(1) STAR WARS VIII. Cameras are rolling for the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, written and directed by Rian Johnson.
(2) THAT WAS THE FUTURE THAT WAS. A 1983 cover of BYTE.
And if I squint real hard, will one of the options say, “I’ll be back”?
(3) EYE SING THE BODY ELECTRIC. A mere $3.50 on eBay!
Twilight Zone Prop Reproduction From the only Twilight Zone episode, scripted by Ray Bradbury, I Sing The Body Electric comes a Facsimile UnLimited original – entitled: Eye Lettuce, it represents one of the eyes available for the fabrication “Grandma”.
(4) RONDO NOMINATING OPEN. If you’re a fan who’s enjoyed James H. Burns’ columns for File 770, affirming that you’d like to see him as a nominee for this year’s Rondo Awards could make a difference.
Check in at the Classic Horror Film Board’s Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards threads “For Best Blog or Online Column: James H. Burns at File 770” and “The Geography of Eden” for “Best Article”. While a nomination apparently is not decided by raw numbers, enthusiastic comments are likely to help,
(5) APEX ACQUISITION. Apex Publications has acquired Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Writing by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, and expects to release the book in 2017.
Yours to Tell is a writers guide to fiction based on Steve and Melanie’s writing processes and experiences they’ve had teaching fiction, including two stints at the annual Odyssey Writing Workshop in New Hampshire.
About Yours to Tell, Steve says, “The book consists of a series of dialogues in which we discuss a number of topics on the writing of fiction, a method which we developed while teaching and continued to use for various articles and columns on both genre and non-genre writing. This is a unique approach for a writing guide, and has the advantage of presenting two different, but complimentary points of view for the basic issues of craft and encouragement which face all writers, whatever their level of skill and experience. We made this guidebook dense with practical information, empowering for new writers desiring a path for learning the craft, and inspiring even for those with more experience but wanting a fresh and encouraging view of the fiction writing process.”
(6) RECOGNIZING THE LESSON. “GUNN: ‘Hollywood Will Misunderstand The Lesson’ Of DEADPOOL’s Success” is the warning quoted by a Newsarama story.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director James Gunn has come out with a very positive review of 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool, but warns that some in Hollywood already have misguided reasons on why the film is a success.
“I love Deadpool even more – the film is hilariously funny, has lots of heart, and is exactly what we need right now, taking true risks in spectacle film,” Gunn posted on Facebook.
However, Gunn takes issue with the perception of an unnamed studio executive who stated (via Deadline) that Deadpool succeeded because “The film has a self-deprecating tone that’s riotous. It’s never been done before. It’s poking fun at Marvel. That label takes itself so seriously, can you imagine them making fun of themselves in a movie? They’d rather stab themselves.”
“Come on, Deadline,” said Gunn, going on to state that saying Marvel wouldn’t poke fun at itself is “rewriting history.”
“Let’s ignore Guardians for a moment, a movie that survives from moment to moment building itself up and cutting itself down – God knows I’m biased about that one. But what do you think Favreau and Downey did in Iron Man? What the f*** was Ant-Man??!”
Gunn goes on to say that he worries studio executives will learn the wrong lessons from Deadpool.
“Deadpool was its own thing. THAT’S what people are reacting to. It’s original, it’s damn good, it was made with love by the filmmakers, and it wasn’t afraid to take risks.”
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 15, 1950 — Disney’s Cinderella opens
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born February 15, 1954 – Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.
(9) CONTINUED NEXT SLATE. Vox Day posted his slate for another Hugo category – “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Related Work”.
The preliminary recommendations for the Best Related Work category:
- Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson.
- Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini.
- The Story of Moira Greyland by Moira Greyland.
- Safe Space as Rape Room by Daniel Eness.
- SJWs Always Lie by Vox Day.
(10) OCCURRING IN NATURE. The weekly science journal Nature for at least a decade has run an SF short story on the last page of each issue. The story in the February 4 issue was Robert Reed’s “An investment for the future.”
Nature’s brief background statement about author Reed says —
Affiliations
Robert Reed is the author of several hundreds stories and a few novels. He won a Hugo before it was controversial. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
(11) FAVORITE SON. Jim C. Hines pleads for equal time for the “Adventures of Michigan Man”.
From time to time, I see people collecting headlines about the wacky adventures of “Florida Man.” I decided to take a look and see what my home state’s “superhero” has been up to lately…
Two of his ten amusing examples:
- Michigan Man proposes at Wal-Mart, gets arrested. Remember kids, don’t steal edible thongs!
- Michigan Man Flies Off Car Hood When It Rams Police Cruiser. You will believe Michigan Man can fly!
(12) KEYBOARD KOMEDY. Meanwhile, Ohio Man was surprised when his fingers didn’t type what his brain commanded.
I was searching for news on Scalia and accidentally typed my own last name in the search box. Was deeply confused by the result.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 15, 2016
(13) DREAM LOUDER. At The Space Review, Dwayne Day’s article “In space no one can hear you dream” discusses the importance of entertainment set in outer space.
Space enthusiasts, particularly those who have a vision of humanity spreading out into the solar system and establishing settlements, have had a difficult time convincing anybody other than a small group of true believers of the legitimacy of their cause. To have a broader impact they need as much help as they can get, particularly in the form of mass entertainment that can shape the popular culture and influence the general public, making settlement seem not fantastical or crazy but instead acceptable, as simply another step in human evolution….
The Expanse is the closest depiction of what space settlement advocates must see when they dream—and yet it is not a very positive vision of the future….
Life is not entertainment and entertainment is not life. But space advocates need popular entertainment to provide positive depictions of humanity’s future in space, not negative ones. They need a culture that is not hostile to their religion, and so far they haven’t gotten that, not even from the most sophisticated portrayal of solar sci-fi to date. Dying of asphyxiation or starvation on Ceres is not an appealing vision, and none of these examples of popular entertainment have provided a satisfactory explanation of why humanity should spread out into the solar system. So far popular entertainment is not helping. Perhaps somewhere right now a space advocate is penning the next great movie about humans moving beyond low Earth orbit, one where the achievement may involve struggle, but where the payoff is greater than simply survival against all odds. After all, survival is a heck of a lot easier by simply staying on Earth.
(14) DEPRESSION ERA MARS. BoingBoing reproduces the colorful alien tableaux from the astonishing “Psychedelic Space Alien themed Art Deco style 1931 high school yearbook” produced by Los Angeles University High School.
(15) MARS MY DESTINATION. Motherboard has the story about how “Britain’s Mapping Agency Made a Map of Mars”.
We’ll need maps when we go to Mars, too. At least, that’s the thinking behind British mapping organisation Ordnance Survey’s new map of the Martian landscape, which presents an otherworldly location in a format earthly ramblers will find familiar.
“There’s certainly no reason why you couldn’t imagine a future where someone might actually use a map on Mars in the same way that they would use a map on Earth,” said cartographic designer Chris Wesson, who made the map of a patch of Martian topography 3672 by 2721 km across, to a scale of 1:4 million.
(16) MARTIANS NEED PHONES TOO. This 1995 ad for AT&T stars Ray Walston who played a Martian living on Earth in the 1960s TV series My Favorite Martian which is the in-joke
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Dave Doering, Martin Morse Wooster, Mark Olson, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
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Scrolls Just Wanna Have Pixels
(6) RECOGNIZING THE LESSON
Still, if enough people miss the point in just the right way… we could finally get that Forbush-Man movie we’ve all been dreaming of! (It should take place in the Not Brand Echh universe, of course.)
Peace Is My Middle Name
Someone here was talking about the Mattel Thingmaker recently. I had one briefly that I salvaged from the curb across the street in the early 80s, and it still had viable Plastigoop. I eventually let a fan buy it from me for ten bucks and the promise that she’d make me a big cockroach. She didn’t.
Annoying Typo Spotted in the Field
A day or so ago, somewhere that wasn’t here, a writer used “flaunt” for “flout.”
Steve Wright
If you leave off the capitalization and italics, Zeitgeist becomes the English word zeitgeist, and it can be pluralized as the Queen intended. (Heh. She’s German anyway, right? House of “Windsor”?)
I have the Alfies on my Best Related list because I think it really did something to save a year. And I’m honestly thinking of adding The Jovians too. Both were nice gestures.
One might note the conspicuous absence of the Gygax biography Empire of Imagination from Beale’s Related Work slate. For someone who claims to be a proponent of “old school” gaming, that seems like a curious omission. Oh well, I guess he needed to pat his own guys on the back with a little cronyism.
I’ll be nominating Empire of Imagination in the category, since it is a good biography of an important figure in the genre. I’ll also be nominating You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), Letters to Tiptree, and These Are the Voyages. I haven’t read a really good fifth choice yet, but I’m sure I’ll get to something in the next month and a half.
I understand where the “Nothing from the Kerpupple” sentiment is coming from, but I really don’t agree with it. To me, it’s kinda like ignoring the elephant in the room when it comes to analyses in the genre in 2015.
My current not-shortlist for BRW (somewhat unexpectedly, this has become among my more extensive lists!):
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)
The Wheel of Time Companion
John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular
The Outlandish Companion
The Alfie Awards
Galactic Journey
Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons
E Pluribus Hugo
Thing Explainer
Letters to Tiptree is pending me reading a sample. Thus far, only the WoT Companion is definitely on my final ballot. The other 4 keep changing a bit too frequently.
Oh, and a very Happy Birthday to our Dread Lord and Master.
Happy birthday Mr. Glyer!
I agree. The category doesn’t need to be mired in last year’s controversy when there’s so many other things Hugo voters could honor there.
If you like that, you should check out Computer Show. It covers current technology but the hosts act like it’s still the 1980s and they don’t understand what anything is. One of the more amusing droll parodies I’ve seen in a while.
@snowcrash: I hear you. If it were arguments about the genre, I might be inclined to agree.
But the Kerpupple is such a meta argument, about voting and award mechanisms and factions for recognizing excellence in the genre. Notable and unavoidable as it may, I just don’t feel like it’s very “Related.”
(That’s my own take on it, of course. To each their own 🙂 )
The “definition” for Best Related Work in the WSFS constitution says “Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, ” – and works deriving from the kerpupple are related to fandom, and by that metric they’re not a bad fit.
On the other hand, I don’t want the category to be all about navel-gazing, and I certainly don’t want it to be “best blog post taking down those other guys”, so my primary focus when nominating in this category is works related to SF as a literary genre rather than to SF fandom
On the third hand, “John Scalzi is not a very …” is bloody funny.
Another book to consider: Joseph Laycook’s Dangerous games. I enjoyed it throughly. It was about the satanic panic of the 1980s as related to RPGs.
I will admit that moral panics and fandom may have been on my mind this year.
@Standback.
Which may be why I’m most comfortable with putting Erin’s work under best new writer. Because it’s wickedly funny, very fannish, and except for John Scalzi is not a Popular Writer, not really one unitary work. And it’s all more about the fandom than about the genre.
@Andrew Hickey
I was thinking that – I think I’ve read most of it. Honestly, I did get a bad taste from one of his lines which is prejudicing me against the work as a whole. The bit about the Moon being as far as we’ve gotten, and as far as we’re likely to get before we go extinct that opens one of his essays is the line in question. It seems a bit Strange Horizons, “look how sophisticated I am, I’m showing my existential despair and my refusal to be seduced by optimism like a prole.”* On the other hand, I’ve found most of the essays he puffed up into the book quite insightful, and well worth the read.
*That being said, I rely heavily on Strange Horizons reviews for my novel reading, and I think I voted them first last year. Will nominate them again. It’s an excellent semi-pro without which I’d have never been introduced to Hannu Rajannami, Elizabeth Bear, or several other writers I now treasure.
There’s just a reason in a conversation with another friend who does the same, saying that something must be good, because Strange Horizons didn’t totally trash it, got a big round of laughter and many nods from others taking part in the conversation. And on the other hand, group all likes Strange Horizons because it’s unafraid to treat sff as something more than genre.
Not eligible for this year, but this is an excellent Dr. Who book that I would have nominated for BRW if I knew then what I know now:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13063683-the-humanism-of-doctor-who
To flounce, or not to flounce, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The S’lions and Errors of outrageous Postings,
Or to take Arms against a Comment of trolling,
And by ignoring end them: to unsub, to reply
No more; and by a flounce, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Internet is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. Particularly for those
Of us who read on Mobile and thus lack Stylish.
[ticky]
@Viverrine
Brilliant.
@ TheYoungPretender
Hmm. I had overlooked or forgotten that part of the conversation, but now you bring it up I could certainly see Alexandra Erin in the Best Fan Writer category, yes.
Hmm. I’d have to go see how that would rearrange my longlist.
@Cat
It’s getting to that point, yes, where any new thing knocks old things off. Tetris. It was well over a month ago, but I’d been looking for what some of our old hands thought of the appropriate place to nominate it all.
Possibly I should have said Worldcon/Hugos rather than just Hugos. When did the thing with locking one group out in the early days happen? Ugh hit by truck memory problems leave me without enough details to do a proper Google search.
Happy birthday Mike Glyer
I’m trying to keep my nominations puppygate limited. I’d like to have this year looked back on for the works as being quality/fun rather than being helping the RP/SP be remembered.
I’ve put Alexandra Erin as Fan Writer
Currently I’m looking ST for Related:
neuro tribes
Letters to Tiptree
Thing Explainer
Felicia Day
The Wheel of Time Companion
And a bunch more which are on my kindle which I’m working my way through. Hugo TBR has me buried
@Viverrine
Love it. Thank you.
Viverinne
This internet is for you ! Wonderful.
Adding to @paul’s birthday greetings to our host.
Happy birthday, Mike!
Mind the pixels, and the scrolls will take care of themselves.
6) I saw Deadpool on Monday. It is frigging hillarious, it is chock-full of sly stuff from the Marvel Universe, and it is true to the established character. There is a whole bunch of Deadpool stuff out there already, from comics to video games, and the movie uses all of it.
In other words, the movie is true to The Lore.
That’s the thing Hollywood still doesn’t get about the Marvel movies. All of them are true to the existing cannon of the Marvel Universe. A place like Middle Earth that’s been under construction since the 1960’s. It’s ‘real’, you can’t ignore it.
That’s why things like the latest Fantastic Four movie sucked. No respect for the lore. Michael B. Jordan did a good job acting, but he was screwed from the moment he took the job. Because Johnny Storm is not a black kid. So much revision and lack of respect for the comics made the movie just another Hollywood lame action flick with sciency stuff in it.
Many people predicted this, all were told the shut up because “nerd racism”. Movie came out, tanked hard and vanished, now we don’t hear about the nerd racism so much. Sorry, Johnny Storm is a blonde kid with a bad attitude and the brain of a chicken. That’s who he is. You can’t re-write that.
Why did John Carter of Mars suck? Same reason, no respect for the book. Anybody remember the Thunderbirds movie? It sucked! Same reason, no respect.
Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, Ant Man, Thor, DeadPool, why are all these things huge hits? On TV there’s Daredevil, Agents of Shield, Agent Carter. Great shows, commercial successes. Lightning striking that many times in the same place, when the only thing DC can claim worked is a couple of Batman movies?
Respect for the source material.
And what -is- the source material, when all is said and done? Once upon a time, Stan Lee looked at the New York City landscape and said to himself, “Gee, what if there was a kid who could swing between these buildings?” The first time I saw NYC, I finally understood Spider Man. Whereas DC used to have Superman pick up a baseball diamond by the corner, Stan Lee said “That’s stupid! What if this was real? What would happen?”
Marvel movies don’t suck because Stan Lee can finally tell Hollywood what to do. That is what’s happening. They should pay attention to what Stan Lee says instead of wasting hundreds of millions casting black actors to play the part of white characters because politics.
Can Dolph Lundgren play Blade in a movie? No. Can Wesley Snipes be Batman? No.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY EXCLAMATION FOR MIKE.
Florida Man, it turns out, is largely an artifact of Florida’s open-records laws:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRs-7_BsYNc
Happy birthday to OGH!
(And have we done “The scroll has already started; it is too late for the pixels to vote” yet?)
Other BRW suggestions: “Ten billion tomorrows : how science fiction technology became reality and shapes the future”, Brian Clegg; the documentary film “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison Of Belief”; “Space Helmet for a Cow: The Mad, True Story of Doctor Who”, Paul Kirkley.
You can check to see if scroll ideas have been used https://file770.com/?page_id=22881
Happy birthday, Mike!
The book sounds interesting, but I don’t see why a book about RPGs would win a Hugo award. There are awards in the RPG community that are a better fit.
@rcade
Enough of it refers to the experience of being a fan at the time and question and up through today that I felt that it had as good an argument as the Gygax biography. The Hugos are a bit of big tent, so I figured why not? I also tend to be fascinated by the history and sociology of belief systems and creeds, so it’s really in the wheelhouse. And to be blunt, fandom is shaped enough by the fortress mentality that reading about some of the barbarians at the gates who are actually there, (as opposed imagined to be there a la puppy-dom) seemed, well, really relevant.
Let it be known that I am resurrecting SMOF News. This is a feed of news of interest from a con-running perspective. It aims to be short on politics (i.e., no blow-by-blow of the Puppy Wars), and provide a home for stories that aren’t general-interest enough to make it onto the usual fannish news sources (like the story about California starting to enforce its laws about using volunteers, or news of the form Big Hotel Chain Changes Important Policy).
Everything it posts will be fully visible without logging into Ello.
Happy Birthday, Mike!
I see that in honour of the occasion the blog has returned us all to 2016; I hope that you have had, are continuing to have, and will have had a wonderful birthday…
@The Phantom: So out of everything they changed for the FF movie–Ben Grimm as an abused child who’s quoting the man who beat him every time he says, “It’s Clobberin’ Time!”, Doom as a super-powered hacker who wants to destroy the world for Reasons, Reed running away and abandoning his friends for something like a year to the tender mercies of the military…what you focus on is, “They just can’t make Johnny Storm black!”
…yeeeeahhhhhhstoptalkingforeverplease.
(9) The number of Hugos a work should win is directly proportional to the number of Chapter Fives it has, apparently.
Can Samuel L Jackson play Nick Fury? No…oh, sorry yes obviously because he did in multiple highly successful movies.
Let’s all thank The Phantom for showing his true colors. Not just an anger management poster child who always needs to have his hand firmly around a big powerful gun, but you’re standard reason Reddit now equals cesspool in most people’s minds.
Now that I’ve said that, looking at my long list for novels, an it’d take dynamite to get Fifth Season off there. Same story with Ancillary Mercy and Grace of Kings. The other two spots… that’s taking some deciding.
And Happy Birthday to OGH.
@Mike Glyer – Happy birthday!
@Viverrine – ::claps::
@Phantom – While I agree that part of the reason F4 sucked was due to the fact that it had no relation to the source material (Arsehole Reed! Whiny Doom! The source for the Clobberin’ Time phrase!), I think it’s really, really …lacking in perspective to think that it came down to “Johnny Storm is not black”. That movie had just so many problems, and what you’re pointing to was not one of them.
I really liked John Carter though. It was hella fun.
ETA – Triple Ninja’d!
Can Wesley Snipes be Batman? No.
Actually, Phantom, that could be fun. It would be a very strange take on Batman, sure, but I wouldn’t categorically say no.
And of the many problems with that FF movie, Michael B Jordan as Johnny Storm isn’t three of them.
And I did like John Carter, too.
Actually, Thor has absolutely no respect for the source material. It is as if they did a movie about Jesus where he was an alien with hightech walk-on-water shors and sometimes was replaced by another Jesus that is a frog.
It is absolutely NOT faithful to The Lore.
But, y’know, I feel his pain every time they make a movie and cast Adam Sandler in the role of a normal person.
They sucked because they weren’t very good films. Well, John Carter wasn’t so bad. Not all of the sucky Marvel films tank – the Thor films are pretty bad, the X-Films meh, but the renaissance in Marvel movies is because the films don’t just succeed, it’s that they’re good-to-great, written and made by people with talent. No amount of respect can compete with an inch of talent. Though I am generally glad they’re respectful of the source material, and yes that’s part of why those talented people made good films.
You’re right that FF displayed the how utterly out-of-step efforts to distance comics movies from their comic sources are. On the other hand I really hope they limit Stan Lee’s input to the cameos. I really do.
The racist nerds were still racist, and no more right on that point than the misogynists were about Fury Road and the racists/misogynists were about The Force Awakens. FF didn’t suck because they made Johny black. It sucked for so many other reasons, it isn’t funny. Or maybe it is.
As noted in another recent comment thread, the only thing locked in on my Best Related is Invisible 2 (Edited by Jim c. Hines). I have a lot of reading to go (But at least I feel like I have read enough novels to be making a reasonable stab at my favoured votes, even if I see so many more I still wanna read. I can pause for some non-fiction again.)
I am firmly in the Alexandra Erin as Best Fan Writer camp, not for Best Related. Too many small clever things, not one good unified one.
Phantom:
I suspect that John Carter didn’t fail because it did not respect the source material. I would imagine the people who actually know the source material for John Carter in 2016 well enough to know that it deviated from it probably numbers in the high hundreds to low thousands.
And I suspect that, actually, is the real reason it failed more than anything else.
Or where Jesus is a magical lion living in a land with Father Christmas and an evil witch 🙂
From memory (and probably paraphrased as a result), MKupperman on Twitter: “The best thing about the XXX Marvel parodies is that they all have real Stan Lee cameos too.”
I wouldn’t mind a movie based on Francesco Francavilla’s “Batman 1972” concepts.
Happy Birthday Mike! Wishing you many more!
(6): Uh-oh, Gunn said the “O” word. Already Hollywood products ate hissing and sinking back to their lairs.
(12): Honestly, I’ve had the same problem with my fingers wanting to type “Scalzi” rather than “Scalia”.
I’m also wondering how long it will be before “Scalia” drops off of Swype.
(13) The fundamental problem of there not being a real justification for human expansion across the solar system, seems to have been missed.
Note, I’m all in favour of exploration- satisfying curiosity is justification enough for that. But colonization? There’s no motive sitting enough to justify the expense. Basically, he’s looking for propaganda films to support his fantasy.
@The Phantom Are you seriously trying to argue that Marvel movies would be better if Nick Fury wasn’t played by Samuel L. Jackson? He owns the role.
I liked John Carter of Mars. It was a very very silly film. In a good way.
what you focus on is, “They just can’t make Johnny Storm black!”
I’ll bet he is all bent out of shape about Kirk kissing Uhura too.
There’s reasonable disagreement on issues like this. Every Hugo voter gets to decide how big the tent is for a science fiction/fantasy award.
I believe the “best related work” should relate to something that’s obviously science fiction or fantasy. If an RPG-related work merits consideration, it should be because the work ties directly into SF/F. So I’d consider the Vorkosigan Saga RPG, Numenera RPG, Gary Gygax biography and a non-fiction book about SF RPGs eligible, but not a general work about RPGs or an RPG whose setting is not SF/F.
I don’t know that I’d say John Carter didn’t respect the source material, but it certainly took more liberties than I was comfortable with. Having said that, it was an enjoyable film to the extent that I could kind of divorce it from Burroughs’ Barsoom.
I think its failure owes more to the fact that it was called “John Carter” and not “A Princess of Mars” or even “John Carter of Mars”, but is primarily due to its getting caught up in Disney corporate infighting and so not getting any kind of marketing push to speak of.
(And I’m still bitter that when Disney did their omnibus rereleases of the Barsoom novels, they left out all of Burroughs’ introductions and forewords.)
The Beast That Shouted “Scroll!” at the Heart of the Pixel.
@rcade
It’s very largely about D&D in the 1980s though.
I wouldn’t read too much into the “best related” award having gone to books every year before 2014, given that the category was called either “best related book” or “best related nonfiction book” until 2010. The nominators and administrators seem to have interpreted “related” fairly broadly (e.g. Cosmos, The Bakery Men Don’t See, Science Made Stupid, and After Man), but an individual article or essay isn’t a book.
(I see from the Hugo awards website that the category name was changed from “related book” to “related non-fiction book” then back to “related book” and then back to “related non-fiction book” before the current “related work.” )
(12) KEYBOARD KOMEDY (Scalzi/Scalia edition)
A completely unsurprising bio-auto-correct error, in my experience. I still remember the rough timepoint in my life when muscle memory of whole-word typing became my greatest source of error. When typing rapidly, I’m incapable of producing “heater”, “heathen”, or similar words correctly the first time.