mantle by Alter S Reiss. It was on my virtual TBR pile and I finally got around to it. Despite being a novel(la) about a warrior in a military (not my favorite things lately–I am tired of fighting and battle scenes), it was also about the differences between law and custom (interestingly done) and it had a lovely little romance that I was absolutely in the mood for. Recommended, and I will definitely read more by this author.
With Pratchett, do not forget to read Good Omens which is not Discworld but has added Neil Gaiman.
Re: Pratchett.
I was lucky enough to hear of Pratchett first through a fantastic presentation given by a friend at the Pop Culture conference on the issue of wizards vs. philosophers in Pratchett’s Discworld (am not quite sure when this presentation was except some point in the mid-later 90s probably). I was fascinated, and grabbed him afterwards to ask for a rec on where to start: he suggested Small Gods which was a brilliant choice (stand-alone although some of the characters and cultures appear in other novels, what I consider as mature Pratchett, and some of the most brilliant satire on issues of religion and magic in his works.
Then I started trying to find other Pratchetts which wasn’t that easy since they still weren’t easily available in the bookstores (at least not in the TEXAS bookstores, sign), but that soon changed.
The earlier ones (Rincewind, meh) are yeah, less than memorable, but the Night Watch novels, the Death and Susan series, the Witches OMG the WITCHES, and Tiffany Aching! I have all of the Pratchett I can find (including NON Discworld ones!), because completist.
*thinks* Yeah, the cover were bleh, but I guess because I grew up reading sff in the 60s, I never pay much attention to the covers because well, it’s a given they aren’t necessarily representative of anything (though it was lovely to see when BETTER covers started appearing on sff).
I was lucky enough to read Small Gods as my first Pratchett, and skipped most of the earlier stuff.
(Actually I just remembered it was my second — I read Pyramids first, which was just good enough to get me to read Small Gods next, which convinced me to seek out the others.)
Weirdly enough, Pyramids is one of my most favorites, despite there being very little of the satirical elements I enjoy about Discworld as a whole. (It’s more parody than satire.) It’s just such a beautifully constructed plot; everything fits together without any joins, and you read it the second time with a marvelous new appreciation of seemingly insignificant details.
Oh, and the Sphinx bit is probably his best stand-alone sequence ever. “Unless, and you understand this is just a shot in the dark, here…is it Man?”
I think I’ve read around 20 of Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I started at the beginning and was young enough to be terribly amused by this funny man who seemed to know everything about fantasy and folklore, so I carried on. It was when I got to Mort that I decided he was just brilliant. In recent years for various reasons I haven’t had much time to keep on catching up with Discworld; maybe when I finally order my ereader I’ll get back into the swing of reading them.
He’s also a great writer outside of Discworld, as he showed with Nation.
Are the facts known as technicalities now? My, my.
But please, people, don’t dare anyone to bring a horde of trolls to File770 to prove their existence. Even if it didn’t end up cluttering the threads I don’t think Mike Glyer has done anything terrible enough to deserve moderating their contributions.
ETA: If only swift editing was enough to hide errors before anyone saw them. *shakes fist at email notifications*
@John Seavey
Ah, thanks I am glad you shared that. I heard about the KS and I was curious how it would fare with all the monies raised. 38k a year is a significant salary for a fan produced work.
If folks have not seen some of the fan produced clips – some are really well done. It’s nice to see George Takei acting or a David Gerrold penned script outside of the official movie universe.
@John Seavey: agreed on all points — that’s why I liked it enough to read the next one despite the basic lack of substance. (How highly you rate it relative to other Pratchetts depends on how important those different elements are to you, I suspect.) And I’d forgotten about the Sphinx scene, which as you say was classic.
I started with Small Gods, and it’s still my favorite. I’ve feared it might be because it was the first one I read, but seeing the opinion of others, I am starting to suspect maybe it was just that good. It has one of my favorite lines in fiction, which I generally misquote: “Two Little Wang tripped over a two-hundred-year-old bonsai tree and hit his head on a rock chosen for its fundamental tranquility.”
I liked Pratchett from the start, but he became more and more boring. Guards, Guards and Wyrd Sisters were the books that made me quit.
My first exposure to Pratchett was Innovation’s failed attempt to convert The Colour of Magic into a comic book. So amazing I ever bothered to read his stuff again, but Good Omens helped. Guards, Guards was probably the Discworld book that finally worked for me.
Guards, Guards and Wyrd Sisters were the books that made me quit.
Guards, Guards was probably the Discworld book that finally worked for me.
Heh. And this is why puppy talk of “the other side” makes me laugh.
@John Seavey, I wish I’d seen your Axanar FAQ two days ago, when I got into a discussion about why or why not this was or was not a case of a thuggish corporation being unreasonable.
And my deep thanks to those who gave us the Stylish killfile for File770.com.
It greatly improves it when VD shows up and I’ll just add more if his legion of trolls show up.
All you people who started Pratchett with early Discworld novels have no sympathy from me whatsoever. My first Pratchett was flippin’ STRATA.
I started Pratchett somewhere in the 90’s, when they finally hitting the US in a big way. After that, I did start with Colour of Magic. I was not impressed until Pyramids, Guards Guards, and Small Gods. Then I started to see what Pratchett was building, and started to dive in in earnest.
After trying The Colour of Magic and Equal Rites twice each and giving up after a few pages each time, I concluded that Pratchett is not for me. And I felt really bad about it because I’d found him to be very funny and entertaining on panels.
Good Omens, OTOH, I love. Ironically, I can’t stand Neil Gaiman when he’s writing on his own either.
@Cheryl S: I was getting into those conversations too–that’s what prompted the FAQ to begin with. 🙂 I can totally understand being on the side of fan productions, and I genuinely believe there’s a legitimate place for fan works as an expression of modern culture in an environment where most of our folk heroes are corporate-owned…but the more I looked into the Axanar situation, the more it seemed like this was a case of someone being given an inch and taking a mile.
I also have very vague recollections of bringing Strata home from the library many years ago.
As for Chris Foss, I think I first became aware of him (not by name, necessarily, but as a recognizable style) in Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD and a couple of the other books in that series, which I think Dad was buying for me off the remainder table at the local Waldenbooks.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17794507-spacecraft-2000-2100-a-d
(That was also the series that introduced me to the concept that paintings could be reused in multiple, unrelated contexts.)
Very much this! Love the Foss art. Just out nostalgia I love the Foss covers of exciting space stuff that had little to do with the books inside.
I only read Prachett again with “Good Omens”, when it was “Woohoo! A Neil Gaiman book! And … who? Oh yeah, that British guy who wrote those little vignettes of fantasy novel clichés with that craven wizard hero. Huh.”
And that book was pretty good (although the ending sort of crumples a bit), and then “The Fifth Elephant” came out and despite more atrocious cover art the title was so compelling as to give Pratchett another try.
And that is when I discovered I had accidentally zeroed in on his worst books so many years previously.
I’m very glad to have learned better.
Years ago, I mentioned to David Mattingly that I was in an APA with Bob Vardeman, and Dave immediately asked me to apologize to Bob for a depiction of a spider on a book cover he’d done. He had read the book and knew what was right, but said he was overruled by an art director who wanted it a different size.