Pixel Scroll 2/10/18 There Must Be Fifty Ways To Scroll Your Pixel

(1) STUDYING TOLKIEN. “The Past, Present, and Future of Tolkien Scholarship” conference will be held November 1-4, 2018 at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

This unique conference will examine the totality and comprehensiveness of Tolkien scholarship in three large groups:  the past (from the 1950s to the 2010s), the present (from the 2010s to the present), and the future (from the present to the next 20 years).  There will be four days of paper presentations, plenary speakers, discussions, film screenings, exhibits, book-signings, and music.…

The Call for Papers is out. Full details at the link.

The conference will be divided into three major days of conference papers:

  • Friday, November 2: The past of Tolkien scholarship

Plenary speaker:  Douglas A. Anderson

  • Saturday, November 3: The present of Tolkien scholarship

Plenary speaker:  Verlyn Flieger

  • Sunday, November 4: The future of Tolkien scholarship

A plenary panel discussion with Dr. Robin Reid, Dr. Dimitra Fimi, Dr. Andrew Higgins, and Dr. Brad Eden

Paper proposals on any topic or theme related to Tolkien scholarship are welcome.

(2) CTEIN AND CHTORR. David Gerrold, who has been foreshadowing good news for awhile, finally uncloaked some of the details:

I have contracts on three books. A novella section of one of those books (co-written with Ctein) will be appearing in the May/June issue of Asimov’s. I believe it is one of the better things I’ve been involved with.

The other two books are Chtorran novels and the final draft of one of them will be turned in by summer.

I have sold an option for a TV series based on one of my projects, and the option on another book was just (enthusiastically) renewed. I have also been approached to direct a film based on a favorite fantasy novel, I just finished my first rewrite of the script. (The first writer did a marvelous job of getting all the pieces on the board, my job was to energize them.)

(3) SUMMER OF ’42. Metafilter has a resource post for Retro-Hugo voters: “Some notable SF/F from 1942”.

Most of these texts are shown in the announcement video or have been discussed as possibilities in the F&SF forum or were previously selected as great SF stories of 1942 or have a record of anthologization at ISFDB. Their categorization by length derives from ISFDB also.

(4) SPECULATIVE MASCULINITIES. Galli Books has put out a call for submissions for its anthology Speculative Masculinities. Window closes April 15. Full details at the link.

Masculinity has, almost since the category of speculative fiction emerged in the early 20th century, been a concern of fiction written in the genre. A culturally dominant, Western, toxic form of masculinity has dominated storytelling in speculative fiction. In worlds as varied and diverse as the distant past of magical worlds and the far future of this one, models of maleness and masculinity tend to be the same toxic form of masculinity that dominates modern Western culture. We want to interrogate that model of masculinity, to problematise it, and to question it; we want to see other possible models of masculinity, models not centred on dominance and violence and repression of feelings; other role models for men. We are looking for fiction, essays and poetry which do this.

We are particularly looking for submissions from authors from marginalised identities and backgrounds, especially where those identities complicate the author’s relationship with masculinity, including but by no means limited to disabled writers, trans writers, and writers of colour.

(5) THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS. Bus stop 9-3/4?

(6) COMPOSER OBIT. Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969-2018): Icelandic composer, died 9 February, aged 48. Scores include Arrival (2016).

(7) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Prozines of the past. Art by Tim Kirk.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 10, 1927 — Fritz Lang’s Metropolis premiered theatrically in his native Germany.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born February 10, 1906 — Creighton Tull Chaney, known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian saw Gort showing his rhythm at Bliss.
  • Chip Hitchcock says “He has a point” about this installment of Rhymes with Orange.

(11) WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Yesterday’s Scroll included the class photo featuring 79 actors and filmmakers from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now Unrolled thread from @UberKryptonian has done a humorous deconstruction that tells us the participants’ secret thoughts.

Has anyone really looked at the Marvel 10 year anniversary class photo? Because there is so much going on!

For example –

Chris Evans looks like he’s mad that he has to sit next to the man that tried to murder the love of his life!

(12) A SFF MOVIE LEADS THE PACK. The New York Times asks “How Did ‘The Shape of Water’ Become the Film to Beat at the Oscars?”.

This awards season has been all about hitting the zeitgeist, or at least that’s what the media, present company included, has been telling itself and you. Best picture nominees ought to tap into the #MeToo moment or, failing that, anxieties born in the age of Trump.

But is that narrative really true? And does it fully explain how a fairy tale about a janitor who hooks up with a fishman became the movie to beat?

The film, “The Shape of Water,” stars Sally Hawkins as a cleaning lady who falls for a merman held captive in a government lab, and leads the race with 13 Oscar nominations, more than any other movie. It has also scooped up key precursor awards that often culminate in Oscar gold — last weekend, the Directors Guild of America gave the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro its top prize, two weeks after the Producers Guild of America did the same.

(13) ANOTHER RED TESLA MEME. Randy’s Random has more to say about “Setting the Record”.

A 2010 Tesla Roadster achieves the highest speed and longest range of any electric car ever — and still going strong.

Plus, it can charge from solar.

The most amazing thing to me: it’s a real photo. It’s about time someone did something to capture the imagination of kids who are deciding what to be when they grow up. Engineering, science, technology, astrophysics — they have amazing opportunities.

If nothing else, the stereotype is proven true: red cars are the fastest!

(14) DEALING WITH THE BLUES. “Welcome to the Monkey House”? — “Blue Dye Kills Malaria Parasites — But There Is One Catch”.

It’s hard to imagine that a blue dye sold in pet food stores in the U.S. to fight fungal infections in tropical fish could be a potent weapon against malaria.

…Actually, the use of the dye to fight malaria is not quite as odd as it sounds. The blue dye in question, called methylene blue, is the oldest synthetic anti-malarial drug. A paper published in 1891 tells how two scientists successfully used it to treat a malaria patient.

But there was a catch.

“The treatment being followed by an intense blue coloring of the urine, and the faeces becoming blue on exposure to light, it is not very likely that methylene blue will be much used outside of hospitals,” reads an 1892 publication of the Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association.

(15) HE LIKES IT. Black Panther reviewed by Mark Kermode on BBC Radio 5. Spoiler free review (as usual) from Mark, who seems to have really liked it.

Also Kermode on the attempt to game the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Black Panther.

(16) SEATTLE FILM FEST. The 2018 “Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival” presented by MoPOP and SIFF will feature twenty short films from all over the world at Seattle’s historic Cinerama Theater on March 24. Tickets are now on sale.

The lineup is presented in two sessions of films with a 30-minute intermission and concludes with an awards ceremony.

SFFSFF brings together industry professionals in filmmaking and the genres of science fiction and fantasy to encourage and support new, creative additions to genre cinema arts. Admitted films are judged by a nationally recognized jury comprised of luminaries in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

Session 1: Noon-2:00pm

  • FTL (dir. Adam Stern, Canada)
  • The Sea is Blue (dir. Vincent Peone, USA)
  • Everything & Everything &… (dir. Alberto Roldan, USA)
  • Cautionary Tales (dir. Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, UK)
  • After We Have Left Our Homes (dir. Marc Adamson, UK)
  • GEAR (dir. Kevin Adams and Joe Ksander, USA)
  • Niggun (dir. Yoni Salmon, Israel) – US Premiere
  • Fulfilament (dir. Rhiannon Evans, UK)
  • Voyage of the Galactic… (dir. Evan Mann, USA)
  • Dead Hearts (Stephen Martin, USA)

Session 2: 2:30pm–5:00pm

  • Time Chicken (dir. Nick Black, USA)
  • The Replacement (dir. Sean Miller, USA)
  • M.A.M.O.N. (dir. Alejandro Damiani, Uruguay/Mexico)
  • Die Lizenz (dir. Nora Fingscheidt, Germany/France) – US Premiere
  • Ghost Squad (dir. Kieran Sugrue, Australia)
  • Fizzy and Frank (dir. Randall McNair, USA)
  • Haskell (dir. James Allen Smith, USA)
  • Strange Beasts (dir. Magali Barbe, UK)
  • Jiminy (dir. Arthur Molard, France)
  • The Privates (dir. Dylan Allen, USA)

For more information including film synopses and director bios, visit MoPOP.org/SFFSFF.

(17) RETURN OF THE KESH. Wire Magazine says the record label Freedom to Spend will be reissuing Ursula K. Le Guin and Todd Barton’s 1985 recording Music And Poetry Of The Kesh in physical and digital formats on March 23 — “Music And Poetry Of The Kesh reissued on LP”.

Todd Barton and Ursula K Le Guin’s recording Music And Poetry Of The Kesh, originally released as a cassette accompanying Le Guin’s 1985 book Always Coming Home, will receive a long awaited reissue next month via Freedom To Spend. Part novel, part lengthy textbook, the publication tells the story of an invented Pacific Coast people called The Kesh and a woman called Stone Telling, weaving an anthropological narrative of folklore and fantasy. For its soundtrack, words and lyrics were put together by the late novelist while the sound was composed by Barton, an Oregon based musician and Buchla synthesist with whom Le Guin had worked on public radio projects….

Both Barton and Le Guin has started work on the reissue before the novelist’s death on 22 January of this year. Moe Bowstern, a writer and friend of Le Guin, wrote the sleevenotes for this new edition in which she explains that Barton had built and then taught himself to play several instruments of Le Guin’s design, among them ‘the seven-foot horn known to the Kesh as the Houmbúta and the Wéosai Medoud Teyahi bone flute.’”

Information on streaming and purchasing the recording is available at: http://smarturl.it/fts009

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, Steve Green, Lenore Jean Jones, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, IanP, Mark Hepworth, Martin Morse Wooster, Rob Thornton, Carl Slaughter, Wobbu Palooza, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

60 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/10/18 There Must Be Fifty Ways To Scroll Your Pixel

  1. I finished The Power by Naomi Alderman. I really enjoyed the first third of the book, grew increasingly skeptical during the second third, and found tbe final third completely unbelievable. I went from thinking that I might nominate it for a Hugo to feeling that I am unable recommend this book to anyone. It was very disappointing.

  2. Moving to Sydney in one week to stay there for three months with the possibility that it will be extended 1-2 years. Feels good to get away from the swedish winter. Tired of the dark now.

  3. @Hampus

    I appreciate your dedication to the “we are all Camestros” joke but that’s taking it a bit far!

    Hope you enjoy the experience. Here’s Douglas Adams on Australia to get you in the mood:

    The second confusing thing about Australia are the animals. They can be divided into three categories: Poisonous, Odd, and Sheep. It is true that of the 10 most poisonous arachnids on the planet, Australia has 9 of them.

    Actually, it would be more accurate to say that of the 9 most poisonous arachnids, Australia has all of them. However, there are curiously few snakes, possibly because the spiders have killed them all…

  4. Mark:

    I have set my sights higher. Later this week, I shall visit the chinese restaurant Aberdeen in Stockholm. Then I’m sure I will be Toby Meadows AND Camestros.

  5. 50 ways to scroll the Pixel? I thought there were Nine and Sixty ways of Scrolling your Pixel and every single one of them to be right!

  6. Items (3) and (7) both refer to the SF magazines of the 1940s, which are of interest now both to Retro-Hugo voters and folks interested in SF history in general. Much of the material in these magazines is now in the public domain, and much isn’t. Sorting out which is which can be a bit of a challenge. In the US, it’s dependent on whether copyright renewals were filed in a timely fashion. Outside the US, it’s often dependent on when the author died, but many countries also use a “rule of the shorter term”, by which copyrights that expire in their country of origin (such as the US) expire at the same time in the countries that apply that rule, even if that’s before their usual “life+50 years” or “life+70 years” term expires.

    I’m building up a data set showing when various magazines starting renewing their copyrights, and when individual contributions to those magazines (such as short stories) started to get renewed. I have a grant this year to complete this data set up to 1950 (after which the Copyright Office has a database one can search), and as it happens, I’m up to the early 1940s at this point. Here’s an example data record, in this case for Famous Fantastic Mysteries:

    http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/famousfantasticmyst

    This only shows the first issue and contribution renewal (which is the scope of my grant), but the same JSON data structure I’m using (linked at the bottom of each record) can also be used to record *all* the renewals of a particular magazine, and even include links for author permissions when known. Here’s such a filled-out example, in this case for Amazing Stories:

    http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/amazingstories

    If anybody’s interested in compiling similar renewal histories for other pre-1964 SF magazines they’re interested in, I’ll be happy to work with them to show them what’s involved, with the possibility of incorporating their work into my overall database (which is freely accessible via http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html )

  7. Paul Weimer, I will take your comment to be accurate, because it means that I am absolutely correct to say that there are fifty ways, with plenty to spare.

    (Ta, OGH!)

  8. @ World Weary
    Sorry to hear that. The deeper I got into The Power, the better I liked it. I’ve been recommending it to everyone I know. I thought a couple of the meetings of protagonists, in order to draw together the threads of the story, were a bit too serendipitous, but wanted so much to see where the story would go that it didn’t bother me much.

  9. The Shape of Water: To me, the main character of the movie was the setting. I may be wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone on that. If the movie had been based in 2016 or 1995 or 1984, I don’t think that the movie would have had the same appeal.

    We want to interrogate that model of masculinity, to problematise it, and to question it

    Yes, nothing says “appealing reading” like a pitch written in post-modern lit-crit buzz words.

  10. @7: I remember that cover! — although I’d forgotten that TAC/SFR was still side-stapled rather than saddle-bound by then.

    @11: [snortle]

    @12: that opening is nonsense. tSoW certainly hits the zeitgeist; it’s about the people Trump craps on, with an antagonist you just know would have been one of the “very fine people” in Charlottesville last summer. Fortunately the rest of the article dances around that claim.

    @14: even more obscure story reference: “Theory of Rocketry”: When Will Tech Disrupt Higher Education? I am not looking forward to some of the things he’s looking forward to.

    A third Mars-prep site (short video).

    @Hampus: sounds like you’re moving the right way. An acquaintance who was contemplating post-doc’ing in Stockholm said (in response to my suggestions for summer tourism) that she’d been told her colleagues vacated instead in the deep winter, just to get some sun. Then there’s my overachieving cousin from Texas; she was sent to Australia (in Northern winter) on a customer issue, then told her ticket back had been changed to one via Helsinki and a check for enough clothes to get her through the weather. (From having seen both, I’d say Sydney late winter and Stockholm late summer (i.e., early September) are almost comparable; the opposite, OTOH….)

    @Paul Weimer: that appears to the be Navy version. (Possibly the navy petty-officer version, according to Macdonald.) Googling says the original Kipling is “nine and twenty”.

    @Owlmirror: TFTR. I would have sworn that was Adams, but the closest a quick skim of Last Chance to See gets to Oz is New Zealand.

  11. @Hampus
    Eric and I joked about going at the same time. Then if we, you, Camestros, and the Meadows family all got together for dinner, we could call it a convention. “CamestroCon” has a nice ring to it.

    We could have Camestros take the group picture, so he’d be behind the camera, not in the picture itself. Then, just in case people said, “hey, the waiter took that,” we could have him take a picture of the group PLUS the waiter. 🙂

    Okay, I’ll stop now.

  12. @Darren Garrison Yes, nothing says “appealing reading” like a pitch written in post-modern lit-crit buzz words.

    None of those words seem very obscure to me, but if it helps:

    “We want to ask questions about the conventional idea of masculinity, show how and where it causes problems, and ask if it has to be that way.”

    Or if you want a less literal translation:

    “We want stories about masculinity, but not the traditional kind. We’re not Men’s Rights Activists.”

  13. @Darren Garrison Yes, nothing says “appealing reading” like a pitch written in post-modern lit-crit buzz words.

    Points for “interrogate,” “problemati(z)e” and “complicate,” but without “unpack,” I’m afraid I can’t give them the full lit-crit Academy score.

  14. What Ghostbird said. I’ll be interested to see the results of this. Women, Trans and intersex people and others have been talking about gender roles for a long time. I have seen some discussion of deifferent models of masculinity, but would like to see more.

  15. @Ghostbird

    None of those words seem very obscure to me, but if it helps:

    Nowhere did Darren mention obscure.

    And by choosing the phrasing they did, the editor gives me the impression they are looking for stories sure to impress last year’s Sharkes. Pass.

  16. @Hampus Eckerman: Have a safe, fun, and productive trip! 🙂

    @Mark (kitteh): “. . . that’s taking it a bit far!” – LOL!

    @Greg Hullender: This would be sort of like a non-speculative SarahCon from Sarah Pinsker’s “And Then There Were (N-One).” 😉

  17. Hi all! Speaking as the founder of Galli Books, I just want to address the idea that I’m looking for stories that would impress last year’s Sharkes, as suggested by Nancy Sauer.

    One of my favourite books from last year was A Closed and Common Orbit. I’m sure you remember the (utterly wrongheaded) Sharke attitude to that particular work of actual warmth and genius. Impressing them is not even close to my mind: we’re not looking for (necessarily) literary science fiction or fantasy. We’re looking for thoughtful and smart engagements with masculinity. Ghostbird, in fact, “translated” the CFS pretty perfectly! So rest at ease with your pulpy submissions, so long as they’re presenting models of masculinity that aren’t the traditional, toxic ones we’re so used to (bored of). I’d actually love to see more of those…

    @BigelowT, I will stand by my UK English spelling forever, though, thank you very much. 😛

  18. Getting over a cold here in February of 9350. Just finished The Hidden People, by Alison Littlewood. Read it in one sitting, not normal for me, but then, having a cold I absolutely need to get rid of to visit a sick relative in less than a week is not normal for me, either. I think I can recommend this for people who enjoy… what genre does Wuthering Heights fit in? That’s a pretty easy rec, given it’s a well-written book with a good story, and Wuthering Heights is pretty prominent within it. Warning: this novel is disturbing in its portrayal of traditional romantic relationships, and the gap between how women experience a world as confining as Victorian England and how men understand that world.

    V guvax zbfg traer ernqref jvyy svther bhg gur onfvp tvfg bs gur cybg eryngviryl dhvpxyl, ng yrnfg nf sne nf jurgure nalbar’f tbvat gb raq hc va Gve An Abt. V qvqa’g cvrpr gbtrgure gur ragver zlfgrel hagvy n puncgre be gjb orsber gur aneengbe, ohg V’z n ynml zlfgrel ernqre – V yvxr gb whfg yrg vg sybj bire zr naq tnfc ng gur nccebcevngr zbzragf. V’z abg fher gur dhrfgvba bs gur rkvfgrapr bs gur Tbbq/Uvqqra/Snve Sbyx vf shyyl erfbyirq, ohg vg’f n fvqryvar gb gur fgbel, naq V qvqa’g svaq gur erznvavat ybbfr fgenaqf naablvat. Vs nalguvat, erfbyivat gurz naq pynevslvat nyy gur riragf jbhyq yvxryl unir purncrarq gur obbx.

    I particularly liked one minor quote from Lizzie’s journal:

    Gura vg zvaqrq zr bs fbzrbar ryfr V zrg bapr, jub chg zl nez va uvf, naq V gubhtug ur zvtug jvfu gb znxr n jvsr bs zr, ohg ur qvq abg . . .

    Gung fubjf hc va, VVEP, gur svefg guveq bs gur obbx, jura guvatf ner fgvyy zlfgrevbhf naq gur aneengbe whfg frrzrq yvxr n glcvpnyyl boyvivbhf, zvfbtlavfg evpu Ivpgbevna xvaqn sryyn. Vg vzcyvrf gb gur aneengbe (naq gb gur ernqre, vs gung ernqre vf zr) gung uvf pbhfva unq erzrzorerq uvz nyy gubfr lrnef. Vg nssvezf uvf cvpgher bs ure nf n qrsrafryrff, bar-qvzrafvbany vaabprag ur pbhyq unir fnirq. Jura gung dhbgr pbzrf hc yngre va gur obbx, guebja va gur aneengbe’f snpr ol uvf jvsr (jub ur qbrfa’g obgure anzvat sbe gur svefg srj gvzrf jr zrrg ure), fur fpbssf jura fur ernyvmrf ur gubhtug gur wbheany ragel jnf ersrerapvat gur bar gvzr gurl zrg, nf puvyqera. V jnf fhecevfrq, orpnhfr V qvfgvapgyl erzrzorerq gung dhbgr pbagnvavat gur jbeq “pbhfva” fbzrjurer. V gubhtug “N-un! ur’f orra vafnar nyy nybat!” naq ybbxrq vg hc (ybbxvat hc cnffntrf va n Xvaqyr vf n avtugzner pbzcnerq gb n cncreonpx, ohg V znantrq). Naljnl, V gubhtug gung jnf n pyrire hfr bs gung dhbgr. Vgf zrnavat pbzcyrgryl punatrq nsgre yrneavat zber nobhg uvf irel uhzna pbhfva naq uvf frys-pragrerq angher.

    I’ve read that the plotting is slow. I suspect that is true, as it’s not a short novel, but I thought it was less plodding and more… relaxed. I loved Littlewood’s description of the English countryside, and the nightmarish or just creepy scenes were well-executed. She may have also inspired me to re-read Wuthering Heights (something I frequently plan to do, then don’t because Mt. Tsundoku beckons).

  19. @Nancy Sauer

    I took “buzzwords” to imply obscurity, but please substitute “hard to understand” for “obscure” if you feel that’s clearer.

    It sounds like the real problem here – as with last year’s Sharkes – may be fannish distrust of literary criticism in general. I think that’s a shame but I accept tastes vary.

  20. 17) Book View Cafe used to have a digital MP3 version of Music and Poetry of the Kesh. I’m pretty sure Vonda McIntyre produced it. I missed out on the boxed set of Always Coming Home with the cassette tape, so this is what I’ve been listening to. It sounds great. But the new LP looks gorgeous. It’s very tempting.

    The best link for the reissue is https://igetrvng.com/shop/fts009/.

  21. Tom Becker says Book View Cafe used to have a digital MP3 version of Music and Poetry of the Kesh. I’m pretty sure Vonda McIntyre produced it. I missed out on the boxed set of Always Coming Home with the cassette tape, so this is what I’ve been listening to. It sounds great. But the new LP looks gorgeous. It’s very tempting.

    Not having a cassette player when I owned the boxed set, I’m curious as how it adds to the book itself. The University Of California trade paper edition comes without it.

  22. 4) Whatever one imagines the meaning of the phrase “toxic masculinity” to be — why would being a POC matter? Are Saudi Arabian, Chinese, or Colombian men, say, more enlightened than those of European ancestry?

  23. @Cat Eldridge: I think the songs and poems are like the book, a non-linear collection that can be read or listened to as you wish. When I got the MP3s I listened to them several times over. I wanted to them to become familiar, so I could hear them more as a Kesh person would. This was definitely not a hardship. The music is lovely.

  24. I took “buzzwords” to imply obscurity, but please substitute “hard to understand” for “obscure” if you feel that’s clearer.

    No, I pretty much meant it in the way the definition comes up on Google: “a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.”

    It sounds like the real problem here – as with last year’s Sharkes – may be fannish distrust of literary criticism in general.

    Yes, I think lit-crit, in general, is silly stuff pulled out of the ass of the critic. It is a mirror into the mind of the critic, not the writer. I say this from the perspective of my failed hopes of being a fiction writer myself, and the various writing classes I took in college (one of them taught by Sue Monk Kidd, if anyone is familiar with her) where we wrote pieces “anonymously” (in that our name wasn’t on them, but people could probably guess who wrote it) which the whole classes read and discussed. I remember how amused I was by people picking out interpretations of what I meant by a passage, always getting pretty much everything pretty much absolutely wrong. And I don’t think that people who are professionals or professors or internet personalities in literary criticism are any less wrong.

  25. @DFranklin: I will stand by my UK English spelling forever, though, thank you very much.

    Very sorry. Spelling it with the s gave me the Red Underline of Wrong Spelling, plus the Academy I’m familiar with uses “problematize,” so I went with that. (And now I’m getting the Red Underline of Wrong Spelling for that, too!) I was only attempting to poke fun and not criticize your search for fiction with non-toxic masculinity, by the way. I tend to be amused (rather than annoyed) by all the unpacking and interrogating that goes on among my friends who talk to me about their current work. (The fact that I used “Academy” should tell you I am shamelessly using the same kind of buzzword.)

    @Ghostbird: I took “buzzwords” to imply obscurity, but please substitute “hard to understand” for “obscure” if you feel that’s clearer.

    I took “buzzwords” to mean, well, buzzwords. Lingo. Argot. “The vocabulary or jargon of a particular subject or group of people.” The special vocabulary a lot of us use to communicate with others who share our profession or hobby or area of interest, often to show we’re in the know or of the moment or part of the crowd. I guess “godstalk” might be seen as a buzzword at File770, just like “millennial pink” was everywhere in the world of fashion for a hot minute. And “hot minute” is probably way out of fashion. (Ninja’d by Darren Garrison on that part!)

  26. @Clack why would being a POC matter?

    Because different communities have different ideas of masculinity which don’t always fit the White Western default. (Joanna Russ, for example, wrote about being seen as butch because her culture was traditional Jewish, where men were supposed to be shy and retiring and women were supposed to be outgoing, practical, and physically strong.) And an outside view is a good place to start interrogating default masculinity.

    And because race and gender intersect in complicated ways when racism and sexism support each other. So we have the hyper-sexualised image of the Black man as an object of fear and fetish for White racists, or the Orientalist projection of femininity onto the “sensuous East”.

  27. A minor defense of literary criticism (and English in academia):

    When I took literary theory in undergrad, I found it very useful because it forced me to question my assumptions. Not that I believed everything that they said (in one presentation I compared literary deconstruction to the destruction of the Death Star), but normally I would find something that enriched my own thoughts on literature.

    Also, earning a BA in English exposed me to a lot of literature that I would have never read otherwise, including a wonderful seminar on Latin American magic realism. Borges, Marquez, and Llosa were important to my college-aged mind.
    So on the whole, the world of academic English was well worth the time that I spent there (though most of the time I was pounding out articles for the school paper). I recommend it if you can find a career path in the field.

  28. Because there are only 5 days left, and it’s got a bit of a ways to go yet in order to fund, I’d like to repeat a promo from the January 23rd Pixel Scroll.

    Michael Jan Friedman, who is perhaps best known for more than 30 Star Trek tie-in novels, a writing credit on the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Resistance”, and more than 100 comics in numerous DC, Marvel, and Image franchises, has created a Kickstarter campaign for Empty Space, a science fiction adventure in the form of a 128-page full-color graphic novel, with 115 pages of story and illustrations by pencil-and-inks artist Caio Cacau:

    Your name is Robinson Dark. You don’t know where you are or how you got there or what happened to the crew you led into space. All you know is you can’t feel a thing – not even fear.

    Then it gets weird.

    Funds are collected only if/when the project reaches its funding goal, so consider backing this project if it sounds interesting to you.

  29. @JJ: I backed that at the time, and I hope it funds (but fear it will not). Fingers crossed!

  30. P.S. I’ve checked the box to notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail, but never got a notice. I went into WordPress and the two items I’d checked the box for were on the “Pending” tab, so methinks WordPress is just slow/cranky today. But FYI in case anyone else runs into it.

    (After confirming those two pending “follow comments” items, I went to some older items and unfollowed them, just in case.)

    /ramble

  31. @Ghostbird: I think fannish reaction to criticism varies widely. Factors include whether the critic is addressing a wider audience or merely other critics, whether their dislike is based on facts of the text rather than their {,mis}reading, and whether they start from what the work is rather than criticizing it for being a bad attempt at something it isn’t trying to be. The Sharkes jumped variably in this regard; I happen to agree with them (and disagree with most Filers) that …Orbit was … manipulative, but a number of their texts — particularly their hairtrigger reaction to counter-arguments and their attribution of all disagreement to US prejudice — damaged their case.

    I’m also wondering whether the editor(s) realize that toxic masculinity has been questioned for some time; consider Sturgeon’s “Granny Won’t Knit” (1954) or “The Skills of Xanadu” (1956) for examples from far back, or much of MZB’s work in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Yes, I know people find MZB’s work questionable because she was a terrible person. Some of her work has signs of this; some, at least in my reading, does not.) It will be interesting to see how many works have the sly mockery and plausible story of (e.g.) “When It Changed”, and how many are more polemics than stories — acknowledging that different people will have different thresholds for this.

  32. I must say I am looking forward to reading stories with diverse views of masculinity. I think that could be a fun and enlightening read.

    Mike – thanks for picking up the item I sent in – it will encourage me to remember to submit stuff, I hope!

  33. @Kendall,

    A while back I found that there is a limit to the number of threads you can subscribe. It was JJ who pointed me to this where you can subscribe to all comments.

    This is the URL I used: https://subscribe.wordpress.com/
    This is what I now use: https://wordpress.com/following/manage

    JJ said:
    Awhile back, when I discovered that I could automatically subscribe to all comments on all File 770 threads, I just did that. Yes, it tends to fill my inbox (especially during the last few days), but when I read a thread I can then just delete all the notifications for it en masse. (And it’s been helpful if I wanted to see the content of a comment which gets hit with the banhammer.)

    https://wordpress.com/following/manage

    This page can be used to add a site URL to your list (if it’s not already there), then click the settings gear icon and turn on notifications for each new post on the blog, and, if you desire, for each comment on each post.

    Now I no longer have to worry about godstalking threads, and get immediate notification even when a comment is posted on an older thread.

  34. msb

    The Power held my interest to the end and I liked the characters particularly Roxy and Tunde. My issue with the story in Rot13

    V qba’g oryvrir fb zhpu phygheny punatr vf cbffvoyr fb snfg jurer zra tb sebz orvat va punetr gb orvat zreryl qrpbengvir va yrff guna bar trarengvba. Jr qvqa’g rira frr n trarengvba bs puvyqera obea nsgre gur punatr tebj gb nqhygubbq. Jr bayl fnj gur svefg trarengvba jvgu cbjre tebj gb nqhygubbq. Gurl arire rira unq xvqf. Abe qb V oryvrir nal fhpprffshy fbpvrgl pna xvyy 9 bhg bs 10 znyr puvyqera naq fheivir. Lbh bayl unir gb yòbx ng gur erfhyg bs Puvan’f bar puvyq cbyvpl gb frr gung jba’g jbex.

  35. @Chip: There are also more than a few Tiptree stories on the subject, such as “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” and “The Screwfly Solution.”

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