Pixel Scroll 4/1/21 I’ve Been Pixeled, Been Misfiled, When Will I Be Scrolled

(1) PLAY ALONG AT HOME. Eli Grober offers these “Opening Lines Rewritten for a Pandemic” in The New Yorker.

“A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle

“It was a dark and stormy night, so we stayed inside, just like we’d done every night for the last year. In that way, it was a perfectly normal night.”

“A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But, mostly, it was the worst of times. In fact, not once had it felt like the best of times.”

Bill sent the link with a suggestion that Filers extend the list. Here’s his contribution —

“Double Star” by Robert A. Heinlein

If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he doesn’t need to wear a mask, he’s a spaceman.

(2) FREE BOOK FROM TAFF. Creative Random Harris is now available in multiple formats at the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s website, where they hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund if you please. Over 276,000 words.

Chuck Harris (1927-1999) was active in fandom in the 1950s as a founding editor of the legendary fanzine Hyphen (where he wrote the “Random” column), and returned to the fannish scene in 1984. His letters, full of hilarious, scabrous and generally irresponsible anecdotes, were re-edited as the “Creative Random History” column in many issues of Pulp (1984-1989) and distributed in his own round-robin compilations Quinsy (later just Q) and Charrisma; similar columns also appeared in other fanzines.

For this ebook, Rob Hansen and David Langford have assembled a huge mass of Chuck’s articles and correspondence (some never before published). There is an introductory appreciation written in 1989 by his lifelong friend Walt Willis, a historical foreword by Rob Hansen, and various notes and explications by David Langford.

Cover photo of Sue and Chuck Harris in 1989 (as special guests of Corflu 6) by Geri Sullivan.

(3) RED AND OTHER COLORS PLANET. View the California Art Club’s online exhibit “Mars: An Artistic Mission”. Features work by Julie Bell, James Gurney, William Stout, Boris Vallejo and many others.

Art and science have been intertwined since the dawn of civilization. Science, and in particular space exploration, has allowed us to transcend our bodily limitations on Earth, magnifying our creativity in the process, as we are propelled into the cosmos. With Mars: An Artistic Mission, which celebrates the landing of the Mars Perseverance Rover on the Red Planet, we honor the marriage of art and science.

As you venture through these virtual galleries, you will find dazzling Mars-scapes, snapshots of rovers in operation, and ethereal portraits of life beyond our Earthly barrier.

We hope this exhibition leaves you saying “Mission Accomplished.”

(4) ANOTHER SPIN AROUND THE BLOCK. “Surprise! A Second The Suicide Squad Trailer Has Dropped”Yahoo! leads the way:

Trailers have a fun way of changing the context of what you’re looking at. It’s truly an experiment in the Kuleshov effect, but with more music. We’re barely a week out from the bombastic, humor-fueled, classic-rock-ified first trailer for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, which introduced us to our new favorite son, King Shark. Now, Gunn has shared a second trailer that premiered in cinemas with Godzilla vs. Kong. It’s got a completely different feel, even though it uses a lot of the same shots, moments, and lines. If we saw this one first, we might think we were getting an action drama. Maybe it’s both!

(5) MIDCOURSE MANUVERS. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction revealed forthcoming changes to hosting and sponsorship in the “Shape of Things to Come”.

October 2021 will see the tenth anniversary of the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which since 2011 has been hosted by Orion and linked to the Gollancz SF Gateway ebook operation. Orion/Gollancz have now decided not to renew the contract on 1 October 2021, and we are parting amicably.

The principal Encyclopedia editors John Clute and David Langford plan to move sf-encyclopedia.com to their own web server and continue as seamlessly as possible with very much the same “look and feel”, with access exactly the same as now, though soon perhaps with a new sponsor and certainly with a few improvements that the current platform does not allow. Keep watching the skies!

John Clute’s version of the announcement ends:

…The first changes to be made, several of which David has already pre-coded, will be technically “cosmetic”, but should make the site easier to navigate. Nothing is ever signed until it’s signed, and nothing is ever certain till it bores you silly: but the reference to new sponsors is not blowing in the wind.

(6) IRISH NATCON WILL BE ONLINE. Octocon, the National Irish SF Convention, is going virtual again in 2021.

This is absolutely not an April fool’s joke.

The committee weighed up the pros and cons, and we want everyone to be able to attend our next in person convention.

Our convention family includes people from outside Ireland as well as all over the 32 counties.

Last year’s Virtual convention went so well, we are exploring bringing you all even more panels, readings, workshops, interviews, and fun activities.

(7) AWKWARD. Wil Wheaton asked Facebook readers to find him a copy of an anecdote he had published. When he happened to find his own copy he shared it with his Facebook followers. (Also at his blog.) Here’s the setup:

I first met William Shatner on the set of Star Trek V back in 1988. I was 16, and had been working on TNG for two years at the time….

For weeks, I tried to get up the nerve to introduce myself. When I would walk from the stage to my dressing room or school room, I would do it slowly, looking at their stage door, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mister Spock, or Doctor McCoy, or even the legendary Captain Kirk. The few times they did appear, though, I could never find the courage to approach them.

This went on for about six weeks.

…Why was I so intimidated? I was a 16 year-old geek, with a chance to meet The Big Three from Star Trek. You do the math.

One afternoon, while I was sitting outside stage 9 talking with Mandy, my costumer, they opened the huge stage door across the way, and I could see right into the set of Star Trek V. It was a large area, like a cargo bay, filled with extras and equipment. It was quite different from our set, but it was unmistakably The Enterprise. Standing in the middle of it all was William Shatner. He held a script open like it was a holy text. The way he gestured with his hands, I could tell that he was setting up a shot and discussing it with the camera crew.

I waited for the familiar rush of nerves, but it didn’t come. Seeing him as a director and not as Captain Kirk put me at ease. I knew that this was my moment. If I didn’t walk over and introduce myself right then, I would never do it….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1981 — Forty years ago, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York premiered. (That was how it was shown on-screen.)  Starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, this film was written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle. It was directed by John  Carpenter, and produced by  Larry Franco and Debra Hill. Supporting cast was  Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton. The film received generally positive reviews with Russell in particular finding favor with the critics; it did very well at the box office earning far more than it cost to produce; and audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent seventy seven percent rating. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born April 1, 1875 Edgar Wallace. Creator of King Kong, he also wrote SF including Planetoid 127, one of the first parallel Earth stories, and The Green Rust, a bioterrorism novel which was made into a silent film called The Green Terror. Critics as diverse as Orwell, Sayers and Penzler have expressed their rather vehement distaste for him.  Kindle has an impressive number of works available. (Died 1932.) (CE)
  • Born April 1, 1911 – Augusta Braxton Baker.  First black to get a Master’s degree in librarianship from Albany Teacher’s College, admitted only under pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt whose husband F.D. Roosevelt was then Governor of New York.  First black librarian in an administrative position at the NY Public Library.  President of Amer. Lib’y Ass’n Children’s Services Division.  Chaired the Newbery and Caldecott Medals committee.  First Storyteller-in-Residence at an American university (Univ. S. Carolina).  Two anthologies for us, The Talking Tree and The Golden Lynx.  (Died 1998) [JH] 
  • Born April 1, 1918 – Frank Borth.  Twoscore interiors for us; also comics e.g. There Oughta Be A Law! 1970-1983 succeeding Harry Shorten, “Draw Along with FB” in Treasure Chest 1963-1972.  Here is an illustration for “As Chemist to Chemist” in the Nov-Dec 78 Asimov’s.   Here is Zelazny’s  “Last Defender of Camelot”  (Died 2009) [JH]
  • Born April 1, 1926 Anne McCaffrey. I read both the original trilogy and what’s called the Harper Hall trilogy oh so many years ago. Enjoyed them immensely but haven’t revisted them so I don’t know what the Suck Fairy would make of them. And I confess that I had no idea she’d written so much other genre fiction! (Died 2011.) (CE) 
  • Born April 1, 1942 Samuel R. Delany, 79. There’s no short list of recommended works for him as everything he’s done is brilliant. That said I think I’d start off suggesting a reading first of Babel- 17 (one of his four Nebula winners) and Dhalgren followed by the Return to Nevèrÿon series. I’m reasonably sure that his only Hugo-winning fiction was in the Short Story category at Heicon (1970) for “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” as published in New Worlds, December 1968. He won another Hugo for Best Nonfiction Book with The Motion of Light In Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village 1957-1965 at Noreascon Three (1989). (CE) 
  • Born April 1, 1950 – Randy Bathurst.  Active in the Detroit area during the 1970s, particularly with fanart.  Fan Guest of Honor at Marcon XI.  Here he is in the Masquerade costume competition at Torcon II the 31st Worldcon (hello,Tim Kirk).  He’s in the first issue of File 770;see here (PDF; scroll down to p. 8).  See his Ten of Cups in Bruce Pelz’ Fantasy Showcase Tarot Deck here (PDF of the deck starts with BP’s introduction, then Cups).  Here is Our Gracious Hosts report of his death.  (Died 2009) [JH]
  • Born April 1, 1953 Barry Sonnenfeld, 68. Director of The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values  (both of which I really like), and the Men in Black trilogy (well one out of three ain’t bad). He also executive produced Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which I’ve not seen, and did the same for Men in Black: International, the recent continuation of that franchise. (CE)
  • Born April 1, 1960 Michael Praed, 61. Robin of Loxley on Robin of Sherwood which no doubt is one of the finest genre series ever done of a fantasy nature. He also played Phileas Fogg on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, an amazing series that never got released on DVD. It has spawned a lively fanfic following since it was cancelled with names such as Spicy Airship Stories. (CE) 
  • Born April 1, 1963 James Robinson, 58. Writer, both comics and film. Some of his best known comics are the series centered on the Justice Society of America, in particular the Starman character he co-created with Tony Harris. His Starman series is without doubt some of the finest work ever done in the comics field. His screenwriting is a mixed bag. Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Well that’s him. He’s much, much better on the animated Son of Batman film. (CE) 
  • Born April 1, 1966 – Janette Rallison, age 55.  A dozen novels, one novelette for us (some under another name); a score of other novels and books of shorter stories. Has read My Double Life (memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt), BabbittA Tale of Two Cities, two by Jane Austen, The Brothers KaramazovThe 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.  “If your teacher asks you to identify symbolism in my books, you have my permission to tell him/her that I didn’t put any in.”  Website.  [JH]
  • Born Aril 1, 1974 – Diane Awerbuck, age 47.  Two novels for us (with Alex Latimer, as Frank Owen), a score of shorter stories.  Outside our field, Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Short Story Day Africa prize.  Geoff Ryman’s interview with her for Strange Horizons (and excerpt from AR’s Home Remedieshere.  [JH]
  • Born April 1, 1991 – Kat Zhang, age 30.  Four novels for us.  Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year.  First book sold at age 19.  Outside our field, in The Emperor’s Riddle a Chinese-American girl and her brother visiting China tangle with legends of the Chian-wen Emperor (Ming Dynasty; disappeared 1402). [JH]

(10) A FAN’S HOUSE. This post from Porch.com advises you how to “Turn Any Space at Home into Your Favorite Fandom”. It exists to drive business to home improvement professionals, however, its commercial orientation didn’t keep me from enjoying the article — maybe you will, too.

First, assess your space.

When it comes to Fandom decor, you can draw inspiration from your favorite films, books, video games, or any other cultural sources that strike your fancy. You can transform a nook beneath your stairs into Harry Potter’s hidden chamber or your bedroom into Maleficent’s boudoir of enchantment. The key is to choose a theme that resonates with your interests so that it will delight you each time you visit the space. 

Of course, before you head out to shop for a Lego Death Star for your Star Wars-themed room or a life-size Pikachu for your Pokemon personal den, you’ll need to assess your space carefully. Keep its measurements handy so that you don’t have to estimate sizing considerations while you’re shopping for items like draperies, carpets, furnishings, and decorative items. Be sure you note the dimensions of windows, walls, and the floor.

(11) NOT LIKE OLD TIMES. Diamond Bay Radio did a podcast on time and space in Russian speculative fiction of the 1920s. In this interview, Mlex spoke with Reed Johnson, of Bowdoin College, about the life and works of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and his time travel story, “Memories of the Future”.

“Half eaten away by rust, its letters said: WHOLESALE SUPPLIERS OF UTOPIA SINCE… The year had been obliterated by time.”

(12) RAMPING UP TO THE VIRTUAL EASTERCON. Episode 28 of the Octothorpe podcast is now available: “Literally the Best Thing You’ve Ever Said About Me”.

John Coxon is communicating, Alison Scott’s head is spinning, and Liz Batty is a programme operator. We discuss all the things about Eastercon that we’re excited about (which takes a while!) and then discuss future Eastercons, briefly talk about staying Seder in the apocalypse, and then talk about breakfast.

(13) HANDMAID’S TALE. In The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 trailer, June Osborne becomes Public Enemy No. 1 says Yahoo!

June Osborne wants justice and it looks like the country of Gilead is prepping for an all-out war. Hulu has released the first full trailer for the fourth season of the popular Emmy-winning series, and the wait to learn more is coming to an end with the show’s return on April 28.

(14) GENTLEMEN, BE SEATED (TWICE). David Grigg and Perry Middlemiss look at Australian literature, ranging from a book about bushrangers written in serial form in 1882 to modern science fiction in Episode 49 of Two Chairs Talking.

(15) WHEN THE HUGOS ARE DEAD, WILL YOU BE INVITED TO THE FUNERAL? Here’s someone who thinks that’s only minutes away – Richard Paolinelli – who’s such a lazy ass his post runs under a photo copied from File 770. (*) “The Sad Demise Of The Hugos And The Nebulas” [Internet Archive link].

…Instead, they embarked on the “Wokian Way”, disregarded great works, and embraced lesser material based on the creators’ sex and race rather than on the quality of the works themselves. Any creator deemed unworthy, 99.9% white males oddly enough, was run out of each organization and their works blacklisted from consideration. Predictably, with each passing year the Hugos and the Nebulas have become less popular, as shown by the declining number in participating voters.

The Dragon Awards, open to all who enjoy SF/F around the world and free to participate in – unlike the Hugos and Nebulas – are thriving….

Of course they’re thriving — because the Dragons are moving toward the mainstream – John Scalzi’s The Last Emperox won in 2020 – something the Sad Puppies who monopolized the awards in their first year tried to ignore: “Reaction to 2020 Dragon Awards Winners”.

(*) It’s Fran Wilde’s photo from Twitter, but bears the file name the image was given in the media library here.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mind Matters introduces DUST’s short film “The Big Nothing”:

When the captain of an isolated mining station near Saturn is murdered, Detective Lennox is sent to investigate the three remaining crew members. Centered around a series of interrogations and flashback, Lennox discovers that everyone has a motive to kill. With otherworldly threats approaching and the killer amongst them, will everybody make it off the station?

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Mike Kennedy, Mlex, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, James Bacon, David Langford, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, Bill, John Hertz, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

91 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/1/21 I’ve Been Pixeled, Been Misfiled, When Will I Be Scrolled

  1. First!

    The weather’s taking a rather nasty turn, so I’m enjoying re-reading Bear’s Ancestral Nights right now while watching the snow fall outside.

  2. Just finished Jack Vance’s Anome and I think I have read it before. However, I now have copies of the remaining volumes in the trilogy (The Brave Free Men and The Asutra) so now I can finally finish the darn thing!

  3. Ok, I’m curious. What’s are the novels that you’ve re-read the most? Mine’s two by Emma Bull — Finder and Bone Dance, plus Mieville’s The City and The City.

  4. Exhausted, and we had some nasty rain, but Dora and I both have food in the house.

    And I have an arc of The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers.

  5. (8) And Carpenter’s co-author wad also Michael Myers (“the Shape”) for most of his scenes in the original “Halloween.”

    (9) For what it’s worth, Somerset Maugham was a fan of Edgar Wallace. There is an anecdote (linked below) where he asked Mrs. Wharton (it’s assumed he meant Edith Wharton) about Edgar Wallace, and she had never heard of him and expressed disdain about the very thought of reading thrillers. I first read about the encounter eons ago, and I never wanted to be the writer who was completely unfamiliar with the names of popular authors.m even outside my genres. Who wasn’t too shy enjoy thrillers and the like. Who didn’t get too “judgy.” Then again, I was already that sort of reader…

    http://www.librarything.com/work/4060238

    Also, happy birthday to Anne McCaffrey, who was the first author who shared my first name and its spelling. Only later would I come to know her more for her dragons. And Restoree. And Brainships. And psionic powers. And Crystal Singers!

  6. (9) Regarding Delany, I would also start with Babel-17 but I can’t imagine proceeding directly to Dhalgren… maybe the long novella “The Star-Pit” instead, or directly to The Motion of Light in Water for its description of how Delany’s domestic arrangement became the trio of Navigators in Babel-17. And respectfully, I have trouble considering everything he wrote to be brilliant; whatever else one might call The Tides of Lust, I don’t think that word applies.

  7. (6) Octocon: There have been at least two other conventions with that name in the past. MileHiCon started out in 1969 with the name “MiniCon,” as it was a miniature convention. When Denver fandom discovered the name was already in use by Minneapolis’s annual convention, they changed it to Octocon, under which it ran for two years. Then they discovered that name was already used by a Star Trek convention, so it was time to change again. The Denver Area Science Fiction Association (DASFA), which sponsored the con at that time, had a major debate over the renaming. One hippie member was all for “Lungfish Granola Con,” but the chairfan who’d run the previous Octocon said she refused to help organize any convention named that. So, someone came up with “MileHiCon” (sometimes spelt “MileHighCon). Quite appropriate for our city, although somewhat unoriginal–there are hundreds of businesses here with the Mile High/Mile Hi moniker. So, the first MileHiCon by that name was MileHiCon 4.

    I have no idea what became of the Trek con named Octocon. Nice to know that another convention has revived it.

  8. April 1 is also the birthday of Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, best known for his work with director Akira Kurosawa. Mifune appeared in several fantasy films, including the highly regarded Throne of Blood (1957), Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth reset in feudal Japan. Other genre(ish) works include The Three Treasures (1959), The Lost World of Sinbad (1963), and Princess from the Moon (1987). In addition, Mifune appeared in Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, which, while not particularly genre itself, was a major inspiration for the original Star Wars movies.

  9. 1) When Menolly, daughter of Yanus Sea-Holder, arrived at the Harper Hall she arrived in style, with a N-95 mask and complete vaccination paperwork.

  10. @ Paul Weimer

    In this case, I got all three of the Durdane books off of Biblio from Adventures Unlimited in Washington State. Fortunately I managed to buy them in a set, which was very aesthetically pleasing. I don’t know if they’re in e-book or not (actually, they were impulse buys while I was searching for a copy of James White’s Federation World).

  11. There was an Octocon in northern CA, in wine country, for a few years back in…the eighties I think? It was quite small, and I only have vague memories of it, but I do remember it being the place where I first met Greg Bear.

    My usual rec for someone’s first Delany is Nova. But Babel-17 is a perfectly reasonable choice too. I agree with gottacook about holding off on Dhalgren–while many people love it, it can be quite intimidating if you’re not prepared.

  12. While I am not familiar with the Star Trek convention Jeanne (Sourdough) Jackson mentions, there was definitely an Octocon in Ohio that predated the Trek, Denver, California and Irish cons. According to Fancyclopedia, the relaxacon called Octocon began in 1957 in Sandusky, Ohio, and moved to Cincinnati much later (probably in the 1980s or 90s). That Octocon lasted until 2002. While it was run by the Cincinnati Fantasy Group (CFG), the Sandusky location was initially chosen in order to draw fans from Detroit and Cleveland.

    I probably began attending (the Ohio) Octocon in the early 1970s when it took place at Sandusky’s Green Tree Inn, which was connected to a bowling alley. And, occasionally, there was even a Cincinnati v. Detroit bowling tournament during the con .

  13. The University of Waterloo’s SF/gaming club Watsfic held a somewhat infamous con named Oktocon with a K. The idea was to run it concurrent with Oktoberfest, as an affiliated event. Having allegedly aquired a verbal agreement from the people running Oktoberfest, they rented facilities, ran the event — I want to say Jeanne Robinson was the guest [1] — and then asked Oktoberfest for the funds Watsfic believed had been agreed to. Whereupon the Oktoberfest people asked to see the contact, which of course did not exist on paper. The Federation of Students paid the money owed but they were not happy about having to cough up money for nerd debt.

    (This was before my time but having been part of student orgs, I can see many explanations for what happened that don’t necessarily involve the Oktoberfest people lying)

    1: Unless it was WilfCon at WLU that discovered while Spider Robinson did not count as a Canadian artist for grant purposes, Jeanne did.

  14. 1) How about Neuromancer:

    “The sky was a color, but nobody noticed which color because they were all indoors on lockdown.”

  15. 1) In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. The End.

    @Cat Eldridge — setting aside the Usual Suspects (LotR) and things I’ve forgotten from my childhood, the novels that I’ve reread the most are probably C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars books, and The Man of Gold, the first Tekumel novel by M.A.R. Barker. Oh, and Vance’s Dying Earth books in particular.

    @Paul/@Rob — Those Vance books should be available in eBook form — Spatterlight Press brought pretty much his entire catalog back into print, at least electronically, several years ago.

  16. Michael Praed also starred in the 1987 movie adaptation of Nightflyers… if anyone can be said to have starred in that one.

    1) Two thousand million or so years ago, two galaxies were carefully maintaining social distancing from each other.

  17. (7) How could Wheaton have mislaid this account of his encounter with William Shatner? He’s been regurgitating it continually for years.

  18. (1) “Do you remember where you were when the Meteor hit? I’ve never understood why people phrase it as a question, because of course you were inside, just like everyone had been for the last year.” – The Calculating Stars

  19. (1) “I could have become a mass murderer after a few weeks of lockdown, but I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays and music consumed.” – All Systems Red

  20. (1) The second paragraph of All Systems Red works even better: “I was also still doing my job, on a new contract, but since the humans were isolating in separate habitats and couldn’t go outside, nothing tried to eat me and I didn’t have to interact with anyone. It was great.”

  21. 9) Edgar Wallace was a big influence on me, via the West German film adaptations of his thrillers made in the 1960s. I’ve reviewed a few of them for Galactic Journey. I’ve also tried reading his novels, but find that I enjoy the movies, which have their own unique style, more.

    15) I see that he still doesn’t understand how the Hugos and Nebulas work. The Hugos are nominated and voted upon by the members of Worldcon, so millions of fans can’t vote on them, because no Worldcon has millions of members. The Nebulas are nominated and voted upon by the members of the SFWA, so once again millions of fans can’t vote on them, because there are not millions of SFWA-qualifying SFF writers. You’d think he’d learn to google before shooting off his mouth.

    Also, we still don’t know how many people really nominate and vote for the Dragons, though the finalists and winners have been a lot more mainstream in the past two years. Besides, the Goodreads Choice Awards likely beat the Dragons with regard to the number of votes.

  22. 1) The Pride Of Chanur:
    There had been something contagious on the station dock all year, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint.
    Makes it sound like a zombie story.
    Oh, and The Pride Of Chanur is probably my most re-read book.

  23. 9) As it happens I re-read Dragonsong recently, and the biggest change in my reaction to it from waybackwhen was that, in addition to being mad as hell at Menolly’s parents and sister for the crappy way they treated her, I was mad as hell at all the people who didn’t push back at them.

    (The books with weyrfolk as main characters I don’t think I could bear to re-read now that I know that subtext is a thing.)

    Oh, dear. One of my cats just brought me half a pixel.

  24. Cat Eldridge on April 1, 2021 at 7:01 pm said:
    Ok, I’m curious. What’s are the novels that you’ve re-read the most? Mine’s two by Emma Bull — Finder and Bone Dance, plus Mieville’s The City and The City.

    I only rarely re-read, but probably the Wild Shore or Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson.

    Also the Icewind Dale trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, which I know I read several times as a kid and recently again as an adult in Turkish translation.

  25. @Cora,

    Richard Paolinelli seems proud of his ignorance. I mean these are simple facts that are trivial for anyone to discover. And how long has he been ranting about the Hugos? (You would think that being a writer of SFF, he would already be familiar with how the major industry awards work.)

  26. (15) I doubt that Paolinelli has read the recent Hugo winners.

    (9) My Delaney reading has been a bit different from others, and I’d offer as supplemental suggestions Empire Star as an early read, and working through the Nevèryon series.

    @Cat Eldridge Frequent rereads were more a thing of my youth with fewer books available to me and more time spent reading. At this point in my life I’d have to guess which I reread most frequently – maybe Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

  27. Embarrassingly, my most reread book is probably Godstalk.
    I lived in Appleton when it was first published, so Hodgel was a local author, but I read the covers off my paperback.

  28. Cora Buhlert says Also, we still don’t know how many people really nominate and vote for the Dragons, though the finalists and winners have been a lot more mainstream in the past two years. Besides, the Goodreads Choice Awards likely beat the Dragons with regard to the number of votes.

    The thing is that both the Goodreads Choice Awards and the Dragon Awards are blackboxed so we don’t know just many voters take part in them, nor for that matter if the organisation actually honors those voters in the end. The Hugos are a process open to examination so we know how votes were cast, period.

    I’ve never looked at how transparent the Nebula and Mythopoetic Society processes are, so I’ve no idea what they disclose regarding their Award selection processes.

  29. Cat Eldridge: I’ve never looked at how transparent the Nebula and SFWA processes were, so I’ve no idea what they disclose regarding their Award selection processes.

    The only thing SFWA discloses are the Finalists and the Winner; no nomination or voting totals, and no ranking of how the non-winning Finalists placed.

    Which I can absolutely understand, it’s a small organization of professional colleagues, and releasing totals would possibly cause some rancor or arguing. So I think that the way they do it works well for them.

  30. My most reread novels are probably Alexander Jablokov’s wyrd Solar System novel Carve The Sky or Melissa Scott’s noir-ish SF novel Burning Bright. Both of them are great books and good comfort reads for me.

  31. (15) Paolinelli has bloged about the decline of the Hugos forever, getting so much wrong is just embarasing.

    And the Nominations are down, yes, and? We have still over 1.000 people who nominated. And nomination is right not an obligation. (It is harder than voting in my opinion) And here is the old puppyfalshood, less nominators or voters don’t make the results bad.

  32. Meredith moment: Elizabeth Hand‘s splendid supernatural tinged take on folk music Wylding Hall Is available for a buck ninety nine from the usual suspects.

  33. 9) Re Delaney, I went from his short in Dangerous Visions (possibly Again?) to Babel-17 and then to Dhalgren, which I didn’t bother finishing.

  34. (1) “You can’t just die. You got to book an appointment first.” — Richard McKenna, Casey Agonistes

    “It wan’t until the mermaid turned up in his bathtub that SImon Grue seriously began to wonder about the possibility of contagion from the Russians next door.” — Fritz Leiber, Pipe Dream

    On most reread, every few years I reread Walter Jon Williams’ Maijstral books, starting with The Crown Jewels. Also Alexei Panshin’s Anthony Villiers books. Also Three Men in a Boat. Yes, there is a pattern here.

  35. (1) “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that his eleventy-first birthday party was cancelled due to Covid restrictions, there was much disappointment throughout Hobbiton. Gandalf stayed out of the Shire bubble entirely, so no fireworks, either.”

  36. I keep overlooking The Hobbit as among my most re-read books. My most recent re-read was a listen of it in the form of the narrated version by Andy Serkis. Most splendid it was.

  37. @Kit Harding: Which leads to the question, did Shatner ever play that part in Midsummer Night’s Dream? I can almost imagine casting it with Star Trek actors now.

  38. 7) I knew an aspiring actress who got work, but not enough, so she was working in a veterinarian’s office. One very busy day, Shatner came in with his animal. He, like everyone else, sat and sat while the staff processed all the pets. Finally, he went up to the counter and demanded to be seen. The actress looked at him, put on a Scotty voice, and said, “I’m sorry, captain, but we’re going as fast as we can.” He stormed out.

  39. C.A. Collins: don’t be embarrassed. I read it to death in my teens and twenties and still pull it out.

    Others? Vacuum Flowers, Craft Sequence, Virga Sequence, Raksura books.

  40. Kyra says Godstalk is always a good comfort read for me, too!

    Ok I’ll admit that I’ve not read it. And I’m intrigued that it’s on Baen Books. I take it that it’s not a typical book by them?

  41. I will make my report as if I told a story, because I was taught as a child during the pandemic that truth is a matter of the imagination.

  42. if anyone can be said to have starred in that one

    “Had a lead role in…” ?

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