(1) PAID REVIEW WORTH IT? Jeb Kinnison evaluates Kirkus Reviews’ reception of sf.
So I was leery of spending my publisher’s money to get a Kirkus review done. The review was glowing, but without the coveted star that tends to get notice from other reviewers and purchasing agents. I was interested in how they had treated other genre books, so I did a quick survey.
It appears that in the past, Kirkus assigned reviewers who were less than sympathetic to the book’s genre and intended audience. This review [of GHOST by John Ringo] made me laugh: …
But other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? This is Ringo. His books aren’t likely to be accidentally purchased by people like the reviewer, so the review is useless for deciding which violent testosterone-infused male fantasy adventure book to buy for people who enjoy that sort of thing.
One of the best writers of science fiction and fantasy, Lois McMasters Bujold, never got a starred review from Kirkus. Here’s the summary of their review of middle Miles Vorkosigan in Mirror Dance: “A well-conceived series, solidly plotted and organized, though heavy going in places and, finally, lacking that spark of genuine originality that would blazon it as truly special.” Kind of missing the point, no?
(2) DOCTOR WHO PUN OPPORTUNITY. We ought to be able to do something with a character who is married to River, and whose series will be hstreamed on Amazon Prime beginning in March.
Welp, it wasn’t the longest of national nightmares, but now it appears it is over. Last week, I wrote about how and where you could watch Doctor Who following its abrupt pulling from streaming services on February 1 of this year. But it wasn’t to last, it seems; Amazon announced today via their Twitter that Series 1-8 of the show will be back on their Prime streaming service beginning in March.
#DoctorWho fans, never fear for Doctor Who might have left #Netflix, but will be coming to #PrimeVideo in March. https://t.co/0bwJqXGRdz
— Rachel Hirst (@RachelTheTall) February 23, 2016
(3) WHEN DID YOU FIRST SUSPECT? I got a kick out of Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Ten Signs That You Might Be A Novel’s Character” at Mad Genius Club. Number 10 and the Bonus sign are especially funny.
1- Nothing is ever easy, nor simple. Say you are walking across the street to get a gallon of milk. A rare make of car will almost run you down. The store that sells the milk will be out of milk. You’ll have to walk across the most dangerous area of town to get to the next store.
This means someone is making you terminally interesting….
(4) FROM REJECTION TO ANGRY ROBOT. Peter Tieryas details “My Experience Publishing With Angry Robot” at Fantasy-Faction.
My journey to being a writer almost never happened. With my new book, United States of Japan, coming out, I wanted to reflect on how I got here and what it’s been like working with the fantastic Angry Robot Books.
Perfect Edge
Back in 2009, almost seven years before I joined the robot army, I’d gotten so many short story rejections, I wondered if I was even meant to be a writer. While I’d had a series of short stories published when I was younger, there’d been a gap of about five years where I’d only gotten one piece accepted. I was devastated when I received that issue and found all sorts of typos and formatting errors in my story. What I thought would be a brief moment of victory had been ruined…..
As the decision to publish was made by the whole of Angry Robot and Watkins Media staff, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It took USJ about four months to get to “acquisitions” which is the meeting where they make their choice to “acquire” or not. I got an email from Phil the week of the acquisition meeting telling me when it was going to happen. I could not sleep the night before and kept on hitting refresh on my emails, awaiting final word. The notification came from Phil on March 5, 2015 with a simple subject line: “You’re in.” Even though it was late, I got up and started dancing in what might be better described as an awkward fumbling of my hips.
(5) HOLLYWOOD READIES SF/F MOVIES. News of three different sf/f film projects appears in Deadline’s story “Ava DuVernay Set To Direct Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’; Script By ‘Frozen’s Jennifer Lee”.
EXCLUSIVE: Selma director Ava DuVernay has just been set by Disney to direct A Wrinkle In Time, an adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Medal-winning Madeleine L’Engle fantasy classic novel that has a script by Oscar-winning Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee. Deadline revealed February 8 that DuVernay had been offered this film and was also in the mix at DreamWorks for Intelligent Life, a sci-fi thriller scripted by Colin Trevorrow and his Jurassic World collaborator Derek Connolly. DuVernay now has the offer on that film and is in negotiations on a pic that has 12 Years A Slave Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o attached to a fable about a UN worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be one. That film is produced by Frank Marshall, Trevorrow and Big Beach principals Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub.
(6) TRUST & SAFETY. Here’s Twitter’s announcement of the Trust & Safety Council in case you want more info, tweeted February 9. It lists all the members of the Council. (Somebody may have put that in a comment here already.)
As we develop products, policies, and programs, our Trust & Safety Council will help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly. In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices from organizations including:
- Safety advocates, academics, and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet;
- Grassroots advocacy organizations that rely on Twitter to build movements and momentum;
- Community groups with an acute need to prevent abuse, harassment, and bullying, as well as mental health and suicide prevention.
We have more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions joining as inaugural members of the Council. We are thrilled to work with these organizations to ensure that we are enabling everyone, everywhere to express themselves with confidence on Twitter.
(7) AXANAR SUIT DEVELOPMENT. Inverse discusses why “Paramount Must Explain ‘Star Trek’ in Court or Lose Ownership”.
Enter the lawyers. Obviously, they can claim to own Star Trek because they acquired the series from Lucille Ball’s Desilu Productions in the late 1960s. Now they’ve been merged with CBS and that’s how we’re getting both a new TV series and a continuing film franchise. But the Axanar team has a card up its sleeve.
The Paramount lawsuit claims that this infringes upon “thousands of copyrights” and the Axanar team has asked the simple question: “Which ones?” Because Star Trek now exists over several different universes, time periods, and casts, it’s not so simple. The universe is so spread out, it is almost impossible to define what Star Trek actually is. To that end, the burden is on Paramount to explain what Star Trek is — in a legal sense.
(8) CLIFF AMOS OBIT. Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22 after a long battle with heart disease. Bob Roehm wrote a fine appreciation on Facebook:
Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22. Cliff was the founder of Louisville fandom, creating both the Falls of the Ohio Science Fiction Association (FoSFA) and RiverCon. I first met Cliff around 1970 while he was teaching a free university course in SF at the University of Louisville. We had both separately attended the St. Louis worldcon the year before, but had not met. Seeing an announcement of the Free U. meeting, I began attending the weekly gatherings. A year… or two later, the local fan club was organized and in 1975 Cliff chaired the first RiverCon (combined with DeepSouthCon that year). Cliff continued to head RiverCons for several years and was a regular at Midwestcon and Kubla Khan. He was given the Southern Fandon Confederation Rebel Award in 1979, and also chaired the second NASFiC, NorthAmeriCon, that year. His interests were certainly wide-ranging and eclectic (for example, he once appeared on Tom Snyder’s late night talk show as warlock Solomon Weir), and he will be missed by his many friends both within and without the science fiction community. There will no funeral service or visitation but a memorial wake is being arranged for the near future (probably this coming Sunday); details forthcoming.
(9) GAMBLE OBIT. Australian childrens’ book artist Kim Gamble passed away February 19 at the age of 63.
The much-loved, award-winning artist is known for illustrating the best-selling Tashi books, written by mother and daughter authors Barbara and Anna Fienberg.
Gamble created the lively, elfin boy with the towering curl of hair and gypsy earrings, who looked nothing like the authors initially imagined, more than 20 years ago….
Anna Fienberg called Gamble’s imagination “a magic gift which he shared with the world”….
“Working with Kim was like learning a new way to see. It was perhaps the magical appearance of Tashi that inspired us to go deeper into the mythical land of dragons, witches, giants, ogres … the world lying beneath.”
…Gamble’s favourite book as a child was Moominsummer Madness, by Finnish writer Tove Jansson, and artists he admired included Marc Chagall and Odilon Redon.
When asked about the success of the Tashi series, Gamble said, “It’s very popular because he’s the smallest kid in the class and in every story he’s up against the odds … and he uses his head, he doesn’t fight to get out of the problem. I think kids really just enjoy how cleverness beats brawn.”
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born February 24, 1786 — Wilhelm Grimm, historian and, with his brother Jacob, compiler of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
- Born February 24, 1947 — Edward James Olmos
(11) MORE MARK OSHIRO COMMENTARY. Mark Oshiro updated his Facebook readers about the response to his complaint about sexual harassment at ConQuesT.
3) MidAmeriCon II was the first to make a public statement, which you can find on their Twitter account. I wasn’t expecting a response from them, so I appreciated a very direct message about their commitment to safety for this year’s WorldCon. I *am* going to be at WorldCon, even if some of the people who were responsible at ConQuesT are on staff/the board. WorldCon has become a tradition for me because it was my first introduction to this community, so I will be there and be on programming. Say hello if you like!
4) Chris Gerrib was the first to apologize to me, and I appreciated and accepted the apology. I respect that he did so without being asked to.
5) Yesterday, Kristina Hiner sent me an apology. I am keeping it private because I see no reason to publish it. It is a *very* good apology, and I accepted it, too. I am very thankful for her response, and more so than anyone else, she was the only person I really *wanted* an apology from. I have also informed her that at this point, I actually don’t need each of the complaints followed up on at this point. It seems redundant to me. Everyone knows about the post now, and I don’t need an apology from anyone else. I just wanted someone to inform these people that their behavior was unwelcoming, rude, or hostile. I’ve now done that, so I think the board and ConQuesT can devote time and energy to future conventions instead of last year’s.
Mikki Kendall used the discussion about Oshiro to launch her post “On Bad Cons & How You Kill An Event in Advance”.
I get invited to a lot of cons that have a diversity problem. I also get a lot of requests from cons that claim to want to create anti harassment policies. Aside from my feelings on an expectation that I donate hours of work to strangers for events I have no interest in attending, there’s the sad reality that many small cons are so entrenched on reinventing the wheel they’ve missed the window to do better. Younger fans, fans of color, disabled fans…they don’t have to keep going to cons that aren’t welcoming to be able to connect with other fans. They can go to the big commercial cons, to the smaller cons that do get it & to social media for their community needs. So no, they won’t keep giving cons with bad reps chance after chance. They won’t be patient with serial offenders or the places that enable them. Why should they donate that time & energy to some place that doesn’t want them, that thinks they deserve to be hazed, deserve to be mistreated in order to prove something to bigots?
Bluntly? Most small cons will age out of existence because of bad behavior, because of a focus on the past that prioritizes the social mores of the dead over the actual experiences of the living.
(12) THE LIGHT’S BACK ON. The Wertzone says “Pacific Rim 2 re-greenlit for 2018”.
It was on, off and now back on again. Universal and Legendary Pictures are moving ahead with Pacific Rim 2, probably for a 2018 release date….
This has unfortunately meant that Guillermo Del Toro will be unable to return to direct, having already moved on to other projects. However, Del Toro will still co-write (with Jon Spaihts) and produce the movie. The new director is Steven S. DeKnight, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran who went on to create Spartacus and is currently working on Netflix’s Daredevil. The film will be DeKnight’s directorial debut.
(13) THIS COULD RUIN ANDY WEIR’S SEQUEL. This video argues we can reach relativistic speeds using new technologies.
Imagine getting to Mars in just 3 days… or putting points beyond our solar system within our reach. New propulsion technologies could one day take us to these cosmic destinations making space travel truly interstellar! NASA 360 joins Professor Philip Lubin, University of California Santa Barbara, as he discusses his NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) for energy propulsion for interstellar exploration.
(14) ADMIT IT, YOU DO. Motherboard asks, “Why Do We Feel So Bad When Boston Dynamics’ New Robot Falls Down?”
Even though all the things the engineers do to mess with the robot are done to showcase its ability to correct itself, recover from falls, and persevere in performing tasks, the human tendency to anthropomorphize non-sentient objects is so strong as to override our common-sense knowledge that Atlas is an object incapable of feeling. Engineers commonly kick robots to demonstrate their ability to recover, and it always feels a tiny bit cruel. It’s a strange quirk of the brain—though the tendency is stronger in some people than in others.
(15) A LONG TIME AGO IN DOG YEARS. Some Sad Puppies writing on Facebook are grieved that I have not excerpted Stephanie S.’ “Opening a Moderate Conversation on Fandom with ‘Standback’” atThe Right Geek.
Let’s talk first about what I like to call the “pre-history” of the Sad Puppies. For the past fifteen years (at least), the character of fandom has shifted in a way that many Puppies find very troubling — and by the way, for the vast majority of our number, this has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexuality. A significant number of us are women who accept the precepts of first wave feminism at the very least. A number of us are “people of color.” And a number of us are gay or, at minimum, amenable to leaving gay people alone to live their lives as they see fit. No — what has disturbed the Puppies is the increasingly strident tone that many fans have adopted in support of their favored cultural and political causes. In our perception, the vague “codes of conduct,” the “shit lists,” the pilings on, the endless internet flame-wars, and the non-falsifiable accusations of racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. have all created an environment that is extraordinarily hostile to points of view that don’t hew to a particular left-wing party line. The result? We’ve felt unwelcome and stomped on for what, to our mind, should be recognized as sincere and well-meant differences of opinion.
Over the same time frame, the Puppies have also become concerned about the artistic direction of our field. The “Human Wave” movement, the “Superversive” movement, and the more generalized complaints about “message fic” and “grey goo” that started gaining steam before last year’s Sad Puppies campaign are all flailing attempts by the Puppies to describe the flatness we’ve perceived in many recent award winners — particularly in the shorter fiction categories, where the stylistic sophistication and emotional catharsis beloved by creative writing professors and MFA programs the world over appear to be crowding out more accessible stories with identifiable plots and recognizably science-fictional ideas.
(16) EDIT AND GET CREDIT. Michael J. Martinez singles out for praise and award consideration five editors who worked on his fiction in 2015.
Yes, these are editors I’ve worked with. Each one of them has contributed both to the quality of my work as well as my ever-ongoing education as a writer. They are also lovely humans, which goes a very long way with me.
(17) ANY SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. Radio Times found a very funny site: “Someone is pretending to be the IT guy at Hogwarts and it’s hilarious”.
Let’s be honest: magic is great and everything, but if Hogwarts didn’t have WiFi, we probably wouldn’t be so interested.
A Tumblr account called The Setup Wizard took this premise and ran with it. The blog is the fictionalised account of an American muggle named Jonathan Dart working as Hogwarts’ first IT guy. The somewhat grumpy character is constantly solving problems and handling the struggles of being a Muggle in a magic world.
How is it that the first person in this school I’ve successfully been able to explain network bandwidth to is the 500 year old partially decapitated ghost?
Today I taught a centaur how to use a hands free Bluetooth headset. Apparently he really felt the need to make phone calls while wielding a bow and arrow.
[Thanks to Will R., Michael J. Walsh, Reed Andrus, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
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Sure. On the other hand, Cryptonomicon was plain WWII historical fiction intercut with a contemporary story set in the recent past. It was nominated for a Hugo and Clarke and won the Locus and Prometheus. Quicksilver was 100% historical fiction set in the 17th and 18th century. It was shortlisted for Locus and won the Clarke. Next up, claims “Gravity” or The Martian isn’t really SF because all the technology exists today. Setting boundaries for the genre is always a tough call.
Brian Z: Setting boundaries for the genre is always a tough call.
Sure it is. My point is that it is not your call — except insofar as it affects your Hugo nomination choices.
You are arguing your opinion of what is and is not “Hugo-worthy” as if what you are saying is fact, and not merely your opinion.
I mean, A Borrowed Man — “innovative and rigorous worldbuilding”? Seriously? Clearly, your idea of “innovative” and “rigorous” is a universe apart from mine.
Brian Z: In 2014, I was very impressed with Nicola Griffiths’ Hild, which had no magic but used an Arthurian-ish setting to investigate social issues that historical fantasy going back to the groundbreaking Mists of Avalon had left out.
Wait. Arthurian-ish? I thought it was based on the life of Hilda of Whitby. That’s, what, seventh century England? Not what I’d call Arthurian-ish, and certainly not Celtic Britain, in any case. (Checking, I discover that Hild was at least 2013, not 2014, anyway–predating Goblin Emperor by a year, so I’m not quite sure what the point of your direct comparison is, in terms of Hugo nominations. Hild did get a Nebula nom in 2013, but no Hugo nom.) Thanks for the reminder, though: it–Hild, that is–has been on my TBR pile for far too long . . .
@ JJ
Enough, you know, science fiction and fantasy writers thought Hild deserved an SFF award to shortlist it for the Nebula. But I have no problem with people who don’t agree.
Acknowledging that the precise boundaries of the genre are difficult to pin down is a separate question from thinking about how the preferences and outlook of the Hugo voters have changed over time, and how fans can evaluate excellence.
I kept silent on your Borrowed Man rant, thinking someone like redheadedfemme might come stand up for it. Perhaps you didn’t do so consciously but you opened the novel with the attitude of I’ll skim offended. You can’t speed read Gene Wolfe, and one reading is never sufficient. A Borrowed Man is a devastating meditation on posthuman ethics. Every detail of that world was meticulously placed for a reason, including the occasional sexist remarks and the time the clone randomly beat up a guy on a bus.
@Brian Z – You’re dismissing one of the most critically acclaimed and bestselling European novels of 2015 on the basis of some pull quotes. It’s not your cup of tea. Fine. But it’s a “What if” novel about a future in which an Islamic party takes power in France and a Saudi prince buys the Sorbonne.
But I wasn’t. It’s totally not my cup of tea, for reasons which I believe I explained quite adequately. That doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong for finding it amazing and award worthy. What I’m taking issue with is doing so based on originality, a claim which you’ve only weakly and unconvincingly supported. Twice.
Like what you like, advocate for the things you think are award worthy, but if you do so because of some dubious ideas about what is innovative, you’re just going to have to keep walking it back when the better read point out why you’re wrong, because there’s nothing new under the sun, Horatio.
What makes work unique isn’t the science or the structure or the way one of the universal plots gets adapted, it’s how the writer brings their characters to life and tells their stories. Dick couldn’t write Butler’s stories and she couldn’t write LeGuin’s stories and LeGuin couldn’t write Dick’s stories and each one has their own version of standing on giants while reflecting the world in which they live in some magical alchemy of transmutation. That deeply personal accomplishment is the place you’ll find real originality, not your eccentric set of data points that ignores hundreds of years of fiction and mischaracterizes the voting patterns of more than a generation of Worldcon voters.
It took me awhile to warm up to Ancillary Justice too, and I wouldn’t put it in my top ten, but given a chance I would have voted for Ancillary Sword. Also, I’m spoiled for choice in short stories, but I added Folding Beijing to the very long list of things I really like. I’m not sure how I missed it, but I’m guessing I just forgot to read that issue.
Brian Z: Perhaps you didn’t do so consciously but you opened the novel with the attitude of I’ll skim offended.
No, I didn’t. I opened that novel, after reading the blurb, thinking “This sounds really cool!”
I’ve never read any Gene Wolfe books before, and had no preconceived notions other than that I’ve seen other people refer to his prose as “flowery” and similar adjectives. Which really surprised me, because I didn’t think that his prose in A Borrowed Man was flowery at all — I found it very readable and accessible.
What I found less accessible was his continual retreading of overused noir tropes. Instead of doing his own worldbuilding, he transplanted Chandler to a world where the buses were hoverbuses and the detectives were clones. Certainly the concept of the clone with the uploaded experiences of the author from whom he was cloned was interesting, but innovative? Hardly. That concept’s been done dozens of times, as has the “get help from uploading a mind into a facsimile” (obTNG: “Booby Trap”).
I didn’t “skim” that book. I didn’t speed-read it. I read it.
You have zero idea what I was thinking, and your claim to be a mind-reader of me is laughable. You’re just unhappy because I did not find the book “innovative” and its worldbuilding “rigorous”, as you apparently did. Given the lack of raves from other people who’ve read it, I was clearly not a minority. Get over it.
@JJ, I misjudged your previous comment about having read thousands of SFF novels. If that doesn’t imply you’ve read a Wolfe novel before – which still amazes me – then I did presume too much, and I’ll rephrase my comment. Here goes. If you were more familiar with Wolfe’s approach, you’d give A Borrowed Man the benefit of the doubt, and I am certain it would grow on you with rereading. In a Gene Wolfe book, nothing is as it seems. There is a deeper reason for having an elite that thinks it is a good idea to jet around in ridiculous Jetsons flying cars while a vulnerable underclass takes the bus. Having an unreliable narrator make a jarring sexist remark is virtually a signpost from the author to draw your attention to something else entirely that is going on below the surface. As for the lack of raves, read Neil Gaiman’s essay, or the reviewers that did rave, and you’ll see why approaching a Gene Wolfe is such a daunting yet ultimately rewarding task.
Okay, Explain:
Brian Z: Every detail of that world was meticulously placed for a reason, including the occasional sexist remarks and the time the clone randomly beat up a guy on a bus…
And it wasn’t the unreliable narrator making the sexist remarks, it was the reliable narrator who made those.
@ Cheryl S.
You just used three of the 20th century’s most innovative authors to argue that innovation is not important.
If you simply want a rich and lovingly drawn character study, you can vote for John Banville’s The Sea (a personal favorite!). If your view is that merit is merit regardless of whether one is voting for the Pulitzer or the Booker or the RITA or the Hugo, fair enough, that’s one fan’s valid opinion.
Historically, Worldcon voters tended to believe excellent science fiction excelled on its own (sciencefictional) terms, and sure enough, books that were appallingly bad “literature” could win the Hugo on the strength of their ideas. Whereas in that 1964 five-way close best novel contest Cat’s Cradle, the finest book of the lot in pure literary terms, got the fewest votes by a huge margin.
I guess there is an argument to be made that today SFF is all grown up, so it should be treated just like other kinds of literature. (Maybe Vonnegut would even think so if he were still around, I don’t know.)
But that’s selling SFF short. It does a lot of things that realism can’t accomplish. I’m not the only one who thinks that its singularly sciencefictional achievements should be recognized and rewarded.
And to observe that fans used to be much more on the same page about that than they are now is not to be prescriptive about where to go from here. I’m just describing the challenge for the Hugos as I see it.
@ JJ
Which reliable narrator? The reclone with the implanted memories of a dead mystery writer who was imprisoned in a cell in a library? We know a couple things about him. We know he was deliberately programmed to speak in the style of the narrator of a noir mystery novel. (And he has chosen to tell you his story as if he were Raymond Chandler writing The Big Sleep!) We know that he was deliberately programmed to be unable to tell a lie to the library patron who checked him out, yet he still managed to find a way to completely mislead her. He certainly was never programmed to have to be straight with you.
Brian Z: He certainly was never programmed to have to be straight with you.
And yet, at the end of the book, nothing he had said had misled me. Whereas I caught the deliberate time inversion by the unreliable narrator the moment we were given a hint of it.
And you still haven’t explained:
Brian Z: Every detail of that world was meticulously placed for a reason, including the occasional sexist remarks and the time the clone randomly beat up a guy on a bus…
He’s a condemned man on death row writing in his diary. He’s not being straight with you because it’s hardwired into his brain, because he’s at the mercy of his jailer, a dystopian state, and because he either believes, or wants you to believe, that blackmailing his patron is (or was) the only way to prolong his life. And that’s just him lying to you – how might he be lying to himself?
Explain what? Did you think the author literally sees women as mere sex objects and glorifies casual violence?
Brian Z: He’s a condemned man on death row writing in his diary. He’s not being straight with you because it’s hardwired into his brain, because he’s at the mercy of his jailer, a dystopian state, and because he either believes, or wants you to believe, that blackmailing his patron is (or was) the only way to prolong his life.
But he’s not being dishonest about the blackmailing. None of his narrative was unreliable. His self-justifications were quite recognizable for exactly what they were.
An “unreliable narrator” tells you things that didn’t happen, or tells you that they happened differently than they actually did. The detective in this story does not do that.
Brian Z: Explain what? Did you think the author literally sees women as mere sex objects and glorifies casual violence?
I think the author was being lazy and using old noir detective tropes instead of doing “innovative worldbuilding”. I’ve seen nothing which might convince me otherwise.
The two of you have pushed this book way up my TBR list.
Will R.: The two of you have pushed this book way up my TBR list.
Great! I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts after you’ve read it.
@Brian Z: I’ve read a lot of Wolfe and A Borrowed Man didn’t win me over. I didn’t hate it but it felt like the same Wolfe ideas from recent novels played out on a stage with different sets. I did find the odd reference to sexist violence strange – I agree that Wolfe would have put it there carefully for a reason but whatever that reason was I don’t think it helped the novel (I suspect it was a marker for ‘1950s’ like other elements in the book).
@Snowcrash At risk of derailing an interesting thread:
Pray tell, what are those things (apart from being an arse, which is subjective) apart from oversimplified political views? You know, stuff you can and should disagree with, with evidence.
@ JJ
He framed each scene as if he were a hotshot detective who’s cool with the women yet quick to show a man who’s boss, and he assured us he wasn’t exaggerating. But he’s not a detective. He’s not even the mystery writer he’s forced to talk in the style of a narrator of. He a posthuman kid and they neutered him, implanted false memories and tried to take away his free will, and then they condemned him to death. He’s also a murderer. Look at the opening again:
My takeaway was that we should definitely take everything he tells us with a grain of salt.
@ Camestros
The reclones are an idea further developed from Home Fires, sure, and I believe Home Fires is the superior book – but what he did with it here is still chilling and to my knowledge completely original. I’ll have a think about why I seem to have found the noir narrator conceit more successful than you did. Perhaps one reason I thought it worked is that the structure of this story was made deceptively simple and yet it still packed the usual Wolfe punch.
@Snowcrash What I’m trying to get you to explain is they’re not just political views, they’re an offense to right-thinking people. There is a moral component. Or, in a religious frame, intolerance is a ‘sin’.
Brian Z: He’s also a murderer. Look at the opening again: “Murder is not always such a terrible thing. It is bad, sure, sometimes awfully, awfully bad. But only sometimes.” My takeaway was that we should definitely take everything he tells us with a grain of salt.
Except that he explicitly tells us about the murder he commits. He doesn’t soft-soap it. He describes it as he does it. So I don’t see how that makes him an “unreliable narrator”.
@Brian
Did you just say that developing a previous idea in a different setting counts as “completely original” in your book?
I would have said he soft-soaps it.
(And there are other things he hasn’t told us.)
@ Mark, completely different worlds, different moral questions, both stories have implanted memories in them. Sometimes your cheap shots are kinda stupid.
@Brian
Oh dear, and I was deliberately giving you the opportunity to clarify what I was taking away from your statement before coming to any conclusions, as opposed to your habit of restating people’s positions and then coming to all sorts of erroneous conclusions in the same post.
Cheap shots indeed.
—
So, to be clear, was it the use of “implanted memories” that you were describing as “completely original”?
You do know how science fiction works, right?
Mark: So, to be clear, was it the use of “implanted memories” that you were describing as “completely original”?
‘Taint nothing in that novel that is “completely original”. Which doesn’t make it a bad novel — it’s not, it’s pretty entertaining. Just that claims that elements of it are “completely original” are spurious.
It was in the context of you saying
as if refusing to play jolly and have a beer with someone who gloats about beating gays to death with a tire iron or gloats about enslaving women were a simple matter of social disagreement between people with equivalently moral values.
In your next post you repeat the vicious old canard that it is “intolerant” to object to someone else’s intolerance (which is almost always violent and brutal inhumanity towards other humans).
None of my religious friends consider the idea of turning one’s gaze away from the brutalization of fellow human beings for the sake of making the brutalizers feel comfortable, as you seem to be demanding, to be *virtuous*.
@Brian
All I’m doing right now is asking you a couple of questions to clarify what your position on ‘originality’ is, and you’re replying with insults and evasions. Why would that be?
(To move things on a bit, I’d happily accept that “completely” is hyperbole, btw)
@Peace
No, I didn’t. I asked whether @snowcrash saw intolerance (i.e. being ‘ist’) as equivalent to a ‘sin’ in a religious morality system. You seem to have answered that question.
The whole point is that your morality system is not equivalent to the morality system of a Catholic who believes homosexuality is a sin. How that person treats individual ‘sinners’, however, is a reflection of their character. They can choose to forgive, behave kindly, and secretly pray for the ‘sinner’s’ soul. They can choose to piously moralise. They can _actually_ beat someone to death (a truly evil act).
@VivienneRaper:
Truly I do not understand what point you are trying to make.
It is common in some but not all religious traditions to preach tolerance and understanding.
It is common in secular life for some people to work at tolerance and understanding.
It is extremely common for predators to try to piggyback on tolerance and understanding by demanding that it be given like a free pass to them regarding their brutality towards other human beings.
@Vivienne raper:
Ah, I believe I see.
It sounds like you are calling for *compassion*.
Compassion is a good thing. Ghandi was extraordinarily compassionate, towards the English as well as towards Indians. The English may not have seen it that way.
Compassion is not “nice” and it is not “jolly”.
But it certainly is a virtue.
@PIMMN: I’m not sure I’m following. She wants us to have compassion for the poor misguided bigots?
I have pity for them. That doesn’t stop me throwing up every defense I can find.
Compassion and/or pity doesn’t make their bigotry into an equally valid viewpoint.
I have yet to encounter a bigot who wasn’t abusive in some way. Emotionally and/or spiritually at the very least.
Count me as another person not interested in “getting on” with anyone who believes that my lifestyle, or those of my friends, are an offense against Nature or that we don’t deserve bodily autonomy. Hell, I’m not particularly interested in “getting on” with anyone who believes that the solution to systemic economic inequality is for poor people to just work harder, or who looks at a classroom full of dead first-graders and whines about their rights and traditions.
There are seven billion people in the world. If screening for basic human decency means I can’t hang with some of them, I don’t think my life will particularly suffer.
@ Mark, if you’ve seen a post-apocalyptic setting where dead people’s last brain scans are nationalized by a dystopian world government and offered as a public resource by downloading into the brains of specially engineered clones lacking human legal status who then are shipped out to local branch libraries, let me know, but I found that to be very original.
@VivienneRaper
Firstly, before you start throwing such terms, you may want to consider the possibility that the person you’re speaking to was brought up in a religious system that has a very different understanding of the term ‘sin’.
Secondly, there is a difference between being an adherent of a faith that considers homosexuality a ‘sin’, and thinking that gay-bashing is a default response.
Also, “(in)tolerant”. Bugger that. People are not there to be tolerated. Beliefs are not there to be tolerated. “Tolerance” is not some absolute good that people should strive for.
You appear to consider “rampant homophobia, disenfranchisement of women, religious / racial bigotry” to be “oversimplified political views”. I suspect that you’re using an entirely meaningless definition of the term “politics”. That’s fine – you do you.
Just don’t expect me to tolerate such nonsense.
Goodness Brian, why so hostile? And more pertinently, why do you act as if I’m disagreeing with you about the originality of the book you were so passionately praising? I entirely accept that what you’re describing is, when taken as a whole, interesting and original (for values of original that aren’t deeply pedantic, at any rate).
What I’m really interested in is how your analysis treats the existence of previously-explored ideas in amongst new worldbuilding and story. You say that taking known elements and examining them within new worlds and story isn’t disqualified from your criteria of ‘original’, so what I would then do is ask you to apply that judgement to all the modern Hugo winners you’ve condemned for a lack of that originality. Please, tell me how you disqualify the last three decades of Hugo winning novels without breaching your own analysis.
(And yes, I’ve jumped ahead from clarifying your position to reaching conclusions in the same post, but you spurned your chances to reply properly earlier)
@Vivienne Raper–
And here’s the fundamental dishonesty, or perhaps just profound confusion, of your position. With the Puppies, we’re not talking about people who hold different views but are kind, decent, and generous to everyone. We’re talking about people who publicly, loudly, aggressively claim that the increasing diversity in Hugo winners–the increase in writers and characters who are women, people of color, LGBT, etc. can’t be a result of the Hugo voters actually enjoying those works, but must be the result of an evil conspiracy of people voting for bad works over good in order to check off politically necessary demographic boxes.
Also, in the case of John C. Wright, that the natural response of all “normal” men is to beat gay men to death with tire irons. That’s not just privately believing or feeling something while behaving and speaking in a civilized manner in public. That’s talking publicly in a wayI that encourages bad impulses in those who have them and that makes the targets of this talk feel less safe. That’s being an asshole.
In the case of Beale, we’re talking about someone who called Anders Brevik, a mass murderer who targeted the children of people he disagreed with politically, a hero. (And no, I am not interested in or impressed by his subsequent weaseling.) “Asshole” is a very, very kind term for that. And with Beale, that’s only one example.
With the Puppies in general, we’re talking about people who at best see no reason to dissociate themselves from people advocating for such views. Brad has made it all too clear that he thinks “gay” is one of the worst things he can call another man. And that the increase in women winning Hugos in recent years cannot possibly be explained by the voters enjoying and admiring their work. And that it’s perfectly reasonable to accuse people of lying when they say no, they really admired and enjoyed the works. And to accuse them of cheating and rigging the vote. And of being insufficiently tolerant of differing views, i.e., his view that they are obviously bad people…
What do you call that except assholery?
Oh, got it. You meant I can’t say “completely” because Rudy Rucker thought of brain scans 30 years ago. That was a lot of effort for such a stupid rhetorical point.
What Wolfe did with it was completely original.
Now if I can just figure out which three decades of Hugo winners I “disqualified”!
@Brian
I explicitly said I wasn’t holding you to “completely” and then didn’t use that word again, so you haven’t “got it” at all. In fact, what you’ve done is to restate my position incorrectly and respond to that instead. You are also continuing to argue Wolfe’s originality when I’ve already accepted it. Please respond to things I did say, rather than things I didn’t.
In the spirit of that, I’ll concede that “disqualify” was too harsh a description for what you were claiming about a lack of originality in recent winners earlier in the thread.
Now that we’ve reset the board, I await your reply with interest.
No, you can hold me to “completely.” As I told Camestros, what Wolfe did with it here was completely original.
You’ve retreated from stating that I have condemned “all modern Hugo winners” (three decades!) for a supposed “lack of originality” to simply referencing in a vague way “what you were claiming about a lack of originality in recent winners earlier in the thread.”
If you can articulate something that 1) I claimed that 2) you object to, I’ll reply.
This wrangling is thirsty work! 😀
Tolerance is often misunderstood in the same way free speech is. Regardless of popular belief of those who aren’t tolerant tolerance is to be free from bigotry. Words have meanings. To help the discussion along I’ve provided both the current definition and the origin and history of tolerance from Dictionary.com
noun
1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.
Word Origin and History for tolerance
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n.
early 15c., “endurance, fortitude,” from OldFrench tolerance (14c.), from Latin tolerantia “endurance,” from tolerans, present participle oftolerare “to bear, endure, tolerate” (see toleration). Of authorities, in the sense of “permissive, “first recorded 1530s; of individuals, with the sense of “free from bigotry or severity,” 1765. Meaning “allowable amount of variation” dates from 1868; and physiological sense of “ability to take large doses” first recorded 1875.
Brian, you’ve spent much of this thread arguing that older works were thought-provoking and original, and many (but not all) of today’s award winners are not. I did not state that you condemned “all”, but you have criticised many as part of identifying a supposed trend.
You, referring to pre-80s SF: “With this system, they consistently chose a challenging, thought-provoking, original, and (sometimes) well-crafted book, from a pretty decent shortlist.”
You then go on to claim that this has been lost in modern times. Elsewhere you’ve explicitly said that “well-worn territory” “ground was already well trod” is not award-worthy and decried that “it doesn’t even have to be original any more.”
You’ve now supplied a partial definition for “originality” that allows unoriginal elements to be deployed*, and I’m asking you to reconcile your claims while sticking to your definition. Seems fair enough to me.
*Which is perfectly reasonable in my book; there is very little new under the sun, but we can look at the same things with fresh eyes again and again.
I’m asking you to reconcile your claims while sticking to your definition. Seems fair enough to me.
It is a fair request, but I suspect you will never get a straight answer out of Brian Z, because his standards are incoherent. He seems to be inventing a justification for claiming what he likes is better, but like all invented justifications, there isn’t any substance to it.
That’s much clearer, thanks.
You have misquoted me.
I said that in contrast with the original write in ballot system of the 50s, the voting system of write-in nominations followed by a final ballot, a version of which has been in use since 1959, “consistently chose a challenging, thought-provoking, original, and (sometimes) well-crafted book, from a pretty decent shortlist.”
I also called Hugo voting in the present decade: “chaotic. The voting community is fractured in terms of what they like or what they are even willing to read. It is naturally difficult to agree on what is best anymore. Who knows how this will all turn out. Best not to prejudge.” Is that what you are objecting to?
Brian, you are now misquoting yourself. You followed that section by talking about how “The kind of book that won changed over time”, a theme that you’ve been developing for the last few days, and about which you’ve also said “The Hugo used to be about rewarding authors who break new ground. Today, opinion is clearly divided, and many fans would prefer to read and reward something that is comfortable and familiar to them rather than what is most challenging.” and “But from the 80s, the center of gravity shifted toward fantasy, and science fantasy, and then science fantasy with a double helping of Horatio Hornblower in space. Works reminiscent of that now tend to win the awards. And it doesn’t even have to be original any more.”
For you to claim you haven’t been critiquing recent award winners compared to earlier decades on grounds including ‘originality’ is obtuse at best.
I’ll tell you what Brian, if I’ve totally misread you and you don’t think there’s anything wrong with the recent award winners and that the Hugos are as healthy as they ever have been, then just say so and I will agree with you wholeheartedly.
You are mashing together my comments on different topics to make a random jumble.
“And it doesn’t even have to be original any more” is a direct reference to several people on this thread who have weighed in to say they don’t prize originality. I repeated their self-assessments.
You are avoiding my question.
Again:
I’ve called Hugo voting in the present decade: “chaotic. The voting community is fractured in terms of what they like or what they are even willing to read. It is naturally difficult to agree on what is best anymore. Who knows how this will all turn out. Best not to prejudge.” Is that what you are objecting to?
Brian, I’ve never addressed that passage. Others have already pointed out that it is an incorrect comparison to the past.
It is true that I had to go looking in many different comments to find your thread, but that is a consequence of your discussion style; it doesn’t change what the argument you were assembling was.
You’ve had a number of replies now which you have spent claiming I said something I clearly didn’t, or that you didn’t say something that you clearly did. You missed your chance to just say something clearly for yourself.
I feel sure that the point I wanted to make has been made to those people likely to care about it several posts ago (or perhaps several months ago).
@Brian Z – You just used three of the 20th century’s most innovative authors to argue that innovation is not important.
Congratulations, you’ve made me roll my eyes.
I just reread what I wrote, and what I was responding to, and I don’t see how you pulled precisely the wrong conclusion out of the interchange. It’s like a superpower.
You’ve been arguing for some debatable SFnal originality (which, when you’ve given examples, gets ably refuted by others) as the basis for award worthy work and completely missing what actually makes fiction original. It’s not retreading a new to you but not actually new plot point or a slight twist on a familiar trope or an interesting gimmick that hasn’t been seen before in exactly that way.
When you insist on the presence of what you see as original and dismiss fiction that doesn’t have a plot you haven’t seen before or a gimmick or a twist, you miss what actually makes it innovative, which is that the end product of a writer’s work is completely unique to them and cannot be replicated by another writer, no matter how brilliant the second writer is. Dick, LeGuin and Butler have written original fiction, but the originality isn’t based in whatever passes for a checklist in your mind.
In other words, I think you’re dead wrong about what constitutes originality. And I think you compound that error by taking your incorrect notions and applying them to Hugo voting patterns. Then you dismiss many if not all of the recent nominees for not having your low-value and insupportable qualities, missing what is unique, wonderful and special. These cascading errors of thought and analysis land you in the soup when you argue that originality is somehow crucial to determining award worthiness and that it was present in past works and isn’t now.
@ Cheryl S.
I love the idea of debating what is innovative about this or that work. That’s a great discussion. I’d love it if you told me what you think made specific works of LeGuin, Butler and/or Dick innovative so we can compare notes.
I made this central claim about SFF:
Are you with me that far?
If you further agree than an SFF award should primarily reward works that are excellent at doing the things only SFF can be excellent at doing, then we’ve got a significant amount of common ground.
To be worth listening to the troll needs to go through all the nominees and winners since the Hugos began to present and definitively show there has been an objective change in Worldcon voting. For now all he has is confirmation bias.
He is attempting to force filers to come to an agreement on what exactly Hugo voters should use as THE definition when nominating and voting. We already have a working definition we like what each individual Worldcon member believes is the best of SFF of the previous year and as a collective which of the top 5 nominees gets the votes