(1) A COMIC DISGRACE. A few weeks ago The International Festival of Comics (Angoulême) embarrassed itself by issuing a set of nominees for its awards with zero women among them. Several were added in response to a threatened boycott.
And at the awards ceremony on January 30, what the organization covered itself with was not glory. “Angouleme organizers criticized for presenting fake awards” reports Robot 6.
As if this year’s Angouleme International Comics Festival hadn’t been plagued by enough controversy, the organizers decided to play a practical joke at the closing ceremony that a lot of people didn’t find very funny.
The ceremony began with comedian Richard Gaitet, clad in a neon-blue suit and red bow tie, announcing, “This will be the shortest ceremony in history, because all we want to do is drink and dance.” He proceeded to present nine awards in rapid succession, including the award for best series to Saga, best comic for young people to Aaron Renier’s The Unsinkable Walker Bean, and the Fauve d’Or, the big prize, to Arsène Schrauwen, by Olivier Schrauwen. And then two women appeared and said, “Bravo Richard, for that joke about the false fauves [awards] and the size of the Grand Prix. We laughed a lot, but now we must go.” And then they presented the real awards because that first set? That was fake.
(2) SELF-DOUBT. That first item is just one more of the zillion reasons people identify with Aidan Doyle’s “The Science Fiction Writer’s Hierarchy of Doubt”. Here’s his introduction, and the first few entries on the scale.
Even if you’ve had a successful writing year, there’s always going to be another writer who achieved more. Sure, I had a few short stories published last year, but none of them ended up on recommended reading lists. No matter what level of writer you are, there’s always something to worry about. Take consolation in The Science Fiction Writer’s Hierarchy of Doubt.
Why don’t I have any ideas?
Why haven’t I written anything?
Why haven’t I written anything good?
Why won’t anyone publish my stories?
(3) NEW CAMPBELL REQUIREMENTS. On the other hand, last year’s Campbell Award winner Wesley Chu sounds pretty confident. He just announced the next new writer to win it will have to go through him.
New rule for #HugoAwards this year. To truly win the Campbell and don the tiara, the winner must defeat me in the Thunderdome. To the pain!
— Wesley Chu (@wes_chu) January 31, 2016
(4) BEFORE DAWN. What if the Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice film was made in 1966 starring Adam West and George Reeves?
The makers also produced a video showing scene-by-scene how they parodied the official Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice trailer.
(5) TIP OF THE DAY. “Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Carlos Hernandez” at Black Gate.
A Few Words on Structure, Point of View, and Discovery
I once told Delia Sherman that one of the great pleasures of reading her work is the same pleasure I would have purchasing an antique grandfather clock. Maybe I bought the clock because it is gorgeously carved and imbued with history, but then I am delighted to discover over a period of months that it keeps perfect time.
“Perfect time” in that conceit is structure, the mechanics of storytelling. It is, to my mind, the absolute hardest aspect of writing. I can write a funny line or a mordant or trenchant one, but how many of those may I keep and still preserve the pace and measure of the whole? It’s an impossible question to answer in advance of writing, and maybe just plain impossible.
(6) SHATNER COVERS ALL THE BASES. William Shatner does his usual first-rate narrating job on the Major League Baseball Network’s new documentary, The Colorful Montreal Expos, about the National League team that existed from 1969 to 2004 (before moving to Washington D.C., and becoming The Nationals.) Shatner, of course, was born in Canada….
It debuted this week, and should be repeated frequently. Here’s the trailer.
(7) SOURCES OF LOVECRAFTIAN LANGUAGE. Jeffro Johnson has an exposition on “Lovecraft on Lord Dunsany and the King James Bible” at Castalia House blog whose theme is —
So… Lovecraft doesn’t merely encourage writers to study the King James Bible for its “rich and forceful English.” He points out that that Lord Dunsany was among the best (if not the best) because of assimilation of its style– and that lesser writers suffered from not being familiar with it! Given how his politics and beliefs tend to be portrayed, this is liable to be a surprise.
(8) MORE LOVECRAFT ADVICE. Maria Popova’s “H.P. Lovecraft’s Advice to Aspiring Writers: Timeless Counsel from 1920” was Johnson’s inspiration. There are several more interesting quotes in her post.
Much like Jennifer Egan did nearly a century later, Lovecraft stresses the vital osmosis between reading and writing:
No aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules. … All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost. In many cases, the usage of good authors will be found a more effective guide than any amount of precept. A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe’s will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.
(9) FINLAY OBIT. SF Site News reports actor Frank Finlay (1926-2016) died January 31.
One of his earliest roles was in the six-episode sf series Target Luna (1960). (He did not appear in the three sequels.)
Fans probably know him best as Porthos in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and The Return of the Musketeers.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 31, 1936 – The Green Hornet made its radio debut.
- January 31, 1961 — NASA launched a rocket carrying Ham the Chimp into space.
(11) ARCHIE ON TV. Jackson McHenry of Vulture spins the announcement of Greg Berlant’s new Riverdale series this way — “The CW Orders an Archie Pilot That Will Finally Answer the Question: What If Everyone in Riverdale Were Really Hot?”
According to Variety, Riverdale will offer a “surprising and subversive take on Archie, Betty, Veronica and their friends, exploring the surrealism of small town life — the darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale’s wholesome façade.” Substitute “Riverdale” for “Lumberton” and this is also the plot of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
(12) A FOURTH HELPING OF DOGS. Jim C. Hines returns to a subject he has studied closely in “Puppies, Redux”, but I’m compelled to ask — if a Middle-Earth blogger wrote, “So far the new ringbearer has been doing a better job,” would you feel reassured?
Predictions:
I don’t know for certain what’s going to happen this year. My personal opinion, for whatever it’s worth, is that there’s been so much hatred and nastiness surrounding Sad Puppies that it’s all but impossible to run a “clean” recommendations list under that brand. That said, SP4 seems to be genuinely trying for openness and to escape last year’s nastiness. Props to the organizers for that, and I hope it continues.
Given everything that went down in 2015, I don’t expect the Sad and Rapid Puppy groups to have as much influence on the final ballot. I imagine they’ll get some nominees from their lists onto the ballot, but it won’t be the same kind of shutout we saw in 2015.
(13) YEP, THAT’S MY PUBLISHER. G. Willow Wilson, the writer of Ms Marvel, talks about the whole Marvel CEO-donating-to-Trump thing that was on yesterday’s scroll.
In an ordinary election cycle, I’d say that when the CEO of an entertainment company supports a conservative candidate while also fostering diverse creative talent within his company, it is a sign of a healthy democracy. Being a Republican is not a crime. However, this is not an ordinary election cycle, and Trump is not an ordinary Republican. The irony that Ms Marvel was launched on Perlmutter’s watch–while Donald Trump would like to prevent Muslims from even entering the United States–was not lost on the mainstream media, nor on me.
(14) NEWS IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. Let me be the last to report that William Shatner played the role of Mark Twain in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries aired in October 2015 on Canadian television. Here’s the behind-the-scenes preview.
When Twain’s life is threatened after a controversial speaking engagement at the Empire Club of Canada in 1903 Toronto, Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) and his colleagues must protect the esteemed writer.
[Thanks to Soon Lee, lurkertype, snowcrash, John King Tarpinian, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]
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Stand on XanaD’OH! indeed…
Heh. I see Day is stretching out his nominations category by category to collect those valuable clicks, which, of course, is the primary metric that the world revolves around.
Other than Brown and Weir (who I’m moderately sure have never heard of Day), I’ve never heard of the others, and Google is not much help. One is a Singaporean Castelia writer, one more appears to be an tabletop game designers (with books published in the 90’s???), and the last appears to have a series or two that I can just see described as being “like Locke Lamora”.
Let’s see how the Dead Elk respond eh.
I doubt it very much. Flavour text wasn’t really a thing in LBB editions. There might have been more in later editions, but whether we could clearly separate out Marc Miller from William Keith is unclear.
Oh boy, we’re having puppy food again!
Johan P:
Smileys were something apa writers were striving for in the 70s (in my experience) with abbreviations like S,AS (Smiling, Always Smiling) and so forth. Even then, it was apparent that they could be used sarcastically, which would eventually kill their utility for other ways. I used to wish their was an anti-bird gesture, that there might be a simple signal one could use that meant “I’m sorry!” and another for “Thank you!” A little thought experiment, though, shows that these would soon become fouled by sarcasm and lose their kindness.
As to the “well, he [or whoever, but let’s just go with ‘he’ for now] writes like a psychotic, but he’s nice in person” meme, I started to think (during my Usenet days) that this just means he’s too cowardly to show his hand face to face, but indulges his nastiness when he thinks it’s safe and sorta-anonymous.
I commented over at Hines’s post that some who perceive themselves as underdogs like to believe that, as in the Chick tract “Big Daddy?”, they are always calm and courteous, while their persecutors are rude and ready to flip out, and that vein on their forehead just might explode.
A calm tone in writing can be achieved by omitting inflammatory words and most adjectives and various other means, including not spending a lot of time making up belittling names, acronyms, initialisms and JargNyms for the other side… or one can write like an overheated purple prose-inator and then direct that the resulting prose must be read in a calm and unthreatening, nay, debonair, manner. This takes the burden of reasonability from the writer (who gets to have his catharsis in print after all) and puts it on the reader, and if the reader can’t make that shift, well, it’s all the reader’s fault, isn’t it? (vide Oneiros, et al)
@RedWombat
How many Morlocks does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The Marc Miller piece was, I assume, Agent of the Imperium, a Traveller novel he Kickstarted last year. (I backed it but haven’t read it. As is the case with about 90% of the literary Kickstarters I’ve backed.)
http://www.amazon.com/Agent-Imperium-Story-Traveller-Universe-ebook/dp/B019Y37LC8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454338331&sr=8-1&keywords=agent+of+the+imperium
2015 Locus Recommended Reading List is out.
Hooo boy. There’s more to read now.
Ninja’d by Joe H !
However ISFDB does show up a Marc Miller novelette from 1994.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1052281
So definite eligibility issues.
@Ray: heh. I am a Christian, I can see my KJV from here (it’s between my RSV and my complete works of Poe*), and all I can say is – if I had to choose – I would rather be trapped in a lift with Dawkins than with Falwell….
*I don’t shelve my books in an entirely sensible way.
RedWombat, in case you’re curious, we’ve just finished an extended book discussion of Bryony and Roses over on Compuserve. You don’t need to log in to read the discussion.
These are people who will make no bones about the KJV being lies, frauds, having no redeeming value, and the great benefit to the world of all copies being burned, except for a select few being kept back as an example to the wise of things to be avoided.
I don’t know about that. I seem to recall at least some of those gentlemen stating that they can appreciate the artistry of cultural works related to Christianity, even if they believe the message is false. I can recall, for example, Dawkins talking about how he appreciated the beauty of cathedrals and hymns, even though he didn’t believe in the faith they represented.
@Snowcrash
The Locus list – the short fiction end makes me almost content as I’ve actually read half of them. On the other hand, the novels list is just a terrible reminder of how many books I’d meant to get around to…
If every Puppy supporter votes in lockstep, they take either everything or nothing. (Unless they take some things coincidentally, because lots of other people are voting for them as well.) But in fact, even last year, they did not vote in perfect lockstep – the RP voters showed some variation, and the SP voters a lot more. It looks as if, even when the thing was explicitly framed as a slate, some people were using it as a recommendation list – this was confirmed a while ago by one Filer’s report of Puppy supporters they know. This year, when it’s officially a recommendation list, presumably more people will use it that way, even though it’s set up in such a way that it can be used as a slate. Hines seems to be taking them at their word when they say it’s a recommendation list, and on that basis their getting some spots but not all is not implausible.
These are people who will make no bones about the KJV being lies, frauds, having no redeeming value, and the great benefit to the world of all copies being burned, except for a select few being kept back as an example to the wise of things to be avoided.
But do they think that only about the KJV, and not about other versions?
Now, with a plethora of translations, it may be unlikely that people will use the KJV unless they have a specific ideological commitment to it. But in Lovecraft’s time what else was there? Catholics would have had a different version, of course (the Douai? Or was that only in the UK?). And the American Standard Version – which is the progenitor of the RSV, the NRSV and so on – had been compiled, but I don’t know how popular it ever was. I’m sure that for a lot of people the KJV was just The Bible.
@Snowcrash:
He’s not collecting clicks. He’s stretching it out to collect outrage, enthusiasm, and angry analyses.
Short of something of real substance to say, I’d rather ignore him.
@Mark: I had the same reaction: relieved that I already read two-thirds of the stories and felt like I’ve done enough, just spotted half-a-dozen I’d been meaning to get to. Doesn’t help me with my Related Work headache, though!
that Locus novels list just keeps on going, doesn’t it?
*groan*
Every time I think I’ve caught up… there are more 2015 books to read.
I’ve read the first book by Sebastian de Castell and quite enjoyed it – although it is is a bit like a grimdark Locke Lamora.
I seconded Dann’s recommendation of this on the SP4 website, which is where VD probably got the name from.
I guess VD is trying to ‘wreak havoc’ by nominating some names that would likely be nominated anyway by the rest of fandom (Brown, Weir) or that overlap with the SP4 slate, sorry, recommendation list. Nominating stuff that everyone else likes to spite us is possibly not the genius plan that he thinks it is…
I had the same reaction: relieved that I already read two-thirds of the stories and felt like I’ve done enough, just spotted half-a-dozen I’d been meaning to get to. Doesn’t help me with my Related Work headache, though!
Right now I have four things on my related work list for nominations (in no particular order):
1. Empire of Imagination by Michael Witwer, a biography of Gary Gygax. My review of the book is here.
2. You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), by Felicia Day, which is her autobiography. My review of the book is here.
3. These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Three by Marc Cushman, which is a “show biography” of the third season of the original Star Trek series. There are three volumes in the series (one for each season), and I’m considering nominating all three as a unit under the “series” rule.
4. Letters to Tiptree by Alisa Krasnostein and Alex Pierce, which is a collection of letters and essays about James Tiptree, Jr. (who was actually Alice B. Sheldon) written by a wide array of mostly female science fiction and fantasy authors.
I don’t know what I’m going to put in the fifth slot. Maybe John Scalzi Is Not a Very Popular Author, and I Myself Am Quite Popular by Theophilius Pratt (actually Alexandra Erin), but that feels almost lightweight compared to the others.
re: mr beale
And five out of five equals….slate!!!
Of course, this just about guarantees that EPH will be ratified this year.
re: Locus recommended list
*boggles* *sobs* *adds to bookmarks*
I think sleep is going to be in short supply for the next couple of months.
I read the first de Castell too. Didn’t care for it, myself. Not motivated to read the sequels.
Is the Stalking Puppy lists now closed? If not, would someone like to check in a couple of days and see if there’s a sudden influx of votes for Teddy’s people?
[ticky?]
Ah yes, I’d been meaning to read Letters to Tiptree. And then my local university library has the interesting-sounding Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairy Tales of Victorian Britain.
@Aaron
I’ve been meaning to mention that I read the Felicia Day on your recommendation and enjoyed it very much.
@Aaron and Andrew M.
Good points, all. With American Catholicism, which bible gets used can be a gray area. The KJV is of course the work of evil Protestants – but it’s such a very good work, and the cadence of the prose works wonderfully, that a great many American Catholics are quite fond of it. The New Standard Version was somewhat infamous for being a better read of older versions of the Greek than the Erasmus translation the KJV is heavily influenced by, but they killed the poetry. The revised standard got some of the poetry back, and you can really debate back and fourth between the cleaner style of the Revised, or the magisterial weight of the KJV. There are many arguments on both sides, and as routes to the Word they can do even better in tandem.
I will admit I was thinking of Hitchens more when I made my little list, but Dawkins’s occasional appreciation is amongst a great deal of rather shocking vitriol. Bring up Muslims and the man sounds like John Wright. I was also thinking of the less published but numerous and quite vocal segment (I do not say or wish to imply “majority” or “most” or anything of the type, just that there are enough to make an impression) who can be quite, quite hostile. The contention of religion as an entirely negative force on history . Which are very similar to the assumptions many people will make about Christians when who they hear loudest or see the most are the Pat Robertsons, Joel Olsteens, and Duggers, about the noisy representing the all.
Steve Wright, is that an intentional reference to Elevatorgate?
Not so. If the RP slate all get 500 nominations and non-RP get, say, 1000, 800, 600, 400, 350, 320, 300, 270… then you get three non-RP and all five RPs (because of the tie rule).
Assuming that even the RPs can’t stay in perfect lock-step, and it’s actually 510, 501, 500, 497, 495 (more realistic) then you can still get three non-RP and two RP.
Oh, and finally getting around to reading through the Locus list. ARCHIVIST WASP! YES! READ THAT ONE!
Dare I say it? Yes, I do. As a work of English literature, an example of what the English langue can do it the hands of masters of it, the KJV is a treasure.
But as a translation of the Bible, no, sorry, not very good, many better now (though not Douai, which is not a translation of the original but of the Latin Bible) and rejected by Catholics less because Evil Protestants than because it leaves out major portions.
Dawkins’s occasional appreciation is amongst a great deal of rather shocking vitriol. Bring up Muslims and the man sounds like John Wright.
Oh sure. Dawkins’ appreciation for the beauty of religious art is packaged with a great deal of cultural chauvinism on his part. I suspect that he appreciates hymns, cathedrals, religious paintings and so on in large part because they are the touchstones of his own cultural heritage. Given that it is the KJV we are talking about, I suspect that the book would fall into his “I don’t like religion, but the art here is good” zone.
@Lis Carey
Exactly. Thank you. I think you can have a side by side of “meaning of KJV version of verse as it has become common part of English Language” and “general exegesis of same version from better translation.” Also, I really dislike replacing “love” with “charity” in some key places. The style is just… yeah.
It was a valiant effort – at least it’s a translation of the Greek, if badly. It’s just that Erasmus’s greek was sometimes greek translations of the latin, sometimes Byzantine transmission that were much new than he thought, etc.
@Aaron
Yes, I think you may have it.
I try to avoid organized atheists. They tend to repeat all the worst things of religions – without the excuse of being trapped in outdated scripts.
Huh. For some reason I expected more of a splinter of the RP slate. Not impressed by the Xanad’oh maneuver so far. Maybe it just looks especially pathetic bathed in the scrutiny of a thousand annoyed scowls.
For Related Work, can I recommend Downfall, by Caroline Hobbs?
It’s a fantastically speculative storytelling game where you create a society with one critical, fundamental flaw, and then you play out the society’s tragic collapse. It’s brilliant, unusual, and fun. It makes a game of very SF-nal worldbuilding and storytelling, and I think it’ll make a worthy nomination.
I wrote some more here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ziv-wities/downfall-by-caroline-hobbs-for-best-related-work/10153324203174537
Having been raised Catholic myself, I have always tended to view the KJV as more of a literary source.
Regarding Andy Weir: deep in my soul I honestly cannot view him as eligible for the Campbell. I read his webcomic about mad scientists for several years, and it ended more than two years ago. (Long enough ago that my current laptop doesn’t even have an obsolete bookmark in the old comics folder). And I don’t think I really care what the award sponsors think about the matter, though I would care if I were seeing him as possibly eligible.
I had forgotten how moving Ursula Vernon’s
is; it is particularly poignant given the number of people who have gone before their time in the last few weeks.
I’m pleased to see that so many stories from
are included; I’ve been banging the drum for the anthology ever since I snapped it up as a Kindle bargain shortly after it was released, and it’s nice to know that others have enjoyed it as well.
Oddly enough, I thought Kai Ashante Wilson’s
was too short to fit in the novel category; perhaps it’s simply because I read it quickly. He has a short story included on the Locus list as well; it’s a very good year for him.
Still not at all happy about the exclusion of Genevieve Cogman’s work, but it’s an American list so perhaps that’s the explanation. I’m not sure how to enquire about eligibility; presumably when they are properly published in the US -as opposed to being shipped from the UK- that is treated as the publication date for Hugo purposes. I’d be grateful for advice on this, if anybody has any….
snowcrash –
I’m torn between sad that a lot that I loved isn’t on that list, and overwhelmed at the amount to still read on top of that.
I still don’t get Young Adult. If the Half The Trilogy by Abercrombie were movies they’d be a hard rated R.
Ray said:
I’m convinced that it holds for enough people that I describe my religious belief as “atheiest, but not fundamentalist”.
Then Hampus Eckerman said:
“Outdated scripts” hardly describes all religions; we’ve got plenty of new ones.
But other than that quibble, yes, I agree, as an atheist and someone who use to describe themself as a member of the skeptic movement. (Nothing to do with the recent scandals; I was long gone by then. Ironically, I learned enough about skeptical thinking to start noticing what Hampus said above.)
Shame there’s already been a post using a “Kubla Khan” reference– it’s belatedly occurred to me there was an opportunity for a joke about a visitor from Morlock…
Dawkins actual opinion: A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.
@Mark said, “I’ve been meaning to mention that I read the Felicia Day on your recommendation and enjoyed it very much.”
I’m glad you enjoyed it. It is always nice to hear that a book you recommended went over well with someone who took you up on the recommendation.
@Stevie
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is in the 42-43k words region, which just tips it into novel but still within the discretionary % for being moved back into novella. Tor.com’s eligibility post said something along the lines of ‘we think it’s got more in common with novella-length works’ and I would agree. If I nominate it, it will be in novella.
I bought Robert Alter’s translation of the Pentateuch a couple of years ago since his Hebrew-Bible translations are highly praised. To my surprise, in the introductory matter he had very kind words to say about the accuracy of the KJV’s rendition of the Old Testament. That flew in the face of my hazy impression that the KJV was regarded as very pretty, but unreliable.
On fiction length categories: Given that my tendency is to write a story until it’s done and only then consider the length, I’m interested in people’s take on a more structural definition. In your opinion, what makes a 7500 word story a “long short story” versus a “short novelette”? What makes a 17,500 word story a “long novelette” versus a “short novella”? And (the precipitating question) what makes a 40,000 word story a “long novella” rather than a “short novel”?
For me it isn’t entirely a hypothetical question, given that I have a story that sits right at the cusp of the novelette/novella boundary in terms of word count, and I’m still dithering over whether to leave it as it is (just barely on the novelette side) or make a concerted effort to tip it over into classifying as a novella. Not that I seriously expect it to matter in terms of award-category eligibility. And since I plan to include it in a self-published collection, it doesn’t matter in terms of submission-length categories either. But as a theoretical question…
Jim Henley on February 1, 2016 at 5:54 am said:
Well, there is the ancient baby trick of waiting until one’s gotten the poop-filled diaper off and a clean one in place to spew more poo and laugh. But that’s–
Oh, wait.
It doesn’t actually say so, but I imagine that the 2015 Locus List entries are all Hugo eligible?
It will be interesting to see if the RP keep up this type of makeup of their picks. Brown actually got the movie deal before the first book of the series was published (back in early 2014) and he’s already had success in the Goodreads awards. I had him as a guest at Phoenix Comicon and he was a good panelist and very fan friendly.
The why didn’t Weir win last year comment is priceless!
bloodstone75 asked:
Probably, unless one of the recommenders made a mistake about a publication date. (There’s an erratum at the bottom of the post about something being originally placed in the wrong category, so it wouldn’t hurt to re-check for anything you like enough to nominate.)