Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same

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(1) THE TENTACLE RECONCILIATION. This just in — “Cthulhu Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize”.

OSLO, NORWAY — Dread Lord, and presidential candidate, Cthulhu has more to savor this week on the campaign trail than the vulture-picked carcasses of the campaigns of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Martin O’Malley and others. Cthulhu has been officially nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, according to Henriette Berg Aasen, Nobel watcher and director of the Peace Research Cooperative of Oslo….

Aasen told the Kingsport Star Herald that Cthulhu has been nominated, as He is yearly, by the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (known also as CTHU). Cthulhu joins a long list of historical luminaries nominated for the coveted prize like Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Rush Limbaugh, Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin.

Aasen says CTHU selected the independent candidate and demon god because “when He rises from the Deep, humanity will finally know peace and understanding. Our conflicts will disperse. Our prejudices will fade. The Truth of existence will fill us. And those of us left will join as one in praise of Pax Cthulhia.”

(2) TORT SOLO. The BBC reports “Star Wars prosecuted over Harrison Ford injury”.

The production company behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens is being prosecuted over the incident in which Harrison Ford broke his leg.

The actor was struck by a hydraulic metal door on the Pinewood set of the Millennium Falcon in June 2014.

The Health And Safety Executive has brought four criminal charges against Foodles Production (UK) Ltd – a subsidiary of Disney.

Foodles Production said it was “disappointed” by the HSE’s decision.

Following the incident, Ford was airlifted to hospital for surgery.

Following an investigation, the HSE said it believed there was sufficient evidence about the incident which left Ford with serious injuries, to bring four charges relating to alleged health and safety breaches.

(3) PUT TO THE QUESTION. The characters in Redshirts are out of jeopardy, but not out of Jeopardy!

(4) MORE RECOMMENDATIONS. Black Gate’s John ONeill points out “Gypsies, Paupers, Demons and Swans: Rich Horton’s Hugo Recs”:

I cover a lot of short fiction magazines and novels, but I never feel adequately prepared for the Hugo ballot. But that’s okay, because I know people who read every single short story published in English, and can point me in the right direction.

Well, one person. Rich Horton. Seriously, he reads them all. No, really. All of them. When he modestly claims he doesn’t, he’s lying. He’s read some of ’em twice.

(5) HORTON’S RECS. The recommendations originated at Rich Horton’s blog Strange at Ecbatan.

For the past few years I have avoided the sorts of posts I used to routinely make, listing my favorite stories of the year and making suggestions for Hugo nominations. There are several reasons – one is simply that I thought my Best of the Year Table of Contents served such a purpose by default, more or less, another is time. And a third, of course, is a feeling of skittishness about the controversy that has arisen, from several directions, on the appropriateness of nomination lists, or, Lord preserve us, “slates”.

But hang it all, almost all I’ve been about for my time writing about SF is promoting the reading of good stories. Why should I stop? Why should anyone? I don’t want people to nominate based on my recommendations – I want people to read the stories I recommend – and lots of other stories – and nominate the stories they like best. I don’t want to promote an agenda. I don’t want to nudge the field towards any set of themes or styles. (Except by accident – I don’t deny that I have conscious and unconscious preferences.) In fact, I’d rather be surprised – by new ideas, by new writers, by controversial positions, by new forms, by revitalization of old forms.

This is, indeed, mostly the contents of my Best of the Year collection, with a few added that I couldn’t use for one reason or another (length, contractual issues, etc.). And let’s add the obvious — I miss things! Even things I read. There have definitely been cases where a story I didn’t pick seemed to me on further reflection to be clearly award-worthy.

I recently made a post on potential Hugo nominees in which I briefly discussed potential Best Editor nominations. I mentioned John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Trevor Quachri, C. C. Finlay, Sheila Williams, Andy Cox, Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, Scott H. Andrews and Brian Thomas Schmidt. And in all honesty, I think any of those people would be wholly worthy nominees. They have all done first-rate recent work. But that said, let’s be honest, I was being a bit timid. Who would I really vote for? I wanted to be a bit more forthright, and plump for a few folks I am really rooting for….

(6) DEFERRED GRATIFICATION. “20 Year Overnight Successes: Writing Advice” is a set of Storified tweets from Maria Dahvana Headley about writing.

Mark-kitteh sent along the link with a modest disclaimer: “Obviously I have no way of knowing if they’re good advice or not, but as Neil Gaiman commented on then approvingly I’m assuming they’re good…”

She begins:

Gaiman’s comment:

(7) RANDOMNESS. Don’t know what this actually relates to, just found the stand-alone comment amusing.

https://twitter.com/Redregon/status/698283588756836352

(8) IAN WATSON. At SF Signal, Rachel Cordasco’s “Eurocon 2016: An Interview with Ian Watson”

RC: This Eurocon is taking place in Barcelona- what is the state of Spanish scifi today?

IW: Spanish SF (including, as I said, Fantasy and Horror) is thriving, but not nearly enough gets translated into English nor is published visibly enough. Félix Palma’s Map of… trilogy is certainly a best-seller in English (as the New York Times says) but consider a genre-bending author such as veteran Rodolfo Martínez, a major award winner in Spain: you can get a Kindle ebook of his novel

The Queen’s Adept in an English translation so good, of a book so good, that it reads like an original novel by Gene Wolfe, but you’ll find it in no bookshop in the USA or UK. (While on the subject of actual books, devour The Shape of Murder and Zig-Zag by José Carlos Somoza.)

Recent professional labour-of-love productions include The Best of Spanish Steampunk (big, edited and translated by James and Marian Womack, whose Nevsky press is based in Madrid), the crowdfunded Castles in Spain put together by Mariano Villarreal, and (in progress) the likewise crowdfunded competition-winners anthology Spanish Women of Wonder edited by Cristina Jurado, title courtesy of Pamela Sargent. Mariano Villarreal is also responsible for an admired series of original anthologies entitled Terra Nova, published by Rodolfo Martínez’s own Sportula press, of which one is in English translation: Terra Nova: An Anthology of Spanish Science Fiction. Ebooks only, these last three.

On the whole, things are humming.

(9) ALBERT FANDOM. Einstein is not only on a bubblegum card, he’s on a Star Wars gif too –

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born February 12, 1915 — Lorne Greene, who played Commander Adama.

(11) MEET THE RABIDS. Vox Day adds to his slate: “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Graphic Story”.

(12) WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. The L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers & Illustrators of the Future Annual Awards Ceremony invitation was extended to LASFS members on Facebook. Information about the ceremony is here. The event is April 10, 2016 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Doors open at 5:30 pm – Event starts at 6:30 pm. Party and book signing immediately follow. Black tie optional or Steampunk Formal. RSVP HERE

Past winners of the Writers of the Future Contest have gone on to publish well over 700 novels and 3000 short stories; they have become international bestsellers and have won the most prestigious accolades in the field—the Hugo, the Nebula, the John W. Campbell, the Bram Stoker, and the Locus Award—and even mainstream literary awards such as the National Book Award, the Newbery and the Pushcart Prize. The Illustrators of the Future winners have gone on to publish millions of illustrations in the field.

 

(13) CHARACTERIZATION. At All Over The Map, Juliet McKenna has some interesting advice concerning “The importance of thinking about ‘local values’ when you’re writing”.

On the other hand, you can turn this issue of local values to your writerly advantage, in the right place, for the right character. When I said minus three degrees or minus thirteen a few paragraphs back, I meant Celsius, because my local weather values are centigrade. When I come across temperatures given in Farenheit in US crime fiction, I always have to pause and do a quick mental conversion calculation. It disrupts the flow of my reading, so as far as I am concerned, that’s a bad thing.

But if I was a character in a book? If the author wanted to convey someone feeling unsettled and out of their usual place? Sure, that author could tell us ‘She felt unsettled by the unfamiliar numbers in the weather forecast’ but you could do so much more, and far more subtly, as a writer by showing the character’s incomprehension, having her look up how to do the conversion online, maybe being surprised by the result. It gets how cold in Minnesota in the winter?

(14) ALPHA HOUSE. To better organize the presidential candidates competing in the New Hampshire primary, Mic sorted each candidate into Hogwarts houses from Harry Potter. Still funny, even if the primary’s over.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mark-kitteh, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jenora Feuer.]

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195 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same”

  4. “Throw on the HTML sieves! Rev her up to 770! We’re scrolling through!” The clicking of the pixellators increased: ka-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety…

  5. FREE SPACE

    Shao Ping: I have gone back and added a #2 item — don’t want anyone to feel shortchanged!

  6. The Rabid Pup pandering to GGers continues apace which serves as yet more evidence that Beale’s claim to have loads of followers set to do his bidding is nothing more than puffery. He’s little more than a politician jumping onto a train already underway so he can try to claim credit for it.

  8. Ugh. Gunnerkrigg Court is on my ballot. I am beginning to suspect that people are right about VD’s ultimate goal of throwing stuff at the wall and if something good gets nominated, taking credit for it.

  9. The GGers have their own home-grown leaders already, some of whom aren’t even white supremacists and actually work for a living. Right? They don’t need li’l Teddy; he makes them look bad.

    (12) Of course, they’ve also written a lot of crap. And those twins freak me out. (Not for being twins, either of them alone would be kinda freaky)

  10. So Gunnerkrigg Court looks like Beale’s “I’ll throw in something good to trick them all!!!1!” candidate this time. It’s also been recommended (as a webcomic, generally, not as a Hugo candidate, specifically) by Neil Gaiman. I’d consider nominating it, despite the odor of Beale that now attaches to it.

    eta: ninja’d by Nate!

  11. Graphic Story is a category with a wealth of good options: Bitch Planet, Lumberjanes, Rat Queens, three volumes of Ms. Marvel, ODY-C, Sex Criminals, and Saga, just to list a few. I wish Nimona was eligible as well, because I’d nominate that in a heartbeat.

  13. ULTRAGOTHA: I suspect a lot of what Beale is doing is happening via e-mail. I’m pretty much ignoring everything that’s public.

    Yeah, I think that what’s being posted are the faux slates, and what’s being disseminated by e-mail are the real slates.

    Either way, it’s not going to affect my nominating behavior. Although I certainly will take notice if one of the non-Puppy slated authors posts a big “Thanks for your support!” on VD’s blog.

  14. I’m reading Wytches now. Really, really good comic. I believe I will nominate it. Scary stuff though, I was hooked from second page.

    Not so good, Copperhead. Got irritated at the setting from the start. Too cliche western in a boring way.

  15. I suspect a lot of what Beale is doing is happening via e-mail. I’m pretty much ignoring everything that’s public.

    I that is the case, I look forward to those emails being distributed. I’m reasonably sure that there are quite a few outsiders who have broken VD’s super-sekrit winnowing method for joining the Dead Elk.

    Regardless, I continue to enjoy the rather sad attempt to pander to some mythical yoooooge GG contingent. Even among GGers, there’s a not insignificant number who consider Day to be an arsehole, so I’m gonna enjoy the response he gets.

  16. Both for the Puppies and for the Gamergaters, the huge silent majority…really really isn’t so.

    I do try and ignore the public stuff that Beale does, to no avail. I was rather gobsmacked when Castalia House’s twitter account retweeted a tweet of mine (it was a link to a podcast I did with the SFF Audio folks** on Lovecraft’s DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH).

    **Technically I just guest on the podcast a lot rather than being officially part of the podcast. And really that distinction would only ever matter if the podcast got an award nomination of some sort.

  17. Pretty weak choices from Vox and a mean spirited post as well. Both Sad and Rabid camps are particularly weak when it comes to this category (i.e. weak relative to the very low base).

    Gunnerkrigg Court is the best of the bunch but not one I’d pick.
    And that GamerGate strip? It just does the same joke over and over – some gamergate character is supergreat and the people who hate gamergate aren’t and they don’t get how supergreat gamergate character is.

  19. Do you recommend Descender? And why? I love Essex County and, to a lesser extent, The Underwater Wielder, but have mixed feelings about the other Lemire I’ve read, namely Trillium, Sweet Tooth, and Animal Man. But maybe that’s because I now have a preference for nostalgic, melancholic, or angsty (?) graphic novels often about young people maturing–e.g. I love Adrian Tomine even if I feel he might be a bit one-note.

    (I do, however, love everything I’ve read by Kurt Busiek; reading some Conan now)

  20. ::ticky::

    ETA: Vox Day does what he does, and not all of it in public as we saw with the Goodreads fiasco.

    I shall do what I was going to regardless: nominate what I think is Hugo-worthy. Let’s see what happens.

  23. (3) Johns not the only author to be mentioned in the Sci-Fi Movel catagory. Jeopardy has been hitting us a lot recently, me seems.

  25. Hi, gang! I’m still alive, just semi-crippled by my carpal tunnels, and also busy. I recently posted about a topic near to us all getting rid of books visited by the Suck Fairy. In this case, visited by the Hella!Racism Fairy.

    Also, today I spent a hilarious quarter-hour with the SFF expert at my local Barnes&Noble, trying to remember a) the title of RedWombat’s latest, and b) what name she’d published it under. Found at last! but I couldn’t buy it there, and I lost my VISA card and don’t have a new one yet, so I have to WAIT.

    Fortunately, I bought Gentleman Jole &TRQ and City of Bones with cash.

  27. I’m fairly sure that Trees, Ody-C, and Bitch Planet will end up on my final ballot for graphic story. Not so sure about the last two spots, but they will likely be from among Invisible Republic, Descender, The Eternaut, or Space Dumplins, all of which I liked for very different reasons.

    Shao Ping, I still don’t think Descender is as good as the County Essex trilogy, but I think it was among the best of this year’s SFF graphic novels. It felt like there was a lot more depth and thoughtfulness put into the setting than in Trillium or Sweet Tooth, and Nguyen’s artwork was a good match. It’s definitely worth the time.

  29. Jim Henley on February 12, 2016 at 9:26 pm said:

    Should we not sort Mythos creatures into Hogwarts houses next?

    Everybody will want Cthulhu because he’s the cool one. It will be like that bit in Reservoir Dogs when Steve Buscemi is complaining about being Mr Pink and he’s told they can’t pick their own color because everybody will chose ‘Mr Black’.

  31. Hmm…Nyarlathotep’s Slytherin, Azathoth is Hufflepuff (but so is Nodens) Cthulhu himself is probably Griffindor, Yog-Sothoth is Ravenclaw, Shub-Niggurath is Hufflepuff, Yig is Slytherin, the Great Race and the Great Old Ones are Ravenclaw, shoggoths are Griffindor, Deep Ones are….mmmm, tough call, probably Hufflepuff, they do seem more forgiving than other Mythos races….Fungi from Yuggoth, I gotta go Ravenclaw.

  32. re: Graphics Novel

    So far, I’ve got Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor and Rat Queens vol. 2. One or both Lumberjanes collections are a possibility. I didn’t care for Nimona, but I’ve heard good things about Ms. Marvel. Oglaf, unfortunately, squicked me out too much.

  34. Am I the only one who has The Sandman: Overture? I literally have not seen anyone mentioning it besides me. Has its every-five-months schedule made it sink below people’s radar? Because it finished last year, so it’s eligible this year, and it is just fantastic. (In every sense of the word.)

  35. @Doctor Science: Eek. Well, glad you’re disposing of them in an environmentally friendly way. If you didn’t have a fireplace, I was going to suggest recycling them (possibly after shredding so no one would have to come across them again).

    Okay, does that mean “Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage” is also not eligible? Because that was a webcomic too. Yes some of it was redone, but so was some of Nimona.

    I’m just sayin’.

    Egads, somehow my inadvertent logout the other day meant my Campbell nominations didn’t take. And I think many of us can agree that inventing Katsu the windup octopus deserves a spot on the Campbell list.

  36. My best graphic story noms are certain to include The Sculptor by Scott McCloud; The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua; and Sex Criminals v 2: Two Worlds, One Cop by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky.

    I also read the second volume of Ms Marvel, the latest Saga and the first volume of the new Thor and wasn’t totally overwhelmed by any of them. However I take the point that the more you nominate, the less the power of any slates.

    I’m also sure that the real RP2 instructions are being (or have already been) issued by email, or just possibly by some other private means. I doubt that anyone else has tried to infiltrate his system; why bother?

  38. @David Goldfarb: I’ve read Sandman: Overture and I liked it very much indeed. I also had the somewhat overwhelming experience of seeing all the original art for one issue up close in a gallery show.

  40. @Eli: (original art, “somewhat overwhelming experience”)

    Different artist, but I can relate. My very first duty as a convention volunteer (in 1994) was hanging original pages from The Crow, each of which had a price tag, IIRC, between $600-$800. Well, except for the $2000 two-page spread that was too heavy for the mounting hardware and kept falling…

  41. I’m in a fix, because all of my top Hugo mind in that category are all ongoing webcomics- do purely electronic comics count?

    Let’s see…

    Strong Female Protagonist- one if the best superhero comics, talking the idea of whether dressing up in a costume is the best thing a feminist super can do.

    Blindsprings 300 years ago, a young princess escaped into a magical wood. And she lived happily ever after-until a young mage decided to save her. She is not best pleased, but the spirits see a chance to regain power…

    Decrypting Rita: Its about a cyborg in an SF world- no a dancer in our world- no a dragon in a fantasy world- no she’s a hat lady. Actually all of them are same person in different worlds, and they’re about to collide. This had some of the most brilliant use of highly kinetic infinite canvas I’ve ever seen.

    And that’s a start. All of them way to obscure to have a chance, but well worth a look.

  43. @Rose:

    I think I remember liking SFP, but my webcomic reading habits fall strongly into the “omnomnom forget oh yeah” pattern.

    Speaking of supers, I’m about to start the fourth of Michael Bailey’s “Action Figures” novels, which detail the formation and adventures of a teenage super-team. There’s a pretty good mix of super/mundane in the plot, and actions definitely have consequences; indications are that this volume gets rather dark, and book five’s description makes it look very much like a “picking up the pieces” book… further implying a book four bombshell or three.

    Anyway, book four is a 2015 release, but even if it lives up to my high expectations, the preceding backstory is too involved for me to expect it to stand alone as a potential nominee. That said, I’ve been quite impressed with the series on all levels so far. The editing is good; I’ve only found a handful of technical issues across all three earlier books, and storywise it’s obvious that There Is A Plan underpinning everything. If you like supers-in-prose books and can deal with some harsh violence (as befits realistic supers as a genre), I suggest giving the series a shot.

  44. So far, all I’ve got for Graphic Story is Stand Still, Stay Silent and Oglaf.

    (I’m sure Oglaf deserves a Hugo rocket, but I’m slightly worried about what they might do with it.)

  47. I have more to read before shortening my GN longlist, but Sandman: Overture, Sculptor, and The Autumnlands are all on it. Want to read Bitch Planet, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and The Wicked + The Divine. And probably more.

    Best thing about reading File 770 is all the recommendations!

  50. Annoyance that he is, we should perhaps be glad that someone as politically toxic and persistent as Theodore Beale has decided to dedicate his malignant energies merely to disrupting a prominent SF award.

    It’s like an alternate history in which Adolf Hitler sticks with painting, and spends the thirties and forties in increasingly doomed attempts to manipulate fine arts awards into giving prizes to himself and his equally mediocre cronies.

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