(1) SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS WHO WERE NEVER DRUNK ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY. Here are a few of the genre’s known teetotalers – doubtless there are others…
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Harlan Ellison
- J. Michael Straczynski
- John C. Wright (see comment #14)
- Isaac Asimov is another famous nondrinker, but one can’t be sure never applies here:
Asimov was a teetotaler in later life, mainly because in all of his experiences with drinking alcoholic beverages, just one or two drinks were sufficient to get him drunk. On the day he passed the oral examination for his Ph.D., he drank five Manhattans in celebration, and his friends had to carry him back to school and try to sober him up. His wife told him that he spent that entire night in bed giggling every once in a while and saying “Doctor Asimov”.
(2) OB IRISH. For a more substantial tribute to St. Patrick’s Day, we recommend James H. Burns’ tribute to Disney’s Darby O’Gill movie — “And A Moonbeam To Charm You”.
(3) FANHISTORY OF GREATER IRELAND. David Langford (coincidentally) chose St. Patrick’s Day to trumpet the forthcoming update of Rob Hansen’s history of UK fandom.
Wearing my Ansible Editions hat, I’ve been copyediting the final sections of Rob Hansen’s expanded (though not, as he says, extended), corrected and source-noted THEN: A HISTORY OF UK FANDOM 1930-1980. The final word count is around 211,000, about 20% more than the original. Our planned trade paperback is up to 410 pages, which will grow a bit more when the awaited 1970s fan mugshots go in (dread chore). To be published … Summer 2016?
(4) RECOMMENDED GREEN READING. At the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, “5 Fantasy Novels That Go Full Emerald Isle” not only gives you Ireland but the magic number 5!
Ireland isn’t just a country, it’s a repository of myth and legend that has been mined by genre writers for decades. Even today, Ireland seems to be bursting with magical energies that other countries couldn’t hope to match—I mean, who would imagine an epic fantasy set in the wilds of New Jersey? Naturally, that means that not only have some of the best works of fantasy ever written taken inspiration from Irish history, but several are explicitly in Ireland. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are a five fantasy novels exploring the Emerald Isle.
The Book of Kells, by R.A. MacAvoy As with all of MacAvoy’s novels, The Book of Kells is difficult to pin down. Time travel, ancient Ireland, Viking invasions, and a saint or goddess meddling in mortal affairs? You’ll find all of it here, as an accidental confluence of ancient music and the tracing of an ages-old pattern by a modern-day artist transports first a screaming young woman from the past into the artist’s bedroom, then the woman, the artist, and a companion back in time a thousand years, into a medieval Ireland grounded in historical fact—which doesn’t lessen the fantastical nature of the ensuing adventures. It might lack wizards and dragons, but that doesn’t make it any less fun, and part of that is down to exploring a raw, roiling Ireland of old, populated by characters who act intelligently, considering (one even nips back to the modern day in order to convert all his cash into material that would be valuable in the tenth century)…
(5) MOVIE MAKING TECHNOLOGY. Lucid Dreams of Time is a short from Disney’s Zurich research division (and yes, Disney has an alliance with the Gnomes of Zurich) which is a time travel story but also a way of showcasing new Disney technologies.
The film portrays a moment of transition, from life to afterlife, with the story being told from three different perspectives – a mother, her son, and the messenger who can alter time. Simona and her son Gabriel travel through three realms – a present moment, supernatural world and a lucid dream – to discover purpose after a series of events change their lives forever. Through an afterlife mirror, Simona views the last few minutes of life with her son. Later, as Gabriel falls asleep, Simona receives a small gift from the Messenger – to talk to her son for exactly one minute. As the sands of time quickly run out, she appears to Gabriel in his dream to deliver a message that he will never forget.
(6) YESTERDAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY.
- Born March 16, 1926 – Jerry Lewis. Click to read a tribute by James H. Burns.
(7) SILICON VALLEY COMIC CON. Steve Wozniak has brought a Comi Con to Silicon Valley reports smofnews. The Los Angeles Times previews his plans in “Silicon Valley Comic Con comes with an extra dose of tech”.
Kicking off Friday at the San Jose Convention Center, the inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con will bring the internationally recognized comic, science fiction, fantasy and video gaming convention to the Bay Area.
Although the event will be smaller than the flagship San Diego Comic-Con, which last year drew nearly 170,000 attendees (the three-day Silicon Valley event is expected to draw 30,000 per day, with many attendees attending multiple days), Steve Wozniak, the event’s host and pioneer of the personal computer, said it would be for the same audience.
“It’s for people who are local who haven’t been able to get to the San Diego one,” said Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs. “It’ll be a full Comic Con in terms of the sorts and booths, presentations and celebrities that we have.”
The key difference? There will be more technology — the kind that “carries over into pop culture,” Wozniak said — and a greater focus on science fiction.
The convention will have a dedicated virtual reality zone where attendees will be able to play with the latest VR gadgets, and there will also be science-driven panels, such as one about whether artificial intelligence or “super babies” will be the greatest threat to humankind.
But Wozniak made clear that Silicon Valley Comic Con is “not just a tech conference.”
The event will also feature a “Back to the Future” cast reunion, a presentation by actor William Shatner, appearances by “Mythbusters” co-host Adam Savage and science fiction authors and artists.
“I wanted to be a part of Silicon Valley Comic Con because for me this show highlights what the Valley has meant to science, technology and innovation and encapsulates what ‘Back to the Future’ is about,” said Christopher Lloyd, one of the film’s stars.
(8) ERIN ON HUGOS. If you want to know what Alexandra Erin’s thinking about Hugo nominating season, check out Blue Author Is About To Write.
I haven’t been talking about the Sad and Rabid Puppies much this year because the Hugo Awards are going to happen every year and I don’t want that to be my life, but I understand they’re still at it, still spinning the same narratives, still spreading the same propaganda, still appealing to the biases and suspicions of the biased and the suspicious. I don’t know how much impact they’ll have.
For nominations, there are three possibilities: they’ll have another walk in the park, their machinations will be shut out entirely, or they’ll have some impact but not be able to seize as total control as they did last year. I think if everybody who was mobilized to get involved and vote on conscience and merits rather than politics stays involved, their ability to unduly influence the process will be nullified, but that depends on a big if.
My name has come up in a few circles as a possible nominee. By that I mean, I know that some people have nominated me, but that’s not the same as making it onto the ballot, even without any puppies piddling in the box. In truth, it is an honor just to be nominated, even if I don’t make the short list. It is an honor to have my name being mentioned in conjunction with some of the giants of the field…..
(9) THE EARLY RETURNS. Here are some reactions to the Sad Puppies 4 list, which was posted today.
The G at Nerds of a Feather
Given last year’s caustic battle over the Hugo Awards, as well as the generally caustic nature of U.S. politics in 2016, you might be forgiven for assuming that the 2016 Hugo Awards would be yet another battleground in the never-ending (and endlessly tiresome) culture wars. Only it isn’t looking that way, in part because the Sad Puppies have followed up last year’s politically partisan and highly divisive slate with a longlist of recommendations that…isn’t partisan or divisive at all.
Rachael Acks
https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/710556932344385537
Eric Franklin
https://twitter.com/gamethyme/status/710595443219046400
Brian Niemeier
https://twitter.com/BrianNiemeier/status/710579138919174144
It may have been a mistake to post a recommended reading list with probably over a million words of content two weeks before nominations close. Unless it was a clever trick to say “aha! Sad Puppies was about the discussion, not the final list!” in which case, well played. That means that those who came over from places like File770 to leave comments and votes are now Sad Puppies.
Without the synergy between Sads & Rabids this year, I think we’ll see less of a direct impact this time around, but I think that it gives a pretty good look at how the Hugo noms would’ve shaken out with or without the Puppies. Plus, it may give the statisticians out there a better look at just how much pull Vox has. There was a lot of talk last year that there were actually only a handful of Sad Puppies and the 500 or so Vile Faceless Minions were the deciding factor.
And where the list was posted, Mad Genius Club commenters have been submitting a large number of copyedits and arithmetic corrections.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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Jim, your mention of post-treatment avoidances reminds me of when Dad had his first bypass surgery. As one of the nurses and the surgeon both told us later, shortly before the surgery he was reviewing all the things he was supposed to have stopped, and it was almost entirely things he’d never done, and he had given up the few things that were on the list and he did…but he insisted that he absolutely couldn’t give up smoking. He let them remonstrate with him for several minutes before admitting that this was because he hadn’t smoked since a few times during World War II.
And people wonder why I turned out the way I did.
I do need acid blockers when I have more than a couple drinks now, but that means my stomach doesn’t hurt at all.
GSLamb: Indeed, knurd would explain it all.
Meredith channeling (have we heard from her recently? I hope she is well)
Today’s UK Kindle deal includes the first two Dresden books by JIm Butcher
http://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=sv_kinc_4?ie=UTF8&node=5400977031
Quick PSA – I’ll be at a con this weekend and may or may not check in here. Don’t anybody get worried! 😉
From my experience at cons, there does seem to be some subcultures of fandom who are interested in alcohol–a subfandom as it were. People interested in different kinds of hard spirits, and beers, and what not. Michael Martinez (who wrote the Daedalus Trilogy) has a blog devoted to beer, and I know some others who use, or have used, untappd (which is a social network thingy for beer).
Me, I’ve never drunk much, and I get inebriated easily. I decided at some point that I didn’t want the empty calories. (I’ve given up much of my soda consumption as well). The only genre consequence of this is that I’m much less sillier on the Torture Cinema segments of The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
Is there a continental divide? Moderate drinking is definitely the European norm, with some people taking things to extremes. Proudly not drinking seems a more common American thing.
Wouldn’t agree. Binge drinking is the standard in sweden, even if we aren’t really a part of the vodka belt anymore. The social norm for parties is drinking where people will continuously ask you why you aren’t drinking and it is not unusual to be told to “drink more”.
Instead, moderate drinking of having a glass of wine to the food on an ordinary working day is more uncommon, something people might frown upon.
@Hampus
Agreed, there seems to be a North/South divide in Europe over alcohol. Binge drinking is the norm in Scotland as well, and since the recent cut to the recommended weekly limits (14 units/week regardless of sex) a lot of people are exceeding the weekly limit on two or more days a week.
Never drunk alcohol beyond a few tastes either. Teenage me figured 1) I don’t like the taste. 2) It’s more expensive than drinks I do like the taste of. 3) I don’t like the effect it has on people. Why do I want to drink this stuff? So I didn’t.
I did buy alcohol under age though. Seems they’re unlikely to card someone buying a bottle of Dom Perignon, even if they are 17. My mother was getting remarried, and since both families had all the usual wedding gift appliances already, I got them the champagne and a basket of meats and cheeses for the wedding night.
Re: Lurkertype: “7. SVCC has no relation to SDCC. It’s entirely new, to replace the con the area used to have before SD stole bought and moved it. I think it incorporates a previous event as well. ”
Not quite. SDCC did buy Wondercon, and moved it from where it was already a tight fit in the Oakland Convention Center across the Bay to part of Moscone in SF. And things went well for several years. But then they couldn’t get a reservation at Moscone one year due to refurbishing eliminating a lot of dates. And since then, they’ve been unable to get a combination of acceptable dates known to them far enough out (i.e. So, how’s mid-July [same time as SDCC] and we’re only telling you this in March?). So it moved to Anaheim, and this year due to construction at the Anaheim CC, to the LA CC.
SDCC says they’d love to bring it back to SF, and I tend to believe them. The SF Chronicle pop culture reporter did a story on it, and pointed out that Moscone now has almost no open to the general public style conventions, as opposed to annual meetings of the Association of Some Profession and the like; there seems to be a strong bias against such by Moscone’s powers that be.
SVCC bought the former 3rd-4th tier Big Wow Comic Con, according to one report because that was the easiest way to reserve the space at the San Jose CC; just buy them and take over their registration. I’m definitely expecting some glitches; based on the website, what and how they’ve scheduled things, that they haven’t reached out to the local comics stores, etc., it’s unclear if they have folk who are really experienced with this sort of thing on board, at least at certain key positions.
St Patrick’s Day: drink and Darby O’Gill? Oh to be sure to be sure. Darby O’Gill is… not well liked in Ireland. I think we’re largely inured to stage Irishness through sheer saturation and repitition but talk about your cultural appropriation. Terrific cinematic rendition of a banshee but otherwise those were our folk tales you Oirished up!
And I’m sure those books ae great but The Third Policeman is one of the best fantasy novels of the 20th century and perhaps deserves to be more than an afterthought. Grumble grumble.
But we do binge drink horribly so fair enough about the drink.
Or a drink-when-it’s-cold-and-dark consensus?
I drank my way through high school. Which was good prep for drinking at cons…starting with a dedicated crew at a Balticon; they revered Murphy’s Irish whiskey and group sang “Lucky Man” (at the time I thought it filk and was surprised to hear it on the radio later), Then there was the gentleman who I helped make sangria in a 50 gallon trashcan…good stuff that.
In college I learned that being unconscious made one vulnerable to pranks (fortunately not as a victim) and gave it all up.
On another note: the tally for novels on SPIV doesn’t match mine. Though I’m SURE that there must have been things taken into account I wasn’t aware of….
I’ve grown up around alcohol, as my Mother’s family was steeped in French/Italian tradition and my father was a Scotch aficionado.
While I did binge once in college, I have dialed it back to a drink every few weeks. Well, once a week during football season.
Gave up drunking after being diagnosed with gout. I can deal with it infrequently, but avoid beer. Will drink wine, but dislike the sulfides in the commercial material.
And I should add experiencing gout is a good enough inducement to swear off and swear at drinking.
I think interest in and competence for alcohol is not the same as drinking whatever shade of ethanol you can find until shitfaced. You can hardly do that with single malt unless you are truly loaded, anyway.
British fandom has a certain overlap with real ale fandom. I taste them, I like them, but they all taste like beer to me. Then again pretty much all coffee tastes like coffee and all white tastes like either white or red wine. It’s really sad. I feel I am missing out.
All of fandom in unison, thinking of Scandinavian room parties: WE KNOW
I realised on moving to London that developing a certain tolerance for alcohol was probably a needed social skill, because feeling ill and sleepy after the second pint ruined too many social occasions for me.
Nowadays, having reached maturity and wisdom, I can and do drink socially, never getting really drunk and certainly never puking all over myself as has happened once or twice in my younger and more depressed days. Alas the day after migraine and consequent I Will Never Touch Another Drop Of Alcohol I Swear moment has not been completely banished.
Italians do drink, and Italian teenagers do get disastrously drunk, as I can affirm from personal experience. But, unlike in Northern Europe, it is considered a shameful lack of control and not a fun thing to do together, or a goal to achieve. As in, your friends will give you coffee with lemon, hold your brow, and on one famous occasion hold you under the cold shower, but will then mock you relentlessly about it, and their parents will let you know just how much they do not appreciate you puking on their nice sofa, so eventually you learn to stop. Unless you become an alcoholic first, of course.
I lost a lot of respect for Jerry Lewis over the years. It was a battle in his films over control and funny. The control came out, along with his ego, which make Orson Welles look small.
When I was ten, I enjoyed his films. But now, I just see missed opportunities. And flaws. A lot of them.
Honestly, the first thing that I entered my mind when going to a MidAmericonCon2 was to bring airplane bottles of aquavit to entertain people with. Which might not be as good idea as I thought if there is going to be one giant party space to which you can’t bring your own alcohol.
I never liked his older movies, but he’s simply brilliant in King of Comedy where it is mostly his calm and controlled side that is visible. A fantastic movie.
KING OF COMEDY came after a hiatus of not being on the screen for over a decade.. Jerry Lewis didn’t direct it. So it moves in a different kind of manner.
#1 Other than the whole “being an atheist” thing, I would have made a great Mormon–I’ve never drank alcohol even once, never smoked tobacco, never used any other recreational drug, and don’t drink coffee (though because I don’t like coffee, not because I have any philosophical problems with it.)
#4 Just for a second there, seeing the title Book of Kells, I was excited to think that it was the basis of the movie The Secret of Kells, only to be disappointed.
I seem to be odd one out: I lived in France during the critical phase in the formation of my palate, and then was influenced a little after by CAMRA in the UK.
As a result I drink wine with food for specific taste variations (down to details of terroir), real ale and craft beers, with a preference for hoppy IPAs and IIPAs — I like bitter food and drink and have no sweet tooth — along with the very occasional post-prandial peaty single malt Scotch, Cognac, Armagnac (Burgundy and Beaune fit in above…), Calvados, etc.
As far as I can tell alcohol itself has no actual taste, which means that drinks which are sweet enough to cover the “burn” from stronger concentrations can be dangerous, as they send no immediate signal to regulate consumption. I do drink the occasional good cider, but I note that the mouthfeel of the drink gives no warning as to strength; I assume that the same applies to mixed drinks, which I avoid.
ETA — All in moderation, I may note. If you’re drinking for taste, drinking to excess is counterproductive.
Never liked sweet drinks, but it’s cold drinks that raise alarm bells for me. I was in Vegas one time with a woman trying to buy me drinks (and that sounds more exciting than it was) and I concluded that while I quite liked the frozen margarita, I had absolutely no sense of how boozy it was, which meant that I should probably stop after one if I was going to drive to Bryce Canyon the next day.
I had to listen to a couple of people at my job yesterday describe how they knew they were drunk. It involved how much came back up. They drink because they wanted oblivion after work, not relaxing with friends. And on the other hand, we have known people who like to get plastered on a holiday. It’s called “Tuesday”. Every day is a kind of Tuesday.
Have some Madeira…
But watch out for falling asleep on the slow, slow train on the way home.
Jerry Lewis is like the Three Stooges for me: occasionally funny, but strangely fascinating.
I set a timer for the TCM tribute nights this week, complete with interviews from this year, and was defeated by technology: a defective disk cost me AT WAR WITH THE ARMY, and my own negligence made me forget to catch the beginning of THE BELLBOY, which I regard as the most successful directorial Lewis pic (his first), though I don’t recall laughing at anything in it. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t talk through it all, so that the endless scenes of him doing things to people who don’t react are mercifully silent.
The best Jerry Lewis movies are the ones directed by Frank Tashlin. (THE KING OF COMEDY isn’t a “Jerry Lewis movie.”)
The comparison was made to Orson Welles, but I think Jerry was aiming even higher. I think he wanted to be Charlie Chaplin, writing and directing and starring and writing the music, and being the sad clown (who cried) and creating Great Art.
TCM sort of lampshaded that, I thought, scheduling THE GREAT DICTATOR right after the second string of Lewis movies. I was hoping that this would have been one of Jerry’s picks, and that there would be an interview segment before it, but the segments seem to have stopped a couple of movies before it, and I didn’t check, since I already have the movie on disk. Another interesting choice, they showed some Dean Martin movies last night. I watched KISS ME, STUPID with furrowed brow, watching Ray Walston do his best in a Billy Wilder comedy stocked with some great supporting comic actors, wondering where the comedy was.
ps: They’re having an Edward Everett Horton festival this morning. He not only stars in the one I’m watching just now, he stars twice. It’s the Edward Everett Horton-est. The next is apparently a drama. I can’t wait.
The problem with frozen margaritas is that you have to be someplace hot to enjoy them.
It’s probably just as well that I need to renew my passport, because on a cold grey day in London the prospect of sipping one in some idyllic spot in the Carribean is exceedingly enticing..
As Aaron says, the SP organisers this year explicitly said they would not ask people’s permission. This seems right to me; there was some condemnation of them last year for asking people’s permission (even though in some cases it turned out that they didn’t). You do not normally ask people’s permission to put them on a recommendation list; asking permission, thus implying that everyone recommended supported them, was one of the things that turned it into a slate in a narrower and more ideological sense. A recommendation list created by an open process should list everything that the recommenders actually recommend.
Darby O’gill: When I was in primary school (1st-4th grades), once a year for a treat they would gather us all in the auditorium and show us a movie. Darby O’gill was one of them. Another was Night Crossing. And unless I’m really misremembering things, a third was Song of the South. (This was back in the “film projected on a screen” days. By the time I was in middle school (5th-8th grades) VCRs were becoming only a few hundred dollars, and one year I had a teacher that had apparently just given up–he would wheel in a TV and show movies more than one day a week. Some were arguably educational (Gandhi) but others were not (Raiders of the Lost Ark.) As a kid, I enjoyed it. As an adult, I think he should have been fired.)
Jerry Lewis: Speaking of cringe-worthy movies, I’ve long had a morbid curiosity to see The Day The Clown Cried.
THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. watched an interview with Jerry Lewis on that back in the 1970’s and how he couldn’t get it released. A few have seen it and say its awful. I’m too old to want to knowingly watch bad films, and try to avoid them.
This seems right to me; there was some condemnation of them last year for asking people’s permission (even though in some cases it turned out that they didn’t).
I don’t recall any condemnation of SP3 for asking permission. I recall criticism for asking for permission while obscuring exactly what the permission was for (see, for example, Juliette Wade’s comments on how Torgersen asked her permission). Given that SP3 was framed as advancing a political agenda (as evidenced by many of Torgersen’s posts explaining why SP3 existed), asking permission and explaining what the SP3 list was for was probably the minimum level of courtesy that should have been extended.
Even though SP4 is less slate-like than its predecessors, it necessarily drags their reputation along with it. Not asking for permission from the various people who appear on the list strikes me as simply being rude. Because of the legacy of previous Puppy slates, many people will associate SP4 with the politics of previous slates (and to be perfectly honest, even though SP4 was assembled slightly differently, one only has to look at the posts and comments supporting it to see that SP4 is awash in the same politics as the previous Puppy slates). An author (or artist, or fan, or whoever) who didn’t want to be associated with this sort of political movement should have been given the opportunity to decline to be on the list. That would have been the courteous thing for the SP4 organizers to do, but then again, the Pups have made a practice of being as rude as a point of pride, so the fact that they were rude in this instance is unsurprising.
The sum of all sinful habits is constant. While it is true that my alcohol intake has declined drastically the last 4-5 years, it is not because of me having seen the light or something like that. It is mostly because alcohol intake would negatively affect my other sinful habits.
I still do the binge drinking thing, but it is more like 1-2 times a year. Before it was more likely 10 times that number.
As others have already noted in response to Cat Valente, yes, I remember the same thing. SP4 said it would not be asking permission to put people on its this-is-not-a-slate, it would just do it without asking.
(My feeling about the asking with SP3 was that if you know that your recommending/endorsing someone’s work for a Hugo Award may cause them embarrassment or problems, then you should refrain from recommending anyone for a Hugo, sit down, rethink your life, and focus on becoming a person who can recommend people for a Hugo Award without embarrassing them.)
VD announced that the Rabids would (again) not be asking anyone for permission and would refuse to take anyone off the slate who asked.
I don’t recall whether or not SP4 said it would, like the Rabids, refuse to take anyone off their this-is-not-a-slate who asks, or whether a person’s name is now permanently on the SP4 list whether or not they want to be there.
Hampus:
Instead, moderate drinking of having a glass of wine to the food on an ordinary working day is more uncommon, something people might frown upon.
What’s to frown about?
Also, why do you say Sweden is no longer part of the Vodka Belt?
Just from intermittently checking out a few web sites, I get the impression that SP morale at least took a serious hit from last year’s fiasco. I’m hoping that SP4 will prove pretty ineffectual. No idea what might happen on the Rabid side as the motives of those people are not as clear to me.
Eventually there will be a Puppy slate that will look good.
I remember Kate the Impala being quoted as saying “we like who we like and we don’t have to ask permission for liking them”. Or something like that. I’m really not searching through the pit of madness to find her exact words.
Doctor Science:
If you drink during the week, even if it is just a glass of wine to the food, it is by some seen as being on the way to being an alcoholic, not being able to control your alcohol intake. In opposite to drinking yourself into stupor on a saturday.
We do not really drink that much vodka in Sweden nowadays. It is mostly a thing for holidays like easter, christmas or midsummer. Otherwise it is beer that is the alcohol of choice.
@StephenFromOttoawa:
I think the Rabid motive is entirely 100% for VD to get attention. The motives of his followers may be to GIVE him attention, or it may be something else. But VD is the engine of the whole Rabid thing, and his motive in this, as in everything else, appears to be to get attention, and nothing more substantial than that.
I was told a couple of times last year by people I didn’t really know, repeating this from sources they didn’t identify (so I didn’t put any weight in it at the time) that the Sads had not intended the Sad thing to become so huge last year and they deliberately intended for it to be smaller this year and did not want to sweep the Hugo ballot again. Daily Puppy rhetoric was so aggressive for months last year, I was very skeptical that rumor was reliable–but now it does seem to be the case, so I may have been hearing valid 3rd-hand Puppy behind-the-scenes comments, after all.
@Darren Garrison:
Hey, me too! Animation synchronicity fistbump!
With alcohol I am cautious, so as to not follow in the footsteps of too many addict family members. But I like a nice glass of beer or wine or spirit as well. It’s a balancing act. (As is life.)
@Resnick, StevefromOttawa
Here’s the thing – let’s not forget why Ancillary Mercy, and the works by Okrafor, Kritzer, Valenti, Wong are on SP4. They’re there so that when people say very true and accurate things about Wright’s novel, about Michael Z. Williamson’s novel, about John Ringo’s novel, their attitudes and their lack of writing ability, all the sealions can start concern trolling about how anyone who objects to Somewhither must be a racist homophobe who hates women because they’re rejecting the Puppy slate.
We’ll see, time could prove me wrong. But I remember enough of the posts from Hoyt and Paulk that have been featured here to think that they think these slated works that we all liked are simply here as cover for their More Tales of Sci-fi Violence.
::lifts head::
Alcohol? Who needs alcohol when you’ve got Daredevil to binge watch?
::huddles back::
Laura: Most people want to avoid VD anyway.
In Buckaroo Banzai, Jeff Goldblum is New Jersey so I find this comment a bit…invasive?
I see several of the commenters on Mad Genius Club say that they have put a blogpost comparing gays to pedophiles on their ballot.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of AUTHORITY, Book 2 in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. On Twitter, I described it as feeling like visiting “Kafkaland” at Disney World.
But mention of THE THIRD POLICEMAN here brings similarities to mind as well.
(The constant sense of being in an off-balance world, where everything — or nothing — may be significant. Unclear motivations, shifting perceptions, a deep mutability to existence.)
In case you were curious, Alexandra Erin has thoughts on the Puppies and their slate/list/whatever: http://www.alexandraerin.com/2016/03/the-pups-of-wrath-yield-bitter-whine/
“Ignoring the Puppies’ list is the correct thing to do…Don’t give them your time, don’t give them your attention, don’t give them your energy.”
I think TYP and Alexandra Erin are missing one reason why surprising works might be appearing on the sad list: People trying to game their system back.
While there may be some puppies who think that somehow nominating something SJW friendly will allow them to claim some reflected glory if Naomi Novik wins a rocket, and probably some who think that they matter enough that by nominating her then the SJW high command will insist that everyone no-awards her.
How many nominations though come from filthy SJWs who think that by nominating puppy unfriendly works then they can force the puppies to campaign on behalf of equal rights and loveliness or reveal their open and democratic nomination system as a sham? The temptation was certainly there, even if I didn’t do it, I’d be very surprised if no-one did. And with only three nominators for some categories…
The Young Pretender:
Here’s the thing – let’s not forget why Ancillary Mercy, and the works by Okrafor, Kritzer, Valenti, Wong are on SP4.
They are on SP4 because, in an open recommendation process, people who liked them – including people from File 770 – recommended them. The SP organisers did not choose to put them on the list. They could have refused to do so, and complied a list consisting only of things they liked, but they would have been widely condemned if they had. You can blame them for all sorts of aspects of what they have done – including setting out to create a list at all, given the context in which it would be seen – but you can’t blame them for the specific selection of works, because they didn’t select them.
What this actually shows (were it needed), of course, is that the SP organisers do not speak for the masses. If they had done, thousands of people would have recommended Wright, Butcher et al, drowning out the voice of the small bunch of CHORFs who got involved. But they said they would run an open procedure, they did, and this was the result.