Note: I’m going to start putting the year in the header, too.
(1) SNODGRASS ON AXANAR. Melinda Snodgrass commented about the suit against Axanar on Facebook.
So far a cease and desist order has only been issued and a lawsuit filed against Axanar, but speaking as a former attorney I see no way for CBS and Paramount to turn a blind eye to the other fan efforts. As it is they have an “unclean hands” issue because they allowed the fan productions to go forward for so many years without reacting. Now that they are taking notice they will have to take notice across the board — no exceptions. That’s my best prediction based on training and education.
Because I am a professional screenwriter and also as a trained attorney I feel I have to step away from any involvement with any Star Trek fan funded project. Out of love for Star Trek, and the chance to write for two wonderful actors from the original series I was excited to write a new Trek script. And at the time I agreed to do this CBS was giving everyone tacit approval, a sort of wink and a nod. That is no longer the case.
Am I disappointed? Of course. Having met Walter I would love to have written for him, but it’s not to be. Look, I don’t blame the network or the studio. Bottom line the intellectual property that is Star Trek belongs to them. They have an obligation and a right to protect their asset.
(2) BIG BUCKS BUT SMALL FOOTPRINT. Forbes writer Scott Mendelson ponders why “Five Years Ago, ‘Avatar’ Grossed $2.7 Billion But Left No Pop Culture Footprint”. Why does the film Avatar have no great fannish following (ala Star Wars)?
Despite a pretty swift case of blockbuster backlash, whereby pundits quickly attributed the film’s box office success entirely to the 3D effects, I still think it’s a pretty fantastic adventure film. The characters are simple but primal, and the storytelling is lean and efficient even while running nearly three hours. Avatar was arguably the right film at the right time, with a potent anti-imperialism message that came about just as America was waking up from its post-9/11 stupor and the rest of the world was more-than-ready to cheer a film where murderous private armies were violently defeated and driven away by impassioned indigenous people.
But it was basically a historical cinematic footnote not a year later, with no real pop culture footprint beyond its record-setting box office and groundbreaking 3D.
(3) ADVISED BY C3PU? Hasbro responded to complaints about not including a Rey figure in Monopoly.
https://twitter.com/HasbroNews/status/684205970248089600/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Few bought the explanation.
https://twitter.com/TheMeganFord/status/684294065987399680
(4) GALLIFREY CONUNDRUM. LA’s Doctor Who-themed convention Gallifrey One has posted a “Program & Guest Update: Early Schedule, Fan Panels and More!” Here’s a panel devoted to a question I’ve wondered about myself.
Life and Death in the Moffat Era — These days it doesn’t seem like anybody who’s dead stays dead… it’s merely a setback! From Clara to Rory to Missy to Osgood to Davros and even the Time Lords — and you have to through the increasingly complicated history of River Song in there somewhere — has Steven Moffat’s decision to bring back multiple characters made death in Doctor Who anti-climactic? Or is it just another example of the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey fun that keeps the show fresh?
(5) USED BOOKSTORES. Mad Genius Club’s Amanda S. Green, in “Bookstores: Friend or Enemy”, a commentary on Kristen Lamb’s post about the publishing industry (also linked here the other day), makes an interesting point about used book sales.
When I started this post, I did so figuring I’d be flaying Lamb over how she viewed used bookstores. Why? Because some of the comments I’ve seen around the internet claimed she denounced used bookstores as bad for authors. She doesn’t, not really. She points out something a lot of readers don’t understand. When you buy a book from a used bookstore, the author gets nothing from that sale. Also, she rightly points out that the books you will find in such stores are, by the vast majority, traditionally published books. So, used bookstores aren’t much help for indie authors.
However, for authors whose books are found there, used bookstores do serve a purpose. In fact, it is much akin to the same purpose libraries serve. A person is more likely to pay a percentage of the price of a new book for an author they have never read before than they are to pay full price. So, even though that author doesn’t get a royalty from that particular sale, if the buyer likes the book, there is the possibility of a royalty sale down the road. Even if the reader doesn’t buy a new book later, they will discuss the book with others who might. To me, it is promotion and a good thing. Word of mouth is the best sort of promotion an author can have.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 5, 1889 — The word hamburger first appeared in print in the Walla Walla Union, Walla Walla, Washington.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born January 5, 1914 — George Reeves, of Adventures of Superman fame. (He was also one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors in Gone With The Wind.)
- Born January 5, 1929 — Russ Manning, artist of the comic strip Tarzan, whose credits include Magus Robot Fighter.
- Born January 5, 1941 – Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author, and manga artist.
(8) DIRTY PICTURES. Settle down, they’re only pictures of dirt. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now sending back close-ups of tall, ripple-ridden Martian sand dunes. Lots of photos here.
(9) GOTHAM. Formerly known as Pee Wee Herman — “Gotham: First Look At Paul Reubens As Penguin’s Father”.
Back in NY shooting pic.twitter.com/5fwzjxH780
— Danny Cannon (@DannyJCannon) January 5, 2016
Cobblepot is in need of a parental figure on Gotham, after his mother was killed toward the end of the first half of the season, by Theo “Dumas” Galavan. What role daddy dearest will play in that story is unclear, but from this image it looks like Penguin may have gotten his more vengeful side from his paternal parent.
While we don’t know exactly when Penguin’s Papa will show up, Gotham returns February 29, 2016, so we can expect him soon after.
(10) LEAPIN’ LITTERS. Not every dog has his day.
Ruh roh. RT Goodreads deletes rabid puppies group over attempted manipulation of ratings. https://t.co/MNVZJQa0KM pic.twitter.com/kEoKF9XA6n
— Wag The Fox ???????????? (@WagTheFox) January 5, 2016
(11) THE CERTAINTY UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE. T. C. McCarthy can’t explain it.
https://twitter.com/tcmccarthy_/status/684426573227896832
(12) QUIDDITCH PONG. Combining the elements of Harry Potter’s favorite sport with beer pong, the Unofficial Quidditch Pong tabletop game assigns the player representing each house three unique spells. For example —
Slytherin:
Avada Kedavra– Once per game, choose a cup and remove it from the table. (can be used on Resurrection Stone)
Crucio– All of your opponents must make trick shots for one round
Imperio– Dictate which cup your opponents must make for one round
(13) WETFOOT. Past LASFS President, actor Ed Green, plays one of the hundreds of faux lawyers and bankers fording the Rio Grande to illustrate a talking point in this Ted Cruz campaign ad. (If there’s a problem with the embedded video below, it can also be played at the Ted Cruz website Fix Our Border Yeah, like you would do that…)
Ed appears at in all his glory at :14, :25 and :35.
[Thanks to Dave Doering, John King Tarpinian, and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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You all have the date wrong. It’s not even a matter of format. Today is 25th of Tevet, 5776, or if you want to be more modern, 25 Rabi al-Awwal 1437. Silly solar calendars. I’d give a Roman date too, but we stopped having consuls way too long ago.
I find myself really agreeing with Ms. Green in the quoted portion. I ran into Ian McDonald at NYCCC and fandboyed out on him a little, given that I had been picking up all the used copies of his work I could find when he was not being published in the US. Finding those works in the UBSs in my area is what caused me to buy his work in hardcover, in the first week, when he was being published again in the US. His backlist is now mostly ebooks, so I really treasure those battered hard copies. (He was really nice about being asked to sign a backpack’s worth of books.) I wonder with ebooks proliferating if the UBS market will be less smaller than it previously was.
I promptly forget the difference between the dashes every time I look it up, so all I know is that whatever the dash option is I’ll probably end up using the wrong one at least once. 🙂
Lol Kyra! French a Republican calendar for the win, every time!
File 770: dragged kicking and screaming into the Century Of The Fruitbat.
My apologies – the correct date separator per ISO-8601 is actually not a ‘dash’ but a hyphen. So the scheduled “em-vs-en-dash” debate has to be canceled.
On the other hand, ISO-8601 does mandate using 2 digits for both day and month – to adapt the example list, dates entirely made up:
Pixel Scroll 2016-01-05 — A Fine and Pixeled Place
Pixel Scroll 2016-04-24 — Reach For The Pixels
Pixel Scroll 2016-11-03 — The Man from P.I.X.E.L
…
Pixel Scroll 2017-01-03 — Was That Avatar Sequel Crap or What?
Pixel Scroll 2017-07-14 — For A Few Pixels More
Pixel Scroll 2017-11-15 — A Fist Full of Pixels
@Jack Lint: I read 3 of the series before quitting, Depending on what you disliked about the first book, you may find it gets more so. I was put off by how the author kept giving Miss Fisher everything. She’s extremely rich, and has impeccable fashion sense, and men come to her when she wants them and go away when she doesn’t. And she can fly an airplane and wing walk, and keeps revealing new talents, I forget what all. And she keeps gathering exceptionally talented friends. And adopted children who love her. And professional success. And…….
Christian Brunschen: My apologies – the correct date separator per ISO-8601 is actually not a ‘dash’ but a hyphen. So the scheduled “em-vs-en-dash” debate has to be canceled.
But we still need a longer dash to separate the date from the title.
Won’t someone please think of the poor, neglected en-dashes?
I remember watching Avatar for the first time thinking it seemed so familiar. Half way through I realized the entire plot was a ripoff of Dances With Wolves. I remember one Amazon review of the DVD called it “Dances with Smurfs”.
Personally, I thought Avatar was a lovely travelogue.
Plot? There was a plot? I didn’t notice one; I was too busy looking at the lovely plants and insects…
@Lisbet,
I’ve also heard Avatar referred to as “SmurfGully” (due to its perhaps more passing similarity with FernGully.
Just in case there’s not enough opinions on dates yet, I’d like to throw in stardate. It’s even more futuristic than ISO-8601! (Right now it’s apparently 69481.)
I saw Avatar on an IMAX digital screen. It was spectacular. Yeah, yeah, the story was a retread — but there were a lot of fantastic effects, and Sigourney Weaver is always a joy to watch.
ISO-8601 has, at least, the ability to make sense of Ancillary Day (2016-01-19).
Traditional DD/MM/YYYY format makes a hash of it.
The engineering company I worked at required the 05JAN16 format on all documents to avoid confusion. Even your timesheet would get kicked back (back when we filled them out on paper). Using any other date format makes me twitch although my husband makes fun of me when we’re filling out mortgage papers.
We’re in the IVth year of Playstation IV and XBox I, the games consuls.
@Jason you are brilliant today:
This. Clearly this is the correct and superior date. Look at the year 5776 proof, proof of its superiority. It’s been in use longer than either of the other two calendar/date formats being discussed. The question is do we write it in English, Hebrew, or both?
I have the Jewish dates incorporated on my calendar thanks to hebcal.
@rea
I hear David Rice Atchison went to Germany and declared, “Ich bin ein Hamburger!”
Today is the second fifth day of the 38th year of the File.
Or 13 baktun, 3 tun, 1 uinal, 11 kin of the Second Great Cycle
The Puppies think we’re part of some over-arching, Hugo/Goodreads/Amazon sales ranks controlling super duper sekrit conspiracy hive mind and meanwhile, in the real world, we’re spending a day arguing over which date format is superior. 😀
Stardate? Ha, today is clearly 16806 in the only measurement that matters to me…
@ Jack Lint
It may not be for you, but I think Greenwood really finds her stride about the 3rd book along. I was hooked when Phryne took Dot in and sank deeper afterwards.
With all that’s happening in the world, is this a good time to discuss whether to argue over date formats?
@Meredith: “…we’re spending a day arguing over which date format is superior.”
No, we’re sowing confusion and conflict, like proper lizardperson Illuminati.
Stardate is nice, since it doesn’t put any historical dates in negative-numbered years, but it has a lot more headroom than necessary for that purpose. There’s an idea I’ve been turning over for years, which probably no one else has proposed, because it’s flawed. Exact dates are only useful for history; ancient archaeology can get away with B.P. (Before Present) — “obsidian arrowheads in X Valley, 36,000 B.P.” So I’d like to divide time into the historical era (exact) and before history (approximate). I was thinking of taking the first known exact date, adding a hundred years to allow for revised understanding and new discoveries, and having that be the year 1 H.E. There’s a variety of problems with that; for just one, you might still find yourself saying “King XXXX reigned 164-179 H.E., and the founder of his dynasty, YYYY, approximately 180-190 B.H.”
Stardates run the risk of inflaming Star Trek – vs – Star Wars sentiments, which surely would lead to the implosion of the known universe and the rebirth of a new one without either – and what a tragedy that would be. (Well, unless whatever replaced them was better still, hmmm ….)
@Nigel
Sigh. Once again, it’s the Century of the Anchovy already people. Get with the programme.
@Kip W
Well we haven’t had anything so time consuming in a dog’s age.
I didn’t say direction we were being dragged.
Re Phryne Fisher: The first book is a first book. Yes to everything Vasha said, and she lives in a world where it is perpetually 1928. And I love her! I adore book Phryne and I adore tv Phryne, too. Who cares that it is unrealistic!
My favorite among the books is the Castlemaine one. I stop re-reading generally around #15 or 16. I thought the last one (#20? Mendelssohn?) was Sherlock Holmes slashfic which is not something I am into, but whatever. I will probably read the next one anyway.
I also like the Corinna Chapman series by the same author.
For dates – yyyy-mm-dd is what mysql wants and so that’s what I use.
Actually, now I think on, the traditional calendar of Karhide, in The Left Hand of Darkness, has a lot to commend it. Simplicity, for instance. Every year is the year 1, can’t get simpler than that.
(Genly Ai’s description of the traditional Karhide New Year’s folk festival whose name translates as “going through every ****ing history book and adding one to every single ****ing date” is unaccountably missing from the story of his mission. Shame.)
It’s clearly 1452099599 epoch time, or was a few seconds ago…
If we’re discussing both formats and used bookstores, I’d like to weigh in on a hybrid – for various reasons, I’m not an ebook fan, so my library is a monument to dead trees. And while I don’t mind paying more for trade paperbacks, those things are playing merry hell with my bookshelves, which I built when paperbacks came in one size. So now books are crammed in wherever. and the dogs are in constant peril from the easily toppled piles on my tables and night stands.
Normally, I wouldn’t complain, but if we’re going to argue formats, I’ll whine about this one. I’m completely neutral on the date thing.
I got no problem with mass-market paperbacks; I got no problem with trade paperbacks; I got no problem with hardcovers (well, except for some of those edge cases that are too tall to fit between my shelves, which are 10 3/4″ apart).
But I hate, hate, HATE (and have thus far avoided buying) the new-sized mass-market paperbacks that are like an inch taller than before, which inch was added, as far as I can tell, solely so that they could bump the price point to $9.99.
Dates:
I work for a Japanese-owned company in the US. I see dates come in equally split between YYYY-MM-DD and MM/DD/YY. I never encounter DD/MM/YY.
I received a draft timeline last month for the Finnish Worldcon. The date column had dates listed in all three formats–DD/MM/YY, MM/DD/YY and YYYY/MM/DD. That was incredibly confusing. I have no problems with any of those formats, as long as there’s consistency.
Avatar:
Very pretty film, and a marvelous technical achievement. I have no desire to see it again, and it no impact on me the day after I saw it, let alone several years later. And I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
Since lists of the best anime of 2015 have started to show up at the larger anime review sites I thought I might link some here for anyone looking for Hugo nominations.
http://randomc.net/2016/01/03/best-of-anime-2015/
There are links to the Random Curiosity reviews where available if you want a better look at anything they mention.
http://www.lostinanime.com/2015/12/2015-anime-year-in-review-top-10_22.html
http://www.lostinanime.com/2016/01/2015-anime-year-in-review-part-ii-11-20_2.html
My list would include
Sidonia no Kishi: Daikyuu Wakusei Seneki (Knights of Sidonia season 2)
Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu (Parasyte -the maxim-)
Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou
Arslan Senki
Gangsta
Kekkai Sensen
Death Parade
One-Punch Man
Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works
Noragami Aragoto
But anything from the links is worth looking at.
I will also call attention to Cross Ange which is not really a good anime but can be very entertaining and has a very interesting character arch for the main character. If you like women in prison stories, giant mechs, and dragons you might like it. However it could be called Trigger Warning the Anime. It has rape, torture, nudity, sexual torture, piles of bodies being set on fire and emotional torture.
What about arguing about which direction text should be printed on book spines? My shelves contain a mixture of English, French, and German paperbacks, which occasions twisting one’s head back and forth to read the titles. (The French ones are printed bottom-to-top in Europe and top-to-bottom in Canada.)
On Avatar — it was pretty forgettable, wasn’t it? It’s a great example of how the thing that makes a work of art resonate is kind of elusive. But in the case of Avatar, I would definitely say forgetttable characters = forgettable movie, and I think the CGI contributed to that.
Gollum in the LOTR movies was great, but that’s a magic combination of Andy Serkis being awesome at motion capture acting, the animation being first rate, and Gollum already being an incredibly iconic character. But I think for Avatar, the loss of expression and facial features for the main characters is part of why everything eventually disappeared into a candy-colored mush.
And the objectively correct date format is always year-month-day. No ambiguity and it sorts correctly.
I realize I haven’t weighed in on the whole date thing. I use month/day/month/month/year. I like months! I’d leave out the day, but people make such a fuss.
(Is there a way to make my postings reflect that next to my name? It bothers me to see this system that only uses month once. Thank you!)
American and genealogist: I function perfectly well with day-month-year (which is the usual date format for genealogy). Year-month-day would be fine with me, too.
Seriously though people, the question is not which date format is best but which METRIC we should use to judge their relative worth so as to settle the argument.
So it comes down to this:
1. number of Goodreads stars or,
2. Amazon Ranking
🙂
Just read The Library at Mount Char based on positive mentions here. I started it knowing nothing about it but the title, (having skipped the spoilers) not even the genre. For those who haven’t read it, it reminds me a great deal of Clive Barker books like Imajica or The Great and Secret Show, or a little like the more recent Neil Gaiman The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It involves seemingly normal humans who are actually godlike beings or ordinary humans who have become godlike through gaining secret knowledge who live in “the real world” (as opposed to a world where outsiders are aware of paranormal shenanigans.) I enjoyed it, except for a couple of aspects—the implication of complex human civilizations going back tens of thousands of years tugged at my ability to suspend disbelief, and a certain minor plot element of the book relating to astronomy tore my suspension of disbelief to itty-bitty shreds.
As for the prose, there are authors who can create an interesting world but are clumsy writers, and writers who create fairly prosaic or muddled worlds but who are masters of the English language—I’m willing to read either type, but of course I prefer authors who can do both. Scott Hawkins managed to both create an interesting world and write transparent, well-written prose that is a pleasure to read. I mostly can’t define what makes prose like that, but I know it when I see it. One aspect is that the author should never use 10 words when 5 will do (as zombie-Millhouse’s Dad said, “Brevity…soul…wit.”) Another is when an author manages to choose the right word instead of the almost right word (reference my favorite Twain quote featuring lightning and lightning bugs.) Hawkins manages to succeed (or at least not blatantly fail) at both. (Examples of books I bounced out of early and permanently thanks to failing one or more of these criteria: The Satanic Verses, The Life of Pi, and John C. Wright’s Golden Age books long before the kerfuffle.)
tl;dr: chalk me up for another positive recommendation for The Library at Mount Char.
(Man, did this take a long time to write with a cat insisting on walking on my keyboard and me having to keep going back and editing out her editorial changes.)
Anime: My post of the sf anime recommendations for the whole year, with additional useful info for Hugo voters, will be live at Amazing Stories tomorrow. (One of the recommended series didn’t even end until after Christmas.)
Date formats: Now that the French Republican calendar is finally gaining traction, uber-hipsters will have to retreat to using the Positivist calendar instead. (Today is Sunday, Romulus, the 6th of Moses.)
Avatar: Disney is still all in for Avatar Land at Disney World; like the movie, it’s at least going to look spectacular. The floating mountains have been visible under construction for a while now; see for instance the latter part of this post for photos.
@Camestros
No, no, we need to know which one won the Hugo!
@Petréa Mitchell
Yay!
Re: Avatar–I bailed on that one within 30 minutes or so. Thought it was Phantom Menace-bad. (Even though I never watched most of it, I still feel comfortable referring to it as “Space Pocahontas.”)
@Meredith
Whichever came fifth of course.
Yes, spine printing direction, that’s an odd one.
Print in one direction and the text is right way up when the book is lying flat with front cover face up.
Print in the other direction and… What is the advantage?
Print in the other direction and… What is the advantage?
The text is right way up when you lay the book flat with front cover facing down because you’re embarrassed by the cover art?
@Lorcan: “Who’s even thought about Independence Day between the cinema release and news of the sequel?”
Well, me, for one. I read the sequel, and when I met Brent Spiner at Dragon Con, I selected his ID4 photo to get autographed because I work from home and thus like to use his character’s “they don’t let us out much” line.
@Ed: “It’s Day / Month / Year, as the good lord intended.”
I generally prefer to avoid putting Day first, as a matter of principle. Especially here. 😉
@Kip W: “With all that’s happening in the world, is this a good time to discuss whether to argue over date formats?”
I direct you to the 1:29 mark for my response:
https://youtu.be/9GVWRSoJ9Z4
@Vasha: “What about arguing about which direction text should be printed on book spines?”
I’ll go you one better: playing card design. If a card game has a horizontal design for the back and a vertical design for the front, should the left side of the back correspond to the top or bottom of the front?
In one example that comes to mind, the base game was laid out one way, but the expansion was done the other way. Thus, you could tell which of your opponents’ cards came from the expansion, which could influence your decision if you got the opportunity to select one. Furthermore, this game has over a dozen siblings, and some of those answer the question to agree with the base set while others agree with the expansion. (The sibs are all internally consistent, though.)
If I really wanted to stir up controversy, though, I’d ask whether slipcased items should be shelved with the case spine out (to look purty on the shelf) or in (for easier access to the item).
The Puppies were too conflicted for MM/DD to get nominated – on the one hand it is obviously the most patriotic format but on the other hand it is what File770 uses. As a consequence the only nominee was John C Wright’s approved date format which goes like this:
On this the most fine and glorious Januarian day, the sixth day of that month and the day on which all right thinking people celebrate the life of Saint André Bessette, in the year of Our Lord two thousand and sixteen Anno Domini (and not, I note, that heathen barbarity “C.E.” which is a personal insult to anyone who values civilization) and three-hundred and thirty-three years and twenty-six days after the defeat of the Ottoman forces at the Siege of Vienna, greetings and salutations to you dear readers.
The Michael Z Williamson nomination was deemed ineligible on the grounds that it wasn’t a date format but a crude Facebook meme about a calendar and an accident in a toilet.
Mike, in the entry for Russ Manning’s birthday, it should be “Magnus, Robot Fighter”.
Googling, I find that “Magus, Robot Fighter” is actually a pretty common typo.
(I have ancient, vague and possibly erroneous memories of some other comic book with a wizard vs. robots storyline, that might possibly be described as “Magus, Robot Fighter”. Even if the memories are wrong, it would be an interesting/challenging idea for a story.)
Rev. Bob said:
My DVD sets are spine in– in addition to looking pretty, it’s easier to spot what I’m looking for. Unless I’m actively working my way through that particular set, in which case it’s spine out.