(1) THEMES. For the next 29 days, BBC has the concert celebrating the music of Barry Gray available for free listening — “The Music of Barry Gray”
Stuart presents the iconic music of TV composer Barry Gray performed by Charles Hazelwood’s All Star Collective at St George’s Bristol. Barry Gray created some of the most memorable music on British television and film from the 1960s onwards including Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet and Stingray. His style combines big band swagger, sci-fi strangeness and soaring theme tunes. Conductor Charles Hazelwood is joined on stage by a stella cast of musicians including Jarvis Cocker and members of the British Paraorchestra.
(2) IT’S TIME. Geoff Willmets advocates “The necessity of deadlines” at SF Crowsnest.
Being creative to a deadline is actually good for you because it prevents your mind wandering from what is essentially a lot of hard work. As the deadline approaches, your brain becomes extremely focused on getting things done correctly. I’ve seen myself go into super-drive doing it and at the same time, knowing that giving myself a little distance from the work as well, actually helps as well. The early drafts often look slightly out of focus and polishing them just sharpens them up to what you want to achieve.
(3) JIM ANSWERS. Raymond Bolton interviewed Jim C. Hines about his novel Revisionary and life as a writer.
Most writers will envy your new situation. Why do you write and when did you first realize you were a writer?
I write because I enjoy it. I love inventing stories and sharing them with people. There are days when it’s frustrating or painful trying to get the story in your head onto the screen, and it’s just not coming out right. But then there are the moments when it comes together, or when you come up with a clever twist or idea, or you hit on something powerful. Those moments are amazing.
Plus I like fantasizing about swords and magic and robots and all that other cool, shiny stuff.
When did I realize I was a writer? That’s hard to say. I toyed with writing a bit as a kid. Started doing it more seriously toward the end of my undergraduate degree. To some extent, I started to really feel like a writer after my first fantasy novel Goblin Quest came out.
And then there are the days when I still don’t entirely feel like A Real Writer. Like I’ve been playing a trick on the world for 20+ years and having a blast with it, but sooner or later someone’s going to catch on.
(4) A CERTAIN GLOW. “Unexpected changes of bright spots on Ceres discovered” – EurekAlert! – Chemistry, Physics and Materials Sciences does not think the explanation is an asteroid having teenage complexion problems.
(ESO) Observations made at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile have revealed unexpected changes in the bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. Very careful study of its light shows not only the changes expected as Ceres rotates, but also that the spots brighten during the day and also show other variations. These observations suggest that the material of the spots is volatile and evaporates in the warm glow of sunlight.
(5) IT’S FIVE! At Tor.com, Myke Cole lists “Five Books About the Ancient World” – fiction books, that is.
The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
This book has a dated prose style that requires some plowing, but it’s worth the work for the incredibly compelling and well researched account of the genesis of Rome’s “Social War” that spelled the end of the Republic.
McCullough’s book is so respected that it’s often cited as a source in secondary scholarship. It’s particularly valuable for those seeking to understand daily life in ancient Rome, from the vaulted heights of the Capitoline Hill to the filth of the Subura, McCullough covers it all.
As with Graves, there’s more if you want it. The First man in Rome is the flagship offering in McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, a seven volume sweeping epic that will take you all the way from Marius and Sulla in 110 B.C. to Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 27 B.C.
(6) SURPRISING A LIFETIME ACHIEVER. Rowena Cory Daniells calls winning the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award “Another Lovely Surprise”.
It would be honest to say that I was stunned.
When I went up to accept the award and had to stand there while Sean read out my list of achievements. It was excruciating.
In my acceptance speech I told the story of my meeting with Robert Silverberg at the Australian World Con in 1999. We’d been wedged in a corner at an industry party where, being the socially awkward creature that I am, I’d said, ‘How does it feel to be the Grand Old Man of Speculative Fiction.’ To which he said, ‘Pretty strange considering that I used to be the Bright Young Thing.’
And there I was, giving an acceptance speech for a Lifetime Achievement Award when I used to be one of the vanguard of new faces.
Future Hugo by Taral Wayne
(7) DEBUNKING DISQUALIFICATIONS. K. Tempest Bradford advances “4 Reasons Why You (Yeah, You) Are Qualified To Nominate for the Hugos”.
The Hugo Award nomination period closes in just a few days. You’ve seen my recs, and over the weekend the #hugoeligible hashtag showcased so many more. But I know some of you are still thinking that you aren’t qualified to nominate because:
- You haven’t read/watched/listened widely enough (according to you).
- You don’t have enough nominations in every category to fill ever slot you’re allotted.
- You don’t have time to read all the cool stuff recommended here and elsewhere and on the tag.
- You’re “just a fan” and not anyone fancy.
I’m here to tell you that none of those things disqualifies you from nominating for the Hugos. None. Zip. Let’s break it down.
(8) PRELUDE TO A BALLOT. Abigail Nussbaum reveals “The 2016 Hugo Awards: My Hugo Ballot, Best Novel and Campbell Award”.
There are three whole days left before the Hugo nominating deadline, but I’m traveling starting tomorrow, so the final post in the series listing my Hugo nominees goes up today. As tends to be the case, the best novel category is the one I put the least effort into. I don’t tend to read most books in the year of their publication, so I’m only rarely sufficiently up to date that I have a full slate of nominees in this category. There are, in fact, more books that I would have liked to get to before the nominating deadline than there are on my ballot–books like Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings (which I may yet finish before the deadline), Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora. Meanwhile, the always-interesting Campbell award is one that I tend to dedicate to short story writers–usually those who have impressed me over the year even if their stories didn’t quite cross the bar to make it onto my ballot.
(9) EBOOKS. Max Florschutz continues the debate about ebooks in “The Question of Value Part 2 – Responses”.
The market is failing the readers.
Okay, now that might sound like a harsh judgement to pass, and perhaps I could voice it differently (also, that could be taken way out of context, so aggregate sites, you do not have permission to use that line without context). When I say market, for the most part, I’m not referring to the books themselves, or what the authors are producing, though in a way, we share part of the blame.
No, what I’m referring to here is the actual market and the way ebooks are being handled. That is what is failing the readers.
I went though all those comments again this morning, this time armed with a pen and paper, and I wrote down each concern as I encountered them. When multiple concerns presented the same topic, I made check-marks next to each one. And at the end, almost all of them fit neatly into one of three areas:
- Misconceptions about ebooks that are not being properly explained to the readers, often overlapped with 2 and 3.
- Mishandling of ebooks by publishers.
- A general failure of the “User Interface” of ebook stores.
With these, maybe now you can see why I say the market is failing the readers. Granted, there’s a little bit of equal blame there. After all, it doesn’t help the market when readers go around spreading misinformation rather than learning about the topic, but at the same time, if the market is deliberately making this information difficult to glean, and in some cases actively working to obfuscate things from the reader’s eyes, well, then I would say it’s definitely failed.
So, I want to take a look at some of these concerns that were given, heading them under these three points, and see if we can’t cast a bit more light on things.
(10) BANDERLOVE. Mark Sommer at Examiner.com reviews Bandersnatch in “Creative collaboration demonstrated in the Oxford writers group the Inklings”.
“Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings” is the newly published adaptation of her 2007 book, re-written for a wider audience. “The Company they Keep” was meant for academic use. However, although the earlier book has been described as “easy and enjoyable to read” with “plenty to enjoy” for new fans and scholars alike, Glyer realized the “fundamentally academic” work should be updated. Besides being of interest to fans of Tolkien, Lewis, and the other Inklings, “Bandersnatch” also is also helpful to aspiring writers, artists, and inventors, providing suggestions on how to interact with others in the same kind of creative collaboration the Inklings did.
The title of the book comes from an often quoted line from a letter Lewis wrote to Charles Mooreman in 1959. Mooreman was researching a book about “the Oxford Christians,” which came out in 1966. After admitting the influence Charles Williams and he had over each other, Lewis writes, “No one ever influenced Tolkien—you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” (A “bandersnatch” is a creature created by Lewis Carol. Lewis was undoubtedly borrowing from a quote from “Through the Looking-Glass” where the White King describes his Queen: “She runs so fearfully quick. You might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch!”)
(11) PUPPY COUNTING. Brandon Kempner introduces a series at Chaos Horizon, “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 1”.
I’m going to start with my estimates from the end of the 2015 Hugo season using the final vote statistics. Here’s what I estimated back then:
Core Rabid Puppies: 550-525 Core Sad Puppies: 500-400 Sad Puppy leaning Neutrals: 800-400 (capable of voting a Puppy pick #1) True Neutrals: 1000-600 (may have voted one or two Puppies; didn’t vote in all categories; No Awarded all picks, Puppy and Non-Alike) Primarily No Awarders But Considered a Puppy Pick above No Award: 1000 Absolute No Awarders: 2500
I think those numbers are at least in the ballpark and give us a place to start modelling. Since you can’t vote against a pick in the nomination stage, we don’t need to know the difference between “No Awarders” and other more traditional Hugo voters. I’m going to combine all the non-Puppy voters into one big group, called the “Typical Voters.” I’ll initially assume that they’ll vote in similar patterns to past Hugo seasons before the Puppies. I’ll have more to say about that assumption later on.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]
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One Pixel…
One scroll
Three is for thirds. More pixels are better.
Fourth!
(6) SURPRISING A LIFETIME ACHIEVER.
A lovely story.
(7) DEBUNKING DISQUALIFICATIONS.
The more members understand that, the better.
(11) PUPPY COUNTING.
Not counting them until they’re
hatchedwhelped, though at this point, I would not be surprised if a number of the Rabid Puppy listed works end up on the final ballot. If that happens, I trust that the WSFS voting membership will display appropriate judgement*, the way they did last year.*Noting that last year “Guardians of the Galaxy” won, despite being on both Sad Puppies 3 & Rabid Puppies 1 slates.
ETA: Accidental (but I’ll take it), Fifth!
(5) How could it miss her, but glad to see Mary Renault on the list. I’ve only read The Praise Singer but loved it and have been meaning to read more.
Also, the AVClub just put up this article about Russian sci-fi. It’s brief and fairly basic, but as someone who has (I think) only read We and Roadside Picnic and watched Tarkovsky, it was fun.
With two or three days to go, I reiterate that The Library at Mount Char is a fabulous novel. Read it — there’s still time!
Chaos Horizon:
Primarily No Awarders But Considered a Puppy Pick above No Award: 1000
Absolute No Awarders: 2500
These are totally made-up bullshit numbers, since the Puppy fiction works (with the exception of the BDPLF category) were pretty much across-the-board not Hugo-worthy. I think a great many people, like me, would have been willing to put a Puppy pick above No Award had they actually provided one that was Hugo-worthy.
I’d really love CH to show their work on how they calculated reading peoples’ minds.
This rather depends on one’s opinion of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, which I wouldn’t have picked as a Hugo winner, but which nonetheless won.
I would assume, somehow, the numbers are deduced from comparing those votes to others. How they separated out voters like me, though, who did not vote for GUARDIANS but did so on my judgment of merit (as, indeed, I did for everything), I haven’t the first clue.
7) DEBUNKING DISQUALIFICATIONS. K. Tempest Bradford
Nice but it ignores how hard determining eligibility is. But then that’s not a selling point to nominate is it. 😉
8) PRELUDE TO A BALLOT. Abigail Nussbaum
We continue to have little to nothing in common
9) EBOOKS. Max Florschutz
OMG he’s fairly coherent for a change. I believe he still misunderstands how lending works on Amazon but whatever. It took a while for me to figure out he was talking about Steam for games. A link really would have helped. I’ve not spent much time there so I can’t comment as to whether a bookstore based on similar design would be easier to use than Amazon. Again I’m not sure he understands Amazon is the top ebook seller due to its UI and search functions.
On that note. I had a long day. Spent 3-4 hours in my new neurologist office. It was exhausting. I think she’s going to be an excellent addition to my medical team once we get past all the initial testing and getting to know you phase. My gallbladder was not happy to be up, about, and in uncomfortable chairs for all those hours. Surgery still on schedule for April 14!!!
I voted GotG above No Award, though not #1. Maybe at #3? I didn’t mind it winning — it was well done, entertaining, and definitely SF. It was certainly the only Puppy pick that would have gotten on the ballot without them, as can be seen by the win. I mean, it had some quality to it.
(5) IT’S FIVE! I plan to read this later, but wow, I’m not much into historical stuff, but I enjoyed the Graves back in the day, I have the Smale on my shelf (wow, SFF in Cole’s list, I’m kinda surprised given the topic), and while I haven’t read that Renault I loved another one of hers, so I may read “Wine” at some point. I should check out the rest as well, methinks (once I read Cole’s article and find out more about these novels).
(7) DEBUNKING DISQUALIFICATIONS. It’s always good when people say these things. The only qualifications for nominating are being a member of the current, preceding, or following Worldon – that’s it!
(9) EBOOKS. I’ve gotta read this tomorrow; no time now.
@Tasha Turner: I hope things go smoothly for you the day before Tax Day. 🙂
@Various: My BDP:Short list is, er, short, and I don’t have time or interest in starting a new TV series or watching a bunch of web videos in the hopes something will stick. But I read the Pseudopod presentation of “When It Ends, He Catches Her” is eligible, since the reading (dramatic presentation) was in 2015, even though the story was in 2014. I listened to it, and the story’s as great as I remember and the reading is quite good as well, so yay, one more slot filled! I hope. Unless the Hugo Admins disagree regarding eligibility.
(5) IT’S FIVE! Redux: Some interesting-sounding recommendations in the comments of Myke Cole’s post, too. Including some SFF.
(9) My comment on Florschutz’s previous post never showed up. Probably in moderation or something. That’s kinda annoying :-/
Standback: You mean a comment at his blog? (The one you quoted here)?
I admit to being surprised upon seeing on Bleeding Cool: If You Were A Hugo Awards Controversy, My Love, where I find that some people may be registering their disgust at Beale putting the Scalzi-and-Swirsky-slamming “If You Were an Award, My Love” on the Rabid Puppies recommendation for Best Short Story… by nominating “If You Were A Puppy, My Sweet” by David A. Mack and myself.
I will be shocked if we make it to the final round, but I do have to wonder how many people saw that article and are amending their ballots– particularly if they didn’t have a fifth story to put in themselves.
I don’t think that the Bleeding Cool article is at all helpful to the Hugos, and I personally think it will be a damn shame if anti-Puppy stuff is put on the ballot by non-Puppy nominators.
There are too many worthy works out there to use up ballot slots in that way, and 10 years from now everyone will look at this year’s final ballot and — not unfairly — think that we are a bunch of idiots.
Oh, I agree. There are way too many short pieces out there– although of course, that’s what allows RP and SP slates to dominate in the first place. Still, I suspect most non-pups are going to vote diversely– unless they want to stick their thumb in Mr. Beale’s eye.
No Glenn, I won’t be nominating your story: it didn’t blow my socks off the way more than a half dozen other stories did. My ballot was an exercise in what to leave out, so definitely no spare slots left.
Besides it would be a terrible idea to nominate a work as a protest as it goes against what the Hugos are all about. If anyone is planning on doing that, I suggest they reconsider their decision: if you’re not nominating your own honest favourites, you’re devaluing the Hugos. Please don’t do that.
ETA: Slates are bad; anti-slates aren’t any better.
I’m not asking anyone to nominate it, nor am I nominating it myself. I’m just finding myself– what’s the right word for what I’m feeling here? “Amused” isn’t quite it; “Charmed”? “Tickled”?– that it’s being used in this manner.
And I wouldn’t call one story an anti-slate by itself, although the story certainly could be.
(11) PUPPY COUNTING
@JJ
Kempner does show his working, in that he links to the 2015 post where he came up with those numbers.
I’m not convinced by his methodology, because the Editor category has problems of its own far beyond any slating effects, and someone could legitimately have decided to NA the whole of BELF despite having carefully considered all puppy picks, but it is there.
Anyway, it sounds like he’s given himself a horribly complicated job in trying to make estimates based on possible turnout of various groups carrying over from last year, which is an interesting question in and of itself: how many people who signed up during the voting stage in a reaction to the kerfluffle are going to exercise their nomination rights?
If You Were a Fifth Short Story, My Love
(5) IT’S FIVE!
Oh there’s plenty. Michael Livingston’s recent THE SHARDS OF HEAVEN was pretty good, wrapping powerful artifacts into the story of Octavian’s fight for the Roman Empire in the wake of Julius Ceasar’s death. Even more interesting, Octavian, the obvious choice for the protagonist in such a story is the bad guy.
(2) IT’S TIME
I’m not in a creative job, but I agree that deadlines can be stimulating (he said, while busily procrastinating). I find that deadlines of the sort that managers euphemistically call “stretching but achievable” get me working at a high pitch, but the sort that I euphemistically call “what moron thought that could be done in that time” cause me to just plod along.
(5) IT’S FIVE!
I read First Man in Rome quite a few years ago and loved it. I’m a bit concerned to hear there are 6 sequels though, I’m sure it was only a trilogy when I read it.
He also mentions the magnificent I, Claudius, which has a TV adaptation almost as good as the book.
(7) DEBUNKING DISQUALIFICATIONS
+1 to everything there. If you read one thing and genuinely loved it, then that’s a vote right there, just do it. If you want to make an effort to read loads and make a complicated judgement then great, but it’s not necessary. (But fun, I’ve really enjoyed my Year Of Reading Lots of Short Fiction, even if it was actually 6 Months of Madly Trying to Catch Up)
(9) EBOOKS
I think he badly understates people’s concerns about ebook formats, drm, vendor/platform lock-in, etc. While I can wave my hands and go “Calibre plus cloud storage, what’s the problem” that’s actually quite complex for a lot of the potential audience for ebooks.
Later he says: “Why is it that I can’t just go to “My Library” on Amazon and look at all the books I own, and click “lend” or “redownload” from there?” – you can! There’s literally an actual page on actual amazon with those actual buttons (admittedly I’m assuming that the lend button is on there for people in territories where that exists). Now, the amazon library service is terrible, and needs much stronger organisation that maps over to your devices, which would have been a much more useful and valid criticism.
Hi. Long-time lurker, first time poster. What finally made me decide to comment were the two links: Cole’s novels of the ancient world, and the link to Soviet SF that someone posted above.
For the first, it’s because I’m still under the impression of having finished I, Claudius late last night, for which recommendation I have this site to thank. Not that I hadn’t heard of it before, but someone wrote about it so enthusiastically here that I moved it to the top of my TBR pile, and was amply rewarded. To some excellent picks on Cole’s list I’d like to add a voice for Mary Renault’s Persian boy. Maybe it’s because I’m something of an Alexander groupie, but I totally love this book. So much, in fact, that I even took a stab at translating it into my mother tongue (never finished, alas, but I return to it sometimes for amusement). I guess I feel that (same as in “The last of the wine”) she writes a sympathetic, though not modern at all, viewpoint, which I find by turns depressing and amazing. And her research seems to be OK.
And for the second, because it was an interesting read on some fundamental differences between classic western and eastern SF. Myself, I’ve always had the impression that the former Eastern Bloc writers were either extremely satiric in their treatment of the subject matter (some Lem, Strugacky brothers) or utterly serious (Zamyatin, other parts of Lem). Also, that Eastern Bloc SF tended to be much more doom-and-gloom oriented, but that might have been just the influence of the anthology of almost exclusively post-apocalyptic Eastern European short fiction I discovered in my local library way back in the early nineties when I was an impressionable schoolkid.
As an aside, I’ve been following the Disconsolate Canines et al. mostly through this site since last year. I’ve never nominated anything for the Hugos, though I did vote a couple of times. Almost never got my wish, yet I somehow managed to resist conspiracy theories. I wish to take this opportunity to thank OGH for the coverage with a distinct lack of froth, and many posters here for many a giggle with the titles. I hoped cooler heads would prevail this year, but what with some things I’m reading on MGC, this seems likely only in comparison with last year.
Last, but not least, I’d likely never have read some excellent stories and books by Ursula Vernon if it wasn’t for my dilligent lurking in the comments here, so thanks, everyone, for that recommendation too! And especially to the author herself.
JJ wrote
I think the telling thing is the editor rockets.
Many people feel, especially for long form, that they do not have enough information to make an informed nomination.
Many people feel that Toni Weisskopf didn’t really try to explain why she was worth voting for.
I feel that in a less febrile year that would have been enough to send her to the bottom of the ballot. She is an editor, she does seem to have a hand in cultivating a successful stable of books, for all their shoddy copy editing and dreadful covers, her winning would not have been an insult to the award in the way that Teddy winning would have been.
2500 people disagree.
“He also mentions the magnificent I, Claudius, which has a TV adaptation almost as good as the book.”
Better, in my opinion. Graves’ books are very good, but because of his adherence to the form of his classical models, they can be very dry and rather distant — there’s very little dialogue in them, for example, and for me it was rather difficult to get a grasp on many of the characters. The TV adaptation is less intellectually rewarding, but it’s a stunning piece of work, and possibly the best TV ever made (in the British “televised theatre” TV tradition, where the Roman Empire is represented by a couple of columns and some curtains, not in the USian “televised cinema’ tradition to which most British TV of the last twenty years belongs). Augustus’ death scene alone, with Sian Phillips talking over Brian Blessed’s unmoving, unblinking, face, will haunt me forever.
(Both the books and the TV series are also SFF, at least by a broad definition — they take place in a world where the Graeco-Roman gods have a real existence and sibylline prophecies do come true.)
Speaking of poor copy editing, does anyone have a physical copy of The House of Shattered Wings they could check – I’ve only got ebook to hand.
In that the House in question is “House Silver spires” which annoys the bejaysus out of me. Should surely be Silver Spires. Both are clearly part of the name – it’s not House Silver, which has an infirmary and and some meeting rooms and some spires.
Artifact of the ebook or a general niggle?
@Andrew Hickey
Well, I really love the books, and agree the TV series is wonderful, so it’s a matter of which two superlatives is slightly more super 🙂
There was a BBC2 re-run of I, Claudius a few years ago and I indulged in watching it in the original one-per-week format rather than boxsetting; it works so well, particularly as the episodic format suits the long passage of time in the story. I watched some of it with an older relative who had seen it on first transmission and told me that in those pre-VHS days it was gripping must-get-home-on-time levels of watching for him.
@bloodstone75. I must agree, though I must also warn it is dark and presents casual sadism. I don’t remember if it was here or elsewhere but I was convinced to pick up mount char. Half way through and I think it’s going to pick up two slots on my ballot. So, thank you whomever triggered that purchase.
Oops forgot the tickey
AutoCorrect got at the Banderlove entry. Happy anniversary, Lewis and Christmas Carol.
RE I, Claudius series vs the books. The series does rise above the sometimes dry material, partly because the cast is damned good. Long before Harry Potter roped in the cream of British actors to do roles, I, Claudius managed the same feat.
(2) IT’S TIME
Heaven knows I finished more songs in Spring 2014 when I thought I might die than I have since.
The TV version of Claudius is damn good, and made me interested in the books. I’ve re-watched about half of it, despite having it readily available for decades. On the other hand, I’ve read the two books four times, if not five, and sought out others by Graves. One or two I bounced off of (not sure I finished The Islands of Unwisdom, but I think I did). Count Belisarius turned out the best. Maybe someone should make a miniseries of that.
Other news, which I think came from Making Light’s comments. Three revelations:
(1) Beverly Cleary is alive.
(2) She’s a centenarian.
(3) She doesn’t pronounce her name like I do.
@NickPheas: It’s Silverspires, actually, no space.
—
re: Cleary’s quip on living to be 100: I’d be happy to live to 1000 if it was an all-benefits-included package with guaranteed physical and mental health and vigor etc.!
OK, I’ll bite: How does Beverly Clearly pronounce her name?
@Mike: Yup, that’s the one.
Pinged him on Twitter, and now my comments exist again.
Heaven forfend the Internet should be robbed of my considered opinion! 😛
From (9):
It’ll outlast you, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to read the data off of it. Hard drive mechanical components will degrade, even if you’re not using them. Flash memory does degrade, albeit very slowly. Max also handwaves the question of formats, but even leaving that aside, what about the bus hardware used to read the drive? Jason Scott, who’s with the Internet Archive these days, had a heck of a time finding something to read 20-year-old 5.25″ floppy disks back in 2007. I think about the gyrations that the people investigating the Pioneer anomaly had to do to read the data off of the old magnetic tapes, and which had little to do with data degradation and everything to do with how to interface with the hardware that read the data. I’ve got no faith that I’ll be able to read a mobi file off of an esata drive come 2040.
TL;DR this is a hard problem that’s easy to get wrong. From talking to people like Jason and my librarian dad, if you’re not actively moving your data forward to new formats and on new media, you’re taking a risky gamble.
(11) Puppy Counting —
I love Chaos Horizon, but I’m not holding my breath on this set of predictions. Just trying to estimate how thousands of new nominators are going to cluster, without any prior behavior, is going to mess it up. (Assuming similar distribution to past years’ “typical” voters sounds naive and optimistic to me; I’d expect lower nomination turnout in “typical” than any of the others, and incomplete ballots for them in many, many categories. I should know; I’m one of ’em 😛 )
Trying to estimate Sad Puppy clusters within the lists of ~10/category will also be tough, particularly as the SP’s are likely to not all vote entirely from the list.
But, having some baseline numbers and terms is a nice thing to have, so I’m happy to follow along and comment.
[5] I’d put Gillian Bradshaw’s THE SAND RECKONER on that list.
One of my favorite Cheers moments is when Frasier mentions having all of I, Claudius on VHS and Sam responds that he loves gladiator movies.
Joe H
“Clarey,” apparently.
This changes everything.
It clarey does.
@Zil: Silverspires would certainly make more sense, but the Kindle version does seem to have added that extra space. And it vexes me.
Dealing with old software/hardware is definitely A Thing. A university-based friend of mine showed me a piece of scientific equipment in his lab. It was controlled by a custom program on an original BBC micro which at some point had been slaved to an very old IBM x86 via serial port running a custom interface to control the BBC, which had in turn been networked to a more modern PC that didn’t have a serial port but could at least run modern Windows. The whole Heath Robinson affair couldn’t be changed because It Works Just Fine Don’t You Dare Touch It. I believe he just shrugged and installed a screen mirroring app on the “top” PC so he could at least run it from his desk.
Poking around the CH website, I’m amused to see the writer lump together “Sorcerer to the Crown”, “Karen Memory”, “Grace of Kings”, and “The Traitor Baru Cormorant” as being so similar to one another that they would “split the vote”. Because fluffy Regency fantasy-romance, steampunk adventure hijinks, classically styled epic, and grimdark are totally all aimed at the same taste…
Love the title. It’s great to start the day with a good belly laugh. Thanks.
@Nickpheas
Ditto, although I’m glad to find it’s a terrible typo and not a bizarre stylistic decision.
The Seiun shortlist is out and this year the official page has helpfully included the English titles of all the translated works. Spot the novel from 1960!
Being that it’s hard to find info on short stories by title only, here are the authors for the translated ones:
“Good Hunting” – Ken Liu
“The Road of Needles” – Caitlyn R. Kiernan
“White Sin, Now” – Tanith Lee
“Mask” – Stanislaw Lem
“Relays and Roses” – Gene Wolfe
“Alfred’s Ark” – Jack Vance
“Beautiful Boys” – Theodora Goss
The Seiun voters have similar tastes to Hugo voters in Hollywood movies, so I’d say the presence of Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the list bodes well for their Hugo chances.
(And… someone made a movie of The Futurological Congress??? WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED OF THIS)
[ticky]