(1) MILLION WORDS (IN) MARCH. Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors, curated by SL Huang and Kurt Hunt, is available as a free download at Bad Menagerie until March 31.
This anthology includes 120 authors—who contributed 230 works totaling approximately 1.1 MILLION words of fiction. These pieces all originally appeared in 2014, 2015, or 2016 from writers who are new professionals to the science fiction and fantasy field, and they represent a breathtaking range of work from the next generation of speculative storytelling.
All of these authors are eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016. We hope you’ll use this anthology as a guide in nominating for that award as well as a way of exploring many vibrant new voices in the genre.
(2) MANLY SF. And then, if you run out of things to read, the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation has announced the preliminary eligibility list of 116 titles for the 2016 Manly Wade Wellman Award for North Carolina Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Or you could just look at all the pretty cover art in the “2016 Manly Wade Wellman Award cover gallery” at Bull Spec.
(3) ALPINE PARABLES. An overview of “The Swiss Science Fiction” at Europa SF.
„Swiss science fiction? Never heard of it !
Yet for a long time, the Swiss SF has engaged in speculative fiction game.”
(4) TOO SOON TO REGENERATE? Radio Times has the scoop — “Peter Capaldi: ‘I’ve been asked to stay on in Doctor Who after Steven Moffat leaves’”.
Now, RadioTimes.com can reveal that the BBC has asked Capaldi to stay on as the Doctor after Moffat’s departure — but the actor himself isn’t sure whether he’ll take up their offer.
“I’ve been asked to stay on,” Capaldi told RadioTimes.com, “but it’s such a long time before I have to make that decision.
“Steven’s been absolutely wonderful, so I love working with him. Chris is fantastic, and I think he’s a hugely talented guy.
“I don’t know where the show’s gonna go then. I don’t know. I have to make up my mind, and I haven’t yet.”
(5) ASTRONAUT SHRINKS. Scott Kelly had reportedly grown taller while at the International Space Station, but he’s back to normal now.
US astronaut Scott Kelly said Friday he is battling fatigue and super-sensitive skin, but is back to his normal height after nearly a year in space.
Kelly’s 340-day mission — spent testing the effects of long-term spaceflight ahead of a future mission to Mars, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko — wrapped up early Wednesday when they landed in frigid Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
One of the effects of spending such a long time in the absence of gravity was that Kelly’s spine expanded temporarily, making him grow 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters), only to shrink as he returned to Earth.
His twin brother, Mark Kelly, said they were the same height again by the time they hugged in Houston early Thursday.
According to John Charles, human research program associate manager for international science at NASA, any height gain “probably went away very quickly because it is a function of fluid accumulation in the discs between the bones in the spinal column.”
(6) AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE. Rose Lemberg provides “Notes on trans themes in ‘Cloth…’”
“Grandmother-na-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” is a Nebula nominee. As such, it is getting a lot of attention.
I usually let my stories stand on their own. When this story came out, I had written brief story notes focusing on Kimi’s autism in the context of the Khana culture. Even that felt too much for me. I want readers to get what they need from my work, without my external authorial influence.
But as this story is getting more attention, I’d like to write some notes about the trans aspects of this story…..
Many of us are pressured by families. Especially trans people. Especially trans people (and queer people) who are from non-white and/or non-Anglo-Western cultural backgrounds, and/or who are immigrants. Many trans people I know have strained relationships with their families, and many had to cut ties with their families or were disowned.
This story came from that place, a place of deep hurt in me, and in many of my trans friends. It came from a place of wanting to imagine healing.
It also came from a place of wanting to center a trans character who comes out later in life. For many trans and queer people, coming out later in life is very fraught. Coming out is always fraught. Coming out later in life, when one’s identity is supposed to be firmly established, is terrifyingly difficult. This is my perspective. I am in my late thirties. There’s not enough trans representation in SFF; there’s never enough representation of queer and trans elders specifically. I write queer and trans elders and older people a lot.
(7) DEVIL IN THE DETAILS. The historianship of Camestros Felapton is on display in “Unpicking a Pupspiracy: Part 1”.
I’m currently near to finishing an update to the Puppy Kerfuffle timeline. The update includes Sp4 stuff as well as some extra bits around the 2013 SFWA controversies.
One issue I thought I hadn’t looked at what was a key piece of Puppy mythology: basically that their enemies are being tipped off by Hugo administrators to enable shenanigans of a vague and never entirely explained nature. A key proponent of this Pupspiracy theory is Mad Genius Dave Freer. In particular this piece from mid April 2015 http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/04/13/nostradumbass-and-madame-bugblatterfatski/
Freer’s piece has two pupspiracies in it; one from Sad Puppies 2 and one from Sad Puppies 3. I’m going to look at the first here and the second in Part 2. However, both use a particular odd kind of fallacious reasoning that we’ve seen Dave use before. It is a sort of a fallacy of significance testing mixed with a false dichotomy and not understanding how probability works.
(8) CLASS IN SESSION. “’You can teach craft but you can’t teach talent.’ The most useless creative writing cliché?” asks Juliet McKenna.
So let’s not get snobbish about the value of craft. Without a good carpenter’s skills, you’d be using splintery planks to board up that hole in your house instead of coming and going through a well-made and secure front door. Let’s definitely not accept any implication that writing craft is merely a toolkit of basic skills which a writer only needs to get to grips with once. I learn new twists and subtleties about different aspects of writing with every piece I write and frequently from what I read. Every writer I know says the same.
Now, about this notion that you cannot teach hopeful writers to have ideas, to have an imagination. The thing is, I’ve never, ever met an aspiring author who didn’t have an imagination. Surely that’s a prerequisite for being a keen reader, never mind for taking up a pen or keyboard to create original fiction? Would-be writers are never short on inspiration.
(9) DONE TWEETING. Joe Vasicek comes to bury, not praise, a social media platform in “#RIPTwitter”.
All of this probably sounds like a tempest in a teapot if you aren’t on Twitter. And yeah, it kind of is. In the last two weeks, I’ve learned that life is generally better without Twitter than it is with it. No more getting sucked into vapid tit-for-tat arguments in 140-character chunks. No more passive-aggressive blocking by people who are allergic to rational, intelligent debate. No more having to worry about being an obvious target for perpetually-offended SJW types who, in their constant efforts to outdo each other with their SJW virtue signaling, can spark an internet lynch mob faster than a California wildfire.
The one big thing that I miss about Twitter is the rapid way that news disseminates through the network. I can’t tell you how many major news stories I heard about through Twitter first—often while they were still unfolding. But if the #RIPTwitter controversy demonstrates anything, it’s that Twitter now has both the means and the motive to suppress major news stories that contradict the established political narrative. That puts them somewhere around Pravda as a current events platform.
Am I going to delete my account the same way that I deleted my Facebook account? Probably not. I deleted my Facebook account because of privacy concerns and Facebook’s data mining. With Twitter, it’s more of an issue with the platform itself. I don’t need to delete my account to sign off and stop using it.
(10) OR YOU CAN ENGAGE. When Steven A. Saus’ call for submissions to an anthology was criticized, here’s how he responded — “Just Wait Until Twitter Comes For You: Addressing and Fixing Unintended Privilege and Bigotry”
TL;DR: When a social justice criticism was brought to us, we acknowledged the mistake, engaged with those criticizing, and fixed the problem instead of doubling down or protesting that wasn’t what we meant. It worked to resolve the problem and helped us clarify the message we meant to send….
So why have I written a thousand words or so about it?
Partially to acknowledge the mistake honestly, and to note how it was fixed.
Partially to demonstrate that there are people in publishing that will listen to your concerns, and that voicing them honestly may effect real change.
Mostly it’s for those people who warned me about Twitter coming for me. It’s for those people who get angry or scared because they’re afraid they’ll use the “wrong” term. It’s for those people who think the right thing to do is to double-down about what they intended and just saw things get worse.
Because they told me that listening to and engaging others would not be useful.
And they were wrong. You can act like a bigot and never mean to. Privelege can be invisible to you – but still lead you to cause real, unintended harm.
I’m here to tell you that if you’re willing to really listen, if you’re willing to put your ego to the side, to forget what you meant and focus on what was heard, if you’re willing to acknowledge the damage you did and willing to try to fix it…
…then you only have to fear making yourself a better person.
(11) ADVANCE NARRATIVE. io9’s Katherine Trendacosta gets a head start on disliking the next Potterverse offering in “JK Rowling Tackles the Magical History of America in New Harry Potter Stories”.
The idea that Salem cast a long shadow over American wizarding history is one that drives me crazy, by the way. First of all, there was a whole thing in the third Harry Potter book about witch burning being pointless because of the Flame-Freezing Charm. But thanks for showing people screaming in fire in the video anyway! Second of all, not to get all “America, fuck yeah!” on people, but please let’s not have the a whole story about the amazing British man saving America from its provincial extremists. Third of all, skin-walkers are a Native American myth, so let’s hope the white British lady approaches that with some delicacy.
(12) WORKING FOR A LIVING. Mindy Klasky adds to the alphabet for writers in “J is for Job” at Book View Café.
Other aspects of “job culture” bleed over into the life of a successful writer.
For example, writers maintain professional courtesy for other writers. They don’t savage other writers without good reason. (And even then, they make their attacks in the open, instead of lurking “backstage” in corners of the Internet where their victims can’t follow.) This doesn’t mean, of course, that all writers always must agree with all other writers at all times. Rather, disagreements should be handled with respect and professionalism.
Even more importantly, writers maintain professional courtesy for readers, especially reviewers. It’s impossible to publish a book and get 100% positive reviews. Some reviewers—brace yourself; this is shocking—get things wrong. They might not understand the fine points of the book an author wrote. They might mistake facts. They might have completely, 100% unreasonable opinions.
But the professional writer never engages reviewers. That interaction is never going to work in the author’s favor. The author might be considered a prima donna. He might attract much more negative attention than he ever would have received solely from the negative review. Even if the reviewer is completely absurd, engaging solely in ad hominem attacks, the writer is better off letting the absurdity speak for itself. The cost of interaction (especially including the time to engage) are just too high.
(13) RECURSIVE FILES. Camestros Felapton knows the thing fans are most interested in is…themselves.
I predict his graph of File 770 comment topics, “Trolling With Pie Charts”, will get about a zillion hits.
(14) THEY STUCK AROUND. The Washington Post’s “Speaking of Science” feature reports “Lizards trapped in amber for 100 million years may be some of the oldest of their kind”.
Tree resin can be bad news for a tiny animal: The sticky tree sap can stop small creatures in their tracks, freezing them forever in time. But that’s good news for scientists. If you’ve ever seen “Jurassic Park,” you have some idea of how great tree resin is at preserving finicky soft tissues. The hardened amber can keep specimens remarkably intact for millions of years.
Now, scientists have examined a flight of lizards locked away in the stuff about 100 million years ago. Among the specimens is a tiny young lizard that could be the oldest chameleon ever found — a staggering 78 million years older than the previous record breaker. One of the geckos may be the most complete fossil of its kind and age. These and 10 other fossilized lizards are described in a paper published Friday in Science Advances.
(15) THE TATTOOINE BRASS. The Throne Room march from the original Star Wars movie as performed by a mariachi band!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Andrew Porter, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
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@Miranda:
But the British didn’t burn witches either, did they?
I had the impression that the British hanged witches, that they considered burning at the stake a sort of barbarism, something the hated Spanish did.
@Peace
It is a mistake to talk about ‘British’. In the seventeenth century England and Scotland are distinct countries. The Scots seem to have burnt witches
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Scottish_Witch_Hunt_of_1597)
but the English did not.
@Dawn Incognito
I think it’s a sign that someone really is a troll when he/she gets upset that people won’t engage. “No one has the right to ignore me!”
Also, the backstory in Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables revolves around the Salem witch trials.
All I know is I want a story where Doc Holliday, Kate, and Johnny Ringo are all magic users.
@Peace Is My Middle Name: The accusations were made in Salem Village, but the major trials happened in Salem Town.
@Peace:
Gasp! I have something in common with JK Rowling!! Sure, it’s being wrong about something, but still! 😀
@Nick:
…Unless JK Rowling was writing about Scottish witch burning after all, which is entirely possible given that Hogwarts is in Scotland. Uh.
Where’s that gif of Daniel Radcliffe on SNL saying “I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me”? 😉
@Viverrine — You might want to take a look at Territory by Emma Bull:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70581
(Now if only they’d ever release the sequel …)
…and to have clicked the ticky box.
ETA: Thank you for that link, Joe! I definitely do want to take a look at that book.
[the tick]
Well, part one of the history of North American magic is available now. It’s just a few hundred words. I suppose there’s nothing hugely wrong with it so far… other than total ignorance of the existence of political units larger than tribes.
(ETA after remembering that sarcasm doesn’t carry well on the Internet: Yes, I actually consider this to be an enormously wrong thing from which many smaller wrong things proceed.)
Re the Territory sequel.
According to Emma’s husband who I just emailed, she’s still working on the sequel, completion date unknown, with a tentative title of Claim .
@Peace
The English could burn witches, but usually didn’t. The Scots, on the other hand… In England, burning was for women convicted of treason, counterfeiting, or petty treason (killing your husband).
Also, witch trials are very rare outside of periods of major social disruption. Witchcraft was a civil crime in England, not a theological one, so hanging was more in line with the other punishment. Proving up magic under the common law rules of evidence was (and would still be) a nightmare. (As an acquaintance once said, Episcopalians/Anglicans make truly terrible inquisitors.) It’s not an accident that the big English witch panics were either in the back end of beyond, or during the Civil Wars, where the rules could be looser.
@Cat Eldridge — That’s excellent news! I know it’s been underway for a long time, but it’s good to know she’s still working on it.
@John Lorentz
Thanks for riding that bucking bronco last year 😉 Not the rodeo you signed up for but thank you to you and the other administrators.
@YoungPretender
You mentioned something about the colonist’s view of rights being influenced by the cultural interaction with the Native American tribes in the east coast ?
Is there a good resource to read about this that you could suggest ? I think it’s fascinating.
::ticky::
So far as I can recall, not a one person was actually *burnt* at Salem (inland Salem Village, really, not the port town the tourists always go to, which has its own very rich and interesting mercantile history).
It’s part of Danvers now. (I saw an article about a historian finding the location where they actually did the hanging. Of interest to me because my sister-in-law is a descendant of one of the ‘witches’, said ‘witch’ being an elderly widow at the time.)
Do read Rose Lemberg’s and Xan West’s articles (and the story).
@John Lorentz,
Thank you & the Hugo admin team for your efforts in what was undoubtedly a difficult year.
@John Lorentz
I talked to you briefly at Sasquan, but I’d like to repeat that my husband and I really appreciated the work you did to make Sasquan a success despite unprecedented challenges, ranging from rabid puppies to wildfires. Don’t let the criticisms of a tiny minority (who, as far as I can tell, didn’t show up at all) get you down.
@P J Evans:
The hangings were in what is now the city of Salem (“Salem Town” at the time). The accused (and accusers) came from Salem Village (now Danvers), but that’s not where the trials were. There will eventually be a memorial at the site of the gallows. I don’t know if it’s been built yet; it was only located a few months ago and the location has gotten landlocked by adjacent properties over the centuries.
OK, this is kind of cool: a “Women of Star Trek” series of postage stamps, in Tuvalu. Now I wanna live on a cool island like that!
http://www.trektoday.com/content/2016/03/new-star-trek-postage-stamps/
Some e-book deals on US amazon store
A Cruel Wind: A Chronicle of the Dread Empire (A Chronicle of the Dread Empire Bundle Series Book 1) : Before there was Black Company, there was the Dread Empire, an omnibus collection the first three Dread Empire novels: A Shadow of All Night’s Falling, October’s Baby and All Darkness Met. I really liked this series, grimdark before there was a term for it but not buried in the muck either. A good read.
Sailing to Sarantium: Book One of the Sarantine Mosaic : Crispin is a master mosaicist, creating beautiful art with colored stones and glass. Summoned to Sarantium by imperial request, he bears a Queen’s secret mission, and a talisman from an alchemist. Once in the fabled city, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, intrigues and violence, Crispin must find his own source of power in order to survive-and unexpectedly discovers it high on the scaffolding of his own greatest creation. This I picked up, but have not read yet … I do like his other books, he writes a kind of historical fantasy that I really enjoy.
Thanks all for the history lessons and clarifications. I am afraid my head is still full of a lot of fluff which needs carding to be able to spin a decent yarn.
@Standback
I read your article, thanks for pulling it out into its own blog post, I did not want to wade through those comments again. I think your focus on perception and intent was good and thanks for spending the time to illustrate what you meant clearly.
Personally, my view is that the bar to entry to world con is a nominating or attending fee which is the same for everyone, pay that and its done. If you want to nominate books, talk about what you love and share book recommendations. I may be a minority opinion on some of my choices but that has never stopped me from sharing what I love with people — now writing whole blog posts about it, not my strength 😉
@RedWombat-She goes off on these genealogy kicks occasionally, but she learned long ago that I really only care if somebody’s done something interestingly nefarious
That’s what is fun about it. I have a friend who got me into genealogy and we have a running contest on ‘interesting’ relatives. Whether it’s a tango teacher accused of abetting a murder (his–and the article seemed to be especially obsessed with her being a tango teacher in Chicago in the 20s) or the papers I found about my GGGGrandfather from the institution he died in that made special mention of the fact that, as a young man,he ‘drank a good deal and cohabited with lewd women more than is consistant with chastity or good morals.’; the black sheep are more fun.
Sarantium might be my favorite Kay book. (Depending on which day you ask me.)
And I do like the Dread Empire, and was very glad Night Shade (pre-implosion) convinced Cook to come back and write a concluding volume. Was that a 20 year cliffhanger?
Re: The Guardian and Camestros
I used to write regularly for their tech section, and a typical pass from pitch to publication was at least a week, often longer, with my copy going in to my editor four days before publication, so I could be fact-checked, copy-edited, and so on and so forth.
The first time I got a headline through subbing, I opened a good bottle of wine in celebration.
@ John Lorentz
Much thanks to you and Ruth Sachter for all the work you have done to make the Hugos happen! I certainly understand why you don’t want to go through a case of Puppies again.
One thing I am angriest at the Pups about (and there is a lot to choose from) is the way they have sapped the interest and good will of the people who put in all the hard work of organizing the WorldCon and the Hugos. Whatever they may have intended (and I have some unflattering ideas about what that was) what they achieved was vandalism of an all-too-rare volunteer spirit that none of them possess themselves.
@ RedWombat
What a delightful story about your ancestor! Trust you to be able to bring a goodly dollop of human decency even to that grim chapter of history.
@ Camestros Felapton
Very good observation about Walter’s piece. I wonder if the real source of Correia’s fury was that it only contained a paragraph or so on Correia and was mostly about someone else.
I am reminded of his claim that when he was nominated for a Campbell a “prominent critic” said a Correia win would spell “the death of writing forever.” I tried to find anyone actually saying that and couldn’t. “Wrongfans having wrongfun” he actually admitted in so many words that he just made up, and lets not even get started on “not a real writer”–he says that about himself forty times as much as anyone ever said it about him.
@steve davidson
What “day” are you thinking of by “back in the day”? Like, what year?
Thanks for the info. I assumed it would be a non-trivial amount of time but I don’t know enough about publishing to say more than that. Given what you said Freer’s timeline gets even more wacky.
@Cat That may be the case. It does seem like Larry can have a very thin skin at times. Ironically I think the Walter’s piece makes Larry look more relevant than he is. The article gives an impression of an empassioned debate between authors rather the weak fisk Larry actually wrote.
Not scrolled, but relevant to your interests:
I’ve just added a new short story by Matthew Hughes (The Spiral Labyrinth, Template, The Other) to his web site.
It’s a (very) near future story about a United States that’s elected a far-right wing celebrity to be its president. So, you know, A COMPLETE FANTASY. You can read it here.
@Lowell Gilbert: The Jonathan Corwin House in Salem (aka The Witch House) is, as far as I know, the only structure still standing with any connection to the Witch Trials: it was the home at the time of Judge Jonathan Corwin. (None of the proceedings, however, took place there.) The house was moved (about 35 feet) from its original location in the 1940s and restored to its original appearance; it had been fairly heavily modified during the 19th century.
The last English witchcraft trial was during WW II as told in Nina Shandler’s The Strange Case of Hellish Nell: The Story of Helen Duncan and the Witch Trial of World War II which we reviewed here.
I would like to point at something about this community which makes me unreasonably pleased: most people seem to know about the rather odd irregularity of the verb “to hang”. One can hang a painting on the wall or a person on a gibbet, but after the fact, the picture was “hung” while the person was “hanged”.
All the accounts I have seen say that the Witchcraft Act 1735 was directed against people falsely claiming to be witches, and that is what Helen Duncan was tried for.
@ Young Pretender
Quite right about burning, although it was also used for both male and female heretics, on the theory that this approximation of hell would force the heretic back to the religious straight and narrow in time to save them from the real thing. The English seem to have gone off burnings for heresy after Mary I burned nearly 300 in less than 5 years.
@ Standback
Many thanks for the excellent post on the puppies. Worth every minute you spent on it, I would say.
@Cally: The way I always remember it is that a hung man is *much* better company than a hanged one. ;P
@RedWombat: That is, as Cat observed, weirdly heartwarming. I have a fondness for those incidents where people can’t get away from what the law says but decide to “conveniently” be distracted by something else at the time.
@Bradley W. Schenck
I just read and reviewed Loser, by Matthew Hughes and gave it four stars (Recommended).
It’s a very disturbing read, but it’s very well-written, and therefore quite effective.
Andrew M sagely notes ‘All the accounts I have seen say that the Witchcraft Act 1735 was directed against people falsely claiming to be witches, and that is what Helen Duncan was tried for.’
Correct. The book indicates the British government was more worried about military secrets being leaked no matter what the method was than if she was really a witch.
The only thing missing from this fascinating discussion of the past is how American Thanksgiving was never the Puritans sitting down with the Native American Indians to celebrate together. Only mentioning because Thanksgiving, Puritans, and Native Americans were all brought up at various times during this discussion.
The amount of knowledge filers have continues to impress me.
@Greg Hullender :
I’ve thought for years now that Hughes deserves a lot more attention than he gets.
@Shambles
There’s an overview and review of the literature at this link.
http://www.academia.edu/1341800/Becoming_American_Native_American_Influences_on_Revolutionary_Political_Thinking
The gist of it is that without the traditional means of coercion available at the scale that usually existed in Europe, colonial institutions adapted, and it’s no accident that a lot of colonial America and its institutions look a hell of a lot like how the Haudenosaunee and other Algonquin speaking tribes north of the Chesapeake did their business. The footnotes are a guide to further scholarship on this, which is scholarship and not some crazy-eyed redditor.
More in general though, well, this kind of history can be a bit of an orphan. For all their talk of Indian blood, a fair number of conservatives rather like having the flow of culture being strictly one way, from enlightened Europeans to benighted natives. On the other side of the coin, this is a few of the Native Americans that is less, well, “elvish.” They aren’t noble savages, living in harmony with nature and eden-like innocence of the sinful West, but highly effective and highly organized polities exercising agency in the face of a number of powerful stressors in the form of foreign invaders and new germs – so no really the romantic left’s cup of tea, either.
@Bradley W. Schenck
Everything else of his that I’ve read has been light-hearted high fantasy. This was completely different. The funny thing is, I don’t for a minute think things could really happen as described in the story–democracies take a while to die–but the writing was so effective it made me believe in it.
Now I need a drink or something . . .
@YoungPretender
Thank you for that link … I know criminally little about early American history or the native cultures that existed.
I recall liking the Dream Park novel that introduced Inuit culture in the course of its ‘game’. Barsoom Project I think it was called ?
@Joe H
I think it was a 20 year cliffhanger. I despaired the series would ever be done. I have not read the new book – TBR pile but I plan to once I am done nominating though I might reread the series first; it’s been so long.
Shambles said:
Yes, that one was The Barsoom Project.
Speaking of early American history, I would like to thank deeply whoever alerted me a while back that 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created exists. I’ve been reading it in chunks in between batches of Endeavour Award books and it is every bit as awesome as 1491. I’d love to see Tsenacomoco-style agriculture or something like Potosí in its boomtown years as an sf or fantasy setting…
Well, they burned witches in Britain, provided they weighed the same as a duck. I SAW IT IN A MOVIE.
Project Gutenberg has a two-volume history of the witch trials, complete with a lot of trial transcripts. The author is Upham, and the book number are apparently both PG 17845. I’ve had them on my reader for a while, but haven’t gone very far into them as yet. I first became interested in the subject because of a Classics Illustrated article on them. Not an entire comic, but a four-page (or so) end-of-the-book filler in one of their “World Around Us” specials. Perhaps the art—by Reed Crandall, I’m pretty sure—helped make it interesting. It certainly captured some psychological overtones.
(11) Regarding skin-walkers, the first prominent reaction from a Native American perspective is… nope.
For those who didn’t click through to the full io9 post, BTW, a skin-walker is in the teaser trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
When we visited relatives in Danvers, I was about three years old, and took something people said to mean that there was a woman who lived in that house right there who was a witch and they burned her in an oven. There was a hatch on the side of the house, probably on the chimney for purposes of ash removal, and I had it in my head for some time that that was the oven. On the same trip, we saw Niagara Falls, and I actually had the thought (pure Dennis the Menace cliche) that someone had left the water running. In retrospect, maybe Dad made a joke about that and I took it seriously.
By a coincidence, someone in the “old Fort Collins” group on Facebook posted scans of the program book from the 1971 HMG production of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” and my sister mentioned it to me. I went and looked (cursing, as always, my computer asking if I wanted to use my old Facebook password) and peered at photos of me at age 14, trying to reconcile me at 14 with my daughter, who is 14 right now. 14 doesn’t seem to equal 14 somehow. It’s like how pictures of kids in my sister’s high-school yearbook always seemed older than high school, perhaps because all the boys were wearing ties.
The coincidence part (moving right along here) is that one of the tech people on the show had come to Colorado from somewhere back here on the Eastern Seaboard, and according to one of the board people for the theater group, she had just had a messy divorce in which her husband actually accused her of witchcraft. That’s all I really know about it. I was 14!
There’s also the official hashtag of the new “stories”, #MagicInNorthAmerica, which is now full of complaints.