(1) KEN LIU ON THE SCROLL. Ken Liu notes that we’re back to scrolling, in “The Grand Evolution of Books” at the Powell’s Books blog.
A similar shift may be happening today as we go from reading on paper codices back to endless (electronic) scrolls in the form of Web pages. Hyperlinks and sophisticated search functions have allowed scrolls to catch up to and even surpass the advantages of codices in random access and ease of reference, and electronic texts offer many more advantages: user-controlled text formatting and flow, instant access to encyclopedias and dictionaries, ease of note-taking and quote-sharing, community-based discussions, and so on.
Yet, we persist in pretending that the scroll is not authoritative.
Shocking.
(2) SCIENCE FICTION LEAGUE IN CHICAGO. Doug Ellis chronicles “Jack Binder and the Early Chicago SF Fan Club” at Black Gate.
Back in the mid-1930’s, one of the most active science fiction fan clubs was the Chicago Science Fiction Club, which had among its members such fans as Jack Darrow (among fandom’s most prolific writers of letters of comment to the SF pulps), Earl and Otto Binder (the Eando Binder writing team), Jack Binder (their brother, an artist), Walter Dennis and Paul McDermott (both of who had started the Science Correspondence Club in 1929 and later published The Comet, edited by Ray Palmer and arguably the first SF fanzine), William Dellenback, Allen Kline (brother of author Otis Adelbert Kline) and Howard Funk. The Chicago Club had formed as the Chicago Chapter of the Science Fiction League, the nationwide fan organization created and promoted by Wonder Stories. The Chicago Chapter’s activities were prominent in the pages of Wonder Stories, and in Sam Moskowitz’ words, it was “the outstanding chapter of the time.”
(3) DINING WITH DOYLE. Episode 4 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic with Tom Doyle is now live —
Writer Tom Doyle and I recorded Episode 4 of Eating the Fantastic at Ethiopic Ethiopian restaurant nearby the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and Union Station in Washington D.C.—which unless I’m mistaken has the largest Ethiopian population outside of Ethiopia after so many resettled here during the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Tom’s the author of a contemporary fantasy series from Tor which began in 2014 with American Craftsmen, returned in 2015 with The Left Hand Way, and continues in the third installment War and Craft—the manuscript of which he handed in to his editor mere days before we met.
Edelman’s next guest will be Carolyn Ives Gilman.
(4) HAMILTON PHONES ADAMS. “The Legacy of 1776: A Conversation with William Daniels and Lin-Manuel Miranda” on New York City Center.
CITY CENTER: Before we get too deeply into ticketing, I want to talk a bit about 1776. Today we think of it as being in the pantheon of great musicals, but in the 1960s, the show was so unconventional that Sherman Edwards had a hard time getting it produced. “Some of the biggest [names] in the theater,” he recalled, “looked at me and said, ‘What, a costume musical? A costume, historical musical?’” Mr. Daniels, do you remember your initial reaction to the idea?
WD: I read the script with a bunch of people at somebody’s apartment. Sherman Edwards was a former schoolteacher from New Jersey, and he had written not just the songs, but the script. It was a little stiff; I remember thinking, We’re in the middle of Vietnam, for Christ’s sake, and they’re waving the flag? I really had to be talked into doing it. At any rate, when the script came back to me, Peter Stone had taken ahold of it, and he’d gone back to the actual conversations in the Second Continental Congress. He had written them out on little cards and injected them into the script, and it made all the difference in the world. It added humor and conciseness and truth.
LM: I love that anecdote, because it gets at something that I discovered in writing Hamilton: the truth is invariably more interesting than anything a writer could make up. That Peter Stone went back to the texts written by these guys, who were petty, brilliant, compromised—that’s more interesting than any marble saints or plaster heroes you can create. And the picture you all painted together of John Adams was so powerful; in the opening scene, he calls himself “obnoxious and disliked,” which is a real quote. We don’t have a John Adams in our show, but we can just refer to him, and everyone just pictures you, Mr. Daniels.
(5) SOVIET MOON LANDER. “Giant steps are what you take, walking on the Moon”, from The Space Review.
If there is an infinite number of universes, then certainly in one of them Alexei Leonov climbed down the ladder of the Soviet Lunniy Korabl (“lunar ship”) and put his bootprint on the surface of the Moon. But Leonov did not take such a step in our universe and, as a result, the Soviet effort to beat the Americans to the Moon is largely forgotten. Had the Soviets ever gotten that far, had they ever sent Leonov to the Moon, he would have died rather than eventually become a genial geriatric cosmonaut, ambassador of the Soviet space program, and living legend. That was my thought when looking at the ungainly and rickety LK-3 test article on display at London’s Science Museum a few weeks ago. It is the second time that a lunar landing craft has ever ventured outside of Russia (one was displayed at EuroDisney in Paris in the 1990s), and will probably be the last time for many, many years to come.
Soviet moon lander.
(6) ENTER STAGE LEFT. M. J. Herbert has a long, intensively researched piece about the earliest days of Doctor Who in “Doctor Who and the Communist: The art and politics of Malcolm Hulke” at Fantasies of Possibility.
The origins of Doctor Who Sydney Newman’s success on ITV led him to being poached by the BBC, who offered a job as Head of Drama: he started work in January 1963. Looking back 20 years later, when interviewed for a BBC oral history project, he described what he found at the BBC.
The material didn’t really cater to what I assumed to be the mass British audience. It was still the attitude that BBC drama was still catering to the highly educated, cultured class rather than the mass audience which was not aware of culture as such . But above all I felt that the dramas really weren’t speaking about common everyday things…”
They needed to come up with a new series for was the late afternoon slot at 5:15 between the end of the afternoon sports programme Grandstand and the start of Juke Box Jury. At a number of meetings in the spring of 1963 Newman and his staff evolved the notion of a mysterious Doctor who could travel in time and space. The aim of the series were educational, similar to Pathfinders in Space, with the remit of teaching its young audience in an enjoyable way about space and history. In its first years the serials alternated between a science fiction adventure and an adventure set during a dramatic historical event such as the travels of Marco Polo, the Crusades, and the St Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre of 1572 (an extraordinary subject for a tea-time children’s serial, although no actual killings were shown).
Newman brought in as producer a young woman he had worked with at ABC, Verity Lambert, which caused a stir as the BBC was then a very male world. Verity persuaded the veteran actor William Hartnell to take on the role of the Doctor. Hartnell had been working as an actor since the 1930s, but was frustrated by the limited roles he was being offered, often as an army sergeant. Verity had been impressed by his part in a recent British film This Sporting Life.
(7) TREK IN CONCERT. STAR TREK: The Ultimate Voyage visits the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on April 1-2.
Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage brings five decades of Star Trek to concert halls for the first time in this galaxy or any other.
This lavish production includes an impressive live symphony orchestra and international solo instruments. People of all ages and backgrounds will experience the franchise’s groundbreaking and wildly popular musical achievements while the most iconic Star Trek film and TV footage is simultaneously beamed in high definition to a 40-foot wide screen.
The concert will feature some of the greatest music written for the franchise including music from Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Starfleet Academy and much more. This never-before-seen concert event is perfect for music lovers, filmgoers, science-fiction fans and anyone looking for an exciting and unique concert experience.
(8) SUPPLEMENTAL CHAOS. Brandon Kempner returns with an alternative set of rankings, “Final Best of 2015 SFF Critics Meta-List” at Chaos Horizon.
To supplement the mainstream’s view of SFF, I also collate 10 different lists by SFF critics. Rules are the same: appear on a list, get 1 point.
For this list, I’ve been looking for SFF critics who are likely to reflect the tastes of the Hugo award voters. That way, my list will be as predictive as possible. I’m currently using some of the biggest SFF review websites, under the theory that they’re so widely read they’ll reflect broad voting tastes. These were Tor.com, the Barnes and Noble SF Blog, and io9.com.
For the other 7 sources on my list, I included semiprozines, fanzines, and podcasts that have recently been nominated for the Hugo award. The theory here is that if these websites/magazines were well enough liked to get Hugo noms, they likely reflect the tastes of the Hugo audience. Ergo, collating them will be predictive. This year, I used the magazines Locus Magazine and Strange Horizons, the fan websites Book Smugglers, Elitist Book Reviews, and Nerds of a Feather (to replace the closing Dribble of Ink; Nerds didn’t get a Hugo nom last year, but was close, and I need another website), and fancasts Coode Street Podcast and SF Signal Podcast.
(9) LOCAL APES MEETUP. The Damn Dirty Geeks’ second annual Planet of the Apes Day gathering to celebrate the classic 1968 film Planet of the Apes and “all its sequels, remakes and re-imaginings”takes place April 2 at the Idle Hour Cafe in North Hollywood, CA (map below) beginning at 5 p.m.
The organizers ask those planning to attend to RSVP on the Facebook event page and note that you plan to be there in person. Space is limited.
(10) IRISH ORIGINS DEBATED. According to the Washington Post, “A man’s discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish”. (Tolkien is quoted in the article.)
From as far back as the 16th century, historians taught that the Irish are the descendants of the Celts, an Iron Age people who originated in the middle of Europe and invaded Ireland somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C.
That story has inspired innumerable references linking the Irish with Celtic culture. The Nobel-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats titled a book “Celtic Twilight.” Irish songs are deemed “Celtic” music. Some nationalists embraced the Celtic distinction. And in Boston, arguably the most Irish city in the United States, the owners of the NBA franchise dress their players in green and call them the Celtics.
Yet the bones discovered behind McCuaig’s tell a different story of Irish origins, and it does not include the Celts.
“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford who has written books on the origins of the people of Ireland.
(11) A DIFFERENT PUPPY DISCUSSION. Sarah Hollowell has a dialogue with Chester the Corgi, in “Put Fat Girls in Your SFF YA” at Fantasy Literature.
Yeah, you’re right. Okay. Okay. Let’s go.
You’re a fat teenage girl, and you love YA. You especially love scifi and fantasy. Space? Hell yeah. Magic schools? Hell yeah. Magic schools in space? Sign you up. And everyone says dystopias are out of style, but you still can’t get enough. Got it?
Got it.
So you read all these books, as many as you can, and it becomes difficult not to notice a pattern. You realize all the girls in all the books are just different kinds of skinny. You can’t for the life of you find a girl that looks like you. Books are supposed to help us dream and dream big but you’re starting to feel like you’re just too big to dream. You’ve read a couple books where fat girls get to be loved in the real world, and that’s wonderful, but fat girls don’t get whisked away into alternate worlds and told they’re a long lost princess. Fat girls don’t get to see the magical underside of New York City. Fat girls don’t save planets.
(12) DIED ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY
- March 19, 1950 — Edgar Rice Burroughs
- March 19, 2008 — Arthur C. Clarke
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born March 19, 1928 – Patrick McGoohan
(14) STARZ PRODUCTION OF GAIMAN NOVEL. In “’American Gods’ Casts Its Laura Moon”, The Hollywood Reporter says A Series of Unfortunate Events alum Emily Browning will take on the role in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel.
(15) A METAPHOR FOR AN ANALOGY. “It’s Over Gandalf. We Need to Unite Behind Saruman to Save Middle Earth from Sauron!” at Daily Kos.
Gandalf had the crazy idea that some little hobbits could stand up to and defy the power of the billionaire class Dark Lord Sauron. But I guess that was a pipe dream after all.
Gandalf failed. He got his ass locked up atop Saruman’s tower when he foolishly defied the head of the Democratic Party council of wizards. And now that he’s locked up it’s not like some eagle is going to magically appear and rescue him. It’s over. And now Saruman is our only hope against Sauron.
We need to stop saying nasty things about Saruman or it will be difficult to rally the people of Middle Earth to his side. Here are some things we should no longer mention, or if we do, we should put a positive spin on them so people will still see Saruman is our only hope.
- Saruman’s Environmental Record: While it is true that Saruman has supported clear cutting huge ancient forests, and while an old hippie tree hugger like Treebeard might tell you lots of those trees were his friends, we ARE talking about trees here. And sure, Gandalf has a much better record on the environment but he’s done now. It’s time to focus on how much worse Sauron’s environmental record is. I mean, have you seen Mordor?
(16) A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS. Alastair Reynolds, in “’Slow Bullets’ and Sad Puppies”, says his request to be removed from the SP4 List has not yet been posted in comments at Mad Genius Club.
I was away for a few days without internet access and discovered when I returned that my novella “Slow Bullets” has been included on the “SP4” Sad Puppies list for Hugo nominators. At this point it’s of no concern to me whether this is a slate or a set of recommendations. Given the taint left by last year’s antics, I don’t care for any work of mine to be associated with any list curated by the Sad Puppies. The list was announced at Kate Paulk’s website Madgeniusclub.com. Late last night I left a comment asking – politely, I hope – for the story to be removed, but after I checked the site in the morning I couldn’t find my comment and the story was still listed. I’ve tried to leave another comment to the same effect.
(17) ANTIQUE PREHENSILE. In the event someone wants to run out and buy a fanzine I published in 1973, with a 1973-appropriate Grant Canfield nude on the cover, Prehensile 10 is for sale on eBay. Since the seller doesn’t say what the contents I wondered if I remembered correctly. Checked my file copy — yes, that’s the issue with Jerry Pournelle’s article about how to reform the Worldcon, written the year he was President of SFWA. Lots of good stuff by Richard Wadholm, Bill Warren, Jerry Pournelle, Marc Schirmeister and others.
(18) INSIDE JOKES. A mash-up of references to Bewitched and Star Wars in this Brevity cartoon.
(19) ALL LIT UP. Darth Maul: Apprentice, a Star Wars fan film, is basically 20 minutes of lightsaber fights.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Martin Morse Wooster, Will R., and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Gregory N. Hullender.]
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@Kendall: Regarding reviews to be read after the story, that’s what we do at Rocket Stack Rank. 🙂 We provide a rating and a spoiler-free blurb, then a mini-critique with spoilers. (It’s labeled “mini-review” for SEO purposes, with upside-down text that can be toggled for reading.)
@Brian Z – I think it’s also important to remember that Reynolds is a writer, a serious writer with some excellent work out there, and that the Puppies have claimed that some of his fellow serious writers with excellent work – his colleagues and often, probably, friends – were given accolades only because of their race, gender, and/or sexual orientation. We can disagree that last year’s Puppy movement(s*) put out slates of works and artists who they expected to be nominated with or without prior or current knowledge of said works and artists, but you can’t deny that the Puppy leaders have claimed that works** were appreciated only because of the above attributes, and – and this is very important – that those works are of inferior quality.
ETA: What I’m saying is, it’s obvious what Reynolds means by “antics” when you think about it.
======================================
* if you honestly believe the Rabids were completely separate from the Sads, well, I think you probably weren’t paying much attention, have a terrible memory, or have poor reading comprehension, but okay, you could possibly honestly believe that.
** And I’m not just talking about the fucking dinosaur prose poem, or the fucking Scalzi email compilation. We’re talking some excellent novels that have been poo-poo’d as merely Marxist message fiction about starving polar bears and/or whatever-the-fuck Corregersen was whinging about the last few years. And if you expect me to keep the two of them separate in my head, demand better script writers. Same goes for Freer/Hoyt.
Lots of interesting remarks here, with Aaron and Brian Z going over the top as usual. I’m of the camp that thinks noting the removal request in some way is a fine solution for them. And, as Laura suggested, if they get a kick out of using asterisks, fine. Maybe they’ll stop whinging about last year.
What I don’t understand is why no one seems to have complained about being on the Rabid Puppy list, which really is a slate. Or did I miss it?
Tea: I had a bottle of Oi Ocha Jasmine Tea. Japanese bottled teas are the only ones I’ve found that taste like fresh tea; too many others taste like they’ve gone rancid.
I’ll drink to that!
@Lenore Jones – That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I can entirely parse it right now, but I feel like I get it intuitively. Something like, nothing can make people think the RP list is anything other than a sub-GG troll, whereas the SP movement claims to be serious.
Somewhere there is some guy called Bard Torgosen who wonders why I keep writing posts about him…
I don’t think VD has announced his finalised list yet – just his draft suggestions per category. Monday is his due date (which is today but I checked and it isn’t there yet)
@kathodus,
You may be right that by “antics” he was referencing, among other things, Torgersen’s infamous “affirmative action” post.
But he is not condemning people for pursuing an offensive conservative agenda that is at odds with his liberal one. I think he is saying that he would equally wish to dissociate himself from any people on the left, right, or in between who he thinks have tried to politicize the nomination process. Do you think I misread this comment?
@jonesnori/Lenore Jones, I believe authors don’t have the right to demand to be taken off other people’s rec lists. Complaining on his blog with those harsh words when his first-ever comment on someone else’s blog requesting to be taken off wasn’t released from moderation immediately seemed to me to be impulsive and foolish. Getting mad at him about it is foolish too. Do you really think that is over the top?
Tasha etc al., having read this entire thread, I feel a,strong need to join you in thar drink to world peace. I’ll take a nice cup of green tea.
@Camestros Felapton: his d
raft suggestionsFTFY. 😉
@jonesnori/Lenore Jones: Good question! Maybe folks are trying to ignore him, since he craves attention? I dunno. I guess really the Puppies are less of a big thing this year; SPIV is so meh that maybe that’s hurting how much attention T.B. gets, since they’re so linked in everyone’s minds (and in actual history)? And/or people know he won’t remove people if asked, but SPIV seems more tractable? My theories are probably no good.
(No extra cup of tea for me tonight after all.)
Brian Z.: Complaining on his blog with those harsh words when his first-ever comment on someone else’s blog requesting to be taken off wasn’t released from moderation immediately seemed to me to be impulsive and foolish.
It seems to me that Reynolds is well aware how fast news gets around on the Internet, and what he did was to take swift, decisive action to distance himself from the Sad Puppies before anyone got the mistaken impression that he endorsed the Sad Puppy agenda.
Good on him for doing so.
Indeed.
Also – if, for whatever reason (some sort of odd matter of principle, or because it isn’t that sort of list or just because they said they wouldn’t) KP doesn’t want to remove him from the list then, the right response is to politely (and as respectfully as possible) refuse. The freak-out we are seeing (which looks somewhat forced) from the Pups that people dare to ask to be taken off the list and that this means wrongfanswrongfunpersecutionblahblah really just helps underline why the brand is toxic and why people would not want to be associated with it.
He didn’t say anything about their political agenda. Just that he doesn’t approve of coordinated bloc voting which he thinks the Sad Puppies did.
Camestros, can’t the one saying “why, take me off your community-sourced recommendation list right this instant” AND the one saying “how dare you disagree with us, why, I’ll never buy your books again” both be wrong?
Oh, and here’s another thing that’s worth noting.
The Sad Puppies 4 recommendation list includes a work by John Scalzi.
Scalzi was one of the Puppies’ favorite targets of ire—especially the Rabid variant. (Remember the whole thing about that book Vox Day self-published, and other people satirized, a few months back?) However, some time ago he stated publicly that he would not be accepting any award nominations for his 2015 works, and requested people not nominate him for any.
So, putting him on their recommendation list anyway seems fairly transparent.
Brian Z.: He didn’t say anything about their political agenda. Just that he doesn’t approve of coordinated bloc voting which he thinks the Sad Puppies did.
Exactly. Neither Camestros nor I mentioned a “political agenda” (but hey, nice try at palming that card). The Sad Puppy agenda was gaming the Hugo Awards, and that’s what Reynolds was distancing himself from.
You can try all you want to claim that he was wrong for doing so — but I think he and Valente are well-justified in wanting to very publicly say “I do not support what this group has been about, which is gaming the Hugo Awards”.
Kathodus is the one who mentioned a political agenda.
No, Reynolds didn’t say they are still about bloc voting this year. He thinks there was “stuffing” in recent years so now there is a “taint.”
Announcing “I do not support this group” is perfectly fine. No one has said otherwise.
I’ve checked with the higher powers controlling the universe and apparently two people with contrasting views CAN both be wrong at the same time in this reality (apparently the ‘excluded middle setting is a bit loose’). However, it isn’t really reasonable to say Mr Reynolds is wrong – he doesn’t want to be on the list, which is rather like not wanting to eat broccoli. I’m sure I could come up with lots of reasons why he should like eating broccoli but I can’t really say that he is wrong as he clearly doesn’t like to eat broccoli*. It comes down to a personal preference.
The supporters of the list for various reasons, not least of which being that people like Sarah Hoyt and Nicki Liberty-Zone** prize individual liberty and the principle of self-ownership, should be respectful of people expressing what brands they want their names associated with. Dave Freer himself once expressed this sentiment: “Good luck trying. Most of those mavericks are more likely to kick you than go along quietly to wear your brand and add value to it.”
Of course in that case he was imagining a future in which the shadowy cabals that he imagines run the Hugos desperately seek out the lone maverick Conservative authors in a desperate bid to revive the dying Hugo brand, but the notion works just as well reversed and applied to reality. ‘Puppies’ is a crappy brand and why would Reynolds who has spent a lot of time and effort developing his own brand want to be associated with it?
Now, should he take pity on the Pups? I think so for tactical reasons and perhaps because of my lingering Catholic tendencies to imagine that redemption is possible and because of what the SP4 list actually is and the way it is different from Sp1 to 3. But gosh, watching Puppies is one of my hobbies – I should imagine Reynolds has much better things to do with his time than considering the nuances of Puppy management. Come to think of it Mad Genius is often berating us all about how much work authors have to do and how the lowly author is the stakhanovite hero of publishing – so again by their own ethical principles they really shouldn’t be wasting an author’s valuable time from writing space-battles with this sh!t.
So if I were him I’d ignore it but I’m not (and if I were me*** I don’t think I’d be happy to be on an SP4 list) so that is a moot point.
*[I don’t know that he doesn’t like broccoli but he strikes me as somebody who doesn’t like it broccoli]
**[Sorry I’m not sure of her actual surname]
***[which I am]
@ Camestros,
We agree that no one could find grounds to object to saying I’m not happy being on this list. I guess you can say Reynolds has the right to ask Paulk to take him off it. He can ask Paulk anything he wants, really. IMHO asking her politely, but then taking to his bully pulpit and including some less polite terms (“taint,” “antics”) when she wasn’t around to unscreen his comment immediately, was impulsive and his words might have been better calibrated.
I must take issue with “should.”
If there’s any expectation that Paulk, or anyone else, should feel pressured or obliged to take Reynolds, or anyone else, off a list of recommended works of fiction, that would be quite wrong.
Brian, it’s interesting that you feel that Reynolds’ fairly mild and innocuous statement of his opinion is “wrong”, “impolite” and the use of a “bully pulpit” and yet other writers ranting about Marxists, CHORFS, insults, destruction, conspiracies, and the insanity and stupidity of liberals is simply “fans who love science fiction”.
“Interesting” is it? Oh come on. I’m Alastair Reynolds’ biggest fan and I’ve bought every book he’s ever published. I called his response foolish, but I’ve already responded to the pushback by restating that I think it could have been better calibrated. Taint and antics are impolite and that an author blog is a bully pulpit doesn’t make an author a bully – get a dictionary and give me a break.
Review vs Recommendation:
You can write a review without a recommendation. You can not write a recommendation without a review.
All parsing aside, the reason there’s two different words is because they’re two different things.
@Brian Z: I can readily see why real, serious writers might not want to be associated with a group of people who’ve basically spent a full year (more in some cases) now telling everyone that isn’t in their tiny little sheep pen that they’re horrible, evil, worse-than-Nazis Marxist scumbags who only give awards based on affirmative action.
Basically, the Puppy brand has been tainted by their antics. I fail to see how this is impolite. It is simply true.
” Taint and antics are impolite”
Frankly, they are far, far more politeness than the Puppies deserve in this case.
The Puppies have spent the last three years explicitly campaigning to sabotage a major literary award for their own benefit, associating themselves with some of the very worst elements of humanity in the process, putting forward some of the worst-written material it’s ever been my misfortune to read, and loudly saying that the authors they were putting forward shared their political views, which they claim are discriminated against.
Their lists can’t be taken in isolation from all that. By putting people on their lists, they are explicitly associating those people with those goals, tactics, and behaviours. Anyone who doesn’t share their political views, doesn’t want to be associated with Vox Day, John C Wright and their ilk, or doesn’t approve of sabotaging literary awards for selfish purposes, has every right to dissociate themselves as loudly, publicly, and rudely as they want, since it is a rude, hostile, act to deliberately create that association without asking them.
And yes, I think were the situations reversed the same would apply. If I were to post a list of Hugo recommendations to my blog containing, say, Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves (which would be on such a list were I to make one, because it’s a very good book), and say “vote for all these to stick it to the Puppies and their bigotry”, and were Stephenson (who has not made any public statement I know of about the Puppies, and who seems to me from his writing to be a relatively conservative person) to in fact be a Puppy supporter or just someone who didn’t want to be pulled into either side of this ridiculous culture war you seem to be having in the US, he would be well within his rights to dissociate himself equally rudely and publicly.
I’ve written my own piece on the affair. This link won’t work yet, at the time I’m posting it, but after 8 a.m. Eastern it should be good.
Brian, it’s pretty clear that there is no real issue with the tone of Alastair Reynolds’ comments, just with his audacity in not wishing to be associated with the Puppies’ ridiculous campaign.
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SPIV is a slate. As evidenced by editorializing from puppy affiliates in recent days, there is still a political agenda behind their actions.
Last year I lobbied for all creators to disavow/repudiate slates in anticipation of and in defense of exactly what SPIV has done this year; put forward a slate inclusive of both generally popular works and generally popular creators in order to create exactly the kind of nomination-angst that we are witnessing right now.
I stated that anyone who repudiated slates would get a “pass” so far as I was concerned and leave the door open for me (personally, YMMV) to consider such works as if they were not associated with a slate. Reynolds, Valente and many others have done so. Should I nominate either or both this year, and should they win, I will not consider it a “win” for the SPIV slate. If they argue that it is a win for them, or that it is evidence that people are coming around to their view, I will be able to point out that, due to the repudiations, the win happened DESPITE their antics.
We’ve got the raw data on the SPIV nominations – but not all of it. Who is behind those anonymous names? Especially those behind the nominations and upticks for works by people who would rather not have anything to do with puppies? Is it the supposed non-puppy nominators who participated out of a sense of fairness, or is it puppies gaming the system.
We just don’t know.
Yesterday, in the comments on Hoyt’s rant, one person stated that they hadn’t made the list and they wanted their work on it, with multiple asterisks accompanying. It could have been humor. It could have been more giggling over asterisks. Or, it could have been an accidental reveal that there is another SPIV “recommendation list” that has gone out to a puppy’s only mailing list, suggesting what the slate really is.
We just don’t know.
So long as the brand remains active; so long as the same people are the loudest voices and so long as whatever they do remains associated with advancing the ideas that some people are more entitled than others to awards, that fandom is in thrall to a cabal and that it is necessary to create a separate strain of fandom in order to seize control of the (non-existent) reigns of power, there will be justification for questioning anything and everything they do, just as there will be justification for giving it the side eye. All the time. Every time.
The puppies destroyed TRUST between themselves and fandom at large.
When you want to rebuild trust, you have to accept the fact that it will not be forthcoming immediately. You have to accept suspicion of your actions. You take special care in evaluating your actions in order to see whether or not they are in support of that trust building. You do not continue to engage in actions that bring it into question. You go out of your way not to do so.
This is evidently not the case, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that nothing has changed on the puppy side and is unlikely to do so. Their actions with SPIV have not been trust building, they’ve been, lets see how little we can do; how can we twist this around so it merely looks acceptable.
Brian, it’s interesting that you feel that Reynolds’ fairly mild and innocuous statement of his opinion is “wrong”, “impolite” and the use of a “bully pulpit” and yet other writers ranting about Marxists, CHORFS, insults, destruction, conspiracies, and the insanity and stupidity of liberals is simply “fans who love science fiction”.
The reason for the distinction Brian makes in those cases is pretty simple: Brian is a disingenuous, lying troll.
But not the actual antics tainting SPIV? Unless they were, in which case that’s just accurate. Do you think the antics were impolite, Brian? Do you think there’s a taint that lingers from such antics? Do you even think the antics have ceased in any meaningful way?
I don’t see why we have to talk about people’s taints.
It ain’t a fit topic for polite conversation.
Good morning. Is there anything more to say here? [pours tea]
I have a small book called Whispered Anecdotes: Humor from Behind the Iron Curtain (Beckmann, 1969). Apart from casually smearing “Star Trek,” the book is a terrific collection of jokes you wouldn’t have told very loud if they meant much to you, and it concludes with a particular favorite of mine. It doesn’t map perfectly to the current situation, but it might be clear enough what reminded me of it anyway.
Except perhaps to note that Vox Day’s slate is now posted, including the Reynolds novella, with a note that he will not entertain requests for removal, save on grounds of eligibility.
The important action here is not what SP or Beale are doing/saying, but the position that Reynolds took.
@Kip W
Thanks for sharing the joke. It does seem appropriate.
And is there anything new and noteworthy about Reynolds’ position?
It has struck me that ‘recommendation list’ is ambiguous; it can mean ‘list of recommended works’, where the creator of the list is recommending the works, or ‘list of recommendations’, where the creator is only recording the fact that recommendations have been made.
I’m not sure which the SP4 list is supposed to be. Perhaps the compilers have not stopped to think. I suspect that, if asked, they would say it is a list of recommendations; but as mentioned earlier, their behaviour with BDP short form (and apparently also BRW) isn’t totally consistent with that. Nevertheless it’s probably true that they don’t want to recommend all the works on the list.
I think the distinction, if anyone were clear about it, might make a difference to the question of whether it was appropriate to take works off the list.
If someone had gone around lots of sf blogs and picked up everything that a blogger recommended or reviewed well and counted that as a recommendation from that person, and then added up how many recommendations each work received and then divided them up by Hugo category, then that would have produced a very interesting recommendations list.
And I don’t think that many people would think it reasonable to ask for your name / work to be removed from that sort of thing, which is just an aggregated reporting of what other people have written.
I think that SP4 people feel that this is pretty much the same what they did, and that’s why they are reacting to people wanting to be dropped off. I think they’re wrong, because the Sad Puppies brand is associated with a bunch of things that authors, quite reasonably, don’t want to be associated with. If they’d chosen to step away from what happened before and run articles saying “Brad got it wrong. We’re doing it right this year”, then without changing the substance of how the list happened many more people would have found the list acceptable.
If they just had the sense to explain that they’d changed, that they understood why people had a problem with SP1-3 and that they were trying to fix that, then they’d shift a lot of attitudes. People who have been following the detail (like Camestros) have been much more sympathetic to SP4 than to the previous ones. But you have to be following the detail for this to convince; if, like most people, you haven’t been following the detail, then the not unreasonable assumption is that this is a slate much like SP3. And, the cries of “not a slate” don’t convince anyone when you’re still claiming that a post with the title: “SAD PUPPIES 3: the 2015 Hugo slate” wasn’t a slate.
So: SP4’s problem isn’t with the actual recs list; it’s with the PR. The problem isn’t the process (unlike last year), it’s the fact that Kate Paulk, Sarah Hoyt and Amanda Green have fixed their actual process, but failed to convince anyone outside of a small number of close observers that they have done so. That’s on them, and the perceived insults are for their crap PR.
@Brian Z – I did reference the SP political agenda out of necessity, but I was referring to the fact that the Sad Puppies call to arms revolves around insulting Reynolds’ fellow writers, not to any right/left argument. I was saying that perhaps “antics” referred not just to the slating, which was bad, but doesn’t appear to be the case this year, but also to the constant insulting of writers whose only sin has been to publish works that ended up winning awards. That is still an inherent part of the background of the SP and RP movement(s). VD has been on about it, as has Dave Freer.
Regardless, I don’t think this is a right vs. left issue, angry meowing about Marxism aside. The people who instigated this do happen to be on the right, yes, and often seem incapable of seeing anything outside the left/right perspective, but the people who are against them come from various (diverse?) political perspectives, and would be just as angry if a left wing group decided to create a slate favoring their friends.
bloodstone75 asked:
Cracked! A Magic iPhone Story is funny, probably going on my ballot, and nice and short so it won’t take up much of your time.
I’ll heartily second Zero World.
snowcrash asked:
The name of a work or works which qualify the person you’re nominating as eligible for the award.
See, that’s a helpful answer.
I had to heroically restrain myself from recommending snowcrash just fill in “Yes.”
I wish the Hugo nomination form came with instructions on each category so I’d stop feeling like a fool when I’m not sure what they are asking for.
It’s kind of paradoxical, really. They want those examples to help them vet unfamiliar nominees. However, they won’t bother to vet any that aren’t finalists. And how likely is it that a potential finalist is going to be obscure?
As it’s not beyond possibility that I would have done that, I’m kinda glad you didn’t 🙂
@Mike Glyer
Good question. Might be obscure to the Hugo Admins but not nominators? But then the nominators are going to be pointing to different works by the nominee. I’d think they’d have to contact to be sure of eligibility so I’m still unclear on how the information helps. I’d think author contact info would be of more use. An author could have a sale fans missed from several years ago and fans could only know about this years publications.
The real issue is with your audacity in not understanding that Reynolds has any number of ways to express such a desire ranging from “I don’t approve of Hugo stuffing” to “if nominated I plan to decline” which do not involve inhering in the author the property of instructing readers on what they can’t or can’t recommend.
Reynolds has tended to be very conscientious about not appearing to campaign for awards. That he would go negative is disappointing to one longtime fan who has otherwise admired his approach, even if it wasn’t his primary intent, and that’s pretty much all I’m saying.
Brian Z: Reynolds has any number of ways to express such a desire ranging from “I don’t approve of Hugo stuffing” to “if nominated I plan to decline” which do not involve inhering in the author the property of instructing readers on what they can’t or can’t recommend.
Except that’s not what he did. He did not “instruct readers on what they can’t or can’t recommend”. He said, “Take me off your Sad Puppies list, because I don’t want to be associated with the toxic actions and behavior of your group”.
You, and the Sad Puppies, insist on framing this as being about honest fans making recommendations — when what it’s really about is that those recommendations are being made under the Sad Puppies imprimatur — a brand which represents people who’ve behaved in hateful and malicious ways, including gaming the Hugo Awards.
And the insistence of all of you on framing it that way is incredibly dishonest.
And the insistence of all of you on framing it that way is incredibly dishonest.
It wouldn’t be the Sad Puppies or Brian Z if they weren’t being dishonest. Lying comes so naturally to both of them that it almost seems like they do it reflexively.