(1) NO BUCKS, NO BUCK ROGERS. “Can you make a living writing short fiction?” is the question. Joe Vasicek’s in-depth answer, filled with back-of-the-envelope calculations, is as carefully assembled as any classic hard sf tale.
First of all, it’s worth pointing out that short stories are not like longer books. In my experience (and I am not a master of the short form by any stretch), short stories do not sell as well in ebook form as longer books. That’s been corroborated anecdotally by virtually every indie writer I’ve spoken with.
At the same time, they aren’t like longer form books in the traditional sense either. I have three deal breakers when it comes to traditional publishing: no non-compete clauses, no ambiguous rights reversion, and no payments based on net. Short story markets typically only buy first publication rights with a 6-12 month exclusivity period, and pay by the word. That means that there’s no reason (unless you want to self-publish immediately) not to sell your short stories to a traditional market first.
(2) PAT SAYS IT’S PERFECT. Patrick St-Denis, who reviews at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, just awarded a novel a rare (for him) 10/10 score.
People have often criticized me for being too demanding when I review a novel. They often complain about the fact that very few books ever get a score higher than my infamous 7.5/10. But the fact is that year in and year out, there are always a number of works ending up with an 8/10 or more.
When I announced on the Hotlist’s Facebook page last week that Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar would get a 10/10, some people were shocked. I received a couple of messages asking me if it was the first book to get a perfect score from me. I knew there were a few, but I actually had to go through my reviews to find out exactly how many of them had wowed me to perfection. Interestingly enough, in the eleven years I’ve been reviewing books, Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar will be the 11th novel to garner a perfect score. The 13th, if you throw the Mötley Crüe biography and GRRM’s The World of Ice and Fire into the mix.
(3) GOLDEN SOUNDS. Trisha Lynn on “Road to the Hugo Awards: Fight the Future for Best Fancast” at Geeking Out About….
What Works
There are many podcasts out there which are dedicated to reviewing books and movies from a critics’ perspective. However, I believe this is one of the first podcasts I’ve heard of which reviews the actual worlds in which the books or movies take place. Of all the episodes I’ve heard, there are very few instances in which I feel that either Dan or Paul or their guests know or care too much about the current science fiction/fantasy literary blogosphere’s opinions of the works, its creators, its production team, or the actors portraying the characters. They are just there to discuss the work and only the work. When they do bring in references to other works or the greater outside world, they do it either near the beginning or near the end so that the discussion of most of the episode is focused on just the world inside the movie or book. It’s both fan discussion and literary criticism in its purest form, where the only clues you have are the work itself, the world you currently inhabit, your personal experiences, and that’s it.
(4) A BRIDGE JOKE TOO FAR? The Guardian asks “Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?”
“Many humans are under the impression that the Cthulhu for America movement is a joke candidacy, like Vermin Supreme – a way for people disgusted by a political system that has long since perished to voice a vote for a greater evil to end the status quo and the world,” says [campaign manager] Eminence Waite, sighing in a way that makes you think she’s been asked this question many times before. “They have never been so wrong, yet so right. Cthulhu is no joke.”
(5) HOW MUCH IS YOUR HARRY WORTH? Old editions of Harry Potter books may be worth up to $55,000.
First up, hardcover first editions of the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone could fetch anywhere from $40,000 to $55,000. Only 500 were published, and 300 went to libraries, so if you have one, go ahead and treat yourself to a nice dinner. You can afford it.
This edition has a print line that reads “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1” and credits of “Joanne Rowling” rather than JK.
(6) BUD WEBSTER MEMORIAL. There will be a Memorial for Bud Webster on March 12, from noon til 5 p.m., at the Courtyard by Marriott Williamsburg, 470 Mclaws Cir, Williamsburg, VA 23185.
Hotel Rooms: $89.00 – Please ask for the Bud Webster Memorial Rate – Also mention Mary Horton or Butch Allen if there is some confusion while trying to book the room. We are not catering anything. Sodas and snacks are available at registration
(7) DON’T GET STUCK IN THE MIDDLE. Kameron Hurley (according to her blog, an “intellectual badass”), reveals how to “Finish your Sh*t: Secrets of an Evolving Writing Process”.
People often ask how I’m able to do all that work on top of having a day job, and the answer is, most days, I just don’t know. But one thing I have learned in the last three months is that I have a lot easier time completing a draft that has me stuck in the mucky middle if I just skip ahead and write the ending.
I tend to spend a lot of time on the openings of my novels and stories, and it shows. My latest short story for Patreon, “The Plague Givers,” is a good example of this. There’s a very polished beginning, as far as the prose goes, and then it veers off into simplier language for much of the middle, and returns a bit toward the end to the more polished language. I will most likely go back and polish out the other half of the story before finding a home for it elsewhere, but watching how I completed that story reminded me of how I’ve hacked my process the last few months to try and get work out the door just a little faster.
I’m a discovery writer, which means I like to be surprised by events that happen in a book just as a reader would be.
(8) LURKER QUEST ACHIEVED. In the February 8 Scroll (item 10) a lurker described a story and asked for help identifying it.
The answer is Kent Patterson’s “Barely Decent”, published in Analog in 1991. The literary estate holder was located with an assist from Kevin J Anderson, who had anthologized another Patterson story, and from Jerry Oltion. The rights holder has authorized a link to a free download of the PDF for the story.
(9) THE POWER OF LOVE. Barbara Barrett shows how mighty love is in the worlds of Robert E. Howard: “Discovering Robert E. Howard: ‘My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions’ (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)” at Black Gate. But this otherwise serious roundup begins with a leetle joke —
For those of you who searched for the right way to describe your feelings for that certain special someone on February 14, Robert E. Howard might have been be a good source. After all, he was a wizard with words. And he did have a novel approach when it came to romance. As Bob Howard explains to Novalyne Price Ellis in her book One Who Walked Alone:
[M]en made a terrible mistake when they called their best girls their rose or violet or names like that, because a man ought to call his girl something that was near his heart. What, he asked, was nearer a man’s heart than his stomach? Therefore he considered it to be an indication of his deep felt love and esteem to call me his cherished little bunch of onion tops, and judging from past experience, both of us had a highest regard for onions. (106)
(10) OSCARS. At the Academy Awards on Sunday night, sf favorites The Martian and Star Wars: The Force Awakens won nothing, but Mad Max: Fury Road, so often praised here in comments, won six Oscars (Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Make-up and Hair, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing), more than any other film.
Other sf/fantasy winners — Best Animated Feature Film: Inside Out and Best Visual Effects: Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington, and Sara Bennett for Ex Machina.
(11) FAST OUT OF THE GATE. R. S. Belcher, fresh from his GoH-ship at MystiCon, is ready to impart “Lessons Learned at a Writing Workshop”.
Lead strong, hook ’em, and keep ’em hooked: This advice given to several of the workshop participants made an amazing difference between draft one and draft two. The sooner you get the reader’s attention and begin to unwind the reason for your tale, the stronger the likelihood, your reader will keep reading to learn more. Novels can afford a little more leisurely pace…but only a little, and for short fiction, a strong, powerful hook is needed right out of the gate. You may only have a few sentences of an editor’s attention before they decide to keep reading or toss the Manuscript—make them count.
(12) MESSAGE FIRST. SFF World’s “Robert J. Sawyer Interview” offers this self-revelation.
What came first – the story or the characters?
Neither. I’m a thematically driven writer; I figure out what I want to say first and then devise a storyline and a cast of characters that will let me most effectively say it. For Quantum Night, the high-level concept is this: most human beings have no inner life, and the majority of those who do have no conscience. And the theme is: the most pernicious lie humanity has ever told itself is that you can’t change human nature. Once I had those tent poles in place, the rest was easy.
(13) A LITTLE LIST. David Brin asks, “Trumpopulists: what will be the priorities?” at Contrary Brin.
There is often a logic, beneath shrill jeremiads. For example, Ted Cruz has proclaimed that even one more liberal or moderate justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court might shift the reading of the Second Amendment (2A) — does it give private individuals an unlimited right to own guns, or reserve that right only to members of a militia? (Go read the amendment and come back. In Heller v. D.C. the court went with Red America’s wishes by one vote, one interpretative vote. Moreover, let me shudder and add that Cruz is probably right about this one thing. The swing between those two interpretations is very likely to teeter for our lifetimes and more. But in railing about the near-term, he and his followers ignore the long term implication — …
— that the Second Amendment, as currently worded, is by far the weakest in the entire Bill of Rights. If this court or the next one does not reverse Heller, then it will inevitably happen when some huge national tragedy strikes. That’s called the “Ratchet Effect” (see The Transparent Society), and you are behooved to plan, during good times, for what you’ll do at some future crisis, when the public is scared.
If today’s political rightwing were rational, it would be working right now to gather consensus for a new Constitutional Amendment that might protect weapon rights far more firmly than the ambiguous and inherently frail Second. I have elsewhere described just such an amendment, which could actually pass! Because it offers some needed compromises to liberals and moderates – some positive-sum win-wins – while protecting a core of gun rights more firmly than 2A.
(14) JUDGING LOVECRAFT AND OTHERS. Frequent readers of Jim C. Hines will find his Uncanny Magazine essay “Men of Their Times” not only deals with its topic in a significant way, it also outlines the analytical process he applies to history.
…This argument comes up so quickly and reliably in these conversations that it might as well be a Pavlovian response. Any mention of the word “racism” in association with names like Tolkien or Burroughs or Campbell or Lovecraft is a bell whose chimes will trigger an immediate response of “But historical context!”
Context does matter. Unfortunately, as with so many arguments, it all tends to get oversimplified into a false binary. On one side are the self–righteous haters who get off on tearing down the giants of our field with zero consideration of the time and culture in which they lived. On the other are those who sweep any and all sins, no matter how egregious, under the rug of “Historical Context.”
….In an ideal world, I think most of us would like to believe humanity is growing wiser and more compassionate as a species. (Whether or not that’s true is a debate best left for another article.) If we assume that to be true, we have to expect a greater amount of ignorance and intolerance from the past. We also have to recognize that humanity is not homogenous, and every time period has a wide range of opinion and belief.
When we talk about historical context, we have to look both deeper and broader. Were Lovecraft’s views truly typical of the time, or was his bigotry extreme even for the early 20th century? Did those views change over time, or did he double–down on his prejudices?
Recognizing that someone was a product of their time is one piece of understanding their attitudes and prejudices. It’s not carte blanche to ignore them.
(15) STORIES OF WHAT-IF. At Carribean Beat, Philip Sander talks to Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias Buckell, Karen Lord, and R.S.A. Garcia.
Caribbean Beat: How do you define speculative fiction?
Nalo Hopkinson: I generally only use the term “speculative fiction” in academic circles. Science fiction and fantasy are literatures that challenge the complacency of our received wisdoms about power, culture, experience, language, existence, social systems, systems of knowledge, and frameworks of understanding. They make us reconsider whose stories deserve to be told, whose narratives shape the future and our beliefs, and who has the “right” to make and remake the world.
Is there a distinctively Caribbean kind of spec-fic?
A bunch of Caribbean SF/F [science fiction/fantasy] writers will be gathering to discuss this in March at the University of California, Riverside, as part of a year of programming I’m co-organising on alternative futurisms. I suspect one of the things we’ll end up talking about is Caribbean relationships to the experience of resistance — how it’s shaped our histories and imaginations, and so how it must shape our imaginative narratives. For instance, when I watch The Lord of the Rings, I wonder what the orcs do to rebel against their forced existence as beings created to be foot soldiers and cannon fodder.
We’ll probably also talk about the unique impact of place and space on the Caribbean psyche. I recently wrote a short story for Drowned Worlds, a fiction anthology on the theme of the effects of rising sea levels worldwide. For me, coming from island nations whose economies are often dependent on bringing tourists to our beaches, and which are the guardians of so much of the world’s precious biodiversity, it was particularly painful and personal to write a story about what will become of our lands. The resulting piece is angry and spooky, and combines science with duppy conqueror in ways that are uniquely Caribbean.
On the panel, we might also talk about language. The multiple consciousness that Caribbean history gives us is reflected in our code-switching, code-sliding, code-tripping dancehall-rapso-dubwise approach to signifying simultaneously on multiple levels. Science fiction reaches for that in its use of neologisms. Caribbean people, like so many hybridised peoples the world over, live it. We are wordsmiths par excellence.
(16) PUPPY COLLATION. Kate Paulk shut off comments at Sad Puppies IV and says “I’ll be going through them and collating the results over the next 2 weeks”. The Hugo nominating deadline is March 31.
(17) TALKING TO THE CUSTOMERS. The Video Shop presents “400 Fourth Wall Breaking Films Supercut”. (Most of you already know that when somebody on stage acknowledges the audience, that’s called breaking the fourth wall.) (Via io9.)
Since you’re reading this let me give you a bit of background and a couple of provisos.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of fourth wall breaking films. There are shitloads. Definitely more than 400. But 400 seemed a tidy number to end on. It’s not an academic study and there’s no rhyme or reason behind the grouping of the clips other than what seemed to work. So while yes, there are highbrow French new wave films in there I’ve also had to include The Silence of the Hams and Rocky and Bullwinkle. But then I kind of like that.
And because it’s mine I give more screen time to my favourite serial offenders, just because I can. Take a bow John Landis, Woody Allen and Mike Myers.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Rob Thornton for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mart.]
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Some interesting results from the Clarkesworld readers poll:
That’s a lot of ties, and it appears that the readers disagree with the Nebulas about When your Child Strays From God.
I don’t have any major quibbles apart from not really thinking the Liu Cixin story was that great, and wondering where The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild has gone.
20 or more votes – 0.015% (2)
10 – 19: .045% (6)
5-9: .083% (11)
2-4: 28% (37)
1: 58% (76)
Quick estimate of individual nominators – 100-120. That could be off by a decent amount, but at first blush, that’s what it looks like.
My own personal take on gun ownership is that nobody needs to own more than four firearms:
1) Long-barrel rifle, for hunting or target shooting.
2) Shotgun (because some things, like dove hunting, just about require it).
3) A handgun, for personal defense.
4) A second handgun, for those rare circumstances when you feel a need to go Full Lamont Cranston.
Anything beyond that seems excessive.
@Bruce.
My own personal take is: there are many many chemicals in the home that can be used for “stuff”. Sports equipment is often handy as well.
🙂
@redwombat
Let me take a poke at this.
The Founding Fathers established rules that limited the size and scope of government. They also established rules for granting that government more power to reflect probable changes in society over time.
Throughout the breadth of human history, the single greatest source of death, destruction, oppression, and poverty has been government. Specifically large and intrusive governments with a stunted perspective of individual liberty.
The current (well….since the 1930s at least) mode of evaluating the Constitution via interpretive dance instead of the English language has eroded the protections against excessive governemnt that the Founding Fathers sought to erect.
It isn’t that they were better people. It isn’t that their standards were perfect.
The point is that they could see beyond the limitations of their culture towards an expansive (and expanding) view of individual liberty. Their personal flaws aside, their creation was and is a magnitude of order better. I’m unwilling to easily give it up.
Regards,
Dann
@Dann–
You’re overlooking the important factor that the Founders had tried a more limited form of government–the Articles of Confederation.
They found it to be completely unworkable and the country was in danger of coming apart. The Constitution is what they wrote and ratified when they realized they needed a stronger central government.
I apologize in advance if my comments for the rest of the day are incoherent. I spent 2 hours with primary physician today (well waiting, talking to assistant, and a little time with Doctor). Hubby took notes, provided hearing person translation, and support. It was exhausting and my brain fog is overwhelming. I believe outcome was:
1. Why yes maybe I should have listened to your request we test for anemia the last 3 times you’ve been in here. It could be cause of heart problem I/doc have been freaking out over. Get test you’ve been requesting for 6-12 months and we’ll talk
2. Get echocardiogram ASAP because mumble mumble
3. EKG abnormalities shouldn’t interfere with scheduling gallbladder surgery. I’m sure the surgeon will see the urgency and won’t make you wait another 3 months. No I won’t get involved.
I love knowing having a man in the room the doctor sees regularly at service helps me get better health care.
Hmmmm. If this was true, Somalia with its lack of government would be paradise on earth. But it is not true. Creation of government is one of the effective means to combat poverty that exists. Where poverty is the greatest is also where no government is there to help the poor.
And do note that US has a truly terrible track record in combating poverty. And that is not because of too large government.
Using a similar approach to yours my numbers differ from your by 1 or 2 here or there (I’m guessing around the ‘me too’ comments and the comments that are discussion rather than recommendations).
However those margins are enough to possibly cause some shifts in the final 10.
Timothy is naturally delighted by Honor at Stake doing so well. Aside from that, well if puppies didn’t run a slate or even campaign for particular books and just said ‘be puppies and nominate the obvious stuff’ they’d get the same result, Butcher, Wright, RIngo, Williamson, & maybe Correia (although he has said he would refuse a nomination)
Throughout the breadth of human history, the single greatest source of death, destruction, oppression, and poverty has been government.
You haven’t actually studied much history, have you?
The current (well….since the 1930s at least) mode of evaluating the Constitution via interpretive dance instead of the English language has eroded the protections against excessive governemnt that the Founding Fathers sought to erect.
The idea that the means by which judges interpret the Constitution changed radically in the 1930s displays a fairly shocking (although common) level of ignorance about the legal history of the U.S.
@ Stevie: The V in V.E. Schwab stands for Victoria. You keep calling her Veronica.
@ Bruce Arthurs:
2) Shotgun (because some things, like dove hunting, just about require it).
OK, but what requires dove hunting? Is that actually a thing?
Weren’t things better back when oppression and slavery were outsourced to private industry?
Looks over at the political clout of the prison-industrial system and the number of private prisons in the U.S.
You mean they aren’t now?
Note that pigeons and doves are actually the same family, Columbidae.
@ Jenora Feuer – No, no, you don’t understand. That’s not oppression. Socialised health care is oppression.
@Mark: I, on the other hand, have a lot of quibbles with the Clarkesworld readers’ tastes. Didn’t read “Yuanyuan’s Bubbles” but otherwise my reactions ranged from “good” (most of them) to “mediocre” (“Cassandra”) to “ugh” (“Today I Am Paul”). The only Clarkesworld stories I thought were wonderful this year were “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” (Aliette de Bodard), “Summer at Grandmother’s House” (Hao Jingfang), and “An Evolutionary Myth” (Bo-Young Kim). Not surprising that stories with sentiment are popular with readers, though. Just as long as the editors don’t start serving up nothing but!
I definitely approve of the magazine’s translation project even if the results are often not great stories. “Coming of the Light” by Chen Qiufan was another good one. Considering all the enthusiasm for the translations, we’ll certainly get more in 2016.
Didn’t Ringo say he was taking a pass on Hugo nominations, too?
@mister Dallard
The one time I went hunting (I was just spotting, although I had fired the gun on a previous outing–the only occasion in my life I’ve ever fired a gun) was indeed dove hunting, so yeah, its a thing.
Funny bit to that story. My friend (sadly, late friend) hit a dove, and the darned dying bird fell right down at me, and came within inches of hitting me. He thought it was absolutely hilarious that the dying bird’s final act was to come down at *me*.
Camestros Felapton: Correia (although he has said he would refuse a nomination)
Isn’t it funny how the guy who thought it would be a good idea to start the Sad Puppy campaign to try to get himself a Hugo now realizes that a nomination achieved through gaming the process isn’t worth shit?
@Camestros Felapton.
Shift the order, but unlikely to change the top 10, I think.
I find it exceedingly interesting that it appears that what Finn has done to the SPIV “recommendation list” is nearly identical to what SP/RP did to the Hugo nominations.
I wonder why more didn’t do the same (even though there were a couple of other self-nominators in there).
Of course, it’s not nearly as surprising, and not necessarily outside the “culture”.
@Jack Lint: yes, I think you are right – Ringo has said he doesn’t want a Hugo.
@JJ: the cosmos gives free writing lesson – in Larry C’s case the lesson is on ‘irony’
@Steve Davidson: self promotion and mutual promotion is very much part of the culture of SP. It is also part of their dislike of SFWA ( i.e it doesnt spend most of its time boosting authors), Worldcon (it isnt all about making new authors feel special) the Hugo Awards (i.e. the awards aren’t on a muggins turn basis) and book criticism in general.
@Camestros: me. not us.
Snap!
The sadpuppies4 website hasn’t been lively, but my understanding is that Puppies congregate at madgeniusclub so there may be more nominating activity there. Also I believe Paulk wrote (though I could be wrong) that she would accept suggestions through Facebook and email as well. With various sources including private email, I don’t see how it will be possible to verify her data.
@bbz,
Got a cite for that? Because the SPIV FAQ doesn’t say anything about accepting recommendations outside of comments at the SPIV site:
IIRC there was some talk at the start of SPIV of broadening the base and taking nominations from other sites. But in her last post she said that people wanting to use the Puppy recommendations could just count the recommendations themselves, because that’s what she’s going to do… when she gets around to it.
bbz said:
You may be misremembering that from what Brad Torgersen said about SP3. I don’t recall Paulk ever saying that she’d take nominations from anywhere other than the SP4 site. At any rate, it’s not in any of the posts there or on the “About” page.
(Incidentally, checking the “About” page reminds me that SP4 has an explicitly stated goal of bringing in 8000 new nominators. There’s still most of a month to go, so counting chickens before they’re hatched and all that, but I suspect it may fall a tad short.)
@Soon Lee et alia
No cite on that so I retract.
A quick look at MGC shows some recs in the comments but nothing by Paulk saying she will count them. My memory of her saying she would accept recs through Facebook and email must be faulty because I can’t Google her saying any such thing
Apologies to you all for my inaccuracy.
We now have all the Sad Puppy 4 nominating recs. They can be examined by everyone.
It’s a surprisingly small set.
Throughout the breadth of human history, the single greatest source of death, destruction, oppression, and poverty has been government. Specifically large and intrusive governments with a stunted perspective of individual liberty.
I represent a coalition of microbes that are affronted at how blithely you dismiss their efforts. Trust me, you don’t want to piss off this gang.
Query, is Apex Magazine a professional publication for Campbell Award purposes?
Wait, I know this one! And…you’re wrong.
Mosquitoes kill more people in human history than people kill people, because disease kills more people than people kill people. By, like, a lot.
I am just about willing to allow that we can turn the interpretation for “government” to include stuff like “failure of government to regulate coal mine safety leading to black lung” and I’m perfectly happy to hand over the deaths by disease in war-time, like gangrene and fever and whatnot, in which case I’ll give you a chunk of disease for your government, but my mosquitoes are still like so far ahead it’s not even funny.
Also, you’re going to have to give me back rabies, because we would need much MORE intrusive and active government to knock down rabies. Smallpox we will decide on a case by case basis.
You can keep lyssavirus, though. I’m not greedy.
Anyway, there are colorful infographics and everything. Multiple ones. Even as murderers, we’re kinda small potatoes.
ETA: Dr. Science, my mosquitoes join your microbes in their outrage.
Dann665:
This is a little like saying that I must be richer than Bill Gates because he spends so much more on living expenses and travel each week than I do. It only looks at half the equation.
You overlook the role of governments, including large governments, in promoting standards of living, creating societies and making wealth. And in helping to promote actual liberty – such as the mass education that makes this forum different from a couple of illiterate peasants talking around a plow.
@Bruce Arthurs: If you’re a hunter you’ll want multiple rifles and shotguns in appropriate calibers and gauges for the different things you expect to hunt. If you’re a serious target shooter, you may want a number of different pistols because it’s your hobby. I want a new Privia PX-650 even though my existing digital piano works just fine. My bigger concern is the reversal in the percentage of households with at least one gun since the scary black man became president. Also the fools who imagine they’ll be super competent at defending themselves if it comes to that. Also the degradation of long-held standards for safe storage and handling.
But no new nominators can be added, as of January 31, 2016. So any new nominators SP4 would have brought in had to BE in before then.
Unless they’re going to try to persuade people who already have memberships but didn’t nominate in the past to become nominators?
Like cars I’ve never had much desire for an actual gun. However I can see the need for a specialist gun for shooting at jellyfish. I can’t imagine any standard gun would be effective.
RedWombat: Wait, I know! The greatest source of death has been natural causes. Because, as they say in rock’n-roll, nobody gets out of here alive.
Vasha: Apex Magazine is now classified as pro. Neil Clarke verified it with them not long ago when he was updating Semiprozine.org. I ran a post here about that as well.
ULTRAGOTHA said:
There are over 9000 members of last year’s Worldcon who are eligible to nominate this year and didn’t (or couldn’t) last year, so, sure!
…but to be honest, I momentarily forgot about the January 31 cutoff.
I expect a lot of the additional almost-4000 voters who showed up between nominations and final voting last year will be nominating this year, and I suppose SP4 will try to take credit for that.
@RedWombat: You have inspired me!
💑 braved the wilds of the backyard and pruned the 🌹 basically cutting off dead wood and rose hips. Also the 🍑 tree is covered with things that look like 🌸 there are a ton of 🍋 the 🍎 tree looks good. As long as we get enough 🐝 to pollinate. Also we ripped out yards of passion vine. While the 🐱 🐈 watched in confusion. Tonight we have 🍕 .
And of course, vote for Katsu. 🐙
THANKS JJ!!1! 👍 👍
Right, but that doesn’t help me figure out if an author began qualifying for a Campbell when published in Apex two years ago. The rule is “professional publications are works sold for more than a nominal amount”; did Apex pay for stories in 2014?
Steve Davidson: As I was checking comments this afternoon I found once again someone — you — has processed all the SP4 data and stuck it up on my blog.
Don’t do that.
It’s mindblowing how many self-proclaimed slate opponents just can’t keep themselves from trying to save SP4 from collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence.
And it is completely fucking beyond me why you think I want to host that data.
I am *very* interested to see how Finn and Niemeier do in the overall SP4 tabulations. From a completely unscientific observation, those were the 2 that clearly tried to mobilise their base.
Finn will doubtless do very well, but looks like Niemeier’s late start will hamper him.
Lurkertype, it isn’t nice to gloat. We got several inches of snow here yesterday. Spring is still a rumor, a myth not to be believed.
Tasha, I am so sorry that was your medical experience. Do you have any reasonable alternatives for care, who don’t suffer from selective double-x chromosome input impermeability and who will take steps to work with your heating disability? Because you should not have to endure that treatment.
I know there was something else I meant to mention… I will no doubt recall it 6 minutes from now.
ETA: Camestros, I don’t know what would happen if you shot a jellyfish with a shotgun loaded with sequins and sparkly beads, and I am too sqeamish to find out. But I suspect you’d either be out one jellyfish or have created a heckuva craft project.
I blame cold meds for the above image.
A sensible history of US jurisprudence would identify a moment of radical change of course not during the New Deal, but in the 1870s-80s. That was when Reconstruction was sabotaged and then destroyed. Racist courts and legislators decided they didn’t have to obey the obvious letter of the 14th and 15th amendments, because they’d be damned if they granted non-white people equal standing anywhere. The New Deal really marks a return to taking the text of the Constitution more seriously as a guideline to actual, specific policy in situations not at stake when its various parts were first enacted.
Oof. Mike said a cuss word, that is srs bzness. Even when he scolds me, he hasn’t cussed.
Anywho, can I go all 2nd wave feminist here and say OF COURSE the SP left the hard work of asking for comments/consensus, sorting through comments, and totaling up numbers to a WOMAN? She’s been appointed secretary-treasurer of the Puppies. Not president or CEO, nope. The boys take the easy way out and nominate their buddies without bothering to get input from others; the one woman has to actually DO the hard work, only after the “corporation” has suffered bad PR. She has my honest sympathy in this one case. Even when they’re trying not to be sexist, it ends up sexist.
I s’pose she’ll put up the 4-10 “suggestions” in each category a few days before the deadline, SP will vote all of them (if <= 5) or the 5 they've heard of the most (Finn the Self-Pimp). RP will just be putting down what Teddy ordered, and some of the SP will go along with him too (esp. in categories where they're short). Because "winning" is so very very important to them.
@Mike,
sorry.
@LunarG this is how gun proliferation happens – because now I want a shotgun to try that idea out.
@Lurkertype puttung aside the whole history of Sad Puppies asude for a moment; I think Kate Paulk set up SP4 in a clever way. Done right it is the sort of thing that could morph into a benign resource for people nominating for Hugos that adds to tge mix from other places.
The latest GigaNotoSaurus novelette is very nice: “Polyglossia” by Tamara Vardomskaya. The author studies linguistics at the same university where I did; the story was therefore calculated to delight me but I think other people will like it too. It is a portrait of a situation of cultural conflict and linguistic contact; there are an embittered linguist, a visiting singer with a sharp sense of cultural survival, an angry chorister from a minority people whose language is recently dead, an enthusiastically many-languaged child, the visiting singer’s aunt who is skilled at social manipulation… Debates about language loss and recovery, poetry, subversive music… And a happy ending.
*shakes fist at lurkertype for emoji abuse*
*praises lurkertype for gardening*
*it’s complicated*