(1) WEIN SCHEDULED FOR SURGERY. Wolverine co-creator Len Wein has made a public appeal for your good thoughts when he’s in surgery on Tuesday:
Hey, Gang–
I am about to impose on our online friendship for what I pray will be the final time. Then I can go back to posting endless videos of cute Golden Retriever puppies, of which there can never be too many.
Okay, so here’s the deal: About six weeks ago, I took a header while leaving my foot doctor’s office and bounced my head off the floor, which I may have talked about here. At first, they thought the damage was minimal, but further testing revealed I had fractured/broken my upper neck in several places, which need repair immediately or I run the risk of becoming a planter with a head on it. I’m going into the hospital tomorrow morning (March 6) for prep, with major all-day surgery scheduled for Tuesday (March 7) at 11AM PST.
So here’s where you come in. At that time on Tuesday morning, I’d really appreciate it if you just think good healing thoughts about me. I asked the same of you two years ago when I had my quintuple bypass heart surgery, and I believe to this day that’s a major reason I survived it.
So, if you think you can, please do. On the other hand, if you think I drink runny eggs through a straw, I’d rather you not think of me at all. After that, the rest is up to my talented surgeons and whatever Higher Powers That Be.
Thanks for listening, and I hope to see you on the other side.
(2) SPACEMAN SPIFF’S FRIEND. On The Verge, Andrew Liptak introduces readers to Brian Kesinger’s Tea Girls, which includes a series of Calvin and Hobbes-style Star Wars cartoons.
(3) GANYMEDE BORNE ALOFT BY DEVELOPERS. “Tolkien’s favourite watering hole in line for a makeover: St Giles pub The Eagle and Child in major redevelopment bid”. The Oxford Mail has the story.
HISTORIC Oxford pub The Eagle and Child is in line for a major revamp.
Pub company Young’s and St John’s College plans to redevelop the Grade-II listed watering hole in St Giles.
Known as ‘The Bird and Baby’, it was the favourite meeting place of the 1930’s Inklings’ writers group, which included Lord of the Rings and Hobbit author JRR Tolkien and Narnia creator CS Lewis.
The makeover will span numbers 49-51, including Greens café next door and space above, which is vacant.
Under proposals submitted to Oxford City Council, the Eagle and Child will be expanded and upgraded, with distinctive eating and drinking zones created.
The two upper floors will be converted into seven hotel rooms, with en-suite bathrooms.
Leaseholder Young’s is working with St John’s College, which owns the building and both say they expect the redevelopment to be completed by 2018.
Young’s chief executive Patrick Dardis said: “The Eagle & Child is an iconic pub with huge potential and we are very excited to be working with St John’s on its redevelopment.
(4) THE HOME STRETCH. Radio Times says these three stars have a shot at becoming the next Doctor Who.
Former Death in Paradise star Kris Marshall may be the clear favourite to be the next Doctor – but he still has competition from two women according to one firm of bookies.
William Hill says money is still being taken on Tilda Swinton and Olivia Colman suggesting that the battle for the keys to the Tardis could now be a three-horse race.
(5) SUGGESTED READING. The SFWA Blog has posted the “2016 Andre Norton Award Jury Recommended Reading List” of young adult and middle grade fiction recommended by jurors Ellen Klages, Leah Bobet, Eugene Myers, Jei D. Marcade, and Fran Wilde. I have indicated 2016 award finalist with as asterisk (*).
2016 Andre Norton Award Jury Recommended Reading List
(in alphabetical order by author)
- Kelly Barnhill – The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Algonquin) (*)
- Frances Hardinge – The Lie Tree (Macmillan) (*)
- A. J. Hartley – Steeplejack(Tor Teen)
- Heidi Helig – The Girl From Everywhere (Greenwillow)
- David D. Levine – Arabella of Mars (Tor) (*)
- Katharine McGee – The Thousandth Floor (Harper Collins)
- Philip Reeve – Railhead (Switch Press) (*)
- Lindsay Ribar – Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (Kathy Dawson Books) (*)
- Patrick Samphire – Secrets of the Dragon’s Tomb (Henry Holt)
- Delia Sherman – The Evil Wizard Smallbone (Candlewick) (*)
- April Genevieve Tucholke – Wink, Poppy, Midnight (Dial Books)
- Diane Zahler – Baker’s Magic (Capstone Young Readers)
(6) NEWSWEEK TOLKIEN TRIBUTE. “The Road Goes On – The Making of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Silmarillion’” is an article from Newsweek’s Special Edition: J.R.R. Tolkien—The Mind of a Genius.
The story of Bilbo Baggins and his quest to the Lonely Mountain was originally conceived with no connection with his vast and epic mythology. The Lord of the Rings, which began as a simple sequel to the immensely successful The Hobbit, also lacked concrete ties to The Silmarillion (at least in the book’s early stages). But the grip of Tolkien’s earliest tales on the rest of his oeuvre proved inescapable, and the author found himself adding references to his myths within The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, especially because several characters from the latter work, such as Galadriel, hailed from the time period described in The Silmarillion. Tolkien added these characters into his larger legendarium, and in doing so couldn’t resist the temptation to delve deeper into the myths he created and their implication for his world.
“He became more and more interested in what you might call the metaphysical aspects of his secondary invention,” Christopher Tolkien said. “Above all with the nature of the Elves.” The result was that Tolkien died with what he regarded as his most important work, the urtext of a universe loved by millions, in a state of frozen transformation.
Fortunately, Christopher Tolkien was intimately familiar with his father’s vision for Middle-earth’s mythology and proved capable of sorting through the reams of notes and journals the professor left, containing everything from the genealogy of Elf kings to poems to the details of life in Aman. Working with Guy Gavriel Kay (who later went on to become an accomplished fantasy writer in his own right), the younger Tolkien crafted the final version of The Silmarillion for publication in 1977. For the first time, fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings learned of the titanic clashes between good and evil and feats of heroism only hinted at in their favorite fiction.
(7) TOLKIEN, THE PSYCHIC PAPER EDITION. And for those of you with no intention of ever reading the book, eBay is offering the perfect collector’s first edition of The Silmarillion – a publisher’s pre-sale dummy copy – for a mere $945. It has everything but that bothersome text.
TOLKIEN, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. First Edition. Publisher saleman’s dummy copy used in advance of the book’s publication. This sample book prints the half-title, title pages, copyright page and the first 32 pages of the text followed by a couple of hundred blank pages to fill out the book. With a long blank folded sheet at the rear as a mockup for the map that would be in the finished book. Bound in blue cloth with the stamping and decoration the same as that of eventually used in the finished book. Fine copy in a fine proof state dust jacket.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 5, 1943 — Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is released.
(9) THE FROZEN CHOSEN. As I reported earlier today, Vox Day released the Rabid Puppies 2017 slate. The slate comes with a brand-new logo.
Matt Y accepted the challenge of interpreting the new art.
Techgrrl1972
And could someone decode that logo?
I’ll try:
What you have is a title using a Heavy Metal font, giving it the look of a Def Leppard concert T-shirt. There’s a lot of ice, obviously a clear signal refuting climate change. There’s the castle from Frozen ironically in that they’ll never let it go. There are three puppies. The one on the left is sporting a ladies fur lined parka which might be seasonal however would seem odd to be wearing fur over fur. Not just in a PETA way but just in general. That puppy appears to be playing fetch with Mjolnir and is on it’s way to return it. The husky in the middle has it’s head cocked in stupefied confusion in a mirror image of how most people look when someone tries to explain Rabid Puppies to them. The one on the right didn’t get the melee weapons memo and is trying not to show the others how much that hurt it’s feelings.
The three of them will defend Elsa against the Duke’s evil plans, while desperately seeking a participation trophy once again.
(10) MAGICAL THINKING. Camestros Felapton, in “Tired Puppies 2017”, deconstructs Brad Torgersen’s latest column for Mad Genius Club.
In the comments, Brad even manages to have his cake and eat it by complaining about more ‘literary’ SF *not* having traditional SF covers (his specific example is All the Birds in the Sky) because that is a bad thing too for some reason. Yes, yes, you’d think that he would WANT non-nuggety SF to have non-nuggety covers but that would be applying far too much logical consistency to what is a fundamental objection to wrongbooks having wrongfun in the bookshop.
I think the best, most recent example of this, is All The Birds In The Sky. It’s packaged deliberately as a lit book. It desperately wants to escape the SF/F shelves and go live on the mainstream shelves where the “important” books live. (chuckle) I blame Irene Gallo, who is very much responsible for this trend at TOR. She wants the field as a whole to stop looking like it did during the high period. Because making all that amazing money with space art that actually looks like space art, and swords’n’sorcery art that actually looks like swords’n’sorcery art, was just so gauche.
Note how there is no ground for compromise here. If publisher market SF to a less-SF audience then for Brad this is bad, if they market the same SF to a SF audience then to Brad this is also bad. Would Brad *seriously* be happy if ALl the Birds in the SKy had a cover featuring space rockets (in the book), people descending from ropes from helicopters (in the book) and magical people casting spells (in the book)? Goodness no! That would be the other evil of somehow tricking the honest-SF-reader into reading a book with cooties.
We are back to the unspoken logic of much of what has consumed the right for decades. It is unspoken and avoided, an incomplete argument leads people to a conclusion that they would reject if spoken. By not following the logic they can retain a belief that they are moderate and reasonable. However, their argument always leads to the same spot. Brad would just rather these wrong books DID NOT EXIST. He doesn’t want to ban them or burn them or imprison their authors (although how else can his wish come true?) he just wants them to magically not be there.
(11) THUMBS DOWN. BBC calls live Beauty and the Beast overlong and pointless.
There are two obvious differences between the two versions, however. The first difference is that the current film is live-action, so there are lots of rococo sets and intricate digital creations to look at. And yet, despite the zillions of dollars that must have been spent on the Hogwarts-ish production design, the sad fact is that neither of the showstopping numbers, the title song and Be Our Guest, is as magical or imaginative as it was in a cartoon which came out over a quarter of a century ago.
Few of the actors live up to their predecessors, either. Buried as he is under layers of computer-generated imagery, Dan Stevens manages to make the Beast his own by finding the pathos in his aristocratic awkwardness. Ewan McGregor puts some oomph and ooh-la-la into Lumiere the candelabra. As for the rest of the cast, Emma Watson is prim and petulant as Belle; Emma Thompson’s Mrs Potts is no match for Angela Lansbury’s, who was as warm and soothing as the tea she brewed; and Kevin Kline is painfully mannered as Belle’s wittering father. In many cases, what it comes down to is that the voices in the cartoon were provided by musical and opera veterans who could really sing, whereas the same characters in the live-action film are played by movie stars who really can’t.
(12) DON’T BUILD THIS IN YOUR BASEMENT. The UK military misplaced what?
A north Wales town has a cold war thriller on its hands after nuclear submarine plans were found in a charity shop suitcase.
Staff at a Barnardo’s store in Porthmadog, Gwynedd, were amazed to discover the document showing details of the former £200m HMS Trafalgar.
“Someone said that if the phone rang and it was someone with a Russian accent, I should put it down,” joked manager, Stella Parker.
The plans will be auctioned off.
Charity store staff say the suitcase was donated anonymously and filled with books.
But hidden in the lining of the luggage was the impressive 6ft (1.8m) drawings of the former Royal Navy vessel.
Chip Hitchcock suggests, “Dave Langford is probably snickering at anyone who foolishly thought The Leaky Establishment was fiction….”
(13) VIRTUAL EXHIBITS. Twilight Zone Museum is celebrating 15 years online by hawking video from two TZ conventions held at the beginning of the century. (Remember when the 21st Century was the future?)
For those who missed our two Los Angeles-based TZ Conventions, you’re in luck! We have the 3 panel discussions done in 2002 available on DVD. The actor panel featured actors Cliff Robertson, Jean Carson, Jonathan Harris, Arlene Martel, Wright King, William Windom, Suzanne Lloyd, Kevin McCarthy, James Best, Anne Francis, and Suzanne Lloyd. The writer panel featured George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, John Tomerlin (“Number 12 Looks Just Like You”), and Marc Zicree. The directors panel featured James Sheldon and Eliot Silverstein plus actors Susan Gordon and Ben Cooper (who appeared in their episodes). George Clayton Johnson’s historic keynote address at the VIP Dinner Celebration, which can be viewed for free right here on this page, is also available on DVD. The 2004 panels: Actor panel with George Takei, H.M. Wynant, Shelley Berman, Gail Kobe, Bill Mumy, and Lloyd Bochner. Director/Producer panel with Ted Post and Del Reisman (both of these panels were hosted by Tony Albarella). Writer panel hosted by Andrew Ramage, with Gloria Pall (TZ actor and writer of her own TZ scrapbook plus 14 other books), Sandra Grabman (author of “The Albert Salmi Story”), Chris Beaumont (son of Charles Beaumont, TZ writer extraordinaire), Roger Anker (biographer of Beaumont), and George Clayton Johnson. There was a fourth panel of folks involved with “The New Twilight Zone” (from the 80s), led by Alan Brennert and including Harlan Ellison, Rockne O’Bannon, and others. The charge is $60 for all four of the 2002 panels and the charge for all five of the 2004 panels is also $60. Shipping cost is $6 within USA; if you buy both sets, it’s still $6 total for shipping. Outside USA shipping – please inquire for cost, as we will have to look it up online. These are high quality Region 1 DVDs. Payment methods accepted are Paypal, cash, or USPS money order ONLY! If paying by Paypal, there is a surcharge of $6 if purchasing both sets, or $3 if purchasing only one set, due to Paypal’s processing fees. Note: it costs you nothing to send money by Paypal, but there is a fee for us to receive your money and a 2-3 day waiting period before it hits our bank account. Please email [email protected] to place your order or if you have further questions!
(14) DEADPOOL 2. A teaser for the next Deadpool movie is making the rounds.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]
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First? I’m ignoring VD, he’ll fail and claim to win as usual. Also, looking for internal consistency from the puppies and fellow travelers is just going to drive you nuts, as there isn’t any.
As for the leaky establishment, I really don’t want to know how much was real…
(9) THE FROZEN CHOSEN.
I’ll add a link to Kurt Busiek’s enhancement to Matt Y’s excellent artistic interpretation:
But then there’s also the Special Snowflakes, who are either the Puppy voters, backing up the Hounds of Houndism, or they’re infiltrating Castle Safespace, and that’s what the Puppies are on guard against except the snowflakes are behind them so they can’t see them.
But they’re On Guard anyway.
In a scroll and [first] third! yay!
[psst – also the quote from Brad has lost its quotey format so now it looks like I said what Brad said. ]
Brad Torgersen’s fragility is sad. If only those tricksy and disloyal readers would stop liking the wrong books. It upsets Brad.
Camestros Felapton: Ooh, that’s awkward. I have given Brad’s quote a little nudge, should be clear now.
Thank you 🙂
Next time, I’ll invest in some quotation marks!
(9) All that was missing was a rickrolling.
1) There is a Really Unfortunate Typo in the first paragraph of the quoted text. While this was doubtless a cut-and-paste duplication of an error in the original, you might still want to fix it. (Hint: It refers to puppies.)
I think you had quotation marks, didn’t you? I seem to remember dropping them because my style of identifying embedded quotations is different from that. Unfortunately, I neglected to do my alternative til you pointed out the error.
Lee: Len owes you a beverage!
10) ObSF parallel, from A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold:
“So what is it that you want from Mark, Kou? Do you wish him to offer to marry Kareen?”
“Er,” said [Kou], caught out. What he wanted, near as Kareen could tell, was for Mark to be carried off by predators, possibly even along with his four million marks in nonliquid investments, but he could hardly say so to Mark’s mother.
Speaking of Bujold: Paladin of Scrolls?
WRT the magical thinking in #10 — it seems to me that Brad’s thinking is similar to right wing attitudes towards government:
A) Government is bad and cannot do anything right; anything they touch will turn to drek
-except-
B) Military and Police and Security functions of government are always executed perfectly and with nothing but good will and pureness of heart.
I always point out that I prefer dealing with the very efficient and well run DMV (in KENTUCKY, no less!) than the idiots on the other end of the line when I call The Cable TV Company or The Phone Company or (goddess forbid) An Airline.
I could write a very funny essay on the enjoyment of dealing with amazon.com’s phone center in the Phillipines concerning a missed delivery that had been ‘attempted’ by someone other than the “Big 3” of UPS, FedEx or the USPS.
Never underestimate the power of the profit motive to screw things up.
@ Mike: Hey, the man’s got a lot on his plate right now. I’m willing to cut him a break.
ETA: Egad. I swear that wasn’t intentional!
Woot! Contributing Editor of the Day!
9) The puppy in the middle actually looks quite cheerful. Maybe it was misdiagnosed?
4) Way too early to tell, I think, who really IS a frontrunner to be the new Who. But with a new showrunner, and a new Doctor (whoever it is) it will be a time of change. Time will tell if its “not a moment too soon” to quote the first words of the 6th Doctor
Turning the “precious snowflakes and their safe spaces” rhetoric back against the Puppies is undeniably funny, but every time I see it my inner pedant goes “that’s not what safe spaces are about”. It’s probably a sign I’ve spent too long in The Discourse.
One rather odd thing about Torgersen’s complaint is that if the publishers wanted to put All the Birds on the mainstream shelves, they could have done so. Plenty of books with SFnal content do appear on the mainstream shelves (e.g. The Buried Giant, The Chimes, Arcadia, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street – though some of these seem to have moved to the SFF shelves later). But I have never seen Birds put there – which is not surprising, as it is a work which very consciously orients itself in relation to the traditions of SF and fantasy.
(8) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
I haven’t noticed “Frankenstein” being used as the name for the monster before so explicitly and “officially”. I thought that naming the monster that way was mainly a pop culture shortcut.
I read Kameron Hurley’s “The Stars are Legion” this weekend. It took me a little bit to process all of my thoughts on it, but I think I am coming away with “Eww. I don’t like it.” This was my first book (after Geek Feminist Revolution) by Hurley, and I really only picked it up after seeing some really high praise on it. I think that praise is unfounded and wrong. More thoughts below, but ROT13’d as they’ll contain spoilers.
Svefg bss, V sryg yvxr v arrqrq gb fubjre nsgre ernqvat. V trg gung guvf frrzrq nyzbfg yvxr n cbvag fur jnf gelvat gb znxr, ohg V ernyyl qvqa’g yvxr vg.
Gurer ner fbzr pbzzragf V’ir frra, naq rira va gur npxabjyrqtrzragf bs gur obbx, gung zragvba gur fhogyr jbeyqohvyqvat. Ohyyfuvg. Gur “jbeyq” naq fbpvrgvrf gung znxr hc guvf obbx qba’g znxr n yvpx bs frafr. Ubj ynetr ner gurfr jbeyqf/fuvcf? Gurer ner zbzragf gung znxr gurz frrz uhtr, yvxr n erny jbeyq; ohg gura gurer ner gvzrf jurer gurl frrz gval, yvxr gur fvmr bs n pvgl. Vapbafvfgrag. Naq V trg gung gurer’f fhccbfrq gb or fbzr zlfgrel oruvaq fbzr bs guvf fghss, yvxr Jung gur shpx vf gur Yrtvba? Jung ner gurfr jbeyq guvatf? Ubj gur shpx qb gurfr jbzra whfg trg enaqbzyl certanag? Ubj qbrf rnpu jbzna tvir ovegu gb fbzrguvat pbzcyrgryl enaqbz naq qvssrerag? Vs gurfr jbeyq’f ner obea sebz jbzra, gura jul qbrf vg frrz yvxr gurer vf n zrgny fxryrgba haqrearngu gur ovbybtl? Qbrf rnpu jbeyq gung vf ovegurq whfg rng gur jbeyq gung vg vf ba? Naq fvapr vg frrzf gb ernpg naq rng gur jbeyq nyzbfg vafgnagnarbhfyl, jbhyq vg tebj vagb vg’f bja jbeyq jvgubhg univat gb rng nabgure jbeyq? Nsgre nyy, jung vf pnhfvat gur “pnapre” bs gur jbeyqf? Gurer vf fb zhpu urer gung vf whfg tybffrq bire. Znlor gung vf fhccbfrq gb nqq gb gur zlfgrel bs vg nyy, ohg vg whfg cvffrq zr bss.
Gnxr Yrpxvr’f Napvyynel Whfgvpr, sbe na rknzcyr. Urer vf n obbx gung hfrf fhogyr jbeyqohvyqvat gb perngr n onpxfgbel, fbpvrgvrf, zrnavat, checbfr, naq cybg nyy juvyr tvivat n frafr bs zlfgrel naq sha va gelvat gb svther bhg jul guvatf unccra gur jnl gurl qb. Va Fgnef ner Yrtvba, vg srryf yvxr gur onpxfgbel naq zrnavat vfa’g whfg fhogyr naq jr’er gb svther vg bhg naq cvrpr vg gbtrgure, vg srryf yvxr vg vf orvat sbepvoyl jvguuryq sebz hf. Abg pbby.
Guvf qbrfa’g rira gbhpu ba gur punenpgref, bs juvpu gurer ner ab erqrrzvat inyhrf jungfbrire. Abar bs gurz ner gung vagrerfgvat, znxr zhpu frafr, be ner va nal jnl erqrrznoyr. Jul gur uryy ner Mna naq Wnlq tbvat guebhtu nyy bs guvf? Vf yvsr, va guvf fbpvrgl, ernyyl jbegu fnivat? Orpnhfr, ubarfgyl, abar bs vg frrzf yvxr vg unf n cbvag. Ng nyy. Rirel fbpvrgl va guvf obbx vf greevoyr, ab bar vf unccl va nal frafr, naq yvsr vf pbzcyrgryl hainyhrq.
Ynfgyl, whfg gb raq guvf enag, v jnag gb gbhpu ba gur jubyr “ybfg zrzbel” vqrn. Jura qbar jryy, V unir ab vffhr jvgu guvf (frr fbzrguvat yvxr Fgne Jnef: Xavtugf bs gur Byq Erchoyvp), ohg V unir ovt ceboyrzf jvgu ubj vg jnf unaqyrq va Yrtvba. Gur ovttrfg ceboyrz vf gung sbe nobhg 3/4 bs gur obbx, zbfg bs gur puncgref pbafvfg bs “Bhe znfgre cyna jvyy ubcrshyyl pbzr gbtrgure” naq “V unir ab vqrn jung’f tbvat ba, ohg fbzr bs guvf srryf snzvyvne”. Ubefrfuvg. BX, V trg vg, znlor ng gur ortvaavat gubfr guvatf ner BX, ohg gb xrrc ba naq ba naq ba naq ba jvgu gur rknpg fnzr sbezng bs uvqvat gur gehgu sebz gur ernqre trgf gverfbzr. V arire sryg yvxr V jnf tvira pyhrf nf gb jung jnf tbvat ba naq nyybjrq gb cvrpr gurz gbtrgure (frr Jbeyqohvyqvat gubhtugf nobir), ohg jnf fvzcyl gbyq “V’z abg tbvat gb tvir lbh nalguvat”.
Bar zber guvat, gur birenyy cybg vf nobhg nf fgnaqneq ivqrb-tnzrl nf lbh pna trg. Ureb ybfrf zrzbel, trgf frag gb greevoyr cynpr. Rfpncrf, tnguref gebbc bs pbasyvpgvat sevraqf, yriryf hc, jvaf. Nyfb, gur jubyr Mna = Ybeq Zbxfuv jnf nobhg gur zbfg genafcnerag “hairvyvat” V’ir ernq va n obbx.
That was quite a rant, sorry for the wall of text. I simply had a lot of issues with this book.
(9) THE FROZEN CHOSEN
Actually, I think the lil doges are cosplaying the scene from the end of the first Laundry novel.
(10) MAGICAL THINKING
Here’s the cover for the latest Scalzi. I don’t know to what extent Gallo was involved in that particular cover, but basically the only way to get a cover that is more in keeping with the classic Chris Foss look would be to actually hire Chris Foss.
I know she’s very involved with their novella line, so to see if they’re ignoring classic swords and sorcery art here’s an Orc with a ridiculous axe and another woman with a less ridiculous sword.
For space art, here’s someone on a spaceship, and someone on a space station.
I can’t think of one of their novella covers that was badly misleading about the sub-genre inside.
Admittedly their covers for UF and more contemporary fantasy push a few more boundaries, but as UF is a child of the eighties there’s no “classic” UF cover style to ignore.
@Mark
Ah, but the images are not completely photorealistic, but slightly blurry and blurry images signal “artsy fartsy literature” to Torgersen and pals, who apparently are still shocked by this new art movement calling itself Impressionism.
Plus, the title font isn’t big and blocky and orange enough.
@Mark: Ah so the latest Scalzi cover is going to trick poor unsuspecting Brad into buying some SJW work!! Oh noes! Won’t someone think of the Puppies?!
@Johan P
(8) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
I haven’t noticed “Frankenstein” being used as the name for the monster before so explicitly and “officially”. I thought that naming the monster that way was mainly a pop culture shortcut.
Universal did this as soon as the first sequel — “Bride of Frankenstein” came out in 1935. (I realize that Henry Frankenstein married in the film, but it seems to me that the Bride of the title refers far more to the bride of the monster than it does to the bride of the doctor).
Though putting more random windows on the space station would be a possible intermediate step.
All the goodiest most healingiest thoughts for Len!
About that castle. Doesn’t the opening to it look like a vagina? (I’ve never seen one for real, but I found a few pics on the Internet, and they sure look similar.)
Woah, I made the scroll.
10 – I like a good cover art argument. Shame there isn’t one here. What’s space art and sword’n’sorcery art? Is that the one where there’s a character on the cover dressed up in a space suit or armor looking over their shoulder or at a distant point bravely? Because those are boring covers.
Also (again) shows an alarming lack of historical understanding of the genre for one that wants to Make It Great Again. I love old school sci-fi cover art. There’s the fun campy stuff which sometimes has nothing to do with what’s inside the book and there’s really out there and the latter I love seeing for just how weird it can be. I usually go through the classic area in Half Priced Books just to look at the covers 🙂
11 – Speaking of art I’m only interested in the movie for the visuals, but it’s sad to see folks cast for a musical who might not have musical talent.
(3) Let’s just say I’m glad I made it to Oxford in 2014.
(6) I’ve probably read Lord of the Rings twenty-five times. I have attempted to read The Silmarillion half a dozen times and never get more than a few chapters in and couldn’t tell you anything that happens.
(8) The creature is, in fact, named Frankenstein, or should be, since it’s his father’s surname. I’ve seen a good case made that his first name should probably be “Adam.” Adam Frankenstein.
(9) I saw “the frozen chosen” for the first time probably ten years ago on a bumper sticker on a truck in the middle of the night in rural Mississippi and thought it must have something to do with cryogenic preservation, given that we had just seen a tanker truck explicitly labeled “cryogenics” (I think it was NASA-related). So I thought maybe people who were having themselves cryogenically frozen referred to themselves that way.
Then I found out it was probably a religious slang term. http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/frozen-chosen/
Now there’s a book by that name. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GU8JCH2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
And a movie by that name. http://www.fdl.com/frozen/
I like the Husky in the middle of the logo. He might be intended to look like he’s snarling, but instead he looks like he’s trying to bite that sword somebody handed him for no good reason.
@Greg
Great googly-moogly. Once seen, it can never be unseen.
@k_choll:
I haven’t read it, but those sound like similar issues to ones I had with Hurley’s The Mirror Empire. ‘Mindblowing’ worldbuilding that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and arguably interferes with the main plot, and hard-to-love characters who actively reject opportunities to grow or reveal hidden depths until far too late.
McJulie, I was raised Presbyterian and more than once I heard the term “Frozen Chosen” used self-deprecatingly from the pulpit to describe the congregation. (“We, the frozen chosen…”) Presbyterians, at least in the congregations I’ve seen, don’t go in for tambourines, spontaneous exclamations like “Hallelujah” or “Praise the Lord” or even “Preach it, Brother!”. They don’t applaud anyone over the age of about ten (children’s choirs and/or pageants get applause). They sit quietly, sing or read invocations and prayers aloud when told to do so, and otherwise show little emotion or visible reaction to anything going on in the service….
I went to a wedding in a Baptist church once. It was a different world. There was a tambourine under the seat and I had to restrain my husband from picking it up and playing with it. Several members of the congregation jumped to their feet and made loud approving interjections during the homily. It was a very different world from what I (or my Catholic husband) was used to…
(10) My response to Brad’s comment when I first read it was why is it a bad thing to be shelved with literature/fiction? The SF crowd will find it no matter where it is. Smart bookstores would even shelve it with both fiction and science fiction. Given how much stake the MGC puts into how many copies sold = quality of work, wouldn’t they want their own books to get as much exposure as possible to a potential audience?
Then again, that’s dated thinking based on bookstores being the primary source of copies sold. How much is Amazon influenced by the packaging? They of course have no problem with treating any title as belonging in multiple genres.
The Frankenstein monster’s real name is Abby. Abby Normal.
“Frozen Chosen” also plays off “Frozen Chosin” — the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War, Nov 1950, in which a cold front from Siberia brought temperatures to -37 degrees C (-35F).
Bill: As far as I know, that’s where “Frozen Chosen” originated. At least is the earliest usage I’m aware of.
It’s also a reference from Michael Chabon’s alternate history novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska.
The Rabid Puppies 2017 logo vaguely reminds me of Phil Foglio.
[godstalk]
I clearly have to tick this box in front of me
Clicky
Speaking of Frozen Chosen, don’t Frankenstein and the Wolf Man end up being frozen at the end of the movie? More specifically, they are hit by a flood of water after a dam is blown up and then they are found frozen in House of Frankenstein which was the next movie in the Universal Frankenstein movie franchise
OT but surely relevant to your interests: a website which rewards you for making word count with kitteh pictures.
Greg Hullender: About that castle. Doesn’t the opening to it look like a vagina?
Gah. This one always drives me crazy. Everyone keeps making these mistaken references to something as “looking like a vagina”. The vagina is an internal body part. The pink hats women wore during their march do not resemble vaginas, despite what JCW says.
The front of that castle resembles labia. And let’s just leave the anatomical references at that, shall we?
Mark: the only way to get a cover that is more in keeping with the classic Chris Foss look would be to actually hire Chris Foss.
Having done a Google Image Search on Chris Foss, all I can say is that I am very glad that Tor is instead choosing to go with such artists as John Harris, Stephan Martiniere, Jaime Jones, and Sparth. 😯
@ JJ: ISWYM. The dude is really fond of stripes and checkerboard patterns, isn’t he? And some very… odd… color combinations.
@JJ
I’ll cop to liking Chris Foss, just because he did the cover of almost all my Asimov collection. But, yeah, weird geometrics, strange colours, and lots and lots of windows.
Nevertheless he was my first thought for “classic” covers that aren’t pure pulp.
JJ on March 6, 2017 at 1:37 pm said:
Okay, so it’s not just my imagination. Thanks.
Does that mean we start calling them “Rabid Pussies?”
@Greg. That idea’s a riot.
Some of us are still, nostalgically, very fond of Chris “Enormous Machinery With Windows” Foss. To the point of checking whether he’s done any qualifying work when we’re looking for Best Graphic Artist nominations. (So far, the answer has been no, though I live in hope.)
Of course, he also did the illustrations for The Joy of Sex…. If he’d ever got the two styles confused, it might have made those old Panther paperbacks much more intriguing.
Greg Hullender: so it’s not just my imagination
Definitely not your imagination. I don’t even want to hazard a guess as to whether it was intentional. I’m guessing not, but underestimating the capability of the Puppies for cheap and sleazy tactics would be a mistake.
@Mark
I have a soft spot for Chris Foss, too, and for the same reason. Most of my Asimov books, all UK editions from the late 1980s, have Chris Foss covers. However, they usually had very little to do with the content of the books, though at least they managed to put Chris Foss robot paintings onto the robot novels-
@Cassy
Back when I was still religious, the services (Lutheran Protestant) I attended were all like this. People sitting quietly and listening and only singing or reciting prayers out loud, when told to. Clapping or spontaneous outbursts would be considered disruptive and extremely gauche and if someone suddenly jumped up and declared that the holy spirit had come over him, the pastor would probably call emergency services.
American religious services with spontaneous outbursts, etc… seem very, very strange to me. Never heard the term “frozen chosen”, because this is just the way religious services are where I come from. It’s not just Lutherans either (and Presbyterians and Lutherans are pretty similar), but Catholics as well, though they sing more.
@ Cora: You’d never get them to acknowledge it, but the Evangelical style of “making a joyful noise” owes a great deal to the heritage of black gospel services. White folks didn’t used to do that. None of the churches my parents or grandparents attended would have ever done that, because they were all traditional Methodist. As a teenager, I didn’t recognize that this was about a black “traveling salvation show”.