(1) INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY. Iain Clarke’s image of astronaut Mae Jemison, created for the Dublin in 2019 Worldcon bid, makes a great reminder that March 8 is International Women’s Day.
(2) THE FRANCHISE. And the BBC marked the occasion with its article “International Women’s Day: Why women can thrive in sci-fi”.
While the Star Wars expanded universe has a number of popular, female characters, the cultural impact of seeing a female Jedi’s hero journey on the silver screen can not be overstated. “For years we’ve been hearing that women couldn’t front a sci-fi/action film,” Jenna Busch, founder of Legion of Leia.
“The fallacious perception is that they just won’t sell. But, now we have Katniss, Furiosa, and Rey to prove that attitude wrong. There is something about seeing the box office numbers that might be a step in the right direction.”
(3) THERE IS ANOTHER. Last November, James H. Burns saw a van tricked out as the Mystery Machine on Long Island. Now, on the other side of the country, California authorities are seeking a different fan of the Scooby gang who’s been speeding around in her own version of those wheels — “Redding police: Suspect flees in ‘Scooby-Doo’ Mystery Machine”.
On Sunday, March 5, the Redding Police Department was alerted by Shasta County Probation Department about a subject who had allegedly violated their probation around 12:50 p.m. The subject was identified as Sharon Kay Turman, 51, Sgt. Ron Icely said in a news release.
According to the report, officers spotted Turman in the Mystery Machine, a 1994 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, at California and Shasta streets. Turman fled when officers tried to pull her over, traveling at high speeds. A CHP helicopter and Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputies joined the pursuit. Turman is reported to have reached speeds of over 100 m.p.h.
(4) FAKE FAN. A fake GalaxyQuest fan site, created to promote the movie, can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine. One of its features is ”Travis Latke’s” interview with Gwen DeMarco, replete with fannish typos. (I think Travis learned copyediting from me).
TL: How do you do it? How d you deliver one blockbusting performance after another?
GDM: It’s all about the craft. As an actor I try put myself inside the head of my character. Since I sgtarted acting, I always try to become the charactere, that sometimes is very trying. For instance I once played Medea in summerstock in the Hamptons and, gosh, for weeks I hadthey nauseating feeling of having done all the bad things Medea does in the Euripides play.
With Galaxy I delved into scientific research that by the time the show was cancelled I knew enough for a PhD in astrophysics. I mean, it’s a fascianting subject. I made some great friends at the Pasadena Jet Prupolsion Lab who I still consult whenever I have a question aboput quassars and wormholes.
(5) WINE PRESS. To this day, fake fans are still being used to promote things. Hats off to Trae Dorn, who’s been drilling to the bottom of “Wine Country Comic Con’s Bizarre Litany of Lies” at Nerd & Tie. There is no end to it!
Last week we published a piece on Wine Country Comic Con. A first year convention currently scheduled for April 23-24 in Santa Rosa, CA, we were alarmed to find they were using a fake Facebook account to spam groups and talk with potential attendees.
But the more we looked into this event, the more we discovered that this story went further than just the fictional “Frida Avila.” Wine Country Comic Con organizer Uriel Brena has constructed a complex charade of lies, fake staffers, and a whole bunch of weirdness.
This rabbit hole runs deep.
A Full Complement of Fake Staffers
The first thing we found out was that “Frida Avila” wasn’t the only weirdly complex fake staffer created by Wine Country Comic Con. Thanks to some email tips (and a bit of our own digging) we found several more:….
(6) A ROBOT WITH KEANE EYESIGHT. Kirsty Styles at TNW News says “Aido is pretty much the robot they promised everyone back in the 1950s”.
Aido will be friends with your weird kid, act as a security guard, remember your schedule and project movies onto the wall to help with anything from cooking to plumbing.
This is the robot to kill all robots. With kindness.
(7) ROWLING ON NORTH AMERICAN MAGIC. Will there be anything left to say about this topic by the time I post it to the Scroll? We’ll find out. Today Pottermore ran the first installment of J. K. Rowling’s revelations about wizardry in the New World.
The first piece of writing from ‘History of Magic in North America’ by J.K. Rowling is here, and we can also give you a taster of what’s to come this week.
Today’s piece goes back through the centuries to reveal the beginnings of the North American magical community and how witches and wizards used magic before they adopted wands.
Wednesday’s piece will divulge more about the dangers faced by witches and wizards in the New World, and on Thursday you’ll discover why the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) took steps to move the magical community deeper underground.
The last piece will take us right up to the Roaring Twenties, when the magical community in North America was under the watchful eye of MACUSA President, Madam Seraphina Picquery – played by Carmen Ejogo in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
These stories will give you some idea of how the wizarding world on this continent evolved over the years, and of the names and events that lay the foundation for the arrival of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in November.
(8) TROPE TRIPE. Arguing over Rowling should put everyone in the mood for Mark J. Turner’s post at Smash Dragons, “Five Fantasy Tropes That Should Be Consigned to History”.
2. The Chosen One
In fantasy books the protagonist often begins life as Mr A.N.Other, minding his own business in some nowhere village doing nothing in particular. Then we discover that he is the son of a king or a powerful wizard or warrior, and suddenly he is able to take on the world, no training required. Or if there is training, the author presses the fast forward button on the process, and our protagonist learns in a year what it would take others a lifetime to master.
And the transformation in our hero doesn’t end there. He has spent his formative years as a farm boy or a swineherd, yet for some reason that has prepared him perfectly for the demands of running a kingdom. When he rises to the throne, everyone lives happily ever after. There seems to be a sub-text in these books that in order to stop the world slipping into chaos, all you have to do is put the “right” person in charge. It’s as if the natural order is somehow disturbed if there isn’t a man or a woman ruling everything. Whereas in reality we don’t have to look too far in our own world for examples of where putting all the power in the hands of one person isn’t necessarily a good idea.
(9) ON STAGE. James Bacon reviews The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore at Forbidden Planet. The play features segments written by authors Christopher Fowler, Stephen Gallagher, Kim Newman, Robert Shearman, Lynda E. Rucker and Lisa Tuttle, alongside a wraparound story by director Sean Hogan.
The writing is hilarious, within moments of our travellers sitting down and their unpleasantness becoming clear, the audience are laughing at dark contemporary humour, riffing off recent well-known scandals, while smart language and profanity reflect more closely the mores and morals of modern society. Using traditional ideas of what we consider horror monsters, the authors skilfully show what monsters really are, that nothing is as monstrous as humanity, and the writers with their sharp razor-like ability to find angles in people, left the audience contemplating where the horror truly lies and what being a monster really is….
The framing worked well – a fancy dress party, as one’s favourite monster on a vintage steam train, a very nice little conceit to create the right atmosphere for the portmanteau of stories. Strobe lights, sudden intrusions, the chimey tinkley creepy music as the stage went dark for the changes, the sound effects and stage work, props and masks/costumes all were just right, adding the perfect amount of tangibility for a lively suspension of belief….
(10) OVER THERE. Larry Correia’s next tour stop is —
Just learned @monsterhunter45 will be at Ramstein Air Force base in Germany on April 20th, for those of you in the service.
— Baen Books (@BaenBooks) March 7, 2016
(11) SAVE GAME OF THRONES FAVORITES. George R.R. Martin’s characters face “Danger! Peril! Death!” Only this time, it’s not because he’s writing scenes for them in his next novel.
Suvudu is doing another one of their Cage Match tournaments. This time the theme is Dynamic Duos. Jaime (one-handed) and Brienne have been paired together. In the first round they are facing Garth Nix’s Sabriel… and a pussycat.
In the first Cage Match, lo these many years ago, Jaime defeated Cthulhu (with a little help from Tyrion). Surely he cannot lose to a fluffy little ball o’ fur (and fleas). Not with the mighty maid of Tarth by his side.
(12) TYSON HOSTS DEBATE. Panelists for the 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate will engage the question: “Is the Universe a Simulation?”
What may have started as a science fiction speculation—that perhaps the universe as we know it is actually a computer simulation—has become a serious line of theoretical and experimental investigation among physicists, astrophysicists, and philosophers. Join host and moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson and his panel of experts for a lively discussion and debate about the merits and shortcomings of this provocative and revolutionary idea.
The Asimov Debate panelists are: David Chalmers, Professor of philosophy, New York University; Zohreh Davoudi, Theoretical physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James Gates, Theoretical physicist, University of Maryland; Lisa Randall, Theoretical physicist, Harvard University; and Max Tegmark, Cosmologist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The debate takes place April 5 at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium. Check the website for tickets. The debate also will be livestreamed via <amnh.org/live>.
(13) BOOKS SCIENTISTS LOVE. Charlie Jane Anders at io9 pointed to a forum in reddit’s Print SF Resources where scientists talk about their favorite books and the scientific problems they find in SF. Filer Greg Hullender makes an appearance there.
(14) STEAMPUNK RULES WHERE STEAMBOATS DOCKED. The Riverfront Times was there when “The Science Center Went Steampunk on Friday – and Everyone Had a Victorian Good Time”.
The St. Louis Science Center takes Fridays very seriously, with a themed evening of special events the first Friday of each month. Last Friday was no exception, as the Science Center hosted a night entirely devoted to steampunk science. The event drew everyone from families to costumed fanatics. All enjoyed a night of demonstrations (did someone say “escape artist”?), activities (where else can you try a steampunk shooting range?), films and more devoted to this take on Victorian-era science fiction.
(15) HYPNOTIC SCULPTURES. Everybody with a quarter-of-a-million spare dollars is going to want one of these.
(16) SUPERGIRL WILL BE BACK. The Mary Sue has deduced Supergirl will get a second season.
While technically nothing official’s been announced, while speaking at Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, CBS President Les Moonves pretty much stated that Supergirl is getting another season. Well, specifically he said:
We have about five new shows on this year. Of those five, I believe all five of them will be renewed, and we own four of them.
[Via Nerd & Tie.]
(17) A NEW SUIT. Another Comic Con is being sued for trademark infringement – but the mark involved is not “Comic Con,” as the Houston Chronicle explains — “Convention bureau sues comic convention over ‘Space City’ trademark”
Houston’s convention bureau is suing the operators of a popular local convention over the use of “Space City” in its name, claiming it infringes on a 12-year-old trademark.
The convention in question, Space City Comic Con, also happens to compete with a similar event that is half-owned by the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau itself. The bureau acquired a 50 percent stake in the more established Comicpalooza last September, spokesman A.J. Mistretta said….
Houston has billed itself “Space City,” a boastful nod to its founding role in U.S. space exploration, since the 1960s. Over the decades, dozens of local companies from plumbers to construction outfits to tattoo parlors have used the moniker as part of their name. But they are not affected by the trademark registered by the convention bureau in 2004, said Charles S. Baker, an intellectual property lawyer with Locke Lord in Houston who is representing the bureau in its lawsuit.
The trademark is narrowly constructed and applies solely to efforts that promote tourism, business and conventions in the greater Houston area, Baker said.
(18) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 8, 1913 – The Internal Revenue Service began to levy and collect income taxes in the United States. (Go ahead, ask me what that has to do with sf. They’re raising money for the space program, okay?)
(18b) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
Born March 8, 1967 — Tasha Turner
(19) MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Amazing Stories’ Steve Davidson makes an ingenious comparison in “The 7 Levels of Recommending”.
Maimonides, a Jewish scholar and Rabbi (which are pretty much the same things: he was an astronomer too…) once developed a “hierarchy of charitable giving”. He essentially analyzed the different kinds of charity that people extended and attempted to define the different types and then ordered them from least to most selfless. He ended up with 8 different levels of giving. The lowest form of charity is giving grudgingly – forced to hand over a dollar to the street bum because he’s blocking your path. The highest form is giving before it is even needed (my father thought that included my allowance….).
I mention this because, as a result of all of the discussion regarding slates vs recommended readings lists, I thought that a similar hierarchy of the levels of recommending might be instructive.
(20) SHUT UP, PLEASE. Max Florschutz uses “The Loud Neighbor” as a social media analogy. I found his argument appealing until he decloaked his attack —
And this is where a lot of “social” groups these days get it wrong. A lot of what’s being touted online and in social circles these days is the act of calling the landlord to complain about noise, while being just as loud on one’s own, but giving one’s self a free pass to be loud because you have the “right.” It’s wanting the freedom to do what you want, produce as much friction as you want, while not being willing to extend that same courtesy to others. It’s the kind of mentality that leads to things like “safe spaces” where only individuals of one sex or skin tone are allowed entry. Freedom to produce as much friction as possible while denying others the same freedom. One group is allowed to be “loud” while simultaneously “calling the landlord” to complain that the other group needs to be silent.
Is it a perfect allegory? No. But it still holds. We can’t be as loud as we want and expect that no one else be given the same treatment. We need to extend the courtesy that we give ourselves to others. If we don’t do that, then what are we doing but putting ourselves on a pedestal and pushing those around us down?
(21) IS THIS A GOOD THING? You can now pre-order 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush, edited by Kevin J. Anderson and John McFetridge, at various places including Amazon. (My header, there, is just a joke. A message board I used to follow had a devoted Rush fan, and yanking his chain about it was an indirect way of expressing affection.)
Ron Collins drew my attention to the book in a promotional e-mail —
I’m super-thrilled to announce that you can now pre-order copies of 2113, an anthology of stories inspired by Rush songs that includes my work “A Patch of Blue.” I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this one. I’ve spent a lot of good times listening to those guys. [grin]
My story is one inspired by Rush’s “Natural Science,” which is a monstrous work in three acts that’s just cool as all get-out. It was a total blast to write, partially because I got to put it on endless loop while I did it–so, yeah, the song is pretty much indelibly inked onto my brain now.
(22) ENERGIZE – THEN DIE! This is freaking alarming — The Trouble with Transporters.
(23) RAVEN MANIAC. From Amoxtli, the poetic masterwork of the day.
A sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore:
Lenora Rose, people are bound to confuse us, given the name similarity (or not notice that our names were autocorrected to the other version, as my computer tried to do to your name just now).
As I was on the File a-tapping on my keyboard, posts o’erlapping
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
Suddenly there came a fwapping: “The Rose and Jones are not for swapping.”
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
When the accurs’d hour tolls our doom, shall we mistake the name Lenore?”
Said the Filers, “Fear no more.”
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, David K.M. Klaus, James Bacon, Martin Morse Wooster, and Kendall for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
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10) Over There: so I guess Larry will be playing to an audience that is mostly younger, male, thrill-seeking, and generally fond of guns. I imagine he’ll be in his element.
20) The Loud Neighbor “We need to extend the courtesy we give ourselves to others.”
If only the Puppies did that. If only they treated others as gently and sympathetically and courteously and admiringly as they expect to be treated. Safe spaces wouldn’t be necessary. And I suspect that unnecessary safe spaces would just kind of die away for lack of attention as the people they are open to wander into them, say “oh, this is just like the con except with fewer people and less programming” and wander out again.
Regarding the Potterverse I’m a bit sad that JK Rowling put so much effort into writing the extended ‘verse without doing more research; that is a pity. It’s like building a canoe over a twisted form, months of effort spent on a project whose flaws can’t be fixed now. I hope her next project works out better.
Vampires are a very important part of various folklore. Whether this belief constitutes a religious belief is a matter of perspective. But in some places and times the fear of vampires did have a similar importance to say, the teaching of Jesus Christ.
It didn’t keep fantasy authors away from imagining all kinds of vampires, from classicaly evil to let’s-turn-the-table friendly, through plain stupid and ridiculous or sexy with a machine-gun.
One could even argue that the whole point of fantasy is the appropriation of traditional beliefs, and their more or less transformed restitution in a work of fiction.
Going no further then the Potterverse, J.K. Rowling “invent”, I insist on the term, versions of werewolves, witches, vampires… that people who used to believe in such things would not have approved.
So in all due respect, I am not sure to see what the point is. The quality of J.K Rowling cheap transposition of her concept to other cultural contexts being another point entirely.
I do have considerable reservations about the belief that an actual oppressed people need white people to defend them against other white people. It seems to me that the Navajo Nation are eminently capable of speaking for themselves on this topic, should they wish to do so…
[tock not tick]
One of my friends went to a boarding school in another state in the late 60s, early 70s. We wrote back and forth quite a bit. He came back to town in junior year, explaining that he’d come down with colitis. “I used up my tuition in toilet paper,” he said.
Tasha Turner
Happy B… wait. Someone born in 1967 can be 49 now. Odd, my skeleton has suddenly started aching in several new places. How does that work? I’ll hobble over to the encyclopedia and look it up. Hey! You kids quit hoverboarding over my lawn! It kills the roots!
I remember in sixth grade, suddenly realizing that I would be alive in the year 2000! How cool was that? I sat down and figured out how old I’d be, realized I’d turn 43 then, and decided that at that age, I wouldn’t care about anything anyway. (I WAS YOUNG THEN) Oh, yeah, um…
…irthday!
katster
There’s a Mystery Machine at my campus. I was walking to my car, and a mom was taking photos of her husband and kids in front of it. Naturally, I offered to take some pictures of all of them (my mom was barely ever in our photos—not only did she take most of them, she would likely have refused to pose anyway), so they laughed in front of the van while I told them to say “those meddling kids!” It was my good deed for the day. (I had another opportunity for similar at the Monet exhibit at the Albright-Knox Gallery when a woman was taking a selfie with the life-size cardboard cutout of the painter. “Both of you smile!” I said.)
Chris Meadows
I had an idea for the animated Star Trek series, since they could more easily do things that would have been too expensive for the special effects of the live-action series. Basically, it was a transporter malfunction that made the person smaller each time they went through, with a presumed Lower Limit of Doom and a crisis that necessitated Kirk using it a bunch of times, getting more and more diminuitive.
I’ve wondered for years if the person who steps out of the transporter is the original. Can’t recall with certainty whether I got the idea from someone else any more.
Peace Is My Middle Name;
About the same problems I have with Marvels Thor.
A few Native Americans are quoted here (only one of them Navajo):
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/09/jk-rowling-under-fire-for-appropriating-navajo-tradition-history-of-magic-in-north-america-pottermore
Rowling has always been bad at worldbuilding.
Her methodology has never really changed: grab some cosmetic effects based on popular conceptions of magic and use them with no idea as to how they really fit together. Other commenters have noticed how economics don’t match up with her numbers, and how the ignorance of the muggle world among wizards makes no sense given the influx of wizards from non-magical backgrounds. I’ll point to one thing that (although it doesn’t raise any issues of appropriation) makes sense only as a detail designed purely for atmosphere: use of quills.
Quill pens are really awkward to use, and much less reliable to make, requiring more work to maintain, than any other pen. There’s no evidence that using quills is a required element in creating written spells, and Harry and his cohort use them for writing essays in any case. In no sane world would the wizarding world not have adopted at least steel pen nibs and standard fountain pens. No, she chose it because it’s an arbitrary differentiator and because it provides an archaic atmosphere.
Her awareness of the details of even European history is not a strong point; her writing builds the wizarding world as a calque over our own modern world with a liberal application of clichés for quick acceptance: a reading experience a mile wide and an inch deep.
This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have strengths — her control of the narrative techniques needed to write a good mystery story is visible in how she is very capable of introducing key plot elements early on that she’s going to need later while avoiding making them pointers to what actually is going to happen. It’s not a surprise that her post-HP adult fiction is within the mystery genre. But criticising her for details of her worldbuilding is like attacking Pope’s Sporus: who crucifies a butterfly upon a wheel?
or the treatment of religion in comics, which wobbles between “all these gods co-exist somehow”, “they’re all just different names for the same thing”, and “when you get right down to it, things look very very judeo-christian”… in a way that is completely unsurprising when you consider who created most of the big comics
lurkertype said:
Today’s installment covers the colonial era, so we’ve only gotten as far as “Americans are fanatically religious”.
Still no mention of Canada or Mexico, and native wizards vanish from the narrative after a brief mention of “conflict”.
Also, “unfamiliar magical plants”? When there’s been contact between European wizards and those New World potion-making geniuses since the Middle Ages? Huh?
Maybe magic in the potterverse works the way it does in the Apt universe, where if your brain is wired for magic, it cannot comprehend stuff like how doorknobs work.
Fun fact about the New World: It’s a hotbed of The Horny! Actually, this was the European belief about every single culture they encountered, new or old, outside their own. All “they” could think about was sex, sex, sex. I found sources on this when I was writing my paper on Caliban as the avatar of African stereotypes last year. Apart from eskimos, who were apparently a veritable model of rectitude—the Good kind—every aboriginal group consisted of sex-crazed libertines, and every new vegetable found by explorers was sought out by Europeans for its hornymaking qualities.
Take-home fact: They thought potatoes were aphrodisiac. Potatoes.
ps: For a real hoot, check out the expanded version of The Tempest by Davenant and Dryden, with extra versions of the principals, including a sister for Caliban and a brother for Miranda. Parts of it are quite good, says the Curate.
James Moar
I think I will confine myself to pointing out that Brian Young is a controversial figure within the Nation; his willingness to stick with Netflix, when other Navajos left a production because of its stereotyped depiction of Native Americans, suggests that his tolerance level for stereotypes is exceedingly flexible…
Happy belated birthday Tasha!
So there’s an interesting new science fiction story now available:
http://ftpcontent.worldnow.com/khq/ODOMDOCS.pdf
Okay, never mind that the author believes every word of it…
This doesn’t even work, but what are the alternatives, if Potter world history (through Muggle eyes) is supposed to be exactly our own?
1. NAs didn’t have magic
2. NAs had magic, but there was no contact before Columbus
3. NAs had magic, which they didn’t use
4. NAs had magic which was ineffective
5. NAs had magic, but euros had magic too and euros won
Either magic is completely irrelevant, or you have a secret history where all wars were wars of magic and all plagues and natural disasters were caused by magic (or magicians saved themselves and let the Muggles die)
happy birthday to tasha
happy birthday to tasha
your comments are insightful
your cake made from kasha
(hope you like kasha)
🙂
@Kip W: They didn’t know about Eskimo wife-swapping?
The modern Hebrew word for “tomato” is agvaniyyah, from the root agav, meaning sexual desire—as another example of the same root, the word for “syphillis” is agevet. Eliezer ben-Yehuda, the man who brought the Hebrew language back from the dead, thought this was a vulgar word and campaigned for an alternative, but the Israeli people voted for agvaniyyah, as it were, with their tongues.
More here.
Ray – I’ll bet Phil Farmer could have done a great job on your last scenario
[8] Sean Stewart totally skewered this one in Nobody’s Son
The field lost a fine author when he decamped to greener pastures.
Happy belated Birthday, Tasha 🙂
Happy belated Birthday Tasha
Seth
Apparently, they were clueless in both directions. I’m reminded of an SNL bit from decades past where some prince or whatever anguishedly kept telling his true love “You mock me!” while the courtiers pulled faces at him behind his back.
Charles Stross also recently continued his series, this time considering cliches in space operas (there are only a few in his list…not). http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
First off, many native peoples and the Navajo specifically *have* complained in the strongest terms about people using distorted versions of their customs and religion as pop entertainment.
Second, I am distinctly uneasy about an argument so often used by bullies to isolate their victims and try to drive away those concerned for the victims’ plight.
One may have compassion for a people not one’s own. In many circumstances, to stay silent is to give complicit approval to wrong action.
(22) ENERGIZE – THEN DIE! I forgot when originally posting this video, but I once read a great story about this. Warning: Spoilers for a very old story you’ll probably never read, so I’m not going to bother ROT-13’ing. Can anyone ID this story?
Seriously, if you don’t like to read the full plot of a story you may never be able to find, then skip the rest of this.
Aliens come and introduce transporter/teleporter technology. Someone who’s psychic/sensitive figures out what happens when she meets the aliens. She touches the hand of an alien and gets the impression of its last true memory from when it was alive, when it used the transporter the first time on its home world and “died.” It turns out people lose their soul when they “die” using transporter; their transported copy “lives,” but without their soul, and thus lacks some essential creativity. The protagonists find supporting evidence in the alien’s history for this: their interstellar drive, developed before the transporters, had some dangerous effects that were improved upon initially, but improvements on the drive stopped soon after it came out, which was . . . around the time the transporters went into wide-spread use! That was the smoking gun (probably explained better in-story than I’m doing here). Anyway, IIRC the aliens had been basically going around exploring, sharing technology (including the transporters) with all cultures they met, who of course adopted it. Once everyone understood the horror, they stop that; I vaguely recall maybe they settled on earth and didn’t move on, but I guess their compatriots at alien-home-world still did this, or maybe this was the only exploration team or something? I forget. Anyway, of course, everyone stops using the transporters (at least on earth).
Anyone remember this story and know who wrote it/where it appeared? I’d love to track it down and re-read it. I fear it’s from some decades-old magazine I’ll never find, but maybe it was by someone famous and it’s in a collection I could get.
Rowling’s bad worldbuilding, so far as Hogwarts and the wizarding society of the UK goes, is pretty charming, honestly. Its ridiculousness is the point, the way it’s cobbled together out of various fantastical and non-fantastical myths that dance around various children’s literature traditions and merge them with a healthy dollop of modernity. It makes no sense, because it’s a light-hearted comedy chimera of children’s fantasy and an affectionate parody of notions of Britishness.
As for what’s wrong with turning other cultures into a “vanilla mush”, I can only say that there are countries that have not dealt with, or significantly improved on the conditions that resulted from, the government-sanctioned genocide that took place within their borders. In the same way that it’s a fairly poor idea to write a romance novel where a Jewish woman in a concentration camp falls in love with the Nazi camp commander and converts to Christianity, despite the fact that it’s fairly generic “anything for love” romance pap if you don’t consider the historical context, you sort of have to consider the historical context. When the context includes actual genocides with ongoing impact on whole ethnic populations, breezy literary fluff is somewhat misjudged, particularly when the literary fluff in question trades on thoughtless ethnic stereotypes. I don’t know, I can’t imagine why ethnic stereotypes would bother a population still devastated by ethnic violence and a century of stolen children in living memory, and quite recent living memory at that.
That’s the difference between the broad cultural stereotypes of Beauxbatons, Durmstrang and Hogwarts, and broad cultural stereotypes of Native Americans. No one ever took vast numbers of French children away from their parents and put them into schools where they were half-starved, kept from their families, forcibly converted to their occupier’s religion, involved in uncountable abuse scandals, and had the French language beaten out of them for the better part of a hundred years, while ignoring most treaties made with the French government and pushing the French people who still want to live as francophones into a reservation in Alsace where they dumped most of Europe’s nuclear waste, where they are to this day. If they had, you can bet that the portrayal of Beauxbatons as sexually-irresistible schoolgirls would have been a lot more disturbing, and not the terminally cheesy “oh, those wacky French with their Gigi and their Bardot”. And if those things were not true of Native Americans, then some terminally cheesy cultural stereotypes would be relatively harmless, too. And without the holocaust or anti-semitism, a romance novel about a Jewish woman who converts to marry a local German officer in 1944 wouldn’t be as big a deal, either. But we live in a world where there is the holocaust and anti-semitism and the treatment, both historical and current, of Native Americans.
Oh, tropes. I don’t mind most of those, but the names…the names get to me. A lot.
Relatedly: my tolerance for Stuff That’s Clearly Coffee But With a Fantasy Name ran out around 1995, so I can handle “malak” or “klah” but everyone else? It’s fucking *coffee*: stop being precious. (Despite the…dubiousness…of the name, I started to read Wi’tch World and then found someone drinking ko’koa and put the book down like it was on fire, because OH HELL NO.)
Re Magic in North America, a much more likely answer is that there was no contact until the Euro muggles “discovered the New World.” She has already shown that the Euro wizards are weirdly insular. Then the native wizards were decimated by Euro magical diseases, just as the muggles were decimated by ordinary diseases. Thus, entire traditions and studies of magic were lost when they died. The remaining magic users, understandingly bitter, rarely interact with Euro wizards, especially since many of these survivors would still be alive in the present day according to her mythology. This way, she could have kept her narrative that all wizards (except death eaters) are good because the European wizards did not intentionally do this. She has already established that magic doesn’t cure everything. She could have said that the native magic users keep their practices private so not much is known except that they exist, they are powerful and Euro wizards respect this privacy (because wizards are always better than muggles).
I’m going to be interested in how she explains why the African magic communities allowed millions of people to be enslaved when she turns her attention there. I’m guessing slavery won’t be mentioned.
Darn File 770 making me late for work again! ?
yeah, bit of a downer for a children’s book series, don’t you think? And have there been references to magical diseases in the Potterverse before?
Isabel: Relatedly: my tolerance for Stuff That’s Clearly Coffee But With a Fantasy Name ran out around 1995, so I can handle “malak” or “klah” but everyone else? It’s fucking *coffee*: stop being precious.
I constantly assert that a secondary world fantasy can be thought of as a translation of the actual language and concepts there. If it really IS coffee, and not any different, then it should be, IMO, called such, because you are translating things into English. If its similar but not the same, then the unique name is fine. (I debated with an author who I beta read who used tisane for what was most certainly and clearly tea, on this point. It was tea, why call it tisane?). It CAN work but its harder than it looks.
Heck. there is even a TV Trope (warning: TV Tropes) about this, and it goes back to the SFWA Turkey City Lexicon.
@Ray There have been references to magical diseases but in passing only and no mention of magical epidemics. Magic was unable to heal Mr. Weasley after he was attacked and they had to use muggle methods IIRC.
Additionally, the whole premise of the series is that a mass murderer tries to kill a child in its crib in front of his horrified parents and instead murders the mother in front of the child. The series also features a child being raised by his grandmother because both his parents were tortured to the point of insanity. There is plenty of downer in-universe already.
@Ray: IIRC when they visit the Wizarding hospital, there were passing references and/or depictions of magical diseases. I’m blanking on specifics.
ETA: Ninja’d by @WorldWeary.
@Ray: And have there been references to magical diseases in the Potterverse before?
It’s absolutely packed with them. The gross-out humor of magical illnesses and injuries is one of the pillars the books rest on.
@World Weary: There is plenty of downer in-universe already.
Yeah, quite a lot of it. Not to mention two different Wizard Hitlers ethnic-cleansing the place, and quite a bit of torture and Clockwork-Orange style ultraviolence depicted in the books. It’s honestly pretty bleak under the technicolor surface.
Ref. (20)
I’d like to thank the Filers that understand the point being made in that article and have therefore already adjusted their language to discriminate between folks that disagree with the content of what is currently considered award worth SFF and….quite frankly, Vox Day.
Also….Happy B-day, Tasha! Hope it was a good one.
@ Cat
In my experience, those will not be the only relevant features of that audience. They….hell, “we” back in the day….suffer from a broad range of interests that are not mutually exclusive. Witness the video of my brothers singing “Let it go” in the barracks. Back in the day, we used to race back to the barracks after training to watch Days of Our Lives. **chuckle**
Regards,
Dann
@Paul: Exactly, though I still question why “unique morning stimulant beverage” is the point on which anyone needs to differentiate their fantasy world. If you’ve got swords and horses and wheat and shoes all going by that name, and you want your characters drinking something dark and strong and slightly bitter in the morning, just…use coffee. And if you want to distinguish it, use something other than “coffee but kinda cinnamon flavored.” Hell, switch the delivery method entirely: a fantasy book where the morning return-to-consciousness ritual was doing lines of powder off a mirror would have a better-than-average chance of getting my seven bucks.
On tea/tisane, I dated a British guy once who was *very firm* that only black or green tea (maybe also red and white, we didn’t get into that) was “tea”. Herbal tea was “tisane.” He had a lot of feelings on this issue, so I don’t know if that might explain it?
@Amoxtli
I liked your post a lot.
@Isabel – agree with you about coffee!
@Tasha:
Happy belated birthday!
Now, on to the less fun part:
@ Darren Garrison:
That’s a local news story (for me, at least) which gets less funny when you add in shot a local pastor in the back six times and is still at large. 🙁
Edit to add: local news just updated, he’s been arrested in Washington D.C. phew.
@Isabel
I love tea. But it is only tea if there are actual leaves of the tea plant in it. I use the term “infusion” rather than tisane but I’m American. I don’t make this distinction to be pedantic. If I am offered tea, I am disappointed to receive a hot beverage that has no actual tea in it. So I ask because I don’t want to be disappointed. I may drink and even enjoy the occasional infusion but it’s not tea.
@Isabel Cooper
Um, yeah, that’s pretty much what my dictionary says. “Tea” is from a particular variety of camellia and nothing else.
Ha! See, that’s what I was talking about.
Whereas I’m used to saying “tea” to cover it all (not technically accurate, but enh: I also use “Band-Aid” for generic sticky bandages) and “herbal tea” or “black tea” or whatever if I want to be specific about the kind. Although usually I just ask what kinds of tea are available, as most friends and fancy restaurants have multiple sorts of both tea/tisane, and most cheap diners have either Red Bag Lipton (caffeinated) or Green Bag (decaf).
Iain Clark’s art for Dublin 2019 is *great*, thanks so much for including it. I assume I can put him as “Best Fan Artist eligible” for 2015, right?
@Isabel Copper
I’ve heard the tea/tisaine distinction from the British… and from Ann Leckie, who is also of the tea is tea, the real thing, nothing but, etc.
@Tasha
Happy Birthday!
@Amoxtli
That’s pretty much it, yes.
@Amoxtli
I can see your point on why Navajo or other Natives nations can feel particularly sensitive on the topic of cultural appropriation, but honestly, the analogy with the nazi-jew romance doesn’t hold.
JK Rowling did not make innapropriate usage of the sensitive issues you describe by turning, for instance, Indian reservations in some kind of Hogwart-style magic lands. Her worst crime is probably not to give those issues the front place you think it deserves.
And I don’t know if Jews are complaining about the pop culture appropriation of golem or kaballah or the Ark of the Covenant, but I bet it is not on the single motive that History have been tough on the jewish people. They might rightfully protest if this appropriation nurtures old antisemitic stereotypes, though.
@Isabel Cooper: Word! (about the coffee-not-coffee thing) I really, really enjoyed the “Black Magician” trilogy by Trudi Canavan, but she extra-bugged me on this because she had real-world things…but then, weird names for tea and coffee and other animals/insects, like I think there was a rat called something else, some herbivore that really should’ve just been whatever-it-is-in-real-life, etc. It was an odd mishmash of half real things, half “should be real but have fake names” things.
I love tea and I love herbal tea. I know the latter isn’t really tea and try to be correct-but-not-pedantic, but I’m sure I fail plenty.
Any Audible members here? Tor.com just released Tor.com Collection: Season 1. This one-credit audiobook has 10 novellas from 2015, originally published as separate audiobooks. This is a great deal if you use Audible, like me! It’s a 1 GB file, 36.5 hours of content – no way I’ll finish it by month’s end, but I’m going to use this to absorb some more novellas, since my shortlist has only one entry on it.
The collection contains The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson; Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell; Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss; Binti by Nnedi Okorafor; The Last Witness by K. J. Parker; Of Sorrow & Such by Angela Slatter; Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace; The Builders by Daniel Polansky; Domnall and the Borrowed Child by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley; and The Shootout Solution by Michael R. Underwood.
I have ebook samples of a few of these waiting; this’ll be more efficient. 😉 Time to pause my current audiobook “re-read,” Robert J. Sawyer’s Humans (I forgot how tedious and useless the framing sequence was) and listen to new fiction for a change. I’m looking forward to Cornell’s and Polansky’s, and I’ve heard good things about Wilson’s and Wallace’s. Hopefully I’ll find something Hugo-worthy to add to my one lonely novella.
How Can We Scroll When Our Blogs Are Burning?
Well, but by making the Navajo demon-outlaw “skinwalkers” into good guys and the counterparts of real life, real Navajo spiritual leaders into liars and frauds about them, Rowling is actually saying something really offensive.
My favorite not-coffee is Cherryh’s “gfi” from the Chanur series.
@RedWombat: Hahaha, that’s great!