Pixel Scroll 2/19/16 The Fifth Editor

(1) LONGEST EVER 1-HOUR EPISODE. A Kickstarter is raising $15,000 to produce “A Skyboat Audiobook of Harlan Ellison’s Star Trek Teleplay”.

On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the launching of Star Trek – the Original Series, we want to make the FIRST-TIME-EVER, 6-hour AUDIOBOOK, full-cast version of Harlan Ellison’s book THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER.

To clarify, this book contains Harlan Ellison’s original teleplay; NOT the one eventually filmed. This is the episode which won the Writers’ Guild Award for best dramatic hour-long script. The filmed teleplay also won Harlan a Hugo Award. The book also contains Harlan’s Essay on the controversy backstory, and several tributes from his colleagues.

Roles will be voiced by LeVar Burton, John Rubinstein (a Tony Award winner, as Captain Kirk), Scott Brick, Jean Smart (Emmy Award winner as Edith Keeler), Harlan Ellison, Stefan Rudnicki, J. Paul Boehmer, Richard McGonagle, David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, Richard Gilliland, Jim Meskimen, Orson Scott Card, and Robert Forster.

In addition, Harlan Ellison has narrated his essay describing the before, during, and after of the controversy surrounding the episode, which has been voted as the most beloved episode of the Star Trek® series. It also includes:

  • Harlan’s rewrite of the Prologue and Act One to eliminate the controversial “Jewels of Sound” drug-dealing elements that the censors and powers-that-were objected to at the time,
  • plus two screenplay treatments written by Harlan,
  • and tribute essays from authors and colleagues who-were-there.

Gabrielle de Cuir also has an article on the Kickstarter page detailing the many differences between Ellison’s original script and the aired episode which include —

The original opening sequences contain the “Jewels of Sound” subplot that was so controversial at the time, and eventually was eradicated from the teleplay altogether. We have several characters in this version that did not appear in the final: the villains Beckwith and LeBeque, the iconic Trooper (the Verdun veteran) and a delightfully surly Cook.

(2) CLAGS WORKSHOP. CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies in New York City will host “Sci-Fi Alien(ation): Diversity Under Attack, Racism, Homophobia, & Sexism at Hugo Awards & Beyond” on April 8, 2016.

A panel discussion of scholars and science fiction authors including André Carrington, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Craig Laurance Gidney dissect racism, homophobia, and sexism in the world of sci-fi publishing and fandom in general, and the highly-publicized hate campaign at the 2015 Hugo Awards.  A group calling itself the “Sad Puppies” gamed the voting system to assure that most award nominees were white, male, and straight, voicing public statements about gay, black, and women’s themes and authors ruining the genre.  Many non-white, queer, and women authors have received rape threats and death threats in association with this campaign.  This episode mirrors “gamer-gate,” where similar rape and death threats against women in the video game industry who have complained about sexism.

In contrast to GamerGate, which had all of the following things, during last year’s Hugo controversy I did not hear about: people fleeing their homes in response to threats, calling the police for protection (Crazy Uncle Lou, though, did try to get the police to screw Sasquan), filing for restraining orders, and being stalked at con panels by hostile bloggers. The things that happened were bad enough – and some Puppies assuredly tried to interest GamerGaters in getting involved. Hopefully the actual workshop will stick to valid parallels between the two controversies.

(3) BUILDING A RABBIT HOLE. Publishers Weekly tells why the owners of Kansas City’s The Reading Reptile are leaving that business in “Kansas City Booksellers Launching ‘World’s First Explorastorium”.

Kansas City booksellers Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid, who have owned The Reading Reptile for more than 25 years, intend to close the bookstore Pettid founded in 1988 by the end of March so that they can develop “the world’s first explorastorium,” a project that they have been conceptualizing for the past year. The proposed museum, modeled upon San Francisco’s Exploratorium and St. Louis’s City Museum, and called The Rabbit Hole in homage to Alice in Wonderland, will allow visitors to physically immerse themselves in the narratives of beloved children’s books through interactive exhibits and galleries. There will also be regularly scheduled presentations and workshops led by touring authors and illustrators to complement the full-scale 3-D installations, which will change every three or four months.

explo COMP

The mission of The Rabbit Hole, which is being set up as a nonprofit, is to “create new readers on an unprecedented scale” in a world where “only around 50% of parents read aloud to their kids on a regular basis.”

A prototype of one component of The Rabbit Hole has been installed in a temporary leased space in Kansas City’s Crossroads neighborhood. The prototype is a full-scale, walk-through exhibit bringing to life The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau by Jon Agee, who has assisted the Rabbit Hole team in creating it. The grand opening of this Rabbit Hole prototype will be held on April 9.

(4) THOSE BRONZE AGE SOPHISTICATES. Photos and a videos accompany the BBC article “Bronze Age wheel at ‘British Pompeii’ Must Farm an ‘unprecedented find’”.

“The existence of this wheel expands our understanding of Late Bronze Age technology, and the level of sophistication of the lives of people living on the edge of the Fens 3,000 years ago.”

(5) THE ICELAND CON COMETH. Fans in Iceland have plans to launch a new convention this year.

Icecon 2016 is a science fiction and fantasy fan convention that will be held in the heart of Reykjavík, Iceland, this fall. On the 28th to the 30th of October, Iðnó theatre ( idno.is) will be filled with the fantastic.

There will be panels, readings, a Halloween masquerade and other events.

Information on registration, membership fee, guests of honour, program and accommodation coming soon. All information will be posted on this event-page and a forthcoming homepage. Any interested parties can also email us at icecon2016(at) gmail.com

Icecon 2016 is supported by Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature ( bokmenntaborgin.is/en/)

(6) DREAM DESTINATIONS. I mentioned the NASA space travel posters before, however, this particular webpage displays the entire collection as large thumbnails, and also has a link to the JPL store if you want to order a literal printed poster.

(7) UNDERGROUND REVOLUTION. The Society of Illustrators in New York City will exhibit “The ZAP Show: A Cultural Revolution” from March 2-May 7 on the main floor.

No one could have known that when struggling illustrator R. Crumb self-published Zap Comix #1 in 1968 and began hawking copies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, history would be made. By the arrival of issue #4 (1969) and Crumb’s Zap collective (S. Clay Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffiin, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams, and Spain Rodriguez) fully formed, the artists had broken every Comics Code taboo imaginable — and then some. Zap spawned an entire underground comix industry, establishing an adult market for the comics medium that, in turn, set new standards for creators’ rights and ownership that one day would liberate mainstream comic books from the tyrannical grip of corporate publishers, paving the way for literary work by the likes of Art Spiegelman, Lynda Barry, Chris Ware, and Daniel Clowes, among others.

(8) MEYEROWITZ ART DISPLAY. About the same time, the Society of Illustrators will exhibit on the third floor “Rick Meyerowitz in the National Lampoon” from March 1-April 23.

mona%20gorilla

Rick Meyerowitz was a prolific contributor of both artwork and written pieces for National Lampoon from its first issue in 1970 until close to its last in 1991. He collaborated with many of the magazine’s writers on an astonishing variety of topics and themes. Among his most notable works were the “Mona Gorilla” (Mona Lisa as a gorilla); “DODOSAURS: The Dinosaurs That  Didn’t Make It” (which he and Henry Beard turned into a 1983 book); the widely recognized poster for the movie Animal House; and most recently, “DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: The Writers and Artists Who Made The National Lampoon Insanely Great,” published by Abrams as a coffee table size visual history of the Lampoon. A documentary film of the same name was released last year.

(9) NURTURING TALENT. Gregory N. Hullender says Rocket Stack Rank “has a new article comparing the Campbell-eligible writers with the stories we reviewed in 2015 with an eye towards figuring out which editors were the most supporting of new writers in 2015” – “Nurturing New SF Short-Fiction Talent in 2015”.

(10) PLAQUE FOR TONI WEISSKOPF. The National Fantasy Fan Federation has circulated a picture of Toni Weisskopf’s Neffy Award.

(11) HARPER LEE OBIT. Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, died February 19 at the age of 89.

“This is a sad day for our family. America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century’s most beloved authors,” Hank Conner, Lee’s nephew and a spokesman for the family, said in a statement Friday morning.

“We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her life, and a generous soul in our community and our state. We will miss her dearly.”

Conner’s statement indicated that “Ms. Lee passed away in her sleep early this morning. Her passing was unexpected. She remained in good basic health until her passing.”

(12) A REALLY BIG SANDBOX. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog knows “How One Mashup Artist Got Legal Permission to Pair Calvin & Hobbes with Dune”.

Calvin & Muad’Dib picked up international attention after a shout-out from io9 in September of 2014, and this attention led to an immediate DMC takedown. But unlike most bloggers, Joe lawyered up.

“I did this because it was clear that I wasn’t profiting in any way from Calvin and Hobbes,” Joe says. “There were no advertisements on my blog, nor did I sell or intend to sell any merchandise or even ask for donations. I felt I had a solid ground to defend myself, and I also happen to believe that most DMCA takedowns are inherently unjust due to the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ nature of DMCA.”

Joe entered into talks with the lawyers of Calvin & Hobbes’ publisher. Though he never spoke directly to Watterson, he did succeed in his goal: Calvin & Muad’Dib went back up six months later, in February of 2014.

“We worked out a licensing deal where I could continue to make comics in the way I intended, and the Calvin & Hobbes lawyers could be ensured that abuse of Bill Watterson’s original works would not occur,” Joe says of the discussion. Every comic on his site now comes with a reminder that the mash-up is legit: “Calvin and Hobbes: © and ™ Bill Watterson, used with permission.”

fear is the mindkiller COMP

(15) TWENTIETH CENTURY FANAC. At Amazing Stories, R. Graeme Cameron opens his time capsule: the script of his 1989 talk about fanzines to the Vancouver Public Library.

There exist people who have never earned a penny writing, yet have published thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of words. They belong to FANDOM. Fandom is something more than merely fans of Science Fiction in its various forms: books, magazines, movies, comic books, etc. Fandom is a mode of behaviour, of attitude, an approach to organized appreciation of Science Fiction which is universal among fans, so that fans as far apart as America and Soviet Russia have enough in common as to establish an immediate rapport should they meet.

People writing for no money! That’ll never catch on… And look who’s one of the people doing it –

FILE 770 is quite a renowned perzine. Mike Glyer has been producing it for a longtime. This is the 77th issue. It’s a kind of NEWSZINE really, reporting on conventions, writers, fan activities, fan feuds, and other fanzines. But it is a one-man operation, so I classify it as a perzine.

(14) ROAD WARRIOR. Someday soon Larry Correia will live at the end of Yard Moose Mountain Road. First he has to build the road. The mountain came built-in….

When we built our current house it was all open fields around us. There were houses near, but we had a little room to breathe. I’m a country boy at heart. I don’t like people all up in my business. We even had a moose come and live in our yard. That’s why we started calling it Yard Moose Mountain. He just kind of camped out under my son’s bedroom window, then he’d wander out and eat our neighbor’s trees, but he never messed with my trees. Good moose.

It was really nice.

Over the last five years our area slowly filled in, until one day I woke up, and realized that rather than living in the country anymore, we were living in a small neighborhood. Sure, it was a nice commuter neighborhood (I’ve got 12 doctors in my ward, no joke) and the people are about as nice as you could possibly ask for, but it was still a neighborhood.  We landscaped and put in a fence for privacy, but it has lost its charm. Add to that, I’d retired from my finance manager job a few years ago to just be a full time author, so I no longer needed to be close enough to the city to commute.

Being a failed D List nobody hack pulp writer with an irreparably damaged career who will never be a *real* author and who can’t even manage to get measly five hundred people to a book signing, my income had still somehow gone up dramatically, but we’d not really changed our standard of living (well, except for more guns and minis, but those don’t count). Plus, because I have a pathological hatred of debt I had been making lots of extra house payments, to the point that I’d knocked 27 years worth of our 30 year mortgage payments out in 5. Because screw debt.

So last year we decided we wanted to move, and this time we were going to move someplace where we’d never have to move again….

(15) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 19, 1985 – The movie Brazil premieres in France, 10 months before opening in the USA.

(16) YOUR SCIENCE QUOTE OF THE DAY. From CNN: “Hubble image: Dormant black hole, in a word, is gargantuan”.

“Black holes don’t suck,” van der Marel said. “That’s a common misconception. Material that happens to be moving in the direction of the black hole falls in because gas has friction that gets eaten [by the black hole]. Once the black hole has eaten all the gas there it can just move on and it will be dormant until it gets another dose of material that it can consume.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Addressee Unknown .]

160 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/19/16 The Fifth Editor

  1. “Black holes don’t suck.” But being trapped in one surely does!

    Spaghettification—such a cool-sounding word; such a nasty experience.

    Oh, pre-pre-something-fifth!

  2. (10) PLAQUE FOR TONI WEISSKOPF

    Very classy looking plaque there. I spotted that next to the announcement for Weiskoppf there was also:

    “Heroic Commendation to All of Hugo Fandom for reviving the most ancient and honourable of all fannish customs, the all-hobby fan feud.”

    So, do we get a plaque too? We can send it round the Hugo voters on rotation. I’d like the fifth go, please.

  3. Pre-fifth:

    Boy, that Larry sure has a big chip on his shoulder.

    ETA: yay! POC destroy science fiction completes, making all its stretch goals.

  4. Fifth!

    Yay!

    Re Larry – passive-aggressive, much? For a manly, heroic, gun-toting manly (can never be too manly) man, he sure does whine a lot…

  5. (2) CLAGS WORKSHOP – that sounds … exaggerated.
    (12) A REALLY BIG SANDBOX – Oooh. See you in a while. “Let’s go exploring. “

  6. (10) PLAQUE FOR TONI WEISSKOPF. – Congrats, and congrats to Hugo Fandom for the accompanying commendation as well.

    @Mark – I’ll have the second fifth go then.

  7. (4) On Bronze Age gubbins

    I live around 2 miles away from Must Farm (where the dig is going on). Like a lot of archaeology in Britain it is ‘rescue archaeology’ – the site is ostensibly a brick pit. Eventually the archaeologists will have to pack up (even if there are lots of stuff still left in the ground) and leave and the digging out of clay will continue.

    The earlier finds like the log-boats (also found at Must Farm) from a few years ago are on display at another bronze age site about a mile away (Flag Fen), and the current finds will either go to Flag Fen or the local museum.

  8. nickpheas: Boy, that Larry sure has a big chip on his shoulder.

    That’s no chip, that’s an entire Sequoia tree.

  9. (14)
    Good on Correia for paying down the mortgage. That’s a good financial aim. He’s a good read when he’s not ranting about non-Puppy conspiracies, though the attempt at being self-deprecating misses the target. You’re a published writer and your books sell well. You *are* a real writer.

  10. Larry is kind of obviously referring to the guy who tried to be smart towards him at twitter. Just as Scalzi has Beale who makes himself an idiot saying that Scalzi is unsuccesful, Correa has his share of people making themselves idiots.

    Anyway, happy for him.

  11. Five hundred people to a book signing? That’s a mighty high bar. I’ve seen far fewer show up for Nobel Prize winners. Fewer than that is nothing to be ashamed of.

  12. So it looks like the new Humble Books Bundle is a “SF Classics” bundle. It includes a bunch of Zelazny e-books, most of which I already own, and a bunch of the Bettancourt Amber prequels, which I, erm, don’t. Also includes some Bester. Various sets of books are available at various price tiers from “whatever” to (currently) $12.54 to $15. No word on a special price to not include the Amber prequels.

  13. unrelated to anything:

    SCORE! I picked up a bunch of (print) older File 770s at Boskone yesterday!

    Mike – if your inventory is not complete, let me know.

  14. (9) NURTURING TALENT

    I think that looking at work with new writers is a useful metric (not the only one of course), so I like this RSR article. It’s not a great shock that the online venues tend to publish more new writers than the print ones but it’s interesting to see that it’s quite such an obvious gap. John Joseph Adams probably comes out best from the comparisons, and his list of Campbell-eligible writers at the bottom of this page is impressive. Tor.com seem to do even better on new writers, but their results are shared among many editors, who they helpfully name in a big list here.

  15. I don’t begrudge Correia’s financial success. More power to you, Larry.

    I just begrudge slating him onto a Hugo ballot and then getting pissy when said efforts get no awarded, and a vile expat editor living in Italy sees this as an opportunity to make mischief with the Hugo awards and grind his own ax.

  16. ROAD WARRIOR
    Fred Small has a song that goes (in part):

    Once I lived in the city; it was crowded and noisy
    So I moved to the country; it was quiet and peaceful
    All my friends came with me; they built find new houses
    Now it’s crowded and noisy, think I’ll move to the country…

    So the Road Warrior has reached the end of this verse, and is planning to repeat it, because this time the outcome will be different.

    Also it’s interesting how insecurity can be a vicious circle. That next-to-last paragraph is all the attitude(s) that persuaded him to use the Puppies and persuaded the Puppies to be used by him, and got him the predictable response from the rest of the world that is now feeding the attitude.

    @Hypnotosov–probably someone said he wasn’t a real writer once; it has happened to Lois McMaster Bujold, after all, and she’s the best writer I know of. The difference is that Lois said “hmm, some people feel very strongly about their genres” and went on with her work and mentioned it once in one interview somewhere, and Larry, by contrast clutched the insult to his soft underbelly until it ate its way through and lodged in his heart. Now he brings it up so often there is no way now to sort through the haystack of Larry’s amplification to find the needle of the original statement. I’d blame the person who said it, but when someone is that insecure, they’re basically looking for a spot marked X–if it hadn’t been that person and that insult, it would have been someone else and some other toe-stepping incident.

  17. There was a disturbance in the Force as millions, no thousands, uh hundreds, dozens maybe (?) of Filers suddenly found the source of their addiction temporarily cut off…

  18. @Mark

    I think that looking at work with new writers is a useful metric (not the only one of course), so I like this RSR article. . . . Tor.com seem to do even better on new writers, but their results are shared among many editors, who they helpfully name in a big list here.

    Thanks. I looked through the list of Tor editors when we were writing the 2016 Editors (Short Form) article, but only two of them seemed to meet the eligibility requirements for the Hugo:

    3.3.9: Best Editor Short Form. The editor of at least four (4) anthologies, collections or magazine issues (or their equivalent in other media) primarily devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy, at least one of which was published in the previous calendar year.

    (WSFS Constitution)

    To interpret “the equivalent of one magazine issue” we took the average across 12 months of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF and decided it amounts to 45,000 words of original fiction. That means that of the Tor.com editors, only Ellen Datlow and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are eligible for the Best Editor (short form) award this year. (Unless we missed something something.)

    Of those two, only Ellen Datlow edited any stories by new authors, and that was just one story. It was a bit of a surprise, given that Tor printed so much fiction by new authors last year. I guess they’re promoting new authors and new editors!

  19. Let us scroll then you and I while the pixel is spread out against the file like a number five doubled on a table of contents…

  20. I always figure, to paraphrase Stephen King, if you can sometimes pay the light bill with your writing, you’re a “real writer” in the sense of being a professional. (You can be a real writer and unpaid, of course, but there are different metrics there and I’m lss familiar with them, mercenary wench that I am.) If Correia can make a full-time living off it, he’s definitely a real writer, much as I may loathe him on an ideological level.

    @Cat: Right, exactly. Reminds me of the people who absolutely cannot let go of not having been popular in high school, regardless of how well they’re doing for themselves now. And really, the insecurity in both cases is what makes them less than well-liked.

    Every artist has someone who thinks they’re shit. I know people who hate Tolkien; I dated a guy who loathed Pratchett*; that happens. You spend all your time trying to convince people that you’re totally a serious artist like for serious, and it’s not going to get you anything but an ulcer.

    * Yes, that should have been my first clue.

  21. @Ray Radlein:

    The price for not including the Betancourts would be too high for anyone to afford it!

    (I kid because I care and I may even *GASP*read them!*GASP*)

  22. 2) CLAGS WORKSHOP sounds like a real giggle. I think I may be far enough from NYC for safety.

    14) It is a tragedy that LC’s career has been so damaged by “the highly-publicized hate campaign at the 2015 Hugo Awards” that he couldn’t buy himself a whole mountain, just half of one. Looking forward to this year’s hate campaign, maybe LC will be able to get himself a Chieftain tank to drive out to the back forty and check targets.

    In other news, it comes as zero surprise to me that despite having devoured many a novel in the last year, I have read none of the Nebula Award nominees. I view this as a public service the Nebula provides, now I know what to skip.

  23. Today’s read — Champion of the Rose, by Andrea K. Höst

    Andrea K. Höst is an SFF self-publishing success story (and to give you an idea of the level she’s operating at right now, Julie Dillon did the cover art for this book), and there’s a reason for it. Her work is well-written and provocative. While she’s not a must-read-everything author for me, I always enjoy her stuff, and this one is no exception. What starts out seeming like a fairly standard court intrigue and quest story takes a turn for the disturbing not long in, and I appreciate that this is a story where being the Chosen One genuinely suuuuuucks. (Possible trigger warning, by the way, for forced sex.) Also nice to see a fantasy world where all humans appear to be bisexual by default.

    In summary, while it wasn’t the most mind-blowingly amazing thing I’ve read in recent months, it was a solid fantasy title well worth the read, and I’m going to keep reading her stuff.

  24. [ticky]

    I finished watching Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle last night and…wow. The last episode, “A Way Out,” is on my short form ballot. I’ve never read the book, so I don’t know how it compares, but I can’t wait till next season.

    Also, re: Editor Long Form nominations–it occurred to me that I have a ready-made supply of names, that being the editors who worked on the books I nominated for Best Novel. After all, if I loved the book enough to nominate it, it’s a good bet the editor had a lot to do with that. As I found out, though, it’s just devilishly hard to pin down which editor worked on a particular book. Is there some website or list that might have that information?

  25. I love Zap Comix! Superheroes never attracted my attention for some reason but I’ve got a complete collection of Zaps (along with pretty much everything else Kitchen Sink Press put out). I didn’t get interested in them until they were 20+ years out of date, but fortunately S. Clay Wilson was still alive and I eventually got him to autograph the issue with “Captain Pissgums and his Pervert Pirates,” which is one of my most cherished possessions. Sheer creative anarchy! From the glorious and heady days when you could make deliberately offensive art.

  26. The problem with Correia, with the SPs in general, is that he IS a real professional writer with a significant following, and the Hugo isn’t supposed to be an author-driven award. [At which point I ignore the old chorus of “Pros are fans, too.”] One of the few things the Nebulas got right, at least in the past, was prohibiting authors from nominating their own works, and their greatest flaw was in the constant author-driven logrolling.

  27. Bought the Humble Books Bundle: I admit to a certain curiosity about the John Gregory Betancourt books, but hey, no-one is forced to download & read them if they are disinclined.

    And if/when another one is compiled, can we please have one that is an all-women bundle for balance? This one is a complete sausage-fest.

  28. @Phantom – not trying to dox you or anything, but is your real-life name Frank Burns? Because every time I read one of your posts, it’s his voice I imagine sneering those words in a whingey shout as he flounces out of the room in a tiff. (been watching a lot of M*A*S*H reruns, lately)

    (14) Congrats to Correia. I wish he could stop stockpiling old insults and bringing them out to glare at every time he makes even totally unrelated, happy announcements.

    Nebulas-wise, lessee… I’ve read three of the novels, all of which will probably go on my Hugo ballot; none of the novelas or novelettes (no great surprise, as I don’t have a lot of reading time, so I spend most of it on novels); one or two of the short stories; I’ve seen four of the nominees in the dramatic presentation category (all of them definitely on the shortlist); and read none of the YA nominees, though I’ve been meaning to get to a couple of them.

    Currently reading Bryony and Roses. So messagey! Geeze, plants are cool, we get it! Seriously, though, I really dig our resident wombat’s very human voice. I’m often reminded of Pratchett’s witches stories when I read her works.

    Probably going for “We Just Live Here” next, based on Kyra’s recommendation in a previous thread.

  29. Note if this car would just stop shooting on my lap I could probably download two thirds of the short nebula nominees…

  30. Still at Boskone. Sitting at Info & Volunteers in the Galleria. Come by and say hi.

    Also, bring me a Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi if you can.

    Listening to King’s Crusade by A.D. Starrling. Two groups of immortals engaged in a complicated conflict along with a birthrate crisis. Second book of four (plus a bunch of shorts) in what looks like it could be an Endless Series.

    Why the heck am I enjoying it so much? My eternal weakness: Good characters plus a lack of annoying gender stereotypes. Bits of real history thrown in. I like the narrative voice. So glad I gave it a chance!

    Note: Probably not deathless literature. Having fun, though.

  31. Kathodus on February 20, 2016 at 11:20 am said: “@Phantom – not trying to dox you or anything, but is your real-life name Frank Burns? Because every time I read one of your posts, it’s his voice I imagine sneering those words in a whingey shout as he flounces out of the room in a tiff.”

    Nice. You missed the “highly-publicized hate campaign” part, I must assume. Reading issues, or selective outrage? Or both?

    (14) Congrats to Correia. I wish he could stop stockpiling old insults and bringing them out to glare at every time he makes even totally unrelated, happy announcements.

    Stockpile? Who keeps stuff like “is your real-life name Frank Burns?” around cluttering up the place? The stink alone would lower property values for blocks in all directions.

  32. Argh so much reading to do !! My nomination ballot is going be probably be short in quite a few categories unless I get some free time soon

    Wandered over to black gate and read some of the back and forth on Matthew Sturridge’s article (promises of havoc etc by various rabble rousers). It reminded me a bit of LC article quoted above, where issues of identity, oppression / inferiority, get tangled together it’s hard to have a conversation about what is a pretty simple and fun award without things going off track.

  33. Just watched the first episode of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It’s not a book that could be captured on film, but so far it is similar enough (and good enough as a thing in itself) to be worth continuing.

  34. @Ray
    I really enjoyed JS&MR and I plan on nominating it. It was a very good screenplay adaptation and stuck the landing in my opinion.

  35. Phantom, Do you read “Schlock Mercenary”? I ask, because it seems like something you might like. And Howard Taylor, who writes it, wrote a glowing review of Barsk. So you might want to consider not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    (I’ve not yet read Barsk myself, but it’s on the TBR pile.)

  36. 3) Regarding the Rabbit Hole: that sounds so cool. I don’t foresee being in Kansas City but if I were, I’d want to check that out.

    9) Regarding the Rocket Stack Rank article: As noted in the conclusion, this seems like a situation in which it is especially problematic to examine only the top past-award-getting magazines. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that magazines like Apex, Shimmer, Strange Horizons, or Uncanny publish more new writers than any of the magazines that RSR reviews.

  37. Being as this is a slow day for comments so far, I’d like to offset the “they should have nominated X, Y & Z!” chagrin caused by the Nebula announcement with a poll question.

    I kept a mental list of favorite 2015 short stories starring queer women; but it occurs to me that stories featuring two female main characters who are friends/buddies/comrades are equally underrepresented. In that vein, Liz Bourke named Arkady Martine’s “When The Fall Is All That’s Left”, an intense story of two old friends fleeing together, as one of her top stories of the year. My pick would be “La Héron” by Charlotte Ashley, a funny and surprising swashbuckling story. And now to you, o Filers, what were your favorite story-central female friendships of 2015, in short prose, long prose, or visual media?

  38. @Phantom

    Nice. You missed the “highly-publicized hate campaign” part, I must assume. Reading issues, or selective outrage? Or both?

    Oh no, I recall quite well your part in the highly-publicized hate campaign. I’ve never been sure if your issues involve reading comprehension, selective outrage, or both. I used to think selective outrage, but lately I’m thinking it’s both.

  39. Re (14)

    I can have some real pity for Correia, in the way I can’t have for Teddy or Wright. He’s not as much of a hateful ass then the other two, a legitimately better writer (even if they’re not my kettle) – and yet he seems to have this persistent, crippling feeling of being an imposter. One’s mental demons are always the worst.

  40. Lois Tilton on February 20, 2016 at 10:53 am said:

    One of the few things the Nebulas got right, at least in the past, was prohibiting authors from nominating their own works, and their greatest flaw was in the constant author-driven logrolling.

    I had a friend in SFWA who let me read their old newsletters, and I can remember noticing patterns of authors who would mutually nominate each other’s works for Nebulas. “Oh, X nominated Y’s story and … yep, here’s Y nominating X.”

  41. You never want to make Emily Dickinson mad, apparently.

    I’m totally with Larry Correia on the importance of debt to equity ratios. It’s great that he’s flourishing and I really wish he’d stop assuming that the ratio of asshats to people who wish him well despite differences is so much higher than it actually is. Jeez, just go forth and prosper.

    In other news, I want an Explorastorium in my town.

    eta – @Vasha, I really enjoyed the relationships between women in The Mystic Marriage, by Heather Rose Jones. They were complex and sometimes unexpectedly moving. Also, part of what I love about Jessica Jones is the relationship between Jessica and Trish. That’s all I have in the editing window, but I’m looking forward to other responses.

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