(1) WHERE THE DEER AND ANTELOPE PLAY. BBC’s report “Grand Theft Auto deer causes chaos in game world” includes a video clip.
More than 200,000 people have tuned in to watch the deer via a video stream on the Twitch site.
Best version
The project uses a modified version of GTA V that let Mr Watanabe change the player to look like a deer. The animal wanders around the virtual 100 square miles of the San Andreas world in which the game is set.
“The most difficult thing during the creation of the project was simply teaching myself to modify GTA V,” Mr Watanabe told the BBC. “There is an incredibly active modding community and I figured out how to programme the mod through a lot of forum searches and trial and error.
“The biggest difficulty was getting it stable enough to run for 12-14 hours at a time without crashing,” he said.
He made the deer impervious to harm so it can keep on wandering despite being regularly shot at, beaten up, run over by cars and trucks, shelled by tanks and falling off buildings.
The trouble it has caused on military bases, beaches and on city streets led, at one point, to it having a four star wanted rating.
The deer regularly teleports to a new position on the game map so it does not get stuck in one part and to make sure it samples the games’s many different environments and meets lots of its artificial inhabitants.
(2) JEDI EVANGELISM. Darren Garrison wanted to be sure I knew about “Jedism in the Wisconsin State Capitol”. I enjoy running Jedi religious stories more when the concept hasn’t been appropriated for the culture wars.
Around Easter every year, the Capitol rotunda becomes cluttered with numerous religious displays, mostly of a Christian nature. This year’s the rotunda features a large wooden cross, several Christian posters promoting Jesus’ death, and pro-life displays, among many others. This time, the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (AHA) have added a Jedism poster to the mix.
The poster, designed by AHA, is based on a modern, newer religion called Jedism. Its followers worship Jedis such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, from the Star Wars movies. Their poster reads “One Man Died for All”, referring to the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The poster displays a portrait of Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Jedi, but is oftentimes confused as a portrait of Jesus. Their poster asks the following questions with respective answers: “Who is this man?” “Obi-Wan Kenobi”, “Why is it important that we remember him?” “To escape the death star”, and “How does his death help us?” “Because he comes back as a ghost at times and it can be quite surprising”.
(3) ORIGIN STORY. Andrew Liptak praises “The Innovative Jim Baen” at Kirkus Reviews.
Baen returned to Ace Books in 1977, where he began working with publisher Tom Doherty. Doherty had grown up reading Galaxy, and “I had kept reading both of those magazines,” He recalled, “I thought [Baen] was doing an exceptional job, and brought in him to head up our science fiction [program].”
At Ace, Baen continued his streak of discovering new and interesting authors. “He brought in a number of strong authors,” Doherty recalled. His time at Ace was short-lived, however: Doherty decided to venture out into the publishing world on his own, setting up Tor Books. Baen, along with Harriet McDougal, joined Tor Books, where he continued his work under Doherty editing science fiction
Baen followed “the same pattern that had revived Ace,” Drake wrote in his remembrance, “a focus on story and a mix of established authors with first-timers whom Jim thought just might have what it took. It worked again.”
In 1983, rival publisher Simon & Schuster began having some problems with their paperback division, Pocket Books. Their own SF imprint, Timescape Books, run by David G. Hartwell, wasn’t doing well, and was being closed down. They reached out to Baen, asking him if he’d like to run the imprint.
Doherty remembered that Baen wasn’t keen on joining Simon & Schuster: “Look, Jim doesn’t want to join a big corporation,” he told Ron Busch, Simon & Schuster’s president of mass-market publishing. “But he’s always dreamed of having his own company. How about we create a company which you will distribute. We’ll take the risk and make what we can as a small publisher, and you’ll make a full distribution profit on our books?” Busch agreed to the deal: he would get his science fiction line.
Baen formed his own publishing house, Baen Books, with Doherty as a partner, and began to publish his particular brand of science fiction.
(4) KEN LIU INTERVIEW. Derek Kunsken has “The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories: An Interview with Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-Winner Ken Liu” at Black Gate.
You play with a lot of myths. Good Hunting and The Litigation Master and the Monkey King pull in Chinese myth. The Waves weaves the creation myths of different cultures into the narrative. State Change creates its own mythology of souls and famous people. What are your favorite myths? When writers use myth, do they only borrow that cultural and thematic gravitas, or do you think that writers today can bring to the table a new way of looking at older myths?
All cultures are founded on myths, and modern life hasn’t changed that at all. It’s important to remember that living myths are not static, but evolving, living tales we craft.
Our sense of what it means to be American, for example, depends on contesting and re-interpreting the foundational myths of America—our “Founding Fathers,” our original sins of slavery and conquest, our exceptionalism, our self-image as the city on the hill, the crucibles of the wars that gave us birth, the gods and heroes who laid down our republican institutions and democratic ideals like the bones and sinew of a giant upon whose body we make our home.
Or look at the myths that animate Silicon Valley: the idea that a single person, armed with a keyboard (and perhaps a soldiering iron), can transform the world with code; the belief that all problems can be reduced down to a matter of optimization, disintermediation, and “disruption”; the heroes and gods who founded the tech colossi that bestride the land while we scurry between their feet — some of us yearning to join them in a giant battle mecha of our own and others wishing to bring them down like the rebels on Hoth.
(5) COVERS UP. John Scalzi answers readers’ questions about writing at Whatever.
Listhertel: There’s an adage not to judge a book by its cover, but we all know people do. I know authors get little to no say in the cover art, but do you have any preferences? Painting versus digital, people versus objects, a consistent look versus variety? Are there any of your covers you particularly love or hate (including foreign editions)?
The book cover of mine I like least is the one on The Book of the Dumb, but inasmuch as BotD sold over 150,000 copies, meaning that the cover art worked for the book, this might tell you why authors are not generally given refusal rights on their covers. Cover art is advertising, both to booksellers and to readers, and that has to be understood. I’m at a point where if I really hate a cover, I’ll be listened to, but I also know what I don’t know, so I rarely complain. But it also helps that, particularly with Tor, the art director knows her gig, and they do great covers. I would probably complain about oversexualized covers, or characters not looking on the cover they way they’re described in the book, but in neither case has this happened to me.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 26, 1969 — Rod Steiger stars as Carl, The Illustrated Man.
(7) TWO SPACEMEN. From George Takei:
Crossed paths Thursday with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, at Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience, where I am appearing Friday and Saturday. Buzz walked on the moon 47 years ago, back in 1969. Isn’t it time someone set foot on Mars?
(8) MORE FROM SALT LAKE. “Doctors and River reunite to celebrate the infinite possibilities of ‘Doctor Who’” in the Salt Lake Tribune.
Actors from “Doctor Who,” including Alex Kingston, left, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Matt Smith fielded fan questions and discussed the popular show among the Salt Lake Comic Con’s FanX 2016 at the Salt Palace Convention Center on Friday….
Even a fleeting moment is going to follow Smith for the rest of his life. A fan in Friday’s audience asked Smith if he would do the Drunk Giraffe. The Drunk Giraffe is a dance move Smith’s iteration of The Doctor does, during which he throws his arms over his head and waves them around like noodles of spaghetti.
Fans count the moment — which takes up just 3 seconds of screen time — as a favorite of Smith’s run. Smith, to uproarious cheering, obliged.
“For the rest of my life, I’m going to have to do that,” Smith said. Kingston joked that McCoy and Davison should join him; alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
(9) NEEDS MORE KATSU. BBC Magazine remembers “The octopus that ruled London” at the Crystal Palace in 1871. Several stfnal references.
“It would have been a bit like a freak show for the Victorians,” says Carey Duckhouse, curator of the Brighton Sea Life Centre, as the aquarium is known today. “They would have featured models of ships in the cases for the octopus to grab hold of. They would probably have loved that, as they enjoy playing.”
One possible visitor to Crystal Palace aquarium was the writer HG Wells, who was just five years old when it opened and lived in Bromley, four miles away. Several octopus-like creatures appear in his stories.
In his 1894 essay The Extinction of Man, Wells pondered a “new and larger variety” that might “acquire a preferential taste for human nutriment”. Could it, he asked, start “picking the sailors off a stranded ship” and eventually “batten on” visitors to the seaside?
More famously, the invading Martians in Wells’s War of the Worlds have tentacle-like arms.
(10) UPSIDE DOWN IS UPRIGHT FINANCIALLY. The Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling Kickstarter appeal has successfully funded. A total of $23,206 was raised from 1,399 backers.
The anthology, edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates, is an anthology of short stories and poems that highlights the long-standing tradition of writers who identify tropes and cliches in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and twist them into something new and interesting.
(11) SANS SHERLOCK. “WonderCon 2016: HOUDINI & DOYLE Screening and Q&A” at SciFi4Me.com.
During this year’s WonderCon, there was a preview screening of the first episode of the new Fox show Houdini & Doyle, “The Maggie’s Redress”, followed by a short Q&A with Michael Weston, who plays Harry Houdini, and executive producers David Shore, David Ticher, and David Hoselton.
The series follows the two men in 1901 as they go about investigating cases that involve supposed paranormal events. Houdini, riding high on his celebrity as a magician, is the doubter, wanting to bring reason and expose those who would take advantage of people who are looking for comfort from the great beyond. Doyle, on the other hand, has just killed off Holmes and is trying to get out of that shadow, and is the believer, wanting proof that there is something more to this life beyond death. We will be recapping the series when it premieres.
(12) GRAPHIC PREFERENCES. Barry Deutsch completed review of “2015 Science Fiction and Fantasy Graphic Novel Recommendations, Part 3: Crossed + One Hundred, and, Stand Still, Stay Silent”.
….Moore returns to the reinvention game with Crossed + One Hundred, a new graphic novel set in Garth Ennis’ awful Crossed universe. Crossed was Ennis’ attempt to make the zombie genre more disturbing and violent: the premise is that most of humanity population gets infected with a mysterious disease that turns them into torturing, murdering, rape-happy idiots. In many ways Crossed is the comics equivalent of the Saw movies; cheap, gratuitous, and compelling…..
(13) VOLTRON WILL RETURN. Engadget has the story and a gallery of images — “Here’s your first look at Netflix’s ‘Voltron’ series”.
As Netflix expands its suite of original programming it’s going to the nostalgia well once again. The good news here is that instead of another sitcom spinoff like Fuller House, we’re getting Voltron: Legendary Defender. Today at Wondercon 2016 its partner Dreamworks Animation showed off a teaser trailer and some artwork that confirm everything at least looks right to children of the 80s.
(14) BACK TO BASIC. The video “How to Send an ‘E mail’–Database–1984” is an excerpt from a 1984 episode of the ITV series Database where viewers learned how to send emails. Major retro future action is obtained where they get onto the net through a phone modem with a dial on the telephone… (Yes, I’ve done that, and I have the white beard to prove it…)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Darren Garrison, JJ, and Barry Deutsch for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Mr Butcher will have to console his not winning Hugo’s by counting his huge piles of cash. As a multi NYTimes best-selling author, he’s not really needing validation from elsewhere, apart from tremendous commercial success.
I am interested in having a look at that too. I’ve read some of Wright’s work from the early years of the century and it was well done, amusing, self-aware, and intelligent.
@Kendall – It takes you less time to read a novel than a graphic novel? Wow, I’m the other way around (except my tendency to jump around too much can slow down graphic novels).
Also: May I add to your @airboy comment (with which I heartily agree) that popular doesn’t necessarily equate to well loved. Many people bought “Windlass” based on Butcher’s past work; apparently some were disappointed in it. Sales don’t mean people love what they bought – or that they got around to reading it. It means they bought it.
And given how Amazon reviews are gamed, and people give low/high scores based on things other than the item itself, aggregate star ratings there aren’t super meaningful.
I have a reading disability and get visually confused if there is a lot of detail on the page. The Autumnlands, which I loved, took me nearly four days, because sometimes one panel was enough to overwhelm my brain. The Sculptorwas far easier and regular text is easier still.
Good point on sales figures not equating to books read. Like others here, I tend to look at three star reviews on Amazon, because they’re generally not hyperbolic. Also, if people are meh about a book but still willing to write a review, there might be information there I can use.
@Xtifr, I needed an earworm today. Thank you!
@Chris S:
Agreed. But airboy isn’t the first Butcher fan to show up here really put out that Butcher hasn’t also won prestigious awards.
I find popularity completely unrelated to quality. I’ve read bestsellers I thought were excellent, bestsellers I thought were enjoyable reads but not memorable or standout (and I believe an “award quality book” should be memorable or standout), and bestsellers that I thought were so awful I was baffled that anyone had published them (The Celestine Prophecy and The Bridges of Madison County both instantly pop into mind).
Meanwhile, various novels I’d describe as among the best I’ve read were not bestsellers.
Soon Lee on March 27, 2016 at 3:57 pm said:
I tend to suspect that most of them are influenced by the other factor I mentioned: that the “Golden Age” stuff actually available to them tends to be the cream of the crop, while the more recent stuff available to them tends to be…everything. Which brings Sturgeon’s Law into play.
I’d also add that a number of the books that are my personal favorites–books that I’ve re-read numerous times–aren’t necessarily books I’d describe as “award quality.” They’re often books I find personally engaging or comforting, but I don’t think that my “comfort food” reading necessarily makes a book “award quality.”
There is a difference between “something I love” and “something that merits formal recognition as an exceptional achievement.” They can overlap, but they are not the same thing.
And at the risk of derailing… surely we need only look to the outcomes of political elections to realize that “popularity” and “quality,” while not necessarily mutually exclusive, often are mutually exclusive.
Clicky.
I have the feeling good I’ve missed a scroll. Maybe?
I couldn’t see Airboy’s post. I was blinded by my version of book politics. It’s temporary, as long as I look not at ye heretics, hail Scalzi.
Halfway through Luna: New Moon at the moment; and all I can think is “wow”. I can happily ignore the Helium3 in favour of McDonald’s glorious deconstruction of Clarke’s Imperial Earth through a lens of gangsterism, Italian city-state politics, Piketty’s rentier economics, and Brazilian favela culture.
A well-deserved jump straight onto my Hugo nominations list.
(And why have I not seen anyone else point out the Clarke link? Hello people, “Duncan Mackenzie”. Does he have to wield a bigger clue-by-four?!)
@Xtifr: “I tend to suspect that most of them are influenced by the other factor I mentioned: that the “Golden Age” stuff actually available to them tends to be the cream of the crop, while the more recent stuff available to them tends to be…everything.” There’s certainly that.
There’s also the phenomenon of favoring stuff because it’s favored by someone else, almost a cargo cult approach to fandom. In the tabletop roleplaying game world, there’s some of it when a certain cadre of fans talks about fiction E. Gary Gygax cited in his appendix of inspirations, in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The diehards seek to like everything on the list, and to like it in a way that makes it work as D&D inspiration. You could see some traces of it in Jeffro’s reviews, though others have gone way more overboard than he does.
In cases of adopted tastes, you’ll often find people dismissing stuff their sources happen not to have encountered – the guy way into Clark Ashton Smith who never heard of Brian McNaughton and can’t be bothered to look up Throne of Bones; the sword and sorcery fan who has no use for any of Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, or Charles Saunders; the space opera fan who won’t even look at Ann Leckie or Justina Robson but knows they’re inevitably inferior. They know no modern work can be as good because, well, it didn’t inspire their sources, so it can at best be derivative.
When you’ve got that dynamic at work, it’s possible for the follower to be deeply attached to real crap that the source was keen on.
I’m not nominating a number of my favorite SFF reads this year for a Hugo. Why not? They are comfort reads where they did a fantastic job within the sub-genre and the series but not something a new reader picking the book up for the first time is likely to be blown away by. If they read UF/PNR they might see that my favs are among the better authors. If they’ve never read the genre they might be blown away or totally lost as they were books 4-14 in series.
When I was doing target market research on UF I determined Butcher and Gaiman fell outside the norm. Many of Butcher’s readers don’t read much other fantasy so everything he’s doing seems fresh and new to his readers. Mind you I’m not saying all, just enough of his fans that he is not a good example for target marketing in UF. Descriptions of his signings will be boys age 9 to grandmothers in their 70s. Nothing wrong with this at all. It’s great for Jim’s sales. Something he should be proud of. But it doesn’t mean he writes books which are going to grab the attention of readers who read 50-200 books a year since they were kids as award worthy.
Gaiman’s writing plays with tropes and prose in unusual ways so his readers may not read other UF and if they do they may initially grumble as its not what they were expecting.
There is nothing wrong with being a bestselling author. Wow can’t believe I needed to type that. Winning writing awards is about writing something which, in the year it won, had something extra which appealed to nominators and voters that year. Standalone books will usually do better than series. If it’s in a series, the earlier in the series the better chance it has.
Buzz around the book matters. Is the buzz happening in spaces where award nominators and voters will hear/read it?
Author behavior is starting to matter more and more. So many books. So little time. If you insult me, my family, my friends I’m less likely to spend limited money/time on you. I have to find ways to keep my TBR under control.
So many things come into play. But one thing I’m not doing when I’m considering a book for an award is how many bestseller list it was on. The books on those lists have already gotten money and recognition. A book I nominate may be on bestsellers lists or not. The question is do I think it’s personally worthy of the award I’m a judge nominating and voting for?
airboy –
None because apparently while people enjoy Butcher only a small group of people felt that they needed to work the system to give him an award instead of his work being worthy of it.
It’s not Butcher’s best work. I’m a fan but haven’t ever considered one of his books as being best of the year in any year I read it in. I love kung fu movies and rarely ever consider them the best movie of the year. It’s possible for many people to enjoy something without thinking it deserves an award.
If you like action SFF I’d recommend A Crown For Cold Silver, The Fifth Kingdom, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, The Mechanical, Nemesis Games, The Water Knife, The Autumn Republic, or Half the World. All I felt were better than Cinder Spires book one.
Added to TBR on title alone. 😀
Another good description for Luna!
Doctor Science: At the recs of various people here, I’m reading “Zero World” by Jason Hough. I’m on p.172 of the hardback. I have a question: is it ever going to be explained — jul ur pna’g rira qevax gur jngre? jul rirelbar vf fcrnxvat Ratyvfu? — and are these answers likely to be to my satisfaction? Because right now I’m pretty unsatisfied.
I think they are already explained at that point, but not as a “stop the narrative for a moment and explain this thing”, which may be why you didn’t catch them. VVEP, ur’f tbg n Havirefny Genafyngbe vzcynag, naq Rnegu ovbybtl naq gur zbyrphyne ovbybtl bs guvf cynarg (juvpu vf va n pybfryl-nqwnprag havirefr ohg abg gur fnzr havirefr nf Rnegu) ner qvffvzvyne rabhtu gung ur pna’g zrgnobyvmr gurve sbbq naq jngre (va snpg pbafhzvat vg znxrf uvz dhvgr vyy), naq ivpr-irefn.
Vg’f zl erpbyyrpgvba gung lbhe cebsrffvba vf ovbybtl eryngrq, fb lbh znl unir na njnerarff V qba’g unir gung U20 jbhyq abg or n ceboyrz va guvf jnl. V whfg ebyyrq jvgu vg nf n tvira, fb vg qvqa’g obgure zr.
Dawn Incognito –
It has a cat doing a John Woo dive on the cover!
One batch, two batch, Pixel and Scroll.
@Matt Y:
Yes, but it’s not a Siamese cat. How will I signal my virtue now?
Not a siamese cat?
Have to be content with riding a chrome horse with your diplomat.sans feline
Today’s Oglaf (NSFW). Anyone else getting a Brandon Sanderson vibe?
@Matt Y
Added on the *cover* alone. It better be Nutty Nuggets inside.
@David Goldfarb (I think) @Ampersand, other comics aficiandos:
I don’t know who recommended The Sandman: Overture, but thank you. I just finished it, and my brain is…stretched, is one way of putting it, I suppose. Great Ghu, it is fantastic. And this is coming from someone who went into the series completely cold. I’ve subscribed to Neil Gaiman’s blog for years, and I’ve read plenty about the Dream King, but I’ve never read any of the comic until now.
Needless to say, it filled my last Graphic Novel slot.
@snowcrash: Added on the *cover* alone. It better be Nutty Nuggets inside.
But I like Captain Chrunch not Nutty Nuggets
The Cinder Spires: the Aeronaut’s Windlass – some objective facts.
It has sold like crazy.
“Like crazy” is a subjective evaluation.
Of the 1,090 reviews on Amazon there are:
69% 5 star; 18% 4 star; 7% 3 star; 4% 2 star; 2% 1 star
Amazon reviews are subjective evaluations. They also aren’t really indicative of much of anything. Uprooted has 1,047 reviews, 69% of them being 5 star and 20% are 4 star. Books with piles of five star ratings on Amazon are a dime a dozen. As an evaluation method, they are essentially meaningless.
Glowing reviews from the general book review press include those by Publishers Weekly, Booklist and the Library Journal.
And lots of other people have reviewed it and found it not worth nearly as much praise. That’s the nature of subjective things like reviews and book evaluations.
Yet….. this book was not on the list by Locus. It was also not on the list of much of anything else in the literary SF world.
It is just a fact that a massively popular SF book, with such excellent reaction from the normal SF reading public, that received such positive reviews in the general book review press DID NOT get even a mention on the literary SF lists. An obvious conclusion is this sort of work is routinely excluded.
That’s quite a leap you made there. How do you know that Butcher’s book is being bought and read by the “normal SF reading public”? How do you define the “normal SF reading public”? I’d suggest that the typical Butcher fan is probably outside of the general SF reading public, and is likely to read little inside the genre other than urban fantasy, or nothing else in the genre at all. I’m just guessing with that assessment, but it is as valid a guess as yours.
I might note that while you are here pimping for Butcher, you’ve mentioned nothing about Laurel K. Hamilton, or Kelly Armstrong, or any number of other urban fantasy authors. Hearne’s Shattered, for example, has 767 reviews on Amazon with 71% of them being 5 star. Why aren’t you all excited about getting him a Hugo nomination?
And those of you who commented that “this is not Butcher’s best work.” Other than Sad Puppies and an individual’s personal list – whose recommendation obtained Butcher his first finalist status on the Hugos? Did any other Butcher book ever make it as a finalist for a Hugo novel?
No. Because without context your question is meaningless. You can’t look at whose work is nominated in the abstract. You have to compare them specifically to other works that were published that year as well. Quite bluntly, Butcher has never published a book that I’d consider in the top five genre fiction books published in that year. I probably wouldn’t put Skin Game in my top twenty from last year (which might suggest a reason why it would not be on the Locus list).
Some of you are so blinded by your version of book politics that objective reality escapes you. You are welcome to your own opinions of the Hugo worthiness of Butcher’s book. But the objective reality is that the broad public that reads SF really enjoyed it, other book review sources loved it, and the literary SF lists ignored it.
You really don’t understand what the words “objective reality” mean.
@Airboy
I haven’t read The Aeronaut’s Windlass, but I have read (and own) all of The Dresden Files. I also just read Kevin Hearne’s Shattered. I gave Skin Game four stars, and Shattered three stars, with a review of “Fine, Frothy and Fun.” In both cases I think they are just fine for what they are (although Butcher’s torturous plotting is really beginning to grind on me), but I would nominate neither one for a prestigious award.
You are confusing “sells well” with “good.” I think the existence of Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight refutes that claim.
@Greg
Delurking because I adore Babbitt’s “The Search for Delicious.” It manages to be both otherworldly and entirely familiar in that way that looks easy, but is so hard to pull off.
Recommended particularly for people who like interesting worldbuilding, and/or people who are both horrified and entertained by arguments…which…actually might be a lot of the Filers, now I think about it. I hadn’t thought of it before, but Babbitt’s story is not without its parallels to the Pups.
@Mike
Anyone who values fair play or sympathizes with the underdog can be cheered and inspired by seeing minority religions (like Jedi, like Santiera) get equal treatment from the government. We don’t need to be Jedis ourselves to feel that.
If we’re going to have religion in school then I don’t see how giving every religion, however minor, a day (as Steve Davidson was suggesting) can reasonably be said to be insulting other religions, whether equally, as you accuse, or in any other way. Although really, it’s better to keep it out of school altogether, I think, because if we’re going to allow schools to teach Christianity we have to teach everything from Athabascan to Zoroastrianism to keep it fair and when are we going to find the time to teach anything *else*?
In short I think Junego and The Young Pretender have a good point; this is not about mocking religion, it is about showing that government can be fair, religious and dignified–(pick any two.)
Ahem, Jim Butcher actually was nominated for a Hugo before 2015, namely in 2009 for a Dresden Files graphic novel. He lost out to Girl Genius.
Like Tasha and someone else whose name I don’t recall, I’m an urban fantasy fan. I read and enjoy Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. However, I have never nominated a single one of them for the Hugos, because while I like the series and am invested in the characters, the books don’t have the extra something that makes them Hugo worthy IMO. Nor is The Dresden Files the best urban fantasy series out there, though I still buy it. As for The Aeronaut’s Windlass, it was okay. But I prefer Harry Dresden and it won’t make my Hugo ballot either. It has – ironically – made my Mom’s, even though steampunk isn’t normally her thing.
As for why Jim Butcher is rarely nominated for awards in spite of his popularity, I think the reason is that a large part of his readership has little overlap with the SFF community, let alone the Hugo electorate. Jim Butcher’s readership doesn’t even overlap with the general urban fantasy readership all that much. In fact, I have met people for whom The Dresden Files is the only urban fantasy series they read. Some people aren’t even aware that The Dresden Files are part of a defined subgenre. I’ve honestly come across people who were looking “for something like The Dresden Files, only with a female protagonist”. Uhm, try the urban fantasy genre maybe?
There are other authors in the same situation, extremely popular, but little recognised in genre circles and never nominated for awards. Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb comes to mind, as do Diana Gabaldon, Charlaine Harris, Laurel K. Hamilton, Nalini Singh, J.R. Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Christine Feehan, Kresley Cole, Kelly Armstrong, Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, Karen Marie Moning, etc…
However, the people who want Hugos to be awarded solely to popular authors never care about any of them. It’s always about Jim Butcher, Larry Correia and Kevin J. Anderson.
Chris S on March 27, 2016 at 3:58 pm said:
Mr Butcher will have to console his not winning Hugo’s by counting his huge piles of cash. As a multi NYTimes best-selling author, he’s not really needing validation from elsewhere, apart from tremendous commercial success.
“Money will see you through times of no awards better than awards will see you through times of no money.” — Jerry Pournelle
snowcrash –
It’s David Wong so it’s full of sarcastic cynicism. But it’s better written than John Dies at the End or This Book Is Full of Spiders (not that I didn’t enjoy those books, but still).
Tanya Huff was never nominated for a Hugo! Conspiracy!
(The Blood books were my first and still favourite urban fantasy.)
Current reading is City of Stairs, and it is really thrilling me. Why wasn’t it ever nomin…
…oh. Oh yeah.
On religion and town squares. The Christian displays are taken for granted to the point where they are considered a right by too many people. Watch your local Chabad move to town and go to put their menorah up and all of a sudden there is an uproar on the war on xmas.
Intellectually I understand those who’ve had privledge for so long having a hard time emotionally accepting it’s 2016 not 1816. But my sympathy is low. If Christians don’t want what they consider mocking stuff in the public space there is an easy solution. Remove their religious objects from public spaces. All religious things on public spaces disappears if they do that.
I might be biased due to the following: Many people of various religions have faced death at the hands of Christians for thousands of years for having different beliefs. Others haven’t been allowed to practice their religion, been forced to convert, and/or considered savages and barbarians because of their different beliefs right up to today. Having to put your religious display on private property or share space seems a small thing IMHO.
Dawn Incognito: Current reading is City of Stairs, and it is really thrilling me. Why wasn’t it ever nomin… …oh. Oh yeah.
Yeah, I’m still bitter about that one.
@Cora Buhlert
I used to love Diana Gabaldon, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Christine Feehan (later I realized way more explicit sex than I like but for a while I was reading them like candy). Then I read Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs (my current favorites). Unfortunately for Kresley Cole, Kelly Armstrong, Nalini Singh, and J.R. Ward they all came after Andrews and Briggs and just didn’t make my cut – too much sex and borderline or over the line on consent. Dresden books came after the TV show (good) and having read Andrews, Briggs, Nora Roberts, Faith Hunter, and Kevin Hearne he just wasn’t anything special – I’d seen it and it’d been done better with less male gaze. Kevin Hearne had me for a few books but before shattered he’d lost me with too many mythos pulled in and the male gaze was growing with each book. I read too many reviews of Laurel K. Hamilton to get pulled into her series which by the time I’d heard of it had turned erotica. Charlaine Harris’ short stories didn’t work for me so I never tried her series.
Big Bang Theory. I know, a lot of people hate it, but I actually kinda like it, and it’s, like, the most popular show on TV and has been for a while. But here’s the thing: even if it qualified as a genre work, I wouldn’t be nominating for Hugos, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to, and I wouldn’t expect it to win. Because, popular as it is, and entertaining as I find it, it’s just popcorn. Empty calories. It’s not a great work; it’s a work with broad appeal. Lots of people like it, but how many love it? How many actually think its the greatest thing ever? I certainly don’t!
And yes, I’m pretty much the same way with Butcher. I like him, as do a lot of people, but I don’t think his stuff is great. It’s fun, it has broad appeal, but it’s not, and will never be, my favorite. And I think a lot of other people feel the same way.
Do we really want our awards to say: hey, a whole lot of people thought this was just kinda ok? Or do we want them to say: this work may not appeal to everyone, but if you’re into SF, this should knock your socks off! I’ll take the latter, thanks. So I won’t be nominating BBT anytime soon! Even if they add aliens. I promise! 😀
@Xtifr So I won’t be nominating BBT anytime soon! Even if they add aliens. I promise! ?
I’m holding you to that 😉
Well, in this genre, that’s certainly true. But in romance, JD Robb has won at least 3 Rita Awards (the most prestigious award in romance, given out by the Romance Writers of America), and has been nominated a number of times. Admittedly, though, if JD Robb were not Nora Roberts, a huge icon in the romance genre (who has also won many Rita Awards), who knows whether her books would be as acknowledged in the romance genre as they are? But I tend to think they would be, since a number of those authors are very popular in the romance genre. I don’t know whether they’ve gotten Rita attention, but I’ll bet they’ve all gotten attention from Romantic Times, who hosts a huge convention and also gives out awards.
Whereas there is only one Hugo or one Nebula each year for the general category of “best novel,” buts multiple Hugs and Nebulas for short fiction, the commercial romance genre has always been a book-length field. It was 15 or 20 years into the Ritas before an award was created for Best Novella, and it’s the only short fiction length recognized by the Ritas (or by any other award in the genre, as far as I know). By contrast, there are almost a dozen categories in the Ritas for best novel awards, including Romantic Suspense, Paranormal Romance, Young Adult, Christian (which they label “Inspirational”) romance, erotic romance, and various lengths of historical and contemporary romance, as well as Best First Book. Yes, it does mean about a dozen people go home with a trophy for “best novel” each year–but this doesn’t seem to devalue the award. Possibly because of the enormous number of romances published each year, possibly for some other reason(s).
@ Tasha:
I loved Outlander. I think I read it 3 times over a period of 20 years. Also loved Dragonfly In Amber. But I found her third book, Voyager, so disappointing that I quit the series. I did try a couple of the subsequent books years later, but I found them unreadable.
Had a very similar experience with her Lord John series. Really liked the first couple of books, but was so disappointed in book 3 that I quit the series after reading it.
So I’m probably done with Gabaldon. (Given that she’s had multiple no. 1 hardcover NYT bestsellers and now has a successful TV series, I think she will survive the disappointment of losing this reader.)
@Bonnie McDaniel: I was a huge Sandman fan back in the day and highly recommend it! I need to read “Overture”. . . . (blush) I believe I have it and misplaced it, eekly.
@Dawn Incognito:
I think you with this thread, though it’s a bittersweet win. 😉 BTW if I’ve never said, I love your handle. P.S. I love the Blood books (and Tony books)! The audiobooks are IMHO quite good as well; if you like audiobook “rereads,” I highly recommend them.
@Tasha — Having tried Sharon Shinn, Nalini Singh, Laurel K. Hamilton, Anne Bishop, and several lesser-known writers, I am about ready to declare that I don’t like paranormal romance; I find stuff I like in other romance subgenres but not that one. However, I haven’t tried your two favorite authors, Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs; I think I may before I give up for good. Do either of them use my least-favorite trope, “fated mates”? That takes all the interest out of romance, since the appeal is seeing two people find out what it is about each other’s personalities that they like and figuring out how they fit together. I also don’t care for psychic bonds between lovers (a detriment to the Liaden books which are otherwise pretty good). Even in a fantastic setting, it’s more interesting to have the couple restricted to the ordinary means of communication. Some paranormal romances, like Sharon Shinn’s, I have disliked because the main characters behaved in what seemed to me bizarre ways. I guess I am wearing my romance reader hat rather than fantasy reader! Bizarre characters could be a good thing in fantasy.
Oh, well done!
@Kendall:
I literally made a little “oh!” noise. Thank you! Were I male, I would probably have an avatar of the “Don Incognito” character from The Simpsons 😉
I am not an audiobook person; sadly I just don’t interact with narratives that way. If I’m doing something with my ears it’ll be listening to music; if I want a story I prefer to curl up with a blanket and a dead tree and a cup of tea.
@Tasha
I was going to ask for UF recommendations – back in the dim and distant past I read (and loved) Emma Bulls War For the Oaks (looking at the publication date, in the first paperback printing) and Ian McDonalds’ King of Morning, Queen of Day.
I’ve recently read Patricia Briggs and Seanan McGuire, which are solid.
Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity series was pretty interesting, but slingshot off into the weird at supra-light speed about book 3.
Sounds like I should take a look at Ilona Andrews – any others you’d recommend in UF?
ETA too late: His name was Guy Incognito all along! My life is a lie! *sobs*
I found my The Sandman: Overture issues! 🙂 Time to read.
ETA: LOL Dawn – can’t win ’em all.
JJ;
Thank you for the info about “Zero World”. Alas, that’s what I feared was going on, which is chemically/biologically Impossible-with-a-capital-I. Water doesn’t work that way, and I have no idea why it was necessary to the plot.
My only remaining Hugo question is, will I try to find & read Hardinge’s “Cuckoo Song” before the 31st?
Tasha Turner: I don’t think the roadmap to a good discussion of freedom of speech is taking the inventory of criminal behavior engaged in by other religions.
@Chris S
I’ve bought quite a lot of urban fantasy, although I’ve been reading more straight SF and F lately. That said, I really like Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassin series (great secondary characters in this one); Ann Aguirre’s Corine Solomon series (that one ties up pretty neatly in five books); Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles (if you like laugh-out-loud humor); and even Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, if you like doorstop-sized volumes, angsty male wizards and torturous plotting. Also, Marjorie M. Liu’s The Iron Hunt books have an interesting, more mythic take on typical UF tropes. (The first eight or nine of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books are okay, too, before she descends into polyamorous porn.)