(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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Lis Carey: The left-out portions are in fact included in the KJV translation (it annoys me to have to call it that; it’s the Authorised Version, dammit! But no one will understand if I say that); they are just in a separate section, ‘The Apocrypha’. Unfortunately – although you need this to follow the English Prayer Book lectionary – it is left out of many printings, especially those by the Bible Societies, who are not merely Evil Protestants but Puritans. (Um, that may be a slight oversimplification of the matter.)
It doesn’t actually say so, but I imagine that the 2015 Locus List entries are all Hugo eligible?
Yes: but I think they are not including things that were published in 2014 but are eligible under the ‘American publication’ rule (Lagoon and Cuckoo Song being two obvious ones).
I see the Pups are still as clueless as ever. Included in the comments are:
How did Weir not win this last year?
A: Because the Puppies knocked him off the ballot.
I think he wasn’t nominated last year simply because the book was too “science-y” for SJW’s to actually enjoy.
A: <facepalm>
And as someone else pointed out, Marc Miller had a qualifying work back in 1994. He is no longer eligible for the Campbell.
Standback: For Related Work, can I recommend Downfall, by Caroline Hobbs?
One of the criteria for Best Related Work is that it is primarily non-fiction, so Downfall would not be eligible in that category.
Heather Rose Jones: 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.
Want an academic’s rant? Well, semi-rant; I’m not really all that passionate on the subject.
In academic circles, what we call a “novella” (that is, 17,500 to 40,000 words) is often described as a “short novel”: see Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. (Honest. There used to be a fairly common textbook, now out of print, titled Sixteen Short Novels that included both of the above. Go figure.) The thing is, and with apologies to the serious genre theorists out there, what makes a novel a novel is both length and complexity. Novels have subplots, they have complex (though not necessarily multiple) points of view; they have more than two or three named characters. Short stories tend to focus on what Poe called “the single effect,” or the short, sharp shock–they are aimed at a profound, concentrated impact that may make the reader see the world differently but are tightly structured so that no irrelevant details at all are included. Novellas fall somewhere in between; they really are just “short novels,” I think. Novelettes . . . are an arbitrary length designation intended (at most) to indicate that there is a difference between a long short story, such as Crane’s “The Open Boat” and a short one, such as Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” But what that difference is depends on the reader, I suspect. (I also believe that even serious genre theorists would have no problem calling a standard “novelette” a “short story,” even if a “longer than usual short story,” but that’s a matter of labeling.)
Does that help? I am a big proponent (as I get the impression you are too) of the idea that “the story should be as long or as short as it needs to be”; I’d say it’s part of the writer’s job, when writing for a particular length, to develop an idea that can be expressed in that length. If the writer is wrong–well, then it’s a different story from what he/she thought it was going to be at first, and that’s that. I also think that “the story is just this side or that side of the word count” doesn’t make that much difference in what it IS: even the awards categories, like the Hugo eligibility rules, have that percent-of-flex provision, and I’ve never met an editor who wasn’t willing to accept some reasonable variability if the story was good enough–if the story was the story it was supposed to be. So . . in terms of your specific question? I imagine it depends on how much effort it would be to “flip” the story to the novella side, and how much you want to do that work. Given what you’ve said about your writing process, I suspect that if you really want to make the story longer, it’s because you think it would be a better story that way. If you are just doing it because you think maybe you SHOULD, for technical publication category reasons . . . probably you shouldn’t bother?
@rob_matic
Ah crap. I suppose the trick is how to get something noticed without it becoming a political football. (and, yes, I get the irony……)
Sebastian’s Greatcoats series is indeed one of the series that has me stoked right now. I sampled Three Body Problem and Ancilliary Sword. I read The Goblin Emperor from cover to cover.
For my money, both books thus far are top shelf, award quality fiction. Eastly better than those three, IMHO.
I’ve been trying to suggest the most recent entry in various places where folks would not discount the recommendation due to my self proclaimed proclivities. 😉
Since half of my current inventory is out in the open, let me also recommend Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series. Each and everyone entry of that series is also top shelf work worthy of recognition within the genre.
Both gentlemen are producing work that you will regret missing.
Consider a lengthier version of “squee” to be here:
[squee]
Regards,
Dann
The why didn’t Weir win last year comment is priceless!
So is the one about how The Martian wasn’t nominated because it’s too science-y for SJWs. I’m not sure a spit take is what RPs mean when they talk about heads exploding, but whatever. I will cherish that particular comment forever.
As a Catholic schoolgirl, I was disappointed by how the Douai Bible compared to the KJV. I love the language of the King James Bible and can’t imagine what it would take for a contemporary version to even begin to approach its literary value.
WTactualF with the French comics award? I just … I … that’s the kind of “joke” you would pull if you lacked even the most basic understanding of how human beings work. And then …
Buddy, the problem is that you’re quite a few panels short of a strip.
It is interesting to see the amount of activity going on at the SP4 site. Aside from Best Novel and the BDP categories, there’s not a large number of posts happening there and a good number of the posters don’t appear to be puppy sympathizers.
The Devourers by Indra Das isn’t out in the U.S. yet (or the UK—it says Penguin India as one of the publishers, so maybe it’s out in India?). Steles of the Sky came out in the U.S. in 2014—in fact, it was on last year’s Locus list!—yet it shows up on this year’s list. I’m not really sure what eligibility criteria Locus uses for this list, but “first U.S. publication” can’t be it.
Interesting to compare this list to all the other lists already put out. No Barsk the Elephant’s Graveyard, Updraft, The Library at Mount Char, A Darker Shade of Magic, or The Mechanical. (Other omissions were surprising, but these were the ones that were really surprising to me.) Not a single item was published by Baen. Only one of the Philip K. Dick shortlisted novels made this list
(Also? Guys? A major reason by Beale started his list today was because he knew the Locus list was coming out today. It’s always published online February 1. He wanted people talking about him instead of the Locus list. Might be a good idea to keep that in mind.)
Steles of the Sky is definitely Hugo-ineligible, so I’d double-check anything on this list.
One of the criteria for Best Related Work is that it is primarily non-fiction, so Downfall would not be eligible in that category.
Strictly, the criterion is that it is noteworthy primarily for something other than the fictional text. I think the work that inspired this change (from ‘Best Non-Fiction Book) was Diana Wynne-Jones’s Tough Guide…, which was arguably fictional from beginning to end, but notable mainly as a commentary on epic fantasy. It would also cover guides, etc., written in an in-story way, like last year’s ASOIAF guide, or The Compleat Discworld Atlas (eligible this year, people! Eligible this year!).
I do find it hard to see how Downfall would satisfy this criterion, though.
JJ, Andrew: Ooof! Thanks for alerting me to the snag in my interpretation of the category.
I’m still not clear on the definition (for example, Downfall has basically no fictional text). But now I know that I’d better dig in and look it up 🙂
Re (6) — You note that Shatner was born in Canada; I’ll add that more specifically, he was born and raised in Montreal. So tapping him for the Expos documentary makes sense.
@Dann
I enjoyed the first Brett, but the new POV character in the second one caused me to go “hell no” and never read the third. This may well be my loss, of course.
JJ, Andrew, I’m not seeing either of the criteria you mentioned. The only limits I’m seeing are “provided that they do not qualify for another category,” and “not an anthology.”
Where are you drawing from? Am I looking in the right place?
@Mark
The very best part about our modern SFF is that there is plenty of everything for just about everyone.
I liked Jardir quite a bit. His character has developed quite a bit since book 2. Some things don’t change. Some things do.
YMMV, of course!
Regards,
Dann
@Richard Gadsden: “I wonder if there’s enough of the Free Trader Beowulf story or other flavor text in Traveller to qualify as a short story for eligibility purposes – if so, given that it was definitely a professional sale (ie to GDW), then Marc Miller isn’t eligible.”
If that’s true, then GURPS Casey & Andy (2005) disqualifies Weir. Then again, the 2011 self-published version of The Martian may disqualify Weir. I’m not saying that to bash Weir – quite the opposite; I liked C&A and thoroughly enjoyed both the novel and movie for The Martian – but fair’s fair.
@Lis Carey: [The KJV is] “rejected by Catholics less because Evil Protestants than because it leaves out major portions.”
Actually, I’ve seen at least one copy of the KJV with the Apocrypha included – in the chapel of a Catholic hospital. It’s definitely not the normal/common version, but it exists.
Personally, I prefer the New Jerusalem Bible as a translation. There are a couple of verses I use as tests, and the NJB passes where the rest I compared at the time did not.
@Stevie:
Random question – is there a particular reason you blockquote book/movie titles instead of italicizing them? I only ask because the paragraph breaks introduced by the blockquoting always trip me up when I read your comments.
Andrew M– In addition to banishing seven books from the OT to the Apocrypha, KJV/the Authorized Version also have shorter versions of Daniel and Esther.
Enjoying Bandersnatch. On audio, listening to and enjoying This Gulf of Time and Stars, by Julie Czerneda.
I’ve read and enjoyed the Great Coat books; I expect that I will read and enjoy Tyrant’s Throne in due course.
I don’t think they are worthy of Hugo nomination for a number of reasons; one of them is that a few weeks after reading them I can no longer recall much in the way of plot or characterisation. Comparing and contrasting with Steven Brust’s books, which I do recall very clearly, suggests that they lack the depth to really lodge in the imagination.
Of course, Steven Brust hasn’t won a Hugo either; if we are considering swords and sorcery then the Hugo standard is set by Fritz Leiber’s Ill Met in Lankhmar, probably the finest prequel of all time, and Castell isn’t in that league.
Someday he may be, and he has time to hone his craft and work towards that goal; it really isn’t kind to him to pretend that he’s already there. If he’s any kind of decent writer then he knows he has a long way to go to reach those heights; using him as a pawn in other people’s schemes simply reinforces the fact that those schemes have nothing to do with the works themselves, and the writers are just so much cannon fodder.
ETA
RevBob
Incompetence on my part!
Emma
Thank you; it is obviously one of those mysterious things moving in mysterious ways.
I suspect “Barsk” isn’t on some reading lists because it is profoundly inadequate.
@Mary Frances semi-rant up there a ways reminds me of my original impression that (aside from the totally broken physics and linguistics, and bogus ending) it is an inflated short story pretending to be a novel.
That would explain some of the oddly un-populated feel.
Lis Carey: The omitted portions of Daniel and Esther are also in the Apocrypha.
Standback said:
They’re probably looking at the official definition. (See text from 2014 or PDF from 2015.):
(ETA: The “substantially modified” part allows it to cover online works which go through major updates or add content on an ongoing basis.)
@Stevie re. the Greatcoat books.
I think a Campbell new writer nomination for de Castell would be, for me, perfectly reasonable.
Standback: No, you are not looking in the right place. That’s the informal guide; what you need is the WSFS constitution (which is linked from it).
@Petréa, Andrew: Thanks!
I’m not sure I’m convinced it’s ineligible, but I definitely see what you’re saying. I’ll look into this more before I plump for it any further…
@ Johan P:
Exactly this.
And as has already been remarked multiple times, a different TONE doesn’t change the CONTENT of JCW’s comments and essays, and CONTENT is what various people find repugnant in his remarks.
Regarding the KJV — I had always heard that it had translation problems, but I now suspect that the worst translation problem isn’t original languages => KJV but rather KJV => present day English.
That’s why you end up having to tell people “coat of many colors” was originally something like “really splendid coat” — not because “coat of many colors” was such a bad translation given the idiom at the time it was translated, but because five hundred years later people will translate the KJV vernacular into the modern vernacular and end up with “technicolor dreamcoat.”
Atheist activists get annoying when they act like inverse evangelical Christians.
You know, they’ve got THE TRUTH. It is literally and objectively The Truth; it is the only REAL The Truth there is; all evil in the world arises from rejecting The Truth and all good in the world comes from accepting The Truth; anyone who believes in any other The Truth is either a poor deluded fool who has never heard The Truth, or is a willful fool who has heard The Truth and knows, deep down inside, that it is The Truth, but is in rebellion against The Truth because The Truth scares them.
And, I agree with the consensus here, that a lot of spittle-flecked over-the-top insults delivered in a calm, dry voice doesn’t make the original insults any less inflammatory. It just makes you sound like a Bond villain.
You don’t need to be producing Best Novel/Short etc quality work to be a Campbell nominee. (Obviously doesn’t hurt though).
My concern for the Campbell would be more about potential nominees with a very limited amount of work to judge them on.
Thank you Mary Frances, that was helpful. I think I agree with you that a novella is a type of short novel. Makes me feel better about nominating the borderline-length Wylding Hall as a novella when it clearly is a novel by your criterion of having multiple themes simultaneously.
The hilarity: VD is having to stamp out a minor rebellion in his comments from minions who’ve realised that Andy Weir might be a bit of a lefty.*
In the land of 4GW this simply guarantees his ultimate victory, of course.
*I’ve no idea if they’re right about that, but his admiration for Neil deGrasse Tyson was considered exhibit #1
Mark: Weir said on Reddit — On social issues I am very liberal, as you can probably expect from me growing up in the Bay Area. But on fiscal matters I’m conservative. I work hard to keep my political views out of my stories. Nobody wants to be preached at.
@Rev. Bob,
It’s complicated.
The eligibility FAQ:
I interpret it to mean that “GURPS Casey & Andy” isn’t a Campbell-qualifying work. And for “The Martian” self-published version to qualify, it needed a print run of at least 10,000 (from same link), but the self-published version was electronic only.
Also given that Writertopia (which is about as definitive as possible without being a Hugo/Campbell administrator’s pronouncement) lists Weir as in his 2nd year of Campbell eligibility, my conclusion is that Weir is eligible for the Campbell.
The Shatner-as-Mark-Twain clip did not, I’m afraid, impress me. For most of it, he seemed to be channeling himself, not Twain. It was only in the portion where he was portraying Mark Twain as *M*A*R*K* *T*W*A*I*N*!*, famous public speaker, that gave me any sense of Twaininess.
And, as was mentioned in the clip, Shatner looks nothing at all like Twain. I kept wondering why Chester Alan Arthur was trying to pass himself off as Mark Twain.
(If I sound a little cranky in the comment above, it’s largely because I found out this morning that I’ll almost certainly have to have the 2012 shoulder surgery re-done in the fairly near future. The prosthetic joint is beginning to come loose from the surgical cement, and the original bone has thinned to the extent Mayo’s surgeon may have to use cadaver bone for reinforcement in the new surgery. The upside is, if the latter happens, I will, like Frankenstein’s Creature, contain both dead body parts and an abnormal brain. Hopefully, this means I will finally be able to speak and read French.)
That’s always going to be an issue with the Campbell because we’re trying to extrapolate based on limited data (no more than two year’s worth of output from first professional publication) whether a writer will go on to have a successful career. It takes only one mind-blowing work to convince me though.
@Mike
I guess that’s better evidence than liking Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Given that Weir would have made last year’s ballot were it not for the slates, and he’s had a blockbuster movie to enhance his audience this year, I think Weir is entitled to treat VDs spoilerdorsement with the contempt it deserves.
No sign of Rabids invading the SP4 recommendations so far, but it’s early days yet and I’m sure they’ll show up eventually. Plenty of nominations for Weir, of course, and two for de Castell (one of them from Dann). Nothing for Brown, which is somewhat surprising given his Goodreads Choice award, Miller, or Cheah.
I agree. Speaking as an atheist, we definitely have rights that need to be protected (when I moved to this state just 3 years ago, I wrote to my state rep immediately, because the state legislature was voting on a proposal to INcrease legalized discrimination against atheists here), but I can’t stand atheists who fetishize atheism.
@Soon Lee
Yes, one mind-blowing work is quite sufficient, as are several good-with-promise works. It’s the one-rather-flawed-work type of nominee from last year that I worry are being lined up again.
I’m not sure how to put my finger on “promise”. I think I’m more likely to ignore moderate flaws on the assumption that they can be ironed out, and look more for the best elements through an optimistic lens.
Mind you, I also have a couple of short story writers on my longlist simply because I enjoyed a story and was then surprised to read that they were a new writer. I figure that if I can’t tell they’re new, then they’re doing something (or several things) right.
Laura Resnick: when I moved to this state just 3 years ago, I wrote to my state rep immediately, because the state legislature was voting on a proposal to INcrease legalized discrimination against atheists here
Wait, what? What were they trying to do?
Peter J said:
I expect there will be a call to, err, propagate the RP2 recommendations once they have all been revealed.
@ JJ:
In my weariness, I’ve actually forgotten the specifics. I live in Kentucky, a state that has looked for multiple ways to criminalize atheism and also homosexuality.
@JJ, Laura Resnick.
I’m gonna guess some Orwellian “religious liberty” bill?
The main logistical problem with the Campbell is how much of the question of who gets considered is entirely up to chance. If your first qualifying work is a novel from a major publisher, you’ve got the best chance of being on people’s radar. A novel from a small publisher, or a novel that doesn’t get pushed…much less likely. If your first work is short fiction, and you haven’t had the good fortune to sell a lot of pieces within the same initial time-frame, chances are your eligibility is going to run out before more than a handful of relevant people know who you are. And making a splash with a cluster of stories within your eligibility window isn’t exactly something you can strategize. I imagine that getting on people’s Campbell radar with short fiction is easier if one has a supportive social platform going in.
Of course, all the popular awards are affected as much by publicity transmission as by writing quality, but the narrow window of Campbell eligibility sharpens the question.
Cassy B: Awesome!
I was just on a local community radio program this morning talking about our favorites from 2015. Our host loved Barsk. As usual, there were so many things to talk about that we probably overlooked zillions, but a few that came up were Bandersnatch, Uprooted, the novellas in the Book Burners project, File 770 itself, Binti, Fifth Season, Ancillary Mercy, etc etc.
It was fun, even if I kept derailing about octopus stinkhorns and so forth, which I can generally be relied upon to do.
@Stevie
Oddly enough, the Greatcoats books stick with me pretty well. At least as well as things can stick in this noggin’ lately. The series works for me as a reader on a bunch of different levels. Plot, character development, pacing, as well as a bit of symbolism.
While it may be bit presumptuous to suggest Hugo level accolades for an author’s first or second book, we should keep in mind that Harper Lee wrote precisely one book that won a Pulitzer and didn’t publishing anything else for almost 50 years.
Ringing the bell early in a career is unlikely, but it isn’t impossible. Also, I tried to be a bit moderate in my enthusiasm by suggesting that de Castelle is doing “award worthy” without specifying which awards. I didn’t want to constrain things too much as opinions regarding specific awards vary.
Readers should be hearing about both of these series whether or not they actually make the finalist round for any award.
@rob_matic
Works for me!
Regards,
Dann
Oops–in the name of accuracy: the textbook I referred to my my semi-rant about novellas was actually titled Five Short Novels (I think), but definitely not Sixteen. Sixteen Short Novels is a different book . .
Not important, but I hate leaving factual errors–even when based on fading memories–uncorrected. Sorry.
Ars Technica: Calling all Bay Area Belters: come hang out with fellow fans of The Expanse!
5pm Wednesday, February 3, at Longitude in Oakland. The rumwala will be unveiling a new cocktail in honor of the event.
Going forward, it’s looking as though the meetup will be a regular thing, held every other Wednesday. Milowda ta tenye tim gut ere ora xush wit Team Belter at the first one!
It’s a bit of a pity that there will probably never again be a day as good as today to call a post “The Celebrated Scrolling Pixel of Calaveras County” and the chance wasn’t seized.
As to Andy Weir, I have every intention of nominating him for the Campbell this time around and if the puppies aren’t going to try to deny him the nomination again, fine, that’s certainly not a good reason to change my plans. Regarding the final vote assuming he’s on the final ballot, maybe I haven’t been paying attention and have missed something but it would be nice to see some evidence on ongoing literary production from him. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with ranking him above other plausible Campbell nominees as best new writer without some evidence that The Martian wasn’t the one and only good story he had in him.
@Soon Lee: (Weir, C&A, and the Campbell)
It still seems odd – one might even say weird – to me that one can write a webcomic for several years, self-publish a successful and acclaimed novel, and only become eligible for the Campbell by virtue of signing a publishing deal with one of the Big Five to produce a print version of the previously-electronic-only novel.
@Laura Resnick: “I live in Kentucky, a state that has looked for multiple ways to criminalize atheism and also homosexuality.”
Could be worse. For two examples: TN and GA. Even in this late year of 7637, they both have significant problems in those areas. (For bonus credit, would you care to guess which state border is closest to my dwelling?)
TheYoungPretender wrote:
Aaron replied:
Additionally Dawkins has asserted that the bible should be taught in schools as poetry because it underlies so much of our culture.
So you can probably find someone somewhere to match your straw atheist, but Dawkins isn’t it. That misinformation is still being used to give atheism a bad name, though.