(1) WORLDBUILDER. In George R.R. Martin’s “Random Updates and Bits o’ News” at Not A Blog, he says people who are fans of Westeros should not feel shortchanged just because Winds of Winter isn’t done.
…I did, however, get a lot of work done in 2021. An enormous amount of work, in truth; I seem to have an enormous number of projects.
(I am not complaining. I like working. Writing, editing, producing. There is nothing I like better than storytelling).
I know, I know, for many of you out there, only one of those projects matters.
I am sorry for you. They ALL matter to me.
Yes, of course I am still working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. I have stated that a hundred times in a hundred venues, having to restate it endlessly is just wearisome. I made a lot of progress on WINDS in 2020, and less in 2021… but “less” is not “none.”
The world of Westeros, the world of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, is my number one priority, and will remain so until the story is told. But Westeros has become bigger than THE WINDS OF WINTER, or even A SONG OF ICE & FIRE. In addition to WINDS, I also need to deliver the second volume of Archmaester Gyldayn’s history, FIRE & BLOOD. (Thinking of calling that one BLOOD & FIRE, rather than just F&B, Vol 2). Got a couple hundred pages of that one written, but there’s still a long way to go. I need to write more of the Dunk & Egg novellas, tell the rest of their stories, especially since there’s a television series about them in development. There’s a lavish coffee table book coming later this year, an illustrated, condensed version of FIRE & BLOOD done with Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson (my partners on THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE), and my Fevre River art director, Raya Golden. And another book after that, a Who’s Who in Westeros. And that’s just the books.
And then “there are the successor shows,” he explains, and updates them, too.
(2) AURORA AWARDS NOMINATIONS OPEN. Members of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association have until March 26 to nominate works for this year’s Aurora Awards. Click here to review rules about the awards. Twelve categories are open this year and members may select up to five different works in each category.
(3) UNDER WATER. Starburst Magazine hosts “A Conversation with Samantha Shannon & London Shah”.
Samantha Shannon is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Priory of the Orange Tree. Her new book, The Mask Falling is out now via Bloomsbury Publishing. London Shah is the creative force responsible for the Light the Abyss duology, out now via Little Brown Young Readers.
The two caught up with each to discuss the heady world of writing (and also talk a bit about their new books)…
… Samantha: I’m not surprised the concept has stayed with you for years. Even as someone with a fear of the sea, I found it captivating.
London: That’s amazing; it’s always very encouraging to hear that from folk who have a fear of the sea, so thank you. I’m deeply honoured you’re a Light the Abyss fan. Yes, the sight of anything underwater, whether shipwreck, a person, ruins, or even boring infrastructure—it really didn’t matter what—always stirred such wonder and curiosity and would send me drifting off into my fantasy every time….
(4) MAKING PRESERVES. In “Microreview [book]: The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi”, reviewer Joe Sherry tells Nerds of a Feather readers there’s one thing he would add to the recipe:
If you’ve ever wondered what it would have looked like if John Scalzi wrote Jurassic Park instead of Michael Chrichton, you don’t have to wonder any longer because that’s the best comparison I’m going to come up with for The Kaiju Preservation Society. The only thing we don’t have (yet) is Richard Attenborough kindly reciting his iconic lines over sweeping camera shots showing the scope of what this new world looks like while the music swells and soars….
(5) ABOUT BOOKS. “How Karen Joy Fowler’s Grandfather Lied His Way Into a Who’s Who” – a New York Times Q&A with the author.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
There can be more than one right answer to this question and I have a dozen. But today’s answer is “Castles and Dragons,” a collection of fairy tales given to me in 1958 or ’59 by Vidkun Thrane, a Norwegian psychologist who came to Indiana to help my father run rats through mazes. The Grimm fairy tales were too dark for me as a child, too many parents abandoning or selling or eating their children. The fairy tales in “Castles and Dragons” were the first ones that I loved unreservedly. My short story “King Rat” is all about this book and Vidkun and what stories are just too painful to tell.
(6) APERTURE MOMENT. The Hollywood Reporter’s Richard Newby contends “John Carter Bombed 10 Years Ago and Changed Hollywood”.
… Look away from Mars for a moment and consider the films that changed the course of the industry. Not necessarily the best films ever made, but the ones that served as watershed moments. There are certain movies throughout film history that drastically shifted the tide, that gave studios and audiences a glimpse of a future that could be theirs if they reached out to touch it. The Jazz Singer (1927), Gone With the Wind (1939), Ben-Hur (1959), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), Jurassic Park (1993), Titanic (1997), The Matrix (1999), Toy Story (1999), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Avengers (2012), just to name a few.
Whether it was major leaps forward in technology, spectacle, storytelling, box office success, audience engagement or some combination of these elements, these films changed the industry and our relationship with movies, cleared the way for a glut of imitators (some more successful than others), and popularized new tools of filmmaking. When we think about films that changed the industry, we typically think about success stories, and John Carter, at least financially, was anything but….
(7) A PRESENT OF THE PAST. The Hollywood Reporter introduces a miniseries based on the book of the same title by Walter Mosley in “’The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ Review: Samuel L. Jackson in Apple TV+ Drama”. The story includes overtones of Flowers for Algernon.
…If it is true that, as Coydog (Damon Gupton) says in Apple TV+’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, “all a man is, is what he remember,” then the Ptolemy Grey (Samuel L. Jackson) we meet at the start of the story is barely a shell of who he once was. A nonagenarian suffering from dementia, he can hardly make sense of what’s happening in front of him, let alone everything else that’s happened to him over the decades. But when a drug promises to temporarily restore all of Ptolemy’s memories — to make Ptolemy the fullest version of himself, going by Coydog’s logic — the question becomes what he’ll do with that rare gift.
…Having established the intimate interiors of Ptolemy’s life, Last Days adds in a touch of the mythic around the second episode when Dr. Rubin (Walton Goggins) presents his offer. The bargain that Ptolemy strikes is a Faustian one, underlined by his habit of referring to Rubin as “Satan.” The lucidity granted by the experimental treatment will last only a few weeks, after which Ptolemy’s mind will decline faster than before; in exchange, he’ll sign over his body (though not, Ptolemy makes a point to note, his soul). Their agreement places Ptolemy in the long history of risky medical experimentation performed on Black people — which in turn fits into an even more expansive one of white capitalists using and abusing Black bodies, as also glimpsed in frequently tragic flashbacks of Coydog and a very young Ptolemy (Percy Daggs IV) in 1930s Mississippi….
(8) THE GOOD STUFF. Paste Magazine has compiled the “Best Quotes from The Last Unicorn”. Contemplate them while you’re waiting to see Peter S. Beagle at the LA Vintage Paperback Show later this month.
This March marks the 54th anniversary of the publication of one of the best fantasy novels of all time: Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. While many late Gen-Xers and elder millennials may be familiar with the (incredible) 1980s animated film, far fewer are have likely read the book upon the movie is based on, which is a bit darker a whole lot weirder….
“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”
(9) MEMORY LANE.
1966 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] The first Nebulas were given in 1966, for works published in 1965. They were created by the SFWA secretary-treasurer Lloyd Biggle, Jr. He says he based them off of the Edgar Awards which are presented by the Mystery Writers of America. He wanted a ceremony similar to that of the already existing Edgar and Hugo Awards
The first ceremony consisted of four literary awards, for Novels, Novellas, Novelettes, and Short Stories, which have been presented every year since. Dune was awarded the Nebula for Best Novel whereas “He Who Shapes” took the Novella award (tied with “The Saliva Tree”) and that author took home a second Award for Best Novelette for “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth”. The Story Story Award went to “Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”. No, I didn’t mention authors as I know that you know who everyone is, don’t you?
Some other Awards were added over the years: Best Script which has been discontinued, Best Game Writing which is ongoing and two that considered Nebula awards, the Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction and the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, but are now considered official Nebula awards
Other Awards are the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy”, the Author Emeritus for contributions to the field, the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Award for service to SFWA, and the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for significant impact on speculative fiction.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born March 11, 1921 — F. M. Busby. Together with his wife and others he published a fan magazine named Cry of the Nameless which won the Hugo award at Pittcon. Heinlein was a great fan of him and his wife with The Cat Who Walks Through Walls in part dedicated to Busby and Friday in part dedicated to his wife Elinor. He was a very busy writer from the early Seventies to the late Nineties writing some nineteen published novels and myriad short stories before he blamed the Thor Power Tools decision for forcing his retirement which is odd as he published a number of novels after that decision became in effect. (Died 2005.)
- Born March 11, 1925 — Christopher Anvil. A Campbellian writer through and through he was a staple of Astounding starting in 1956. The Colonization series that he wrote there would run to some thirty stories. Short stories were certainly his favored length as he only wrote three novels, The Day the Machines Stopped, Pandora’s Planet and The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun. He’s readily available at the usual digital sources. (Died 2009.)
- Born March 11, 1947 — Floyd Kemske, 75. I’m betting someone here can tell me the story of how he can be the Editor of Galaxy magazine for exactly one issue, the July 1980 issue to be precise. I’ve not read either of his two genre novels, Lifetime Employment and Human Resources: A Corporate Nightmare, so I can’t comment on him as a writer, but the Galaxy editorship story sounds fascinating. (Both are available used in softcover for quite reasonable prices.)
- Born March 11, 1952 — Douglas Adams. I’ve have read and listened to the full cast production of the BBC’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but have absolutely no desire to see the film. Wait, wasn’t there a TV series as well? Yes there was. Shudder! (I really like Theatre of The Mind as did the Seacon ‘79 Hugo voters who nominated the radio series for a Hugo. It would win the BSFA.) The Dirk Gently series is, errr, odd and escapes my understanding of its charms. He and Mark Carwardine also wrote the most excellent Last Chance to See. It’s more silly than it sounds. (Died 2001.)
- Born March 11, 1963 — Alex Kingston, 59. River Song in Doctor Who. She’s in a number of different stories with a number of different Doctors and was the eventual wife of the Eleventh Doctor. She was in Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead, as Sheila, and she was Lady Macbeth in the National Theatre Live of Macbeth. Oh and she’s in the Arrowverse as Dinah Lance, in FlashForward as Fiona Banks, and recently shows up as Sara Bishop on A Discovery of Witches, a series based off the Deborah Harkness novel of the same name. Great series, All Souls Trilogy, by the way. She’s been continuing her River Song character over at Big Finish.
- Born March 11, 1982 — Thora Birch, 40. A very, very extensive genre history so I’ll just list her appearances: Purple People Eater, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Hocus Pocus, Dungeons & Dragons, The Hole, Dark Corners, Train, Deadline, Dark Avenger series, The Outer Limits, Night Visions series, My Life as a Teenage Robot and a recurring role on the Colony series.
- Born March 11, 1989 — Anton Yelchin. Another one who died far, far too young. Best known for playing Pavel Chekov in Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond. He also was in Terminator Salvation as Kyle Reese, in the Zombie comedy Burying the Ex as Max and voiced Clumsy Smurf in a series of Smurf films. Really he did. (Died 2016.)
(11) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter says tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants muffed these genre opportunities.
Category: Says Ann[E]
Answer: A lot of Fay Wray’s lines as Ann Darrow in this 1933 monster movie are bloodcurdling screams.
Wrong question: What is ‘Dracula’?
Right Question: What is ‘King Kong’?
***
Category: BritLit
Answer: Chapters in this H.G. Wells novel include “In the Golden Age” & “The Sunset of Mankind”
Wrong question: What is ‘War of the Worlds’?
Right question: What is ‘The Time Machine’?
(12) DISCON III REPORT. SF² Concatenation has tweeted an advance post of Sue Burke’s DisCon III Worldcon report ahead of its next seasonal edition (slated for April).
It was a tough save. Originally scheduled for August, Discon III was postponed due to CoVID-19 until December, when it fell just as the omicron variant began its surge. The original hotel went bankrupt, and a new hotel had to be found. One Guest of Honour, Toni Weisskopf, editor and publisher of Baen Books, was disinvited over posts advocating violence in Baen’s user forums. The original co-chairs, Bill Lawhorn and Colette Fozard, then resigned. Some division heads resigned, and the replacement Hugo Administration team also resigned. And there were a series of controversies over a variety of concerns before and during the event.
Although the convention went hybrid, my husband and I decided to attend in-person…
(13) THE DOORS. In “Microreview: Last Exit by Max Gladstone”, Paul Weimer at Nerds of A Feather, considers an example of the portal fantasy revival.
Zelda has a problem. For the last ten years, she has been traveling the United States, using her gift to heal the cracks in the world to try and keep together a 21st century US that seemingly is on the brink of falling apart. Ten years ago, she and her friends, including her love, Sal, made a daring journey into alternate worlds. That journey ended in disaster.
But now Zelda needs to get the band back together, to journey back into the alternate worlds. But her friends have moved on from traveling the dangerous alternate worlds. But with Sal’s young cousin June, who has unusual powers of her own, the need to find Sal is stronger than ever before. But what forces are chasing them across the real and alternate worlds? And what precisely happened to Sal?
These are the big questions at the heart of Max Gladstone’s Last Exit….
(14) RAMBO/BROZEK ANTHOLOGY. Roseanna Pendlebury knocked a point off the book’s score “for putting by far the creepiest story right at the start and so nearly stopping me reading it entirely because I’m a wuss” but everything evened out to 7/10 in her review of “The Reinvented Heart: Tales of Futuristic Relationships, edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek” at Nerds of a Feather.
…The theme for this collection is absolutely spot on, and while I liked, disliked and was indifferent by turns to some of the stories, I nevertheless finished the collection feeling glad that it was a theme being written about. Characters and relationships – in all their complex, messy glory – are by far my favourite thing in reading fiction, and so to have that spotlight focussed on them here, and specifically how they might change as the world, technology and the people in it change, was a gorgeous choice….
(15) THE PITCH. A behind-the-scenes clip for the LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga game dropped yesterday. It’s essentially a commercial that displays lots of scenery and art.
(16) NEWS SCOOP. “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Ice Cream Returns Nationwide at Walmart” reports Food & Wine. Honestly, you can have my share of that one, however, some of these other flavors sound intriguing.
…But if you still haven’t tried this cheesy, pasta-less ice cream, don’t necessarily sleep on heading to Walmart. These seven flavors — which also include Planet Earth, Pizza, Hot Honey, Royal Wedding Cake, Bourbon Cherries Jubilee, and Wild Blueberry Shortcake — will be part of a “10-week” rotation Van Leeuwen plans to “refresh” over the summer, meaning they still could only be around for a limited time….
(17) ROLLING, ROLLING, ROLLING. NASA announces “Coverage, Activities Set for First Rollout of NASA’s Mega Moon Rocket”. “Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars.”
Roll out of the integrated Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is slated for Thursday, March 17.
Live coverage for rollout begins at 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, March 17 and will include live remarks from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other guests. Coverage will air on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
At the pad, NASA will conduct a final prelaunch test known as wet dress rehearsal, which includes loading the SLS propellant tanks and conducting a launch countdown.
The rollout involves a 4-mile journey between the Vehicle Assembly Building and the launch pad, expected to take between six and 12 hours. Live, static camera views of the debut and arrival at the pad will be available starting at 4 p.m. EDT on the Kennedy Newsroom YouTube channel.
(18) PHASE OF THE MOON. Richard Linklater’s new film is sf. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood. Arrives in theaters and on Netflix on April 1.
A coming of age story….the way only Richard Linklater could tell it. Inspired by Linklater’s own life, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood takes you to the moon and back in this story about growing up in the 1960s in Houston, TX.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Ed Fortune, Joel Zakem, Chris Barkley, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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(10) Anvil’s *Pandora’s Planet” http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7892 was published as a novel.
10) You named the Scottish play! And Herself!
@Michael: “Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends!” should neutralize the curse.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h–HR7PWfp0
Andrew (not Werdna) says Anvil’s *Pandora’s Planet” http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7892 was published as a novel.
Except it’s not listed under novels which is why I didn’t notice it
Novels
The Day the Machines Stopped (1964)
The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun (1980)
Ah. That makes sense. Pandora’s Planet was the first Anvil I read so I remember it.
Andrew (not Werdna) says Ah. That makes sense. Pandora’s Planet was the first Anvil I read so I remember it.
Looking at the listing for Pandora’s Planet, I see it was a novelette. And most of the fiction set in that series was either short stories or the like.
The novelette and its sequels were put together as a novel (rather like Operation: Chaos).
Michael J. Lowrey says You named the Scottish play! And Herself!
I’ve mentionned That Play innumerable times here. It’s one of those plays that comes up frequently in the resumes of British genre performers, both male and female. And I’ve never known an actual actor who believed in that curse.
Andrew (not Werdna) says The novelette and its sequels were put together as a novel (rather like Operation: Chaos).
Which apparently ISFDB doesn’t list under his novels.
What’s the name of the composite novel?
Pandora’s Planet is what the novel is called too (and it is called s novel on this page http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7892 – even though it doesn’t show up on the Anvil page itself as a novel)
And of course Baen Books doesn’t have it available from the usual suspects. The only one they have available is Pandora’s Legions which admittedly is almost a Meredith Moment at six dollars and ninety nine cents.
Baen has always left me quite perplexed on what they put up and don’t put up for digital offerings.
Walter Jon Williams has made a newsworthy announcement on his website:
http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2022/03/return-to-caraqui/
@Bruce a friend of mine (the writer John Appel as it so happens) pointed me at that. Joy!
@Cat Eldridge
Baen says that “Pandora’s Legions” includes Pandora’s Planet.
Meredith Moment: The Veiled Throne (third in Ken Lieu’s Dandelion Dynasty) is currently $2.99.
10) I do have a lot of fondness for the original BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series, which had most of the cast of the radio play + 70s Doctor Who production values.
Joe H beat me to it, but it bears repeating – the BBC TV version of HHGTTG is well worth watching. It’s the proper story with the proper cast (very nearly) and classic BBC quality. Way better than that dreadful movie version.
There’s also a rather nice large format book version I got some years ago, that was very cleverly priced at £25 or $42, timed just right for that to be the correct exchange.
5) What was the best book I ever received as a gift?
Neck-and-neck. When I was 11, my mother gave me all three books of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. In 1966, when I had just turned 16, Aunt Jeanne, Mom’s sister, gave my family a set of the paperbacks of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
About the only thing I liked about the HHttG movie was Alan Rickman as Marvin, and even he wasn’t as good as David Learner in the original version.
@ Tim – “classic BBC quality”. The adjective ‘classic’ is not what comes to mind when I think of BBC SF. But agreed that the TV series is way better than the movie.
@Bruce Arthurs: Great news!
@OGH: Thanks for the title credit (didn’t notice last night that it was one of mine)
(6) I’ll admit that I thought “John Carter” was fun. But the marketing… Ack. The choices were so bad that at least one person said they made it tank on purpose for some esoteric reason.
(14) When I read this last night, I was wondering why there was an anthology of Rambo stories and what the SFF connection was. Was he fighting wars in space now? Then I realized it referred to our Rambo. And now I want an anthology of futuristic Rambo stories, edited by Cat Rambo. Introduction by David Morrell, of course.
6: Any review or commentary on the John Carter film that includes statements to the effect that it was “largely true” to the source material can be given a pass, as it is based on a completely inaccurate premise.
@Anne: yes, the marketing was lousy, but that was the kind of marketing the film deserved. (Anne, the following uses your comment as a starting off point, but is not directed at you personally.)
Every time the subject comes up, pundits, reviewers and fans attempt to do the same two things: one – they conflate their “like” of the film for the (lack of) quality of the film and two – hang the film’s bad reviews and ratings on the lousy marketing.
But it didn’t really get lousy marketing; they promoted it during the freakin super bowl, ran multiple trailers, splashed Kitsch all over billboards and had tens, if not hundreds of articles and news bits praising and touting Stanton and Dafoe (like you’ve never seen him before), etc., etc.
And there’s also this to consider: Great films have gotten lousy marketing in the past and they are still remembered as great films. Terrible films got NO marketing in the past and are still household names (Plan 9 to name one).
Marketing can succeed or fail in getting theater companies to schedule a film and maybe put the first round of movie-goers into the seats. After that, its word of mouth, and word of mouth ROUTINELY over-powers critical reviews and bad-mouthing, just as it can tank a movie that is technically “great” but isn’t really.
But mostly what kills me about this whole JC adventure is how many people reviewing and commenting claim that it was largely faithful to the original, when it was anything but: the airships were not “powered by light”; the Therns were one race among many, not interstellar shape-shifters, Carter DID NOT HAVE A BACK STORY (sorry, that one really gets my goat as the primary appeal for the Character in the original was the fact that any (boy) could slot themselves in to that role – there were no background encumbrances or disconnects); the transport to Mars was not technologically based, the white apes were not blind and king-kong-sized, no one, not even Willem Dafoe – learned the Tharkian language by drinking a potion, and Calots could not maintain enough friction with the surface of Mars to move that fast; oh, and there’s no super-weapon, Zodanga didn’t have feet, Martian’s did not cover their bodies with tattoos showing their allegiance because, oh, well, because they just might find themselves fighting for another city and flaying one’s self to fit in is harsh even for Burroughs.
But one of the most egregious affronts takes place early on, when Carter first awakens on Mars. I’m sorry, but someone who can’t sense the difference in gravity the moment they stand up, and can’t figure out that their best method of locomotion (at least temporarily) is a soft shuffle, sorry, but that character is just way too stoopid to be anyone named John Carter.
My family and I loved the John Carter movie and are so puzzled why it didn’t find an audience. It was splendid.
Any theories about why?
I remember approving basically all the creative decisions in the John Carter movie – particularly a better role for Deja Thoris and the framing story with the Therns – but I thought it felt a bit light and unfocused, for want of a better term? The story kind of meandered about and the action sequences felt low-stakes and a bit cartoony, so it didn’t really grab me and carry me along. I suspect it needed to be shorter, and maybe less based on A Princess of Mars, which is surprisingly dull and talky compared to the pulp kinetics that came after. I respect the director’s effort and evident love of the source material but I’m not surprised it flopped, sadly.
I remember watching the John Carter film when it came out. It was I thought quite entertaining. Was it accurate to the original source material? Hell no. But I thought as a piece of pulp fiction that it worked rather well.
Would I call it a really great film? Of course not. But it wasn’t supposed to be anymore than nearly everything else done is supposed to be. I watched it once and pretty much forgot about until now.
Re: “…if John Scalzi wrote Jurassic Park instead of Michael Chrichton…”
It’s stuff like this that makes me really miss writers like Arthur C. Clarke. Almost everything Scalzi does is derivative, not original. He was never a scientist or engineer who did something that helped change the world before turning his genius to writing SF, and as you would read a story, would make you feel as if you were on the an adventure in the future, and/or on the bleeding edge of science and technology. Back in 1994, Gregory Benford could critique cyberpunk by saying that it was a “literary attitude and form driven by the world, whereas Clarke’s vision of space drove the world” [Foundation, Spring 1994]. Things in SF have only gotten worse since then, with even scientific organizations complaining that SF writers no longer are providing the kind of inspiration that in their youth led them to their careers. It’s not surprising that a now-celebrated writer like Scalzi started out as a movie reviewer, rather than something like a rocket scientist or bioengineer, etc. Like Hollywood, which spawned his career, he produces nothing but remakes. (now watch the Filers pile on me calling me a Puppy or worse…..)
Yeah, it wasn’t the John Carter film I would have made, and some of the creative decisions irked me — the design of the Tharks seemed particularly … gormless — but it fell into the category I call perfectly cromulent fantasy piffle, and I think it was sunk by a combination of terrible marketing and internal studio politics.
K: You’re certainly entitled to not like Scalzi’s works (there are plenty of well respected SF authors whose works don’t speak to me). I find his work consistently entertaining and his Lock In universe explores the intersection of technology and disability issues in a way that I think is illuminating even if the assistive tech he’s talking about never comes to pass (just like Niven’s Flash Crowd says something interesting about the Internet even though teleportation isn’t real). At any rate there have been very successful and influential SF writers with no technical background (one example was a cloth salesman; another a high school dropout).
Ah, the glory days of SF. When technical experts like E E ‘doc” Smith brought us new ways to stick sugar to donuts and also exploding planets that moved faster than light.
The one thing that I think “John Carter” had going for it was that it had romantic chemistry…you could have gone far with that.
@ Sophie Jane
Huh. That’s interesting! Today I learned… that E. E. “Doc” Smith worked for Dawn Donuts.
And I wonder what Skylark donuts would taste like? Would they be like Starlight Coke?
Anyway, the whole “yesterday’s SF authors were scientists” argument doesn’t work out. And even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. Just because you are a scientist, that doesn’t mean you can write good SF. (Or even a good paper about science. Trust me.)
Where is it written that SF stories can only be written by people with specialized degrees? Or that SF is “good” only if written by scientists? I think better SF was written by the daughter of a famous electric engineer than was written by many engineers.
8) Love “The Last Unicorn.” I wanted to write a paper on it for English 201 in college; professor said the book “had no literary value.” (I mentioned this to my dormmates in the lounge one evening; they howled with laughter. Of course, this lounge was where I was first introduced to the X Men comics, so that tells you what type of people hung out there.)
I wrote the paper anyway; I think I got a D or something on it.
Sophie Jane: What science was Philip K. Dick trained in – pharmaceuticals?
I think the way the Anvil stories go is that “Pandora’s Planet” was the original short story, then it was fixed-up with some of the sequel stories into a novel of the same name. Then when Baen acquired the rights they did another fixup that included the original story and all of the sequels, and published the result as “Pandora’s Legions”.
If The Last Unicorn has no literary value, then neither does The Sun Also Rises. They both address the same questions, admittedly from very different directions. What did the professor think Haggard represents, anyway?
Although if someone wants to argue that Hemingway is overrated, I might be willing to tag along…
(6) The Hollywood Reporter article says:
… John Carter’s failure was the moment Disney became the servant of sure bets, and Hollywood realized star power was truly gone. That was when we entered the age of name recognition, where familiar characters and concepts — Jedi, superheroes — became worth more than any actor’s name.
Am I missing something? Neither Taylor Kitsch nor Lynn Collins was an established movie star before John Carter (or afterward), so the idea that the film’s failure demonstrated that movie stars could not be relied upon for a box office hit doesn’t make sense to me.
“Galaxy Quest” reference in the wild https://notalwaysright.com/and-a-bratty-child-at-that/253504/
@Mike Glyver
Philip K Dick was whatever the mirror-image of a scientist and astronaut is, studying unreality and exploring inner space 🙂
My copy of Pandora’s Planet, DAW First Printing, August 1973 says:
This novel was developed from a short story by Christopher Anvil entitled, “Pandora’s Planet” first published in Analog in 1956, copyright 1956 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc. The story was republished in 1962 in Prologue to Analog, edited by John W. Campbell (Doubleday & Co., Inc.).
Cover price 95c
1) I can’t be the only one to read this and think, there is no way GRRM is going to finish Winds of Winter. (not trolling, truly, I’ll read it if he writes it, cool if he doesn’t) I read the entry on his Not a Blog, and he’s super excited about the cool books and great TV shows, and then it’s ugh I’m still slogging through this book that everyone is bugging me about. And if he gets through WInds of Winter there is still book 7. I suspect he will continue to put his energy into the projects he enjoys and put ever less energy into WoW. Again, his life, he should do the things that make him happy.
9) The first Best Novella Nebula was a tie between “He Who Shapes” and “The Saliva Tree”.
10) Floyd Kemske: Galaxy had been in decline for a while; the issue he edited was 10 months after the previous one, the only one for that particular publisher, and the last issue for 14 years. (His predecessor only edited 2 issues.)
@Roger: Thanks. So it’s an expansion (like the novel form of “Flowers for Algernon”) not a fixup (like “More than Human”)
I found this title-altered vintage paperback sort of adorable:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca9L9ZbovA9/
Here’s what I’ve pieced together about Christopher Anvil’s Pandora’s Planet:
It was originally a novelette in the 9/56 Astounding. He wrote four further stories in the series from 1961~1969. In 1972 he published the novel version, which consisted of the original novelette and four further new sequences, but none of the sixties material.
In 2002 Baen published Pandora’s Legions, which consisted of the novel and the four stories, organized thusly:
1: Pandora’s Planet — Astounding 9/56
2: Able Hunter — part 2 of the novel
3: Pandora’s Envoy — Analog 4/61
4: Pandora’s Unlocked Box — part 3 of the novel
5: The Toughest Opponent — Analog 8/62
6: Contagious Earthitis — part 4 of the novel
7: Trap — Analog 3/69
8: Pandora’s Galaxy — part 5 of the novel
Then the fourth 60s short story, “Sweet Reason,” If 6/66, separate from the main sequence.
I don’t know if it was worth the effort, but there it is.
Pandora, on the Freas cover of the DAW edition, was modeled on me although I am not and have never been blonde. Nor as thin as the lady shown.
@roger no, you’re not the only one.
@ Anne Marble:
“Doc” Smith was known to refer to himself as a “weevil mechanic”; but that Ph.D. was worth its weight in gold as far as marketing to the SF readership.
Kevin Lighton says The first Best Novella Nebula was a tie between “He Who Shapes” and “The Saliva Tree”.
Now fixed — thanks much!
Now watching Waking the Dead‘s “Double Bind” story
I suspect that if GRRM doesn’t finish the Winds of Winter, it won’t be entirely his fault. The sheer level of bile thrown at him is offputting enough, but then there’s also all the plot speculation, all the places where if he does the same thing as the tv show he’ll be reviled, and if he does something completely different (Like leave Jon Snow to die) he’ll be even more reviled. And it’s not like he can fully hide from it… it comes to him every time he makes an appearance in person or online, and even if he maximizes his use of assistants to filter the responses, he has to hear some of it himself.
There are studies showing that shaming and harassing deter people from doing the thing people are trying to shame and harass them into doing — most famously fat-shaming causing people to abandon diets and exercise faster — but tested and applicable in different scenarios, and definitely applicable to GRRM. I don’t think there are studies on how much trying to anticipate a writer’s plotting gets in the way of the writer’s own creative process, but I definitely think hearing constant ongoing speculation, and seeing how a different version of the story ends, would at least make it harder to come out with a good personal solution without second and third guessing whether I’m just copying someone else’s suggestion.
I’ve certainly heard of shows who had thrown out essential plots based on fan speculation getting too close to correct – in some cases to the known detriment of the final version. Not sure if it applies to novels but other than happening in one person’s head instead of a writer’s room, I can’t see why not
(10) Christopher Anvil. A little bit after the fact but if a novel is part of a series, it shows up in the series section of the ISFDB entry for an author. If you look just after the author header you will note “Other Views”. If you click “Chronological” the titles will appear in that manner and not in series. Doing that I notice that Anvil actually had five novels, two of which were in series. I could think of some improvements but the programming “staff” at the ISFDB is incredibly minimal and totally overworked by a multitude of projects and fixes.