(1) SF IN NYT. Amal El-Mohtar’s latest Otherworldly book review column for the New York Times covers “Princesses, Priestesses and Time Travel: What’s New in Science Fiction and Fantasy”
What does it mean to retell a story? Does it mean dressing up a familiar tale in different clothes? Reading it against its grain? Replacing parts of a story like boards in a ship, until an old story’s shape is built of entirely new wood? This month, I’m looking at recent books that are all retellings of one sort or another.
(2) EDITORS YOU RECOGNIZE. Amber Troska pays tribute to two editors in “Shaping the Speculative Fiction World: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling”.
It is difficult to overestimate the tremendous value of editors. The contributions that authors make to their respective fields, and their impact on the readers that encounter their work, can’t be overstated either, of course—but it is equally important to remember that no truly great author goes it alone; there are always strong editors behind the scenes, shaping the individual stories themselves as well as the publishing world at large. The Hugo Awards are named for an editor, after all.
Yet I can count most of the editors I recognize by name on one hand. Even with such a limited group to choose from, only two have had an extremely significant, identifiable impact on me as a reader: Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. I could never hope to cover everything the two have contributed to the publishing world—their careers have stretched too far and are too varied and far-reaching for me to do them full justice. However, there are several projects that are worth looking at in order to appreciate their impact and get a sense of how influential their work has been, and continues to be.
(3) AFRICAN SF EDITORS. From The Minnesota Review: “Editor Interview: Mazi Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu and Chinelo Onwualu of Omenana”.
Mazi Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu and Chinelo Onwualu are co-founders and editors of Omenana, a web-based literary magazine dedicated to publishing speculative/sci-fi/fantasy fiction by African writers. In this interview with Uche Okonkwo, Mazi Chiagozie and Chinelo talk African speculative fiction, life lessons, and writing and publishing as a labour of love.
UCHE OKONKWO: This idea that Africans don’t write sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction is, I believe, part of the reason you started Omenana. Where do you suppose this idea comes/came from and why did/does it persist?
MAZI CHIAGOZIE: I think it comes from that general misconception that Africa is a backward place that hasn’t played any notable role in man’s journey to the stars. So even Africans look at Africa as this place whose people only concern themselves with war, famine, dancing, and procreation. It’s a view that has been propagated for a long time and has now come to offer a copout for people who don’t want to do the work needed to unravel the complexity that is Africa and her varied nations and peoples. We are doing our bit to change the perception, but it continues to persist. And with Wakanda being a fictional place, will continue to persist.
CHINELO ONWUALU: I think the idea that Africans don’t write speculative fiction is born out of the rather racist definitions that limit what speculative fiction is to the sorts of things written by white men in North America and Europe. Thus, when Africans write speculatively, it’s often dismissed as folklore or fable telling.
I feel many of us have adopted this same attitude as part of the deep-seeded practicality that is common with a lot of oppressed groups. Because our systems are so broken – often by colonialist design – we don’t see a lot of value in imaginative endeavours that might divert our energies from the struggle for daily survival. Combined with the devaluation of cultural artefacts like our stories, traditions and beliefs, many of us end up dismissing creative pursuits as wastes of time.
(4) ONCE LESS IN THE BREACH DEAR FRIENDS. David Langford tells about a program Terry Pratchett asked him to write in “The Silicon Critic” at the Milford SF Writers blog
Milford participants often have distinctive personal crotchets when commenting on stories, and John Brunner’s (as I remember from the 1980s) was a particular sensitivity to repetition. Sometimes it seemed that the unintended re-use of a significant word too soon after its last appearance pained him more than a gaping plot hole. The “deliberate repetition for effect” card could be played only so often, especially if you hadn’t noticed the repetition of “repetition” and the fact that it’s now appeared four times in one paragraph.
Terry Pratchett was another author who worried about such things. In 1998 he invited me to write a little Windows application to monitor his own use of favourite words. This, he stipulated, was to be named Bicarb because the idea was to stop you repeating….
(5) ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST. The Hollywood Reporter picked up the con’s Twitter announcements: “Universal FanCon Suddenly Postponed a Week Before Event”
The Baltimore convention created to celebrate diversity has not been rescheduled.
A week out from its announced debut, organizers have confirmed that Universal Fan Con, the new convention created to celebrate diversity and inclusivity in fandom, will not take place and has been postponed to an as-yet unspecified date.
In a series of tweets, organizers said that they were “devastated to make this postponement decision,” and shared that there is a “contingency plan” for those whose travel to Baltimore next week was already booked and are unable to reschedule their trip.
Although no official reason has yet been given for the sudden postponement — social media accounts for the event were promoting the show as recently as yesterday — a source told Heat Vision that the event “has a financial deficit.” In January, Heat Vision talked to Universal FanCon executive director Robert Butler, who said that the Kickstarter campaign to fund the show had been “a greater success than we could have imagined,” raising twice the amount initially asked for….
One committee member announced her resignation:
https://twitter.com/beauty_jackson/status/987362975253192705
https://twitter.com/beauty_jackson/status/987418823375585282
One dealer publicized how the cancellation is affecting him financially – start the thread here.
https://twitter.com/itsedwilliams/status/987451963720851456
The con committee now has posted a FAQ on their website: http://www.universalfancon.com/. They claim the con will be held at a later date.
Why are you postponing FanCon?
Currently we are in a financial deficit that will not allow us to operate the convention within budget. Accordingly, we have made the decision to postpone and reschedule FanCon so we can put forward the type of event our fans deserve.
Why did you wait so long to postpone the event?
The FanCon team worked really hard up to the last minute to put forward an amazing event. However, it became clear in our last team meeting that we would not be able to deliver the event the fans deserved without more time.
How long will the event be postponed?
Once we are able to fully assess our options, we will make an announcement.
(6) ANDERSON OBIT. Harry Anderson (1952-2018): US actor and writer, died April 16, aged 65. Genre roles include Tales from the Darkside (one episode, 1985), Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme (1990), Tales from the Crypt (one episode, 1990), It (1990), Harvey (1996), Lois & Clark (one episode, 1997), Nightmare Ned (voice for video game, 1997), Noddy (one episode, 1998). He also wrote one 1992 episode of Tales from the Crypt.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born April 20, 1937 – George Takei
- Born April 20, 1939 – Peter S. Beagle
- Born April 20, 1964 – Andy Serkis
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Lise Andreasen discovered it’s not all play time when you’re a werewolf.
The mundane life of a lycanthrope. @phoenixcomicuk pic.twitter.com/oXvmCgYmMA
— Jess Bradley (@VenkmanProject) April 20, 2018
(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman hopes you will “Share spring rolls with Stoker Award-winning author Elizabeth Massie” in Episode 64 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Elisabeth Massie
It’s time to head to Providence, Rhode Island for the final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during this year’s StokerCon, following my Italian lunch with Paul Di Filippo and a Portuguese dinner with Victor LaValle.
This episode I wandered off with one of the con’s Guests of Honor, Elizabeth Massie, for lunch at Apsara, a restaurant which serves up Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese cuisine. Massie made her first professional fiction sale 35 years ago, and since then has won two Bram Stoker Awards for the critically acclaimed novels and short stories which followed.
We discussed why Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner is the one to thank for her Stoker Award-winning first novel Sineater, how reading Robert Bloch’s Psycho at a young age was like a knife to her heart, which episode of Twilight Zone scared the crap out of her, why you’ll probably never get to read her Millennium and Law & Order novels, her nearly impossible task of writing one spooky book for each of the 50 states in the U.S, why Kolchak: The Night Stalker was her favorite franchise to play in, the great-great grandfather who cut off his own head with a homemade guillotine, which Dark Shadows secret was only revealed in her tie-in novel, and much more.
(10) NO B5. “J. Michael Straczynski Says With Current Warner Bros. Execs, Babylon 5 Never Going to Happen” – Bleeding Cool has the story:
During an extended series of tweets on Thursday evening, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski expressed at length that the award winning science fiction series’ current television rights holder Warner Bros. has no intention of either doing anything with the license themselves, or of letting anyone else do anything with it….
They won't sell. Because if it were to do well elsewhere, it would embarrass them. And studios don't let out IP. So they're like a monkey with its fist around a nut in a jar, it can't pull it out and it won't let go. https://t.co/04wyxk5rCd
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
(11) HELP WANTED. Hugo nominee nerds of a feather has put out a call: “New Contributors Wanted: 2018”.
Who we’re looking for: we are looking for people who (1) write well and don’t need extensive copyediting, (b) appreciate our brand of humor, (c) understand and are ready to abide by our established format and scoring system and (d) are otherwise good fits with our voice and style. We are not, however, looking for automatons who agree with the rest of us on anything and everything.
We would also like to note that one of our goals is to feature a diverse range of voices on the topics that matter to us. As such, we encourage writers of all backgrounds to apply.
Caveat: we know lots of you have awesome projects you want everyone to know about, but since these are regular contributor positions, we would like to emphasize that this would not be an appropriate forum to use for promoting that awesomeness (aside from your blogging awesomeness, of course).
(12) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? Here’s a no good very bad article for everyone to disagree with: Olivia Ovenden asks “What’s Going Wrong With Sci-Fi?” at Esquire.
“One of the problems with science fiction,” said Ridley Scott back in 2012 ahead of the release of Prometheus, “is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar. The corridors are similar, the planets are similar. So what you try to do is lean more heavily on the story and the characters.”
Great science fiction has always done just that. So why have a recent string of releases shown less interest in the story than the spaceships? Is sci-fi a genre in trouble?
(13) PUNCH BROTHERS, PUNCH WITH CARE. Declan Finn says his personal solution would be what Asimov described as “the last resort of the incompetent” — “The John Ringo and ConCarolinas issue”.
I’ve been scratching my head for a while about whether or not I was going to do a blog post for the whole ConCarolinas debacle.
To be honest, I’d never heard of them until this fashla happened. So they made a great first impression on me.
So much so that they convinced to never attend their convention, as a guest or even as just an attendee.
And no, it’s not necessarily “Oh, look what they did to Ringo.”
I am doing something radical. I will take them ENTIRELY AT THEIR WORD that they can’t guarantee the safety of one of their own guests against the angry hordes of Social Justice Zombies.
On THEIR OWN TERMS, I should be concerned to even walk the halls as a regular attendee carrying a John Ringo book. While I have no problem defending myself, I to go conventions to have a good time. I don’t want to spend the majority of the con in cuffs because some dickheads decide “You’re a Ringo fan, therefore you’re [insert cliche lefty insults here]” and therefore I have to beat them senseless.
(14) ERASURE. Sarah A. Hoyt rehashed Sad Puppy history in “Of Conservatives And Conventions” [Internet Archive link] at PJ Media.
…I went over to John Ringo’s page and read about it. As far as I could tell, a bunch of people on Twitter had been badgering both the con-committee and the other (very leftist) guest about inviting someone who was… what the heck was he? I don’t know.
In the beginning, the accusation against him was that he was “Puppy Adjacent.”
For those of you wanting to follow this at home, the score card is this: Five years ago, my friend Larry Correia started a movement called Sad Puppies, which was a half joking attempt to get books not of solid leftist bent (not even right wing, just not preachy left) nominated for the Hugo, which used to be one of the most prestigious fan awards in science fiction.
When Larry tired of the game after two years, my friend Brad Torgersen took it over…
Vox Day was a little offended to find that he and the Rabid Puppies have been erased from Hoyt’s version of history — “SJWs in SF: Sad Puppy version” [Internet Archive link.]
I find this rather fascinating for what it omits. The Baen cum Sad Puppies crowd is in an uncomfortable position not terribly different from that of Never Trump and the cuckservatives. They are accustomed to being the sole opposition to the SJWs in science fiction, and viewing themselves as the proper and respectable opposition, so they really don’t know what to do about the Rabid Puppies or the considerably less accommodating opposition that is now represented by Castalia House, Arkhaven, and Dark Legion. Nor do they understand how various trends favor the growth of our influence, in part at their expense.
So, they push a narrative to the public in which we don’t exist, even though without us, Sad Puppies would have remained what it was prior to our involvement, a minor bump in the road that didn’t even require any suppression outside of the usual routine. This is not to say that what they did was not admirable, and indeed, their construction of the Dragon Awards will likely prove to be more significant in the long run than our demolition of the Hugo Awards. I merely observe that their efforts would have been insufficient in our absence.
But unlike the SJW narrative, the Sad Puppy narrative does not harm us at all. I am content to let them push it in peace; after all, they are not the enemy. Right now, we are marshaling our forces and preparing to engage in offensives on multiple fronts, some of which are known and others which will prove to be unexpected….
Let the others trail in our wake at their own pace. As long as they refrain from either attacking us or getting in our way, they are not part of the problem. They are trying to be part of the solution, even if they go about it in different and suboptimal ways.
[Hat tip to Camestros Felapton.]
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. in Stems, Scottish animator Ainslie Henderson shows how he takes found objects and turns them into stop-motion animation.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, ULTRAGOTHA, Steve Green, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mark Hepworth, Andrew Porter, Lise Andreasen, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ky.]
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So Declan Finn has decided to never in the future visit a convention that he has never visited in the past. I’m sure that will make a devastating difference.
Are Nerds of a Feather offering paid positions? Because I didn’t see anything about pay, and a lot about weekly posts and interacting with readers on twitter… Not sure of my reading comprehension
The Esquire article was a lot of words but I didn’t get the point. Is SF failing because critics didn’t like some of the movies or because they weren’t runaway successes?
(1) I agree with her about the Robson — it was going gangbusters and then it quit. I tried to turn the page but there were no more pages.
(4) This needs to be much more widely used, frankly.
(7) Good day for SFF!
(13, 14) They’re really giving alternate history/counterfactuals a bad name. And a dull one.
Morning. Technically.
Yeah, Declan Finn’s decision to never attend a con he’s never attended has likely added exactly nothing to ConCarolinas concerns.
@Lis, Hampus: ConCarolinas is probably either thinking “good” or “who?”
eta: fixing the problem mentioned in item (4) oh, the irony AND to say accidental fifth, is that a music thing?
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS. Wow, Takei is only a few years younger than my parents.
(8) COMICS SECTION. Hehehe, cute; forwarded to my better half.
(12) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? One thing that irritates me is how articles like this talk about movies/TV, but refer to everything as if that were all there is. Sci-Fi, the genre, the problem with science fiction, etc. GAH! Science fiction is fine, whether or not TV/movies are in some kind of trouble; at least, the books are awesome, don’t worry, gentle column author at Esquire.
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Adorable and haunting, what he did there.
@World Weary: It’s a group blog, not a professional paying magazine. They’ve been nominated for Best Fanzine! I wouldn’t expect a paycheck. 😛
ETA: Ooh, coveted 2nd 5th position!
(10) I’m okay with this. No need to reboot everything. I enjoyed b5 in the original run, I even bought some of the media tie-in novels, hung out in a b5 IRC chat, had fun.
Ready to move on to the next new thing.
@World Weary: P.S. The key part is the list of benefits:
“Benefits: free books and the potential for other free stuff, as well as joining a dynamic team of enthusiastic nerd bloggers at this here little Hugo-nominated fanzine.”
It’s a fanzine/fan site labor of love. Hmm, free books. . . . 😉
(13) PUNCH BROTHERS, PUNCH WITH CARE.
Declan Finn: I don’t want to spend the majority of the con in cuffs because some dickheads decide “You’re a Ringo fan, therefore you’re [insert cliche lefty insults here]” and therefore I have to beat them senseless.
I am sure that a lot of people are glad that Finn has self-identified in advance as someone who would be willing to physically assault anyone who he feels has insulted him.
I hope that all conrunners are taking note of Finn’s self-professed propensity for violence.
I would certainly declann to invite him to a con.
Ray Radlein: I would certainly declann to invite him to a con.
Bad Ray! Bad pun! Bad! Go sit in the corner. 😀
(5) So are they just super-bad at budgeting, or did something happen to the cash?
Re: Nerds. It is a Fanzine, its not a paid position. They are good folks I’ve known for a good while.
Although I do not contribute there myself, I also got to be their representive last year in Helsinki when they were nominated for a Hugo Award. Which let me get to sit next to Alyx Dellamonica and Kelly Robson during the Hugo ceremony (which ties in vaguely to the discussion of Lucky Peach above).
13-14 I am not surprised that Hoyt would want to airbrush Beale out of the history of the Puppies.
/c4c
@JJ
Ah, where’s your sense of Finn.
(10) NO B5. It is worth noting the show itself never actually had good ratings, nor was it cheap to make. It was wrapped up as was Farscape, another show that was very costly to produce. Sometimes it’s best to just let series like this escape being rebooted.
Man, I stop paying attention to fandom news for like three days…
IanP: Ah, where’s your sense of Finn.
You can go right over and sit in that corner with him, Mister, and think about what you’ve done. 😀
(1) Didn’t click, but it’s how I’ve produced art lately—scan a pencil sketch, then ‘ink’ it on the computer, replacing it bit by bit. After I’ve presented my latest project in class (a stained glass window design), I might put it up on New Pals where it will be safe from scrutiny.
Ah, now we see the pixels inherent in the system!
(11) Nerds of a Feather has a fairly complex system for rating stories on a 1-10 scale–much more complex than Rocket Stack Rank‘s rating system.
In the past, though, Nerds of a Feather has only used that system to rate novels. (That I know of, anyway.) It will be quite a change if they start applying it to short fiction, particularly given the strong pushback against negative short-fiction reviews we’ve seen lately.
Thanks for explaining about Nerds. I was wondering if I should forward to a friend but being available to respond on twitter and social media makes this sound like a big time commitment for a labor of love. I barely have time to keep up with File 770 and read Hugo nominees while working. I don’t know how someone can keep their day job, commit to Nerds and have time to pursue professional writing.
“Niagara Files…
NIAGARA FILES??
Scroll-ly
I turned.
Step
by
step.
Pixel
by
pixel…!”
Meredith Moment:
The Indexing books by Seanan McGuire are part of Amazon US’s KDD at $1.99 each.
13) Does this now make preemptive announcements of non-attendance at events you’ve previously neither heard of nor attended “declanations” ?
I’ll go back to the corner now.
@World Weary
More and more, I think a reviewer should not be an author, or, at least, not someone currently sending submissions out. Writers form mutual support groups, and they protect each other fiercely. The Sad Puppies are the most famous such (and as a support group, I’m assured they still exist), but there are clearly others (you can see them on Twitter). Those support groups are clearly important to many/most writers, and writing impartial reviews is apt to get a writer kicked out or ostracized.
Some authors are extremely touchy about reviews. Even the wrong kind of glowing review will upset them. An author writing reviews is likely to lose his/her support group unless all the reviews are warm, fuzzy, and inoffensive. I saw one such reviewer write that nothing offends writers more than when a reviewer tries to figure out what their story meant. If that’s true, then there’s no hope of writing meaningful reviews and still belonging to one of these support groups.
Of course a reviewer could be an author who doesn’t socialize online with other authors. (Or, maybe, a reviewer might write very different reviews for his/her friends vs. other authors, but that would be really bad.) But, in general, it seems to me that an active author has an irresolvable conflict of interest if he/she tries to also be a reviewer.
@14: I’d ask for the popcorn concession, but I’d rather not be in range of the inter-Pup poo-flinging.
@GSLamb re @5: the obvious conclusion (given that they’re a new convention) is that they had no idea how little income they would see. There are tons of conventions; I suspect that trying to take a particular slant hurts as much as it helps, as travelers interested in the focus might not want to risk a con with no track record and locals might wonder why bother with a focused con when they’ve got a big general-interest one. Countering this is the question of how much they can save by postponing the convention — money not spent might still be obliged unless they got unusually con-beneficent contracts — but I’d bet against the money “just shrinked” if I were forced to pick an option.
(13) Christ what a special little snowflake, to admit he’d try to take a swing at someone over a perceived insult. I thought words were something that only hurt us lefties, not big strong conservative men like Finn and Ringo.
(14): Right now, we are marshaling our forces…
All six of them.
poisoning pixel in the park
@Peer:
Scroll is here, scroll is here,
Life is Pixels and life is Bheer,
I think the wonderfulest time of the year is the Scroll,
I do (don’t you? ‘course you do!)
Re: #5, I’ve been following a little (among other things I have a friend who was slated to vend). I agree with the people who think they probably completely failed to meet their hotel contracts and thus hit the buyout clauses on it and suddenly crashed horribly. They’ve apparently been, the last little bit, frantically trying to get people to buy in/get rooms.
Further, they got space in the Baltimore Convention Center, which is huge, and had FIVE partner hotels, which I am told were all reasonably upscale. My friend who’s done hotel liaison has commented that the roughest part of a new con is probably getting a reasonable estimate of how many people will show up so as to set room block estimations reasonably; the people running this basically seem to have gone, “Hey, our Kickstarter doubled what we were asking for, this is going to be HUGE” and planned accordingly. For values of planning that include, apparently, keeping the Kickstarter backers somewhat updated and not the vendors, guests, or other attendees.
I am guessing first-time conrunners with eyes bigger than anyone’s wallets. They probably had the backing to arrange for a pretty decent small to medium weekend con and they made commitments assuming they were going to get Worldcon attendance their first year out.
(6) Harry Anderson was also in the TV remake of The Absent-Minded Professor, which is arguably genre (albeit silly).
Well I’ve heard there was a secret scroll
That our good host filed and it pleased them all
But you don’t really care for SF do yah?
Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the tickbox fail and the second fifth
The mousewheel sound of filers pixel scroll yeah.
Pixel Scroll yeah
Pixel Scroll yeah
Pixel Scroll yeah
Pixel Scro-ooll yeah
Sniff. That song always makes me want to get teary and sniffle a little.
I dare you to not get teary-eyed.
@ Gregg Hullender: “I saw one such reviewer write that nothing offends writers more than when a reviewer tries to figure out what their story meant.” Not your sentiment, I realize, but I don’t know what else a review is about, unless the whole enterprise is just about assigning stars or making buying recommendations. And of course “what it means” is an elastic notion that ranges from reductionist allegorizing to detailed analysis and interpretation. And FWIW, I do get occasional word back from writers in the form of “You got it,” which is heartening. (Happened twice in the last month, which is, to be sure, about three years’ worth of such feedback.)
On writer/reviewers: Damon Knight, James Blish (pseudonymously, to be sure), Judith Merril, Alfred Bester, Avram Davidson, Algis Budrys, Theodore Sturgeon, Joanna Russ, Spider Robinson, Ed Bryant. . . . Of course, these are from the Olden Days, and maybe things are different now.
10) I think we’re about 20 years away from the Babylon 5 reboot, with much better special effects, and removing all the original’s sillyness and frivolity…
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee, coming out June 12.
Ooooo, ahhhhh. Now I know when I’m going to be doing my reread of Raven Stratagem. 🙂
@Greg says: “I saw one such reviewer write that nothing offends writers more than when a reviewer tries to figure out what their story meant.”
I’m curious who said this and what the exact wording was. But my main reaction is that any story will “mean something” differently to different readers. There isn’t one right answer, and every reader brings their own frame of reference to the text. Shakespeare means something different to spectators today than to audiences back when those plays were written. So a reviewer can certainly talk about their own interpretation of a story but they should do it with the understanding that their interpretation isn’t definitive and that someone else might understand the story very differently.
I say this as someone who has had a few short stories published and reviewed; I’ve seen some reviews that I found interesting and close to my own understanding of my work, and at least one interpretation that was far from anything I personally had considered. Was it wrong, per se? I dunno, I guess I’d argue with it, but I’d hesitate to call any reading “wrong” as long as the text supports the interpretation to some extent. That’s what that reviewer read, is all.
Just my take. There are no doubt writers who would say to stop reading into everything and just enjoy the fun story. That’s got its advantages, too.
@Niall McAuley: Yay!
@Contrarius: One of my favorite versions.
@Kip W: “Scroll-ly I turned.” [etc.] – LOL!
A nice story for fans here:
Looking through the bookbargainbin for my mother because she is making a trip to France and wanted somethink to read for that trip. Not finding anythink at first (Anita Blake was not the right think for obvious reasons) she holds one book up.
My recomandation was there when I did read the writers name: Luis McMaster Bujold.
Now she takes which her a part of the hugonominated World of the Five Gods, the third book of the trilogy. A good find.
I once got a “I didn’t even realize I was putting that there! So cool that you spotted it!” from a fanfic writer, which is still generating warm fuzzies years later.
@Kendall —
I hadn’t heard that one, thanks!
@Lia
In a previous scroll (or maybe it was on Camestros’s blog) we talked about the fact that it’s not reasonable to ask a reviewer to keep saying “I think” and “in my opinion” over and over in review after review. It’s a review; readers should understand that it represents the reviewer’s opinion.
In my opinion, 🙂 the best discussions on Rocket Stack Rank are when different people do have different interpretations of a story. It’s a lot of fun to discuss a story with other readers. Authors should not try to shut that down. They shouldn’t want to.
I am sure that a lot of people are glad that Finn has self-identified in advance as someone who would be willing to physically assault anyone who he feels has insulted him.
One of the current Retro-Hugo finalists features a character whose detachment from ordinary life is proved by the fact that he doesn’t know when it’s appropriate to fight someone with one’s fists, or how to initiate the encounter. That was seventy-five years ago, of course…
@Andrew M:
My first thought was Coventry (which is close to your description), but when I realized that that wasn’t nominated this year, I conclude you’re thinking about the Retro-Hugo nominee in which the super-engineer who initially imagines himself capable of surviving without any human contact at all, ultimately decides he’d be happier as a ballet dancer with friends good old-fashioned SF).
Fixed a bunch of little typos in the edit!
>So Declan Finn has decided to never in the future visit a convention that he has never visited in the past. I’m sure that will make a devastating difference.
I was actually thinking of attending in support of the Con staff. In this instance, they’ve been bullied by their invited guests and attendees. Clearly they’ve also had concerns about guaranteeing Ringo’s safety.
@Contrarius: I forgot to mention – the one I linked to was the first version I’d ever heard. So to me, it’s the “right” version 😉 which I realize is silly, for a song that’s been covered so many times. I’ve found a couple of others I like a lot, but don’t have the links handy.
@Kendall —
Try the k.d. lang version. IMHO it’s especially good. But Jeff Buckley is my favorite by far.
Incidentally, I think two different skaters — at least one, anyway — at the recent Winter Olympics used the Jeff Buckley version in their routines. It was beautiful, but I could NOT figure out why skaters would want to use such sad and quiet music!
I favor k.d. lang. I’ve been listening to the piece for a remarkably short time, all things considered. This past Sunday, my sister gave the service at their UU church on the subject of Alleluia and Hallelujah and so forth, and used Cohen’s own reading, as well as Handel’s well-known chorale and other musical examples to punctuate her text.
In cyberspace, no one can hear you scroll.
@Jamoche
The BBC’s film correspondent Mark Kermode was talking about something similar just recently