(1) WAX TREK. The Orange County Register’s Keith Sharon should get a Pulitzer Prize for the first line of his article “$80,000 later, why this trio gave up their ‘Star Trek’ wax figures, Enterprise replica”:
Mr. Spock’s head cooled in a wooden crate for 10 years before someone noticed something was wrong.
Equally good is the rest of the article — about the fate of the wax Star Trek crew since the defunct Movieland Wax Museum sold its exhibits in 2006.
Steve and Lori had 24 hours to decide whether they wanted to pay about $40,000 for Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Uhura, Dr. McCoy, Chekov and Scott. Or they could buy just one, or just a few.
They went to Don Jose’s restaurant and had margaritas over dinner. They knew other people wanted to buy the individuals in the crew. One guy wanted to put Spock in a bar. Another guy wanted to put Captain Kirk in his house. So they decided to buy them all, to keep the crew together. They made it their mission to save the crew of the Enterprise.
“Let’s protect them,” Steve told Lori.
“We took them home and put them in our dining room,” Lori said.
That’s when it got weird. Steve couldn’t stand the life-like eyes looking at him all the time.
“We put paper bags over their heads,” Steve said.
Steve Greenthal puts on the head of his Captain Kirk wax figure at the Fullerton Airport before donating them to the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum on Saturday, March 25, 2017. The figures were purchased when the Movieland Wax Museum went out of business. (Photo by Nick Agro, Orange County Register/SCNG)
(2) NOT ENOUGH HAMMER. Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology for The Guardian and finds it very well-written but wanting in some ways:
Gaiman plays down the extreme strangeness of some of the material and defuses its bleakness by a degree of self-satire. There is a good deal of humour in the stories, the kind most children like – seeing a braggart take a pratfall, watching the cunning little fellow outwit the big dumb bully. Gaiman handles this splendidly. Yet I wonder if he tries too hard to tame something intractably feral, to domesticate a troll.
… What finally left me feeling dissatisfied is, paradoxically, the pleasant, ingratiating way in which he tells it. These gods are not only mortal, they’re a bit banal. They talk a great deal, in a conversational tone that descends sometimes to smart-ass repartee. This chattiness will be familiar to an audience accustomed to animated film and graphic narrative, which have grown heavy with dialogue, and in which disrespect is generally treated as a virtue. But it trivialises, and I felt sometimes that this vigorous, robust, good-natured version of the mythos gives us everything but the very essence of it, the heart.
(3) FROM BUFFY TO BATGIRL. Joss Whedon is in talks to do a Batgirl movie says The Hollywood Reporter.
Whedon is in negotiations to write, direct and produce a Batgirl stand-alone movie for Warner Bros., adding another heroine to the studio’s DC cinematic universe.
Warner Bros. Pictures president Toby Emmerich will oversee the project, along with Jon Berg and Geoff Johns….
Batgirl will be the second female superhero stand-alone in Warner Bros. DCU (Wonder Woman will hit theaters on June 2). Whedon has long been credited as a pioneering voice for female-focused genre fare, having created the hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer two decades ago.
(4) DIETZ ESTATE SALE. Over 300 sf/f collectible books and other items from Frank Dietz’ are for sale on eBay. Dietz passed away in 2013.
He was chairman of the first 14 Lunacons, and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2007 Lunacon. His activities as “Station Luna,” an effort to record the proceedings of many World SF Conventions, continued for many years. He recorded events at the 1951 Worldcon in New Orleans.
(5) WOTF IN TOWN. Ron Collins reports on Day 2 of the annual Writers of the Future Workshop.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” Andrew Peery told me during a break after the opening session. He meant it in a good way. Peery, from North Carolina, is the 4th quarter first prize winner. The group had just walked through the Author Services Hall of Writers and been given a presentation of past judges throughout the contest’s history. People here have asked me how things have changed in the 18 years since my last visit. One thing that’s different is that the list of judges has gotten a little longer and a little more prominent. It’s very cool to think about.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of the workshop.
“Our goal in this workshop is to help you train yourself to be a professional writer,” Dave Farland said in his opening remarks. He and Tim [Powers] then covered several topics, focusing on things like how to develop writerly habits, how stories are structured, and how to create and use suspense. And that was just before lunch. Along the way the two of them did a little brotherly bickering about the speed with this things should be done. “If you’re here, we already know you’re good,” Dave said. “But now we want to help you think about producing that good work more quickly.” Tim, followed that up with: “My first drafts take forever and are never any good.” Then he explained why that was just fine by him. I’ve seen that before, but, yeah, it holds up on second viewing! It’s always great to see how creativity is different for two such high-caliber artists.
Other authors have written about Day 1 and Day 3.
(6) EGYPT IN SF. Tim Powers was recently interviewed by Rachel Connor and described his preparation.
Rachel: I was first introduced to your work when I read The Anubis Gates, a historical fiction with time-travel, Victorian corruption and ancient Egyptian folklore. Can you tell us a little about your approach to historical fiction? What is it about a certain period of time that intrigues you?
Tim: A novel for me generally starts with something I stumble across in recreational non-fiction reading. I’ll notice some peculiarity — like Edison working on a phone to talk to dead people with, or Albert Einstein going to a séance — and I’ll start to wonder if a story might not be built around what I’m reading.
If I come across another oddity or two — like Edison’s last breath being preserved in a test tube in a museum in Michigan, or Einstein turning out to have had a secret daughter who disappears from history in 1902 — I’ll decide that this isn’t recreational reading after all, but research for a book.
For The Anubis Gates, it was a note in one of Lord Byron’s letters. He said that several people had recognized him in London at a particular date in 1810, when at that time he was in fact in Turkey, very sick with a fever.
I wondered how he might have a doppelganger, and started reading all about Byron, and his doctor in Turkey, and London at the time, looking for clues
(7) EVERY JOT AND TITTLE. Tom Easton and Michael Burstein’s collaborative short story “Sofer Pete” has been published in Nature
The visitors were crowded against one wall of bookcases, facing a large table on which was stretched a long piece of parchment. An inkwell filled with black ink sat off to the side. A hand holding a traditional goose-quill pen moved over the parchment, leaving rows of Hebrew characters behind it more quickly than a human hand ever could.
Because the hand did not belong to a human. The gleaming metal hand belonged to a humanoid robot seated on the other side of the table. Its name was Pete.
(8) THANKS DAD! Most people know Joe Hill’s father is Stephen King. Here’s what happened when young Joe turned to him for advice….
In the late 1990s I asked my Dad how to write a cover letter for my short fiction submissions. He was glad to help out. pic.twitter.com/BV5x7qbjqf
— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) March 30, 2017
(9) “EVERY WINDOW’S A SEAT”. How much will people pay to be in space for a few minutes? “Jeff Bezos just revealed a mock-up of the spacecraft his rocket company will use to take tourists into space”.
Each launch will rocket a handful of wealthy tourists more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth on a roughly 11-minute trip.
Near the top of a high arc, the rocket will detach from the space capsule, which will fall toward the ground, granting passengers about four minutes of weightlessness and letting them take in an incredible view of the fringes of our planet’s outer atmosphere.
(10) GHOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST. The BBC says the animated Ghost in the Shell was good, but the live-action is better.
The Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell isn’t just one of the most acclaimed science-fiction cartoons ever made, it’s one of the most acclaimed science-fiction films, full stop. Conceptually and visually breathtaking, Mamoru Oshii’s cyberpunk detective flick bridged the gap between analogue blockbusters and digital ones, between Blade Runner and The Terminator, with their cyborgs and androids, and The Matrix and Avatar, with their body-swaps and virtual realities. The makers of The Matrix, in particular, were happy to acknowledge that they were following in Oshii’s future-noir footsteps.
The question is, then, is it worth bothering with a belated live-action version? Considering that the cartoon is now a cult classic, and that several other films have taken its innovations and run with them, can a mega-budget Hollywood remake have anything of its own to offer? The answer to both questions is a definite yes.
(11) RELAUNCH. First reuse of a SpaceX recoverable booster — NPR reports:
SpaceX launched a communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a rocket stage that has already been to space and back. SpaceX is betting that this kind of recycling will lower its costs and revolutionize space flight.
(12) NOT FIVE? At the B&N Sci-FI & Fantasy Blog, Corinna Lawson shares the four rules that tell her “How to Know When It’s Okay to Read a Series out of Order”.
- When the character arcs are resolved by book’s end
In Sins of Empire, there are three leads, and all set out on emotional journeys that are fully resolved by book’s end.
Meanwhile, ASoIaF readers are still waiting to see what happens via-à-vis Jamie Lannister’s redemption arc, whether the Khaleesi will ever seize her birthright, if Tyrion’s suffering will amount to anything, or if Jon Snow will ever stop flailing about and realize who and what he is.
In Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice, a young man who dreams of being a soldier finds more than he bargained for, and, at the end, his journey has a resolution, despite a fair dozen books that follow.
But Bishop’s Others, series, well, readers have been waiting for four books to see what happens with Simon and Meg, and though their patience is rewarded, it took four other books to get there.
(13) REVIEW HAIKU. Aaron Pound begins with a 17-syllable plot summary, then goes on to tell why he loved Kelly Sue DeConnick’s graphic story Pretty Deadly, Vol. 1: The Shrike.
Full review: I must confess that I obtained this book almost solely because it was written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, and at this point I am pretty much willing to at least take a look at anything she writes. Pretty Deadly not only met the high expectations I have for work from DeConnick, it exceeded them. This is, quite bluntly, mythic storytelling that manages to be both epic in scale and simultaneously intensely personal. Told via a combination of tight and brilliant writing from DeConnick and stunningly beautiful and evocative artwork from Emma Rios, this story presents a violent and visceral enigma shrouded in mystery wrapped up in magic, gunfights, and swordplay.
(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER THOU SHALT COUNT. This is a public service announcement from N.K. Jemisin.
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847085088512847872
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847085668283142145
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847086270694260736
(15) KORSHAK COLLECTION. An exhibit from “The Korshak Collection: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature” will be on display April 10-May 16 at the Albin O Kuhn Library and Gallery on the University of Maryland Baltimore County campus. The collection, now owned by Stephen Korshak, was started by his father Erle Korshak, past Worldcon chair and founder of the imprint Shasta Publishers, and has its own impressive website.
Truly a vision of the fantastic, this exhibition is an amazing exploration of both illustrative art and the evolution of the visual landscape of science fiction and fantasy literature. Featuring work by both American and European artists and spanning more than a century, these vivid illustrations bring to life adventures, beings, and worlds conjured in novels such as Don Quixote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Tarzan, and pulp magazines including Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, and Wonder Stories. Accomplishing far more than simply guiding readers in their explorations of new and sometimes bizarre realms, the range and impact of these illustrations is far-reaching.
The exhibition will also include books, pulp magazines, and other items drawn from UMBC’s Rosenfeld Collection, revealing how the illustrations in the Korshak Collection were meant to appear when encountered as artifacts of material culture.
(16) BEYOND ORWELL. The 2084 Kickstarter has funded. The collection —
features 11 stories from leading science fiction writers who were all asked the same question – what will our world look like 67 years from now? The anthology features new and exclusive stories from:
Jeff Noon, Christopher Priest, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Aliya Whiteley, David Hutchinson, Cassandra Khaw, Desirina Boskovich, Anne Charnock, Ian Hocking, and Oliver Langmead.
(17) BOOKS WERE SOLD. This is John Scalzi’s executive summary of The Collapsing Empire’s first week:
So, in sum: Top selling science fiction hardcover in the US, second-best-selling audio book in the US, my highest debut on the USA Today bestseller list, and a TV deal.
That’s a pretty good week, y’all.
Fuller details at the post.
(18) JURY CALL. The Shadow Clarke Jury continues to review its Clarke Award picks.
I put this novel on my shadow shortlist after reading the opening chapters on Amazon, because I was fascinated by the premise: the seemingly inexplicable overnight irruption of masses of full-grown trees into our familiar world. I said, when I explained my choices, that I was intrigued because it reminded me somewhat of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, in which the world is transformed, first by meteors, which cause mass blindness, and then by the apparently coordinated escape of the triffids, seizing the opportunities afforded by this new blindness. I was curious to see how much The Trees might be in conversation with Triffids more than half a century on.
De Abaitua wrote one of the most complex and difficult novels from 2015, If Then, and I still find myself wondering about it at random times. I was so taken by that strange novel about an algorithmic society in decay—a novel that feels so uneven on the surface, yet so complete in substance—I couldn’t articulate my thoughts well enough to write a decent review. Since then, The Destructives has been on my “most anticipateds” list. Placed on a Clarke award shortlist only once before, for The Red Men in 2008, de Abaitua was unaccountably left off the list for If Then in 2016. The Destructives is the latest piece in this abstract thematic series and, given its scope, it seems primed to make up for last year’s Clarke snub.
Any work of fiction is a formal exercise in the controlled release and withholding of information. What is withheld and for how long is a key element in how we read the work and even how we classify it. To give an obvious example, in a detective story in the classical mode it is essential that the identity of the killer is withheld until the last page, the structure of the novel is therefore dictated by the need to steadily release information that leads towards this conclusion without actually pre-empting it. How successful the novel is depends upon the skill with which this information is managed. If too much is given away so that readers can guess whodunnit too early, the work is adjudged a failure; similarly, if too little is revealed so that the denouement comes out of the blue, it is seen as a cheat and again the work fails.
In a recent article for the Guardian, ‘How to build a feminist utopia’, Naomi Alderman briefly sets out some pragmatic measures for helping pave the way to a world in which genitals, hormones and gender identification don’t matter because ‘everyone gets to be both vulnerable and tough, aggressive and nurturing, effortlessly confident and inclusively consensus-building, compassionate and dominant’. Among suggestions such as trying to establish equal parenting as the norm and teaching boys to be able to express their emotions, she also proposes teaching every girl self-defence at school from the age of five to sixteen. In effect, this is what happens in The Power when it becomes apparent that a generation of teenage girls across the world have developed the capacity to emit electric shocks. The only difference is that this doesn’t just allow the girls to defend themselves against male violence but instead enables them to become the aggressors.
(19) STATUARY GRIPE. Copied to Twitter, a grumpy letter to the editor from a “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” type about a proposed Terry Pratchett statue.
I am delighted Mr Eric G Hart is in the minority and does not speak for the people of Salisbury. #GNUTerryPratchett #SpeakHisName pic.twitter.com/wTkHIUkWbZ
— Terry Pratchett ???? ???? (@terryandrob) March 30, 2017
(20) TV IS COMING. HBO’s latest series promo, Game of Thrones Season 7: Long Walk.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, rcade, Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, David K.M.Klaus, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]
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@Jack Lint: Once the pixel is scrolled, Mr File is no longer your friend. Nice. OTOH, re optioning, there’s (a) money, (b) the chance to work with “really good people” — getting the red-carpet treatment, even for a few days, means a little more than just making one’s mother happy — and (c) the way they’d be kicking themselves if they said nothing and the media version actually happened but didn’t get enough viewers.
@John Lorentz: Some of us kicked the TV habit a long time ago.
It’s more than a little awkward, but if anyone wants to play Ms. Pac-Man on a map based around the area supposedly containing Pratchett’s local, you can do so here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.0300925,-1.9468899,18z/data=!1e3
You just need to click the little Pac-Man icon at the bottom left of the map. I think this will work until 04/02/2017 (or 02/04/2017 to some Filers).
Breaking news; Rainn makes Mudd.
Interesting discussion of dystopia, déjà doom
https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/when-real-life-emulates-dystopia-it-isnt-a-good-sign/
@Jack Lint:
I learned about “development hell” from Fortune and Glory by Brian Michael Bendis. So I don’t get excited when things get optioned.
(I remember being astounded that the Watchmen movie actually happened.)
That being said, great news for Mr. Scalzi.
@ Steve W.: I have never spelled “installments” that way, nor seen anyone else I know do so, nor is the squiggly red line showing up here as I type. I suggest that this is a glitch somewhere rather than a widely-accepted Americanism.
@ John L.: I certainly don’t, and given where it came from that’s no surprise.
@ John S. Thank you for making that point.
Does anyone recall who created the saying about options, “It’s like they give you a big check and a puppy…and after a [period of time] they shoot the puppy.” The only Google hit I can find on the relevant key phrases is a couple years ago in RedWombat’s LJ where I asked a similar question (i.e., “I’m trying to remember who it was who said something along the lines of, “Having a book optioned is like being handed $1000 and a puppy…and after two years they shoot the puppy.””)
I know I got it from somewhere, but damned if I can remember where.
*eyes remains of potluck booze spread from the other weekend’s gamer party*
*considers whether “one shot of each” constitutes a legitimate appertainment choice*
Fortune and Glory is great. It’s also a good example because while Bendis got a big check and did a comic on the experience, the movie was never made. (Let me go check IMDB. Yup.) OTOH, he got an introduction to scriptwriting for Hollywood.
I keep thinking of when Image Comics was the hot thing and all the Image creators were optioning their comics. I remember Rob Liefeld optioned a title to Steven Spielberg that I don’t think he ever published. I’m not sure what we’ve gotten out of all that other than Spawn. (Walking Dead was an Image title, but it came much later after the company had changed direction several times.) There was The Maxx. That was kinda cool.
Happy scrolls for happy pixels.
Thankfully sometimes things do make it out of development hell, checked out the IMDB entry for Altered Carbon recently and it looks like they’ve got a fairly full cast now.
Getting to the office this week has meant skirting bits of Edinburgh’s Old Town that are being used to shoot footage for Avengers Infinity War including the station, Cockburn Street and Royal Mile.
Can’t say all big sprawling series are bad. I’ve enjoyed many, and I love many authors who build up complex future histories telling many stories in them. Others I’ve given up on as they sagged and meandered.
Iiiiiiih! I’ve ordered a new kitten!!
Heather Rose Jones: Google Ngram comes up with nothing for the part of the phrase “they shoot the puppy” so no help there.
@Hampus
I think you’ll find that the kitten has ordered you.
Darren Garrison: That’s wonderfully bad….
kathodus: Not your fault, but I tried to play, and it said my browser did not support the game, and recommended I download Chrome.
@Hampus
Iiiiiiih! I’ve ordered a new kitten!!
Congrats. Any particular breed, or from a shelter?
@Mike Glyer – That’s too bad. Strangely enough, now that I’m at my work computer, I don’t even see the option to play the game.
A Bengal!
Pictures of new kitteh!
http://leopardette.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/1/9/45198315/img-7911.jpg
http://leopardette.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/1/9/45198315/img-8122.jpg
http://leopardette.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/1/9/45198315/img-7910.jpg
That’s a TINY kitten. Who can’t decide whether to be striped or spotted….
How adorable!
Is there a name yet?
@ Hampus: My squee is hypersonic!
Nope, not yet.
What a little cutie!
@Hampus
Ooo, what a pretty baby! He or she?
He!
@2: Just how strange/tragic does Le Guin want these stories to be? Her discussion is more demanding than Michael Dirda’s (which regards Gaiman’s stature as a problem), and Andrew Findley seems to find the stories quite adequately dark. de gustibus….
@Hampus: that’s the strangest name for a cat since NESFA decreed that someone’s was recognized to be named “Not Yet” (“nyet” for short).
Cute kitty, though.
@Hampus,
That’s a beauty. My friends just got a couple. I understand that Bengal kittens have to be handled regularly so they get used to it. Because they are so close to the wild cat, there is a tendency to go a bit “feral” otherwise.
What an adorable kitten!
It just occurred to me that kittens and puppies are two subjects that guarantee a lot of discussion here.
Clip Hitchcock:
http://lipnews.com/site/wp-content/uploads/cat-named-help.jpg
She doesn’t want them to be strange or tragic, she wants them to be nihilistic.
Her view of the Norse myth cycle is that it’s about gods created out of nothing for no reason, who fight against violent, inimical forces all around them and eventually lose. It’s a harsh view of life, but one probably well-suited to that culture, who had a lot more to struggle against than, say, the Greeks, with their much more hospitable climate.
What she’s saying is that Neil did a very nice job with the myths, but it misses what she sees as the heart of the whole thing, replacing it with a pleasant sense of comedy and whimsy. It’s all very skillfully done, but she’d have liked a bit more of a sense of a hostile, meaningless world and a yawning abyss.
I think that’s a pretty good take on the Norse myths. I like the playful fun of many of the myths as we know them (which, as she points out, are all from the translations of other cultures), but that harshness and fatalism is pretty central, too.
Soon Lee:
I buy from a well-known breeders collective where all kittens are trained to be used to cars, to be walked in a harness, used to kids, dogs, getting their claws trimmed, are well socialized and so on.
Kurt Busiek:
I find that a bit weird. I’ve never seen the norse gods as nihilistic. I see them as hardworking, caring and prone to practical jokes. Also, people who don’t back out of a fight, win or lose. Ragnarok is not tragic at all. It is well established that it is an honour to die in battle. The important thing is not that you won, but that you fought and never gave up.
Well, ultimately, I’m not sure what’s to say about that beyond that she sees it a lot more harshly.
I find a lot to like in her view of it all — I like what Neil did, too, and I like the Marvel take on it (well, I like Kirby’s and Simonson’s take, and a few others) — but I think she grounds her argument in the material well.
In the comments, someone named (I think) Tomgar had some interesting comments about how “nihilistic” isn’t the right word, and that was an interesting discussion, too.
Still haven’t read Gaiman’s take, but I did reread D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths (née D’Aulaire’s Norse Gods & Giants) recently, and Gaiman will have some big shoes to fill. I look forward to his interpretation.
@Hampus,
Good! I’ve been reading about them recently.
Neither Kirby or Simonson for me. They didn’t even feel like a parody, more like those pictures of Jesus on a dinosaur. Not until the Ultimate Thor did it feel like anything I could relate to.
Oh, here comes a bit of ramble. Tried to put some thoughts into writing, but it wasn’t that easy…
The problem is this thing with source material, because as a swede, the source material is expanded to an overall cultural context and tied to a nationalism. I mean, these are our gods. We might not worship them, but they still feel like ours. And that means that we will not think of these as tragic or nihilistic. No, our gods are gods we will like and be proud of, otherwise why would we have them as gods?
And we do not read those myths as standalone. We interpret them in context to our culture as it evolved afterwards. Struggles of the peasants, our national values and so on.
So for us it becomes weird when we read foreign takes where they might be interested in the myths and maybe are extremely knowledgeable about the vikings, but the rest could as well be a void. I read Le Guin and sees that she thinks it is “a religion deeply strange to us”. But for me it is as familiar as christianity and as many of our cultural values comes from that culture as from the christian culture. Or I have been taught to believe so anyhow.
So while I have no idea of how well Gaimans book will standup, I feel alienated by Le Guin’s interpretation as it is not tied to the culture I live in.
End of ramble. Hope it was understandable in some way.
Kurt Busiek:
And thank you for pointing out the comment section. Someone there says that “stoic” would be a better word than “nihilistic”. I absolutely agree.
UKLG has a point — the Norse gods are a pantheon that struggle hard and are guaranteed to lose and die. It isn’t what I personally look for in a god; I can struggle and die just fine by myself, I want my supreme beings to at least be immortal.
@Hampus Eckerman (re cat link): now that’s just … stupid. (My partner acquired a cat commonly called “Stupid” (formally “Teal”, but he came out of a pound so she didn’t get to evaluate him nearly as thoroughly as you did). When he escaped from her apartment, on the edge of a large university whose year was just starting, walking around the neighborhood yelling “Stupid?” invariably got a response from one of the many teams moving in.)
@Kurt Busiek: interesting (especially from the suggestion in comments); I have enormous responct for Le Guin as a writer, but there are times I feel she’s imposing her own worldview on somebody else’s — or just making much out of nothing. (I remember being stunned when she spoke well of Close Encounters; I can understand her \preferring/ it to SW (IV), but CE was just dumb.)
@Hampus (re Norse myths): to what extent are the gods of the Eddas your ]ancestral[ gods? IIUC most of the material the stories are drawn from was written by an Icelander centuries after most of Scandinavia was converted to Christianity, giving both distance and distortion. Gods mutate as they move; IIRC the Romans’ pantheon’s behaviors don’t line up with the Greeks’ even though they’re commonly name-paired. More relatedly, consider the common anthropological belief that Tir was originally (i.e., early first millennium CE) the top god rather than Odin, or the modern-era representation of Loki as a god of fire (despite the fact that in the standard legends he lost a contest against Fire). I’m fascinated by modern Swedes being proprietary towards more-or-less-displaced gods; I wonder whether there are any Greeks who feel the same way? Conversely, how do Swedes feel about the Marvel whitewashing of Thor (the you-have-to-be-worthy-to-wield-the-hammer schtick) versus his original slow thuggishness?
@Hampus Eckerman: Let me be the Nth to say yay, congrats on your upcoming ruler, I mean, kitten! 😀 And OMG cute BTW!
@Various: Best take on Wagner’s take on the Norse gods/myths is Anna Russell’s, of course. 😉 Not that anyone asked. /tangent
Clip Hitchcock:
I can only say that it is an emotional connection. Not a rational. So arguing with rationality won’t get you very far. 😛
I find that part extremely irritating. The reason that Tor can wield the hammer is that he is strong, not some weirdness about being worthy. That is Kinf Arthur, not Thor.
And don’t get me started on Thor being a title and not a name…
Catching up after a long week at work:
@Jack Lint
I remember reading various creators talking about how they had optioned something and they were working with great people and they had some cool ideas about how they could adapt their book/comic/story to the big screen and how the studio was really enthusiastic and….
Still waiting for the Santiago movie. “Basis for the upcoming major motion picture” 30 years and counting…
@Hampus Eckerman
Congrats on the kitten! One of our cats is a Bengal cross. Very intelligent but a sometimes a handful too.
#NorseGods
I’m not sure nihilistic or stoic really fit my understanding (loose as it may be). I’m falling short on the right word but however you’d describe the ending of The Worm Ouroboros would be a better fit I think.
In Sweden we would say that they are full of Jävlaranamma. And that is a good word for it.
Still waiting for that Doc Savage sequel we were promised 42 years ago. Same for the Buckaroo Banzai sequel which is about 33 years late. Beginning to think promises of sequels at the end of the original movies don’t count for anything.
I hear we might yet get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, so that’s something.
@Jack Lint:
I’ve long since given up on Doctor Detroit 2: The Wrath of Mom.
Hampus, I am so envious. That is one cute overlord you’ve got there.
My friend had a gorgeous Bengal which unfortunately had to be rehomed when they moved to another country. It was the most lovely-natured cat, and I tried to integrate it with my two cats, but one of them was not having any of it and started peeing on the bed. After a couple of weeks of continually doing laundry almost every day (with a duvet that had to be taken to the laundromat, which had large washers and dryers), I finally had to give up. The Bengal went to another friend, integrated well with an existing cat, and is happy to this day.
That cat is how I found out that Bengals love water. Whenever my friend turned on a tap in a sink or bathtub, the cat was immediately there to play with the water.
Congratulations! I look forward to stories of adventures with your new master.
/feline-stalk!
Aren’t the Norwegians, Danes, and especially Icelanders allowed to claim the Norse gods? I mean, they’re not the Swedish gods. Heck, there are a lot of guys running around Scotland with names beginning with “Tor”.
@Chip: Indeed, the Roman versions of the gods, despite the usual one-to-one matching up with the Greek versions, are quite a bit different. While Ares was just Mr. Thug War God, Mars was a war god AND the founding father, plus a god of agriculture.
@Kendall: Anna Russell’s take on ANYTHING was the best.
@Hampus
I totally understand what you mean and indeed I often have similar feelings.
Debates about cultural appropriation usually focus on non-European cultures, since they suffered the most from the phenomenon. But European culture and mythology is not immune from appropriation and clueless portrayals and for those of us who grew up with these stories, these clueless portrayals can be deeply irritating, especially if they crowd out the stories as we know them, as Hollywood portrayals are known to do.
I do feel a certain degree of protectiveness for the Norse gods, because they were the gods of my ancestors, too, and would have been mine, if not for Saint Ansgar. I found the Thor comics incredibly offensive, when I first encountered them as a teen (“But Thor was a real god. My ancestors worshipped him and this is not right. They would never do this to Jesus.”) and indeed only made my peace with Thor, the Marvel hero, when I chanced to watch the first Thor movie and a really, really bad performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle, which the director used to drive home a point about oil and the Cold War and the US and East Germany hell knows what else, in the same month. And I realised that even though the Marvel Thor took all sorts of liberties, it still told a compelling story that a Germanic tribesman could have accepted as a slightly off version of the god they worshipped. Whereas the Ring cycle performance (and of course, the Ring cycle is an act of appropriation in itself) was a total mess that used the story to drive home some kind of confused point about the 20th century. So which one was more offensive, Thor or the Ring cycle?
Coincidentally, I have heard from Greeks and Italians that they feel similarly protective of the Greek and Roman pantheon and dislike clueless appropriation as much as everybody else.
I also feel very protective of Grimm’s fairy tales, because I was told (told, not read) these stories as bedtime stories (the gory originals, not the sanitised versions). I have visited many of the places that inspired these tales and even live in one of them. When I first encountered the Disneyfied versions of Grimm’s fairy tales as a young child in the US (via both Disney movies and picture books illustrated with photos of dolls reenacting the stories), I immediately realised that those versions got the stories all wrong. I asked my Mom about this and she said that American kids scare more easily than German kids, therefore they had to take the gory bits out. So I accepted the Disney and the doll picture book versions of Grimm’s fairy tales as another version of the original. Besides, I quickly came across yet other variations on the original fairy tales in the wonderful Czech fairy tale movies of the 1970s.
Fast forward twenty five years, when I got on the internet and realised that the sanitised Disney versions of the various fairy tales that to me were just one of many variations of the original story, was the definitive version to most Americans. It also didn’t help that Americans apparently didn’t know the difference between folk fairy tales (passed on orally, no author known) and art fairy tales (fairy tale style stories written by a known author) and thought that the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and those written by Hans Christian Andersen were the same thing, even though everybody learned in primary school that they were completely different.
As a result, I tend to avoid modern fairy tale retellings from US/UK/Canadian authors, because a lot of them are clueless of the context from which those stories arose, respond mainly to the Disney versions which are just one of many variations on the tale and are also often not nearly as modern and progressive as the authors believe, since a lot of what those modern fairy tale retellings try to do has been done and better in forty-year-old Czech films. So in short, the bar for fairy tale retellings is very high for me.
I grew up–in the US, in the middle of the 20th century–with quite a few different takes on the fairy tales the Grimm Brothers collected and retold. There was a translation of Grimm, and various adaptations, including but not limited to Disney, which were of course a big deal because MOVIES! IN COLOR!!! We did not yet take color for granted on our TVs at home. And going out to the movies was a big deal for us.
We also had Hans Christian Anderson, and yes, we did know those stories were different, had a specific known author rather than being folk tales that existed in many different versions, though it’s quite true that as kids, we did not get learned dissertations on “folk fairy tales” and “art fairy tales.”
I particularly remember the differences among multiple versions of Cinderella. I don’t know if I was read the bloodiest version as a very small child, but I’d certainly encountered it by the time I started school. And there was just an assumption, commented on but not considered a big deal, that the movie version was relatively tame because MOVIES, and Disney, and Cartoons. It just was. I mean, Disney got some heat for what happens to Bambi’s mom, and no one expected that in a Disney movie. Yet the unredacted book in translation was readily available to any kid who was reading independently, and I’d read it. It wasn’t “American children scared more easily,” but movies were being marketed to a truly mass audience, and to a generation (the parents of my fellow children) who were often very intent on Americanizing, which had the effect of homogenizing in a variety of ways. One effect was the adoption in the movies of the sanitized, Victorian versions of the folk fairy tales, because the Victorians really did have an unfortunately idealized view of childhood. (Possibly because the people influential enough to be making major cultural decisions didn’t know any children, having turned theirs over to nannies and governesses, or packed them off to boarding school.)
But one facet of reading fairy tales, rather than watching them at the movies, was being reminded that they did exist in multiple versions, having been told and retold by different people in related but different cultures, always being adapted to local culture and local needs.
The Grimm brothers collected and published the particular versions they collected and published. There was never Just One True, Correct Version, because these were folk tales.
As for whether “they” would ever “do that” to Christ, well, um.
There’s Christmas in Japan, where Christmas Eve is a romantic holiday, a full on version of Valentine’s Day. And in this account we see an American in Japan being embarrassed because he doesn’t know it’s a romantic holiday.
Now, give me a single good, defensible reason why that isn’t offensive cultural appropriation but the Marvel Comics version of Thor, or Disney’s version of Cinderella is. Yes, there’s a point at which you can’t help but wince, but with the speed of communication, starting not in our century, and not in the 20th century, but with the telegraph in the 19th century, everyone gets subjected to it, one way or another. Christmas Eve=Valentine’s Day happens to be one of my favorite examples of oblivious disrespect directed at a an aspect of “privileged” western culture, but it’s hardly the only one. And I don’t buy the excuse-making in the piece I linked to, that after all, a lot of Americans aren’t especially religious in how they celebrate Christmas. It’s still considered a religious holiday, it still ain’t Valentine’s Day, and most Americans do still identify as some variety of Christian, while even many who don’t were raised by those who still do, or have friends who are. My feelings on this are, I think, somewhat analogous to Hampus’s on the Norse gods.
I think we all need to know it’s going to happen, and also that we should at least try to give the respect we want for our own treasured cultural items. And that neither we nor anyone else will always succeed, or even always be aware.