(1) SIAM SINFONIETTA. Somtow Sucharitkul conducts at Carnegie Hall tonight! On Facebook, he posted a picture of his dressing room.
(2) SOCIETY PAGES. The Planetary Society has released the second installment of The Planetary Post with actor and Society board member Robert Picardo, their newsletter featuring the most notable space happenings.
For this issue, we took a trip to the set of the scientist-produced musical called “Boldly Go!” to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek.
(3) HOP ON POP. “William Shatner sued for $170 million by man claiming to be his long-lost son”
William Shatner is being sued for $170 million by a radio host who claims to be the “Star Trek” legend’s long-lost son.
Peter Sloan has boldly gone and filed legal paperwork in Florida demanding Shatner submit to a DNA test and cease claiming he isn’t his father.
Sloan, 59, claims his birth mother, late Canadian actress Kathy McNeil, had a brief affair with Captain Kirk in Toronto. She gave him up for adoption at 5 days old.
But Shatner, 85, denies Sloan is his son, and claims the local radio host is trying to unfairly live long and prosper from the connection.
(4) MEMORY NUMBER ONE. Madeleine E. Robins makes a riveting anecdote out of her earliest memory, in “My Mother Went Out for Lemons” at Book View Café.
As a small child my family lived in the top two floors (or more properly, the top floor and an attic) of a brownstone on 11th Street in New York City. Four years after this story we moved to another brownstone, also on 11th Street, where we lived in the bottom two floors. But that’s neither here nor there in terms of this memory.
My brother would have been about six months old–I know this because it was spring (and both my brother and I were December babies, but it wasn’t swelteringly hot the way that summer in New York City so often is). I would have been about two and a half. And my mother was making dinner and realized that she needed a lemon. Rather than waking the baby and packing us both into the stroller and going down to the corner to fetch a lemon, Mom made a different call: she sat me down on the couch, told me not to move, and went out to buy a lemon….
(5) ONE RULE TO BIND THEM ALL. Jeffe Kennedy warns against violating the One Rule, in “Romance Tropes for SFF Writers” at the SFWA Blog.
The romance in the book does not end happily. It does not end with even the promise of happiness. The heroine and the hero part ways with every indication that this will be a permanent separation.
Now, there is nothing wrong with this ending for a science fiction novel. However, for a book marketed as SFR, it’s a huge violation of reader trust. It’s an ending that makes romance readers throw the book against the wall. It’s a profound betrayal that destroys their trust in an author.
An argument that gets introduced in a lot of these conversations – always from non-romance readers – is that the HEA/HFN is not mandatory. That it’s okay for a story to end tragically. Romeo and Juliet gets trotted out. And sure, that’s true! But Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies! Sure, there’s a romance in it. You can even say the romance is the core of the story, but that doesn’t make it a romance. Why not?
Because it ends tragically, not happily.
(6) TRUST. R. S. Belcher says “Trust Your Editor” in a post at Magical Words.
Like I said, I was pissed. I had been doing this job of writing and getting paid for it for a long time, years. I paid bills, mine and my family’s bills, on my words, and I thought, after busting my hump on this piece that it was one of the best journalism pieces I had written.
The first chicken McNugget of “wisdom” I’ll throw out here, is whatever you write, if you expect to get paid for it, expect to deal with criticism…from all corners. You have to learn how to deal with that anger or it will eat you up like acid, or worse, it will influence how you write. It will affect how fearless you get in your writing, what you do, how you say it, and what you decide to not say. If you can’t handle that, pack it in, take up alpaca herding or something, ’cause you will be a bitter, miserable, and poor writer (in more ways than one).
So, I took a few days, because my deadline allowed me to, and did nothing in regards to the article. I did not email this editor and tell him exactly what I thought of his revisions, and where he could stuff them. I did not quit in a funk, or bad-mouth the guy and his publication in social media. In other words, I didn’t shoot my career in the face with a bazooka. I raged in private, I calmed the hell down, and I got back to work.
I did every single thing this editor had wanted me to do; when all was said and done, when all the ego, and emotional sturm und drang was over, it was a better piece, a better creation of my writing, my words. My editor was right, and he was damn good at his job. The moral of this story is trust your editor.
Now, I’m not saying trust every editor, I’m saying trust your editor.
(7) TWO DADS. The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman, on sale May 31. The Fireman by Joe Hill, on sale May 17. John King Tarpinian says, “Joe Hill gave Ray Bradbury credit for the title. Both books are dedicated to the authors’ newborn babies.”
(8) PATTY DUKE OBIT. Patty Duke passed away March 29 at the age of 69. Sean Astin paid tribute to his mother online:
Shortly after the news was made public that his famous mother Patty Duke had passed, Sean Astin took to social media to post a heartwarming tribute — and announce that he’s launching a mental health initiative in her honor.
“I love you mom,” he wrote alongside a photo of his mother holding him as a baby. The message also included the statement that the family released to announce the passing.
Along with image, Sean posted the words, “Her work endures,” along with a link to the Patty Duke Mental Health Project.
“My mother’s life touched tens of millions of people. Her ground breaking portrayal of iconic American legend Helen Keller, launched a career that would span six decades,” Sean wrote of the crowd-funded project. “First on broadway and then on the silver screen, Patty Duke’s characterization of the extraordinary development of the blind/deaf child brought global attention to the plight of people living with those challenges.
“The nature of this kind of illuminating and compassionate work become the sacred mission of her life,” he continued. “She became a voice for the voiceless, a reassuring presence for the scared, the intimidated and the lost. She was a healer of many souls and a champion for so many in need.”
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- March 29, 1955 – Revenge of the Creature was seen for the first time. Clint Eastwood, uncredited, makes his first screen appearance in this movie as the goofy white coated lab assistant.
- March 29, 2004 – Shaun of the Dead premieres in London.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL.
- March 29, 1968 – Lucy Lawless of Xena fame.
(11) A LENS MAN LOOKS AT NARNIA. Vishwas R. Gaitonde has some thoughts about the worldwide popularity of Lewis’ Narnia stories. “With No Inkling of the Contents: Viewing Narnia Through a Hindu Lens” at The Mantle.
Recognizing Hindu Philosophy in Narnia
I began to wonder: what would Narnia be like if it were viewed through a Hindu lens? Perhaps part of the worldwide popularity of the Narnian saga lies in people from other cultures discovering a resonance of their own spiritual beliefs—meanings that Lewis never consciously intended. But then, works of imagination are open to interpretation. As I contemplated the Christian themes in Lewis’ work, I began to wonder: what would Narnia be like if it were viewed through a Hindu lens? Could a reader find such themes throughout Narnia?
…In viewing Narnia through a Hindu lens, I have largely drawn from the Hindu school of philosophy called Advaita Vedanta, which is arguably the most popular contemporary concept of Hinduism.
Atman, Brahman, and Maya: Hindus believe that the human soul (Atman) intuitively knows that existence within a physical body is not its true nature—that it is part of the Godhead, the Universal Spirit (Brahman). But in its body prison, the soul has forgotten its real identity. This ignorance (avidya) forms the human quandary and its accompanying sorrows….
Mythology awakens within us the desire for our true selfIn The Silver Chair, Prince Rilian has similarly forgotten who he is for years whilst bewitched by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. When liberated, Rilian regains full knowledge that he is the heir to the Narnian throne. He declares, “For now that I am myself, I can remember that enchanted life, though while I was enchanted, I could not remember my true self.” Similarly, in The Horse and His Boy, Shasta is clueless about his true identity, but he knows that he isn’t who he and others think he is (a slave or serf). His intuition sets him on a quest that ultimately reveals he is the lost heir of Archenland. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lord Rhoop is trapped on Dark Island where subconscious dreams come to life, where one is a prisoner of his or her own mind. In The Silver Chair, Jill Pole sees boulders and is fooled into thinking they may have given rise to the old wives’ tales of giants—until the boulders turn out to be actual giants. In The Last Battle, Puzzle the Donkey cloaked in a lion’s skin deceives others into thinking he is Aslan. And in Prince Caspian, Caspian longs for the old Narnia, just as the soul instinctively knows that there is a better place and a better experience (viz., Brahman, Spirit) than its current surroundings. Mythology awakens within us the desire for our true self—so just as Caspian clings to his myths, Hindus hang on to theirs.
(12) JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS. Here’s how John Joseph Adams said it, in “NEWS: Hugo Award Nomination Deadline is March 31”:
If you like a thing, and you think it’s deserving of a Hugo Award, nominate it! If you’re not familiar with a thing, but you saw it on a suggested nominations list or something of the sort, either read/watch it, and then nominate it because you like it, or don’t nominate it because you didn’t like it. Point being, please don’t nominate stuff just because it’s on somebody’s list somewhere; only nominate things you personally think are deserving.
(13) DOGGED EFFORT. At Chaos Horizon, Brandon Kempner continues “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 2”.
A pretty simple model and not terribly informative so far. What you’ll glean from this is that the Rabid Puppies are likely to deliver a large block of votes to the works on their list. When we combine this chart with the estimated chart from the Typical vote and the Sad Puppy vote, that’s when we’ll be in business.
The core question is whether or not this block will be larger than other voting groups. In more lightly voted categories like Best Related Work or categories where the vote is more dispersed like Best Short Story, 400 votes is likely enough to sweep all or most of the ballot. Think about Best Related Work: the highest non-Puppy pick last year managed only around 100 votes. The top non-Puppy short story only managed 76 votes last year. Even if you triple those this year, you’re still well under 400 votes. In a more popular category like Best Novel or Best Dramatic Work, I expect the impact to be substantial but not sweeping. Perhaps 3 out of 5? 2 out of 5?
(14) WHAT A WAG. The Good Dog News can be found in this Maximumble cartoon.
(15) SHOPPING ONLINE IN THE STONE AGE. Martin Morse Wooster advises, “The YouTube video ‘Internet Shopping–Database—1984’ is another installment of the 1984 ITV series Database, in which the manager of the Nottingham Building Society reveals ‘If we give away one of these’ (keyboards) ‘We won’t have to build any more branches!’
“The excitement of shopping and looking up your bank statements on your TV is palpable!”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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By including at least one Hugo-worthy candidate in each category, he’s thrown away his last chance to pull that off.
Yeah, no. The asshat’s nomination of stuff that might have been on and winning is actually more offensive to me than stuffing the ballot full of crap/Castalia products. If asshat succeeds in filling all nomination slots with his stuff, then basically you’ve abdicated the entire Hugo nomination process to one obnoxious asshat/gatekeeper sat in Italy twirling his mustache.
So that’s why anything on said asshat’s slate goes below no award for me. I may modify this to say that anything that would have got on the final ballot after taking the votes for the butt-dinosaur off, but that’s as far as I go. This is actually more militant than I was last year, as said asshat filled the ballot full of crap/Castalia products, so no awarding stuff was on quality alone.
Except for Seveneves – that goes below No Award regardless of how many nominations it gets.
Some interesting, and somewhat sad, news: Allison Rapp just got fired from Nintendo. Largely, her sin seems to be that she was an attractive female working in video games.
I mention it here because Teddy hasn’t just been running a libel on John Scalzi and various women in fandom with willful lies about how they support unspeakable sexual practices. Ms. Rapp was also targeted by people of the Puppies’ type (MRA’s, Gamergaters, white supremacists) with similar libels; and if you put on your hazmat suit and visit Teddy’s blog, you’ll see he was part of it.
Even though there various charges were as baseless as the Castelia libel, it was enough to pressure a major games company into caving as fast as Tor. Hopefully not a sign of things to come – hopefully.
If more of my blind dates had turned into human beings under the full moon–or any other time, indeed–I would have been very impressed. And would have had a much better time in my twenties. ;P
“…and whoever it is will certainly have no desire to be nominated just to be humiliated.”
I can’t imagine anyone who writes what Chuck Tingle writes is particularly vulnerable to humiliation.
Damn straight! And someday I’ll finish my night-gaunt teen romance!
@Sean O’Hara:
Have you polled Americans? Because if not, you’re in the position of saying the lurkers would surely support you in email if only.
There is literally a right and a wrong answer here. What counts as a “romance novel” is not a matter of opinion, nor does it hang on the most stubborn nerd in the argument outlasting everybody else. What counts as a romance novel is what gets merchandised as a romance novel. End. Of. Story. This conversation
I can totally understand your feelings on the matter, but I feel like that would be spiteful rage. If the rabid slate is adopted in total my plans will not change. I plan to read as many works as possible, vote on quality, use none of the above as needed and ignore his venom. No matter what the result happen he will claim victory, so I might as well not factor his wishes, desires or actions into anything I do.
However, I will wake up Sunday morning the 21 of August to vote for EPH and any other anti-slate measure that makes sense to my sleep deprived brain*.
@jayn
I do believe you are correct the person who made this twitter account (@ChuckTingle) is not concerned about humiliation.
*this might be the flaw in this plan
@jayn
You might be right, but one never knows about these things. Anyway, both the man’s website and his twitter account provide ways to get in touch, should that be necessary. It’s all moot until we know what the actual nominees are.
@Snodberry Fields
Bravo!
My husband and I will be there with you.
I think a comparison could be made to a movie like, say, “What Women Want”(ignore quality for this argument). It is, technically, either sci-fi or fantasy. But, would anyone with any sense ever market it as such? They’d do what Paramount did and market it as a rom-com, as that more accurately captures the expectations of the potential audience. So, yes, a book with a major romantic storyline that ends badly could be described as being “a romance”, it should not be marketed as a “romance novel”, which is a descriptor that brings along a set of reader expectations, and I think a HEA/HFN is one of the big ones for romance.
@RedWombat: “Reader expectation is important. To a certain extent, in some genres there’s a…oh, contract is too binding a term, but I can’t think of a better one….with the reader.”
How about “compact”?
Would someone’s twitter account count as a related work?
In poetry we speak explicitly of “the metrical contract.” Your first few lines set an expectation of whether or not the poem is going to be metered or unmetered, rhymed or unrhymed, rhymed true or slant, punctuated or not, grammatical or fragmentary and so on. Like, if you’re writing a formal poem and you want a slant rhyme in the last stanza, damn well put one in the first stanza too. If you want to sharply break your rhythmic, syntactical or sonic approach, make sure to put in a clear section break.
@Snodberry Fields:
It could. The person could also count as a Fan Writer. Jeet Heer would really like to be nominated BTW.
@snodberry fieldss and @greg hullender, You have my axe!
@Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy:
SPINE STICKERS!
Lovely discussion from everybody about the spine stickers (how could I not know that name before!) (and can I get them for my library! NO SITS ON SELF SHUTUP SHUTUP SHUTUP).
Apparently I’ve been hanging around university libraries too much because spine stickers are apparently still being used.
(happy sigh)
I’ll share my Afrofuturism/African-American science fiction syllabus for my Fall 2016 class if you share your Modern SF one! (I suspect my syllabus is due soon but am ignoring that until I catch up with this spring’s classes).
http://www.shopbrodart.com/search/?q=fantasy%2bdinosaur&s=MToxNjowOjo6Ojo6MTo%3d&sr=27795e7d-6a7d-4bcf-97d0-9b8ceb0fa054
I’m just going to leave this here …
@ joe H
Oh my … Dinosaur spine stickers
I have a hard enough time getting out of stationary shops without spending All.the.money. (online is even worse)
I don’t think I need to know about all the nifty labels one could buy.
Nope. I don’t need to know that. *covers eyes and stomps away*
Joe H., that was just mean. I wanted to leave that for Robin! You stole it from me!
@robinareid: Absolutely–I taught this course at Purdue and Maryland years ago, so I had to update my course to include the last 20+ years. That meant giving up books I love, but something had to go to make room for cyberpunk, the New Weird, selfpub, and so on.
The stuff about Allison Rapp is disgusting and true with the exception the accusation that Nintendo caved as fast as Tor did. The reality is that the GG/MRAers have been after Ms. Rapp’s head for literally months. It’s been a very prolonged process.
SFF people care about categories too. Orson Scott Card told a story about how Analog rejected one of his stories because it sounded like fantasy, even though his characters were supposed to be psionic.
That’s because psionics ARE fantasy. Curse you, John Campbell!!!
I have to love K.J. Parker’s “Academic Exercises” collection which regularly has a group of people insisting they are natural philosophers NOT wizards, there being no such thing as magic and wizards. They simply study mental energies, science which is not quite understood. They then go on to
cast spellsuse Forms and get into all sorts of trouble withdemonsentities from other Rooms. A deliberate parody of Campbell trying to pass off magic as a sort of science.And as regards paranormal romance, I wanna see someone write something featuring were-felines. Complete with the unfortunate implications for human females of certain features of a male cat’s intimate anatomy and a damned good reason for human females to avoid said were-felines, no matter how dark, graceful and sexy…
(On looking up Wikipedia – holy heck – humans may have vestigial remnants of said unfortunate features, and they think they know the DNA region responsible for its loss in the primate line. Which leads to a plausible inclusion in SF of someone genetically engineering them back into humans for some twisted reason. Go to it, you authors!)
My sympathies to Ms Rapp.
Can’t wait for our society to stop being sexist and run by man-boys who, no matter their age, are still afraid of girl cooties. Your not 12 grow up.
Unfortunately my belief I’ll see the change during my lifetime has decreased since I was a teen. I see generations following mine (gen x) when it comes to gender equality having too many men who hark to the good ole 1950s myth. We did good on LGBT issues but not so great on sex and race issues in raising the next generations. My husband, baby boomer, says its just backlash. I think that lacks nuance and is too easy a fallback answer. Another not taking personal responsibility response. But I might be biased and too critical and idealistic.
@Vasha – Aw, thanks! I actually lobbied (and won) to get rid of the fantasy and science fiction genre stickers in our adult collection. Aside from the fact that I thought the bad clip art looked childish, some of our patrons wouldn’t even look at the books with those stickers. When we interfiled all of our adult fiction (rather than separate each genre), we noticed that folks who usually don’t check out the sf/f titles did when the books were faced out and they couldn’t see the stickers at first. Getting rid of them also solved the problem of what to do with cross-genre works.
We do house some upper-middle grade fiction in our teen department as that area serves grades 6-12. However, the the spine notation for those books serves solely as a shelving indicator. Within that area, we have a lot of genres – everything from ya romance to ya christian fiction to ya fantasy and more – but they don’t get separate genre stickers.
I know that some love the stickers as guides, but I’m not a huge fan of them. I think they make the collection, as a whole, look messy. Some libraries use the genre designation as part of the call number, which I prefer if the genres are separated within the collection.
I suppose, though, for those of you who love them, I should introduce you to Demco’s label selection.
@ Tasha Turner
Problem is, backlash is still lash, and welts hurt just as much.
k8 on March 30, 2016 at 9:21 pm said:
With the expected images (I’ve had Demco bookmarked for years).
Demco has some great products, but it’s hard to project the image of the library as a modern institution while labeling the books with some of those images.
Okay, I’ve only found a couple of Novelettes that I really liked enough to nominate, and I’ve got a little time left for reading before the deadline, so please help me out by posting one that blew you away.
These are the ones I’ve read so far:
The Servant, by Emily Devenport
The Great Pan American Airship Mystery, or Why I Murdered Robert Benchley, by David Gerrold
Rattlesnakes and Men, by Michael Bishop
And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead, by Brooke Bolander
The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society, by Henry Lien
Our Lady of the Open Road, by Sarah Pinsker
So Much Cooking, by Naomi Kritzer
Folding Beijing, by Hao Jingfang
Frogheads, by Allen Steele
The Drowned Celestial, by Lavie Tidhar
Planet of Fear, by Paul J. McAuley
A Planet Called Desire, by Gwyneth Jones
Bones of Air, Bones of Stone, by Stephen Leigh
Ruins, by Eleanor Arnason
The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss, by David Brin
Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan, by Ian McDonald
@JJ, I don’t think these novelettes are on your list:
Another Word for World, Ann Leckie
The Ghost Dragon’s Daughter, Beth Bernobich
The Deepwater Bride, Tamsyn Muir
Grandmother-nai-leylit’s Cloth of Winds, Rose Lemberg
Thanks, Cheryl!
I’ve got Future Visions (contains the Leckie), so I’ll go read that. The Bernobich is $1 on Amazon and the Lemberg is free online. Unfortunately, the Muir seems to only be available on a past mag issue.
@JJ: re: novelettes:
I highly recommend the July/August 2015 issue of F&SF, which has two very excellent novelettes in it:
The Body Pirate, by Van Aaron Hughes, is SF with a very weird and cool premise: it’s a society where people have both body and soul, as two distinct entities – that don’t have to stay put together. It’s fresh, plays with style and formatting, and is really powerful. Great read.
The Deepwater Bride, by Tamsyn Muir, has Hester as a young, snarky, jaded seeress – youngest in the Blake line, who predict and then document Lovecraftian horrors visited on the world. Hester is on the spot for another eldritch calamity, when she Makes a New Friend of the girl at the center of the storm. Really really fun, excellently written. Touches of Anathema Device from Good Omens, in the best of ways.
F&SF issue listing: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/toc1507.htm
Amazon digital issue: http://www.amazon.com/Magazine-Fantasy-Science-Fiction-August-ebook/dp/B014TCOWJ4
Standback: Augh! It’s $8! I’d have been willing to do up to $4.
Does anyone have the F&SF July/Aug 2015 issue on Kindle they’d be willing to lend to me (Amazon says it’s Lending Enabled).
@JJ – Unfortunately, the Muir seems to only be available on a past mag issue.
You’re right and the magazine is $7.99, which is pretty steep for a novelette (the rest of the issue is good, but nothing else in it moved me). It’s a fine, atmospheric, Lovecraftian story. Here’s the opening paragraph:
I liked it a great deal, it made my short list and I’d loan it to you, but it’s late and my brain can’t quite navigate the steps for doing so.
ETA: If you can tell me how to lend it to you in words of no more than two syllables (which I just misspelled), it’s all yours, JJ.
@Cheryl:
1. Go to http://www.amazon.com/Magazine-Fantasy-Science-Fiction-August-ebook/dp/B014TCOWJ4 (URLs don’t need syllable counts!)
2. Look for a “Lend” button.
3. JJ needs to give you the email address he uses for Amazon.
Amazon should be able to take you from there.
And if anyone (me) has been wondering why F&SF has been falling behind in award nominations, I think this little sequence is clearly why :-/
(sheds tear for his beloved magazine)
*snort*
E-mail me at xxxxxx, and I’ll send you my real e-mail address.
Go to this URL
https://www.amazon.com/mn/dcw/myx.html?ie=UTF8&ref_=nav_youraccount_myk#/home/content/booksAll/dateDsc/
(on the Menu, it’s “Manage My Content & Devices”).
Find the right issue (search for Fantasy Science Fiction if need be).
There’s a little box with 3 dots … in front of the Title name. Click that, and select “Loan this title”.
Honestly, I shouldn’t be allowed to type after 10pm, since my brain shuts down after that anyway. I actually do know how to lend books on Kindle (I don’t do it often, but, really, I use Amazon solely because its UI is intuitive), what I couldn’t figure out is the email exchange.
Thank you, @Standback and @JJ. I’ve now sent that email and am awaiting a response.
Yay Filerian recommendation team power!
(I live outside the U.S., so I can’t lend things and I was mostly guessing about the process…)
(If File770 puts in effort to lend digital magazines to each other, does that qualify as File Sharing?)
Also, my punctuation and spelling go to hell. Any other loans will have to wait until morning, but my library is available. All but that issue of F&SF, which currently belongs to JJ. 😉
Got it! Thanks much! 🙂
I’ll let you both know tomorrow what I think of the stories.
I respect all the hard work you’ve done this year with collating and writing reviews. Thank you for that.
But the pivot above damages the credibility of that project for me.
We are in total agreement that neither one of those stories are the kind of thing we’d like to see folks nominating for Best Short Story. We are in total agreement that Scalzi’s reaction at the time must be embarrassing for him in retrospect.
However, maybe, even if Chuck Tingle believes, as you indicate you do, that Vox Day is a monster, he (they?) is enough of a libertarian or even old-fashioned liberal to think he can’t pick and choose who endorses or recommends his work. Or maybe he disagrees with you. One of Vox Day’s chief allies is Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay (but conservative) activist who once organized a flash mob to moonwalk at Liverpool Street Station. Even within SFF/SFWA circles, some, for example Lela E. Bulis, who is known for her LGBT-themed speculative fiction, have tried to think outside the box about the conservatives in fandom. Over at Mad Genius Club, there were conservative fans who clearly despise Vox Day, but they nevertheless take strong exception to someone coming in and telling them, in effect, that having already repeated ad nauseum “we have nothing to do with Vox Day” was an insufficiently powerful “denunciation,” should they wish to be welcomed by the Hugo-voting Worldcon community.
I’m not saying I agree with you or agree with any of them. But I think you are at risk of undermining your drive to encourage people to make the Hugos all about the quality of the work, which I wholeheartedly support.
JJ: If you have time for one more, try “Saltwater Railroad” (online at Lightspeed).
When a Scroll loves a Pixel…. (has that been suggested before?)
@JJ & @Cheryl S.: I love seeing Filers helping Files in this modern way. 🙂
@Stoic Cynic: I love Agent to the Stars! Perhaps the first thing I read by Scalzi (or was it OMW?) – I think I downloaded it off his site. Then later bought it.
Brian, I don’t understand what you’re saying here.
Greg’s talking about (potentially) informing Tingle.
The choice of whether or not to accept the nomination would obviously be Tingle’s, not Greg. It’s certainly entirely possible that Tingle would accept the nomination, for any of the reasons you suggested or just because he doesn’t particularly care about the neverending Hugo-Puppy drama.
All Greg’s saying is: the odds that a random Amazon erotica writer even knows about the Puppy campaigns, or, heck, about the Hugos, is quite small. The odds that information might affect his decision is nonzero. It’s something that a whole lot of people feel strongly about, and the likelihood of an author of gay erotica being sympathetic might be pretty high.
Tingle’s work is not being nominated on quality. You know that, I know that, Greg knows that. If Tingle knows that before accepting or rejecting the nomination, I think that would be A Pretty Good Thing.
Keeping to online sources: lots of novelette goodness in Gigantosaurus, my favourite from them might have been Sacred Cows: Death and Squalor on the Rio Grande. I can’t remember if you like Valente, but if you so then The Long Goodnight of Violet Wilde from Clarkesworld.
Yiannopoulos is not a gay activist. Actually, he is very much against gay activism. He is also well-known for his homophobic views.
Okay, I’ve read Ann Leckie’s novelette “Another Word for World”, and it’s going on my nomination list.
It’s really well done — and its real-life parallels with the different cultural (mis)understandings of the definitions of concepts such as “rulers” and “ownership of property”, as they appear in the Treaty of Waitangi, are most interesting.
@JJ: I liked “Another Word for World”, too. It does a really good job with cultural/contextual differences, which always speaks to me 🙂
…and the “Speaker is experiencing stress” messages were a lot of fun 🙂