(1) KILL YOUR DARLINGS. Jason Cordova of Mad Genius Club thinks after a month of writing, you need “NaDecEdMo!”
Why is that, though? Why do we get to have a NaNoWriMo and not a NaDecEdMo? Because NOBODY wants to be that butthead who is celebrating an author who is gutting their baby.
That’s what editing is, in a nutshell. It’s taking out that precious baby of yours and changing it, ruthlessly making it better. It’s a rough, rough time for an author when this is going on. The author is feeling insecure about their novel as is, and now they have to look at it with a critical eye. That cute scene that you really liked but now doesn’t really fit into the story as much? Gutted like a day old fish on Market Street.
(2) SALE. Francis Hamit of Brass Cannon Books is running an experiment – and you can save.
A consultant has told us selling e-books for 99 cents each will inspire those customers who like them to then buy the print edition to have forever. . What the heck! We’ll try it. All fiction e-books and mini-memoir are now going for 99 cents each in e-book form for a limited time only. Starting February 5th, 2016.
(3) PLYING THE KEYBOARD. Nancy Kress asked her Facebook followers —
Since I am always behind the curve on everything, I have just become aware that nowadays people put one space after a period in manuscripts instead of two spaces. Is this widespread? Do I need to learn to do this? I’ve been doing it the other way for 40 years; old habits die hard.
(4) BY THE NUMBERS. Natalie Luhrs of Pretty Terrible looks for statistical evidence of bias in “A Brief Analysis of the Locus Recommended Reading List, 2011-2015”.
I want to preface this by saying that I believe that the Locus staff works very hard on this list and intends for it to be as comprehensive as they can make it. I know how hard it can be to stay on top of the flood of fiction and other affiliated works that are produced each year.
But I also believe that Locus has a responsibility to think about their biases so that lists of these type don’t inadvertently perpetuate structural inequalities–as our field’s magazine of record, this Reading List is published around the same time that Hugo nominations open and while qualified members of SFWA are filling out their Nebula nomination ballots.
One of her many graphs shows —
…The majority of the authors or editors of the works included on the Locus list are male–over 50% each year. Female authors or editors come in second in the 35-40% range. Mixed gender collaborations are next, followed by non-binary authors and editors….
(5) A NEWS STORY ABOUT NO NEWS. Bleeding Cool gives a status on some aging litigation in “Disney Pursuing Stan Lee Media For Half a Million, Finds Bank Accounts Emptied”.
With Hillary Clinton running for President, her association with convicted drug dealer and fraudster Peter F Paul and Stan Lee Media may well hit the headlines again.
Paul run the (then) largest political fundraiser ever for her Senatorial campaign and tried to get Bill Clinton onto the board of his company Stan Lee Media. The company was set up to exploit Stan Lee‘s name after he left Marvel Comics, to benefit from his new creations for comics, TV and films.
It all went sour rather. And Stan Lee Media – a company no longer associated with Stan Lee – has spent the last ten years trying to claim rights to all Stan Lee’s creations from Marvel – and now Disney. Despite six courts saying they have no claim.
Stan Lee Media have claimed that Lee transferred all his creative rights to the company in exchange for a large sum of money, and that includes Spider-Man, The Avengers, the Hulk. X-Men, Thor and the like. Unfortunately the courts really don’t see it that way. And Disney was awarded almost half a million in costs.
ScreenRant continues, adding its two bits:
The ongoing issue has come up again largely because of old political connections involving Stan Lee Media co-founder Peter F. Paul, a businessman and former convicted drug-dealer notorious for a series of allegedly illegal international political dealings. Paul fled the country during the initial SLMI investigation for Sao Paulo, which became a mini-scandal in United States politics when it was uncovered that Paul had been a major financial backer of Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate Campaign and had even lobbied for former president Bill Clinton to join Stan Lee Media’s board of directors. Paul at one point produced videos supposedly showing Stan Lee himself participating in campaign-finance calls with the Clintons as proof of his (Lee’s) complicity in the company’s bad dealings (Lee counter-sued over the matter). However, it didn’t stop Paul from being convicted to a ten year prison term in 2009 for fraud.
(6) MESKYS’ GUIDE DOG PASSES AWAY. It’s as if the beginning of the New Year also signaled the opening of the floodgates of misery, with one sad loss after another.
Ed Meskys, a blind sf fan, reports, “This morning I lost Gyro (public name ‘Killer Dog’) my guide dog with 9 years of service, just weeks past his age of 11…. He had been welcome at many conventions, SF and [National Federation of the Blind]. He will be my last dog guide as I am weeks short of 80, cannot bend to pick up after a dog, and have trouble with stairs….”
(7) NIRASAWA OBIT. Kaiju designer Yasushi Nirasawa , (1963–2016) died February 2. The Japanese illustrator, character designer, and model maker was known for his work Kamen Rider Blade, Kamen Rider Kabuto, and Kamen Rider Den-O and the creatures in the GARO series.
(8) MITCHELL OBIT. Edgar Mitchell, who 45 years ago became the sixth man to walk on the moon, died February 4, on the eve of his lunar landing anniversary. He was 85.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 5, 1953 – Walt Disney’s Peter Pan premiered.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born February 5, 1914 – William S. Burroughs.
(11) SCIENCE SHOWS CANADIANS ARE NICER. Oliver Keyes says “When life gives you lemons, make science”.
Ever since my writeup on leaving R my blog has been getting a lot more traffic than usual and many more comments. Usually this would be fine except the topic means that a lot of those comments are blathering about whiny SJW babies or actual death threats. 28 at the last count.
But, sure, it’s the social justice people who are oversensitive and fly off the handle…
This isn’t a formal study so my definition of arsehole can be basically whatever I want it to be. I settled for any comment which exhibited one of the following traits:
- Accused me of lying about everything that had happened to get some benefit that apparently comes alongside threats, harassment and weird emails. Nobody has explained to me what this benefit is but I eagerly await my cheque in the mail from the nefarious SJW cabal apparently causing me to make shit up;
- Contained threats, goading-towards-suicides, or generally obscene and targeted harassment;
- Used terms like “SJW” or “pissbaby” or “whinging” or really anything else that indicated the author had, at best, a tenuous grasp on how the world works;
- Was premised on the idea that I was “oversensitive” or “overreacting” which is pretty rich coming from people whose idea of acceptability includes insulting people they’ve never met on somebody else’s website.
So I took this definition and hand-coded the comments and grabbed the data. We ended up with 107 users, of whom a mere 40 weren’t arseholes, producing 183 comments in total. Then I worked out their referring site and geolocated their IP address, et voila.
(12) RABID PUPPIES. Vox Day posted his picks in the Best Fanzine category.
This appears to be one of those increasingly misnamed and outdated categories, but based on the previous nominees, it has apparently become the functional equivalent of “best SF-related site”. Using that as a guideline while keeping the eligibility rules in mind, here are the preliminary recommendations for Best Fanzine:
Black Gate succumbed to the genetic fallacy in turning down last year’s nomination; regardless of whether John O’Neill will do the same or not again this year, it remained the best SF-related site in 2015.
People I respect have suggested I publicly demand that Vox Day remove File770 from the Rabid Puppies slate. Then having done so, if Day fails to comply and I ultimately receive a Hugo nomination, they feel I can accept it with a clear conscience.
If I understand Steve Davidson correctly, he wants everyone to make a public statement repudiating slates. I don’t think people are unclear on how I feel about slates, thus it really becomes a question whether — by modeling that behavior — I want to encourage Steve to go around hammering people who don’t post the equivalent of an oath. I don’t.
Consider this point. I have been planning to nominate Black Gate because I’ve been reading it since last year’s Hugo contretemps brought it to my attention, and think they do a terrific job. What if they don’t make a public declaration? Should I leave them off my ballot? And thereby fail to do what I tell every other Hugo voter to do, nominate the stuff they think is the best?
I’m not voting for Black Gate because of a slate, and I don’t intend to be prevented from voting for it by a factor that has nothing to do with what I think about the quality of its work. That’s also why I’m choosing not to follow the advice I received about handling File 770’s apperance on the slate, though the advice is well intended.
(13) NUCLEAR TOY. In 1951, A.C. Gilbert, inventor of the Erector Set, released the U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory. Using real radioactive materials, one could witness mist trails created by particles of ionizing radiation.
The set included four Uranium bearing ore samples, and originally sold for $49.50. That would be $400 in today’s dollars.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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Oh! Don’t know how many of you are gamers or were into Minecraft and similar, but Subnautica is on sale at Steam through the Lunar New Year–it’s in pre-release, so they’re still adding a lot of features, but it’s a wander around and explore the alien world game, and it’s set underwater. I was iffy at first–the food mechanism is pretty flawed, so you kinda have to play in Freedom Mode until that gets fixed–but the minute I could start building my own underwater bases with observation decks and glass corridors snaking through alien coral reefs…duuuuude.
Letters to Tiptree is also on sale for 99p on Amazon UK, for those interested.
I did not learn to type; it was pressed upon girls with some vigour, but fortunately my school was well aware of the dangers of being press ganged into learning shorthand and typing, allegedly so women could always fall back on becoming a secretary if their real career failed to get off the ground. This is something of a self fullfilling prophesy, and my school wanted nothing to do with it; neither did I.
I’ll note that if VD thinks he can put Baby, sorry, Mike, in the corner then he’s even more deluded than I thought he was, which is a remarkable feat.
Jack Lint
Oh, yeah! I remember now that the first few times I saw Sbarro’s, the story came to mind. Now I’ve seen it so many times, nothing comes to my mind at all. I think I ate at one once.
Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy
Ah. It’s hard to remember back as far as QuarkXPress 3, though I think my little laptop might still have 4 on it. Things that mattered a ton back then have vanished into air, into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. It’s nice to be reminded that these things aren’t on my mind any more. Like Adobe Streamline. Woo. I used Quark for 16 years or so, and then went over to InDesign. Quark worked so hard to protect itself that it became downright user-hostile, though I still find my fingers reaching (inconveniently) for keyboard shortcuts I used on Quark forever.
(And as to Beale’s current interest in games, pardon me if this is so obvious nobody needed to say it, but isn’t that part of his strategy of reinforcing his ranks by kissing down to the GG fussers11?)
Life must be very tiresome to those who act as though it were a neverending game of “Gotcha”.
@JJ
I will use my own judgment, as I would hope others would do as well. If a work on the ballot is, in my judgment, unqualified to receive a Hugo, then I’ll vote it below no award. If I do think it’s qualified, I’ll rank it above no award–regardless of whether it was on a slate or not.
I expect that most fans will do this this year. Therefore, any finalist who feels (in their own judgment) that they don’t really merit a Hugo should withdraw and let someone else have a chance at it.
I was taught on typewriters that had a 1 key, but the typing teacher wouldn’t let us use it because we might someday use a typewriter without one. But it was lowercase L we were supposed to use for 1.
Meanwhile I was also learning programming in Applesoft Basic – this was the days of line numbers, so using the 1 was kinda important 🙂
@Kip W. I too went over to InDesign when it came out, but I have my Editing students start with PageMaker 7.0 (because it has a free trial) and PageMill 3.0 (because it is free) to get the “feel” of Adobe products in a simpler environment. I hope I don’t inadvertently imbue them with the atavistic reflexes we have!
JJ: And how are you deciding who you feel should withdraw, and who you don’t think needs to withdraw?
Greg Hullender: I will use my own judgment, as I would hope others would do as well. If a work on the ballot is, in my judgment, unqualified to receive a Hugo, then I’ll vote it below no award. If I do think it’s qualified, I’ll rank it above no award–regardless of whether it was on a slate or not.
This is merely a statement about how you will vote.
This has nothing to do with your earlier comment expecting nominees to withdraw.
Therefore, any finalist who feels (in their own judgment) that they don’t really merit a Hugo should withdraw and let someone else have a chance at it.
What a clusterfuck of Dunning-Kruger-meets- imposter-syndrome, asking the people least capable of objectively assessing the work to curate the quality of the nominations.
@Greg Hullender, I was nodding along until I got to the last part. For that to work, humans would have to be very different. The people least likely to recuse themselves are those many of us would vote below No Award, leaving behind talented folks who doubt their talent or are otherwise less than robust in the ego. That’s seems highly unfair to put that burden on them.
@Amoxtli, I have no idea who you are, but that’s the second time in two days you’ve transcribed my inside voice. The one I don’t let out, even when I really, really want to. 😉
@Peace Is My Middle Name
Life must be very tiresome to those who act as though it were a neverending game of “Gotcha”..
Though not nearly as tiresome as it is for people on the receiving end of this nonsense…
Interesting list of Hugo eligible works… There are the number of ratings, average review and something called a score. People have to vote and that gives it the score. Interesting that Golden Son that won the Goodreads Choice award is ranked 115 on this Goodreads list.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/88604.Hugo_2016_Eligible_Works?page=1
Zenu: Interesting list of Hugo eligible works… There are the number of ratings, average review and something called a score. People have to vote and that gives it the score. Interesting that Golden Son that won the Goodreads Choice award is ranked 115 on this Goodreads list.
I find Goodreads lists to be worthless to me. For one thing, people often rank books 4 or 5 stars with a comment something like “Can’t wait til this comes out!” — in other words, they’ve assigned a rank without reading.
Anyone can add anything to a list, regardless of whether it’s eligible (published in the correct year, belongs to the appropriate genre) — and once the self-pubbed authors find a list and start adding all their works to it and upvoting each other, whatever usefulness it might have had goes right out the window.
To all who commented about spacing after punctuatin: Yep, I was wrong. Semi-colons only got ONE space.
For those who were wondering where the “spacing rules” came from, I remember being told by someone (a typing teacher? I’m not sure) that it was similar to providing information to the printers, much like underlining was a message to printers to “typeset this in italics.” The extra spacing after periods made it easier to differentiate between periods and commas at a glance (which was often not easy on older manual typewriters, I can say from experience), and everything followed from that. I’m not sure how authoritative my source was–I can’t even remember certainly who my source WAS–but it is another Interesting Theory . . .
@Zenu
The vote means it’s on your list in some way, shape, ummm something… And you can comment why. Some books are “voted” because you were the person who added the book to the list. A number of anthologies/magazines are on the list & “voted” by me because I added them. I’ve used the list as a way to add to my mounting TBR for Hugo reading – voted on ones I wanted to read, were recommended here, as well as adding them “TBR” Goodreads style & bopping over to Amazon to buy/add to wishlist, wishlist then imported to ereaderiq.com . Wow that is complicated. LOL
3) PLYING THE KEYBOARD Nancy Kress & spaces after a period
1 space, 2 space, thank goodness for find & replace. Being consistent and following the style guide of your publisher or whatever program your going to use for converting the document into various print & book formats is what’s important. If someone else is going to be converting your file do as little spacing & formatting as possible following their guidelines and everyone will be happier and less time is wasted.
4) BY THE NUMBERS Natalie Luhrs Locus Rec Reading 2011-2015
It’s a great starting place. As more people and organizations look at their publishing/reviewing/reading habits maybe we’ll see more changes. My habits have been changing over the last few years. Not just what I read but what I recommend.
11) SCIENCE SHOWS CANADIANS ARE NICER. Oliver Keyes
That was just pure fun. What a great way to deal with nasty comments and death threats. No one should get death threats. No one. It’s a sad commentary on society how common they are.
12) RABID PUPPIES. Vox Day Best Fanzine
@Mike Glyer I think anyone who visits your site and pokes around for a little bit would conclude you are anti-slate. I wonder if John O’Neill has changed his mind about being a fanzine. I suspect you’ll have a link to Blackgate with some kind of statement in the next few days as I’m sure he has opinions.
After reading various filers opinions on VDs slate nominees & how they should behave I’m changing my multi-year opinion. I still recommend eligible people announce they are anti-slate if they are because it makes things clearer. But I’m not going to let SP4 or VD dictate anyone’s behavior. I’m anti-slate and I’m anti-playing games with VD or giving them attention.
Hey everyone it’s good to be back. LOL
@JJ
Always have to take a dig at self-published authors don’t you? Do you ever stop & think “RedWombat self-publishes” or “I wonder how many authors posting here are hybrid or self-published authors?” or “hey lots of self-published authors used to be mid-listers”? Just curious.
Did I say it was good to be back 😉
(1) He’s partially correct. Those NaNo books usually need EXTENSIVE editing and rewriting, and a lot of people don’t do it. But NaNo itself suggests January, and other organizations plump for March. December is both too close to the writing and too busy with holidaying.
MGC: “Reinventing the wheel again, only now it’s oval.”
(3) Yes, Nancy, the fine campaign of Opus and Bill aside, it’s one space now. Software usually corrects it to one space. Two spaces marks you as old and unhip. I had two spaces beat into me in the old IBM Selectric days, but I think by the 90’s I’d gone to one. OXFORD COMMA 4 LYFE, though.
Typing was a required class for everyone in my high school. You couldn’t graduate without passing it. They knew how important it was to be able to type your own papers in college, and saw that the onrush of computers was about to happen and everyone would need it. My (male) college acting teacher said the best advice he’d gotten as a student was to learn to type so he could get office jobs, which had stood him in good stead as a grad student, underemployed actor, and professor. He encouraged his students to learn word processing and Xerox wrangling.
(My mother was so happy when I finally took typing and could do my own stuff. No more papers, finally, after 3 kids. She never quite forgave my brother for choosing to do a long report on Czechoslovakia back in the typewriter days — why not China or Iran? But typewriters had had 1 for decades by then. Mom was the national college speed typing champion on a manual typewriter in the 40’s. )
(4) Graphs are keen.
(6) I remember his dog of the 80’s, which must have been a few ago.
(11) Graphs are even keener — and funny.
(12) XanaD’OH approaches! Meh, who cares. I nominate Mike anyway. He has disclaimed and disavowed any connection with Teddy (which is obvious), so Teddy can just stomp his widdle feet when people individually vote their conscience. Same for Black Gate.
(13) I’ve seen photos of this before, and I think there were others.
@Zenu: I think maybe the guy who writes that “Whatever” blog says he doesn’t want any nominations this year. Which is a shame, he really ought to think about a career in professional writing.
I love the File 770 spirit leads to jokes from inadvertent errors. Probably helped by the ethos of our leader Mark.
@Chesterton
Stalinist?! I though we were Marxist! I is confused. (BtW, GK, that you?)
@Tasha – Re: Black Gate – Has John O’Neil actually said something about this? Coz it’s still listed on the semipro directory.
@Cheryl S: I have no idea who you are, but that’s the second time in two days you’ve transcribed my inside voice. The one I don’t let out, even when I really, really want to.
The call is coming from inside the house!
Uh, I’ll try to use my outside-my-head voice. Sorry about that. 🙂
I chimed in on a WarGames reference some pages back (“the only winning move is not to play”) and it occurs to me that if VD took the place of the WOPR in that film, we’d all be in nuclear winter now. He wouldn’t have been able to learn from the tic-tac-toe exercise because from his Xanadu perspective there are only ever wins for him, even when everyone else sees a stalemate. He’s stuck in the Hugo-loop, flashing it up on the screen for eternity, never able to move on to a nice game of chess.
@snowcrash
Yes in the posts about last year’s Hugos he talks about the move Black Gate made a couple years ago to fanzine. He also indicates if not on a slate but through normal voting he’d be honored to be a Hugo finalist. I spent a while today reading many of the posts on Black Gate written by John O’Neill, Matthew David Surridge, and Rich Horton related to last year’s Hugo kerfluffle.
Given that @Vasha in earlier comments mentioned she emailed him to let him know he is on the slate I’m making an educated guess. I do not have any insider information.
Snowcap
Don’t panic! We are, after all, allegedly Marxist-Leninists, and I’m pretty sure VD doesn’t understand how to talk to other people. *
Also, Steven Bust’s a Trotskyite; his books are amazingly popular…
3) Two spaces after a period seems to have been mainly a US thing or maybe an anglophone countries thing. In fact, I was rather confused when I first came across the two space convention, because I have always used only one and in fact two spaces look downright weird to me.
But then, I taught myself to type and never took a formal typing class, so maybe I just didn’t know about the convention. So I asked my parents who both learned to type in Germany in the 1950s/1960s and they had always ever used a single space after a period, too. So apparently, the two spaces convention is a US thing.
(12) I will nominate as I see fit and if my nominations overlap with Vox Day’s choices, then so be it. For example, both File 770 and Black Gate are on my personal longlist for the fanzine category, while Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (both of whom Vox has included on his best semi-prozine slate – the mind boggles) are on my personal longlist as well. My Mom will probably nominate The Aeronaut’s Windlass this year, because she likes Jim Butcher’s work. Should I tell her not to nominate what she enjoys, just because Vox Day happens to like the same book?
As for voting, I will vote on merit, just like last year. If a slate nominee turns out to be Hugo worthy, I will vote for them respectively just like any other nominee. If a slate nominee turns out to bad, I will put them under no award, just like any other nominee. Of course, with last year’s puppy picks there was little difference between no awarding because of slates and no awarding because of merit.
I still haven’t received my Hugo PIN BTW (Sasquan and Worldcon 75 member) and neither has my mother (Worldcon 75 member – she decided she wants to go to Helsinkii to my utter surprise), though I got a very nice mail from someone on the Helsinkii committee to contact them if there was a problem with the Hugo PINs, since both my mother and I used the same e-mail to register.
ROFL!
Where does he find these people?
Tasha Turner: Always have to take a dig at self-published authors don’t you? Do you ever stop & think “RedWombat self-publishes” or “I wonder how many authors posting here are hybrid or self-published authors?” or “hey lots of self-published authors used to be mid-listers”? Just curious.
Of course I know these things. Sheesh, some of the people who comment here seem to think that they must be the only ones smart enough to actually know anything. Just because people don’t continually trumpet everything they know, it doesn’t mean that they don’t know it.
I don’t actually have a problem with self-published authors. I’m not “taking a dig at them” here. I’m glad that they’re doing what they love, and I’m glad for those, like Nagata, and Weir, and Vernon, who manage to break through in what is a very tough business, due to the quality of their work and the popular acclaim they receive because of it.
But I’m speaking from a reader’s point-of-view here.
One of the huge blowups which occurred when Google started really fine-tuning their algorithm to be really helpful to people searching for information was that a lot of websites selling merchandise suddenly dropped pages down the rankings — or disappeared from Search results entirely.
I was working for Google as an independent contractor at the time, and OMG! the screaming by the people who were trying to sell things: “You’re killing my business! I’m going to go out of business now, because I’m no longer appearing on the first page of Search results!”
Google’s response was “Our goal is to provide the most useful results for customers who are searching for things, not to provide priority to businesses who are trying to sell to our customers.”
What Goodreads has become is a tool for authors to promote themselves (and to persecute anyone who gives them a poor review) rather than something that is genuinely useful for readers. I mean, when people as a matter of course are ranking books they haven’t even read, how is that in any way useful to a reader?
What I am “taking a dig” at is the propensity of self-published authors to take anything they can and turn it into a marketing tool for themselves and their works. Again, I absolutely understand why they’re doing this.
But they make Goodreads lists absolutely useless to readers like me, because it’s no longer about quality, it’s about who can add themselves to things and then get their friends and family members and other self-pubbed authors with whom they’ve made reciprocal promotional agreements to upvote it.
redheadedfemme, Thanks for the pointer on Letters to Tiptree.
—–
Yes, those NaNo novels generally need polishing, but that’s because the process is aimed at producing (ideally complete) first drafts, with all revisions saved for later. What I learned from doing NaNoWriMo is that I’m not a novelist (or wasn’t in 2004), even though I can produce sentences and even paragraphs quickly if I postpone all revisions and the question of whether those sentences are any good; this came as no great surprise.
But that’s me, not NaNoWriMo, and editing wouldn’t have helped. In fact, the problem in this case was that once November was over and I had time to catch my breath, I realized that I didn’t have the first 50,000 words of a novel, or even a short story buried somewhere in those 50,000 words. For some other people, “here’s a way to complete a first draft” can be valuable.
I assume most if not everyone here has read the 2005 discussion that is the equivalent of a comic book character origin story? Vox Day’s assertions were debunked with precision, and seems like he never was able to get over it. Not even after ten years. What was that advice from “Frozen”? Let it go?
Of course, now that we’ve mostly broken the conditioning to use two spaces, along come iPhones which treat two fast spaces as “insert a period and a space”. It’s a shortcut I appreciate – faster than switching to the punctuation keyboard – but I wonder how many people discover it on their own.
Laura
I suspect he finds them in people who have no jobs and no prospect of a job, and are living with their long suffering mothers in the basement. I am implacably opposed to anyone mocking people who do live in their mothers basements ; none of us can judge them. But when a basement dweller deliberately lies about his nonexistent bachelors condo, and his nonexistent cars, then it become a question of great importance…
Stevie: I suspect he finds them in people who have no jobs and no prospect of a job, and are living with their long suffering mothers in the basement. I am implacably opposed to anyone mocking people who do live in their mothers basements ; none of us can judge them. But when a basement dweller deliberately lies about his nonexistent bachelors condo, and his nonexistent cars, then it become a question of great importance…
I think he also finds fertile ground amongst other people who perceive themselves to be grievously wronged in some way, and who feel frustrated and powerless because of it:
not just people who’ve lost jobs (whether due to their own failings or to the vagaries of the economy), but people who’ve been divorced by a spouse, people who believe they are entitled to have everything go their way, people who are disappointed in their lives and believe that they deserved better, people who are massively insecure and need to be able to tell themselves that they are better than others in order to feel good about themselves.
Such people are always susceptible to the “persuasions” of charlatans and conmen. And because they’re being told what they want to hear, they are blind to what they’ve actually been suckered into supporting.
No seriously, has anyone considered that the minions might help “burn it down” by joining you in voting no award? File 770 (or whatever) would need an awful lot of first place votes to win the contest for first place in the face of all of y’all’s combined fury.
Jamoche – The double tap for a period on my iPhone has actually caused me to get back in the habit of leaving two spaces after a period when I type on a computer. It’s very frustrating.
I don’t find Goodreads Lists very useful for predicting awards. For example, the lists for award eligible kidlit annoy me so much that I try to not spend too much time looking at them. Although, in those cases, I suspect the problem is that people often rank books based on sentiment rather than the actual criteria for the awards. *cough* Wonder *cough*
As for the Hugo Eligible list, I’m curious as to how it measures up against publicity and availability for each title. Most of what I see there was reviewed by multiple major review journals. If I felt like taking the time, I’d check holdings in WorldCat, but I don’t feel like it at the moment. Also, it isn’t a perfect way to check availability in libraries since not all libraries’ holdings are listed there (for those who don’t know, it’s pricey).
Wait, what?!? This changes everything!!!!
(And I note that even though I’m temporarily (and awkwardly) typing one-handed, I still had to double space.)
I see Brian Z is once again not really reading other people’s comments, or at least not grasping the meaning of them.
I learned to type on a manual typewriter, at home. No 1, used the lowercase L. Typed two spaces after a period because that was The Rule. Also, it looked better.
In high school, for reasons best known to whoever put them in the budget, we had typing classes on IBM Selectrics. Still taught to use the lowercase L in place of the 1, and two spaces after a period.
I think it was well into the 90s when I learned that on a computer, you shouldn’t do that. Different tool, different rules.
@JJ
This particular list seems to be pretty well moderated.
You totally missed the point I was making. Is it really easier to use a simple group name and assume others will know you aren’t talking about them than consider how those words might sound to fellow filers who are self-published authors?
I’m sorry I keep forgetting that you need points spelled out. I will try to do better in the future. My fault this communication went poorly.
Why, Lis Carey, it appears your reading comprehension hasn’t improved either!
Tasha Turner: You totally missed the point I was making. Is it really easier to use a simple group name and assume others will know you aren’t talking about them than consider how those words might sound to fellow filers who are self-published authors?
How would you have suggested I should word it?
ETA: I’m sorry I keep forgetting that you need points spelled out
As I am not a mind-reader, I am going to respond to what you actually post, not what you are thinking.
Brian, you probably thought you were being clear, but you either slipped a clause or two or jumped to the sentence you wanted to write without putting in the bits explaining it.
From the top now–what are you trying to say? You troll better when you give people something to argue with than when you post word salad.
@JJ
If I felt the need to mention it I would have said Some self-published authors. Even Some loud and obnoxious…
It wasn’t just some self-published authors complaining about the Google algorithm changes. It was every business and scammer out there who wasn’t using real content to drive business to their website. I saw lots of SEO businesses and programs trying to scramble as they were becoming irrelevant. The SEO blogs were panicking people with false information. Gaming systems rarely works long-term.
I’m sorry but the way you sometimes throw self-published around with disdain I really did wonder if you consider the way it might come across to self-published filers you seem to respect. Apparently based on your answer no you don’t. It’s a microaggression IMHO. Several of the filer authors who self-publish have mentioned the difficulty they have pressing the publish button. Yes, yes I know authors need thick skin. It’s been discussed enough after the Gaiman tweet no need to restart that conversation. But I know women authors get enough microaggression all the time it would be nice if people who claim to respect them and like their work weren’t adding to their stress. Just a thought.
@Brain Z
I’ve yet to see the slightest suggestion that Lis Carey’s reading comprehension is of anything but the highest.
Wombat, thanks for the backhanded compliment. 🙂 The thing missing was a reiteration of how Hugo IRV works and how No Award has two chances to win, since I figured most of us know that. The Filers (say) putting the “slated” File 770 (say) above No Award despite it being “on a slate” might still not be enough to defeat Noah if other groups do the opposite (and many rank other nominees higher than File 770). Just food for thought, really.
Tasha Turner: I’m sorry but the way you sometimes throw self-published around with disdain
I am happy to consider that when I refer to self-published authors, I need to take more care in how I say it.
If I have offended any of the wonderful Filers here who self-publish, with the way I worded my complaints about the way the Goodreads lists are manipulated for promotional purposes, I wholeheartedly apologize, without reservation.
Laura Resnick has self-published some of her books. Rosemary Kierstein is self-publishing her books now. Book View Cafe is essentially a bunch of authors who are self-publishing their backlist. Simon Bucher-Jones has linked to his work here. I appreciate, wholeheartedly, the fact that self-publishing means that I can have access to works that mainstream publishers will not publish.
I am very glad that self-publishing exists as an option for people who would otherwise not be able to make their books available to the public.
Having said that, I would appreciate you not attributing motivations like “disdain” to me based on your own perceptions, rather than what I actually said.
And I would appreciate not being criticized for responding to what you actually post rather than reading your mind, and not being subjected to (what appear to me to be snide) remarks about how I should have somehow known what point you were really trying to make, but which you failed to “spell out”.
@YoungPretender, maybe it’s not just her then.
Brian Z: The Filers (say) putting the “slated” File 770 (say) above No Award despite it being “on a slate” might still not be enough to defeat Noah if other groups do the opposite (and many rank other nominees higher than File 770).
I fail to see why that should affect my nominating or voting behavior in the slightest.
Mmmm. For the record, I’m generally not bothered by commentary on self-pub authors, although take that with the usual I-don’t-speak-for-everyone caveats and others may feel differently and not be wrong.
I don’t think this is any testimony to the thickness of my skin, though, so much as that I still rarely think of myself as a “self-published” author. Which has nothing to do with self-publishing, and more that I didn’t think of myself as a small-press author, or an online author, and I don’t think of myself as a Big Five author, either.
There are definitely people who define themselves by their branch of publishing! But people who define themselves by their subdivision are usually way more into the division as identity, if that makes sense.
Like, if I say I’m Lutheran, I’m Lutheran. But if I say I’m Missouri Synod Lutheran, then I’m Lutheran and all those other synods are WRONG.
If the day comes when I’m making more money on self-pub than I am on trade publishing, then hey, things may change in my head…
Much clearer, Brian! *clicker*
Also, that’s just how voting works, so I’m not particularly concerned.
I suspect, frankly, that OGH is a grounded enough individual that he will not take this year’s results as a personal referendum on him. I devoutly hope Beale’s other victims in this regard will be able to feel the same.
MidAmeriCon II · Feb 5
More rooms are now available at the Hotel Phillips. More rooms at other hotels should also be available next week.
http://midamericon2.org/hotel-booking
My personal takeaway was “hmm, much as I agree he does a great job, Glyer already has 50, and this looks like it might be something of a mess, so maybe he wouldn’t mind if I cast my net a little wider when nominating.” Just a first reaction, though.
Brian Z: My personal takeaway…
I fail to see why “your personal takeaway” should affect my nominating or voting behavior — or, indeed, that of anyone else here — in the slightest.
Perhaps you have an overexaggerated perception of the importance of “your personal takeaway”.
Rev. Bob re kerning: Have you considered getting a font editor? Then you could fix things like the colon height and the kerning issues once and for all, and be able to trust the font thereafter.