(1) OKORAFOR. “A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” at Weird Fiction Review.
WFR: Binti’s hair, or her tentacle-like okuoko almost becomes a character in its own right. It’s striking that this kind of physical transformation is both by choice but also not by choice; it reflects the physical difference with which Binti already marks herself through her otjize. There are so many layers of cultural and biological meaning wrapped up in Binti’s hair alone. Can you talk a little about this part of the story?
NO: The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community. I may have been born and raised in the United States, but there are significant parts of me that are VERY Igbo (Nigerian) and I am often in conflict with these parts. This is the plight of many Nigerian Americans. And this is the root of my deep understanding about and experience of African cultures.
The same goes for Binti. Binti is a Himba girl of the future and though many things about her ethnic group change, some things stay the same. Some of those things include a strict adherence to community and culture, and the practice of applying otjize. Culture is very deep, it can’t just be shed just as you can’t shed what is part of your DNA. But culture is also alive and can incorporate things, it blend, shifts…and there are always consequences to change.
(2) EVERY TRUE FAN. At More Words, Deeper Hole, James Davis Nicoll lists “Twenty Core SF Books Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves”. Their Billy shelves, presumably.
(3) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WOOLLY. The BBC shares “DNA clues to why woolly mammoth died out”.
Dr Rebekah Rogers of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the research, said the mammoths’ genomes “were falling apart right before they went extinct”.
This, she said, was the first case of “genomic meltdown” in a single species.
“You had this last refuge of mammoths after everything has gone extinct on the mainland,” she added.
“The mathematical theories that have been developed said that they should accumulate bad mutations because natural selection should become very inefficient.”
The researchers analysed genetic mutations found in the ancient DNA of a mammoth from 4,000 years ago. They used the DNA of a mammoth that lived about 45,000 years ago, when populations were much larger, as a comparison.
(4) KNIGHT CHECKS KING. Brooke Seipel on TheHill.com in “Actor Patrick Stewart Applying for U.S. Citizenship to Help Fight Trump” says that SirPatStew tweeted that he is applying to become an American so he can fight the Trump Administration. She also quotes from his appearance on The View.
(5) SEPARATING PAST FROM PRESENT. “The Past, Present And Future Of Sci Fi With N. K. Jemisin”, an interview with the author on WBEZ.
Johnsen: Recently, friends have asked me for recommendations of things to read or watch. They’re like, “I’ll check out anything, except sci fi.” And that drives me crazy. Because to me, that’s like saying, “Oh, I like anything except imagination.” Can you help me make the sell to the haters? Because that’s ridiculous.
Jemisin: It is ridiculous. It’s because science fiction is terrible at marketing, I think. Science fiction has, for years, allowed a fairly vocal subset of its readership to declare that the only true science fiction is stuff that was written 50 or 60 years ago, that the pulps of the ’40s is what the genre is all about. The plain fact of the matter is that it’s an art form like any other. It has evolved. It has grown. It has expanded in ways that I think it hasn’t done the best job of revealing to the mainstream.
So I would test anybody who says they don’t read science fiction or fantasy. I’d say, “OK, what was the last science fiction or fantasy that you read? Where is this coming from? Did you just watch an episode of old school Star Trek and call it a day, or are you doing this with some real information here?”
And then, there’s multiple places that I would direct them. I would take them to the Nebula list and have them look at a few years’ worth of Nebula nominees and novels. I would show them some current science fiction on television, quite a bit of which is getting critical acclaim. I’m very excited that Stranger Things season two is coming. I just watched the first season of Westworld. I had some questions and thoughts, but it’s an example of something that you can shoot to people to say, “Hey, we’ve moved on a little from Star Trek.”
(6) THIRTY BUT NOT #30#. Scott Edelman is amazed – “Hard to believe I’ve made it this far!” – to have reached Episode 30 in his series of podcasts Eating the Fantastic. This time Scott joins Richard Bowes to eat Italian in Greenwich Village.
The venue was suggested by this episode’s guest, who happens to be a long-time resident of Greenwich Village—science fiction and fantasy writer Richard Bowes, who’s a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, and who has also won the International Horror Guild Award as well as the Lambda Award. That photo of him below is not from Café Reggio, however, but rather from the nearby New York Frost Factory, where we went in search of something sweet after the recording.
We discussed his early career as a designer of board games for clients like National Lampoon, why “going to conventions sober is beyond me,” the political transformation of Li’l Abner creator Al Capp, why everyone during the old folk scene days loathed Bob Dylan, what attracts him about writing mosaic novels, and more.
(7) HUGHES OBIT. Hugh Zachary (1928-2016), who wrote as Zach Hughes, died September 5, 2016.The news is just now circulating in fandom, having been learned by William G. Contento.
He wrote over two dozen sf novels as Zach Hughes, and the America 2040 series as Evan Innes. He also wrote westerns, romance, and erotica. As he put it, “I’ve written in every field except bestseller.” If he never made the New York Times list, the books he wrote under a house name for “The White Indian” series of westerns did in fact sell millions of copies over the years.
Zachary gave a very entertaining interview to a UNCW oral historian in 1998 which is still online:
Hayes: So even during the radio/TV days, writing still was kind of a driving force?
Hugh Zachary: That’s what I wanted to be, yes. And I have 375 rejections before I ever sold one single thing; I was persistent if nothing else.
Hayes: Well, talk about some of those rejections. What was the, what were you writing early on then that you were trying to get in?
Hayes: That is hard.
Hugh Zachary: Some of those were poems and at that time there was a much bigger market for poetry if you could call it that. The first thing I ever sold was a poem to a magazine called, “Drift Word” and they sent me a check for $10 and they went out of business before it was published (laughs).
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 3, 1915 — The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA, was founded.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- March 3, 1920 – James Doohan
(10) TODAY’S DAY
I have it on good authority from Jack Lint that this is “I cannae change the laws of physics!” Day celebrated on March 3 in honor of James Doohan’s birthday
(11) THE FANBOY DEFENSE. “3D guns accused manufacturer was a ‘science fiction fanboy’, court hears”. The ABC in Australia has the story.
A man accused of manufacturing 3D printed guns is a fan of science fiction who let his hobby get “out of hand”, a Sydney court has heard.
Sicen Sun, 27, an account manager for an advertising agency, was arrested yesterday when detectives searched his Waverley unit in Sydney’s east, following a tip-off.
Officers found four imitation pistols, including 3D-manufactured semi-automatic Glock pistols and a 3D-manufactured Sig pistol, two air pistols, computer equipment and two 3D printers.
Sun was arrested and charged with various offences relating to the manufacture of firearms using a 3D printer.
At a bail hearing at Waverley Local Court this morning Sun’s solicitor, Jason Keane, said his client was a science fiction fan who got carried away with his hobby and wanted to imitate the weapons from police shows such as NCIS and video games like Call of Duty.
(12) RUMBLINGS. While hawking t-shirts, Vox Day indicated that this year’s Rabid Puppies action is about to begin.
And here’s a hint: if you like the awesome Rabid Puppies 2016 shirt, you should probably pick one up soon, as the Rabid Puppies 2017 logo is almost ready to make its debut.
(13) BRADBURY’S PIVOTAL YEAR. Now available for pre-order, The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, Volume 3, 1944-1945 edited by Jonathan Eller.
The original versions of an American master’s best-known tales
Though it highlights just one year of writing, this third volume of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury represents a crucial moment at the midpoint of his first full decade as a professional writer. The original versions of the 1940s stories recovered for The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, presented in the order in which they were written and first sent off to find life in the magazine market, suggest that Bradbury’s masks didn’t always appeal to his editors. The Volume 3 stories were all written between March 1944 and March 1945, and the surviving letters of this period reveal the private conflict raging between Bradbury’s efforts to define a distinct style and creative vision at home in Los Angeles and the tyranny of genre requirements imposed by the distant pulp publishing world in New York.
Most of the twenty-two stories composed during this pivotal year in his development reflect the impact of these creative pressures. This period also produced important markers in his maturing creativity with “The Miracles of Jamie,” “Invisible Boy,” and “Ylla,” which were among the first wave of Bradbury tales to reach the mainstream markets.
The early versions of Bradbury’s stories recovered for Volume 3, some emerging from his surviving typescripts and several that restore lost text preserved only in the rare Canadian serial versions, provide an unprecedented snapshot of his writing and his inspirations. Underlying this year of creativity was the expanding world of readings in modern and contemporary literature that would prove to be a crucial factor in his development as a master storyteller.
(14) PILOT PROGRAM. A genius idea, but one that will only succeed once they have an AI to fly the drones — “Rise Of The Robot Bees: Tiny Drones Turned Into Artificial Pollinators”.
With the live-model tests deemed a success, Miyako turned his attention to drones. He settled on a bee-sized, four-propeller drone, commercially available for around $100 each. He and his colleagues found that the gel alone was not enough to hold the pollen, so they added horse hair to mimic the fuzzy exterior of bees and provide an electric charge to keep the grains attached. Using fluorescent microscopy, the team observed pollen glowing in test tubes – offering strong proof that fertilization was successful.
Although artificial pollination is already possible, it’s a tedious, time-consuming process. When done by hand, using a brush to apply the pollen, a person can pollinate five to 10 trees a day, depending on the size of the trees. Tackling thousands of trees takes major manpower and a hefty budget.
But even if cost were no object, an army of pollinating robot bees would face myriad obstacles.
“There are 1 million acres of almond trees in California,” says Marla Spivak, a MacArthur Fellow and entomologist at the University of Minnesota. “Every flower needs to be pollinated to set the nut. Two million colonies of bees are trucked in to pollinate the almonds, and each colony has between ten and twenty thousand foragers. How many robots would be needed?”
(15) SANITY CLAWS. Chris Klimek reviews Logan for NPR: “’Logan’ Is The Best At What it Does – And What It Does Is Gritty”.
Long live Logan, James Mangold’s sad, stirring requiem for the X-Men franchise’s most beloved character. The only problem with calling it the boldest and most affecting superhero flick in many years is that it’s barely a superhero movie at all.
It doesn’t talk like a superhero: too many F-bombs, including its very first word. And it doesn’t walk like a superhero: No computer-generated cities are razed in its finale, no unseen thousands sacrificed. Though with its gnarly R-rated medley of stabbings, slicings, skewerings, and impalings in what has been, Deadpool excepted, a PG-13 franchise, Logan sure feels bloodier than most of its ilk. And feels is the right verb: The deaths have weight. For once. To misquote the 40-year-old tagline of the very first big-budget comic book movie, you will believe a man can cry …
… at a movie about a 200-year-old rage monster with a silly haircut and retractable knives implanted in his knuckles.
Because Logan is unlike any capes-and-tights movie we’ve seen. It does for the creaky X series what Creed did for the Rocky cycle, restoring the integrity and emotion of the earliest installments while introducing talented new blood.
(16) PRESENTING THE BILLS. The new Duck Tales trailer.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Scott Edelman, Chip Hitchcock, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
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2). I’m a very bad fan– I’ve only read 6 and have two on my shelves. Those two( Wrinkle in Time and China Mountain Zhang) have survived a number of purges.
Of course, I’m really not a big space opera fan so let’s out a number of them.
First? And I don’t deserve it apparently.
Currently reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Women of Futures Past” which has inspired me to put my copy of Zenna Henderson’s “The Anything Box” on my list to be read again.
2) Wow. You should get a whiskbroom with each post that has Every True Fan in the title. I do OK on the list but am surprised that I don’t recognize a few of them. We’ll be hearing from the Puppies about this, I betcha.
Speaking of Nnedi Okorafor, here is the Club book audio podcast of her visit to the Roseville Public Library. It was tremendous to finally meet her:
http://clubbook.org/club-book-episode-50-nnedi-okorafor/
12)
Gah. So much for Mr. Beale spending his time basking in the glow of his Blessed Trump.
2) Have 15, of which 11 definitely read. In my defence, though missing those particular Lee Killough, C.L. Moore and Andre Norton titles, I have several (in Norton’s case many) of their others, all read, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit is on my ‘to be bought’ list.
Also: Fifth?
(2) EVERY TRUE FAN.
A paltry three for me, though I have read Frankenstein. Plus, I don’t have any Billy bookcases either. Oh, woe is me.
(3) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WOOLLY
When the population of any species gets too small, genetic drift becomes a big problem.
(12) RUMBLINGS.
Is Vox Day’s next killer app a T-shirt merch stall online? Will it be YUGE? Watch this space.
(2)
I have three and have read three or four more. But some of them don’t appeal to me, and some I’ve never seen in print.
Mike has posted an article 2017 FAAn Awards Voting Opens.
This is the first year that I have some real opinions on this subject. I’m a bit dismayed to see that the nomination list is the usual suspects, most of them going back decades. This is probably the normal result of last year’s voters being asked to provide suggestions for this year’s list, but I’d like to see it open up more, to reflect the changing face of fandom and some of the newer creators who have come into fandom in the last twenty years. The people running it may want that too, because they have made it easier to vote on this year’s ballot, which is a PDF, and votes can be e-mailed to the administrators.
I’m going to have a lot of write-ins on this ballot — and it sounds as though this year’s voters may be asked later to provide suggestions to create next year’s ballot. So I encourage all of the Filers to consider taking a few moments to fill this out and send it in.
(2) EVERY TRUE FAN.
I have read 8 of these, and have 5 more of them on my Kindle waiting to be read at some point (I haven’t bought physical books for many years now, for reasons).
(2) EVERY TRUE FAN.
I have three if them, but think Frankenstein is the only essential of them. Most of them I have never heard of. I find the idea of setting up qualifiers for somethings as bizarre as being a “true fan” both ridiculous and pretentious.
My first Scroll title! *dashes excitedly in circles* Thanks, Mike!
(2) I have read only about 8.5 of those books, and I’m shocked that I don’t even know of some of them. Must work on that.
(2) i have owned 10 of these, but i don’t think they all survived the last few purges.
@2: I’ve read at least 13 of these. (A couple I’m unsure of — which Tiptree collection(s) have I read?) But I don’t have nearly all of those on my shelves, as I didn’t start buying even paperbacks in any quantity until I both had a stable job and stopped being a MITSFS [library] member (long story); I don’t love books enough to hunt hard for old titles, although I came back from the 1986 Worldcon with 6 feet of paperbacks (from Glen Cook’s table, where they were cheap). I’m amused by the commenter who claims no Cherryh (not seeing Gate of Ivrel, but I agree that Cyteen is a more significant work of hers. (I thought JDN might be pointing at first novels by major mostly-women, but Left Hand of Darkness is Le Guin’s 4th per ISFDB; arguably it’s her first major work, but that doesn’t explain Galactic Derelict (#13 for Andre Norton) — there are earlier works I’d say are just as significant.)
@15: that’s Chris Klimek. I’ll save my beverage for after the upcoming business meeting….
2- Oops, not a true fan. I’ll somehow live through it much like every other true fan test.
12- Between outing negative reviewers for his books, concern trolling for pizza pedophiles and slobbering over his God-Emperor it’s flattering he found the time!
15- Watched it tonight. Really good. Hugh Jackman has somehow managed to portray the Wolverine character in both the worst and best movies featuring the character, in both solo efforts and team ones. I find that pretty impressive. There’s so much about the movie that remains in my head, I can see some being turned off by the ultra violence but even if you removed all of it the movie would be great. Patrick Stewart was awesome.
(2) I have 15 of these and have read 13 of them. I have glanced over at least 2 of the others and they did not strike my fancy. However I can safely say that only the Russ would likely end up on any core list I made. Though some other books by authors on the list might.
And how can two books that are less then 5 years old be core to anything.
4) While plenty of other Brits are scrambling to aquire an EU passport because of Brexit (I’m a certified translator and I’ve noticed a definite uptick in British expats wanting their birth certificates translated to apply for german citizenship), Sir Patrick wants to become an American to fight Trump. I certainly admire his courage.
BTW, it is absolutely possible for dual citizens to hold a British knighthood. For example, the late sociologist Sir Ralf Dahrendorf was a dual German and British citizen even as a member of the House of Lords.
BTW, it is absolutely possible for dual citizens to hold a British knighthood.
That may be possible, but I think the problem would be on the U.S. end. If I remember correctly, the oath of citizenship requires that the new citizen renounce all other allegiances and honors.
It took me a minute to figure out (2). At first I was annoyed, for a variety of reasons (including the title). Now I’m torn between excited and anxious (anxious because, while I’d read 8 of those, and another 3 were on my TBR, I’ve now added 9 to my TBR, and he’s saying he’s going to do more of these lists).
(12) I recommend reading the comments on Vox’s thread. It is, as usual, a Randian car crash featuring tiny bumper cars driven by Very Serious angry puppies.
(2) Have read 7 and have 11 of them on my shelves (which in my case are Ivar).
(11) *sigh* When can idiots start to simply be labelled as “white male idiot” instead of finding some other downtrodden group to blame it on. (And NCIS and Call of Duty the video game being science fiction?!?)
(12) Will I have to trot this one out again?
The sound of postings on the ‘net,
Good fans, lock down your comment sections
Beware, they seek the deadly set,
That spawns objections and rejections
Sad puppies, sad puppies,
They seek the perfect screed,
Sad puppies, sad puppies,
They’re very sad indeed
Sad; the books they are proposing,
Sad; their looks when Hugos settle
From bias Hugos they are saving,
Their pot is blacker than their kettle
Sad puppies, sad puppies
Now planning your reruns
Sad puppies, sad puppies,
You poor and little ones
(Ttto the Black Adder theme song.)
2) 55% True SF Fan here, must try harder. (I hope James Nicoll has his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek with that title. Although, since it’s James, if his tongue is wedged firmly in his cheek, it’s probably as the result of some appalling and unlikely accident.)
2) Knowing James, I think the whole thing is a caustic comment on all-true-fans lists in general, and those where the authors are all white males in particular.
I’ve only read about a quarter of them, but liked all of those, so I’d guess it’d be a good reading list overall, anyway.
@Aaron
Germany doesn’t like dual citizens either and didn’t allow dual citizenships until fairly recently. For a while, even children from dual nationality families had to choose one passport, when they turned 18. This happened to some schoolmates of mine. However, the ban against dual citizenships was never uniformly enforced and so Germans and other white Europeans such as Sir Ralf Dahrendorf got a pass, while e.g. Turkish immigrants often didn’t.
(2) I have the Le Guin and the Leckie on my shelves, Frankenstein with me here at the coffee shop, and Kindred waiting for me at the library where I reserved it some weeks ago. (Seems to be in demand there.). I’ve read 3-4 of the others.
(2) 17! I’ve read 17! And had most of them till my recent displacement.
(3) I’m very sorry for the wooly mammoths. I feel like I know how they felt, right now. Genetic research making progress too late!
So, this means if we want to clone mammoths back into existence, we should start with the ones most removed in time from us that we can recover usable DNA from?
Meredith Moment: Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas is currently $2.99.
https://smile.amazon.com/Consider-Phlebas-Culture-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B0013TX6FI?_encoding=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=pe_170810_229088170_pe_row1_b3_t
I believe I will see if I can do one of these lists per week, each with a different theme, each one populated purely on the basis of merit.
So, Galactic Derelict was my first Norton. It also has a plot-shape my brain has a lot of receptors for. If you want me to read your book, “ancient ship (or portal network) leads to inadvertent exploration and archaeology” is the way to go [1]. Galactic Derelict and Night of Masks are my two favourite Nortons.
1: See also Shakespeare’s Planet and whatever that Zebrowski was that enticed me into reading a lot of books by him I did not care for.
I don’t think the Puppies are going to mess with the Hugos this year because the rules changes have made it impossible for them to sweep all but a few categories. They could still have an impact, but I suspect they won’t do much simply because at this point anything short of “burning down” whole categories will look like defeat.
One thing to remember about the Rabid Puppies is that they’re able to get organized on very short notice. Last year, Vox Day made a change to his Best Pro Artist nomination just 24 hours before the deadline, and yet 240 of the 318 slate voters in the category managed to switch their votes. So we’re not out of the woods yet.
If one assumes that organic nominations will fall back to the 2015 rate this year, then just 100 nominations would be enough to place a work into the top 6 in every category except Best Novel. Even though he publicly told his people not to nominate this year, I’ll bet he could still muster 100 votes. If nothing else, the 66 people who routinely voted him “Best Editor (Short Form)” are probably long-term fans who vote every year regardless, and that’d be enough to get at least one nominee in all but four categories. It’s not clear how many of these overlap with his “minutemen” who can respond at a moment’s notice though.
At those levels, EPH ought to work quite well, so even if he does prepare a slate, it’s not likely to get more than one or two slots per category. Those would all get voted under No Award in the final ceremony, unless they were “hostages,” in which case fans showed they’re great at figuring out what would have been on the ballot anyway and just ignoring the puppies.
So it looks like he’s in a position where the best move he has it not to play at all. Ironic, isn’t it?
(2) I was oddly proud I’ve only read four* of the twenty and two of them–Frankenstein and A Wrinkle in Time–I read so long ago I need to read them again until I read McBadger’s comment.
Any case, definitely good suggestions which is probably what such lists should be.
*at first I thought I had only read two and was even prouder. then I notice Kindred and The Dispossessed.
2) I’ve read either 17 or 18; I read a lot of Andre Norton in my youth but I don’t recall if Galactic Derelict is one of the titles I’ve read.
So, tell me about The Next Continent by Issui Ogawa and A Voice Out of Ramah by Lee Killough….
If you want me to read your book, “ancient ship (or portal network) leads to inadvertent exploration and archaeology” is the way to go.
So Pohl’s Gateway is high on your list then?
@Greg Hullender
I don’t think the Puppies are going to mess with the Hugos this year
We can only hope – from your lips to Ghu’s ears!
With apologies to The Doors:
Five to one, puppy
One in five
No campaign gets out alive, now
You vote yours, puppy
I’ll vote mine
Not gonna make it, pup
If you try
The sad get sad
And the fen get stronger
May take EPH
And it may take longer
They got the slates
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
Organic voters
Come on!
Yeah!
Your rigging days are over, puppy
Night is drawing near
Shadows of the evening crawl across the years
Ya talk across the blogs with no power in your hands
Trying to tell me no one understands
Log rolling votes for a handful of dimes
Not gonna’ make it, you’re past your prime
Fans cast votes unique each time!
Come on!
(4) I think the best comment that I saw was “Well, he was the one who taught our generation that Resistance Is Not Futile.”
The main reason, I think, to doubt there will be significant Rabid Puppy input into this year’s ballot, is that VD did tell his minions not to go out of their way to register, and the deadline for registration is now passed. That probably means he has lost a lot of his nominators from last year. The actual voters from last year are still qualified to nominate, of course, but they seem to have been fewer in number.
I’m doubtful you can actually work out what he will do from calculations of advantage. As well as the lock-out strategy, which, as Greg says, is hard to make work with EPH, there are at least two other strategies available to him – the griefing strategy and the kingmaking strategy – both of which he tried up to a point last year (the latter most clearly in Novella). EPH does not prevent either of these very effectively. And in any case, it’s difficult to deter someone whose main motive is to disrupt things, so that he can say ‘Look, I disrupted!’. Whether his strategy will have any tangible result become irrelevant in such a case.
(The Sad group, on the other hand, say they are moving on to greener pastures, and I believe them.)
By the way, regarding number of organic nominations, my tentative prediction (based on a sample of one) is that the overall number will not fall back to the 2015 rate, but that some categories may, or near it. People who have been drawn in by the controversy will still want to nominate, since their interest has been roused, but won’t feel the same obligation to nominate in every category, since (it seems) there isn’t the same need to block the slate, and in some of the smaller categories a lot of fans have to go out of their way to find stuff.
Here are ten letters every true Filer should have used at least one:
A, e, O, I, E, S, F, Ä, Z, K
Puppies are strange when they are sadder
Ballots look ugly when they are thrown
Novels seem wicked when they’re unwanted
The votes are uneven, quality’s down
When they’re sad
Puppies come out of the rain
When they’re sad
No one remembers their name
Ξ and Ƕ surely should be there but I don’t use Ѿ in polite company
@Andrew M
Yep, he won’t have the ~400 people he had last year, that’s for sure. But we can expect he’ll at least have the 66 who’ve backed him in the final ballot for three years in a row. That’s why I assumed 100 was about the limit of what he could muster this year.
I’ve heard it suggested that his strategy is to lie low for one year in hopes that the Business Meeting at WorldCon75 votes to repeal EPH, on the grounds that it served its purpose. Then he could target the 2018 awards. That’s just speculation, though.
I think it’s just as likely that he had planned to use the awards to promote his new “Forbidden Thoughts” anthology, but when its release date slipped to January 2, 2017, he no longer had anything to gain personally, so he decided to bail. It’s quite a lot of work making a complete slate, after all. Why do it if there’s no political or monetary benefit?
And it is much harder if he can’t copy most of it from the sads.
(2) well, I’ve got 12 (on Ivar shelves, like Karl-Johan, because you can adjust shelf heights). I hope Nicoll does publish more lists; I can’t imagine any being definitive.
Hampus Eckerman: I take your point, though let’s not overestimate how much work it would be to compile a slate. It will take him five minutes to slot a bunch of Castalia House books, stories, and blog entries into the appropriate categories. Five minutes more to list all the movies and TV shows he liked. And in the remaining space, he’ll salt in a few human shields, like last year.
Well, whatever happens, we can be sure that Teddy will claim it was all part of his master plan.
Mike Glyer: let’s not overestimate how much work it would be to compile a slate.
I agree, but if he does attempt to freep the Hugo noms again this year, he will just end up with even more egg on his face than he had in the last two years. I think that he will choose to ignore the Hugos — claiming that he wasn’t interested in them anymore, anyway, because he’s already won the Hugos battle, so there! — and go for the lower-hanging fruit: the Dragon Awards and the CLFA Awards, both of which are massively ripe for freeping.
(2)
I’ve read 18 and own at least 16, so my taste must be similar to the compiler’s. Not quite the same, though–I think I got rid of Golden Witchbreed because I just didn’t like it much, although friends had recommended it strongly. I read a borrowed copy of Nine Fox Gambit and plan to buy one for myself eventually.
Galactic Derelict was one of my first SF books ever, and like our list-maker, I dearly loved it. Haven’t checked it for creeping suckiness lately, but Norton usually stands up well.
Like Cassie B., I’m wondering about the two I didn’t recognize, The Next Continent by Issui Ogawa and A Voice Out of Ramah by Lee Killough. Ogawa is apparently another male, judging by the photo on Amazon.
(2) I’ve read (or, in the case of Ninefox Gambit, am reading) 13, two of which I don’t own; two more are on Mount TBR. Which, for once, seems to put me ahead of a lot of Filers; it feels odd.
(2) I’ve read, I think 8 on the list, and own a similar number (although there may be differences between the specific titles I own vs. the ones I’ve read).
2) Out of those 20 books, I own two, have read parts of a third, have read but no longer own a fourth, and have at least heard of most of the others. I guess I’m just not a Trufan, but that information is neither new nor interesting.
11) I was unaware that NCIS was considered a science fiction show. As I don’t play video games, I can’t speak to Call of Duty, but a quick Google suggests that there’s not much in it that would be called science fiction either. I think someone is really reaching there.
@ Greg: I have repeated my previous approach of actively avoiding knowing what was being slated until nominations are closed. That way I can vote for anything I nominated without having to worry about other people’s motivations.
@Camestros Felapton
I believe you may have dropped this Internet. Let me just dust it off for you 😛
@Estee
Coincidentally, I picked up a copy of Galactic Derelict at a Goodwill last weekend. Only about a fifth of the way through re-reading but no suck fairy droppings in evidence so far. I’d still rank Star Rangers or The Beast Master higher in my Norton pantheon but having a good visit with an old friend.
On the overall list: 9 for 20 read but only 4 shelved.
Lee: I was unaware that NCIS was considered a science fiction show.
It’s that 10-minute turnaround time on DNA tests which makes it science fiction, doncha know.
@JJ: That and the amazing variation in time-space between their HQ and Norfolk (depending on plot requirements), IIRC – no doubt achieved via SF means.