(1) PLAY INSIDE PKD’S MIND. Chris Priestman of Kill Screen describes Californium, a game based on a famous sf writer in “The videogame tribute to Philip K. Dick is out today”.
In Californium, you essentially play an alternate world version of Dick himself. Cast as one Elvin Green after his wife and daughter leaves him, you start alone but for the pills in your cabinet and the sprawled pages of unfinished novels on the floor. As grim as the circumstances may be, Californium‘s world is brought to life thick with the exaggerated colors of sunny Orange County and a population of 2D cartoon characters drawn with rich expression. Granted, these encounters with fellow residents are mostly miserable—an angry landlady, a disappointed editor, a government agent trying to take you down—but considered strictly visually, the whole thing pops and beams out of the screen at you.
(2) SIMPLE ADDITION. Mary Robinette Kowal contributes eight “Thoughts about how to add diversity. Real simple thoughts.” Here is number 7.
7. To sum up: Diversity means, inviting people who aren't like you. Centering them. Listening to them.
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) February 22, 2016
(3) FIRST FANDOM. Dave Kyle at Boskone.
David Kyle at #Boskone 2016! First fandom! pic.twitter.com/pf3QkVvXN1
— JY (@jypub) February 21, 2016
(4) NEXT FANDOM. Squeaker, David Gerrold, and Muffin at Boskone.
Squeaker and Muffin with @David_Gerrold at #Boskone. They know him as the tribble man. pic.twitter.com/1rjLBy2Vao
— Michael A. Burstein (@mabfan) February 21, 2016
(5) MERCURY TEST FAILS. At Galactic Journey, The Traveler has the latest space exploration news from 1961.
Unfortunately, MA-1 broke up 58 seconds after lift-off. It was a cloudy day, so no one saw it occur, but when the telemetry stopped and pieces of the craft fell from the sky, it was pretty clear the mission was over. The culprit was later identified as the junction between the capsule and booster.
(6) BUD WEBSTER MEDICAL FUND. A repeat signal boost for the Bud Webster Medical Fund drive. Rich Stow says the out-of-pocket medical expenses that Bud and Mary have incurred are staggering. Donations for these medical expenses are being accepted through the MarsCon online store link — https://squareup.com/market/marscon/bud-webster-medical-fund . [Cut and paste URL; I had trouble with the link, but no trouble if I pasted the URL directly into my browser.]
100% of every donation will go to Bud’s out-of-pocket medical and final expenses. The MarsCon Executive Committee has agreed to cover all of the fees that are levied by Square on each transaction. Thank you for any help you can give.
As an added thanks for your donation, you are entitled to receive some ebooks courtesy of ReAnimus Press, publisher of the ebook editions of three of Bud’s books. (Past Masters / The Joy of Booking / Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies)
The perks escalate in proportion to the donations – see details at the site. Also 100% of sales of Bud’s ebooks from ReAnimus Press is going to Mary as well — http://ReAnimus.com/authors/budwebster.
(7) CAMPBELL-ELIGIBLE ANTHOLOGY. SL Huang and Kurt Hunt ([email protected]) have put out a call for submissions for Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors.
Authors eligible for the 2016 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer include writers who published their first qualifying professional science fiction or fantasy fiction in 2014 or 2015. This free e-anthology will collect stories by these award-eligible authors in one place, showcasing the work of exciting new talent for award nominators and for a general audience.
Up and Coming will be available in early March. See the submission link and writers guidelines here. The deadline for submissions is 8:00 a.m. Tokyo time on February 28 (February 27 in Western timezones).
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born February 21, 1946 – Alan Rickman
(9) NEXT, PREDICT THE NEBULA WINNER. Brandon Kempner at Chaos Horizons expected the finalists in the Nebula novel category would be the books on top of the Recommendation List, and they were. He says it won’t be as easy to predict the winner.
Winning a Nebula is very different than getting nominated; a small group of passionate fans can drive a nomination, but to win you need to build a broader coalition…
He produces some new tables, and comes up with some fresh analysis:
In some ways, [Fran] Wilde’s nomination is a key one. It’s the first time we’ve seen a novel receive both a Nebula Nomination and an Andre Norton nomination (the SFWA YA category). I don’t know what that means for Wilde’s chances in either, but it may signal a loosening of the SFWAs attitude towards YA fiction in the Best Novel category. That could have major implications moving forward.
(10) SPIDER-MAN AND HIS EXPENSIVE FRIENDS. Comic Book Resources counts down “The 10 Most Expensive Comic Books Ever Sold”.
On Thursday, February 18, Heritage Auctions auctioned off a Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) graded 9.4 copy of “Amazing Fantasy” #15 at their Comics and Comic Art Signature sale in Dallas. As one of the highest-graded copies of Spider-Man’s first appearance ever to be sold at public auction, it was expected to fetch a high price. In fact, it set a record, selling for $454,100. That’s the most ever paid for a Spider-Man comic at public auction.
(11) TRADITIONAL V. INDIE. Kristine Kathryn Rusch tells indie book authors to beware of “Book-Shaming”.
As I prepped for this blog today, I read article after article, opinion piece after opinion piece, shredding self-publishing. The language in these posts is condescending. The implication is clear: Self-publishing is for losers.
And yet, there’s a tinge of fear in all of these posts. The power brokers understand that things are changing. They can feel the change all around them, but they don’t understand it.
Rather than try to understand it, they’re shaming writers, playing to that writer insecurity. These former power brokers keep trying to convince writers who self-publish that they’re embarrassing themselves, that they’ll never amount to anything. Oh, sure they’re making money, but from whom? Readers who will read anything.
Let me be as blunt as I can here.
People who shame you are trying to control you. They want you to behave in a certain way. Rather than telling you to behave that way, they’re striving to subtly change your behavior by embarrassing you, and making you think less of yourself.
These people are trying to place themselves above you, to make you act the way that they want you to act, even if it is not in your own best interest. Shame is a particularly useful tool, because so many good-hearted people want to behave properly. These good-hearted folk don’t want to offend in any way. Yet shamers try to convince the good-hearted that they are offending or at least, making themselves objects of ridicule.
There’s an entire psychological area of study about this kind of shaming. It’s subtle, it’s nasty, and it often hurts the people it’s aimed at. Usually, shame is used by the powerful to keep the less-powerful under their thumbs.
That’s why shaming has suddenly become a huge part of the public discourse about how writers should publish their works these days. The powerful are losing their hold on the industry. This scares them. The language is getting more and more belligerent (and hard to believe) as the powerful realize they’re going to lose this battle
(12) WHAT RUSCH REALLY MEANT? But at Mad Genius Club, Fynbospress felt this was the takeaway from Rusch’s post:
So the next time someone tells you that you’re “racist sexist homophobic”, without ever trying to get to know you first, makes fun of your religion, expresses disgust at the idea of having children, belittles your choices in what to put in and what to leave out, how you publish, or makes fun of the type of fiction you like to read…
Tell them to take a long walk off a short pier, and keep writing what you makes you happy, and your readers want to read. They’re just trying to control you.
(13) BATMAN. A Los Angeles Times interviewer learns “Frank Miller has more in store for Batman”.
How would you distinguish what you do under the “Dark Knight” title and other Batman comics that you’ve done?
“The Dark Knight” was my ticket to freedom. I was able to do Batman as I’ve seen him. When I do Batman now it’s my version. I’m given a lot of leeway. The character is wonderfully adaptable to the times. There’s the version from the 1940s compared to the ’50s and compared to the ’60s and the Adam West show. They’re altogether different. Mine was just updated for the ’80s and ’90s.
My relationship with DC has always been very, very good. When I first did “Dark Knight” it was turbulent trying some new things out, but that’s the normal tension that happens between your publisher and the writer. There’s bound to be give and take as you hash things out.
There has been about a 15-year gap between each of your “Dark Knight” series.
It takes me a while to get as angry as he is. The character is one I can redo any old time. It’s about finding the right time and everybody’s schedules being open, and having the right people in place who want to get more daring. All these things have to combine at the right time. First of all, the story has to pop into my head.
(14) BOUND TO LIE. “’Blooks: The Art of Books That Aren’t’ Explores the World of Fake Books” at the New York Times.
Mindell Dubansky’s romance with fake books began nearly two decades ago at a Manhattan flea market, where she picked up a small volume carved from a piece of coal and bearing the name of a young man who had died in a mining accident in 1897.
Some 200 items from her collection went on display on Thursday at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, a temple to books, where they will remain through March 12. The exhibition, “Blooks: The Art of Books That Aren’t,” appears to be the first of its kind in the United States.
Most exhibitions at the Grolier, whose grand library holds more than 100,000 volumes with real pages and sometimes spectacular fine bindings, don’t include items like Secret Sam’s Spy Dictionary, a 1960s toy that lets users photograph enemies with a camera hidden inside a fake tome that also shoots plastic bullets out of its spine.
(15) ANOTHER PIECE OF ADVICE. A conversation between two characters in Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night.
Phoebe Tucker. He may be a perverse old idiot, but it’s more dignified not to say so in so many words. A bland and deadly courtesy is more devastating, don’t you think?
Harriet Vane. Infinitely.
(16) WINTER IS TRUMPING. Do Donald Trump’s border policies make more sense in Westeros?
In this video, his face and campaign audio have been cleverly grafted into footage from Game of Thrones.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist.]
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But to be honest, if you don’t understand what’s meant, speculating blindly over what the person might maybe have meant seems a little silly
Look a few comments back. Our resident racist homophobic troll jumped right there with both feet.
I will confess that I recently expressed horror at the thought of having children the other day…but in my defense, I was researching genealogy and found a greatx grandmother who had eleven kids by her first husband, he died, and she turned around and had six more by my greatx grandfather. She died at 58, so by my math, she was pregnant for half her adult life (and presumably nursing for the other half, this being Ye Olden Days.)
This sort of thing makes me want to carve my uterus out with a spoon, but I’ll plead extenuating circumstances on that one.
(10) SPIDER-MAN AND HIS EXPENSIVE FRIENDS. Comic Book Resources counts down “The 10 Most Expensive Comic Books Ever Sold”
Thanks, mom, for throwing out all my comics.
I had that one.
Sigh.
@Aaron:
No contradiction!
The statement “This epithet exists, therefore it is beloved by people who have criticized me” is also a little silly.
…in oh-so-many ways.
@Lauowolf: There, there. If she hadn’t thrown it out, how would it ever have gotten that expensive? 😛
Re (12)
Oh yes, it’s terrible to be disgusted by the thought of children. Except, of course, if your are wondering why “those” people can’t just have fewer children – or calling them moochs for having children while being on assistance. If I had the spoons today to search through MGC or Vox Day or Wright’s blog, I’m sure I could find those sentiments of disgust at having children.
@The Phantom
Yes, I have heard people talk about “breeders” – it was a Fox News discussion of immigrants and black people.
Yes, I have heard people talk about “breeders”
I’ve seen it elsewhere. It’s offensive, even to me: I’ve never wanted children, but I know people who do.
There is a tiny, tiny element on the left that talks about “breeders” that way–and I suspect that Quiverful/Quiverful-adjacent types run into conflict with them more often than the rest of us. More generally, both women who have children and women who don’t often find themselves being Judged for it with a righteous disregard for the reality of their lives.
Personally, I think I’d make a terrible mother, at real risk of repeating both my mother’s and my father’s mistakes. I am grateful to the people who do choose to have and/or raise children. I try to be accommodating and accepting when that means they sometimes have tired, cranky young children with them when in a perfect world the kids would be better off at home. (Remember: It’s not always a choice, because young kids can’t be left unsupervised, and not all errands can be put off.)
But that doesn’t mean I always want kids below the age of reason around, or that I want to be pushed beyond my limited repertoire of polite cooing over very young children whom I am, in fact, frightened of doing something wrong around.
I find Yog’s Law, “Money should flow toward the author”, a useful reminder for determining the relative merits of different types of publishing. That’s not to say that all the money should flow toward the author (there are functions in publishing aside from writing that money should go to as well), but whatever the mode of publishing, the author should not end up with less money than they started with.
————————————————————-
But, I (and anyone else who wants to) can Google what people actually posted online (which is why checking the source, citations, & links, is so important), and if what they posted was actually racist, sexist & homophobic, then I have already gotten to know them by their own words.
And if they are writers, then I trust that they were not miss-speaking
typingbut actually meant to say those racist sexist and homophobic things. So either they are as accused, or their writing is so poor they repeatedly fail to communicate, or Poe’s Law, none of which increases my desire to want to get to know them any more than I have.Stevie, re Uprooted: Well, there’s always the library. FWIW, I got much the same feel from this book that I do from RedWombat’s work; obviously the style is not exactly the same, but the sense of trope-breaking and looking at familiar things from a very different angle is similar. And although it draws on a number of fairy-tale concepts, it’s definitely not just a retelling of $FAIRYTALE — it’s its own unique story.
11) I continue to be amazed by the amount of Excluded Middle and One True Way I see in discussions of self-publishing. I know a lot of authors. Some of them have done well with the traditional-publishing route and see no need to change. Some have decided to go self-pub and are doing well that way. And some are doing both, for a variety of reasons. This really is an area where you have to do the research and figure out which option works best for you, without regard to what other authors are doing.
Aaron: Unfortunately, “breeders” is an insult flung around by the Puppy-equivalents of both gay and childfree culture. Every culture has assholes, and they make the lives of the non-asshole members of that culture just that much harder.
(3) FIRST FANDOM.
Great to see Dave Kyle is still actively congoing. I remember standing behind him in a queue moments after arriving at my first Worldcon – Seacon 79 in Brighton – and thinking “I’m communing with the Elder Gods!”
As you may imagine, I rapidly came to commune with many more Gods that weekend, but for a young (22-y-o) fan at his first non-local Convention (for which I’d hitchhiked from Scotland to Brighton and hired a tent locally to sleep in a nearby campsite) it was intoxicating.
@The Phantom
I never thought this day would come. I totally agree.
The first time I ever saw women referred to as “breeders” was on VD’s blog. While he was running for SFWA president, which is the first time I ever heard of him, he said something that indicated he was convinced we’d encountered each other before. I was skeptical, since I’d have remembered encountering someone that batshit crazy, so I looked at his blog, wondering why he thought I knew him. Nothing looked familiar or rang a bell. So I entered my name in the search engine… and, voila, I discovered that months earlier, for reasons which elude me, he and his followers had had hysterics about me in one of his blog posts. Among other things, they claimed I was “too old to breed” (which they apparently intended as an insult) and that I was “jealous of younger women who can still breed” (by which phrase they apparently thought they were complimenting younger women) and that “desirable males” wouldn’t be interestd in “breeding” with me, and various other references to women as “breeders” and sex as “breeding.”
As you may imagine, this gave me a profound desire never to meet any of these people.
kathodus on February 22, 2016 at 12:23 pm said: “@The Phantom: I never thought this day would come. I totally agree.”
~:D
I think Miller’s best is DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, but ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN is some pretty damn good stuff, you bet.
I’ve definitely heard the term breeders used to refer to heterosexuals, particularly heterosexuals who plan to have or have had kids. From what I’ve seen it’s mostly used by younger members of… groups of people who are not going to make babies with anyone. I’ve heard the term used affectionately amongst friends in private in the same way I’ve heard homophobic, racist, etc. epithets used between friends who belong to the groups being insulted.
It’s not a nice thing to say, as an insult. At the same time, I have a hard time believing it hurts in the same way or as much as slurs in the opposite direction, at least, not in a heteronormative culture like ours, where deciding against having kids is an invitation to pointed questions and frowny faces from immediate family, distant family, and family friends. But I’m also aware that some people on The Phantom’s side of the fence have very thin skin and feelings that are easily wounded and take a long time to heal.
IMHO: Children are part of humanity and in general I think human spaces should have children in them. There are exceptions obviously but I think we should see those places as exceptions and hence, unless there is a clear reason why children shouldn’t be in a particular space, that space should be accommodating and tolerant of children. In addition, for multiple reasons, child-rearing tends to fall disproportionately on women – this is a something that should change and is changing but it remains a basic reality for most communities. So to the extent that a given space is not accommodating or tolerant of children it is also to some extent not not accommodating or tolerant of women (albeit unintentionally).
Having said all that, children are noisy, annoying balls of snotty snot germs.
I admit I’ve expressed horror at having children, but only because modern kids are full of cholesterol. It’s not like the old days, when they were fed whole grains and vegetables.
…what?
I am horrified at the thought of having children, but enjoy having them around. It’s the having them around all the time and having to take care of them thing that horrifies me.
Eh, what do you know? 😉
I am hoping that I will get to meet my brother’s grandchildren before they’re old enough for college. (The oldest will be seven this year.)
Basically what Camestros says. There are places which aren’t young-kid-appropriate for one reason or another (fancy restaurants, R-rated movies, etc) and I have no issue with any individual party/wedding/etc saying “no kids, please.”* But by and large they’re a part of the world, especially because it’s not like the US provides universal free whenever-you-need it childcare, and my friends’ kids are adorable.
That said, I view childbirth and rearing as a bit like camping. People I love do it for reasons I cannot fathom and don’t have to, and find it rewarding, and go them, but personally? OH HELL NO. And I think Random Puppy needs to distinguish between “Me have kids? Ew, no,” and “Ew, you’re having kids?” or to write that distinction better.
(And yeah, there are hardcore CFers who use “breeders” and worse. These are awful people: most of them are, I suspect, freshmen.)
* Especially because I don’t always want to worry about keeping my behavior and language family-friendly. Now that most of my friends are having kids, I’m starting to sound like Ralphie more and more often. “Ah, fu—UUUDGE. FUDGE.” Or my brain will just shut down as I try to find a PG version: “He’s such a di–as–fu–mo–shi–*delphine clicking sounds*.”
You can self-publish dreck and some people do, so I think the gate-keeping function of publishing houses still has something to recommend it. On the other hand, if I already know I like an author then I’ll be on their self-published books like a hawk stooping on a rabbit. Self-pub in and of itself proves only that you have the perseverance to finish a book–that is not nothing, by the way. I have finished a few big projects in my time, and a book looks as big to me as anything I have ever done. But it doesn’t prove the book is good. But self-pub also proves nothing bad about the book or the author.
What that has to do with having kids–*shakes head.* You’ve got me there. Some conservative anxiety thing, perhaps?
I just finished “I am Princess X”, and have reluctantly decided that no, it doesn’t wrote have enough comic content for it to contend for a Hugo in Best Graphic Story.
I am tempted to nominate it for the 1990 Hugo, as a brilliant cyberpunk novel. The way the author integrates the cutting edge concepts of Gibson and Williams in an offhand, matter-of-fact manner, in a Seattle that’s disturbingly similar to the present, is just amazing
@kathodus
While it isn’t as loaded a term as many other insults, I wouldn’t discount it. While it does get used by non-hetronormative groups, I’d say it gets used most often in militantly child-free circles. From the perspective of many of those who deliberately make it part of their vocabulary it is meant as a deliberate slur, and carries weight as such. Also, by definition, most people it would be aimed at are going to be parents who are publicly invested in their children and as such it is guaranteed to be an attack on a part of their self identity.
So while I personally would’t feel particularly upset, I am also unlikely to be a deliberate target of this particular slur. It’s a particularly personal and targeted attack and I certainly would’t discount the feelings of anyone it’s aimed at.
There definitely are people who assholishly disdain others for having kids. I just wonder how often this really comes up in the context of publishing.
(By the way, did you know that the Ancillary series covers were “a carnival of leftist virtue-signaling”? I don’t even know what to do with that one.)
I have to say, I think the term ‘breeder,’ when directed at a couple or at groups of people, is vaguely dehumanising. When directed at a woman, it’s fantastically misogynist. When directed at a man, it’s just sightly embarrassing for all concerned.
TooManyJens on February 22, 2016 at 1:27 pm said:
… (By the way, did you know that the Ancillary series covers were “a carnival of leftist virtue-signaling”? I don’t even know what to do with that one.)
What?
I didn’t even get a balloon.
Does it signal the virtue of having awesome spaceships? Are awesome spaceships leftist? What a weird thing for them to concede.
@TooManyJens
Do you have a link to that? I didn’t find it in my initial search, but wow, does it sound like it’d be fun in whatever possible context it originated.
@Nile and @Ryan H – Agreed.
I first heard the term breeder used when I was in college, and was told it was a an anti-straight term. I only heard it used affectionately or ironically, though. I was hanging with a typically rough-and-tumble college theater crowd back then, and they were probably somewhat edgy for the time (early ’90s) and place (Indiana).
I think I was a little too old to get into the CF movement. I had a brief period of vehement-ish anti-child feeling in my mid-20s, largely a knee jerk against the pressure I was feeling to make some kids of my own, but then my friends and family started having kids and that kinda disappeared.
Okay – I already have a stress headache from work, so I wander over here, and am presented with …
I have no idea what that is even supposed to mean. A carnival of left turn signals from Soviet era cars like the Pobeda? It was supposed to be the first Soviet car to have turn signals, but I thought they were white. And either way – a Pobeda looks more like an Edsel than the cover of an Ancillary novel.
My headache and I are going to find something else to do – like stare at the inside of some eyelids.
@kathodus:
It’s in the comments to the MGC post linked in item 12. It’s…quite something, isn’t it?
TooManyJens: By the way, did you know that the Ancillary series covers were “a carnival of leftist virtue-signaling”? I don’t even know what to do with that one.
It’s just another way of making the old Puppy claim that the people who’ve been nominating and voting for the Hugos have been doing so based on what’s supposed to be politically correct, rather than because we actually think it’s good.
Those of us who love the Ancillary series supposedly only say that we love it because we think that doing so will make us look “virtuous” and “admirable” to others — which is, of course, not true.
Breeder bugs me mildly, because I do indeed bristle at the assumption my life and purpose in this world can be summed up by my boys*. And I’m pretty much the best example of a target for the slur, as I have been at home or 4+ years now. However, I do think it’s a step or two down from the really unpleasant slurs; Jessica Jones can make a crack using it and I can laugh**, which wouldn’t have been true of others.
*I suppose they’re boys, anyhow. I might find out later I’m wrong.
** It helped that we weren’t expected to agree with or approve her behaviour at that point, but if the word she muttered while being obnoxious had been, say, anti-Semetic or a racial attack, there would have been some serious WTF?ing everywhere, and not just by me.
@Kathodus
So they don’t even like the books with rocket ships on the cover anymore? Sad.
I doubt Breq would even raise an eyebrow at being called a leftist virtue signal.
I remember back in the day, when if the text of an SF novel contained a rousing space adventure then you could guess that the cover would show a sweet-ass picture of a sad clown or a diagram of a waffle iron. These days you might find it has some left-wing nonsense like a spaceship.
@JJ: Sure, I get the idea of virtue signaling, but … the covers just have spaceships on them! Maybe I need to get my Leftist Glasses checked so I can see whatever that guy’s seeing.
Since when has freaking John Harris become a leftist virtue signal?
The only possible connection I can think of is that he illustrates Scalzi’s OMW covers. And that’s an absurd leap considering how many, many other authors have books graced by John Harris cover art.
Finding myself in a public library for an hour today, I found “Castle Hangnail” and read a few chapters, to see if it was too young for me. Answer: No! Heir to the mantle of Tiffany Aching, in fact.
But one thing about it confused me mightily: at the start of Chapter 2, it says:
— yet in the illustration *right there*, gur obbgf ner hapnccrq cyngsbez obbgf jvgu ohpxyrf.
Is this A Clue of some sort, that I should wait to have explained later? Or did the author-hemisphere and the illustrator-hemisphere have a disagreement?
The first time I ever encountered the term “breeder” was watching the movie of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, where it is used in a more or less historically correct context to mean a type of slave whose primary job is producing more slaves. It has ever afterward had a deeply negative connotation for me. Unless you’re talking about a type of reactor.
Recent reading:
The Afterlife Omnibus by Mur Lafferty. A collection of 6 novellas that started strong, peaked, then faded and were thrashing a bit toward the end. (Also the copyediting faded a bit over time.)
Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip. Very interesting variant on Arthur and the Grail legend (and Arthurian/Grail scholarship) meet the Food Network. I loved the world and the characters, but I’m not sure the last chapter tied things up as well as it thought it did. If things were being left deliberately ambiguous, I think the balance was off. Or possibly I’m less steeped in Arthuriana and the Grail legend than the target audience and I missed signals the author assumed would be self-evident. (I’m not sure the intended audience exists in any quantity in that case: I’m not a fanatic but I’ve done a quite a lot of reading of and about the source texts over the years. If I missed signals, they needed a lot of expertise to recognize them.) It’s really too bad — I was really enjoying the layers of story echoes until the last chapter fizzled and failed to come together.
Re: Ancillary covers. First comment:
reply:
I note that MGC continues to be fascinated by “signalling”. It’s boggling for those of us who grew up on Richard Powers covers — compared to which John Harris’ work is rigorously techno-representational — but I think their standard of SFnal comparison must be Baen Books’ covers. Hard edges, bright colors, preferably centered on a human figure in violent action … except when they’re not.
But I still don’t see how a spaceship on the cover can possibly signal “more literature than sci-fi”. Have you *ever* seen literary fiction with a spaceship? Or do they just mean, “the art is impressionistic, a little, that means the text will use a lot of adjectives”?
Having raised a daughter to the age of fourteen (so far), I would say that if there’s one thing being a parent has taught me, it’s to swear really quietly.
🙂 I saw that one as well. In an amazing feat of unwitting self-referential irony saying “virtue-signalling” has become an example of virtue-signalling in some quarters. Something to be simply said to indicate the personal anti-leftist integrity of the writer rather than to actually say something substantive e.g. the Ancillary book covers. OK the spaceships have red bits? Perhaps they are vegan space-fighters?
Re: the Ancillary covers: WT-actual-F? As a dyed in the wool lefty, you know what those covers “signaled” to me when I first saw them?
“Big Imperial battle cruiser-type spaceship in the background, vaguely X-wing-type ships in the foreground. This looks a lot like Star Wars.”
@Doctor Science – Ok, I can actually answer that one. The boots are modeled on a set of New Rocks I own, which have buckles, AND laces, AND zippers. You’re supposed to do the laces, buckle the buckles, and then once it looks really badass, you don’t mess with it, you just use the side zipper.
Thaaaat being said, I didn’t actually draw the laces in because sometimes illustrator brain is working about nine months after author brain and can’t be buggered to put up with author brain’s crap.
Some reading!
Someone recommended “Space Helmet for a Cow” by Paul Kirkley for Best Related. It’s a history of Dr Who (Classic only, with a further volume to come I think) which is a pretty crowded space, so its chosen USP is to add massive dollops of British sarcasm and jokes to the narrative. I’m just over halfway through and I have to say it’s got a very breezy and readable style that’s dragged me along a lot faster than I expected.
I’m not a Who scholar but I didn’t spot any horrible mistakes, and by not going into as much deep detail it actually gives a good idea of how everything flowed together, especially in the sequences where scripts have to be trashed, actors rebel, BBC staff strike, and the whole thing seems to be teetering on the edge.
My issue would be that the jokes are incredibly hit or miss, 50/50 at best, and it seems that the author feels every episode requires a sarcastic comment as an endpiece whether or not he can actually think of a good one. Pretty good though, and probably going towards the bottom of my BRW longlist once finished. There’s a substantial kindle sample if you want to check out the tone – it starts as it means to go on.
@kathodus
In my recollection, I have pretty much exclusively heard it used as a slur not against people who have children as such, but against people who assert that having children is an essential, non-negotiable part of being human, or that having children is essential to ensuring the survival of mankind (the latter claim, when I drill down on it, often exposing that it’s primarily caucasian mankind the person is concerned about, in a more or less kinder, gentler form of the 14 Words crowd).
As a father, I’m trying to find a balance, of being proud of my children and enjoying seeing them grow up, while being aware that not everyone shares my feelings, and that those who don’t share them are not unreasonable.
Consider this SJW’s head exploded at the idea that the art of John Fucking Harris is lefty virtue signalling. The Sad Puppies have finally succeeded in their goal.
Recently finished: Bryony and Roses. Really, really dug it. Nicely paced, likeable characters, and it filled me with a bewildering urge to learn to garden.
Just finished: Archivist Wasp. Pretty durn good, but not great. Found some of the world-building a little hand-wavy, and the ending seemed hurried and very YA in a not-so-great way. The world and tone sorta somewhat reminded me of “The Fifth Season”, which may have worked against it. I would’ve liked to know more about the fantastical elements that were going on, but they were just there.
About to start: Not sure at all. I’m thinking of The Great North Road or A Succession of Bad Days, but I’ve been enjoying the quick reads of the last few days.