(1) WHILE YOU WERE WAITING. Ann Leckie must be wondering if any of us are paying attention.
Quite frequently someone at a reading will ask me if I’ll ever explain about that icon Breq is carrying. And the answer is, I already have.
(2) JUST SAY THANKS. Joe Vasicek has some intriguing “Thoughts on series and perma-free”.
For the last five years, the conventional wisdom among most indie writers has been to write short books in sequential series and make the first book permanently free. It’s a strategy that works, to a certain extent. It’s what got me from making pizza money on my book sales to making a humble living at this gig. However, I’m starting to question that wisdom….
….Also, when you have a book that’s permanently free, it tends to accumulate a lot of negative reviews. It’s strange, but some people seem to feel more entitled to XYZ when they get it for free, as opposed to paying for it. Or maybe these are the people who try to go through life without actually paying for anything? Who hoard everything, even the stuff that they hate, so long as they can get it for free? I don’t know.
Certainly, that’s not true of everyone who reads free books. But when you have a perma-free book, it tends to accumulate more of the barely-coherent “dis buk sux” kinds of reviews from people who probably weren’t in the target audience to begin with. And over time, that tends to weigh the book’s overall rating down, which unfortunately can be a turn-off for people who are in the book’s audience.
(3) TIPTREE AUCTION. Here’s an advance look at an item in the Tiptree Auction at WisCon.
On Saturday, May 28, fans of the Tiptree Award will have the opportunity to bid on a genuine blaster that was once the sidearm of Space Babe, a legendary feminist superhero. (Blaster is modeled here by a Space Babe impersonator). This rare item will be part of the annual Tiptree Award Auction, to be held at at WisCon in Madison Wisconsin….
Blaster-wielding Jeanne Gomoll.
(4) MANCUNICON. Starburst brings you Ed Fortune’s 2016 Eastercon report.
Event highlights included interviews with the Guest of Honour John W. Campbell Award-winning novelist Aliette de Bodard, Hugo Award-winning author Ian McDonald, British Fantasy Award-winning creator Sarah Pinborough, and noted astrophysicist David L. Clement. Each drew a huge crowd, and coloured the event in their own unique way. Notably, Clement spearheaded a science-heavy approach to many of the panel items, and many of the talks centred on science and Manchester’s iconic research centre, Jodrell Bank. The iconic building, which has inspired many works of science fiction throughout its history, was thoroughly explored in many talks and lectures.
(5) NUMBER FIVE. Nina Munteanu, at Amazing Stories, continues the series — “The Writer-Editor Relationship, Part 2: Five Things Writers Wish Editors Knew – and Followed”.
- Edit to preserve the writer’s voice through open and respectful dialogue
Losing your voice to the “hackings of an editor” is perhaps a beginner writer’s greatest fear. This makes sense, given that a novice writer’s voice is still in its infancy; it is tentative, evolving, and striving for an identity. While a professional editor is not likely to “hack,” the fear may remain well-founded.
A novice’s voice is often tangled and enmeshed in a chaos of poor narrative style, grammatical errors, and a general misunderstanding of the English language. Editors trying to improve a novice writer’s narrative flow without interfering with voice are faced with a challenge. Teasing out the nuances of creative intent amid the turbulent flow of awkward and obscure expression requires finesse—and consideration. Good editors recognize that every writer has a voice, no matter how weak or ill-formed, and that voice is the culmination of a writer’s culture, beliefs, and experiences. Editing to preserve a writer’s voice—particularly when it is weak and not fully formed—needs a “soft touch” that invites more back-and-forth than usual, uses more coaching-style language, and relies on good feedback….
(6) KELLY LINK. Marion Deeds picked the right day to post a review of a Kelly Link story from Get in Trouble at Fantasy Literature.
“The Summer People” by Kelly Link (February 2016, free online at Wall Street Journal, also included in her anthology Get in Trouble)
“The Summer People” is the first story in Kelly Link’s new story collection Get in Trouble. Fran is a teenager living in a rural part of the American southeast. Her mother is gone, and she is neglected by her moonshiner father. While Fran is running a fever of 102 with the flu, her father informs her that he has to go “get right with God.” On his way out the door, he reminds her that one of the summer families is coming up early and she needs to get the house ready. However, that family isn’t the only group of summer people that Fran “does for,” and this is the point of Link’s exquisite, melancholy tale.
(7) HE’S FROM THE FUTURE. While Doctor Who can travel to anyplace and nearly any point in time, he invariably ends up in London. The Traveler at Galactic Journey seems likewise constrained always to arrive at the same opinion of John W. Campbell, although his fellow fans voted Analog a Hugo for this year’s work — “[April 18, 1961] Starting on the wrong foot”.
Gideon Marcus, age 42, lord of Galactic Journey, surveyed the proud column that was his creation. Three years in the making, it represented the very best that old Terra had to offer. He knew, with complete unironic sincerity, that the sublimity of his articles did much to keep the lesser writers in check, lest they develop sufficient confidence to challenge Gideon’s primacy. This man, this noble-visaged, pale-skinned man, possibly Earth’s finest writer, knew without a doubt that this was the way to begin all of his stories…
…if he wants to be published in Analog, anyway.
(8) ON MILITARY SF. SFFWorld interviews Christopher Nuttall.
Christopher Nuttall’s Their Darkest Hour has just been released as part of the Empire at War collection where four British Science Fiction authors have joined forces to show the world that British Military Science Fiction is a force to be reckoned with….
So what is different with British Military SF? Obviously in Their Darkest Hour you have the UK setting that probably will be more familiar to a Europeans than Americans, but do you also think there are other aspects where British authors are able to bring something different and unique to military SF?
I think that’s a hard question to answer.
There is, if you will, a cultural difference between American MIL-SF (and military in general) and British MIL-SF. Many American military characters (in, say, John Ringo’s work) are very forward, very blunt … I’d go so far as to say that most of them are thoroughly bombastic. Think a Drill Instructor screaming in your face. While a great many British characters are often calm, competent and basically just get the job done. We’re not as outwardly enthusiastic as the Americans; we’re more gritty endurance, stiff upper lip and just keep going until we win.
To some extent, I think that comes from our differing experiences. The Americans are staggeringly rich and, even as early as their civil war, had little trouble keeping their troops supplied. Britain, particularly in the years after 1919, had very real problems making ends meet, let alone keeping the troops supplied. We operate on a shoestring and know it. The Falklands was our most successful war in years, yet it was a very close run thing. We simply cannot afford to be as blatant as the Americans.
I think that is reflected in our SF too. Independence Day was followed by Invasion: Earth, a six-episode TV series set in Britain. Independence Day is blatant; the enemy is clearly visible, merely overwhelmingly powerful. Invasion: Earth has an enemy who hides in the shadows, at least up until the final episode. They both represent, too, a very different set of fears.
(9) OVER THE EDGE OF HISTORY. Jeff Somers considers “6 Historical Fiction Novels That Are Almost Fantasy” at B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
Hild, by Nicola Griffith Set in the so-called “Dark Ages,” after Rome abandoned Britain but before the squabbling kingdoms and tribes were unified under one crown, Griffith’s novel tells the true story of the Christian saint Hild, who would become Saint Hilda of Whitby, patron saint of learning. In 7th century Britain, she is the 6-year old niece of King Edwin of Northumbria, and becomes his seer and mystic upon arrival at his court. The reality of otherworldly forces is taken for granted as real in this brutal, violent land, and Griffith plays with the concept expertly as Hild becomes increasingly masterful at sniffing out plots and advising her uncle in ways that often seem magical. Anyone who has been awed by a brilliant mind’s ability to perceive what most cannot will witness that superpower at work in Hild, one of the most complex and deeply-drawn characters to ever appear in a novel—historical, fantasy, or otherwise.
(10) AN OP-ED. David Dubrow, in “David A Riley and the HWA”, criticizes how Horror Writers of America handled the recent controversy. And he’s announced he’ll be publishing an interview with Riley about it.
At times it’s interesting to get under the hood of the writing business and see how the sausage is made, to mix cliched metaphors. This issue happens to concern horror writers, so it has particular meaning for me at this time.
In short, an English horror author named David A Riley was set to be on the jury for the anthology segment of the upcoming Bram Stoker Awards. As it turns out, Riley was once a member of a far-right, nationalist political party in the UK called the National Front. A Tumblr blog was created to curate some of Riley’s online commentary, titled David Andrew Riley Is a Fascist. Wikipedia’s entry on National Front can be found here.
When outraged members protested Riley’s appointment to the jury, Horror Writers Association President Lisa Morton issued a tepid statement on Facebook that satisfied nobody. As is so often the case, the most arresting thing wasn’t the statement, but the ensuing discussion. Three distinct elements stood out and are worth examination….
Second, the thread has really big buts. The biggest but is, of course, “I believe in free speech, but…” A clever reader always ignores everything before the but in any statement containing a but. Anyone who puts his big but into the free speech discussion is not on the side of free speech, but is actually in favor of criminalizing speech he finds offensive (see what I did there?). As someone who worked at the bleeding edge of First (and Second) Amendment issues in publishing for over thirteen years, I find the big buts disturbing, but they’re there, and they stink like hell….
(11) THE FIRST RULE OF CHICXULUB. According to the BBC, this is “What really happened when the ‘dino killer’ asteroid struck”.
Where armies of trees once stretched skywards, seemingly escaping from the thickets of ferns and shrubs that clawed at their roots, only scorched trunks remain. Instead of the incessant hum of insect chatter blotting out the sound of ponderous giant dinosaurs, only the occasional flurry of wind pierces the silence. Darkness rules: the rich blues and greens, and occasional yellows and reds that danced in the Sun’s rays have all been wiped out.
This is Earth after a six-mile-wide asteroid smashed into it 66 million years ago.
“In the course of minutes to hours it went from this lush, vibrant world to just absolute silence and nothing,” says Daniel Durda, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. “Especially in the thousands of square miles around the impact site, the slate was just wiped clean.”
Much like putting in all the edge pieces of a jigsaw, scientists have outlined the lasting impacts of the meteor strike. It claimed the lives of more than three-quarters of the animal and plant species on Earth. The most famous casualties were the dinosaurs – although in fact many of them survived in the form of birds….
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born April 18, 1976 — Melissa Joan Hart. She’s not a teenaged witch anymore.
(13) THE STARLOST. Created then disowned by Harlan Ellison, the 1970s series The Starlost can be seen here on YouTube. The link takes you to the entire series for Starlost (16 episodes plus the “sales pitch.”)
Complaining about how the show was dumbed down from the original concept, Ellison took his name off the credits and substituted his Writers Guild alias Cordwainer Bird.
(14) DUTCH TREATS. Wim Crusio reminisces about conversations with writers at the 1990 Worldcon, in “Writing science, writing fiction (I)”.
Synopsis: Whether writing a good novel or a killer scientific article, the process is much the same: What scientists can learn from science fiction authors…
Many years ago, back in 1990, I attended my first Science Fiction Worldcon, called “ConFiction“, in The Hague. An interesting feature that year was the “Dutch Treat”. One could sign up with a group of about 10 people and invite a science fiction writer for lunch and talk with them in that small circle. To me, these “treats” were the highlights of that particular meeting. I did as many of them as I could and have fond memories of speaking with John Brunner, Harry Harrison (a Guest of Honor, accompanied by his charming wife, Joan), Fred Pohl, Brian Aldiss, and Bob Shaw (I think that’s all of them, but I am writing this from memory, so I may have forgotten one). Of course, these conversations spanned many topics and I was not the only participant, but at some point or another I managed to pose the same question to each of them, namely: how do you write a story (be it a short story or a novel in multiple parts). Do you just start, do you write some parts first and only continue when you’re completely done with revising them, or something else entirely?
(15) REJECTION. Editor Sigrid Ellis’ post “On handling publishing rejection” tells things that can’t really be said in rejection letters. Some of them would be encouraging to writers!
Speaking from my work as a short fiction editor, I can 100% genuinely assure you — sometimes your story is fantastic, it’s just not what that venue needs at that time.
I hated writing those rejections. I knew that the writers would take them as a sign that the story wasn’t any good, no matter how much I tried to say “I swear to GOD it’s not you, it’s us! We just need something lighter/darker/fantasy/sf this month I SWEAR!!!”
Of course authors take that hard. Because — and here’s the secret — the generic blow-off letter is very similar to a genuine, personal rejection. That similarity is on PURPOSE. It permits everyone to save face. It allows everyone to walk away, dignity intact. But, then, if you get a personal rejection, you understandably might wonder if this is just the blow-off.
I know. It’s hard, and I know.
But here’s what I always wanted every author to do when they received a rejection, whether standard or personalized…..
(16) STRICTLY ROMANCE. The first romance-only bookstore starts in LA. (Strictly speaking, The Ripped Bodice is in Culver City.)
Romance novels are a billion dollar industry, vastly outselling science fiction, mystery and literary books.
And there’s only one rule for writing a romance – it has to have a happy ending.
Yet the romance genre has long been dismissed as smut or trashy by many in, and out, of the publishing world – a fact that mystifies sisters Bea and Leah Koch, who last month opened the US’s first exclusively romantic fiction bookstore.
Their shop in Los Angeles is called The Ripped Bodice, and the store’s motto is “smart girls read romance”.
(17) DEFINING X. They say it’s the intersection of politics and Marvel comics: “A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, Week 9: The Mutant Metaphor (Part I)” at Lawyers, Guns & Money.
A lot of people have discussed the manifold ways in which the “mutant metaphor” is problematic, but what I’m going to argue in this issue is that a big part of the problem with the “mutant metaphor” is that it wasn’t clearly defined from the outset, in part because it wasn’t anywhere close to the dominant thread of X-Men comics.[i] While always an element of the original run, as much time was spent on fighting giant Kirby robots or stopping the likes of Count Nefaria from encasing Washington D.C in a giant crystal bubble. And this was always problematic, because in the shared Marvel Universe, you need to explain why it is that the X-Men are “feared and hated” and must hide beneath the façade of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester, whereas the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were treated as celebrities and could live openly on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, respectively.
So what did the “mutant” metaphor mean initially?
One of the best ways to understand how the “mutant metaphor” was originally understood is to look at depictions of anti-mutant prejudice. In the early Lee and Kirby run, anti-mutant prejudice is described almost entirely as a mass phenomenon, a collective hysteria that takes hold of large groups of people. You can see this especially in the way that crowds of humans descend into violence in contexts that you wouldn’t normally expect them. Like sports events:…
(18) SKYWALKERED BACK. J. J. Abrams made a little mistake…. CinemaBlend has the story: “Star Wars: J.J. Abrams Backtracks Statement About Rey’s Parents”.
Earlier, J.J. Abrams sat down with Chris Rock at the Tribeca Film Festival to talk about the director’s work in television and film. During the Q&A segment, a young fan asked the identity of Rey’s parents and Abrams said “they aren’t in Episode VII.” This implies that just about every fan theory is wrong, but Entertainment Weekly caught up with Abrams after the show and he was able to clarify his statement:
What I meant was that she doesn’t discover them in Episode VII. Not that they may not already be in her world.
So, Rey’s parents could be somewhere in The Force Awakens as opposed to not being in it at all. That’s a pretty serious backtrack, but it opens the floor back up for fans to come up with theories on the heroine’s lineage. This potentially limits the amount of suspects, but most theories were already focused on Force Awakens characters. There are a few contenders that have risen above the rest, each with there own amount of logic and speculation.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Alan Baumler, Chip Hitchcock, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]
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“Recently, the idea that the dinosaurs were reigning strong has dominated the academic debate,” says Sakamoto.
from “Dinosaurs Were Declining Way Before That Pesky Asteroid – The Atlantic” at http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-long-diminuendo-of-the-dinosaurs/478668/
The dinosaurs weren’t in decline, I says, they were evolving.
20 or 30 years ago, I read a science article saying that genetically there was not a gene for left-handedness: there were alleles for right-handedness and for ‘don’t care’, and other factors decided whether the ‘don’t care’ people ended up right or left handed or ambidextrous. Supposedly, homozygous right-handers had more trouble retraining in cases of injury, etc.
I recently read an article on the current state of research that said the situation is more complicated than than (there are a bunch of gene sites involved) but basically the net effects are similar to those reported earlier.
Personally, I am left-leaning variably ambidextrous, but right eyed (even though that is my bad eye… very annoying. My Mom said I was well into kindergarten before I settled on writing left-handed, and I seem pick up other skills based on whether they need the precision or power grip.
Except scissors. Mom was left-handed, and our house was full of left-handed scissors almost exclusively, but for some reason I am a right-handed scissors user. So her scissors never worked well for me because of the leverage problem that usually affect left-handers who try to use right-handed scissors.
(My writing is hook-handed lefty, and apparently the hook-handed or not is also genetically influenced.)
Everyone who speaks wants that speech to have to have consequences. The popular novelist wants the consequence of large royalty checks and movie deals. The literary novelist wants the consequence of becoming immortalized on college syllabi. The political pamphleteer wants the consequence of their favorite political party to be elected. The muckraking journalist wants the consequence of seeing corrupt politicians resign in shame. Etc., etc.
Sometimes, the consequences they get are not the consequences they hoped for.
As Stanley Fish observed, the only kind of speech that is truly without consequences is speech that nobody else notices.
@Robert That seems to be what the new study is saying as well–that they’d been evolving away from being dominant for quite a while before the asteroid got there.
Which may not be a new idea, but it sounds as if the substance of the evidence is new, and apparently the pendulum had swung back toward thinking the dinosaurs were dominant on Asteroid Day.
But I don’t have a reptile in this arena–I’m OK either way. Just noting it was in the news.
Greg Hullender on April 19, 2016 at 10:34 am said:
From Barrayar:
Even in that passage they knew they could have more children. Aral is wrong, medically, and I suspect he knows it. They could have produced another child almost immediately on Barrayar—the reproductive technology was right there at ImpMil, and importing techs from Beta, or even Komarr, to do the genetic work would have been trivially easy.
If Regent Lord Aral Vorkosigan could push damaged Miles’s confirmation as his Heir through the Council of Counts, how much easier would it have been to get them to approve a healthy Miles Piotr, the replacement for the fetus killed by the Soltoxin antidote, regardless of the method of gestation? Or even a latterly produced undamaged Lord Mark Pierre*?
The reason Aral and Cordelia never went the medically viable route of having an undamaged child using cells from a little finger and a big toe is the overwhelming pressure they would have faced to disinherit Miles. It was a political, not a medical, decision. Even Miles knows his teratogenic damage quashed possible siblings unborn.
No, Cordelia refuses to abort Miles because he’s a person she loves who deserves every chance she can give him, regardless of how hard she (and Miles!) have to fight for it. It’s got very little to do with sperm count. Someone comments in a later book that it may be Cordelia’s expectations that pressured Miles as much as if not more than Piotr’s.
*Not our clone Mark Pierre, but a younger brother produced via aforesaid finger and toe and a Uterine Replicator.
Despite it being the wrong time of the year:
“Later on We’ll Scrollspire, as We Dream by the Fire”
techgrrl1972: Is ‘gene cleaning’ nothing more than eugenics with a better PR person?
Not on Beta, apparently, or at least they’ve faced that possibility. Somewhere–Barrayar, I’m pretty sure–Cordelia comments to Aral that she hasn’t seen any “damaged” children or adults on Barrayar, and is told about the practice of infanticide. She mentions then that Betan gene-cleaning “usually” happens before conception, but apparently not always . . . and apparently it doesn’t always work to turn out “perfect” human beings. So Beta appears to have combined UR technology and gene-cleaning with an absolutely ferocious “protect the living” attitude, encoded in their laws and stressed in their culture (see: the fate of Cordelia’s crewman, in Shards of Honor, too). It’s early, of course (in terms of when Bujold is writing), but later on Miles (maybe Gregor?) points out that adopting the Betan Reproduction Laws for Barrayar without adaptation would be a Mistake. Or anyway wouldn’t work (I suspect they think it would cause that Revolution I’m pretty sure is coming, or at least hasten it or contribute to it).
Cordelia’s attitude is Betan. By the time she gives birth to Miles, he’s already a child to her. Would he have been similarly a child if he were a ten-day-old blastocyst? Maybe, but maybe then again, maybe not, and definitely maybe not to everyBetan, never mind to everyGalactic. I suspect that that’s where the “individual choice of the parents” would come into play–and I suspect it varies, even on Beta.
ULTRAGOTHA: That conversation between Aral and Cordelia has always seemed to me to mark one of the cultural divides between them, in terms of acceptance and understanding of technology. Cordelia doesn’t have to think about it; she knows what Galactic reproduction technology can do. Aral may be aware of the possibilities, as you posit, but it’s an intellectual concept to him, not something he ever figured on being relevant to him personally–not an emotional reality, if you see what I mean. And Aral really is more aware of Galactic technology than most Barrayarans, then and later in the series. I suspect that the whole planet is slowly, and with varying degrees of difficulty, going through the same shift from “Oh. That’s possible?” to “Oh, wait–you mean I could do that?” to “Well, of course.”
Which is part of what makes me willing to accept the events of GJ&RQ as outlying actions, so to speak–this Revolution is happening slowly, almost underground, and people are just beginning to realize how much their world has changed. (In addition, though not really relevant to the current conversation, the book is definitely set on Sergyar, the planet shaped during Aral’s regency and by Aral and Cordelia as co-rulers. I have a feeling that lot that happens on Sergyar would probably be considered really Out There, on Barrayar. Komarr has a different culture from Barrayar, obvious because it was first established before Komarr became part of the Imperium–so maybe Bujold is aiming Sergyar at developing a different, if more directly Barrayaran-influenced culture, too.)
A rant about Worldcon becoming less worthwhile for hucksters. Note: this is by Russ, not by me. I haven’t been to a worldcon for a while.
https://www.facebook.com/Werehatrack/posts/10208114220204909
Ah, but the Hugos for 1961 haven’t happened yet, from my standpoint. As of 1960, F&SF had won consistently several years running. When 1961 is done, I’ll do my Galactic Stars analysis and perhaps find Analog improved.
it’s clear that very few recommendations are for Analog stories
I’m not surprised. As a very long-time reader, I think the stories published over the last few years have rarely gotten above mediocre.
Exactly, you’re in the middle of having the experience for which others will vote the magazine an award. But to you, John W. Campbell sucks.
He has his flaws, and he publishes some decidedly un-good stories (as do the other mags, but less frequently). I also, however, point out when good stuff shows up in the mag, too. Frex: Cole’s The Weakling, Reynold’s Freedom, Anderson’s Hiding Place (5 stars!), Clarke’s Death and the Senator, and Simak’s The Fisherman (which I have not finished).
Here are my notes thus far:
January: 2.5 stars (on a 1 to 5 scale, 3 being decently entertaining)
February: 3 stars
March: 3.5 stars
April: 2.5 stars
May: 3 stars
Analog has not been my favorite mag for any of the months this year thus far, though it tied for 1st with F&SF in March.
@Nancy Lebovitz: Till I read that, I’d forgotten how badly I felt for Ken Burnside. He and his piece would have been a worthy Hugo winner.
I’m not surprised but I think Russ might have missed the point when he complained the convention is all about them. I’ve never attended a Worldcon, but my impression has always been that it isn’t a pseudo trade convention like comic cons or general sci-cons where people attend for dealers and collector tables. It’s about the attendees and the panel discussions, with the merchant space as a kind of add on, as opposed to the other way around. So, really, the allure of Worldcon is all about the people attending, as opposed to cosplay, collector auctions, merchant deals, and so on. Correct me if I’m wrong?
Ah, but the Hugos for 1961 haven’t happened yet, from my standpoint. As of 1960, F&SF had won consistently several years running. When 1961 is done, I’ll do my Galactic Stars analysis and perhaps find Analog improved.
By 1960, F&SF had won twice. By 1960, the short story Hugo had only been given out five times. It went to a story published in Astounding (which would become Analog) once (Allamagoosa). It went to a story published in Infinity once (The Star), and a story published in Galaxy once (Or All the Seas With Oysters). Stories published in F&SF won the short story category in 1959 and 1960 (That Hell-Bound Train and Flowers for Algernon).
The Best Novelette category had only been given out four times, and three of those times it was won by something published in Astounding: The Darfstellar, Exploration Team, and The Big Front Yard. The lone exception was The Big Time, published in Galaxy.
By the end of 1960, nine Hugo awards for short fiction had been given out. Four of them were won by stories from Analog (under its previous name Astounding), two by stories from Galaxy, two by stories from F&SF, and one by a story from Infinity. That doesn’t sound like Analog was being ignored. Also, two victories in a row for F&SF doesn’t seem like “several years in a row” to me.
Several is two or more 🙂 F&SF also won in ’58. From my standpoint, F&SF is on a three-year winning streak.
I look forward to Analog being better this year (and, a bit of a cheat, I know the Bova years have some very good stuff.)
@Milt Stevens – I think you just defined the use of a rubber truncheon as a free speech activity.”
Huh. So, if I decided to call you names – and why wouldn’t I, since that was a notably unintelligent response – that should be a consequence free choice? OGH shouldn’t chastise my lack of manners or put me in moderator’s time out, because doing so is the equivalent of a rubber truncheon? And you wouldn’t be objecting, because my speech is privileged and any responses you made would be a rubber truncheon?
Or do you mean actual rubber truncheons, the use of which would subject the wielder to assault charges? Assault isn’t the exercise of free speech (apparently that isn’t clear to you), for first speaker or subsequent speakers.
Dex: So, really, the allure of Worldcon is all about the people attending, as opposed to cosplay, collector auctions, merchant deals, and so on. Correct me if I’m wrong
You aren’t wrong. It’s more complex than that–most things are–but a big, varied Dealers Room has always been only one of the attractions of a Worldcon, and not the major attraction. It’s important, don’t get me wrong, and I sympathize with dealers who are finding the terms less and less attractive (though I’d be inclined to blame the competition from on-line shopping venues as the real, larger issue), but they are just part of the entertainment, not the focus of it. Changing the convention for their benefit only is likely to be a difficult proposition–particularly if the idea is “lower membership costs, increase attendance.” And that doesn’t really make a Worldcon an elitist party, in my opinion. Just, not a trade show or the like.
Little-known bit of trivia–My dad, Mike Resnick, is right-handed, but writes with his left hand.
His collar-bone was broken and his right arm in a cast and immobile when his school class was learning to write, so he used his left hand–and has done so ever since. If you ever get an autographed book from him, you’ll see him sign it left-handed–but he does everything else right-handed.
WorldCon is about the parties.
Everything else is an accessory.
Several is two or more ? F&SF also won in ’58.
F&SF won for Best Magazine in 1958. Yes, they won three years in a row. Prior to that Astounding had won four times in a row. At this point I’m just finding your case for “everyone was ignoring Analog” to be astoundingly weak.
F&SF didn’t win for short fiction in 1958. Or All the Seas With Oysters was published in Galaxy, as was The Big Time.
I know someone who has had stories published in Analog and is currently teaching a class at the local community center titled “How to Write for the Pulps.” In her opinion, and that of the other 28,000 subscribers, Analog-style writing is not the least bit dead.
How is it that writers from this tradition rarely win awards? Perhaps we may find a hint in the fact that this woman only likes Analog and, to a lesser extent, Asimov’s; if other subscribers have equally insular tastes, they form a subgroup hardly overlapping other subgroups. Their favorite stories would thus not come to the attention of award voters, and they themselves would not be much interested in awards that would require them to pay attention to stories of other styles.
This woman said that she thinks that Analog is “more difficult” to write for than other magazines. She may have meant that its audience has exactingly specific requirements for what makes a good story in their view; that would be why she is teaching a class on what those requirements are.
The first time I recall encountering him (though there may have been other instances I don’t remember) was when he (I think) disagreed with me about something on Eric Flint’s blog last year. My impression that May was disagreeing with me was based on my sense that his tone toward me was snide, rather than on what he was saying–since his post was so incoherent, I couldn’t tell what he thought he was saying.
In all honesty, I wondered if he was very drunk when posting. Since then, I’ve seen him posting in other places and have realized, nope, that’s evidently just his writing style. Does anyone know if he is equally incoherent in person?
@Laura Resnick
Well hopefully the people and the filk will be pretty good accessories then because I’m really not a party person.
Galactic Journey: When it comes to our divergent views of Campbell, maybe we’ll eventually manage to refine our act into a Jack Benny/Fred Allen style feud. Or maybe I’ll just get tired of ragging on you about it, though I haven’t yet….
When you finally get to 1964, for which we have the final Hugo voting stats, you’ll see that while Analog won by a wide margin, there were more total votes given to the other four finalists (the was no runoff in the process yet).
A rant about Worldcon becoming less worthwhile for hucksters. Note: this is by Russ, not by me. I haven’t been to a worldcon for a while.
A simple solution for Russ is to not go to Worldcon if it is that onerous for him to attend. No one is making any vendor attend. If they think it isn’t worth their time and effort, they are under no obligation to show up.
What Russ says is elitist is actually more of an effect of WorldCon being democratic to a fault. Also, I get a bit irritated at this:
Subversion? What kind of subversion? It is an award that has always been handed out by WorldCon. What has been subverted?
Mary Frances on April 19, 2016 at 12:13 pm said:
I’m totally willing to tangent in any direction with Bujold! 😉
It’s explicit in both Komarr and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance that Sergyar is being deliberately crafted to be *different* from Barrayar. Cordelia is recruiting settlers from all over the Nexus. She and Aral are offering incentives to colonize—free passage and homesteads in return for some indentured laboring (or at least Jacksonian Tej thinks of it as indentured labor).
Sergyar is going to end up a lot different than Barrayar and that appears to be a deliberate policy of Aral’s and Cordelia’s (and Gregor’s—they couldn’t do it if he didn’t approve).
Mary Frances on April 19, 2016 at 12:13 pm said:
From A Civil Campaign:
A big part of “the Betan legal model” I suspect, is Beta Colony’s severe limit on the number of children. Third child permits are HARD to obtain. Barrayar would, as you say, revolt if that was lifted wholesale into their laws. Barrayar, needs bodies. Both for Sergyar and the South Continent. Not to mention the underpopulated areas of the North Continent. And the social pressure for many children.
Another large part is the legitimacy of children born “out of wedlock” on Beta. I have no idea how Miles’s select committee dealt with that for Barrayar. They had 118 “out of wedlock” replicator births in Count Vormuir’s district as a precedent to work with—though the Vormuir girl-grenade brigade had status leaking over from the Time of Isolation as “acknowledged bastards” of a Count Palatine. How, I wonder, did Miles’s committee deal with two unmarried people deciding to create a uterine baby together, especially if they’re not Counts? I suspect, knowing Miles, it would be legally allowed with agreements on custody and support. Single parenting via uterine replica with no spouse at all is allowed on Sergyar—but Cordelia would have ensured that as Vicereine.
re: subversion. He might mean that the way things have run has both bred anti-elitist resentment and because of the relatively small voting pool made the awards vulnerable to attack. NB: this is not my view, I’m just interpreting what I read.
@John A Arkansawyer
I’m not so sure. I think previous winners of best related work tended to be book-length publications.
Frankly, I think this category is so poorly defined that we’d be better off without it.
Mary Frances:
The point I’m trying to make is that “gene-cleaning” can’t be expected to deal with the very large number of embryos that have no genetic problems, but don’t develop right *anyway*.
It seems to me that Bujold set up Betan reproductive tech and attitudes because she wanted to be “pro-life” and “pro-choice” at the same time: to not force women to be pregnant when they don’t want to be, but to not have icky abortion, either.
But if you think about, it’s clear that abortion must still occur, both on Beta and on Barrayar. On Beta, what else do you call natural miscarriages that occur in URs? Many of these would be due to chromosome problems (Down’s is one of the few that’s compatible with life), some to random bad development.
On Barrayar, abortion must have always been common, because effective contraception apparently wasn’t. URs, when they were first introduced, must have been HELLA expensive, which means that lots of poor people would still need abortions — because of rape, because they can’t afford a child (financially or emotionally), because of various medical nightmares.
@ULTRAGOTHA
I don’t disagree with any of that. The question I was exploring was why Cordelia moved Heaven and Earth to try to save Miles in “Barrayar.” It’s true that she starts by firing her doctor when he won’t attempt the transfer and insisting that Aral will just have to accept her decision, but, when she and Aral talk in private, she seems to have second thoughts, and asks him what he wants. It left me with the strong impression that if Aral had said, “let’s not do this; let’s just try again” that she’d have caved in. She certainly invited him to try to change her mind. That would not have happened if she had already fully conceptualized Miles as a human being.
But once Aral offers his own reasons for trying to save the fetus (i.e. that this is likely the only natural child he’ll ever have), not all the forces of Hell would stand in her way–and, as it happens, they give it a good try. 🙂
Once Miles is born, I absolutely agree that all the reasons you cite apply.
S. on April 19, 2016 at 1:04 pm said:
@Milt Stevens – I think you just defined the use of a rubber truncheon as a free speech activity.”
Huh. So, if I decided to call you names – and why wouldn’t I, since that was a notably unintelligent response – that should be a consequence free choice? OGH shouldn’t chastise my lack of manners or put me in moderator’s time out, because doing so is the equivalent of a rubber truncheon? And you wouldn’t be objecting, because my speech is privileged and any responses you made would be a rubber truncheon?
The phrase was “inflict consequences.” You usually don’t talk about inflicting language, even profane language. It suggests something beyond bad mouthing.
Ultragotha : The Escobarrans seem to also feel that way. In Shards of Honor they give Barrayar 17 Uterine Replicators filled with babies conceived by rape. URs are expensive. Placental transfers are “delicate operations even by Galactic standards”. Both the mothers and the Escobarran government had to really want those babies to survive—or at least they wouldn’t be responsible for terminating them.
I was under the impression that that was a giant “f**k you” gesture from the Escobarran government to the horde of rampaging rapist barbarians who had invaded them and been thrown out.
And here we see the problems with trying to jump into a conversation in midstream, missing all the context that went before.
Milt, this is a conversation that’s been going on across several threads here and across several blogs elsewhere. In the context of that broader conversation concerning Riley’s (self-)removal from an award jury, “consequences far free speech” has been understood to mean “speech and association consequences”, not “assault”. I don’t think even Buis has been alleging that the SJWs wanted to stone Riley; she just asserted that the speech-based consequences to his exercise of free speech constituted (verbal, not physical) bullying.
The word “inflicted” has many connotations, but none, I think, so overwhelming as to pry the conversation free from about a week’s worth of context.
(I’m sorry, y’all, but I had to close my tabs the other day on the related threads – I could see days of sleep and productivity and peace of mind going down the drain if I kept following them. I confess to curiosity about how those conversations continued, but so far I am holding strong and not going back to them. Maybe I’ll catch up over the weekend, purely for “entertainment” value. Some people watch soaps; I read genteel flame wars.)
I’m confused. I don’t think I ever said that. All I said was that, while Analog in 1961 has higher subscription numbers (by a big margin), they haven’t won a Hugo in several years (from a 1961 standpoint…my use of present tense is probably confusing).
Perhaps someone else said that?
Mike Glyer on April 19, 2016 at 1:22 pm said:
If you’re having fun, I’m having fun. 🙂 I started my column to make friends, not necessarily agree with everyone!
Spoilers! Geeze!
Re Analog
I enjoyed it’s 2015 run. I haven’t read any of 2016 yet.
I subscribed to Analog last year in order to increase my short fiction reading for nomination purposes. I also subscribed to Asimov’s. I can’t subscribe to F&SF or Lightspeed through Nook. I can buy Lightspeed, but I have to buy and download the individual issues. I haven’t looked for others but would like more. Does anyone know of other genre fiction publications subscribable through Nook?
Also, finished Lovecraft Country yesterday. I really enjoyed it. It takes all the creepiness and tropes of Lovecraft and riffs on what would happen if normal, kind people get involved in these situations. It’s especially engaging that our protagonists are Black, given that in Lovecraft’s actual writings these characters would be villainous henchmen and worshippers of the Elder Gods. Matt Ruff is very aware of what is good and bad in Lovecraft’s works and subverts them all in this highly readable engaging book. A head’s up – it’s a series of linked stories that add up to one overarching tale. Any of the stories except the denoument could stand on its own and is excellent in its own right. Highly recommended!
All I said was that, while Analog in 1961 has higher subscription numbers (by a big margin), they haven’t won a Hugo in several years (from a 1961 standpoint…my use of present tense is probably confusing).
The Analog published story The Big Front Yard won a Hugo in 1959. Since you’re living in 1960, that’s last year, or if you’re living in 1961, the year before last. That’s not “haven’t won a Hugo in several years”.
Galactic Journey (@journeygalactic) on April 19, 2016 at 3:10 pm said:
1959 Winner: “The Big Front Yard”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Oct 1958)
(No one in fandom at the time would have been confused by the name change from “Astounding” to “Analog”. As you say, it had higher subscription numbers than any other magazine.)
Were you looking only at the short story category? Because that was Best Novelette. (Last year they awarded the category until it was re-instated in 1967.)
Also, in 1957, Astounding (aka Analog) won Best Magazine, in a year where they didn’t give any awards for individual works of fiction. And in 1956, two of the three Best Work awards went to items published in Astounding. The only years where Analog/Astounding didn’t win awards were 1960 and 1958.
@Jim Meadows: there are a number of real people in Starcrossed; e.g., local fan Joe Ross is recognizable enough that he sued Ben for having the character express a good opinion of the show. (The demand was for 30,000 x 10^-4 marshmallows, which were a thing in Boston fandom at the time; Ben paid shortly after being ]served[ and got a formal dismissal of the suit.)
@Aaron: I think I’d slam the Mira Grant books even if they were under the author’s real name; I thought the two I read were pandering. OTOH, someone I know loves them and hates everything else McGuire has done. (I thought the October Daye books took a while to ramp up but was blown away by some of the shorter work that got Hugo nominations.) I’d love to peek into the next universe over to find out whether using pseudonyms for market targeting really works in SF; sometimes it feels like a theory that came out of business school and survived because there was no way to disprove it.
You can subscribe to Asimov’s through the Nook store just like subscribing to Analog (same price, even).
Every once in a while, I think of switching to an electronic version of F&SF–then I remember that I bought a lifetime subscription in 1977 for $100, so those paper copies arriving in envelopes in the mail every other month haven’t cost me anything for several decades.:)
(Best money I ever spent…)
@World Weary
Yay!
Have you looked at what https://weightlessbooks.com/ offers? I use them to subscribe to Beyond Ceaseless Skies and Interzone, but they also offer subscriptions to Lightspeed and Clarkesworld. You order the ePub version and ask that it be emailed to your Nook.
Interzone is a British magazine. Its story quality compares favorably to the US print magazines.
Full Disclosure: I use a Kindle, so I get the mobi versions.
@Greg Hullender:
That doesn’t strike me as relevant. The admins looked at the category specifications and put it on the ballot.
The work itself strikes me as worthy, not the best ever in its category, not necessarily the best of the year, but still a worthy winner. And I feel bad for him personally because (from what I’ve read) he handled both himself and the situation better than most of the people involved.
I’m right handed, but I always put my left hand up since as andyl said, that way I could have the not-so-good one just hanging out while the dexterous (heh) one could go on doing stuff. And I’m so thankful fountain pens weren’t a thing any more by my time. I can blob ballpoint ink everywhere, a fountain pen would have been horrendous. I’d never have learned to write in the olden days with dip pens. Or only after endless dull hours of practice, probably broken up by beatings.
I’m left-eyed (also my weak one, like Cassy) and left-footed, though, which makes me just clumsy AF. I can’t manage chopsticks either way. Strangely enough, I always open bottles and cans with my left hand. Ambiclumsy it is.
I had a subscription to Analog in the 80’s and 90’s, but I wouldn’t bother now. I still read it if I come across one, and surreptitiously read stories by people I like when they sell there, but meh. It’s just mostly been meh.
Whereas last year’s F&SF really surprised me. I read half the issues and found no stories I hated. The worst were at least meh, there were a number of lightweight but well-crafted and extremely entertaining ones (both serious and funny — like the trappers vs. giant beaver) and a bunch that were really good. 2 of them went on my Hugo ballot, and a few more are worthy of a Best of 2015 collection.
I say the sooner we have URs and foolproof contraception, the better. But let people choose. Of course, there will always be women who want to do it the hard way, but anything that makes sure all children are wanted can only be good for individuals and society. Even if the patriarchy is going to call women sluts and whores and such; what the heck, they’ve been doing it for thousands of years already.
I love giant Worldcon hucksters’ rooms! I remember when I first gazed upon one and literally stopped in my tracks. I spend a lot of time in there between programming and always run into friends or new friends… and of course, the more I’m in there, the more things start to look necessary to me. I too suspect the problem is that we can get stuff online nowadays — but I never buy jewelry online, or other handmade things. I like to inspect it up close.
But it’s NOT a nefarious plot by some shadowy Worldcon cabal; it’s just that we can buy t-shirts and stuffed toys and action figures and books lots of other places, and not have to carry them home on the plane once a year.
I too remember “The Starlost” and read “Starcrossed”. I wonder if it holds up if you don’t know the original. Probably — showbiz hasn’t changed that much, and actors and writers remain the same beasties. I read it when it was first published, and then again after I’d had some exposure to the TV biz and it was funny always.
I don’t know, one of the very first things I ran into at Sasquan was Ken Burnside in the con suite giving the Puppy talking points version of the Irene Gallo foofaraw… maybe not JCW bizarro-world revisionism or Antonelli dramatics, but I wouldn’t grant him too much credit as regards his Puppydom , even with his reasonable article on sexism and misogyny in the gaming world.
John Lorentz: I am envious of your excellent decision in 1977. That’s paid better dividends than many other things you could have done with that $100.
I’m also meh-to-nope on Grant but yes indeedy on McGuire. I don’t go around slamming “either” of them, though. That’s silly.
Also highly recommend “Lovecraft Country”. The first section is a novella that could stand alone, and so could some of the middle bits, but the ending that brings them all together is terrific. And the evocation of Jim Crow is amazing.
RDF on April 19, 2016 at 3:03 pm said:
Yeah, that also. But I don’t think Escobarr said “Hey, Ladies, don’t have abortions! Let’s do this more risky procedure on you and then dump the kids on Barrayar, that’ll larn ’em”
I think it’s more on the line of the women NOT wanting to abort the fetuses, being quite willing to go through the slight extra risk to save the child, and Escobar saying “fine, if that’s what you want, we’ll go with that and give the kids to Barrayar. FU Barrayar.”
Oh, and no doubt charging Barrayar for the cost of the URs in their reparations.
Yes, Starcrossed holds up quite well if you haven’t seen the original TV show — it was another one of the books I just happened to come across in the SF section of the public library, and I thought it was a hoot. (I’m pretty sure there was an introduction or an afterword or something where Bova talked about the experience with the TV show.)
The last magazine I remember consistently reading cover-to-cover was the Terminus edition of Weird Tales. Although someday I do plan to go through my set of Black Gate issues one of these years.