Pixel Scroll 3/30/16 I Was Thinkin ‘Bout A Pixel That Might Have Scrolled Me, And I Never Knew

(1) BIOPSY REPORT. Some good Kathryn Cramer health news. She posted to her Facebook page, after her Monday brain surgery.

“Tumor biopsied: it is benign.”

(2) MARYLAND WINNER. Andy Duncan is a recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council 2016 Individual Artist Award in the fiction-writing category.

These awards recognize the exceptional artistic achievements of talented artists from across the state.

This year’s IAA awards, totaling $218,000, go to 96 artists working within the disciplines of Creative Non-Fiction/Fiction, Media/Digital/Electronic Arts, Theater Solo Performance, Painting, and Works on Paper.

Selected from more than 585 applicants, the 2016 awardees receive grants for $1,000, $3,000 or $6,000 to honor their achievement and to support further advancement of their career.

Recipient artists’ names are available here.

(3) AUTHORS WHO ARE NOT GETTING PAID. Anna Grace Carpenter writes about — Galaktika Magazine: Theft on a Massive Scale”.

On March 23, 2016, Bence Pintér published an article at Mandiner Magazine regarding numerous stories published by Galaktika Magazine in 2015 – most of them translated and reprinted without the knowledge or consent of the original authors…..

I first became aware of the unfolding story when an author acquaintance on Twitter began urging other authors to check and see if their work had also been stolen and pointed them to the thread at the Absolute Write Water Cooler which in turn linked to a FaceBook post by Sean Wallace (shared by Ellen Datlow) which contained the link to Bence Pintér’s article at Mandiner. There was also a link to the Galaktika website, which I followed and began looking through the bibliography. (Possibly the only word I am able to recognize in Hungarian.)

As I looked through the TOC for monthly magazines, I immediately began to recognize names and I reached out to a couple that I followed on Twitter.

Aliette DeBodard was the first to respond. I asked her about the translation and publication of her short story “Shipbirth” (Asimov’s Feb 2011) that had appeared in the June 2012 issue of Galaktika. She confirmed that it had been published without her consent and she had contacted them when she became aware. That inquiry was apparently ignored – the editor made no attempt to offer compensation for having printed her story, and, from what she can see reviewing the email at the time, did not bother to respond at all….

No one wants to see a magazine disappear, especially in a country with only a couple Hungarian language SF/F markets, but if that publisher is depending on either stealing or otherwise acquiring work for free, I think they are doing more damage than good. Especially now that it’s become apparent that this is not an occasional problem, but habitual theft of intellectual property.

I asked Mr. Pintér if the publisher had responded to the allegations of theft and he said they had declined to comment on the matter during a separate interview. “After that they sent an email, which is in the article. The boss said that “the area of copyrights is a complicated stuff”. Since then no word from them.”

(4) OCCASIONALLY FREE IS OK. Jim C. Hines is not keen on “Working For Exposure”. Ordinarily.

There are exceptions, of course. I’ve written free content for projects I believe in, for friends and people I like, and for the pure fun of it. But if all you’re offering is exposure, I get plenty of that here on the blog. And to be blunt, my time is valuable, and I only have a limited amount. Writing for you takes time that could otherwise go to other projects, or to hanging out with my family, or even to raking up the leaves and sticks in the back yard.

I’m pretty comfortable at this point with the idea that as a writer, I deserve to be paid. (Though I still struggle with interviews sometimes, depending on where the interview is supposed to appear and how much time will be involved.)

But what about non-writing stuff? I’m sometimes asked to speak at schools, or to present at libraries, or do talk about writing at a workshop. What about a half-hour Skype chat with a book club? Or speaking at the local NaNoWriMo kickoff event? …

(5) SIGNAL INTERVIEW. At SF Signal, Carl Slaughter interviews “Professor Tom Greene on Racism, Hard Science, Vampire Literature, and Hard Lessons about Writing”.

But of course none of my students ever believe me, and I was just the same. I spent more than 20 years writing unpublishable stories while vigorously not listening to people who tried to tell me what was wrong.

So around 2006 I finally accepted that it was a problem with my writing and not the publishing industry, which made it possible for me to begin trying to figure out what the problem was. This is where Critters.org was a big help. The revelation (that I’ve mentioned in other places) happened one day when I was critiquing another writer’s story. It wasn’t a bad story. The writing was competent and the central idea was interesting. But I didn’t really care about the character, and the character seemed to be doing things that didn’t make much difference, and I probably wouldn’t have read the story at all if I didn’t have to critique it.

Which, I realized, was exactly like all of my own stories.

So once that happened, I started working systematically on the problem of how to make a story more engaging. Within a couple of years, my stories started getting published.

(6) NINE’S TO BLAME. No wonder it’s been hiding! According to the Independent — “Planet Nine: Mysterious planet is to blame for mass extinctions of life on Earth, scientists claims”.

The mystery of the extinction events that happen every 27 million or so years is an equally long-investigated and mysterious problem. Nobody is really clear why the comets tend to arrive on such an apparently regular schedule — but potential other explanations include a companion star to our own sun or extra risk as we travel through the spiral arms of the Milky Way.

But the new theory suggests that if the idea of the periodic extinctions is true, then it may be that the particular orbit of Planet 9 is to blame. It proposes that as the planet moves around the solar system, it passes through the Kuiper Belt — an area of the outer solar system full of icy objects — every 27 million years, knocking comets towards us and into the inner solar system.

Once they arrive there, they can smash into the Earth and reduce the sunlight getting to us, potentially leading to the extinction events, the researchers claim.

(7) DEALING WITH HB2. North Carolina convention IllogiCon has posted this statement on Facebook.

Given the advent of that atrocious affront to humankind that is HB2, we wanted to make sure all our members would be safe and comfortable in our usual hotel. We reached out to them, and got this lovely response:

“Our bathrooms will be running as normal as years past. You will not expect anything different from the staff at the Embassy Suites regarding bathrooms. If any of your guests feel uncomfortable using our public restrooms they are welcome to use the bathrooms near the pool area. They serve as family style restrooms, have only one stall, and are lockable from the inside. I hope this helps because we love having you with us.”

Pee as thou wilt, people.

*To clarify for those who have never been to illogiCon before, “running as normal” means the hotel does not monitor bathroom use nor does it enforce use of one bathroom over another.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born March 30, 1945 – Eric Clapton. This birthday boy has had his music in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Men in Black.

(9) ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Another trailer from Official Disney.

(10) PRINT IS HERE TO STAY. From his vantage in 1961, The Traveler explains to readers of Galactic Journey why visual media won’t be driving printed sf/f to extinction.

All this hubbub is silly.  There are two reasons why printed sf/f isn’t going anywhere, at least for the next few decades.  The first is that the quality isn’t in the films or television shows.  Sure, there are some stand-outs, like the first season of The Twilight Zone, and the occasional movie that gets it right, but for the most part, it’s monsters in rubber suits and the worst “science” ever concocted.

But the second reason, and this is the rub, is the sheer impermanence of the visual media.  If you miss a movie during its run, chances are you’ve missed out forever.  Ditto, television.  For instance, I recently learned that an episode of Angel (think I Love Lucy, but with a French accent) starred ex-Maverick, James Garner.  I’m out of luck if I ever want to see it unless it happens to make the summer re-runs.

(11) EASTERCON FAN FUND ACTION. Jim Mowatt announced —

Fan funds auction at Eastercon raised 866 pounds to be split equally between Taff and Guff. Many thanks everyone helping at the auction; Kylie Ding, Carrie Mowatt, Fishlifter Claire, James Shields, Douglas Spencer, Fionna o Sullivan, Mary Burns, Anna Raftery. Also all the people who donated things and bought things. The fan funds continue to exist because of you folks.

(12) FUTURE PUPPIES. Brandon Kempner begins to collate his numbers in “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 3”.

Does this estimate tell us anything, or is it just useless fantasizing? I can see people arguing either way. What this does is narrow the range down to something somewhat sensible. We’re not predicting Ann Leckie is going to get 2000 votes for Best Novel. We’re not predicting she’s going to get 100. I could predict 450-800 and then match that against the 220-440 Rabid Puppies prediction. That would tell me Leckie seems like a likely nominee.

We can go destroy this prediction if we make different assumptions. I could assume that the new voters to the Hugos won’t vote in anything like typical patterns, i.e. that they are complete unknowns. Maybe they’ll vote Leckie at a 75% rate. Maybe they’ll vote her 0%. Those extremes grate against my thought patterns. If you know Chaos Horizon, I tend to chose something in the middle based on last year’s data. That’s a predictive choice I make; you might want to make other ones.

(13) RABID POPPINS. Vox Day is a bit touchy about Chaos Horizon’s estimates that Rabid Puppy performance may not be statistically perfect in every way — “Rabid Puppies 2016: updates and estimates”.

I, personally, consider this to be an inadvertent affront. I would be surprised if only 80 percent of the Rabid Puppies could be bothered to show up and nominate….

What Chaos Horizon means by “slate decay” is a simple failure of discipline. Last year, for example, far more Puppies submitted nominations in Best Novel than in other, less important categories or went lone ranger on occasion. And while I can’t see what slate decay could possibly have to do with what is merely a list of recommendations, and by no means a direct order to anyone, least of all the Rabid Puppies, the Sad Puppies, the Ilk, the Dread Ilk, the Vile Faceless Minions, or the Evil Legion of Evil, by their Supreme Dark Lord, I do think one would be remiss were one to fail to fill out the entire nominating ballot.

(14) HOLD ONTO YOUR WALLETS. Twentieth Century Fox announced Alien Day, a global celebration of the Alien franchise on April 26. IGN reports —

The date 4/26 is of course a nod to LV-426, the planet from the Alien films. The day will have nationwide screenings of the movies, the release of never-before-seen products, and the start of the Alien: Ultimate Trivia Challenge, which will allow fans to win prizes every 42.6 minutes on Twitter.

Reebok is releasing the Alien Stomper worn by Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, and the mid tops worn by Lance Henriksen as the Android Bishop.

There will also be a Lieutenant Vasquez and Newt figure from NECA, as well as a Kenner-toy inspired Ellen Ripley figure. More figures come in the form of an Aliens Queen & Power Loader and Ripley set in Funko’s ReAction series.

As for literature, Dark Horse Comics will feature exclusive covers at participating retailers for the ongoing Aliens series, and a deluxe 30th anniversary hardcover version of the original Aliens series from 1986. Meanwhile, Titan Books is launching a brand new novel, Alien: Invasion (The Rage War book 2) by Tim Lebbon.

(15) STRONG SIGNAL. SF Signal’s new Mind Meld, curated by Paul Weimer, delivers “Our Recent Faves from the Lighter Side of the Genre”.

Q: What books have you read, especially recently, that you’d recommend to others as a temporary vacation from the slings and arrows of our current world?

Melinda M. Snodgrass, Sue Burke, Rene Sears, Lyda Morehouse, Mari Ness, Kat Howard, Kelly Robson, Valerie Valdes, Charlie Jane Anders, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Ursula Vernon, Penny Reeve, and Erin Lindsey name those titles.

(16) NEOLOGIZER ROLL CALL. Popular words invented by authors (infographic)” Kate Funk has created a visual that puts together the words coined by authors and used for the first time in their books.

Will R. says, “Who knew Dr. Seuss invented ‘nerd’? Cyberspace is about as scifi as it gets here. Grok would have been a good one to include.”

(17) SPECTRAL POLITICS. Vox Day also is at work on a non-Hugo sekrit projectRelativity and the ideological spectrum – involving a 9-point scale of political figures. Readers were asked to chime in.

One is extreme left, nine is extreme right. The goal is to clarify, not obscure or start arguments, so leave Hitler and anyone else likely to spark debate out of it.

  1. Vladimir Lenin
  2. Karl Marx
  3. Angela Merkel
  4. Bill Clinton
  5. John F. Kennedy
  6. George W. Bush
  7. Ronald Reagan
  8. Thomas Jefferson
  9. Ayn Rand

I have to say, among the readers’ suggestions brentg’s are my favorites, even if he disobeyed the instruction to stop at nine.

  1. brentg

1. Windows 7
2. Windows XP
3. WFW 3.11
4. Windows 2000, sp3+
5. Windows 98 SE
6. Dos622
7. Windows 95
8. Windows98
9. Windows ME
10. Mac

  1. brentg

1. ungoliant
2. morgoth
3. sauron
4. sauraman
5. eol / feanor
6. tom bombadill
7. galadrial
8. gandalf
9. aragorn
10. boromir

(18) SCANNERS. A 1937 letter features in “Otto Binder on John W. Campbell” by Doug Ellis at Black Gate.

The letter is primarily of interest due to its discussion of John W. Campbell, a few months before Campbell would become editor of Astounding. It’s a shame that no more detailed record of the story telling game played at Binder’s house between him, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Campbell and Campbell’s wife exists; it would have been fascinating to sit in on this! Binder is clearly a fan of Campbell’s fiction (later on, when he found it difficult to sell to him at Astounding, he was not nearly as much a fan of his editing).

(19) IT’S ABOUT TIMES. John Scalzi tells about “My New Writing Gig”.

So here’s a cool thing: I, along with nine other folks, am one of the Los Angeles Times’ book section’s “Critics at Large.” This means from time to time in the pages of the Times, I’ll be writing about books, the universe and everything.

(20) DEADPOOL. Tom Knighton received word that a Special Edition Deadpool DVD is in the works. The release is quoted at his site.

I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this.  “Director’s Cut” could be awesome.  Then again, ramping it up to NC-17 could go either way.  Still.

(21) WHEN WINDOWS 95 WAS YOUR FRIEND. At BrainJet, “This Windows 95 Infomercial Stars Two ‘Friends’ And It’s The Best ‘90s Throwback Ever”.

While Microsoft would like to have us believe that it’s the actors “Jen” and “Matty” (Jen’s cutesy little nickname for Matthew Perry) starring in the video, we all know they’re really playing their “Friends” characters “Rachel” and “Chandler” without saying so in case NBC decides to sue. Not only is Aniston rocking the Rachel haircut and primping and fluffing every chance she gets, but Perry plays Chandler to a T, cracking bad joke after bad joke and letting no silence go unfilled. He even refers to the receptionist as the “wicked witch of Windows 95” (one of his better one-liners if you ask us).

 

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Will R., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

191 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/30/16 I Was Thinkin ‘Bout A Pixel That Might Have Scrolled Me, And I Never Knew

  1. Seconding everyone’s kudos to 770.
    I could never have gotten through the nominations without all the book discussions, referrals, links, and occasional fan-squeeing.
    Best thing has been the love people have expressed over the finds they’ve shared here.
    You guys all rock.

  2. Seconding @Lauowolf – y’all rock!

    @Mike Glyer: Thanks in advance for a post where people can share noms if they show choose. It’s gracious of you, and I hope you don’t feel taken for granted. You’re much appreciated!

  3. Mike Glyer on March 31, 2016 at 10:56 pm said:
    Kendall: Happy to do it. I will set the post to go online at midnight.

    So, you are posting the nominations page first thing on April 1st?
    I will resist the urge to just cut and past in the RP slate, because that would be embarrassing.

  4. “So, you are posting the nominations page first thing on April 1st?
    I will resist the urge to just cut and past in the RP slate, because that would be embarrassing.”

    If someone does, Mike could as a return joke change the date of the page to increase the embarrassment. ^^

  5. @ Darren Garrison
    Thanks for the link to Prothero’s blog post. Loved his book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, although it’s been a few years since I read it. I actually have the dead tree edition.

    From his article it seems the consensus has firmed that the Deccan Traps were more than 50% of the cause of the Cretaceous extinctions, although there was some dissent in the comments. The asteroid is a ‘sexier’ explanation and, from my understanding, was still a factor. A big rock slamming into the earth with instant destruction is visuallly and mentally exciting and boogieman scary.

    To my mind, we’d have some chance of diverting an asteroid. If the earth decides to zip open as it did in Siberia 250 million ya or in India 67 million ya, just about our only chance of survival would be to try to leave the planet or maybe burrow underground (a la Jim Henley 😉 At least in that scenario we’d probably have some time to try to invent the technology to try one or the other or both.

    I was initially somewhat intrigued/semi-convinced by the Firestone/West hypothesis on the NA Holocene extinctions, but, yeah, too many ad hoc adjustments, not enough evidence.

  6. @junego: “If the earth decides to zip open as it did in Siberia 250 million ya or in India 67 million ya, just about our only chance of survival would be to try to leave the planet or maybe burrow underground”

    I vote for the Super Stapler Of Salvation, myself. 🙂

  7. Whatever happens with the shortlist, I think we as readers have already won. We all seem to have discovered at least one new thing that we otherwise wouldn’t have, without all this happening.

    (Having said that, I reserve the right to be mightily pissed off if we get swamped with Puppy shit again later on)

  8. Having said that, I reserve the right to be mightily pissed off if we get swamped with Puppy shit again later on

    Well if so we can cling to the knowledge that there’s nothing more likely to help EPH sail through. I remain a little worried that this year there will be a hugely enhanced nominating population which will demonstrate that there’s no need to put in a long term fix.

  9. @NickPheas

    That is a danger, sure. Last year’s business meeting saw arguments that it was just a one-off, too early to tell, etc that could easily be brought back again if increased participation mitigates the damage. On the other hand, we have a clear demonstration that RP isn’t going away to show the continuing problem.
    I suspect that one of the Xanadoh gambits is that a potential failure at the nomination stage can be used to fuel anti-EPH arguments.

  10. I agree that Uprooted is less exciting than many people think, but I wouldn’t actually call it a fairy tale retelling. It takes a situation from a fairy tale as a starting point, but that’s not what the primary plot is about. I was quite surprised when I read it, because the accounts that others had given suggested that the action would take place wholly or mainly within the tower, which it certainly doesn’t.

  11. Andrew M: I agree that Uprooted is less exciting than many people think, but I wouldn’t actually call it a fairy tale retelling. It takes a situation from a fairy tale as a starting point, but that’s not what the primary plot is about. I was quite surprised when I read it, because the accounts that others had given suggested that the action would take place wholly or mainly within the tower, which it certainly doesn’t.

    And it’s by no means simply a retelling of Beauty and the Beast — it’s only distantly related to it. It has some elements from that story, but it also has elements from several other fantasy stories and tropes, and they’re told in a new way.

  12. Whatever happens with the shortlist, I think we as readers have already won.

    That, I think, is the point that most Sad Puppies did not, and most Rabid Puppies still do not, understand. The enjoyment in the Hugos doesn’t come from voting, it comes from reading and enjoying the works before the process even begins. No matter what happens from this point forward, I’ve had a great Hugo year because I read and watched an array of science fiction and fantasy works that gave me a lot of enjoyment. If, for example, the episode of Sense 8 that I nominated doesn’t make it onto the final ballot, that doesn’t diminish how much I liked it.

    Any Pup of either stripe who nominates just based on slate recommendations is behaving unethically, but the person they really harm isn’t me. The only person they are harming is themselves, because they have denied themselves the enjoyment of the works they could have read or watched.

  13. Aaron: The enjoyment in the Hugos doesn’t come from voting, it comes from reading and enjoying the works before the process even begins

    … and arguing with other Filers about which ones are good, bad, or meh… 😉

  14. I would like to echo what others have said here:

    I offer a profound Thank You to all the Filers here who suggested works and talked about their meanings and interpretations, and what they loved or disliked.

    This is by far the most informed I have ever been in nominating for the Hugos, and for that I owe all of you. Because of your comments, I was able to target my reading toward works I was most likely to enjoy — while still being exposed to lots of new authors, styles, cultures, and ideas.

    I am a much richer person for all of this, and for that I thank you.

    I also thank Mike Glyer, whose hard work over the years created a place that not only became the natural focal point for so many SFF fans last year, but is the sort of venue which would keep so many of us coming back to share and interact in our fandom.

  15. So… I entered my nominations and the form said it saved. I didn’t get an email confirmation, though. Not sure whether to worry about this–if the form saved, it saved, yes?

    I want my little voice heard!

  16. @ L
    I’m in the same situation. I mailed to ask, and they said that if my picks were still there the next time I opened the ballot that meant they had saved correctly.

  17. Adding my thanks to Mike Glyer for making this the place it it. Also thanking fellow filers for all the great reads you helped me find.

    Everything was looking like the problem was fixed with my ballot up until my last fix at 20 minutes to closing. Where it again wiped stuff out, duplicated stuff over other things, and made a total mess. I gave up and went to bed. This morning I woke to email confirmations that yep my ballot is wrong. I’m off to be sucked dry by a vamp… I meet nurse. Lots of various blood tests wanted by all 3 doctors I saw this week. Be back later.

    But yay I gave it my all to be a nominator this year. We got further than we ever have in the past. I’m going to count this as a win even if it lost 30-50% of my nominations. LOL

  18. @Tasha

    Oh hell, I’m sorry.

    I wonder if you emailed the con with what you meant to be your final ballot they could fix it? The people I dealt with for an unrelated problem (they kept invoicing me for an attending membership after I’d paid for a supporting) were very understanding and efficient.

  19. For the record, I super-enjoyed Uprooted and put it on my ballot, but thank you all for the love for Bryony!

  20. @L

    The confirmation emails were getting steadily slower and slower, presumably due to server load, so I wouldn’t sweat it – I have about a dozen emails because I worked in stages, some took almost a day to arrive, and I’m sure the backlog from deadline day will be even worse.

    P.S. I think it was you who pointed to the SF Bluestocking read through of Up & Coming a few days ago? I’ve really enjoyed following it, thanks.

  21. Tasha: I second the suggestion that you email them, and suggest including links to the posts where you reported the problems, because they’re dated before the deadline and prove that you’re not just second-guessing yourself.

  22. I was initially somewhat intrigued/semi-convinced by the Firestone/West hypothesis on the NA Holocene extinctions, but, yeah, too many ad hoc adjustments, not enough evidence.

    If you are willing to put some money into a good comedy, you should buy a copy of Firestone’s book The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes (cheap used copies are available on Amazon.) The crazy really comes out in the book.

    Quoting myself from a mailing list from November 2009:

    Okay, a review– so far this impactor has been a 500 mile wide snowflake from the atmosphere of a supernova hitting at hundreds of kilometers per second. It has been an airburst over ice leaving no crater. It has left craters deeper than Death Valley in the Great Lakes. It has caused golden showers and a rain of diamonds that lasted for months. It shotgun-blasted iron particles into the tusks of mammoths. It has been a comet. It has been a chondrite, and all meteorites found by or through Nininger have been debris from it, so it was actually all types of chondrite and everything else Nininger collected. Now, it is an extrasolar lunar meteorite from the future.

    So, to sum it up, this 500 mile 10 mile very low-density metal and stone filled comet-asteroid supernova-produced lunar snowflake that struck at hundreds of kilometers per second did and didn’t produce impact craters and left no marks except for the Great Lakes and thousands of very shallow overlapping, highly oblong pits exactly like craters from an impact event except for craters from an impact event rarely being very shallow, overlapping, highly oblong pits. It killed off all the lost Ice Age fauna at once, except for all of the Ice Age fauna, which went extinct at different times in different locations and spread out over thousands to tens of thousands of years (in some spots pretty darn well timed with the establishment of human populations, coincidence or no.) Oh, and somehow a supernova is still involved.

    That isn’t refining an idea– that is throwing everything you can think of against the wall and hoping that some of it sticks.

    Not all the references (and the snark) make sense out of the context of the time. Just a couple of clarifications. The “golden showers” comment was about a particularly insane claim that much of the precious metals and gemstones in the United States were blasted out of Canada by the impact (that left no crater) and that for months after the impact, “the skies rained precious stone and metals.” (What? That term can mean something else?) Nininger refers to a giant in the field of meteoritics.

    On a related note, I was really disappointed in the ending of You, Me, and the Apocalypse last night.

    Abg whfg gur qbjare “vqragvgl fjnc”, ohg gur hfr bs n yvgreny qrhf rkznpun-vat va fbzrguvat gung pbhyq unir orra cheryl ernyvfgvp jnf nyzbfg nf onq nf gur raq bs Onggyrfgne Tnynpgvpn. Naq gur “rirelbar fheivivat n znwbe cynar penfu rffragvnyyl haunezrq, fgvyy fvggvat va gurve frngf” cneg jnf rira zber vzcynhfvoyr naq vafhygvat gb gur vagryyvtrapr bs gur nhqvrapr guna Zbfrf 2.0 cnegvat gur Gunzrf. (Naq “cnegvat n evire” znxrf rira yrff frafr culfvpnyyl guna cnegvat n frn.)

    Gur pbzrg sentzragf uvggvat gur Rnegu synzvat nyy gur jnl qbja naq znxvat rkcybfvir oynfgf jrer nf haernyvfgvp nf nal zbivr/GI qrcvpgvba–fznyy pbzrg/nfgrebvq sentzragf ernpuvat gur fhesnpr jvgu pbfzvp fcrrq naq pnhfvat rkcybfvbaf (juvpu nyzbfg arire unccraf–sbe n fcrpvny rkprcgvba, tbbtyr Pnenapnf zrgrbevgr.) Nf sbe gur onq raqvat, gurer vf ab ernfba gung gur furygre qbbe arrqf gb erznva pybfrq nsgre gur vavgvny ngzbfcurevp oynfg sebag cnffrf ol. Vs Zbfrf 2.0 naq Qlvat Uhfonaq fheivirq gung, gurer jbhyq or ab ernfba ng nyy gung gurl fvzcyl pbhyqa’g bcra gur qbbe naq yrg gurz vafvqr (nffhzvat gung gurl qb unir fbzr bgure jnl gb rkvg, jvgubhg juvpu gurl ner nyy genccrq va gurve gbzo naljnl.)

  23. Thanks for the reassurances… Tasha, I hope you can get that sorted out! Seems a shame that all your effort would be wasted. I hope many people don’t report problems.

    @Mark, yes, that was me. Glad to be of help!

  24. Adding my voice to the chorus: Thank you Mike Glyer for hosting File770 & the Filers who help make this a terrific community & a fun hangout.

  25. @all
    Thanks for the advice to email about my ballot problems. I’ll do so ever the weekend attaching copies of various confirmations which show really screwed up info. Thanks for the support it means the world to me.

    After giving 6-8 vials of blood, taking multiple Xanax, and Percocet for the pain from being out and about today I’m not sure I would be fully coherent today.

  26. A sincere and heartfelt thanks to Sir Glyer, whose hosting and continual posting gave me a new community and a new project. And thanks to all those who recommended things, especially Doctor Science for artists and J.J. for novellas and novellettes (the last two categories I finalized.)

  27. @ Rev. Bob
    I vote for the Super Stapler Of Salvation, myself. 🙂

    Maybe the Zipper Pull of Preservation? Not as alliterative, though, but whatever works. ;^}

    @ Tasha Turner
    Good idea to avoid trying to communicate with Percocet on board (says the voice of experience). Rest, feel better, deal with MidAmericon when you’re head is clear and you have more spoons.

    @ Darren Garrison
    You know waaaay too much about waaay too many crazy theories. Do you collect them? I used to participate at a usenet newsgroup called TalkOrigins. We got a lot of the cray-cray there! So I’ll pass on this book recommendation. :-9

    @ Mike Glyer and all the Filers
    Jumping on the fanwagon. Thank you, Mike, for having this place and letting us visit it and all your hard work. Thanks to all the Filers for the recommendations, opinions, respectful disagreements, trivia and fun. I just completed my first Hugo nominations and it probably wouldn’t have happened without all of you!!

  28. @junego:

    Completely made-up statistics prove conclusively that alliteration improves the effectiveness of any superscientific gizmo by at least 37.8%.

  29. @ Rev. Bob
    Completely made-up statistics prove conclusively that alliteration improves the effectiveness of any superscientific gizmo by at least 37.8%.

    I knew that! But, referencing the same sources you have, any use of the letters “q”, “x” or “z” ups effectiveness by an additional 15%! I win?!? Wait, were we in competition there?

    Tell you what, when/if there’s a geological unzippering I’ll start on one end with my gizmo and you start on the other end with yours. (If we can get video of it, we’d be youtube superheroes. There’s an ambition. ;-9

  30. @Ultragotha
    I’ve added the address as a note so I’ll have it this weekend when I work my way through what my ballot should have had versus what the database did.

    I’ve also kept notes on all the questions that came up here on what was being asked in the various fields and other issues we had. I will be posting that list here to get feedback before I pass it along to Worldcon 75 so hopefully filling out the nominations will be easier.

  31. Catching up a bit. Let me add my appreciation for this blog and community, which kept me working on the Hugos this year, and to the multiple other extremely useful sites I found out about through reading here. I have nominated casually in the past, but I did a lot better this year. I’m still not in the 80 books per year category (I reread too much for that), but I took to heart the advice that you don’t need to be doing that to nominate – you just need to have read some good stuff. I spent more time on the short fiction because I was able to get more of it read. And yes, it was fun, and I want to keep doing it.

    Has anyone else read our wombat’s The Raven and the Reindeer? Also the second Hamster Princess book, The Tomato Thief (novelette), and Razorback (short story)? I think those are all 2016 pubs, but I’ve been wrong before.

  32. @Tasha: Good luck getting your ballot sorted! (And best wishes for the upcoming tests and surgery too, of course)

  33. @jonesnori: both “The Tomato Thief” and “Razorback” are on my list for next year’s nominations. The Raven and the Reindeer is in my Kindle app but I haven’t got to it yet.

  34. @jonesnori/Lenore Jones
    I have The Raven and the Reindeer On my TBR to be read soon now that I’m moving on to 2016 books from 2015 reading.

    @Oneiros
    Thanks I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

  35. @David & Tasha, I liked it a lot. Obviously based on the Snow Queen story, with humor and heart, and a wonderful romantic twist. I loved it.

  36. Welp, finally received one of those Yer Ballot emails – the only one I’ve gotten – and they ended up blanking everything after the Short Story.
    Sigh.
    As of 11:45 on the 31st, my final update, I had a full ballot all the way down on the page with the red notices about your ballot.
    I sent off an immediate reply to that email, and now will figure out where else to go complain, see if it can be rectified.
    I’m wondering how many other people this has effected?

  37. I haven’t yet gotten my final email, with the revisions from 3/31. I’ll watch for it. Disheartened to hear that some people’s ballots were munged.

  38. Pretty fast response:

    We hit an issue (possibly due to how loaded the server was at the end) that is causing a severe delay in the e-mail receipts that got sent out each time you hit “save” on your ballot. The e-mail you have currently is from early in your editing, we expect you’ll eventually receive all the receipts and will see that by the final receipt all your nominations will be present.

    We apologize for any confusion this e-mail delay has caused.

    Dave McCarty – Hugo Administrator
    MidAmeriCon II

    So I’m in wait-and-see mode now.

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