(1) CARNEGIE AND GREENAWAY LONGLISTS. The longlists for the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals have been announced.
The Carnegie Medal, established in 1936, is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book for children. The Kate Greenaway Medal has been given since 1955 for distinguished illustration in a book for children.
Locus Online has identified the works of genre interest on both lists.
(2) TOLKIEN POEMS DISCOVERED. Two poems by J.R.R. Tolkien have been discovered in a 1936 copy of a school annual reports the BBC.
The Shadow Man, and a Christmas poem called Noel, were found at Our Lady’s School, Abingdon.
It is thought Tolkien got to know the school while he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.
The poems were printed a year before Tolkien’s first literary sensation The Hobbit was published.
The Shadow Man is an earlier version of a poem eventually published in 1962 in Tolkien’s Adventures of Tom Bombadil collection.
The existence of the poems came to light after American Tolkien scholar Wayne G. Hammond got in touch with the school.
According to The Guardian —
The first poem, The Shadow Man, is an early version of a poem that Tolkien went on to publish in his 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. It tells of “a man who dwelt alone/ beneath the moon in shadow”, who “sat as long as lasting stone,/and yet he had no shadow”. When “a lady clad in grey” arrives, he wakes, and “clasped her fast, both flesh and bone;/and they were clad in shadow”.
The second, Noel, is a Christmas poem, albeit one set in scenery that would not be out of place in Middle-earth. “The hall was dark without song or light,/The fires were fallen dead,” writes Tolkien, going on to portray “the lord of snows”, whose “mantle long and pale/Upon the bitter blast was spread/And hung o’er hill and dale”.
(3) TWITTER WISHES. John Scalzi, in “What I Want Out of Twitter”, explains the changes he’d like to see made in this social media platform.
What I’m more interested in is how Twitter can make itself better, which is a different question than how Twitter can be saved. Twitter’s major issue, as everyone except apparently Twitter’s C-bench knows, is that there are a bunch of shitheads on it who like to roll up to whomever they see as targets (often women and/or people in marginalized groups) and dogpile on them. That’s no good….
So, if Twitter were asking me what I wanted out of Twitter to make it an optimal service for me, here’s what I would suggest, in no particular order:…
Other things to allow filtering of:
- Profile keywords: If I could filter out every single account that had “#GamerGate” in its profile text, as an example, my replies would have been a lot quieter in the last couple of years.
- Accounts based on who they follow: Right now I’m thinking of five Twitter accounts of people I think are basically real assholes. I suspect that if you are following all five of them, you are probably also an asshole, and I don’t want to hear from you. In this particular case I think it’d useful to have the filtering be fine-grained, as in, rather than just filtering everyone who followed one account, you’d filter them if they followed Account 1 AND Account 2 AND Account 3 (and so on). It would also be useful to be able to do this more than once, i.e., have more than one follower filter, because often it’s not just one group being annoying.
(4) THE HAMMER. Robot6 asks “Are you worthy to wield this Thor’s Hammer Tool Kit?”
Noting a serious lack of geek-themed hardware, Dave Delisle came up with an idea for a tool set to tackle virtually any home-repair project in the Nine Realms, even the famed clogged drains of Jotunheim.
As you can see, the Thor Hammer Tool Kit looks like the fabled Mjolnir, until it’s opened to reveal a claw hammer, wrench, screwdriver, socket set and so on.
Click through to see an animated gif that makes it all clear.
(5) UNREADY PLAYER ONE. Science Fiction.com reports “’Ready Player One’ Moves Release Date To Dodge ‘Star Wars’”.
And now that the release date for Rian Johnson’s ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ has officially moved from May 2017 to December 15, 2017, it looks like even the legendary Steven Spielberg is jumping out of the way in hopes of not getting steamrollered.
According to Variety, the iconic filmmaker’s latest film ‘Ready Player One’ will push back it’s release date to March 30, 2018. Originally slated for December 15, 2017, the movie based on Ernest Cline’s acclaimed nostalgia-filled sci-fi adventure has vacated that spot to give a galaxy far, far away some space. After all, they definitely don’t want to end up like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s ‘Sisters’, which went up against J.J. Abrams’ highly anticipated blockbuster during this past holiday season and didn’t stand a chance against the intergalactic juggernaut.
(6) A MUNDANE YEAR FOR GRAMMY. The 2016 Grammy Award winners didn’t have much of genre interest. I’m really going to have to stretch a point…
Best pop duo/group performance
“Uptown Funk”: Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
Although the music video for the song wasn’t a Grammy nominee, it’s the main reason I’m reporting any of these awards, because fannish actor Ed Green appears in the background of it beginning at :25 — he’s on the left, speaking on the pay phone. (He also appears at right, below, in the title frame.)
Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media
Birdman
Antonio Sanchez, composer
Then, Jimmy Carter won the Best Spoken Word Album category, where Janis Ian was also a nominee.
(9) ONLY IN IT FOR THE PUN. The Telegraph says “BBC to axe television and radio divisions as part of radical management overhaul”.
Lord Hall, the director-general of the BBC, will not replace Danny Cohen, the corporation’s recently departed director of television, and is instead moving ahead with radical plans to abolish the broadcaster’s radio and television divisions.
“’Doc Martin’ and ‘Doctor Who’ to be combined into new programme, ‘Doc Who’,” reports Andy Porter.
(10) LE GUIN. Ursula K. Le Guin continues answering people’s questions about writing in “Navigating the Ocean of Story (2)” at Book View Café.
Do you consider it a good idea to offer your work in progress to numerous and/or unselected critics? If so, how do you decide which criticisms are valid and useful?
To offer work for critique to an unselected group on the Net, people who remain strangers, is to extend trust to absolute strangers. Some of them will take advantage of the irresponsibility afforded by the medium.
Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth: Don’t do it unless you’ve considered the risks. Pay attention to any comment that really makes sense to you; value any intelligent praise you get. That’s about as far as trust can take you. Keep an eye out for know-it-alls who make like critics, spouting secondhand rules. And remember some may be there because they want to make soup out of your bones.
This is not the voice of experience. I never gave my work to strangers to criticize in first draft or at any stage. I never submitted a piece to an editor or agent until it was, to the best of my knowledge and ability, finished.
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 16, 1923 – Archeologists opened the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born February 16, 1958 – Lisa Loring, the actress who played Wednesday Addams in the original Addams Family TV series.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born February 16, 1926 – Rusty Hevelin
- Born February 16, 1957 – LeVar Burton, Jr., who played ST:TNG’s Geordi LaForge.
(14) CHAOS HORIZON. Chaos Horizon comments on the final SFWA 2015 Best Novel Recommended Reading List. It’s interesting that only six novels have more than 20 recommendations.
Gannon [Raising Caine] and Schoen [Barsk] have shot up this list like rockets, going from nowhere in November to dominating by the end. Those 34 and 33 numbers are so impressive it’s hard to imagine them not getting Nebula nominations at this point. Overall, there were 728 total recommendations; that has to represent a substantial amount of the final Nebula nomination vote. Gannon and Schoen will raise some eyebrows if they get nominations; these SF books certainly got less press, acclaim, and online discussion than other SF books like Sevenves or Aurora. The Nebula is quirky like this, often favoring smaller authors over the big names. If they get nominated, I think the question is whether or not one of those books can win. Will Gannon follow the McDevitt route—get nominated enough and eventually you’ll win? Will Barsk grab a ton of new readers and take the Nebula? I think there’s a definite advantage to being fresh in your voters’ minds.
(15) WRIGHT BACKS HIS BEST EDITOR. John C. Wright adds his endorsement to the Rabid Puppy slate.
The Puppy-kickers are our ideological foes bent on replacing popular and well crafted sci fi tales with politically correct science-free and entertainment-free moping dreck that reads like something written by a highschool creative writing course dropout.
The Puppy-kickers have repeatedly and vehemently assured us assured us that soliciting votes from likeminded fans for stories you judge worthy was a “slate” and therefore was (for reasons not specified) totally and diabolically evil and wrong and bad, was not something insiders had been doing for decades, and was always totally inexcusable, except when they did it, and voted in a slate to grant ‘No Award’ to categories where they had lost their stranglehold over the nominations.
In that spirit, I hereby officially announce in my capacity as the Grand Inquisitor of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, that the following list is the recommended reading list of our Darkest Lord only, and not a voting slate.
These are the recommendations of my editor, Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.
(16) MESSAGE FREE. Those who feel the yarn is the most important thing may find themselves voting for this —
https://twitter.com/battyknits/status/699679210428882946
(17) MILLENNIALS. “Millennial Fans: An Interview with Louisa Stein (Part Two)” conducted by Henry Jenkins at Confessions of an Aca-Fan.
Many of the shows you write about as Millennial programs are also shows with strong female leads and targeted at female consumers — Friday Night Lights would be a notable exception on your list. So, what happens to the gendering of fandom as we move towards Millennial fan culture?
Issues of gender permeate millennial culture, fan culture, and the relationship between the two. Masculinizing—or feminizing—fan culture has been one way industry interests tame fandom’s perceived unruliness. Seemingly masculine forms of fandom (and I would emphasize that these areas, like gender itself, are social constructs) have already been categorized as industrially legible and profit friendly. The fanboy stereotype has its share of taboo associations, going all the way back to the “Get a Life” bit on Saturday Night Live that Textual Poachers opens with; but the fanboy position has since been spun into industry heralded narratives of superfans and fanboy auteurs (see Scott, Kohnen), with the lines toward brand support and profit already clearly delineated.
Obsession_inc (and many others citing her) have termed this divide “affirmational fandom,” versus “transformative fandom,” with the latter perceived as more the practice of female consumers who transform media texts into art and fiction, often in so doing significantly changing their meaning. In Millennial Fandom, I actually argue that transformational and affirmational fandom are more deeply intertwined than we might at first assume, but nevertheless, at a discursive level, the distinction helps us to see why and how transformative (perceived “feminine”) practices have been and continue to be treated as suspect, marked as taboo, and policed.
(18) AQUA JODHPURS. “Our first good look at Jason Momoa’s full Aquaman costume comes from ToyFair” at Yahoo! TV.
Then along came ToyFair 2016. Ahhhh, good old ToyFair. Hosted in New York City at the beginning of each year, the convention showcases the best of upcoming merchandise to look forward to. It’s also ALWAYS good for a spoiler or two. One of this year’s was a complete look at Jason Momoa’s costume in Batman v Superman, complete with colors. Behold!
The tattoos on Aquaman’s chest appear to continue onto his pants(?) which are a murky green. The better to blend into the ocean floor with. Of course, the camo look is marred by the bright gold knee-highs, but a king has to make concessions for style. I’m curious if Aquaman’s asymmetrical armor has a backstory is just there to look cool. Also, he is totally standing in rubble. Could it be that Wonder Woman isn’t the only superhero to show up at the end to clean up Batman and Superman’s mess?
(19) SHATNER BOOK REVIEW. Ryan Britt at Tor.com says “William Shatner’s New Memoir Leonard is Surprising and Moving”.
Whether they’re in their Kirk and Spock guises, or just being themselves, it’s hard to prefer William Shatner to Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy just seems more comfortable and real of the two, whereas Shatner appears to be putting on airs. Over the years, William Shatner seems to have figured this out and embraced the fact that no one will ever totally take him seriously. All of this makes the publication of a memoir written by him about Leonard Nimoy both look like a cynical cash-grab and a disingenuous maneuver of faux-love.
But if you’re a Star Trek fan, or casually interested in Leonard Nimoy, Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man reveals that not only is Shatner a good guy, but that Leonard Nimoy may not have been the cool one, and did in fact fight all sorts of demons both inside and out.
(20) CORREIA’S SCHOOL FOR BUSINESS. Larry Correia says “One Star Reviews Over Book Prices are Dumb”, which is absolutely true.
I know writers aren’t supposed to respond to reviews, but I’m not responding to this as a writer, I’m responding to it as a retired accountant.
I am the author in question. Your review doesn’t hurt anything except my overall average. You aren’t sticking it to the man. You aren’t harming the corporate fat cats. If you think the book sucks, give it one star. That’s awesome. That’s what the stars are for. But you don’t use one star to bitch about the price of eBooks. That just makes you look stupid. We shouldn’t still be having this conversation with anybody who isn’t a Bernie Sanders supporter.
Now, Accountant Hat on. This is pretty basic stuff. This is how basic costing works, not just for books, but quite literally everything. But today, we’ll talk about books, because your ridiculous review has pissed me off. I’m going to dumb this down and keep it simple as possible.
The rest is a long but lighthearted lesson about the business of producing books that makes cost accounting entertaining. (I know you think I’m being facetious, which is why I need to say, no, I really found it entertaining.)
(21) ANOTHER OPINION ABOUT THE KENYON SUIT. Amanda S. Green at Mad Genius Club begins her “And the World Keeps Turning” column: “I will give the same caveat here that Sarah gave in her post. I have not read the pleadings filed on Ms. Kenyon’s behalf. Nor have I read Ms. Clare’s books.”
On Friday of last week, the Guardian published an article that addresses, from Ms. Clare’s point of view. Two things stood out for me and, yes, I know I am paying attention to lawyer-speak but the attorney, John Cahill, does bring up some interesting questions. First, “the lawsuit failed to identify a single instance of actual copying or plagiarism by Cassie.” The second is that Ms. Clare has been writing these characters and series, iirc, for ten years. That’s a long time to wait before filing suit and part of me wonders if the fact Ms. Clare’s series is being made into a television series wasn’t the impetus for the suit.
To be fair, the suit does allege that Ms. Clare, in her series, does, “employ a line of warriors who protect the normal world from demons”, both cover how “a young person becomes part of the Dark-Hunters’ (or Shadowhunters’) world after being saved by a gorgeous blond Dark-Hunter (or Shadowhunter)”, and “both Dark-Hunters and Shadowhunters have enchanted swords that are divinely forged, imbued with otherworldly spirits, have unique names, and glow like heavenly fire”.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I can think of any number of books, short stories, TV shows and movies that could fall under that description. Those are, indeed, story elements, but does it rise to the level of plagiarism and copyright infringement?
Green steps into the judge’s shoes, for at least a few sentences, to voice skepticism about the plaintiff’s case. Not having read the complaint, Green missed the opportunity to see its list of the statutes the judge is asked to apply. With the help of Google she could have tested lawyer Cahill’s argument, as well as her own doubts that the infringement is actionable.
(22) A MENU ALOFT. Rick Foss was interviewed by Leanna Garfield for her Tech Insider post “We’re in a golden age of airplane food – for some people”.
When American Airlines recently launched a 15-hour direct flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, it also debuted a new menu. Flight attendants offer first-class passengers complimentary glasses of 2010 Penfolds Grange Shiraz (normally $850 per bottle) and roasted sirloin steak with red wine sauce.
Travelers in the economy cabin are still only treated to peanuts (But hey, at least they now get complimentary spirits — quite the perk).
The improvements in first and business class have more to do with the economics of the airline industry than they do with a desire to provide better service, Richard Foss, culinary historian and author of “Food in the Air and Space: The Surprising History of Food and Drink in the Skies,” tells Tech Insider.
Foss has studied the history of airline food for over a decade, from the glory days in the ’70s when airlines served lobster to today’s inflight tuna sandwiches. Here’s a look at that history, and how airlines are trying to bring back the golden age of airline dining for high-paying passengers.
[Thanks to Will R., JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jonathan Edelstein.]
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@TheYoungPretender
“he seems like a such sad, sick, pitiable old man.”
Old? Wright’s younger than I am, and I am in my prime!
(I’m only saying that to maintain File 770’s reputation for featuring “some of the least intelligent commenters on the Internet.”)
I suspect that what he was good at was being edited by David Hartwell.
Wright is only a couple of years older than me, and I am, in all modesty, in my prime, one of the primest priming today.Belated Happy Birthday Mike, otanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu.
Thanks for making this site one I enjoy coming back to frequently.
@Patrick McCormack
Looking it up and… god, I’d thought he was far older! It’s his attitude, I think. All the pining for lost golden ages and I thought he experienced his Eden of pre-Civil Rights Era America and it’s Great Writers as an adult.
Re 20:
When he’s not whining about evil liberals wanting to take away his guns and keep him from winning a Hugo, Correia is quite entertaining. I read some of his early Monster Hunter books and they were fun “popcorn reading”. I’d love to see more along the lines of this article (and his earlier books) from him in the future.
@TheYoungPretender
Ah, I feel so much better now!!
Soon Lee
Open the door.
You are in a maze of nine and sixty tribal lays, all correctly constructed.
.
He has reached the prime of life: his fifties
(14) Chaos Horizon seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that because they saw a lot of buzz about novels like Aurora and Seveneyes, that they must be popular. I’m sure they are popular – among a certain segment of the reading public. But what seems to be a common failing is that people think that because the circle of people they associate with and pay attention to loves something, that means it necessarily is popular with everyone. Sometimes that is true. Other times it is not.
The key is that assuming it must be true can lead one to interesting places – for example the voter living in Montana who assumes that because no one he knows voted for Obama, that means no one did, and so his victory in the Presidential election must have been the result of vote rigging. Or we see people like JCW (and other Puppies) opining that no one likes the books that have been nominated for the Hugo award over the last decade (or two, or three, or four, depending on what day it is). It seems likely that none of JCW’s confidants liked Ancillary Justice or The Goblin Emperor, but extrapolating from that to “nobody liked it, therefore evil conspiracy” is a pure Puppy fallacy.
In these sorts of evaluations, context matters, and context is something that the Pups seem to ignore almost gleefully. Chaos Horizon, on the other hand, seems to have simply not been aware of their blind spot. For them, the difference in the apparent popularity of Aurora and the Nebula results amounts to a curiosity, not a call to arms. On File 770 we’ve seen numerous people have poor reactions to Aurora, and others embrace it as a wonderful book, so its mediocre performance on the Nebula list comes as no surprise. But even if everyone here loved it (or everyone loathed it) that wouldn’t be dispositive with respect to its actual popularity, as one would need broader context to make that evaluation – and it is probably almost impossible to get an overview of the field that is wide-sweeping enough to actually be able to make a determination.
(15) You know, JCW’s whining about the “dreck” her claims has been nominated for the Hugos might carry more weight if he hadn’t admitted that he hasn’t actually read most of the books he complains about. His screed might be a little bit less laughable if the Pups hadn’t slated some of the most turgid message-fiction to ever reach the ballot. As usual, JCW, while styling himself as a coldly-rational intellectual, reveals that he’s actually a fool whose opinions are driven entirely by ignorance, arrogance, and emotion. Every thing he’s written over the last year has made it very apparent just how much his career is owed to the efforts of the editors at Tor who transformed his usual drivel into something coherent.
(21) Using a newspaper article as a launching off point is all well and good, but not actually reading the complaint itself when it is readily available before opining on its merit is kind of silly. I’d wait until responsive pleadings were filed before opining on the apparent merits of the case, but that’s just me being a lawyer and all.
@Steve Davidson: Oh, absolutely: I very rarely buy new books myself unless I already know that I like the author. Getting stuff used or waiting for a sale or otherwise factoring in the price just seems wise. And saying that this particular book isn’t worth the price is totally reasonable as well, especially if you support it with reasons. It’s just, when an entire Amazon review (or a substantial part thereof) is kvetching about standard ebook pricing, the reviewer sounds…deeply out of touch, at best. Like one of those guys who is *deeply affronted* by a request to send documents in Word because blah blah open source blah blah Microsoft blah.
And both people may well have a point. They may not, and that sort of is my point: both ships have sailed, they aren’t among the great injustices of the universe, and most people don’t care. Ebook prices are what they are; most people use MSWord; this is how the world is, and while that guy who protests the status quo of $6 electronic paperbacks/the hardcover/paperback price drop in ebooks/etc in the review section may think he’s Bravely Raising Consciousness, he’s really coming off as either Old Man Yells at Cloud or, worse, one of the main characters from Reality Bites.
And I speak as someone who *does* in fact support Sanders, and doesn’t know what Correia’s on about with that comment.
Wright –
LOL.
@Matt Y: LOL.
Exactly. Somehow he missed all of the explanations as to why slating is detrimental to the Hugos. He also continues the Puppy lie that slates have been done all along, never mind that there is no evidence that this is the case. Then again, I don’t expect anything but dissembling and lies out of the Pups in general and JCW specifically, so I’m not surprised.
Re: Wright
What slate? It’s a “Recommended Reading List”. It’s just a coincidence, I am sure, that there are precisely five things in each category. Pure coincidence.
Some People Call Me the Space Pixel, Some Call Me the Gangster of Scrolls
MidAmeriCon II has tweeted as of about 14 hours ago that the room block has been expanded for most hotels: https://twitter.com/MidAmeriCon2/status/699771415197683712
Also, happy belated birthday to our gracious host! Appertain yourself a drink!
Cause I’m a filker
I’m a filer
I’m a voter
I’m a dogpiler
I hurl my insults in the thread
I’m a scroller
A logroller
I’m a midnight troller
I sure don’t want to go to bed
Yeah, JCW is only a few years older than I am — which, in a way, shouldn’t be surprising. His nostalgia for an imaginary lost world has the single-minded purity you typically only get from people who don’t actually remember it. Or, you know, know anything factual about it.
As a reader of reviews, I find one-star reviews over the price of the book to be both useless and annoying, so I’m against them. When I look to a one-star review, I want to see why somebody hate-hate-hated the book in question. And I want to see a real reason — hating the politics in the book is okay, but hating the politics of the author, while obviously not actually having read the book, is useless and irritating.
I understand from some of the comments here that birthday wishes to our gracious host are in order. Happy birthday!
Ok. So slates are “reading lists” and it’s therefore ok to endorse them because it doesn’t violate the pledge not to appear on slates.
This is a godsend: I can claim to read puppy nominations even when I don’t because “not reading” is now the same as reading (because I say so);
I can No Award everything on a slate that appears on the final ballot and state, quite honestly, that I didn’t do so, because “No Award” is the equivalent of a vote (because I say so),
and I can run around the web and give “four star” reviews (one star) because they’re the same thing also (because I say so).
A huge burden has been lifted. I can do whatever I want and claim it was something else just by saying so in a blog post.
“I’m not sticking No Award on my ballot and leaving slated works off this year. I’m going to read everything in the packet and will vote according to worthiness.”
(and if you believe that, please reference the first few paragraphs of this comment.)
(yes, that is “taking a statement out of context” bait.)
***
Hey, has anyone else ever had the thought that JCW is a C.S. Lewis wannabe? After reading Bandersnatch, I was struck by the seeming coincidences; atheist to believer, writes SF/Fantasy with a strong xtian thread…except not, now that I think of it for what are (hopefully) obvious reasons. Never mind.
@clack: Nobody’s asking the Puppies to exhaustively research the matter. It’s just that admitting you haven’t read the report in question and then choosing to opine at length about it makes one look somewhat foolish.
Would the Dark Lord Funk parody video qualify for Best Related Work?
steve, I believe several people have noted the C.S. Lewishness inherent in John C. Wright, which led Wright to write such things as: C.S. Lewis Was The Joshua Flattening The Walls Of My Disbelief (testimonial) Mere Christians—Inspiring Stories of Encounters with C. S. Lewis, ed. Andrew Lazo and Mary Anne Phemister, Baker Books (February, 2009).
McJulie
I’m not sure how many people are militantly nostalgic for a time they lived through. It’s always something in their dad’s generation. My dad, for instance, once told me that the American Way of Life really ended around 1917. He was born in 1925. The longing for a simpler, earlier time seems to come largely from Hollywood movies, which your political nostalgists insist they hate, even after they derive their worldview from the picture the movies presented. Sure, they believe that commies were infiltrating the industry back in the 30s and 40s (and every other time period), but they only really got angry over it when they started hinting that the image of the Great Melting Pot, the Bastion of Democracy, might not be completely true to life.
Since it’s research and scholarship that casts our forebears in a less-flattering light, they have to hate those things as well, even as they try to wrap themselves clumsily in their trappings (quoting classical authors incorrectly and out of context, spelling Latin terms wrong because they’re mimicking what someone who understood these terms once said to them in a discussion).
They’re pretty much cargo cultists, hoping that by invoking outward appearances and slogans, they will fill their emptiness with the values more worthy people earned, and believing that the flaws of these worthies weren’t part of their characters, because they exclude the middle of every argument as surely as their heroes in power exclude the middle class. Their incomplete understanding has granted control over them to people who aren’t worthy of even their faulty fealty—their heroes are squeezing them out, and they blame their fellow victims, because their heroes said so, and as Mr. Clemens said, it’s easier to fool someone than to show him he’s been fooled.
@Steve Davidson Ok. So slates are “reading lists” and it’s therefore ok to endorse them because it doesn’t violate the pledge not to appear on slates.
The sad thing is he believes it.
I’m basing this on having grown up with a parent who would make a statement just as illogical and from that day forward he believed so strongly in the lie he’d told it really was truth for him. It wiped out real crimes of abuse, rape, embezzlement, fraud, and more. People deserved what happened to them, he deserved the money, the government owed him. Nothing he did was wrong and I’d watch him convince others. It was scary as all get out. His death was a relief.
It’s taught me to be careful what I say as words are powerful things. They change reality. Yours and others.
But I kinda like your fake plan anyways. 😀
On the topic of Hugo-worthy (and eligible) novels as well as bang for the buck, I just finished Matthew De Abaitua’s If Then (mmpb from Angry Robot). Just… wow, on so many levels.
Here is an insightful review.
This has (dare I say?) rocketed to the top of my Hugo novel list.
ETA: Hmm, for some reason the link isn’t showing up: it’s
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MJN8M3UKAFFY/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0857664662&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books
Things I read this past week:
The Raven and the Reindeer: An excellent and lovely book, which for me struck the perfect balance between fairytale logic and how real people react. And one that, unlike Bryony & Roses, did not leave me with a vague feeling of guilt over how I (mis)treat plants (FWIW, I’ve asked my cats not to chew on them, but, well, cats).
@McJulie
Well said.
@PhilRM
Yep If Then is good, far better than De Abaitua’s previous SF novel.
@Ray:
But the only primes in the fifties are 53 and 59.
Wordplay aside, the talk about one-star reviews reminds me of a conversation I had with several of my students the other day. We had somehow gotten on the topic of ratemyprofessor.com. My page there is generally positive (I’m considered fun and helpful, but not easy), but I have a lone terrible review. Ironically, the students mentioned seeing it, thinking that the student reviewing me had no idea what they were talking about, and swapping to my class because I sounded better than the prof they had signed up with initially.
So… maybe one-star reviews that are in themselves terrible are not so bad for authors? (Except for the way they mangle the average rating and page-ranking.)
@McJulie
I’m reminded of an article that went around a while ago talking about how someone’s idea of “good music” tends to reflect two trends: what was popular when they were young, and what was popular when their parents were young. Read into that what you will.
He must be in his fifthies.
(16) MESSAGE FREE – I don’t knit and I haven’t looked at that book, but if the book is actually a good pattern book I wouldn’t mind seeing it on a shortlist.
(20) CORREIA’S SCHOOL FOR BUSINESS – Correia makes a good argument for why books aren’t quite as cheap as that reviewer he quotes wants. But I disagree slightly with commenters here that price have no place in a review.
The problem with book prices compared to other prices is that book are less replacable with different books. If one thingamajig costs 5$ and a similar thingamajig from another manufacturer costs 10$, you might say that the cheap one is good enough and the expensive one isn’t worth the extra price. But if Goblin Emperor costs 8$ and Ancillary Justice costs 13$, it’s harder to say “no, the expensive book is not worth the extra cost, pick the budget option.” It’s more about which book you actually want to read.
On the other hand, in some cases a book can be replaced with a different one. If one is looking for idle entertainment for a few hours, and don’t expect great literature anyway, it’s not unreasonable to say “nah, 5$ is too much, go for the one that costs 2$.
And then there’s length, which in particular can be an issue with self-published ebooks. If you expect a novel and get a short story, it’s not unreasonable to say in a review that “this book is very short and not worth the price.”
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Also, happy belated(?) birthday to our host!
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Also also, like others I am enjoying The Raven and the Reindeer. (Too many other things on my plate, so reading slow right now.) Although I was worried at a point that I’d get another book on gardening.
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On Wright as Lewis wannabe: His “One bright star … ” is basically Narnia fanfic.
Fugue on February 17, 2016 at 9:33 am said:
I know I’ve made at least one sale as the result of a negative review, though obviously I can’t say what the overall net impact of the review was.
My problem with one-star reviews that focus on price is that they aren’t helpful because I already know the price of the book. Finding out that a reviewer thought the book wasn’t worth the price? Fine, if the reviewer then explains why the book wasn’t worth . . . whatever the price was, in the reviewer’s opinion. A reviewer just upset over the price? Well, I already knew what the book cost before I read the review; I don’t need that information repeated as a reason not to buy the book.
I tend to agree that posting a price-bashing one-star review over an $8 e-book is dumb—I mean, that’s $2 cheaper than the $9.99 price that drove the major publishers so berserk they fomented an illegal conspiracy with Apple to force Amazon to raise it. And $11 cheaper than the hardcover. Anyone who thinks new-release e-books should be even cheaper than that is plainly off their nut.
That said, I think that one-starring for prices that really are outrageously high, like the Big Fives’ $15 new-release e-books, is well-deserved. So maybe what constitutes a valid complaint is a little subjective in my book.
Christian Brunschen: Reading the complaint doesn’t do anything more than inform you about the plaintiff’s allegations and the laws they say have been violated, but in this instance the document is available free, and it seems odd that someone opining about the case at a site that prides itself on educating followers about the publishing industry wouldn’t do that preparation.
Happy birthday, Monsieur Glyer! It has been a pleasure getting to know this place a little.
Another author and I once made up little buttons that said “I’m #1!” after getting our first one-star reviews. I would prefer a review bitching about the price to one that hates the way I licked stamps in the book. You never know if it’s someone you annoyed by the way you signed a book or didn’t say hello the way they thought you should or if they really do have a legitimate issue with the book. And I can’t get back into the book to fix it now, anyway, even if they do have a good point.
As a reader, I don’t pay much attention to the number of stars. I read reviews to see if what they’re describing sounds like something I would like to read, even if they didn’t. It’s the same with movie reviews or anything else. You have no way of knowing if this person loves the kind of thing you hate or vice versa. Over time, you can develop enough experience with a reviewer so that you know whether what they say is likely to accord with your own taste. But mostly anonymous Amazon reviews are not like that at all. Even the Harriet Klausners of the world don’t give you enough to go by, since she tended to love everything and not be very specific.
The Scrolls of the Prophets are Written on Pixel Walls
Matthew Surridge has written a retrospective on The Great Hugo Wars of 2015 which is a rather interesting read. For example, on how exactly how he wandered in to the whole thing:
Soon Lee: I thought it was Muphry’s Law. Have I been misspelling that too? (How appropriate.)
@Mark,
Thanks for the Matthew Surridge link. FWIW, I thought he did the right thing.
ETA: @Mike, Dammit, I’m the one who mispelled it. It’s different levels of wrong/funny.
I just realized that I was going to comment on the copyright infringement matter and I forgot. No one with any knowledge of how the law works would attempt to offer an opinion on the merits of an action without reading the complaint and the relevant statutes or laws first and looking at least a little into how the particular court this will be in front of is likely to decide in such a case. How do you know if a plaintiff has met his or her case if you don’t know what a prima facie case is in that instance? Sure, you can be all, x and y don’t sound that similar to me! But what does that do if you don’t know what they’re alleging the similarities are or what the law requires in the first place? Puffing about how many years it took means nothing if you don’t know if that’s even a factor in this area. And back to the specific court or judge for a minute… If this judge has in the past thrown out similar actions or if this judge is a real hardliner with copyright infringement makes a huge difference, not to mention that different jurisdictions have developed their own standards over the years. If it ever gets to a judge… This filing and the attendant publicity may simply be intended to get the alleged infringer’s publisher to settle and pull the books off the shelf (which is what happened with both the young woman from Harvard who ripped off Megan McCafferty [among others] and with Janet Dailey and her extensive plagiarism of Nora Roberts). To sum up… There is no way of knowing much of anything at this point.
@Matthew Johnson I know I’ve made at least one sale as the result of a negative review, though obviously I can’t say what the overall net impact of the review was.
If I’m browsing books and buy one it’s always because of negative reviews. I only read 3, 2, and 1 star reviews. The negative reviewers let me know if any of my trigger issues will be in the book. 3 star reviews usually give pros and cons. I find the majority of 4 & 5 star reviews to be useless as a consumer unless I know the reviewer. Most 4-5 star reviews repeat the blurb in their own words and gush about how wonderful the book is without telling me why it was wonderful. I buy hundreds of books a year. Price is a factor in my purchase but I usually laugh when I read the reviews which include price complaints as they are rarely well written. There are occasional well written reviews which include price but they are less than 10% of price complaint reviews.
Obviously I’m not the norm (average person doesn’t buy hundreds of books/year). But I know filers who read 3 star reviews when deciding whether to buy a book. On Goodreads I’ve been involved in discussions on this topic and I see a concern expressed for books which don’t have negative reviews. Others on Goodreads have discussed using the negative reviews to find out about triggers/content note concerns as most authors and publishers don’t put this information in the blurb.
Amazon algorithms change once you have 50 reviews. It doesn’t care if they are positive or negative.
I came across one of her reviews recently. It was so out of touch with the other 10-15 reviews of the book. I looked at the name & cracked up. I admit I rarely look at the name of Amazon reviewers. I do take note if they are vine reviewers or top reviewers but not names unless the book is written by an indie friend or someone I’m acquainted with. In the case of indies it’s always interesting to see how many reviewers I know. Also lets me know if they’ve broken outside their/our circle yet. Also bought can give you an idea if someone’s broken outside of their circle.
Amazon algorithms can be fun to watch in action. I’ve gone off topic.
@BigelowT
Oh yeah go all lawyerly on us. Bring in facts, judges, legal language. But I ask you… What does that have to do with having an opinion?
I suppose next you’ll point out its the difference between an informed opinion and a foolish looking opinion. Pfft those factists take the fun out of bloviating.
There are two consistent characters in John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books; the title character and his best friend, an economist.
Terry Pratchett gave us a bookkeeper-turned-barbarian-hero in a story about Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde.
It can be done, and is still rare enough that it would be a nice change from the usual background for adventure heroes.
The longing for a golden age known only through second- or third- or seventh-hand stories, on the other hand, goes back thousands of years. That’s not new and creative; at best, it’s like rereading the fairy tales of your childhood.
It is worth remembering, when being nostalgic for a time before you were born, that the time you are painting in those soft pastels included people being nostalgic for a time even further back. There were giants in the Earth in those days, and Methuselah lived 900 years.
(edited to add a comparison)
He’s old at heart.
Kurt Busiek on February 17, 2016 at 12:15 pm said:
Hugo noms, it is true, can be slated to you, if you’re old at heart
It’s not hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind, if you’re old at heart
Now here is the best part
You’ll be in Breitbart
If you are among the very old at heart
Absolutely, Mister Pixel/Positively, Mister Scroll
(A brief fragment, you get the idea…)
You slated books (A reading list!) We disagreed (Scalzi was pissed!)
Ah yes, I remember it well…
You hated gays (Twas rhetoric!) Ranted for days (My wit was quick!)
Ah yes, I remember it well…
@Steve Davidson
Yes, a wannabe C.S. Lewis, without the wit, charm, brevity or simple humanity of the original. But especially the brevity. Whatever else you can say about C.S. Lewis, the man usually knew to take a knife to the word count.
There actually is a Muphry’s Law: “If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law