(1) SAG AWARDS. Genre productions were virtually absent from the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards except in the stunt work categories.
FILM:
Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture: “Mad Max”
TELEVISION:
Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series: “Game of Thrones”
(2) GUARDIANS SEQUEL. “’Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’: James Gunn Says He’s Cast the Villains and Star Lord’s Father” at Collider.
James Gunn is killing it on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director has made himself unusually accessible to fans, especially considering he’s at the helm of a massive franchise for a studio known for its secrecy. But Gunn can pull it off because he’s managed to find the fine line between satisfying fan curiosity without actually giving anything away.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/693089062928932868
(3) FLIPPING BATMEN. Adam-Troy Castro has a very funny idea for “Making Batman Say, ‘Uhhhhhh, What?’”.
You know what would be really, really grotesque?
Switching Batmen and their Gotham Cities.
Imagine plopping Adam West’s Batman down in the dark and corrupt Gotham of, among other creators, Frank Miller, where half the cops are on the take and all the villains are not just colorful lunatics but mass murderers; imagine him fighting, for instance, the Joker of Scott Snyder’s DEATH OF THE FAMILY, or the one played by Heath Ledger.
Conversely, imagine the grim and militaristic Batman of ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN in the Gotham of Lorenzo Semple Jr., where all the crimes are whimsical and campy and Commissioner Gordon has all the competence of a turtle lying on his back.
This would lead to some fun scenes.
FRANK MILLER BATMAN: “There’s nothing about you I can’t fix, Joker…with my hands…”
CESAR ROMERO JOKER (Disconcerted): “Umm, what?”
or
ADAM WEST BATMAN: “I’m just an ally of this fine city’s fine, upstanding police force!”
BURT WARD ROBIN: “Gosh, Batman! You’re right!”
JIM GORDON: (Disconcerted) “Ummm, what?”
And Castro continues…
(4) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY SEEKS FUNDING. Worlds of UKL is doing fundraising for a prospective documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin.
Jayn, who sent the link, mischieviously swears, “I have no connection with the production beyond also thinking that Le Guin deserves a documentary about her (and possibly also a Nobel Prize for Literature and the throne of an Empress.)” Well, who doesn’t agree with that?
Director Arwen Curry wrote on Facebook about a Kickstarter appeal that begins soon.
As I announced a while back, the NEH recently awarded Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin a major production grant. We’re so excited to finish filming and get into the edit room. But the NEH won’t release the funding until we raise the rest of the budget. On January 31, we will do a “soft launch” of a Kickstarter campaign, inviting friends and family to help support this important film. We hope to have a respectable sum when the press announces the campaign to the public on February 1. Can you help now by reaching out to your reading groups, your Facebook pages, and your best geek pals and asking them to ‘like” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin? Thank you!
(5) STOKER BUST. Neil Gaiman is supporting Bryan Moore’s campaign to have a bust of Bram Stoker created in time for World Dracula Day.
As we previously reported, noted sculptor Bryan Moore has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his latest project, a gorgeous bronze bust of DRACULA author Bram Stoker, a project formed in collusion with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and geared to tie into World Dracula Day on May 26th, 2016.
And now, author and dark visionary Neil Gaiman, the man behind such works as SANDMAN, CORALINE and AMERICAN GODS is among the project’s most famous backers.
“We’re incredibly grateful for Mr. Gaiman’s kindness and generosity” says Moore, the sculptor who has successfully crowdfunded efforts to place busts of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum Library in Rhode Island and Edgar Allan Poe in Massachusetts at the Boston Public Library
With 10 days left, The Bram Stoker Bronze Bust Project has raised $7,270 of its $30,000 goal.
(6) WOMEN HORROR WRITERS. A few days ago I linked to Nina Allan’s “Where Are We Going? Some Reflections on British Horror, Present and Future” at Strange Horizons, about another British horror anthology predominantly filled with male writers.
The anthology’s editor Mark Morris posted a response on Facebook. He begins with this argument:
Keeping with this morning’s theme of British horror, there’s an interesting article here on the state of British horror by Nina Allen, in which she raises, yet again, the subject of gender parity. With regard to THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, I’d like to say this:
First of all, it’s not a ‘Best Of…’ anthology, as she claims, but an anthology of original horror fiction.
Secondly, she criticises the book – and by implication my editorship of it – by pointing out that of its nineteen stories only three are by women.
I’ll answer this observation by stating what I’ve stated several times before – for me, the most important thing when editing an anthology is to get the *best stories possible* for it. I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else. All I’m interested in is selecting the very best stories out of all the ones that are sent to me. And if the twenty best stories (in my opinion) were all written by men one year, or were all written by women, then those are the ones I would select. (And would no doubt be damned for it).
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 30, 1933 — The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio.
- January 30, 1991 — Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs premieres.
(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER. At Ancient Origins, which thrives on such things, an architect has presented a radical new theory about Stonehenge.
Could the prehistoric Stonehenge megaliths once have been the support for a wooden, two-storey roundhouse, a venue for feasting, speakers and musicians? That’s the theory of an English landscape architect who designed a small model of what she has in mind and is looking for money to build a 1:10 scale model of the structure.
Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.
(8) TODAY’S CHEERY SCIENTIFIC THEORY. More sound and therefore more depressing is Scientific American’s report about emerging evidence for a transmissible Alzheimer’s theory.
For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.
The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.
…Neither study implies that Alzheimer’s disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.
(9) A FEW BRICKS MORE. “Beautiful LEGO: Wild!, a New Book Exploring Natural Brick Wonders” at This Colossal has a gallery of photos.
LEGO-based artist, author, and curator Mike Doyle (previously here and here) has collected another impressive set of LEGO masterpieces in his lastest book Beautiful LEGO: Wild! by No Starch Press, a book that explores natural wonders from undersea landscapes to a family of sea otters produced from over 3,500 LEGO pieces. Unlike Doyle’s last book which featured sculptures depicting sci-fi horrors and ghoulish nightmares, this book collects the works of several dozen artists who capture natural scenes from our planet’s Animal Kingdom and beyond.
One of Doyle’s own pieces that appears in the book is a new piece titled Appalachian Mountaintop Removal (2015), a work composed of more than 10,000 pieces that directly references the act outlined in its title. Mountaintop removal is a form of coal mining affecting the Appalachian Mountains that levels mountains, poisons aquifers, and damages surrounding wildlife indefinitely. You can learn how to help the destruction of these natural resources as well as view more of Doyle’s massive lego sculptures on his blog here.
(10) GRRM ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. George R.R. Martin encourages people to nominate for the Hugos at Not A Blog.
What you nominate is, of course, entirely up to you.
But please, NOMINATE. I have been beating that same drum for a decade, and this year it behooves me to beat it even louder. Nominate the stuff that you enjoyed best last year. Let your own individual voice be heard.
Yes, I have recommended some stuff I liked, in older posts below. And I will be doing more of same in the near future. But remember, that’s just me saying, “hey, I liked this, you might like it too, take a look.” No one should ever nominate anything just because someone else tells them to.
(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. On the other hand, Vox Day told Vox Popoli readers when they can expect his Rabid Puppy list.
The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.
(12) PREMATURE VICTORY PARADE. Meanwhile, Randy Henderson may have been up late scrying his crystal balls, judging by his post “Important Update: All the Awards I’m Going to Win in 2016!”
It’s award nomination time! AND THANK GAWD, I don’t need to ask you fine folks to nominate or vote for me or anything, because I already know all the awards I’m going to win this year. The people behind the people behind the scenes have told me I’m a shoe-in. So here’s the list. Don’t be jealous.
2016 Hugo for Best Novel Idea about Use of a Hugo: “Condom demonstration prop in sexual education class for cyborgs“, submitted by Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy…
And after that, he plans on winning every other award in the field….
[Thanks to Will R., Jayn, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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Well I’m certainly looking forwards to finding out which careers Teddy has chose to blight this time round.
nickpheas: Well I’m certainly looking forwards to finding out which careers Teddy has chose to blight this time round.
Anyone on his slate who was paying attention to how he ill-used his dupes last year will be issuing disclaimers tout suite.
Of course, some of his dupes from last year still haven’t figured out either that they were dupes or that they were ill-used, so it will be interesting indeed to see this year’s results.
8) obFlanders and Swann moment: “You’ll never get a roof on it… can’t get twigs big enough….”
::ticky::
And Pre-fifth.
Go snowcrash!
(3) FLIPPING BATMEN. – Heh. Hilarious. Loved the bonus bit of Superdickery at the end.
On a related note, brings to mind the best Batman story I ever read, Warren Ellis’s Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth, with the premise that there was a dimension hopper who kept cycling through various versions of Gotham and Batman. Here’s a discussion, with some excerpts. Worth hunting down the full issue, the Adam West Batman is surprisingly effective!
(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. – Lovely, I look forward to the sonic booms from all the people deciding that being thrown under the bus by Day is not really the best idea.
On another related note, I remain quite fascinated by how the SP4 list looks more and more like the The Works of Qrpyna Svaa, as recommended by Qrpyna Svaa (name rot13’d in case he’s a self-Googler). I may wind up checking out some of it just to see what’s going on there.
ETA: Fifth! True Fifth!
I’ve been paying enough attention that ROT13 was not needed to decipher Qrpyna Svaa!
So putting two different announcements together.
Vox Day will post his picks in February
Sad Puppies 4 will post in early March
Interesting.
Not being an archaeologist or an architect frees me from even more preconceptions. Stonehenge was obviously just an early design for a Hugo base.
Also, while I haven’t found a 770 beer I did find a 777 beer the other day.
And oh, how they danced.
The little children of Stonehenge …
#!$%#!$, the plans were for 1:10! Who put in that extra zero?!
In reply to Mark Morris, I want to again quote something I posted once before, by Chinelo Onwualu, the editor of Omenana magazine (in reply to a question about anthologies of original African spec fic having few women):
snowcrash: On another related note, I remain quite fascinated by how the SP4 list looks more and more like the The Works of Qrpyna Svaa, as recommended by Qrpyna Svaa. I may wind up checking out some of it just to see what’s going on there.
Isn’t he the one who wrote the Scalzi murder revenge fantasy? Um, yeah. No thanks.
(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER
Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.
“I’m not an expert so I know better” is one of my favorite arguments.
(8)
And why would you haul 5.9 million tons of material around the desert just to make a tomb? It’s completely impractical!
@camestros
The Rabid Puppies going first dilutes the power of the Rabid Puppies, in theory, in hijacking the Sad Puppies soi disant recommendations. In theory.
The politics and maneuverings here this year, even compared to the previous Puppy Years, are going to be as unique as this American Republican nomination process. I am not sure that’s a good thing.
Me? I’m just waiting for my Hugo PIN, and trying to figure if there any more 2015 books and stories I want to read to fill up even more the pool of choices I have to fill out MY ballot.
I thought the Scalzi murder story was written by a woman. Though as part of a series instigated by a man.
Speaking of puppy picks: the best story of theirs I read last year was Tuesday’s with Molokosh the Destroyer, luckily disqualified for not actually coming out in 2014. Anyone paying enough attention to the stalking horses to know if it’s getting traction there? Has it’s author published anything else? It really was streets ahead of anything they actually got onto the shortlist.
I’d imagine that UKL herself wouldn’t agree with the last-named.
@MaxL
No, that makes perfect sense because it has a roof to keep the rain off the sarcophagus.
Rabids going first
Does Impala Woman have a plan for an influx of Dead Elks cooing in to recommend in unison?
It was a guest submission by another member of the Catholic Writers’ Guild, catholics amirite?
@nickpheas
Tuesdays seems to be a SP4 frontrunner. It’s a good story, and as you say was a highlight among lackluster competition, but doesn’t make “great” for me.
The short story section at SP4 is actually fairly healthy compared to other sections, although that’s as much due to non-puppies joining in as anything else.
RP2 can probably make some fair surmises about the fiction and dramatic categories for SP4 right now based on their site, and can also guess that SP4 will be embarrassingly light on recs in some other categories and so can just bet on their own picks.
Re Women Horror Writers:
Okay, so add Mark Morris to the growing list of people who apparently think overcoming systematic (if not necessarily deliberate) barriers to women and minorities is as easy as being (at least as far as you can consciously discern) neutral in how you choose your stories.
Regarding Rabids going first, we will see how that works out. If the Sads and the Rabids *do* actually settle on completely different lists (the effect I would expect to arise from different people making their own honest choices) it would be a good chance to compare the nominating power of the Sads and the Rabids. If they don’t, it will be an interesting datapoint also, especially when compared against comment counts on the various Sad posts.
(8) Stonehenge
I made about half of an animated movie called HENGED that dealt with, and in my opinion solved, the eternal mysteries of that mysterious place. When I ran out of time, I made the rest into a sort of animatic, which was only about half as animated as the first part. My real regret is that I didn’t leave the card explaining the sudden transition on long enough.
It begins by dollying down to some workmen moving a dolmen or menhir or whatever they call the vertical stones. A foreman keeps time by saying “Oy!” and knocking two rocks together, and they pull, and it moves another inch. We pan past them, and a turtle going the same way, somewhat farther ahead, and get to where a similar gang is raising one of the verticals by a combination of pushing and adding rocks under the raised end. A supervisor calls a worker over.
“We need more rocks,” he tells the worker, holding out two hands to indicate. “About SO big.”
“So big,” echoes the worker, who mirrors the size gesture as he hurries off. “So big.”
Two druids, one from out of town, are seen. One is drawing a diagram in the dirt with a finger. “…and we reckon it’ll be done in a generation or two. And of course, it will be painted blue.”
“Very nice. But what’s it for?”
“For?”
“Well, yes. Is it a marker of some sort? Funereal, perhaps, or…”
“Oh, no, nothing like…”
“Weather station? Observatory?”
“Not at all.”
“Shelter?”
“No, no, no. We just thought it would look nice.”
“Ah.”
(In the tag, a foreman accosts a large worker who’s carrying a vertical stone on his back and cautions him to quit showing off.)
@Carnestros Felapton
I did an illo for Rich and Nikki Lynch, in the ink on paper days, showing Rockethenge, the sort of architecture you’d expect, made up of ancient-looking rockets. It had clearly seen better days, but that wasn’t a comment on anything.
Just finished The Shepherd’s Crown.” Relieved to report that I found it to be very enjoyable. Not Pterry at the top of his form, but excellent anyway.
Now I am starting The Godstalker Chronicles. Thanks for the constant recommendations of it.
Where the wild pixels scroll.
Scroll my PIxels, the Policeman Said.
A Spoonful of Pixels Helps the Medicine Scroll Down
I just came across this self affirmation list from Octavia Butler. Found it striking how much she was concerned with being a best seller.
I’ve ALWAYS read Miller’s tDKR’s Batman as Adam West.
I always thought the Cadillac Ranch would have been better if they had gone for a Stonehenge look.
The Policeman’s Scroll is Half-Pixelated
Actually it would be fairly trivial for the Rabid Puppies to vote brigade the Sad Puppies list if they want to.
@Jack Lint
Carhenge, right? (Another thing that doesn’t rhyme with orange.)
Colourless Green Pixels Scroll Furiously?
Hey, good one!
Not related to anything from today, but I just read this article from Matt Wallace on why getting SF novelists to write for tv and movies would be a win-win for both sides. Apparently the pay for basic screenwriting is much better than for mid-list novels, for starters.
For the Aldiss fans: The 80 Pixel Scroll.
(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER.
In a fresh way with no foundation in discoverable facts, as far as I can tell. Just because it might be possible doesn’t mean they actually did it. Some doofus out there has an elaborate theory that Vikings hung sails from their outstretched oars, too. Doesn’t make it so. Or even vaguely plausible.
Steve Wright on January 31, 2016 at 2:16 am said:
“I suppose you realise this is about the last nesting place for mammoths in the whole of Wessex?”
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microtherion on January 31, 2016 at 7:17 am said:
Why? She was a professional writer who wanted to earn her living through her writing. Surely most professional writers are concerned with being a best seller?
Clicky.
And of course, didn’t clicky.
Have just started reading Bandersnatch, by someone I’m sure Mike has never heard of, someone named Diana Pavlac Glyer…
Lis, I started reading it, too, and so far so good. It got put aside for more Hugo reading but I will be picking it up again soon.
@Mark
So after that you think we should all go try to cheer the Sad Puppies up by posting our own nomination lists on their site? So they won’t feel so lonely and unloved? 🙂
What worries me is if the Puppies start adding what they consider SFW works to their slates just to get the authors to pull out of the running. Not sure they’re self-aware enough for that, though.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia just made a few pointed comments on her facebook about what an editor needs to make an anthology in general, and to make one with something resembling parity. It ends with several questions and complaints about how difficult a job this might be – punctuated with “That is why you are an editor.”
In other words, it’s work, yeah, but it’s the JOB.
“The Seven Pixel Scrollution” (Doyle, though I can’t think of a Pixel Scroll with that few items ever).
A Man, a Plan, a Canal: Pixel Scroll!
Able was I ere I saw… I’ll stop.
(8) TODAY’S CHEERY SCIENTIFIC THEORY
With the disclaimer that I haven’t read this specific article…this is news? The nature and transmission vector for Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease has been known for quite sometime. (I work in a lab working with the stuff back in the mid ’80s. Nothing quite like your work environment including Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and bubonic plague! At least we could get vaccinated against the latter.) And it seems a bit misleading to conflate CJD and Alzheimers as being equivalent.
@Heather Rose Jones: The excerpt doesn’t make this clear, but the article is not conflating CJD with Alzheimer’s. The autopsies it’s talking about were on people who were known to have contracted CJD through surgical contamination; the new finding was that they may have also developed Alzheimer’s.
@C. A. Bridges: I presume you mean (so-called) SJW? This has been discussed several times. IMHO it’ll be transparent, and authors etc. will ask to be removed, then ignored by SP4 (Paulk or someone proudly said they’d ignore requests to be removed), then the authors etc. would loudly trumpet that they asked to be removed and don’t want to be on the slate . . . and Hugo voters are smart enough to see such obvious gaming of the system by SP4 or RP2 to “stick it to SJWs again ‘cuz it worked so well last time” for what it is. At least, methinks/mehopes. 🙂
So I’m not super worried; I feel like it’ll be eye-rollingly silly. Because, you know what? If I’m going to nominate a book, I’m not going to change my mind because someone tries yet again to game the system. We’re humans, not automatons (yet); we don’t have to do what SP or RP thinks we must do because we said we don’t like slates.
Anyway, that’s my take on it, hastily scribed and probably a bit rambly/incoherent.
@C. A. Bridges – What worries me is if the Puppies start adding what they consider SFW works to their slates just to get the authors to pull out of the running. Not sure they’re self-aware enough for that, though.
Since their collective genius for strategic planning is about half that of Elmer Fudd, probably not. However, I believe most of them read and can adapt ideas found elsewhere, if they’re specific enough.
(6) WOMEN HORROR WRITERS – I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else.
Thinking like this makes me tired. Far too many people believe they’re being objective and choosing the best stories and yet the TOC of anthologies where that gets done end up with predominately white, male authors. I really wish that editors would think about how who they are might shape their idea of best and adjust accordingly. That is very different from quotas.
Why does something so simple seem to be such a complicated concept for far too many people?