Pixel Scroll 2/22/17 Scroll Me A Pixel And I Reply, Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie

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(1) EARTH ][. Or maybe Seveneves for Seven Brothers. “NASA Telescope Reveal Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star”

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”

 

(2) COMMON SENSES. Mary Robinette Kowal did a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” today where someone asked her opinion of this writing advice —

“Include all five senses on every single page of your manuscript. That’s every 250 words.”

This is stupid. Yes, you should include all five senses, but at that pace, it becomes muddy. Plus your main character probably isn’t running around licking the walls.

When you’re there, check the schedule of upcoming AMA’s on the right-hand side of the page. An almost-relentless list of heavy hitters, including Yoon Ha Lee on March 30, Aliette de Bodard on April 25, and Gregory Benford on May 16.

(3) SF HALL OF FAME IS BACK. “Prepare to party like it’s 3001” may not scan very closely with Prince’s lyrics, but that’s how MoPOP is inviting people to attend the new Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame which opens March 4 in Seattle.

Join MoPOP for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Celebration honoring the Hall of Fame’s 20th anniversary.

  • Featuring guests of honor: Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency); Wende Doohan, wife of the late James Doohan (Star Trek); Robyn Miller (Myst co-creator); and more
  • Live performances by Roladex, DJ Kate (False Prophet), and the all-female Wonder Woman-loving marching band, Filthy FemCorps
  • Trek Talk panel exploring Star Trek’s 50-year impact on pop culture, fandom, and geekery
  • Hall of Fame spotlights on the mammoth Sky Church screen
  • Costume parade, MovieCat trivia, gaming, and activities
  • Stellar photo ops, themed food and drink specials, and beyond

Tickets include admission into MoPOP’s Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy: Worlds of Myth & Magic, Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds, and the new Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame gallery.

(4) TECHNOLOGY SHOULD NOT BE MUSHED UP. The future is not yet: UPS drone has glitches.

The delivery firm UPS has unveiled a drone-launching truck – but the event did not go completely to plan.

One aircraft failed to launch properly and was then nearly destroyed….

The Horsefly octacopter involved was made by Ohio-based Workhorse Group.

The initial test went well, with the aircraft launching from a platform built into the truck’s slide-open roof.

But a second attempt was more problematic.

The drone tipped over when it tried to take off, rocked back and was then nearly crushed when the truck’s roof began to close over the launch pad where the machine was still sitting.

(5) BUGS MR. RICO! This Saturday is the annual Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois here in Champaign-Urbanana (typo intentional). Jim Meadows explains:

The festival is put on by the university’s entomology department, using cheesy insect sf movies with bad science, to educate the public through reverse example.

This weekend, their guest is University of Illinois alumnus Paul Hertzberg, executive producer of the two movies being shown:  “Caved In” (2006) (with nasty beetles, I think) and 2016’s “2 Lava 2 Lantua” (nasty tarantulas — a sequel to “Lavalantula” which was shown at the festival last year).

The SyFy cable channel and its commissioning of cheap TV movies, often involving bugs, has been a godsend to the Insect Fear Film Festival, giving it a fresh supply of insect sf movies to draw from.

(6) BRYANT’S WILD CARDS INTERVIEW. George R.R. Martin has online the video recorded at MidAmeriCon II of Ed Bryant talking about the Wild Cards series.

After we heard about Ed’s death, I contacted Tor to ask them if Ed had been one of the writers they had talked with in Kansas City. I am pleased to say he was, and we can now present his interview to you complete and uninterrupted.

All those who knew and loved him will, I hope, appreciate the opportunity to see and hear from Ed one last time… but I should warn you, there is a bittersweet quality to this tape, in light of what was coming. Sad to say, Ed never did finish that last Wild Cards story he was working on, nor any of the other tales that he hoped to write.

Sooner or later, all of us have to see The Jolson Story. Be that as it may, for one last time, I am honored to present my friend Edward Bryant…

 

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 22, 1630 — Popcorn was first introduced to English colonists by Native Americans.

(8) SPAM OF THE DAY. Daniel Dern tells the story —

I got this PR email (not unreasonably, since I’m a tech journo):

Subject: Feb. 2017: Marketing Tech Secrets Powering Unicorns

To which I replied: Why do I feel this is a Peter S Beagle / Cory Doctorow mashup novel?

(9) EXTRA CREDIT READING. Yes, I should mention The Escapist Bundle again.

You see, the eleven fantastic books in this bundle come from authors tied together by, among other accolades, their inclusion in a single volume of Fiction River, in this case a volume called Recycled Pulp. For those of you unfamiliar with Fiction River, it’s an original anthology series that Adventures Fantastic calls “one of the best and most exciting publications in the field today.”

With 22 volumes published so far, Recycled Pulp proves one of the most creative volumes. Inspired by the fantastic, escapist pulp fiction of the last century, the amazing authors in this volume were tasked with creating modern escapist fiction from nothing but a pulp-inspired title. The results were fantastic, indeed.

The initial titles in the Escapist Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

  • Waking the Witch by Dayle A. Dermatis
  • Hot Waters by Erica Lyon
  • Recycled Pulp by Fiction River
  • The Pale Waters by Kelly Washington
  • Isabel’s Tears by Lisa Silverthorne

If you pay more than the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular titles, plus SIX more!

  • A Death in Cumberland by Annie Reed
  • Neither Here Nor There by Cat Rambo
  • The Slots of Saturn by Dean Wesley Smith
  • The War and After by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Revolutionary Magic by Thomas K. Carpenter
  • Tales of Possibilities by Rebecca M. Senese

This bundle is available for the next 22 days only.

(10) VIRGIN FIELD EPIDEMIC. Steven Brust thinks con crud has been around for awhile.

Yes – that’s practically the Curse of King Tut’s Tomb.

(11) OH THE HUMANITY. “Two Huge Sci-Fi Novels Were Snubbed by the Nebula Awards” and Inverse contributor Ryan Britt is overwrought:

On Tuesday, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America released its nominees for the 2016 Nebula Awards and there were two glaring omissions in the category for Best Novel. Cixin Liu’s Death’s End and Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey. Does the nominating committee of the Nebulas have something against science fiction that everyone loves?

(12) STICK YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS AND GO ‘LA LA LA’. Can Arrival win? Inverse skeptically takes “A Historical Look at Why Science Fiction Always Gets Screwed at the Oscars”.

1969’s 41st Academy Awards is a kind of patient zero for how respectable science fiction movies would be treated at the Oscars for the rest of time. The Academy had to acknowledge some good special effects and makeup, and at least give a shout-out to original writing. Science fiction received a pat on the head in 1969, but 2001: A Space Odyssey — maybe the best sci-fi movie ever made — didn’t even get nominated for Best Picture. And, like 1969, 2017’s intelligent sci-fi movie, Arrival, is pitted against an Oscar-bait favorite: the musical La La Land. In 1969, the musical Oliver! won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Art Direction. Clearly, the Academy prefers singing and dancing to thoughtful reflection on the meaning of existence.

Although when you put it in those terms, who doesn’t?

(13) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD SPACEMEN. Woody Harrelson has had a pretty good career, and will soon add to his resume an appearance in a spinoff from Star Wars. The first picture of the Han Solo film team was released the other day. (Westworld star Thandie Newton will also have a role in the film, though she is not in the photo.)

L to R: Woody Harrelson, Chris Miller, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Joonas Suotamo (as Chewbacca), Phil Lord and Donald Glover

(14) BRUNCH. Not to be outdone, Twentieth Century Fox issued a photo of the Alien: Covenant cast. Unfortunately, they didn’t furnish a handy key telling who’s who. Maybe that’s less important because so many of these characters will probably get killed before the end of the movie? That’s what we expect to happen in an Alien movie, anyway.

(15) STAR CLICKIN’. ScreenRant found it easy to remember “17 WTF Things Captain Kirk Did”. Here are some of the subheads from the middle of the list. How many of them can you associate with the right episode or movie even before you look?

  1. Threatened To Spank a Planetary Leader
  1. Took Scotty To A Bordello To Cure His “Total Resentment Towards Women”
  1. Created the Khan Problem in the First Place
  1. Didn’t Tell Anyone Else He Knew They Weren’t Really “Marooned For All Eternity”
  1. Cheated on a Test — And Made It Really Obvious
  1. Pissed Off “God”

(16) PROPOSED WORLDCON 75 PANEL. It isn’t the joke, it’s how you tell it.

The Rosetta Stone for deciphering this cryptic exchange is Ursula Vernon’s 2012 blog post “In Which I Win A Hugo And Fight Neil Gaiman For Free Nachos”.

…Pretty much the minute I handed the Hugo to Kevin and sat down, the fact that I was running on a mango smoothie and crabcakes hit me, and I wanted a cheeseburger or a steak or something RIGHT NOW. The Loser’s party had a small free nacho bar. It was very tight quarters, and I had to squeeze past a curly-haired man in a dark suit who was….ah.

Yes.

“I shall dine out for years,” I said, “on the story of how I shoved Neil Gaiman aside to get to the free nachos.”

He grinned. “When you tell the story, in two or three years, as you’ve added to it, please have me on the floor weeping, covered in guacamole.”

“I think I can promise that,” I said.

(17) MEANWHILE, BACK IN 1992. Tom Hanks frames a clip of Ray Harryhausen receiving the Gordon E. Sawyer Award from Ray Bradbury at the Academy’s Scientific & Technical Awards.

[Thanks to Jim Meadows, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, John King Tarpinian, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]

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76 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/22/17 Scroll Me A Pixel And I Reply, Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie”

  4. (11) OH THE HUMANITY.
    “Does the nominating committee of the Nebulas have something against science fiction that everyone loves?”

    Does Ryan Britt not know that there is no “nominating committee of the Nebulas”? That the Nebulas are nominated & voted on by the members of the SFWA who are mainly writers, who have professional writing credits. If there is a “nominating committee”, it’s a “committee of the whole”. If Britt has a problem with the finalists, he’ll have to take it up to the whole SFWA membership…

    (It’s the old story: no award recognises all the works that *I* think should be recognised. Such is life.)

  6. Cathy: Ted White is currently in danger of losing his house

    I had seen that.

    What concerns me is that this campaign is only a band-aid. How will he pay his taxes next year? And the year after that?

    I’d like to see an attorney who specializes in that area of the law volunteering to step in and help him figure out a way to deal with this in the long-term, so that he doesn’t fall back into crisis-mode every year. 😐

  7. 11) That post had me rolling my eyes so hard. After all, some of my favourite SF novels of last year also didn’t make the Nebula shortlist, but I’m not whining about it.

    And while Death’s End was plausible, considering it’s on the Nebula recommended reading list and the first volume of the trilogy did make the shortlist. Babylon’s Ashes isn’t a very plausible Nebula nominee, no matter how popular it might be. It’s part 6 of an ongoing series, was not on the Nebula recommended reading list and no previous book in the series has ever been nominated for a Nebula.

  8. 16) I fully support the pursuit of free Nachos
    10) You laugh, but I assure you that everyone involved in opening King Tut tomb will die. There is no escape.

  9. (5) I can heartily recommend the French TV series of short-shorts Minuscule.

    (10) It’s all due to Twonk’s Disease!

    (11) Man, I’d love to hear his take on the stickiness of the nominating procedures for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

    (16) Sent on to Worldcon 75 programming team. Though don’t hold your hopes up too much – Messukeskus has rather strict rules on food handling and serving.

  10. “Does the nominating committee of the Nebulas have something against science fiction that everyone loves?”
    For the record: I certainly didnt love Death End. Not by a long short. I found it the weakest of the three by far. So “Everybody loves” is simply wrong 🙂

    Every award will have some nominations that you dont like and some you do like (or at least can understand why there are nominated, even if you dont like them yourself and vice versa). If the award is aligned with your taste you can use it for recommendations. If not, you dont. Simple.

  11. Peer Sylvester: For the record: I certainly didnt love Death End. Not by a long short. I found it the weakest of the three by far. So “Everybody loves” is simply wrong.

    I was disappointed by The Three-Body Problem. So I haven’t even read the last two — and I don’t feel the slightest bit bad for that.

    And I love the Expanse novels and I rated Leviathan Wakes quite highly the year it was nominated for a Hugo; it and Embassytown were my top picks that year. But I haven’t been particularly inclined to nominate any of the subsequent books for a Hugo.

    This guy’s no different than a Puppy — insisting that what he likes is clearly what everyone else should like. 🙄

  12. (11) OH THE HUMANITY.

    Random thought – why does it seem that everyone who doesn’t know how an award is organised automatically assumes it’s given by a committee? It seems to me that by far the most common modes for literary and media awards is either a voting electorate or a jury, so if you’re going to get it wrong why aren’t those your guesses?

  13. Mark: why does it seem that everyone who doesn’t know how an award is organised automatically assumes it’s given by a committee? It seems to me that by far the most common modes for literary and media awards is either a voting electorate or a jury, so if you’re going to get it wrong why aren’t those your guesses?

    I think a lot of people use “committee” and “jury” interchangeably — which is understandable, since their function in such a case would be the same.

  14. 10. My roommate and I often kid around with “everyone who eats my cooking dies!” We had a large party once when I repeated this joke and got some shocked looks from people who don’t know me well. My roommate noticed and told them, “Oh, don’t worry, no one dies immediately afterwards.”

    This was inspired IIRC from a Weekly World News article about the “chair of death.” It seems that anyone who sits in it eventually dies. Like every other chair ever made..

  15. SHOCKING NEWS:
    1) Something I like wasn’t nominated for an award.
    2) It’s Thursday.
    People responsible should be ashamed.

  16. I sort of lost my superstitious awe of the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb when I found out that one of its victims lasted long enough to write an autobiography entitled My First 100 Years.

    Meanwhile… con crud at Boskone and Arisia? The lesson seems to be, stay out of the Eddorian/Arisian war. Sound advice for all occasions, really.

  17. Actually one of the minor consequences of the Hugo kerfuffle was me realigning my expectations about awards. Nowadays I’d consider list of finalists good if it contains works I like, works I dislike, works I know nothing about and no works by people I consider assholes. You know, diversity of tastes and all that stuff.

    List filled only by works I like would be excellent but that just doesn’t happen (still don’t have the power to read everything I want at unreasonable speed).

  20. OLeg89: Nowadays I’d consider list of finalists good if it contains works I like, works I dislike, works I know nothing about and no works by people I consider assholes.

    That’s a pretty succinct summary of my feelings now, too. 😀

  21. 11) Novels deep in series are uncommon Nebula nominees, especially given the electorate, other writers. Time is indeed the fire in which we burn.

    In other news, went to a talk NNedi Okorafor gave at my local library last night. Good turnout, good event. They are making a podcast of it, when that goes live, I’ll throw a link up on twitter (and here of course).

    Next week, at a different library in the area, Daniel Jose Older is coming to town. Minnesota is generally flyover country, so having two out of area SF authors show up isn’t nothing…

  22. (It’s the old story: no award recognises all the works that *I* think should be recognised. Such is life.)

    Which is a reasonable complaint for you to make about the Soon Lee Awards.

  23. What concerns me is that this campaign is only a band-aid. How will he pay his taxes next year? And the year after that?

    Yeah, that’s a gigantic amount of property taxes. Around 40 times more than my annual property taxes for my house and land!

  24. According to the Falls Church website, the value of all the property inside the city limits is $4 billion (!) and change. The property is assessed at 100% of fair market value.

  25. @Rob Thornton

    It also seems that they undertake annual reassessment, which is presumably the ongoing increase referred to.
    They have an appeals process available, so like JJ I’d suggest the long-term fix is to try to challenge the valuation. However, I doubt that a lawyer is the best route; as a valuation matter it needs a real-estate professional with appropriate experience. (Caveat: that would be the answer in the UK, I can always be badly wrong about details of US life!)

  26. re: Ted White

    Where I live, there’s a provision for people over 65 making under a certain amount annually to have the property taxes frozen, so the valuation and the taxes don’t keep going up every year. He might check to see if there’s a similar law in his state.

  27. Yeah, that’s a gigantic amount of property taxes.

    Northern Virginia in general is an expensive area to live in. Falls Church has extremely high property values even for northern Virginia. I am entirely unsurprised by the amount of property taxes in question.

  28. Where I live, there’s a provision for people over 65 making under a certain amount annually to have the property taxes frozen, so the valuation and the taxes don’t keep going up every year.

    Falls Church does have a provision allowing for property tax relief and deferral for people over 65 or who are disabled. He may qualify. I’m on the WSFA mailing list and we’ve been talking about his situation, so I’ll bring this up there.

  29. (11) If you don’t know how a particular award works, I’m not likely to take your complaints about said award seriously.

  30. Ted White seems to suggest that the options are pay the property tax on his current home or become homeless.

    If property values where he lives are so high, couldn’t he sell up and move somewhere cheaper, lowering his taxes and having the cash difference in hand?

  31. If property values where he lives are so high, couldn’t he sell up and move somewhere cheaper, lowering his taxes and having the cash difference in hand?

    Given that the house belonged to his parents, and has been owned by his family for something like eighty years now, I am certain there is an emotional connection to the property that makes him loath to simply sell it off.

  32. Northern Virginia in general is an expensive area to live in. Falls Church has extremely high property values even for northern Virginia. I am entirely unsurprised by the amount of property taxes in question.

    The general theory behind a property tax (which this particular implementation may ignore) is to use property values as a marker for apportioning out the desired tax income. Whether values are high or low within the area shouldn’t affect the overall level of liability, it’s the differences within the area that matter. If this is a standalone tax on this community, then the apparently high level of liability is a decision made locally about how much money to raise from this source. Obviously if this is part of e.g. a statewide tax with a uniform rate then being an expensive part of Virginia will definitely be causing the problem.

    /wonkery

  33. Aaron – absolutely, and I would hate to be in a position where I had to sell up and move to avoid property tax.

    But having to move is not the same as being made homeless: I fear becoming homeless. Losing my house is a certainty unless I can keep the property taxes paid, and do the necessary upkeep on the house (it needs painting and a new roof, at a minimum).

  35. Since we will all be famous for 15 minutes* any day now, I suggested that we take that time to announce our own SF Book Awards. When the spotlight hits you, just read off the best SFF books of that year. But remember, you only have 15 minutes so keep an up to date list with you at all times. Or maybe have it available in the cloud so you can link to it quickly.

    That way all our favorite current SFF books will be recognized and we won’t have to complain about the established system for the distribution of awards.

    * May be less. Andy Warhol continues to hog fame from beyond the grave.

  36. @ Mark: What Ted really needs right now is one of those companies that specializes in challenging your property-tax evaluation, and takes half of what they save you as their fee. Long-term… this is probably going to be an unpopular view, but it looks to me as though he needs to acknowledge that he’s in an untenable situation, sell the house and take his one-time windfall exemption (which was put into the tax laws specifically to cover situations like his), and find a place to live that won’t bleed him dry. If the property taxes are that high, he should be able to realize enough out of the sale to support him in reasonable comfort for the rest of his life.

    (This is a calculation we’re having to consider right now, for very similar reasons. If our property taxes were that high, we’d have been forced to this decision long since. And Ted is 20 years older than we are.)

  37. @10 and followons: I worked on Boskone for 5 days and didn’t get sick; maybe the moral is to work instead of enjoying the con? Can’t be, because I didn’t work Arisia. Maybe the moral is not to stay in the hotel? (I commuted.) Staying away from all the friends you haven’t met yet would work, but would make for a very gloomy winter. (An acquaintance facing a post-doc in Stockholm told me that modern Swedes take a chunk of vacation near midwinter, just to get out of the near-endless darkness.) I wonder whether Sasquan, with all its outdoorness, had a lower rate of con crud than other Worldcons? (I’m not an outdoor-activities enthusiast, but spending less time rebreathing other people’s air could be win — at least when the air isn’t filled with smoke from the worst local forest fire….)

    @12: times do change — and AFAICT the Oscars wobble, like a plate on the end of a stick, in the ground between the poles of pure-intellectual and pure-entertainment; Annie Hall beating Star Wars is an example of both of these. (Unlike the writer, I see Return of the King being tied for all-time number of Oscars as a shift.)

    @Aaron: normally I would sympathize with such an emotional connection, even though I’m probably more typical of coastal people. (Parents sold (when I was 18) the house they’d built before I was born; I’ve lived in 6.5 non-dorms since then.) However, White’s … narrowmindedness … limits my sympathy. This is partly personal — having been collectively slagged by one of his ignorant outbursts — but mostly overall; see, e.g., OGH’s remark in “The Men Who Corflued Mohammed”

  39. @Mark: At 79, he’s also the most sought-after prey of the insidious purveyors of the ruinous “reverse mortgages”, a scheme in which (typically) a bank ends up owning a house for a an investment that’s far less than its real value, often well before the owner has died. On paper, they often don’t look all that catastrophic, but the realities for many of the victims have been much bleaker.

    Overall, I agree with the assessment that all concerns of sentiment have to be set aside in the face of the looming reality; at some point, the house *will* be sold to someone else, and the only remaining question is the timing and the terms under which that will take place. At the moment, he has the opportunity to control things to his advantage, or at least in a manner that limits the damage. Later, that is likely not to be true.

  40. @15: I got just one of the six excerpts, one of the other 11 by title, and another by oh-that’s-the-one-where. And as usual there are questionable items; #3 provides no evidence against Kirk’s reasoning as quoted in Wikipedia’s synopsis, and #14 ignores the possibility that Kirk is such a hellion now because of a lost opportunity a long time ago. (I don’t accept that Kirk Mark II’s history (from the reboot) can be retroactively applied to Mark I.) And if you accept the reboot, #12 is a perfect character-defining moment rather than a mistake; whether the Academy should have restarted the hearing and booted him is a larger question.

  41. PS: thanks to the posters of Vernon’s LJ. It’s nice to know how much stage-management progress there’s been since 1980 (when I had to hustle Martin out of the photo area for his Short Story Hugo so he could pick up his Novelet Hugo). Should I be surprised that she thought other people would know during the con, or is that a known regression? At Noreascon 2, the trophy engraver (a mundane who probably couldn’t have cared less), the awards manager, and I were the only ones who knew the winners before they were announced — and IIRC I was told at the last minute, and only because I was managing Events, and possibly only for Dramatic Presentation (memory dribbles…). I figure somebody in Tech \might/ know as a way of avoiding the Magicon kerfuffle (and in place of my role), and somebody in Newsletter needs to know around the time the ceremony starts, but I’d hope the total would be four or less.

  42. @Lee

    If those companies exist in the US and are reliable then that’s exactly what I was thinking of. The equivalent domestic property tax in the UK hasn’t been rebased for 24 years and so there’s not really enough business for reliable ones to exist on the domestic side. (Lots on the commercial side though).

    @Russ

    The reverse mortgage has reared its head in the UK as well, although I haven’t heard much about them while the housing market has been in a downturn – not a reliable investment for those operating them.

  43. @Chip

    I gotta agree about #3. While there might be arguments against that course of action, they are not presented.

    IMHO, Kirk’s actions were defensible as restoring some of the real horror of war that should act as a deterrent to entering into/continuing a war.

    I’m surprised that they didn’t include episode 5; The Enemy Within. While returning to the ship via transporter, Kirk is split into two beings; one “good”, weak, and indecisive, and one “evil”, aggressively so.

    “Evil” Kirk ends up assaulting and attempting to rape Yeoman Rand. Eventually, the crew figures out how to put Kirk back together again. There is a fair amount theorizing about both halves of his personality being present, complementary, and necessary for Kirk to be Kirk.

    At the end, Yeoman Rand is still assigned to a ship where her captain contains within his character the desire to rape her. And she’s supposed to be OK with this?

    Regards,
    Dann

  44. Speaking of terrible Nebula mistakes, I received a communication this morning that was very indignant that a particular podcast had been overlooked by the Nebulas. Inquiry as to which category they believed it eligible for has so far gone unanswered.

  47. Mark-kitteh: The general theory behind a property tax (which this particular implementation may ignore) is to use property values as a marker for apportioning out the desired tax income.

    For the Brits and anyone else who may not be aware, Falls Church, Virginia, is part of the Washington DC metropolitan area, which is why property values and property taxes are so high. Depending on where he’s located and how large his property is, it may be worth up to $1-2 million on the open market — which of course, does him absolutely no good whatsoever, unless he sells it and moves somewhere else.

    His wife’s gone, his child is gone. That neighborhood is essentially the small town in which he grew up and has lived all his life. Where would he go? He’d have to get way far away to get a decent place that’s more affordable — and he’d want to go someplace where he had some friends or relatives.

    It’s a tough spot to be in. 😐

  49. Chip, you’re not the only one who’s had *ahem* strong disagreements with Ted. I stopped talking to him over thirty years ago.

    I still sent ten bucks. I can empathize with the enormity (physical, financial, AND emotional) of maybe having to move out of a house you’ve lived in most of your life, filled with the belongings and memories of that life. Even for Ted White.

    (otoh, Ted was the first editor to buy and publish one of my stories, way back in 1975. So there’s that.)

    (Incidentally, if anyone is curious and wants to look up and read that early story…NO-O-O-O! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE DON’T! The story *ahem* hasn’t aged well. Not… at… all… well.)

    The thought occurs, since Ted mentioned he still does part-time work as a copyeditor for a local paper, that he might be able to earn some extra income by offering editing services for self-publishing authors. Probably not big bucks, but at least some supplemental income.

  50. @JJ

    If Falls Church sets its own property tax rate, then there’s no reason for the high values to automatically result in high taxes – if it wanted to raise no more than an equivalent settlement with lower levels of value it would simply choose a lower rate.

    Their website has been extremely unhelpful, so I can’t tell if they do in fact set their own rate.

    It seems more likely though that the actual answer is what you say about he being in a house that is now disproportionate to his needs, and that is indeed a tough situation – and one that’s going to be common enough that I’m surprised there’s no allowances made for it.

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