Pixel Scroll 3/31/16 The One They Pixel, The One You’ll Scroll By

(1) IT’S BIG. At Entertainment Weekly, “Jeff VanderMeer explains what it’s like to edit The Big Book of Science Fiction”.

During one part of our research, we even had to contact the Czech ambassador to the Philippines for intel on particular authors; in another life this man had been the editor of a Czech science-fiction magazine that, before the Wall came down, paid Western writers in items like books of surreal erotic photography. He had become an expert, due to his travels, on fiction in many countries. From him we received a flurry of photocopies and advice that will likely inform future projects. It’s a small world, but also a big, complex one, too.

(2) ENOUGH PI? NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory answers the question “How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?”

We posed this question to the director and chief engineer for NASA’s Dawn mission, Marc Rayman. Here’s what he said:

Thank you for your question! This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a question like this. In fact, it was posed many years ago by a sixth-grade science and space enthusiast who was later fortunate enough to earn a doctorate in physics and become involved in space exploration. His name was Marc Rayman.

To start, let me answer your question directly. For JPL’s highest accuracy calculations, which are for interplanetary navigation, we use 3.141592653589793. Let’s look at this a little more closely to understand why we don’t use more decimal places. I think we can even see that there are no physically realistic calculations scientists ever perform for which it is necessary to include nearly as many decimal points as you present. Consider these examples:

  1. The most distant spacecraft from Earth is Voyager 1. It is about 12.5 billion miles away. Let’s say we have a circle with a radius of exactly that size (or 25 billion miles in diameter) and we want to calculate the circumference, which is pi times the radius times 2. Using pi rounded to the 15th decimal, as I gave above, that comes out to a little more than 78 billion miles. We don’t need to be concerned here with exactly what the value is (you can multiply it out if you like) but rather what the error in the value is by not using more digits of pi. In other words, by cutting pi off at the 15th decimal point, we would calculate a circumference for that circle that is very slightly off. It turns out that our calculated circumference of the 25 billion mile diameter circle would be wrong by 1.5 inches. Think about that. We have a circle more than 78 billion miles around, and our calculation of that distance would be off by perhaps less than the length of your little finger….

(3) WHICH GHOST WROTE THE MOST? “Houdini manuscript ‘Cancer of Superstition’ divides opinion over Lovecraft, Eddy ghostwriting”. The Chicago Tribune has the story.

…Potter & Potter lists Lovecraft as the ghostwriter, in part citing “An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia” by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, a 2001 anthology of Lovecraft’s work. The book says, however, Houdini approached Lovecraft and Lovecraft’s fellow Providence, R.I., author C.M. Eddy Jr. “jointly to ghostwrite a full-scale book on superstition.”

But how much of “The Cancer of Superstition” was the work of Lovecraft vs. Eddy is up for debate.

Douglas A. Anderson, co-founder of Wormwoodiana, a blog dedicated to researching and discussing the work of Lovecraft and his peers, said one needs to look at “The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces,” a 1966 Lovecraft anthology edited by August Derleth that published a detailed outline and the project’s first chapter. Derleth, who had exchanged letters with Eddy prior to the book’s publication, listed Lovecraft as the author of the outline but Eddy as the author of the chapter….

(4) CASSIDY IN GALLERY SHOW. Kyle Cassidy’s photos from Toni Carr’s Geek Knits book will be part of an art show opening April 1 at the Stanek Gallery in Philadelphia. The book, subtitled Over 30 Projects for Fantasy Fanatics, Science Fiction Fiends, and Knitting Nerds, has been mentioned here in the Scroll before. Cassidy is known in sf for his photographs of fans taken at the Montreal Worldcon in 2009.

EPSON MFP image

thread of art exhibit

(5) LOSE THE RECUSE. Kevin Standlee says Cheryl Morgan ”Talked Me Into It”.

I am quite obviously eligible for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award for the stuff I write on this LJ plus a whole lot of writing elsewhere, possibly most notably on Mike Glyer’s File 770 news site. But as people were talking me up for a Hugo Award nomination, I was uneasy, given that I’m Chairman of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee and possibly the most visible member of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. While I’m not required to recuse myself from consideration, I thought it possible that it would be unseemly and that I’d be considered using undue influence. But Cheryl Morgan wrote yesterday about this subject, and I found her argument persuasive. So if you should in fact think that my writing is award-worthy, don’t think that you’re throwing your vote away to mention me.

(6) INFLUENCE VS PERFORMANCE. Or as Cheryl Morgan said it in “Kevin and the Hugos”

My view on this is that it is one thing to have a high position and get nominated for something else (in my case being on the staff of Clarkesworld). It is quite another to have a high position and get nominated for doing that job. In my case, if my WSFS job was getting me votes for my Clarkesworld work, that could be construed as unfair. (I think it is silly to suggest that it was, and the Business Meeting agreed, but that’s not relevant here.) In Kevin’s case the job and the work are the same thing. So yes, having the job makes him noticed, but he’s being nominated for doing the job. That seems entirely reasonable to me.

(7) YOUTUBE STARS. Here’s a trailer for Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, which will be “available on all major digital platforms” on June 7.

(8) COME CORRECT. Adam-Troy Castro says “No, You Have Not Been Nominated For a Hugo This Year”.

Attention to a certain self-published author: no, you have not been nominated for a Hugo this year. Now, I don’t know whether you’ve made an honest mistake, have fallen prey to wishful thinking, or are actively lying, but in any event, you are wrong; just because some folks have filled out the name of your magnum opus on the online Hugo nomination form, doesn’t mean you are “nominated;” certainly not before the nomination period closes, this Thursday.

(9) IT’S GREAT TO BE A GENIUS OF COURSE. Kate Paulk holds forth on “The Problem of Being Too Good” at Mad Genius Club.

One of the things I learned was that in pretty much any creative endeavor the really good ones don’t look like they’re making any effort. They’re so good they make it look easy. They make it feel easy, and they appear to effortlessly produce the effect they’re aiming for, be it a gem of a musical performance or a story that’s a perfect or near perfect example of its art – and it’s so apparently effortless and clear that those of lesser understanding can too easily fail to see the work the author or musician or artist has carefully concealed behind the appearance of easy. That is why seeing the writer sweat is annoying.

Of course, this leads to those of lesser understanding (many of whom think they’re the bees knees and – to paraphrase Douglas Adams – the every other assorted insectile erogenous zone in existence) thinking that a book (or performance or whatever) that looks effortless actually is effortless and therefore is easy. Simply put, they mistake sweat and visible exertion for skill.

What this reminds me of is my favorite Robert Moore Williams quote. Williams was a self-admitted hack sf writer. He was leery of losing sales by being too literary. He said, “You have to stink ’em up just right.”

(10) WHERE THE ROCKS ARE. An amazing map of prehistoric stone structures in the United Kingdom can be found at http://m.megalithic.co.uk/asb_mapsquare.php.

This map of Britain and Ireland, is divided into 100 kilometre squares. Locations of prehistoric stone circles and stone rows are indicated by the red dots. Click on a grid square to see that map sheet in greater detail. Many of the pages have images and links to information elsewhere on the web, making this a master index of Britain and Ireland’s Prehistoric sites.

(11) MEOW WOW.  “George R.R. Martin Spent $3.5 Million to Make This Sci-Fi Art Utopia a Reality” – at Vice.

Perhaps the only thing more disorienting than visiting the art collective Meow Wolf’s permanent art installation, the House of Eternal Return, is getting a Skype tour of the place, which is what I recently received. Labyrinthine and almost hallucinatory, the sprawling former bowling alley has been transformed to a freak-out art mecca, funded by $3.5 million from Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin and another $2.5 million from Kickstarter and other fundraising.

The 20,000-square-foot art space, the size of Gagosian’s Chelsea gallery, opened on Friday with a cavalcade of 5,500 visitors in the first three days, including Martin himself and Neil Gaiman. Described by 33-year-old CEO Vince Kadlubek as the “inside [of] a sci-fi novel,” the House of Eternal Return is many things: a psychedelic art space, a bar, an educational center, a ceramics studio, and an elaborate music venue (with a half school-bus upper deck), featuring a slew of dream-like elements such as black-light carpeting, a laser harp, pneumatic doors, and a 20-foot climbable lookout tower.

(12) COLE’S HEART. I was very impressed with Myke Cole’s contribution to “The Big Idea” feature at Whatever – but I didn’t want to pick an excerpt that would dilute the reading experience, so here is a comparatively bland quote…

When I did my Big Idea post for Gemini Cell, I straight up owned the PTSD allegory. Schweitzer’s undead status kept him permanently apart from the living. He was among them, but not of them, anymore. The resultant isolation was pretty much the same thing many returning veterans feel.

(13) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 31, 1969 — Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, published.

(14) SUPER BOOKS. Random House Books for Young Readers announced the acquisition of four DC Comics YA novels, with bestselling young adult authors: Wonder Woman will be written by Leigh Bardugo, Batman will be written by Marie Lu, Superman will be written by Matt de la Peña, and Catwoman will be written by Sarah J. Maas.

Wonder Woman will release first at the end of August 2017.

(15) CURSES VERSUS. “Superman And The Damage Done” at Birth.Movies.Death.

There have been other Supermans since, and while none have, in my opinion, reached the heights of Christopher Reeve, all have imparted a similar sense of decency, humbleness and grace. From Brandon Routh to various animated incarnations, children growing up over the past 40 years have found new Supermans they could look to as inspirational models of how heroes act.

But what do the children of today have? Warner Bros, custodian of the Superman legacy, has handed the keys of the character over to Zack Snyder, a filmmaker who has shown he feels nothing but contempt for the character. In doing so they have opened the character to an ugly new interpretation, one that devalues the simple heroism of Superman and turns the decent, graceful character into a mean, nasty force of brutish strength.

Where Superman was originally intended as a hopeful view of strength wielded with responsibility, Snyder presents him as a view of strength as constant destructive force; where Christopher Reeve’s Superman would often float and flit away, Snyder’s version explodes like a rocket at all times, creating sonic booms above city centers in fits of pique, such as after his scene of moping on Lois Lane’s Washington DC hotel balcony. He is a constant weapon of destruction, often smashing concrete when he comes to earth. There are no soft landings for this Superman.

(16) CROWD PLEASER. “SciFi Author Alan Dean Foster Draws Largest Science Speaker Series Crowd in Prescott Campus History” reports the Embry-Riddle Newsroom.

Hundreds of students, staff and faculty filled the AC-1 lecture hall to capacity to hear internationally acclaimed science fiction author Alan Dean Foster talk about “Science in Science Fiction” as part of the College of Arts and Science Speaker Series last Friday.

Foster has written over 100 novels but is best known for authoring the novel versions of many science fiction films including “Star Wars”, the first three Alien films, “The Chronicles of Riddick”, “Star Trek”, “Terminator: Salvation”, and two Transformers films.

Foster believes science is the foundation of science fiction. If the work is not grounded in science then it’s not science fiction, it is fantasy or science fantasy.

“Science fiction sets you on other worlds where you have to create entire environments. Maybe it’s a world with seven different layers or an entirely frozen world. You have to look at a problem and say what’s the best solution here, even if it’s not been created yet,” said Foster. “That solution should still be reasonable. As an author of science fiction, and especially with novel adaptations from movies, I try to fix the science as best as I can. Sometimes they let me and sometimes they don’t.”

(17) BREAKING GAME SHOW NEWS. The March 31 episode of Jeopardy! had a Hugo Award-Winning Novels category – but I haven’t found out what the titles were yet.

(18) SAD NUMBERS. Brandon Kempner spends the last voting day “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 4” at Chaos Horizon.

What we do know, though, is that last nomination season the Sad Puppies were able to drive between 100-200 votes to the Hugos in most categories, and the their numbers likely grew in the finally voting stage. I estimated 450. All those voters are eligible to nominate again; if you figured the Sad Puppies doubled from the nomination stage in 2015 to now, they’d be able to bring 200-400 votes to the table. Then again, their votes might be diffused over the longer list; some Sad Puppies might abandon the list completely; some Sad Puppies might become Rabid Puppies, and so forth into confusion.

When you do predictive modelling, almost nothing good comes from showing how the sausage is made. Most modelling hides behind the mathematics (statistical mathematics forces you to make all sorts of assumptions as well, they’re just buried in the formulas, such as “I assume the responses are distributed along a normal curve”) or black box the whole thing since people only care about the results. Black boxing is probably the smart move as it prevents criticism. Chaos Horizon doesn’t work that way.

So, I need some sort of decay curve of the 10 Sad Puppy recommendations to run through my model. What I decided to go with is treating the Sad Puppy list as a poll showing the relative popularity of the novels. That worked pretty well in predicting the Nebulas. Here’s that chart, listing how many votes each Sad Puppy received, as well as the relative % compared to the top vote getter.

(19) FROM TEARS TO CHEERS. Dave Hogg is basically a happy voter tonight.

(20) NOT AN APRIL FOOL? From the Official Gmail Blog: “Introducing Gmail Mic Drop”.

Friends and family have been testing Gmail Mic Drop for months, and the response so far has been awesome:

  • “Sending email is so much easier when you don’t have to worry about people responding!”
  • “Mic Drop is a huge improvement over Mute! I can finally let everyone know I’m just not interested.”
  • “My team solves problems so much faster with Mic Drop. In fact, we stopped talking to each other entirely!”

Gmail Mic Drop is launching first on the web, but mobile updates are on the way. So stay tuned, and stay saucy.

Will R. asks me, “Will you be introducing a similar feature? It would make the flounce a whole lot easier.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, A Wee Green Man, Daniel Dern, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Swanwick, Will R., Rich Lynch, and Reed Andrus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day StephenfromOttawa.]

224 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/31/16 The One They Pixel, The One You’ll Scroll By

  1. Last catch-up batch of microreviews (writin’ left me less time than usual for readin’):

    The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher. A peasant is faced with an unwanted and unavoidable offer of marriage from a nobleman with dark designs. Another winner from the marsupial with the mostest. I think if there’s one thing this author can be counted upon, it’s reliably engaging heroines. Digger may be my favorite heroine of hers so far and Molly my second favorite, but Rhea is certainly no slouch in that department.

    Dangerous Gifts, by Gaie Sebold. The sequel to Babylon Steel has Babylon heading to another dimension to act as a bodyguard in the midst of political upheaval. Another well-told story, that gets a lot out mileage from plunking the unashamed prostitute title character down in an uptight culture. I rather hope this is a second book in a series and not a final book in a duology, though, because a lot of character arcs are left a bit up in the air at the end.

    Solace of the Road, by Siobhan Down. Not SFF. YA novel about a teen in foster care who runs away. I liked it, but I think I unfairly expect every book by Siobhan Dowd to be amazing after reading A Swift Pure Cry. This one was only good, as it sometimes veered a little to close to movie-of-the-week territory. However, it never shot off the rails straight into it.

  2. Pi approximations: cosmologists (unlike rocket scientists) often use value like 2 or even 10. When you’re dealing with billions or trillions of light years, precise accuracy just isn’t that important, and 10 and 2 are much easier to multiply by in your head.

    Regarding the Google Mic Drop thing: I heard that they removed it quickly after a bunch of people were confused and ended up losing mail.

  3. @Kevin Standlee

    Thank you for posting that very clear explanation of where you stand this year. It’ll certainly be enough for anyone who understands the entities involved, or wishes to have a competent and factually based understanding of them.

    Sadly, I think the desire for that last is more limited than one might hope.

    re (9)

    Self-awareness really isn’t the thing here, is it?

  4. @Kyra: Congratulations! PLEASE let me know if you need a beta-reader who loves your work. Because I fit that description.

    I and my co-writer Robby had our second meeting with StarBurns about “ALIEN VISAS” and it went…well, he said, cautiously optimistic. Some tweaks to the pitch doc, then resubmitting it, and we’ll see what happens…

  5. lurkertype: (5) (appropriately enough) We need a Career or Grand Master Hugo for Kevin.

    Until somebody invents that, a Special Committee Award might fill the bill.

  6. Tom G: I didn’t read The Wanderer when it came out either — but if you were reading SF as early in your life as I was in mine, you would have been hard-pressed to find enough current material to fill your appetite. I think I was still reading more backlist than ~current until the later 1970’s at least.

    Arkansawyer: I expect Leiber was the first many-viewpoints in SF; I was wondering whether it had become enough of a thing mundanely that he was hoping for some crossover interest.

  7. One really useful approximation for pi is half-an-order-of-magnitude, ie the square root of ten.

  8. Current reading: I finished up Robert E. Howard’s El Borak and Other Desert Adventures. Some of his work with which I was less familiar. I think I prefer his overt fantasy, but I find just about any of his adventure stories almost compulsively readable.

    And I’m now about half way through V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, and it’s not entirely outside of the bounds of reason that if I’d read it a few weeks ago, my final ballot might have been slightly different.

  9. lurkertype on April 1, 2016 at 2:18 pm said:

    (5) (appropriately enough) We need a Career or Grand Master Hugo for Kevin.

    Back in 1990, the Donald Eastlakes (III and IV; III is the man who was Parliamentarian under me at last year’s WSFS Business Meeting, and IV is is son) introduced a pair of proposals for the creation of two new Hugo Award categories: Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Secret Master of Fandom, for professional and non-professional achievement respectively. According to the minutes, the former failed 21-29 and the latter 9-many. I was there, but wasn’t involved much with those proposals, and I don’t even remember how I voted on them. Besides, in 1990 I was a mere irritant as the junior member of the San Francisco in 1993 Worldcon bid. I wouldn’t really come to the attention of SMOFdom until the following year, when I held my first WSFS Business Meeting head-table position (timekeeper) and participated in the infamous 14-hour Site Selection ballot count.

    Most people think that the equivalents of what those proposed awards were trying to address — effectively lifetime achievement awards bestowed by Worldcon — are being Worldcon Guest of Honor. I’ve reached the second-highest (and rarer, because there fewer of them) honor: NASFiC GoH, in 2005.

  10. Vivien: Kempner approach can be debated, but he takes into account the difference in turnout between nomination and final vote. It is even a variable in his last few posts.

    No, he doesn’t. He’s estimating nominating turnout for this year based on last year’s voting numbers — not last year’s nominating numbers — without giving any basis for thinking that that’s a valid assumption. (Note that the two numbers have never been closely related in any other sets of subsequent years.) It’s not even clear whether he realizes that’s what he’s doing — based on what he says, he appears to believe that he’s using last year’s nominating numbers.

    He’s also still using the words “votes/voting” and “nominations/nominating” interchangeably — which they just aren’t. I mean, how hard is it to read the rules until you understand how the system works?

  11. I posted a bunch of micro-reviews of audio fiction from Podcastle.org on my blog today. This is courtesy of the fact that my intense work schedule for the last three weeks has meant no gym; no gym means no reading; no reading means I scramble for something to post from my Friday Review Blog.

    Two things were interesting to observe.

    1. Even if I recognize the first couple of paragraphs of a story from the link on the podcastle site, if I can’t recall for the life of me whether I liked the story or not, that fact stands as my review.

    2. I feel dreadfully out of step with the times in that a lot of what’s being put out as fantasy short fiction these days feels very dark and unpleasant to me — even when I can recognize that it has good writing. Am I wrong to dislike stories that leave me wanting jump off a bridge? Even beautifully written ones?

  12. Man, we’re on our third page of comments and no one has mentioned who Adam Troy-Castro is subblogging yet? Damn. You guys are failing my gossip loving soul.

    Also, I’m very pleased to see that Teddy has taken the position that Hamilton is both racist and a sign of the decline of human civilization. I didn’t think it was possible to like Hamilton any more, but that does it.

  13. Hampus Eckerman: While Freer is horrible as a blogger, I have no idea how he is as a writer. Maybe he tries to be more professional.

    LurkerWIthout: Baen.com has a short story by Freer up. It seems competently enough put together and is moderately entertaining. I don’t recall anything about it that makes me think underappreciated grand genius writer either though.

    If his stories are coherent, that just convinces me that either 1) he’s got an uncredited collaborator, 2) his stories are getting the hell edited out of them by someone else, or 3) someone is ghostwriting his stories for him.

    His blog posts are written at about the aptitude level of a grade-schooler (a not-terribly-bright one). Given that an author’s (especially a self-published author’s) main way of promoting themselves and their works to fans and potential fans is the freely-available public writing they do, one would expect the author to trot out their “A” game on their blog posts. I think we’re looking at Freer’s “A” game on MGC, which is just… sad.

  14. @Soon Lee:

    Thanks, I hadn’t heard of Morgan Smith. I do wonder if people are playing cruel jokes on…being nice and using the word trusting…authors.

  15. In other news, I’m mulling over a story about a student at a space-opera space service academy, so I’ve been reading some of the ur-stories of that kind. Read the Heinlein, of course, and I recently read Binti, and I’ve been looking around for others.

    In the process, I’ve been nostalgia-reading some stories I haven’t looked at in over forty years: the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet novels by “Carey Rockwell.”

    Oh dear God the writing in those was horrible. My pre-teen self was clearly not a literary critic.

  16. It might be honest, re Kempner, for him to note that last year’s Hugo voting surge was unprecedented, that there’s no obvious model to follow in translating votes last year into nomination participation or likely models for preferences (again, because of the unusual nature of last year’s voters’ motivations): the numbers might conceivably swamp any numbers he could model – or might not, although I’m inclined to think that people who signed up to vote to defend the Hugos against the Puppies might be more than normally motivated to nominate for the same reasons as well.

  17. @JJ
    No, I’ve read several of Freer’s books. His books must be his A game, because they are definitely better than his blog posts. Some of them I enjoyed quite a bit. The “I got too bored to finish” and “if there is reasoning here, I can’t find it, much less follow it” phenomena that happens so much with his blog rants didn’t happen to me at all with his books. YMMV, of course, and maybe I just lucked out and read the good ones (_Dragon’s Ring_ _Stardog_ _Dog and Dragon_, FWIW). I think they’re coming out of Baen so I wouldn’t expect extensive editing. He worked with Eric Flint for a while; perhaps he learned a lot about how to structure fiction from that that didn’t carry over into non-fiction? And of course, perhaps he does have a silent collaborator but it seems unlikely; such a person could do better for themselves striking out on their own.

    (Don’t get me wrong I’m not pegging them as my favorite books ever–but I didn’t want my money back when I was done, and had they been like the blog posts, I would have.)

  18. @Dawn Incognito,

    Brian Paone remains blithely ignorant despite Kevin Standlee’s efforts, and Morgan Smith, appears equally uninformed.

    It doesn’t look good: either they jumped the gun without doing the minimal amount of research needed to understand how the Hugo Awards are organised, or they are attempting to mislead their readers.

  19. Jon F. Zeigler: Recent space academy books I’ve found:
    The Academy Year 1: Flight of the Outcast, Brad Strickland (don’t think there’s a second one)
    Mars Evacuees and Space Hostages (though only Mars Evacuees covers the school) by Sophia McDougall
    Starbounders and Starbounders #2: Rebellion by Adam Jay Epstein

    Don’t know if you’d count the Starbridge series by A.C. Crispin

  20. Soon Lee: Brian Paone remains blithely ignorant despite Kevin Standlee’s efforts, and Morgan Smith, appears equally uninformed.

    Actually, that Facebook post of Smith’s shows a reasonably-good understanding that she’s not a Finalist — but she still hasn’t removed her bogus Press Release, so I’m not inclined to cut her much slack.

    As far as Paone, it’s clear that he now understands exactly how the Hugo Awards work, that one person may have nominated him but he’s not a Finalist — but I suspect that he figures most people who read his bragging about this on his website and Facebook and Twitter (where he’s paid some hack PR entity to tweet about his “Hugo nominated book” every couple of hours) will not know how the Hugos work, and will assume that he really is a Finalist and that his book is really good and has received high acclaim.

    He’s stated that he’s still planning to come to Worldcon. I wonder how he will react when people see his nametag and say “Oh, yeah, you’re the poser who was bragging all over the internet about being a Hugo nominee, as if it made you a Finalist”. I don’t think he quite gets that a lot of the people at Worldcon will 1) not be clueless about someone who attempts to use the Hugo Awards this way, and 2) not be kindly disposed toward someone who has done that.

    I wouldn’t read his book  ELO fanfic now if he sent me a free copy of it. Abusing the name of the Hugo Awards the way he has done is pretty reprehensible.

  21. Jon F. Zeigler: In other news, I’m mulling over a story about a student at a space-opera space service academy, so I’ve been reading some of the ur-stories of that kind.

    Connie Willis’ D.A. is a great one. If you’ve got an Amazon account, I can lend it to you on Kindle.

  22. Soon Lee on April 1, 2016 at 5:48 pm said:

    It doesn’t look good: either they jumped the gun without doing the minimal amount of research needed to understand how the Hugo Awards are organised, or they are attempting to mislead their readers.

    One did not apparently initially know, and the other did not care, saying that they were “just doing PR, like the big publishers do.” In any event, because their claims are technically correct although badly misleading, they presumably are trying to get publicity among people who think “nominated” = “shortlisted” (as indeed it used to mean until people destroyed the meaning) and really don’t care what Worldcon members actually think, because there aren’t enough of us to matter, I guess.

    When I pointed out to one of them that I could make the same claim they did, and with even more evidence, having made the long list in Best Fan Writer in 1995, they congratulated me and said something like “As an author, you must be aware of the importance of publicity…” which clearly shows that they don’t know what Best Fan Writer is. So there’s is a pile of clueless behavior, some of it wilful, I think.

  23. @Soon Lee, JJ:

    Yeah, that faux press release was something. One of your fans nominating your book for the best novel Hugo is not the victory for self-pub that you’re trying to paint it as.

    Best-case scenario, they didn’t do basic research before making an excited social media post and they’re embarrassed to walk it back and show their ignorance. Understandable, but it’s more embarrassing imho to let the ignorant statements stand.

    Worst-case scenario, they’re trying to use their fans’ ignorance of the Hugo finalist process to drum up sales before the real finalists (I’m going to try to be much more vigilant using that team rather than “nominee” from now on) are announced.

    Either way, it doesn’t reflect very well on them.

    ETA: basically ninja’d by Kevin Standlee. I thought this discussion was lighting the Standlee Signal (TM) 😉

  24. Re: Freer. I did like Pyramid Scheme, one of Freer’s collaboration with Eric Flint.

  25. Lee W: From the Willis column:
    “They also easily might have done a real story on holographic advertising (their April Fool’s story said physicists at MIT had perfected a laser that could project long-distance holograms and that Coca-Cola had licensed the rights to beaming their logo onto the Moon’s surface, turning it into a giant billboard.)”

    Sounds as if someone had been reading Clarke!

    Paul & HRJ: The key to the Heinlein question was the inclusion of “Starship Troopers”, which makes it a gimme.

    All of which is now reminding me of a long-ago article in New Republic, purporting to be “The Case for Higher Dimensions” (as in, more than the 3-plus-time that are currently recognized). I don’t remember if it was the April issue or not, but I suspect so; the author had me going nicely until he began to recount, in all seriousness, “the curious experience of California architect Quintus Teal”. If it wasn’t an April Fool joke, the only explanation I can think of is the author being at a faculty party somewhere, going on at excruciating length about his Theory of Higher Dimensions, until some snarky assistant professor got fed up and ran the plot of “-And He Built A Crooked House” past him as a FOAF story.

    Greg: I thought Hominids was a fabulous book. What didn’t you like about it, IYDMMA?

    Tom G.: I actually started reading at about age 3, but my parents would have told you 4. I’d been telling them for a year that I could read, but they thought I was lying until (like you) I read something from the newspaper to them. And they still thought I’d been lying about how long I’d been able to read, and that up to then I’d just been reciting stories that I had memorized.

  26. @Jon F. Zeigler , I’m a HUGE fan of S.J. Kincaid’s Insignia series. Future academy mecha fighting galore.

    Also, I think I missed my chance to nominate myself for a Hugo and then put “Hugo-nominated review blog” as my banner. Damn me and my integrity.

  27. @Bruce, thanks. I can see that second link and still can’t see the first. My mental Tigerishka is a little curvier, so I won’t beg to be remembered with this one.

    @Jon F. Zeigler, there’s a thin Clarke novel called Islands in the Sky, the name of which escaped me till I looked it up. And I’m glad I had to, because I learned about something of possible use to you: T he Winston Science Fiction set.

    You might also consider John Barnes’s Orbital Resonance from that point of view. The novel is, in large part, about School In Space.

    @Lee, I like Hominids well-enough, but Sawyer’s books remind me of each other too much. It’s like reading the same story with different props.

    @Folks generally, I suspect every professional writer saves the consciously willed part of their A game for their professional writing. Great blog posts will only take you so far if your books suck; sufficiently good books generally pay off over time even if people think you suck.

    Now, sometimes the A game decides to take over, and then sometimes you get a Hugo-worthy piece of fan writing from a professional author who’d really just intended to say a few brief words. I love it when that happens, but I still expect the best writing to usually be in the books, and I sometimes worry about the writer if it isn’t that way.

  28. @Heather Rose Jones Am I wrong to dislike stories that leave me wanting jump off a bridge? Even beautifully written ones?

    No you are not wrong IMHO. I’ve been asking for content note/trigger warnings for stuff that depressing as its not good for my mental state. I don’t need outside help feeling more suicidal.

    I’d like to see more happy/uplifting/comedic SFF. Which is why I back Kickstarters for things like Unidentified Funny Objects

  29. I hope nobody minds an OT “I’m a nerd” moment…

    I was pondering lending an anime series to someone who, as far as I know, doesn’t watch anime. My first thought was Haibane Renmei. Then I thought of Kino’s Journey. My mind rounded that out with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I realized was an incredibly emotionally exhausting triptych.

    Then I imagined these three series battling it out for my favourite anime via a duel between the protagonists. Kino and Homura would identify each other as threats right away, and…I can’t even explain how, but my money is on Kino.

    Then Kino would have a fascinating conversation with Reki and Rakka about Old Home and their society, get on Hermes, and ride away.

    I think that means Haibane Renmei wins on a technicality?

    This is what happens when my mind wanders.

  30. Re “nominated for a Hugo”: I can’t help but think that some of what’s going on here is a conflation of word senses. After all, haven’t we all been talking about making our Hugo nominations for the last month or more? So in that sense, he’s not wrong to say that he’s been nominated for a Hugo — his friend nominated him. The problem comes in with the conceptual leap from there to drawing parallels with the Oscar nominations, or the Hugo final ballot. If the difference has been explained to him in a way that he understood and he’s still saying it, then I’m not going to defend him. But I really do think there’s a vast gulf of ambiguity there waiting to trap the unfamiliar.

    Jon Z.: Few of us are literary critics at fifteen. But IMO more importantly, the genre has improved. If you look at current YA fiction, you’ll find that it’s much better written than Tom Corbett and its contemporary works. I have a sneaking suspicion that a certain amount of the awfulness of stories from that era has to do with what I call the Mikey factor — “We don’t have to work hard to put out consistently good stories, because those people will read anything!”

  31. @Tasha & Heather Rose Jones —

    I think avoiding fiction that makes one want to jump off a bridge is just basic mental health care. Certainly for me!

  32. @ John F. Zeigler
    Although they’re very atypical, what about Ender’s Game and young Miles Vorkosigan’s ‘experiences’ (although only some are in space school but still military)? Might give you some ideas with a twist.

  33. @Lee

    Greg: I thought Hominids was a fabulous book. What didn’t you like about it, IYDMMA?

    The plot has one disbelief-busting event after another, the narration has one infodump after another, and the author has a bad habit of showing AND telling. In a normal novel, the author gets out of the way and you can immerse yourself in the story. That’s impossible with Hominids because the author keeps intruding on the reader about once per paragraph.

  34. @ Heather Rose Jones

    I agree with Tasha and Liz. Go ahead and dislike anything that feels harmful! If you write a review about such a story, praise the writing but explain that it was a bummer emotionally for you.

    I had a similar story on my Hugo long list until very late in the process. If there hadn’t been equally good tales that didn’t give me the willies, I would have nominated it…and never read it again.

  35. @Heather Rose Jones

    I feel dreadfully out of step with the times in that a lot of what’s being put out as fantasy short fiction these days feels very dark and unpleasant to me — even when I can recognize that it has good writing. Am I wrong to dislike stories that leave me wanting jump off a bridge? Even beautifully written ones?

    How did you feel about The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin?

    True tragedy is probably the highest art form when it comes to writing, but very few SFF authors really attempt it. From 2015, only Calved, by Sam Miller comes to mind.

    Of course there’s always stuff that’s dark for less noble reasons, but I don’t think it’s all that common. Stories whose plot is “They tried really hard but then they all died anyway” exist, but they’re rare.

  36. @Kyra: Welcome back and thanks for the microreviews! And congrats on finishing the book! 😀

    @Cally: LOL, thanks. I like how grooming a jackalope starts with whiskey . . . for the jackalope!

  37. Tasha, if you ever come across any of my short fiction, probably best to approach with caution. I tend to lean towards dark & troublesome. Greg’s precis of “They tried really hard but then they all died anyway” is a plot I’ve actually used. (The challenge was trying to write that story and still have it end on an emotionally satisfying and uplifting note; I think I succeeded, but we’ll see when I start sending it around to markets.)

    (My wife has only read maybe half the stories I’ve written. She thinks I’m a very good writer, but she doen’t enjoy most of what I write.)

  38. @Lee, responding to Lee W.:

    Sounds as if someone had been reading Clarke!

    I think you mean Heinlein? The idea of turning the moon into a soft drink billboard was a minor plot point in “The Man Who Sold the Moon”.

  39. John A Arkansawyer: I suspect every professional writer saves the consciously willed part of their A game for their professional writing. Great blog posts will only take you so far if your books suck; sufficiently good books generally pay off over time even if people think you suck.

    My point is that if an author doesn’t bring at least their “A-” game to their blog, a great many people who read one or more blog posts by that author are going to think, “Wow, if they’re this inarticulate and irrational, their books probably suck, too” — and not be willing to give their books a try (Freer, Paulk, Green, and JCW definitely fall into this category for me; Hoyt is lucky that I read one of her trilogies before I ever read her blog posts, or I would never have read those, either — and I’m not likely to read anything more by her now).

    On numerous occasions, I have made a point of getting and reading books or stories by authors after reading one or more of their intelligent or witty blog posts and thinking “Wow, I’ll bet this person writes great books!” (this is how I got into Scalzi’s and Doctorow’s books, for example).

    But I guess if someone figures they have all the readers they need, they wouldn’t care whether they come off sounding irrational and incoherent in their blog posts.

  40. @ John F. Zeigler
    Michael Flynn wrote a series that might fit in: Firestar and its sequels.

    It’s 1062 and we have a long wait before we get to space, though.

  41. Bruce Arthurs: “They tried really hard but then they all died anyway”

    Stories with such a plot can be very, very good if you’re able to cope with the ending; Gypsy by Carter Scholz and The Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn come to mind.

  42. Also, I think I missed my chance to nominate myself for a Hugo and then put “Hugo-nominated review blog” as my banner. Damn me and my integrity.

    I now know of two people who are not me who nominated me for Fan Writer, so I guess I’m “Hugo-nominated” now.

  43. @Petréa Mitchell

    I was thinking that way myself at one point, but the last episode of the anime makes it clear that va gur arj gvzryvar, gurer ner ab shegure nggrzcgrq zheqref hagvy Fngbeh jnxrf hc, for reasons that take a while to explain.

    I think that was a lie, at least it would have been in the manga. I enjoyed the show but I have some problems with it as well.

    V ybirq gur punenpgref naq gur jnl fnivat Xnlb sebz gur nohfr jnf unaqyrq ohg Fngbeh npgvbaf va gur cnfg unq zr chyyvat zl unve bhg. Ur znqr ab erny nggrzcg gb svther bhg jub gur xvyyre jnf. Ur fcrag fb zhpu gvzr gelvat gb xrrc gur xvqf sebz orvat xvyyrq ng fbzr cnegvpyr gvzr naq cynpr nyzbfg nf vs ur jnf gelvat gb xrrc gurz sebz qlvat va n pne nppvqrag be fbzrguvat vafgrnq bs snyyvat cerl gb n uhzna cerqngbe jub jnf pncnoyr bs punatvat uvf cynaf. Naq rira vs ur fhpprrq va cebgrpgvat uvf sevraqf jvgubhg svaqvat gur xvyyre ur jnf whfg yrggvat uvz zbir ba naq xvyy ntnva.

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