Editor’s note: Although I have been at this computer all day it’s included writing other posts, so a lot of good links will need to be carried over til tomorrow!
(1) AGAIN PLEASE. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a sequel to the Emily Blunt-Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow is happening. Original director Doug Liman and both stars are returning for the second movie:
Edge of Tomorrow was based on the Hiroshi Sakurazaka manga All You Need Is Kill, and somewhat controversially, was rebranded as its tagline Live. Die. Repeat. on home entertainment. The film was not considered a runaway hit commercially, making $370 million globally on a $178 budget, but it was a success with critics and has grown in popularity over the years on home entertainment. Liman, Cruise and Blunt continue to get asked about sequel possibilities in interviews, and have all spoken publicly about their interest in returning.
(2) VOTE FOR BOTH. Catherynne Valente tweeted extensively about the indie/trad worlds today. Not in a thread, here are some of the things she said —
(3) DIALOGUE. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and Annie Bellet exchanged tweets today. (Unfortunately, in cases like this WordPress reproduces pairs of tweets, leading to unintended repetition of the message replied to.)
(The “he” in the last tweet is Jonathan Brazee.)
(4) RACISM? Mary Anne Mohanraj raised the question of whether the recent Nebula Awards controversy includes an element of racism in a public Facebook post:
Please imagine that you are a newer writer from Sri Lanka, a brown man from a small island country with a *tiny* publishing industry, a man who has recently been notified that you’ve received a Nebula nomination. You are, of course, over the moon with excitement. You are perhaps scrambling to figure out if there’s any way you can afford the exorbitant cost of a ticket to get to the Nebulas from Sri Lanka (keeping in mind exchange rates as well, which makes said ticket cost ten times as it much as it would for an American traveling to Sri Lanka). It’s going to be hard, but still, overall, you’re so very happy. It is wonderful news, that the largely American-dominated SF/F publishing scene might actually be open to someone like you.
Then some random white lady (random as far as you know, because you aren’t actually up on the minutiae and history of a particular award in another country halfway across the world) starts yelling on Twitter about the nominations, and specifically, about the fact that you and a few other people got nominated…
…Some people in the field have been sharply critical of one of the nominated authors being what they see as condescending in his response to Bellet. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But he definitely wasn’t swearing back at her — he was, in my opinion, incredibly restrained, considering the flood of vituperative abuse Bellet was hurling at him, at the other nominees, and at the people who nominated them.
Now look. Bellet went through a very rough time, and it’s perhaps understandable that she might come out swinging, and swearing. I’m not going to condemn her for that, necessarily, though I think she misread the situation to some extent. Marko Kloos went through a similarly rough decision then, and he deserves slack on this too.
But EVERYBODY else? They could take the time to read and research a little before leaping in on her side against someone they knew nothing about. Is this what we are in the field? A mob that will leap to the defense of one of our own, regardless of the rightness of her cause?
I don’t actually think Bellet meant to be racist — she didn’t single out the Sri Lankan writer. But it is easy to see how it looked that way to people on the other side of the planet.
There are a host of Sri Lankan writers now wondering if THIS is what science fiction publishing is in America. There are already some of them convinced that this was a racist attack against a brown-skinned writer. They are wondering if the field really is as racist as it seems.
Many of them believe this is emblematic of a field and an industry that WE ALL KNOW still has incredibly large disparities in who gets to get published. No matter how loudly we shout #weneeddiversebooks and talk about supporting #ownvoices. I have spent several HOURS in the last few days talking them down, and I cannot blame them for leaping to that conclusion when they are met with such violent language, and such immediate closing of ranks.
N.K. Jemisin made this comment in responset:
Mary Anne, I have a lot of sympathy for the Sri Lankan writer (not sure why we’re not mentioning his name, but I’ll adhere to your convention here). That said, in the scenario you’re asking me to imagine, I would not have rolled in the way he did. Upon seeing an established writer showing every sign of being really pissed off about some past incident — she mentions the Puppies, etc. — I would be diplomatic and at least try to figure out why she’s so upset before immediately leaping to the conclusion that it’s specifically about me. This guy wasn’t diplomatic. He was condescending and there’s no maybe about it. (Among other things, he called her a petulant child for being angry, which feels to me like a one-two combo of tone policing and chauvanism, because I don’t often hear men getting called children just for dropping f-bombs.) I think it’s a misread of the situation to say that Bellet was yelling *at him,* at least initially. It seemed clear enough to me that she was angry with whoever had created and pushed the slate. She never said anything different.
Now granted, I might be more sympathetic to her because my first reaction to finding out about the whole thing was a lot of swearing on Twitter, too! But after reading your post, I’m left trying to figure out what you’re advocating, here, as a better way to have handled it. Are you asking for people still smarting from a recent past incident to not express anger about a fresh trigger? That feels like a lot to ask. For people angry about group wrongdoing to not single out the writers of color? She didn’t, as you note; things only got ugly after he got snitty with her, to start. For people angry about group wrongdoing to consider how it feels to be a newbie caught up in the mess? There’s no one who would understand that better than Bellet and Kloos, and I read their initial anger as anger *on behalf of* the newbies, not *at* them.
I am 100% supportive of more writers of color coming into this field! More writers from other countries, esp SE Asia! All in. But this guy jumped into what was essentially an ongoing conversation about the past few years’ worth of stuff, and reacted as if it was about him, personally. That’s not a misread on Bellet and Kloos’ parts.
Personally, I think this whole business is the result of a culture clash: anything-goes indie writers versus a (indie and tradpub) community that at least *thinks* of itself as merit-focused. The anything-goes writers really should’ve done some field research before they jumped in and tried to plant a flag on merit-focused ground; this mess is the result. I think this writer’s interaction with Bellet is a microcosmic example of the overall problem.
(5) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 1, 1856 — Charles Dodgson chooses his pseudonym-Lewis Carroll.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born March 1, 1938 — Michael Kurland, 81. His The Unicorn Girl was the middle volume of the Greenwich Village trilogy by three different authors, the other two being Chester Anderson and T.A. Waters. Kurland has also written genre novels including Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery, set in the world of Garrett’s Lord Darcy. His other genre novels are Ten Years to Doomsday (written with Chester Anderson), Tomorrow Knight, Pluribus and Perchance.
- Born March 1, 1941 — Martin Greenberg. Founder of Gnome Press who’s not to be confused with Martin H Greenberg. Not on Asimov’s list of favorite people despite being the first publisher of the Foundation series. Not paying authors is a bad idea. (Died 2011.)
- Born March 1, 1950 — David Pringle, 69. Pringle served as the editor of Foundation during the Eighties which In turned spawned Interzone durning that time. The Glasgow Worldcon committee gave Pringle a Special Award for his work on Interzone. With Malcolm Edwards and Ian Watson, he also edited Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction from the late late Seventies through the mid Eighties. Besides his various guides to the genre such as The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, I see early on that he did a lot of work on J.G. Ballard such as Earth Is the Alien Planet: J. G. Ballard’s Four-Dimensional Nightmare and J. G. Ballard: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. I also note that he’s not published anything listed on ISFDB in the field of late. Any idea why?
- Born March 1, 1952 — Steven Barnes,67. Co-writer with Niven of the Dream Park series. I read the first two when they came out thirty years ago, not bad at all. Their Heorot series isn’t bad either. I’ve not read him on his own so cannot say how he is as a solo writer. I see he’s git a spot of series writing having done work for The Outer Limits, Andromeda and Stargate SG-1.
- Born March 1, 1956 — Tim Daly, 63. He voiced Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent in Superman: The Animated Series, plus Superman: Brainiac Attacks, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Superman / Batman: Apocalypse and Justice League: Doom. He has appeared in Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, After Darkness, Made in Heaven and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
(7) WHAT SHAKESPEARE READ. Fascinating research — “Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays” in the New York Times.
“If it proves to be what they say it is, it is a once-in-a-generation — or several generations — find,” said Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
The findings were made by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who describe them in a book to be published next week by the academic press D. S. Brewer and the British Library. The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden.
(8) PICKING A RESPONSE. Hillary Monahan discusses a now-commonplace social media dilemma. Thread starts here.
(9) ANOTHER THING LARRY CORREIA IS SENSITIVE TO. Larry Correia read that Kosoko Jackson pulled his book and issued an apology for having offended people (see details in the Reason.com article linked by yesterday’s Scroll). Jackson’s work as a sensitivity reader seems to have inspired Corriea’s Monster Hunter Nation response — “’Sensitivity Readers’ Are Bullshit, and You Are A Sucker If You Believe Them” [Internet Archive link]. Of course, Correia thinks the very idea of sensitivity is bullshit, and you’d be mistaken if you thought this was supposed to be a defense of Jackson.
…Note, these Sensitivity Readers are always the typical progressive buzzword vultures, looking for racist/sexist/homophobic microaggressions, because it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever read a book from mainstream publishing that they don’t give a shit about offending any other group… Or even getting their basic facts right about anybody who isn’t Team Blue.
Seriously, I specifically set MHI in Alabama because of how sick and tired I was of how southerners are always portrayed as ignorant redneck hicks in most fiction. And I’m a westerner (though I lived there long enough Alabamans adopted me). Where are the “Sensitivity Readers” for combat vets? Where are the “Sensitivity Readers” for Christians? Or gun-nuts? (holy shit, these people are bad at writing action scenes, so they really could use that one)
(10) THE HECK YOU SAY. Mashable has some thoughts about the new “red band” (mature audiences only) trailer for the Hellboy reboot (“‘Hellboy’ unleashes apocalyptic trailer with monsters and blood aplenty”). Check out their opinion at that link, or skip right to the trailer on YouTube. In either case, get ready to rock out to some Deep Purple… OK, a Deep Purple cover band. The movie is set for a 12 April release.
(11) WHERE TO GET YOUR CLICKS. Juan Sanmiguel asked:
It means that after reading my latest post a Filer hasn’t completely given up hope that somebody will come along and write something interesting!
(12) HE SHRIEKED. Andrew Porter tuned into tonight’s Jeopardy! and witnessed this:
Answer: This Edith Hull bestseller about forbidden love in the desert became a 1921 film starring Rudolph Valentino.
Wrong question: “What is ‘The Thief of Baghdad’?”
[Thanks to JJ, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Rob Thornton, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]
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(6) Pringle — I’m confused — there’s quite a lot listed under David Pringle’s name on the ISFDB? (Including one piece of short fiction.)
(6) Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart are well worth reading; I heard Barnes describe how he developed the alternate history background for these at the 2000 Worldcon (or possibly 2001) and then had to wait quite a while for them to come out. Charisma, a near future thriller with SF elements is also good as I recall.
(11) Click means I dont have anything to say at the moment but want to read what everyone is saying.
And thanks for the title credit
(3) DIALOGUE.
Yes, Annie Bellet is a class act.
It’s a pity that Wijeratne is not willing to follow her lead. He has publicly lied on social media about what Bellet said, and he has neither publicly apologized for that, nor publicly corrected it. His friends on social media are continuing to attack her based on that lie.
Most of the slated finalists, Wijneratne, Fox, and DuBoff in particular, are making it extremely difficult to give them any benefit of the doubt.
(11) I’d never wrie ‘click’ only anticipatory premature fifth
(4) RACISM?
Mohanraj: I don’t actually think Bellet meant to be racist.
She wasn’t racist. But when you word it that way, it certainly implies that she was.
Near as I can tell, only 1, maybe 2 of the 7 slated authors is a POC. Calling out and complaining about the slated finalists is not racism, no matter how hard you try to spin it that way.
And making excuses for Wijeratne’s lying about Bellet, and his refusing to publicly apologize for it or correct it, is not helping his cause any.
(6) From David Pringle’s Wiki entry: “Pringle has written several guides to science fiction, including Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, and Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels. His books are less American-oriented and more British-oriented than many similar works. He has also edited two large reference books, St James Guide to Fantasy Writers and St James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers; plus a number of anthologies and illustrated coffee-table books about genre writing.”
Rich Horton: Pringle — I’m confused — there’s quite a lot listed under David Pringle’s name on the ISFDB? (Including one piece of short fiction.)
I think that is exactly what he is saying: that Pringle has written a lot of non-fiction works and edited a lot of works, but didn’t really do much in terms of his own fiction writing “in the field”.
Back in the day, my late pal Martin “Bucky Starr” Cameron was grumbling about his work designing Nintendo games for Lucas. “Well,” I said, thinking of my unglamorous life, “That’s a prestige job!” He sighed. could hear his teeth grit over the phone, and he said, in a low voice, devoid of hope, “Pixels the size of your head!”
Pixels the size of your head.
Pixels the size of your head!”
11) Oh I subsequently explained it to him, never fear
>Near as I can tell, only 1, maybe 2 of the 7 slated authors is a POC.
Brazee is unclear. That’s a Native American name, but he doesn’t seem to claim minority status.
Also, it is unclear about whether this is actually a slate. As I understand it, Brazee posted a list of eligible indie works, which was followed by a discussion of voting for indie works for the awards. This in a very large forum, which admittedly swayed some votes. However, these were all SFWA professional members who voted, and you can’t complain that the works are low quality or poorly written.
Clickity
@JJ — but Pringle isn’t a writer of fiction, and the ISFDB does list his one work of fiction (that I know of). Pringle has written a ton of nonfiction about SF — which is “in the field”, for sure (I would know!) — and that is also listed in the ISFDB.
Sometimes the ISFDB acts up — maybe Cat checked it when it was in a bad mood.
Rich Horton: Pringle has written a ton of nonfiction about SF — which is “in the field”, for sure (I would know!) — and that is also listed in the ISFDB.
Yes, and Cat made note of those works in Pringle’s bio.
[click]
>He has publicly lied on social media about what Bellet said, and he has neither publicly apologized for that, nor publicly corrected it.
Lied about what? I think this is Annie’s post below that caused the offense: She’s accused him of cheating, no? And he didn’t even know about Brazee’s list until the Twitter storm hit, right?
“I know how hard it is for women and PoC to get published, to get noticed in publishing. I know! But cheating isn’t evening the score, it is just cheating.”
It’s good that ISFDB lists somebody‘s nonfiction correctly; when I went looking for his book about the making of the OST Tribbles, it was under “Star Trek Universe” rather than nonfiction.
I have mixed feelings about Barnes’s alternate-history work; it’s an amusing inversion (Irish slaves of the African colonizers of southern North America), but seemed to me to be relying too much on flipping mostly-dead stereotypes and not enough on building a plausible story. YMMV. The 3rd Dream Park book was distinctly repulsive, but I suspect the worst elements in it came from Niven, as I haven’t noticed Barnes being that sexist on his own.
Chip Hitchcock: It’s good that ISFDB lists somebody‘s nonfiction correctly; when I went looking for his book about the making of the OST Tribbles, it was under “Star Trek Universe” rather than nonfiction.
That’s not incorrect. Nonfiction works related to series universe are correctly classified as being part of that universe. See the Firefly works, for example.
…comment removed by author… (was a reply to JJ’s original comment, now deleted).
Chip Hitchcock: I haven’t noticed Barnes being that sexist on his own.
Edit: I’ve deleted my previous comment because of faulty memory over the elapsed years, and have re-posted a correct version.
I saw him being sexist on Twitter a couple of years ago, saying that his son wouldn’t be interested in “the sort of woman” who thought being referred to as a “lady” was offensive. (And that’s exactly how he said it: “the sort of woman”. My jaw was on the floor.) So it doesn’t surprise me.
Andrew, see my correction above.
@JJ: I’ve updated my comment to reflect the correction. Thanks.
4) Either the link goes to the wrong place or Mary Anne Mohanraj has retracted her original statement in favour of a much milder one. I hope it’s the second option, because the excerpted statement was really over the top.
Cora Buhlert: Either the link goes to the wrong place or Mary Anne Mohanraj has retracted her original statement in favour of a much milder one. I hope it’s the second option, because the excerpted statement was really over the top.
No, the over-the-top comment is still there, it’s just at a different link.
Jemisin has another good comment in that thread.
Pingback: The Latest Developments Regarding the 2018 Nebula Award Finalists | Cora Buhlert
I’m waiting for someone to publish a book about how their program proves that Shakespeare wrote the Voynich manuscript.
Bellet appeared to be calling him a cheat in this response to him calling her a petulant child: “You were on a slate. Own up to that. If you don’t care that you cheated and can’t see the difference between a personal recommendation list and what was posted, I cannot help you.”
She has since clarified that she didn’t intend to call him a cheat and he’s responded, “Thank you for being a class act.”
Following this controversy makes me glad the Hugos have done something to deter slate voting tactics. I wish we’d go a step further and adopt Kevin Standlee’s proposal for three-stage voting.
rcade, Thanks for that. I’ve read dozens of tweets, but most of them aren’t threaded, and I didn’t see that one.
I will note that he still has a lot of bad behavior for which he needs to apologize. Bellet has already apologized to him. He still hasn’t apologized to her or called his friends off from their abuse.
Lela E Buis: it is unclear about whether this is actually a slate. As I understand it, Brazee posted a list of eligible indie works, which was followed by a discussion of voting for indie works for the awards. This in a very large forum [20BooksTo50K], which admittedly swayed some votes.
It’s quite clear that it’s a slate, for numerous reasons, as Brazee admitted in his statement. Once again, you’re being disingenuous.
Lela E Buis: you can’t complain that the works are low quality or poorly written
Sure I can. I’ve already talked about the flaws in the slated works, here and at Camestros’ blog, as have Camestros and several other people.
But then, you’re the person who praised John C. Wright’s sleazy hebephilic abuse and torture porn story, called it “erotic” and mischaracterized abuse and torture as consensual BDSM, and who lauded the author’s “integrity” in the libelous, largely-fictional piece of shit “Safe Space As Rape Room”, so it’s hardly a surprise that my opinions of works differ vastly from yours.
I know I’d end up buying that book and regretting it. I should write just so at least I don’t end up having to pay for it.
Camestros Felapton: I know I’d end up buying that book and regretting it. I should write just so at least I don’t end up having to pay for it.
I would Kickstart the hell out of that. 😀
The two I’ve read aren’t great. I can see qualities to both that fans of the loner book series they connect to might enjoy but short stories that require you to have a grasp of a multi-volume SF epic don’t strike me as obvious organic nominations. Neither was in any sense exceptional – they weren’t even exceptional stories in the anthologies they were published in. One wasn’t that great on a basic wordsmithing level (although the author seems quite nice and helped me understand aspects of the story that I’d missed). Unless it was a particularly poor year for short fiction in the Nebulas, I find it unlikely they didn’t crowd out better stories that will have a greater chance of winning.
I’m happy to take Brazee at his words. The list was more accidentally a slate than intentionally but I think its impact was similar to what we’ve seen with other partial slates before: mixed results in terms of work quality and lots of surrounding angst that only hurt the people involved.
Mike, you’re an SFF person, so you may not understand why I’m leaving this comment. But I’m very disappointed you’ve linked to Jesse Singal’s post as a source for the YA book incident regarding Kosoko.
You may or may not know that JS is a literal vulture whose entire game is sticking his nose into community issues in communities he doesn’t belong to and stirring up shit with rude, ignorant, and often nastily bigoted comments, and then tagging his friends in to pile onto people who disagree with him.
His article is neither representative of the facts for this part incident or the general issue with YA Twitter trying to fight bigotry in publishing, nor is he as a human being a trustworthy source for any debate. He made his name writing transphobic articles for mainstream publications, and now he’s popped into YA lit with the help of a lieutenant whose career is also almost entirely about misrepresenting the community for clicks.
Literally any other breakdown of the situation would be more useful for understanding, and helpful for protecting marginalized folks in the community from a nasty bigot who makes money trashing them in the mainstream media.
I understand that you view yourself as a news site for the SFF community, but I am begging you to not take actions that may represent this person’s claims as unbiased sources for a community that neither of you are part of and that he takes greats pains to denigrate to anyone and everyone who will listen, including sending his thousands of followers to harass marginalized members of the community, including literal young adults, many of whom have received death threats and other mass harassment as a result of his attacks, and some of whom have been more or less forced off Twitter over accusations he’s made and his representation of happenings among the YA Lit Twitter community.
Is there an article about the Jackson situation that you think is accurate? It would do more good to read your preferred source than to explain why I went back to the Reason post. I’ve read a bunch of tweets and a few other posts about this, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve seen the best sources yet.
3&4)
Ballet and Jemisin are both class acts.
7) Shakespeare steals from everybody! Yay! Would like to read this treatise, if indeed it is short.
12)
He should shriek: of course, the answer is, What is The Sheik? And a really nasty package of misogyny and racism it is, too.
Long text by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne here. Tells his background, the history of the story that was nominated, his confusion about fan and american politics as a whole. Well worth reading.
Poor guy.
There aren’t many good articles on the issue, because it was mostly a Twitter and Goodreads discussion within the community.
There’s this brief snippet in the School Library Journal which links to probably the two most relevant documents: https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=publication-of-a-place-for-wolves-cancelled
Here’s another short but objective take on Publisher’s Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/79392-sourcebooks-cancels-kosoko-jackson-s-ya-debut.html
The convo on Twitter is pretty spread out, so I’m not sure there’s a good round-up I can point you to there, but here are a couple relevant threads: https://twitter.com/thelionmachine/status/1101244666530488321
https://twitter.com/SanguMandanna/status/1100546115684966400
https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1101111000881864709
There were a couple great threads by muslim/balkan writers/readers, but as many of those folks have locked their Twitter accounts or deleted their threads due to serious harassment from randoms and also Jesse Singal fans and toadies, I can’t link you to them here. I intend these as reading suggestions, and not in any way as demands for you to link to what I say you should on your own site. What you do with them or whether they sway your decision process is obviously up to you.
I do appreciate the personal response to my concern, even if deem it preferable to stick with the Reason article.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne definitely got caught up in some events beyond his control or current knowledge, but I’m not really a fan of his behavior afterward.
@Mike et al. My previous comment is a direct response to Mike’s request for alternate sources on the Kosoko Jackson issue, although I forgot to tag it as such, which is my bad.
Reading Wijeratnes longer text, it comes clear that one of the first responses of critique came from a racist talking about the “token brown”. If you then are attacked för being a cheat by someone you do not know, I’m not surprised if you would add those together. Just as Bellet mentioned Wijeratne as a cheat when he wasn’t aware of the slate or the history.
Hampus Eckerman: Long text by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne here. Tells his background, the history of the story that was nominated, his confusion about fan and american politics as a whole. Well worth reading.
I’m having a hard time sympathizing. He may very well have gotten tweets from trollbots, but it’s pretty disingenuous for him to pretend that the tweet he’s linked, from a genuine Twitter account, is from a trollbot just because it’s posted legitimate criticism of him. If he’s not being honest about that, what else is he not being honest about?
He’s also pretending that this is about U.S. politics, instead of what it’s really about: authors getting onto the awards ballot by gaming the system. More disingenuousness.
And I find it very strange that, if he had no idea that he was on a slate, he would immediately come back with the Compleat Kitchen Sink Catalogue Of Puppy Slate Excuses, bam, bam, bam:
1. I’m a popular author! Look at my credentials!
2. It was only a “recommendation list” and no different from what anyone else has been doing during awards season!
3. Anyway, even if it was a slate and succeeded, then that’s SFWA’s own fault for not having enough nominators participate!
4. How do you know the slated works aren’t award-worthy?
5. This is about evil
liberal left-wingtraditionally-published authors trying to keep out self-published* authors!and of course the evergreen classic:
6. You’re Just Mad Because Your Friends Aren’t On The List!
*I am NOT going to grant the 20/50 people the “indie” designation, because they’re not, they’re part of a huge machine which gives them a massively significant advantage over genuine indie publishers
I see that mostly as confusion from him regarding what is acceptable. For us, it has been hammered in for five years, day in and day out, what is acceptable regarding promotions of awards. All Indie persons I have been in discussing with always refers to film festivals or the Dragon Award.
I have no idea how much they really understand and it seems like it takes some time for the pieces to fall together. For Bellet it was the same, she defended her position and when she resigned from it, it wasn’t because of slates being bad, but because she was tired of being the soccer ball.
A person I had a discussion with in twitter was really angry and defensive and later came back to apologize, starting to see new perspectives.
I think we need to understand that this can take different time for different persons and feeling like you are under siege is not something that helps.
@Hampus Eckerman: I agree. I believe now it’s a good idea to step back and not add to the problems.
I would like to second Atsiko’s comments about Jesse Singal. He is every bit as toxic as Tank Marmot or V–D–, and much more dangerous because he still caries about him the slightest whiff of respectability and has the ability to spill his poison from the pages of mainstream publications like New York and The Atlantic.
(1) AGAIN PLEASE
The only acceptable sequel in the spirit of the original would be a shot-for-shot remake.
@Mark — A shot-for-shot remake that diverges from the original in the last 30 seconds.
>I agree. I believe now it’s a good idea to step back and not add to the problems.
Good plan. It looks like Yudhanjaya Wijeratne stopped by and read the comments. He’s called out File 770 as part of the problem.
@Lela E Buis–
Do you have a link, please?
@ Lis Carey
http://yudhanjaya.com/2019/03/incidentally-there-is-support-for-wijeratnes-story-a-response-to-file770-and-a-record-of-the-nebula-award-madness/
I didn’t read it all but it was long enough to trigger my TDLR reflex.
Lela E. Buis: A great many people regard as a problem the reporting of any of their activities as news.
Lis Carey: She’s presumably talking about the post Hampus linked in an earlier comment on this post.
Mike & Rob, thank you.
Being (hopefully temporarily) stuck here in 385 C.E. makes it hard to follow this stuff efficiently.