(1) CONSUMER COMPLAINT. io9’s Germain Lussier reveals, “Rey Is Missing From New Star Wars Monopoly, And This Is Becoming a Real Problem”.
The problems of female characters being under-represented in geek merchandise is real. But when it’s a secondary character like Gamora or Black Widow, at least toy companies have an excuse. When the girl is not just the star of the movie, but of the whole franchise, that’s another story.
That character, of course, is Rey, the main character of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the latest problem has to do with Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens Monopoly. In the game, the four playable characters are Luke Skywalker, Finn, Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. No Rey.
(2) REWRITING CULTURE. Laurie Penny’s New Statesman post “What to do when you’re not the hero anymore”, while not about marketing oversights, covers some reasons why they should be taken seriously.
Capitalism is just a story. Religion is just a story. Patriarchy and white supremacy are just stories. They are the great organising myths that define our societies and determine our futures, and I believe – I hope – that a great rewriting is slowly, surely underway. We can only become what we can imagine, and right now our imagination is being stretched in new ways. We’re learning, as a culture, that heroes aren’t always white guys, that life and love and villainy and victory might look a little different depending on who’s telling it. That’s a good thing. It’s not easy – but nobody ever said that changing the world was going to be easy.
I learned that from Harry Potter.
(3) GATES KEEPERS. Bill Gates says “The Best Books I Read in 2015” included Randall Munroe’s bestseller —
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, by Randall Munroe. The brain behind XKCD explains various subjects—from how smartphones work to what the U.S. Constitution says—using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language and blueprint-style diagrams. It is a brilliant concept, because if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t really understand it. Munroe, who worked on robotics at NASA, is an ideal person to take it on. The book is filled with helpful explanations and drawings of everything from a dishwasher to a nuclear power plant. And Munroe’s jokes are laugh-out-loud funny. This is a wonderful guide for curious minds.
(4) PHILISTINE TASTE. Cracked delivers “6 Great Novels that Were Hated in Their Time”. Number one on the list – The Lord of the Rings.
The New Republic described the book and its characters as “anemic, and lacking in fiber” which was apparently a real burn back then in the pre-Cheerios days.
(5) TEA TIME. Ann Leckie talks about “Special Teas”.
I am cleaning and organizing my tea cupboard because SHUT UP I DON’T HAVE A NOVEL TO WRITE YOU HAVE A NOVEL TO WRITE that’s why. Also, it had gotten to be quite a disorganized mess and I wasn’t sure what I still had. (Yes, the cats are up next, just gotta remember where I stowed the dust buster.)
Anyway. I came across a sad reminder of Specialteas.com. They were an online tea seller, and they had an East Frisian Broken Blend that was my go-to super nice and chewy for putting milk in tea, and they had a lovely, very grapefruity earl grey.
(6) SHE BLINKED. A video of Ursula K. Le Guin celebrating Christmas Eve at the Farm.
(7) OPEN FOR SUBMISSONS. Apex Magazine has reopened for short fiction submissions. Poetry submissions will remained closed at this time. Apex Magazine’s submission guidelines and the link to its online submissions form can be found here.
(8) COVER WEBSITE TO CLOSE. Terry Gibbons’ site Visco – the visual catalogue of science fiction cover art will go away when its domain name expires February 9, unless someone else wants to take over hosting responsibilities. He posted thousands of images online before moving on to other projects in 2005 – and for the moment, they can still be seen there.
I have tried to find time to do something about Visco at intervals since then but matters came to a head when I got a new Windows 10 computer recently and realised that I no longer have the technology to maintain it. It was developed on a Windows 95 platform – remember that? – using Internet Explorer 3 and such and I guess it is a miracle that it is still accessible at all. But none of the software I used to build it now works on my current machine, so I cannot develop it further even if I had the time.
I could leave Visco sitting there indefinitely, or until advancing technology renders it unusable, but it costs a certain amount of money to run and, more to the point, it is a constant reminder of past glories. So I have decided to let it go to that place in cyberspace where once-loved web sites go to die.
(9) READING RODDENBERRY’S DATA. Joe Otterson at Yahoo! News tells how “’Star Trek’ Creator Gene Roddenberry’s Lost Data Recovered From 200 Floppy Disks”.
Although Roddenberry died in 1991, it wasn’t until much later that his estate discovered nearly 200 5.25-inch floppy disks. One of his custom-built computers had long since been auctioned and the remaining device was no longer functional.
But these were no ordinary floppies. The custom-built computers had also used custom-built operating systems and special word processing software that prevented any modern method of reading what was on the disks.
After receiving the computer and the specially formatted floppies, DriveSavers engineers worked to develop a method of extracting the data.
(10) SIDEBAR TO AXANAR. Kane Lynch’s article in comics form, “Final Frontiers: Star Trek fans take to the Internet to film their own episodes of the original series”, is based on an interview with someone who’s worked on both New Voyages and Star Trek Continues.
(11) BENFORD ON NEW HORIZONS. Click to read Gregory Benford’s contribution to Edge’s roundup “2016: What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”
The most long-range portentous event of 2015 was NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft arrowing by Pluto, snapping clean views of the planet and its waltzing moon system. It carries an ounce of Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes, commemorating his discovery of Pluto in 1930. Tombaugh would have loved seeing the colorful contrasts of this remarkable globe, far out into the dark of near-interstellar space. Pluto is now a sharply-seen world, with much to teach us.
As the spacecraft zooms near an iceteroid on New Year’s Day, 2019, it will show us the first member of the chilly realm beyond, where primordial objects quite different from the wildly eccentric Pluto also dwell. These will show us what sort of matter made up the early disk that clumped into planets like ours—a sort of family tree of worlds. But that’s just an appetizer….
(12) PU 238. The Washington Post reports the U.S. has resumed making plutonium-238, in “This is the fuel NASA needs to make it to the edge of the solar system – and beyond”.
Just in time for the new year, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have unveiled the fruits of a different kind of energy research: For the first time in nearly three decades, they’ve produced a special fuel that scientists hope will power the future exploration of deep space.
The fuel, known as plutonium-238, is a radioactive isotope of plutonium that’s been used in several types of NASA missions to date, including the New Horizons mission, which reached Pluto earlier in 2015. While spacecraft can typically use solar energy to power themselves if they stick relatively close to Earth, missions that travel farther out in the solar system — where the sun’s radiation becomes more faint — require fuel to keep themselves moving.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born January 4, 1785 – Jacob Grimm, the older of the two Grimm brothers. Wilhelm was born the following year.
Tales in the Grimm brothers’ collection include “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rapunzel,” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” The brothers developed the tales by listening to storytellers and attempting to reproduce their words and techniques as faithfully as possible. Their methods helped establish the scientific approach to the documentation of folklore. The collection became a worldwide classic.
- Born January 4, 1643 – Sir Isaac Newton. Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me…
(14) ZSIGMOND OBIT. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who won an Oscar for his achievements in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and worked on a long list of major productions, died January 1 at the age of 85.
His genre credits included The Time Travelers (1964) directed by Ib Melchior, The Monitors (1969) based on Keith Laumer’s novel, Real Genius (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and The Mists of Avalon TV miniseries based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel.
(15) THE YEAR IN COMPLAINTS. The Book Smugglers continue Smugglivus 2015 with “The Airing of Grievances”. (I’m getting a migraine from looking at those GIFS, and I don’t get migraines, just saying…)
SOMEONE IS (ALWAYS) WRONG ON THE INTERNET – PART II: THE SFF EDITION
Speaking of awards: Another BIG thing in SFF fandom happened when the World Fantasy award announced that it would be remodeling its award statuette, which had been a bust of the late HP Lovecraft’s face. (Lovecraft, if you did not know, was an openly venomous racist in his personal opinions and in his writings–both fiction and nonfiction.) This news–from one of the most prestigious international awards for Fantasy and speculative fiction, no less!–was a long time coming, and many of us within the SFF community celebrated this move… but there were people who were SUPER upset. Because, you know, by not using Lovecraft’s face on the award, we were all like ERASING HIM FROM HISTORY FOREVER LIKE MAGIC. Or something.
(16) MORE FEEDBACK. After what others have written about reconciliation this past week, the Mad Genius Club’s Dave Freer sounds practically mellow.
…To the other side this is life or death important. The clique of Trufen who pushed their favorites (and they’re a small, interconnected socio-politically homogenous group of the same people, over and over) have some short term motives in doing exactly what they did last year and the years before. Long term, for anyone with an intellect above gerbil there is a strong motive for the Trufen in general to get rid of that clique and to reach some kind of accommodation with the Sad Puppies. But that clique are powerful and nasty and regard WorldCon and the Hugos as theirs. They have no interest in a future that they do not control completely.
I don’t see the foresight or commitment to take any of the painful (to them) steps they’d have to take to give the Sad or Rabid Puppies a motive for reconciliation, to get them to sharing motives like going to WorldCon. As a writer I simply don’t see characters of sufficient strength or integrity who have the vision or the following to take those steps.
Besides this an election year, both sides will be heated and angry.
We all love sf.
But the motives for our actions are very different.
I am glad I don’t have to write a happy ending for this one. It’d take a clever author to do it convincingly.
(17) RECONCILIATION. Don’t be misled by the placement — I doubt Freer or Gerrold are commenting about each other, just about the same topic. David Gerrold wrote today on Facebook:
…I know that some people have talked about reconciliation — and that’s a good thing. But other people have pointed out why reconciliation is impossible, because for them, the past is still unresolved. I understand that — but rehearsing the past does not take you into the future, it just gets you more of the past.
The only conversation I would be interested in having is not about who’s right and who’s wrong, who should be blamed, and who needs to crawl naked over broken glass to apologize.
No. What a colossal waste of time.
The only conversation worth having is about what you want to build and how you want to get there — stick to the issues and leave the personalities out of this…
(18) PRE CGI. It’s like seeing a star with and without makeup. Bright Side has large format color photos comparing the scenes in “17 favorite movies before and after visual effects”.
(19) GET YOUR RED HOT FOMAX. Charles Rector heartily endorses his fanzine Fomax #7 [PDF file] hosted at eFanzines. Among other things, it has 8 movie reviews and a fair number of LOC’s.
[Thanks to Eli, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nigel.]
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Finally watched Predestination – I thought it was very good.
ThirteenthLetter: if it is happening, I imagine even the most fervent anti-Puppy folks here would agree it is absolutely reprehensible behavior unworthy of any decent bookstore, right?
I’m always mystified that Puppies are totally pro-free-market — except and until the free market does not benefit them.
Considering the numerous horrible racist, sexist, misogynist, and homophobic things which have been said by the supposedly-targeted authors, it would not surprise me to see them become the targets of activists. That’s the thing about Free Speech, you know — it doesn’t mean Freedom from Consequences.
I have to admit that I just laughed when the Puppies — most of whom I’m sure are not buying vast quantities of Tor novels, if any at all — bragged about boycotting Tor. But I didn’t tell them they couldn’t do it. I didn’t tell them that it was “reprehensible behavior”. I’ve withheld my money from businesses with which I’ve had an ethical problem. I don’t see why it’s a problem for bookstore owners to boycott any authors they wish.
(9) seems that reality is now aping a key part of Iain M. Banks The Crow Road
The uncomfortable reality is that they’re not tremendously significant in the broader market. Do any of the aforementioned Puppies shift significant numbers of books in Canadian indie bookstores? If they do, I imagine the bookstore owners would continue to order them.
I know Correia has respectable sales figures in the US, but I’m not sure whether this is also true in Canada.
Further afield? I’ve honestly never even seen a physical copy of a book by Correia, Torgersen, Wright or Williamson in any bookshop I’ve visited in either the UK or Turkey.
While this is only indirectly related to (1), I was pointed to this quite excellent and spoiler-free commentary on The Force Awakens.
JJ at 11:49 pm:
No, he doesn’t realize that. The puppies are conspiracy theorists. Freer’s premise is that there exists a small clique who (somehow) manipulates other Worldcon members. This is particularly clear when he argues that “Long term […] there is a strong motive for the Trufen in general to get rid of that clique”. So in his own eyes, he (and the other puppies) are fighting to liberate the majority from the sinister manipulation of a small clique.
That Laurie Penny post was great.
Johan P: in his own eyes, he (and the other puppies) are fighting to liberate the majority from the sinister manipulation of a small clique
… fighting to liberate the 1,800 “majority” from the “clique” of 3,500 which No Awarded the Novella category…
Um, yeah, sure, that makes sense. Unless you have at least as much math skills as a first-grader.
@JJ: Freer-Science has shown that the 3500 No Awarders represent a tiny portion of SF fandom-writ-large hardly bigger than themselves, while the 1800 are a sliver of the vast, global mainstream of actual and potential readership.
Freer-Science has all the rigor of “Creation Science,” and is as passionately held an article of faith.
@Jim I do think that some of the Puppies sincerely believe that–that they are part of the real majority of SF fans, and they just haven’t turned out in enough numbers to “save” the Hugos for the real SF books that should win–you know, ones with multiple chapter fives, or tedious Christian allegories, or collections of tweets, or gunpron urban fantasy
Speaking as a Torontonian, once you eliminate Indigo and Book City, plus Bakka (whose staff have been fully aware of the Puppies for a long time), McNally’s (which doesn’t buy much SF in the first place, and none in the Puppy subgenres), and specialty stores like Sleuth of Baker Street which aren’t SF specialists, what’s left? Type Books on Queen Street (who are not strong on SF) ? Second-hand shops?
I’m not saying it makes sense, but I think it’s useful to point out clearly what he’s wrong about.
He’s fighting a conspiracy. In his opinion, those 3500 No Award votes does not represent the actual opinion of 3500 truefen, but is the result of manipulation. He’s fighting to liberate the majority from the clique responsible for that manipulation.
A generalist bookseller choosing to not stock a work which was selling well and paying their salary is weird. If that’s happened then it would indeed be worth talking about.
Its not weird at all. Booksellers make idiosyncratic decisions as to what to stock or not stock all the time.
@Paul Weimer: Oh I’m sure most of them believe that. It’s a classic case of motivated reasoning – “Hey, if I do this to these numbers I get the result I wanted in the first place” – and epistemic closure. (“I don’t know anyone who’s liked Ancillary Justice. Do you?” “No.” “Cabal!”) The motivated reasoning, in particular, is the link to Creation Science. Freer makes baseless assumptions, does some simple math on numbers of dubious relevance, and hey presto! out the other end comes the “proof” he baked into the problem in the first place.
Johan P: He’s fighting a conspiracy. In his opinion, those 3500 No Award votes does not represent the actual opinion of 3500 truefen, but is the result of manipulation. He’s fighting to liberate the majority from the clique responsible for that manipulation.
In other words, he’s delusional.
An interesting post from Mary Robinette Kowal giving more details on the 100 people she and other benefactors sponsored supporting memberships for. 83 of them gave permission for anonymised bios to be posted. I noted that there are several that seem to identify as puppy-sympathetic in some fashion; there are of course others that are anti-slate and many that don’t mention the kerfluffle in any way. (In true clickbait fashion, I will say that You Won’t Believe How Eloquent #5 Is!)
Hopefully* that will prevent the occasional grumbling we hear that she only bought memberships for her supporters.
*Insert cynical aside here.
Nope.
I imagine you already suspected as much and believed you’d written an ingenious post that would expose SJW hypocrisy for all to see. It’s nice to have dreams.
Jim,
I particularly liked the line
“I imagine you already suspected as much and believed you’d written an ingenious post that would expose SJW hypocrisy for all to see. It’s nice to have dreams.”
Sadly, no. I assumed there would be almost universal support here for blacklisting authors and removing their works from all stores based on their political opinions, and I was right. Only two respondents were even a little uncomfortable with that. I’d recommend you guys stop and think about what you’ve become, but I will now predict that there will be sneering and snarking instead.
As a matter of idle curiosity I thought to have a look in my local (UK) bookshop and the library this lunchtime. Nothing by any of them. Not terribly surprising, they’re mainly published by Baen, and Baen have very little distribution in this country – about the only Baen author one commonly sees is David Weber.
I did see a JCW book in Forbidden Planet Bristol a couple of days ago. Published by the vile SJW conspiracy that is Tor.
I’d recommend you guys stop and think about what you’ve become, but I will now predict that there will be sneering and snarking instead.
I wonder how noting that even activists and booksellers have free speech rights and the ability to make their own choices is something we are supposed to need to think about. Why do you hate free speech and the right of free association?
I think if there was any reliable evidence for this then there would be a more thorough discussion. Since the only source is a proven liar we’re generally inclined to think it’s a pack of hogwash.
Further afield? I’ve honestly never even seen a physical copy of a book by Correia, Torgersen, Wright or Williamson in any bookshop I’ve visited in either the UK or Turkey.
I can’t remember the last time I saw books by any of them in a bookstore in the DC metropolitan area. I haven’t seen any at library book sales in years. I saw a few being sold by a used bookseller at a local con last year, but that’s about it.
Mark: An interesting post from Mary Robinette Kowal giving more details on the 100 people she and other benefactors sponsored supporting memberships for.
Thanks for posting that link. It takes a while to read all 83 testimonials, but I highly recommend taking the time to do so for those of you who can. There’s some pretty moving stuff in there — and a lot of deep, deep love for SFF.
FWIW here is the original comment about bookstores not buying their work and here is the follow-up comment which has more details.
I trust Dex, but I doubt he has the entire picture. I also figure “so what?” Bookstores have no moral obligation to stock particular books and can decide not to for any reason. Plus some political opinions are beyond the pale and one needn’t–perhaps shouldn’t–support them, even indirectly. I trust bookstore owners to make that decision for themselves.
And if people really want those books, they are still available.
And just briefly mentioning: VD took the first comment and ran with it, adding his own lies to it. But he’s not the source of the idea.
What makes you think it’s based on their political opinions? Personally, I have no problem with right wing politics. I voted Tory in the last UK election (sorry, fellow Brits) and have a subscription to The Spectator so I’m hardly a Marxist.
There is another common factor between the writers mentioned, and that’s that they’re all obnoxious internet blowhards who regularly insult and belittle large swathes of the reading public. Don’t you think that might have something to do with it?
I think all 4 of the named writers (Correia, Wright, Torgersen, Williamson) are available on the science fiction shelves at the big Chapters stores I frequent in Ottawa. Not sure about Torgersen. They have a lot of other Baen as well.
Oops. Sorry if I maligned Dex, I had only seen it through Teddy.
@Rev. Bob–
I’ll take the Chewie tea, thank you.
ThirteenthLetter: I assumed there would be almost universal support here for blacklisting authors and removing their works from all stores based on their political opinions
1) You apparently do not understand the meaning of the word “blacklist”. I encourage you to educate yourself on its meaning and history. The word does not apply here.
2) It’s interesting that you would conflate 2 or 3 stores in one city, which may or may not have chosen not to stock works which they may not have even stocked to begin with, with “all stores”. “All stores”? Really? Do you think you’re being more than a tad overdramatic here?
3) And why do you oppose free will on the part of bookstore owners to choose what they sell? Do you call Christian bookstores, who refuse to sell any books which are not Christian-based, “blacklisters” as well? Are you saying that Christian bookstores should be forced to sell books they don’t want to sell?
4) “political opinions”: Hey, nice try at palming that card. Unfortunately, you were a little too obvious. The objections to the authors in question aren’t because of their “political” beliefs; the objections are because of those authors’ well-documented hate speech and bigotry, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
ThirteenthLetter: I’d recommend you guys stop and think about what you’ve become
What have the people here become? Open-minded individuals who do not believe that anyone should be discriminated against or treated badly because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion (or lack thereof).
You may think that’s something of which to be ashamed. I am very proud of being one of those people, and I am proud to be friends with the other people here, who are kind and generous and welcoming to anyone — even those whose hearts are filled with hate, if they are willing to set their hate aside.
I would hesitate to call it a political opinion that “beating them to death with axhandles and tire-irons, […] is the instinctive reaction of men towards fags.”
I’d recommend you stop and think about the content of the opinions you sort-of-defend from consequences. But I now predict that you’ll consider such a recommendation “sneering and snarking.”
[ticky]
I am much more in favour of bookstore owners deciding not to contribute to extreme right-wing nut cases’ income than I am in favour of said extreme right-wing nut cases put against the wall and shot, something I am decidedly against. At least one of the Puppies would gladly see all of us machine-gunned, so I think we still have the moral high ground here.
I think the obsession Americans have with the hallowed status of their Constitution is a tad unnerving sometimes. Freedom of thought and expression are good things, but lots of countries manage to have checks on it without descending into tyranny. For example, both Germany and Italy have quite draconian laws against the reconstitution of the Nazi and Fascist parties (not that this stops neofascists and neonazi existing).
Anyway – freedom of thought is the freedom to say what you want, write it, publicise it, and NOT END UP IN JAIL OR DEAD, or even just beat up a bit. It does not entail a right to have a third party print it or sell it or read it.
Chapters stores from city to city tend to carry the same stuff, and I believe Chapters/Indigo dominates book distribution in Canada, so the fact that those writers are represented on the shelves of Chapters in Ottawa suggests that they are pretty widely available in this country.
(recoils in horror)
You’ll be telling me you like Marmite next!
I’m not a complete monster.
The first time I saw more than one Baen title on a bookstore shelf in the UK was when Borders set up operation. It was rather exciting, as they stocked US editions of authors who seemed to get limited UK publication, such as Bujold from Baen and Brust (from Ace at that point I think). The Baen covers had the advantage of standing out (which may be their main goal, so I guess it works) and I tried a fair number.
@ThirteenthLetter
“All stores” and (even assuming there’s anything to the gossip, which by no means is guaranteed) “a couple of stores in Toronto, a place which apparently has very strong links between the sf and gay communities” are vastly different things. When someone provides proof – and I mean proof, not just gossip – that Puppy authors are being removed from All Stores for political reasons alone and against the wishes of the majority of the comunity local to that store (after all, removing books that aren’t going to sell is not censorship, it’s just good business) then I will speak against it. Since there is zero indication that that is happening, I’m not sure what there is to speak against.
In the mean time, I remain fascinated at how upset Puppies can be at even the suggestion that people might exercise their right not to buy things (see also: how very upset Puppies are at people saying they won’t buy There Will Be War because of the publisher). The Tor boycott was people exercising the right not to buy things; was that different somehow? Where were the Puppies speaking out against boycotts when it was a Puppy-motivated boycott? It stinks of hypocrisy and I’m sick of it. If Puppies want to be taken seriously they have to start applying their principles equally instead of granting a free pass to anyone on their “side” and ascribing anything not-Puppy as part of some ridiculous SJW conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
rob_matic on January 5, 2016 at 4:12 am said:
[vast swaths of glowing electrons eliminated]
Further afield? I’ve honestly never even seen a physical copy of a book by Correia, Torgersen, Wright or Williamson in any bookshop I’ve visited in either the UK or Turkey.
I would not be surprised if Baen Books have good sales at Post Exchanges on US military bases, both here in the US and elsewhere.
ThirteenthLetter on January 5, 2016 at 5:51 am said:
“I imagine you already suspected as much and believed you’d written an ingenious post that would expose SJW hypocrisy for all to see. It’s nice to have dreams.”
Sadly, no. I assumed there would be almost universal support here for blacklisting authors and removing their works from all stores based on their political opinions, and I was right.
So, would a Puppy owned/managed bookstore carry a full selection of Tor books … not just the writings of JCW? Or Heinlein? Or the Heinlein bio that apparently the Pups missed?
@rob_matic
I’ll try not to hold it against you, although as I’m going through the disability benefits appeals process at the moment I might curse your name occasionally. Nothing serious, just some toy-dinosaur stepping. Perhaps fast-cooling hot beverages. 😉
Jacob Grimm also made invaluable contributions to early linguistics, helping to establish that the Germanic languages were part of the Indo-European family. “Grimm’s Law” is a codification of some of the systematic consonant changes across different Germanic languages and dialects.
ThirteenthLetter –
I’d hate for you to be disappointed by your prediction not coming true, so. I also heard there was another man passing around flyers on the Moon to used book stores there as well. I saw it on a random internet post so it must be true. The SJW conspiracy has gone from international to intergalactic!
Sure I’ve never been to the moon, and the cost for calling to verify would be astronomical (wink) but if this is true, well, I suppose that’s up to the book store owners to decide what books they choose to import from Earth and stock.
You should stop and think about what you’ve become that you fall for such nonsense in the first place, and that it would make you believe a fictional book store owner shouldn’t be able to come to their own conclusions on what they do or do not stock. I know that people acclimate to bad smells when there around them for long enough but the smell of this bullshit is so strong that if you can’t smell it you might have lost the ability to.
Meredith — To be fair, it was New Labour who brought in ATOS and pandering to the myth of the “deserving poor”; the Tories have merely continued the trend.
For what it’s worth, Bakka Phoenix had Larry Correia’s latest in its new arrivals section as of Saturday. The cover is a big change from the usual Baen ugly.
@James: Another possibility is Another Story on Roncesvalles. I’ve never been in there, but they have a social justice theme anyway. To be honest, they don’t look like they have a large SF section to begin with (although judging from their web site they do sell some).
@ThirteenthLetter: I’m not sure I see the problem. Book stores have limited shelf space, and aren’t required to stock everything. This is still rumor at this point, unlike the well-publicized Tor boycott.
@NelC
But not PIP which is the one I’m appealing!
I’m not a fan of Labour on the subject, either, as it happens. Or the Lib Dems. All of them have been rubbish when it comes to disability benefits.
In the mean time, I remain fascinated at how upset Puppies can be at even the suggestion that people might exercise their right not to buy things
That’s because, in the Puppy mind, the rights of free speech only apply to them. They get to publish books and make pronouncements, and the rest of the world is required to sit down, shut up, and listen. Booksellers are required to stock everything the Pups publish, regardless of any particular bookseller’s own wishes. The Pups see themselves as entitled to shelf space and an audience. Anything less than complete obedience to these edicts is censorship.
@Michael Eochaidh: I know Another Story and regularly skip over it when looking for SF because its SF holdings are incredibly thin — and it’s very strongly social justice themed as well. I can’t see them carrying any Puppies in the first place.
In the wake of the megabookstore chains like Indigo small retailers have tended to specialize — either by focussing on specific subfields (Bakka=SFF, Sleuth=Mystery, Caversham=psychology, etc.) or by having a strong thematic slant (Another Story is very Social Justice + Literary fiction, Pages is very CBC/Can. Lit./Literary). Nicholas Hoare and McNally’s (which was founded by an ex-NH employee) were the last independent bookstores I knew of which had a deliberately broad scope and now that NH is gone McNally’s is the only one left. Like NH, it doesn’t exclude SFF but it merges what it carries into its general fiction offerings and it’s all towards the literary end of the spectrum (for example, I recently noted Treadwell’s Arcadia there). All of my McNally’s purchases have been nonfiction, I note.
Indigo’s purchasing is very central-office driven, and while I can see them excluding books which someone convinced them were, as books, promoting hate, I can’t see them dropping Correia et al. just because of the author’s personal views: after all, they carry Louis-Ferdinand Celine. And they definitely do carry Puppy books, as does Bakka.
So I must admit that I’m puzzled by what actual stores, with what actual effect, this circulating of puppy information can have targetted. Some odd suburban stores I don’t know about? Mixed used/new stores like Doug Miller (whose new books are not SFF and whose fairly decent SFF offerings are all second-hand)? U of T Bookstore (not a core place to look for SFF)?
Interestingly enough, I’ve got a book out from one of Amazon’s publishing imprints…and many indie bookstores will not stock anything from them, because they feel it’s cutting their own throat to give Amazon shelf space.
Is this SHOCKING IF TRUE? Should I run to the Internet yelling that I’m being oppressed? Or do businesses have the right to carry what they wish?