Pixel Scroll 4/23/18 It Was Me Who Ate All The Cupcakes In The File770 Office IN SELF DEFENCE!

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(1) 100 LOVED BOOKS. PBS series The Great American Read premieres May 22. One hundred books, one winner:

THE GREAT AMERICAN READ is an eight-part series that explores and celebrates the power of reading, told through the prism of America’s 100 best-loved novels (as chosen in a national survey).  It investigates how and why writers create their fictional worlds, how we as readers are affected by these stories, and what these 100 different books have to say about our diverse nation and our shared human experience.

(2) AMAZING OPENS SUBMISSIONS WINDOW. Steve Davidson announced “General Submissions for Amazing Stories Opens Today”. See detailed guidelines at the link. Davidson had more to say on Facebook:

(3) COMPTON CROOK AWARD. Nicky Drayden announced on April 19 that her book Prey of Gods won the 2018 Compton Crook Award. [Via Locus Online.]

(4) RINGO’S WORLD. John Ringo’s April 16 Facebook post about his withdrawal as ConCarolinas special guest continues gathering moss, now with over 900 likes. Today Ringo showed everyone what they’ll be missing with a new comment that explains to his sycophants why ConCarolina’s Guest of Honor can’t compete with him.

No. Because nobody but people who pay close attention to the industry and awards has ever heard of her.

Her Amazon rankings are pretty low. Her bookscan ratings are low. That indicates she’s not particularly popular just heavily promoted and ‘popular’ with the ‘right crowd’. (Which is a very small crowd.)

James Patterson is a big name. JK Rowling is a big name. Hell, China Meville is a big name.

Seanan McGuire is not ‘a big name’.

I have no clue where we stand representationally in sales comparison to me but I suspect I sell more books. Just a suspicion, though, and it probably depends on the series.

Honestly, I suspect A Deeper Blue sold more books than all of hers combined.

(5) ENCHANTED MUSEUM. Atlas Obscura reveals the “Hidden Elves at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science”.

Back in the 1970s, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science hired artist Kent Pendleton to paint the backdrops for many of the museum’s wildlife dioramas. Little did it know that Pendleton’s penchant for hiding tiny mythical creatures in these paintings would add a whole new dimension to the museum experience.

It all began with eight elves—or gnomes, or leprechauns, depending who you ask—hidden in Pendleton’s wildlife dioramas. An elf hiding in the lowland river. An elf riding a dinosaur along a cretaceous creekbed. Another elf sat on a rock in the Great Smoky Mountains. And others, hard to spot but definitely there, in various backdrops throughout the museum.

In 2018, Pendleton told the Denverite: “It was just kind of my own little private joke. The first one was so small that hardly anyone could see it, but it sort of escalated over time, I guess. Some of the museum volunteers picked up on it and it developed a life of its own.”

(6) THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. Kevin Standlee is running for office in his home town:

I’m Kevin Standlee, and I’m running for a seat on the Board of Directors of the North Lyon County Fire Protection District, which serves the city of Fernley, Nevada.

I grew up in a fire station. As the child of a US Forest Service officer, I lived a lot of my formative years on a series of fire outposts in the Sierra Nevada….

June 12 is Election Day.

(7) HISTORIC DUNES. ABC News tells about “Visiting the desert where ‘Star Wars’ was filmed”.

There’s a reason the original “Star Wars” movie was filmed in the deserts of southern Tunisia. This stark, remote landscape looks like another planet.

One of Tunisia’s vast desert regions is even called Tataouine (ta-TWEEN), like Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tattoine.

And the underground home where Luke Skywalker first appeared living with his uncle and aunt is a real hotel in the town of Matmata, one of various desert locations used in the movies.

Masoud Berachad owns the Hotel Sidi Driss. He says visitors have dropped off since Tunisia’s democratic revolution in 2011 and attacks on tourists in 2015.

Still, devoted “Star Wars” fans keep the hotel in business….

(8) CURSED CHILD IN NEW YORK. David Rooney goes into great detail – perhaps too much – in his “‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’: Theater Review” for The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s a relatively spoiler-free excerpt:

…Pockets of racist outrage exploded online when it was first announced that a black actress had been cast as Hermione, which Rowling shot down in her no-nonsense style by pointing out that the character’s ethnicity was never mentioned in the books. In any case, only the most bigoted idiot could find fault with the brilliant Dumezweni’s performance, her haughtiness, quicksilver intellect and underlying warmth tracing a line way back to the precociously clever girl Harry first met on the train all those years ago.

Thornley’s Ron, too, is readily identifiable as the perennial joker of the trio. He’s acquired substance and a charming mellowness over the years, though a glimpse of him in a time-warped present tells a heartbreakingly different story. Miller takes the early indicators of Ginny’s strength and builds on them, shaping a smart, grounded woman capable of handling Harry’s complicated baggage. And Price’s Draco is still peevish and moody, his bitterness exploding in an entertaining clash of wands with Harry, but he’s found a softer side in maturity as well.

At the center of it all is Parker’s Harry, grown up and more confident but still pensive and troubled as ever, plagued by memories of the orphaned boy who slept under the stairs at his aunt and uncle’s home, and the reluctant hero he was forced to become. It’s a finely nuanced performance, with gravitas and heart, particularly as he wrestles with and eventually overcomes his struggles as a parent. Even with the sweet sentimentality of the closing scenes, what lingers most about Parker’s characterization is the stoical knowledge he carries with him that every moment of happiness contains the promise of more pain to come.

Of equal importance in the story are Albus and Scorpius, and while Clemmett is affecting in the more tortured role, at war with himself as much as his father, the discovery here is Boyle. His comic timing, nervous mannerisms and endearing awkwardness even in moments of triumph make him a quintessential Rowling character and a winning new addition. “My geekness is a-quivering,” he chirps at one point, probably echoing how half the audience is feeling. It’s stirring watching these two young outsiders conquer their self-doubt to find courage and fortitude….

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Daniel Dern doesn’t want Filers to miss xkcd’s cartoon “Misinterpretation.”
  • Lise Andreasen asks, “Things men weren’t meant to know?”

(10) GENESIS. In “How Stan Lee Became the Man Behind Marvel” Chris Yogerst of the LA Review of Books reviews Bob Batchelor’s biograpahy of the comics icon.

STAN LEE WAS FINISHED with comics. “We’re writing nonsense,” he once told his wife Joan. “It’s a stupid business for a grownup to be in.” After riding the early success of comic books, Lee was concerned about the future of the medium. He wanted to write more intelligent stories, something adults could connect to.

Following his wife’s advice, Lee decided to write one last story. With characters that were grounded in reality, stories that channeled Cold War tensions, and a narrative influenced by popular science fiction, Lee created the Fantastic Four. This was the type of story Lee would have wanted to read. If it was successful, maybe he would stick with comics a little longer.

Popular culture historian Bob Batchelor’s latest book turns a critical eye on the life of Lee, who ultimately became “the man behind Marvel.” Batchelor’s Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel focuses on where Lee came from, what influenced him, and how he became the immortal face of the comic book industry. In other words, to use the vernacular of the superhero genre, Batchelor gives us Lee’s origin story.

(11) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #800.Here’s another variant cover for the upcoming milestone issue.

It’s all been building to this – the biggest Peter Parker and Norman Osborn story of all time, and the first Marvel comic EVER to hit 800 issues! In celebration of the 800th issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and the now historic run of Dan Slott, Marvel is excited to show a variant cover from legendary artist Frank Cho and colorist David Curiel!

Witness the culmination of the Red Goblin story as Slott is joined for his final issue by epic artists such as Stuart Immonen, Humberto Ramos, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Nick Bradshaw!

(12) SKYWATCH. Bill Gates among backers of proposed live-video-from-space satellite constellation called EarthNow:

EarthNow takes advantage of an upgraded version of the satellite platform, or “bus,” developed originally for the OneWeb communications service. Each satellite is equipped with an unprecedented amount of onboard processing power, including more CPU cores than all other commercial satellites combined. According to Greg Wyler, Founder and Executive Chairman of OneWeb, “We created the World’s first lowcost, high-performance satellites for mass-production to bridge the digital divide. These very same satellite features will enable EarthNow to help humanity understand and manage its impact on Earth.”

Use cases are said to include:

  • Catch illegal fishing ships in the act
  • Watch hurricanes and typhoons as they evolve
  • Detect forest fires the moment they start
  • Watch volcanoes the instant they start to erupt
  • Assist the media in telling stories from around the world
  • Track large whales as they migrate
  • Help “smart cities” become more efficient
  • Assess the health of crops on demand
  • Observe conflict zones and respond immediately when crises arise
  • Instantly create “living” 3D models of a town or city, even in remote locations
  • See your home as the astronauts see it—a stunning blue marble in space

(13) TODAY’S COPYEDITING TIP. From Cherie Priest:

(14) LOSING FACE. Motherboard says “This Is the Facial Recognition Tool at the Heart of a Class Action Suit Against Facebook”.

On Monday, a federal judge ruled that a class action lawsuit against Facebook can move forward, paving the way for what could turn out to be a costly legal battle for the company.

As Reuters reports, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook improperly collected and stored users’ biometric data. It was originally filed in 2015 by Facebook users in Illinois, which passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in 2008. The law regulates the collection and storage of biometric data, and requires that a company receive an individual’s consent before it obtains their information.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook ran afoul of BIPA when it began using a tool called Tag Suggestions, which was originally rolled out in 2011. Like many Facebook features, it’s designed to make your user experience better while also providing the company with your data—in this case, very specific facial features.

(15) KNOT OF THIS WORLD. Gizmodo’s Kristen V. Brown advises “Forget the Double Helix—Scientists Discovered a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells”.

The double helix, though, is not the only form in which DNA exists. For the first time ever, scientists have identified the existence of a new DNA structure that looks more like a twisted, four-stranded knot than the double helix we all know from high school biology.

The newly identified structure, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Chemistry, could play a crucial role in how DNA is expressed.

Some research had previously suggested the existence of DNA in this tangled form, dubbed an i-motif, but it had never before been detected in living cells outside of the test tube. Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, though, found that not only does the structure exist in living human cells, but it is even quite common.

(16) ROCKET MAN. In his book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede ranked William Shatner’s 1978 performance of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” at #17 on the list. Details from the Wikipedia —

At the 5th Saturn Awards Ceremony, which aired as the Science Fiction Film Awards in January 1978, Taupin introduced William Shatner’s spoken word[29] interpretation of the song. It used chroma key video techniques to simultaneously portray three different images of Shatner, representing the different facets of the Rocket Man’s character….

How can you not want to watch it after a build-up like that?

(17) MAKING A BIGGER BANG. Wil Wheaton has been having fun —

Since last week, I’ve been working on the season finale of The Big Bang Theory, and today we shot Amy and Sheldon’s wedding.

It was an incredible day, and I am still in disbelief that I got to be in multiple scenes with Kathy Bates, Laurie Matcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Brian Posehn, Lauren Lapkus, Teller, Courtney Henggeler, and this guy, who is not only one of the kindest people I’ve ever worked with, but is also from a science fiction franchise, just like me!

[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, JJ, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Carl Slaughter, Lise Andreasen, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]

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259 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/23/18 It Was Me Who Ate All The Cupcakes In The File770 Office IN SELF DEFENCE!”

  1. Seeing multiple copies of some comments.

    I’ve read 44 of the books, weighted toward the “classics” and away from the “bestsellers” l’d say. Certainly an odd mix of books.

  2. 2) It’s a nice list of demographics there, good to see them being inclusive. Though I do notice that there’s no mention of nationality, nor is that mentioned in the submission guidelines on their website, so I’ll just assume they are open to submissions from non-Americans and non-USA residents. After all, the bright, positive future they’re looking for won’t put borders between people, will it?

    15) Diane Duane’s ‘Wizard’s Knot’ springs to mind.

  3. Oneiros on April 23, 2018 at 9:40 pm said:

    (1) in honour of today’s scroll date, I got 23! Holy crap I was expecting a few more than that.

    Edit: in my self-defense I’m British, not American…

    EXACTLY what he said.

  4. The site was refusing to post comments for a while earlier, and was then fully down for a few hours. Looks like it saved those comments up and then posted them in a bunch, including ones where people (inc me) had tried a few times.

  5. (10) I don’t really trust Lee’s origin story as told by Lee. Wasn’t there some other guy involved as well?

  6. Arifel: Standard fixation on “I am somebody and anyone I have not heard of, or who disagrees with me, is nobody” which we’ve come to know and… know… from the puppies and friends.

    Yes, I am really tired of hearing people (of any persuasion) emphatically declaring “I’ver never heard of [author] before now!”, as if that proves anything other than that the person who is insisting that the author is a “nobody” is not very widely-read — as if the word of someone who is actually bragging about their ignorance is supposed to mean something.

  7. @Msb, I enjoyed War And Peace as a charming “romance-in-a-time-of-war” novel, but I’ll freely admit I kept a cheat sheet with all the variations on peoples’ names written on it. Between names, nicknames, patronymics, and titles, one individual could be referred to by a bunch of different names on the same page, if the people addressing them were of different social status. Which as an American I found a little tricky to follow at first.

    (Remember when a thousand page book was considered monstrously huge? Now it’s just Tuesday….)

  8. @NickPheas Wasn’t there some other guy involved as well?

    Nonsense! Everyone knows that after he was struck by radioactive lightning Lee was bitten by an ancient alien artefact and gained the power to turn his Raw Originality directly into comic books without further human intervention.

    2) I found that a bit “all lives matter” – and “NO political agenda” is an obvious impossibility – but anonymous reading is a good idea, if they’re serious about it.

  9. Well, I got 46 and it was a mix of “wanted to read”, “ought to read” and “have to read”.

    Not too impressed with the list over all, either, but, then, this is the 21st century…

  10. (1) Only twenty-eight for me, but then, I’m Australian so our lists of classics and assigned books are different. That said, we did study To Kill A Mockingbird, and I sort of stole my copy of The Great Gatsby from the school storeroom.

    (My dad was an English teacher and would let me have a single copy of any set text that was no longer in use.)

    I echo the surprise of previous commenters about The Pilgrim’s Progress – my grandparents had a copy on their shelves and I found it completely unreadable when I picked it up as a teenager who voraciously devoured all nearby printed material. Is it a book people read in Sunday School, maybe? (I have never been to Sunday School and all I know about it I learned from The Simpsons, so I may be way off base here.)

  11. 28, more or less. I count War and Peace even though I self-abridged a hundred pages of “Did you ever really look at your hand?” after the story was actually over. One or two books I couldn’t really remember for sure. Now, if they tightened the list up by dropping flashes in the pan that will be forgotten in a few years, that would be like 28 out of 75 or so. And Then There Were None is the only Christie novel that really stands up to re-reading for me, and I had read it thrice before I was even in the play, and I’ve read it again since then. My list would have The Canterbury Tales on it, and I, Claudius and Red Harvest, and The Long Goodbye, at least.

    I’d put in a good word for “Patrick Dennis”‘s Genius, too, which I’ll probably scan soon so I can keep it at the ready on my devices. The narrator of Auntie Mame et seq tells the story from a wretched little resort in Mexico (“My dear boy, if Mexico needed an enema, here’s where they’d plug it in.”), first relating all his previous encounters with the larger-than-life auteur director Leander Starr—all of which featured high hopes leading to wasted time and disappointment—then returning to the story of how Starr shows up, farther down on his luck than ever, and having just one last chance to redeem the promise of his early career. “Dennis” is scathing about the jetsam Starr surrounds himself with, and is skeptical anything could come of it, and then in Chapter XII, we finally see Starr in action and realize the real meaning of the title. It’s a little like the moment when we realize that the ugly lead-colored statue people are running around after is gold encrusted with jewels underneath.

  12. 1) 63, but there’s a large chunk based on either ‘read the first book, saw no need to read the rest’ like VC Andrews and a section of classics that came from a year of reading basically dedicated just to the ‘great’ classic works of fiction. Which I don’t regret but oh man… you find me a man who says he reads James Joyce for fun and I’ll show you a liar.

    10) Sean Howe’s ‘Marvel Comics: The Untold Story’ is a really good account of how Lee and other contributors worked and how the original ‘Bullpen’ was structured in the early days of Marvel. The creation of books like FF and Spider-Man involve a lot more people than we traditionally recognize and there’s a lot more fingerprints on their early days.

  13. My run for the NLCFPD Board is my first try at a “mundane” political office. I did serve a three-year stint as an appointee to the Caltrain (local commuter railroad on the San Francisco peninsula between San Francisco-San Jose-Gilroy) Citizens’ Advisory Committee when I lived down there. The post is unpaid, so in some respects it’s much like the other non-profit boards on which I sit: lots of reading of reports and trying to make too little resources cover too many demands.

  15. (2) Points 4, 5, and 6 in this list make me very happy. Also the “rules lawyering” is already beginning in the Facebook comments on that post.

  16. Only 18. Despite my English degree, I have always been behind on my classics (only Dickens’ Pickwick Papers), and I’m light on the popular SF/F. For example, I have never read more than three books of WoT, and never read more than bits of Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, or Twilight (for example). Most of my reading is in the corners of SF/F, so I’m not too bothered, but I do really need to get those classics under my belt.

  17. Note: I meant that Pickwick Papers was the only Dickens that I have read, not that it was the only “classic” that I have read.

  18. (1) 49/100, but to be fair, I was an English major in college, and so read many classics. Did not count some that I am sure I started, but not sure if I finished. Like Moby Dick–where I skipped a lot of the whaling detail.

    In the year 7171, reading is considered a sport, with Olympic medals for short stories, novellas, novels, and Doorstop Marathons.

  19. My parents were subscribers to “Heritage Club” (or whatever it was actually called): they reprinted classic books in very nice slipcased hardcover editions, frequently with illustrations, and every month or two they’d have a new one ready to send out. So we had a lot of those books on our shelves, even if I didn’t read them all. (They did try to get books by the same author to have similar covers, for a semi-uniform look.)

  21. Pleased to see my earlier comment didn’t get et, but apparently my tick did!

    Current reading is A Veil of Spears, the third in Bradley Beaulieu’s Song of the Shattered Sands series. It’s good so far but I’m adding it to the increasingly long list of genre books that I think would benefit from a quick plot recap and character sheet at the start…

  22. (1) — 21.5 (I read the first … six? eight? Wheel of Time). Possibly a few more back in my school days, but I wouldn’t want to put money on it. And as I look at the list, I’m content with my numbers.

    (Also: Swan Song? Really? Which, to be fair, is one of the books I have read.)

  23. The most notable thing about Ringo’s comment? He has said explicitly and out loud that he has no respect for fellow panelists who aren’t as famous as he is (in his extended Ravencon screed he talks about has-beens who should shut up, never-weres who should shut up and wannabees who should shut up. Oh, and all of these people get liberally peppered with various insults about their physical appearance, too). If by his standards, Seanan McGuire isn’t as important as he is, then evidence is in that you DO pretty much have to park him between J.K Rowling and Stephen King to get him to feel even slightly like he’s not the most important person in the room. And even then, he’d probably just ask his so-hot-and-accomplished girlfriend to come in, bring him a coffee mid-panel, and sit in the front row and say it made everyone else jealous.

  26. 33 but as German not so bad (some of them I have only read because they are free as ebooks now)
    About Ringo: Everythink has been said, execpt his big name points.
    I think Stephen King does messure in the big name bussness, I am not sure if even Neil Gaiman is a big name if you use Rowling and Paterson as messure.
    The rest is rubish. Is Ringo trying to convice people not to read him?

  27. Today is one of the few days I can honestly say that the scroll comments do look like an echo chamber.

    4 – I think it was kind of him to provide an example of the type of behavior that makes people not want to be around him. If you treat everything like a pissing contest then don’t be surprised when people may not be pleased that you’ve sprayed piss everywhere.

    Joe H. on April 24, 2018 at 7:30 am said:

    (Also: Swan Song? Really? Which, to be fair, is one of the books I have read)

    Hell I’m just glad to see a Robert McCammon book listed the most loved books.

  28. And I think that now the comment can be left out of moderation. (have edited it to be less problematic)

  29. @Arifel

    Current reading is A Veil of Spears, the third in Bradley Beaulieu’s Song of the Shattered Sands series. It’s good so far but I’m adding it to the increasingly long list of genre books that I think would benefit from a quick plot recap and character sheet at the start…

    Honestly, I’m getting to a point where I believe if a series is longer than 2-books, this should be a requirement. Give me a few page summary of the prior relevant plot and a page of character names and who they are. That can’t be that hard, can it?

    I remember a decade or so ago I was into Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of Seven Suns (I know, I know) and would read each book as it was released. He did the whole Recap at the start of the book and I loved him for it.

    I oftentimes spend a good deal of time researching prior books before starting a new book in a series just to relearn everything. I wish I didn’t have to do that. Maybe there are people who can easily recall this stuff, but I definitely can’t.

  30. Have read 42 books on the list (not a Hitchhiker’s reference). SF, Fantasy and Classic Literature account for nearly all of that.

  31. @JJ: That “thinks” was about 10% sarcasm and 90% that my google-fu was failing me first thing this morning.

    Here in 2550 the sarcasm tags actually work on days not ending in y

  32. Meredith Moment:

    Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly is on sale for $2.99 at Amazon US.

    Here in 1283, the Welsh are pissed at King Edward I. High treason is invented as an excuse to kill your enemies.

  33. Good evening. Tonight on ‘It’s the Mind’, we examine the phenomenon of deja vu. That strange feeling we sometimes get that we’ve lived through something before, that what is happening now has already happened.

    I’ve stopped looking at these lists of 100 things. They’re rarely satisfying. And a bit long.

    In the year 3159, all our lists are in base 8 and we usually only do lists of 64.

  34. (4) I don’t really understand the claim, which is easily refuted, and just silly. If I pull up Seanan McGuire’s total career sales, it comes out to a quarter million copies. Which is probably underreported, but that is what we have to work with, as a comparison, which is great for such a short period of time, relatively. Ringo’s A Deeper Blue, however, only sold thirty-nine thousand copies, between the hardcover / mass-market paperback. The publishing industry is significantly different. Had she been published back then, when B&N was much bigger, then, and Borders was still kicking around, her sales would be through the roof, extensively. Either way, it is interesting math. (By the way China Mieville does sell considerably well, but he also started two years before Seanan. Given enough time she will catch up to his sales. It is only a matter of time.)

  35. (4) Furthermore, if we compare mass-market paperback editions against each other, the closest example might be Strands of Sorrow (Ringo, December 2015) and Once Broken Faith (McGuire, September 2016) . . . well, they wash out, basically. He sells a wee bit more, but we are talking a stastically small difference here.

  36. 1) I’ve read a whole 10 of those. I’d blame being a UK’ian but I’m not even interested in the bulk of the rest. Though I did finish the Wheel of Time out of stubbornness.

  37. @1: 27 ~7/8 (counting fractions of 2 series and faking the last half of Moby-Dick, which I was supposed to read in school, and (per @Kendall) not counting at least two I’ve seen the movies of (sometimes in pieces rather than straight through), and leaving 1 off the survey because it was so forgettable I didn’t recall it until a comment.) Some of the others I wouldn’t allow in the house, and I still regret the time I spent reading Confederacy of Dunces. Seconding @David Goldfarb, I find the spread of work fascinating, and wonder whether the survey required people to actually have completed the books they endorsed rather than just thinking the books belonged on the list. And like @Laura Resnick and @Lin McAllister, I wonder about which novel was chosen to represent a particular author. I don’t feel inadequate about this list, given not only those doubts but the IMO-comparable stuff that I have read (both D’Artagnan novels, The Brothers Karamazov, …)

    @4: sounds like someone who couldn’t make contact with reality with a long stick and a lot of shouting (as if that’s news…). And he can’t even spell “Miéville”. (I’m not surprised by the missing accent, but the missing ‘i’ is … special.) (Ninja’d by Bruce A!) I’m also baffled that he cites a hard-socialist — is there a personal connection, or does JR think any man is better than every woman?

    @9: I’m probably still not going — I read the book-from-the-script and found it very weak — but it’s interesting to hear that the actors are making the most of the material.

    @16: How can you not want to watch it after a build-up like that? Very easily; I got my fill of Kirking sprechstimme from his performance of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (IIRC off a record (at least 40 years ago) that featured various people singing who shouldn’t, e.g. Mae West singing “Twist and Shout”).

    @Lurkertype (re what’s a series): AFAIK it’s technically true that LotR was never sold in one volume (unlike, e.g., Cyteen), and that the 3 volumes did not come out all at once. However, it appears to have been a single project, complete (except for maps and appendices) when sent to the publisher, instead of being published as it was written like aSoIaF (which is arguably as continuous) or WoT (which I don’t think is, but based on reports I’ve never touched it). And the tech certainly exists for it to be published in one book now.

    @Cassy B: “asymptotic” — from what I’ve heard that’s a great description; a sarcast I know once described (in one paragraph) the entire plot of a hypothetical volume 257, in which 30 seconds pass.

  38. 47 including DNFs like Moby Dick. I read enough to form an opinion, which was that this wasn’t worth reading further. Interesting mix of books on the list overall.

  39. @Sean Wallace – Did that include the Mira Grant books? Maybe Ringo doesn’t know she has a pen name.

    ETA: (I don’t know why I’m treating this as if Ringo is being sensible or really cares about facts, except that it’s such an egregious faux pas that I’m still a bit stunned.)

  40. (4) I wonder if it would cause Ringo’s head to explode that one of the bestselling books right now, per bookscan, is Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti, which has moved almost twenty thousand copies and is still selling a thousand copies a month, easily, hands-down?

  41. (4) Oh drat, I did forget Mira Grant. You would have to add another hundred and eighty thousand copies to the previous number. So for a grand total of four-hundred and thirty thousand copies sold? I would say that that is not too shabby, at all.

  42. @Sean Wallace well, that sounds like something based on reputable outside data and not a thing made up in John Ringo’s head. So based on current trends, I suspect it wouldn’t have much of an impact on his thinking at all.

  43. Well, counting books I read in Reader’s Digest Condensed versions, and ones where I saw the movie or View-Master set or had a pack of bubble gum cards, as well as the ones whose titles I read a whole bunch of times or which I saw discussed on a daytime TV show, I guess I’m well above 40 on that list now. I feel so literate.

    The Scroll of the Unknown Pixel

  44. 1: 26 (counting a series if have read at least one book in it: not counting Moby Dick, of which I have read only bits, mostly the bits which allegedly no one likes).

    If Pilgrim’s Progress appears on a list chosen by a national survey, I’m guessing someone reads it. I mean, Left Behind is on the list, and Pilgrim’s Progress surely has a wider constituency than that.

  45. John Ringo is easy to point and laugh at but in this case he is probably right. Ten years ago he had estimated sales by other people of over 2 million, by himself of closer to 3 million. Most of that seems to have been on the back of Ghost.

    That does not make him a better writer,panelist,guest, or person but it does make him a better selling author.

  46. @Sean Wallace

    Thanks for the hard figures, that’s really interesting. I was noodling around on Goodreads trying to use their # of ratings as a proxy for sales, and was getting to the rough conclusion that they had very similar numbers on recent comparable books, but no need for me to finish that now!

  47. IIRC, The Lord of the Rings was split up by its original publisher because doorstopper tomes weren’t a thing at the time (remember when War and Peace was cited as an overly long and daunting novel? It doesn’t seem like one these days, given the overly stuffed and padded novels publishers are putting out now). I have 2 1-volume editions of LOTR, neither of which seem unusually thick.

    I frequently read 19th century novels for pleasure (I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Wuthering Heights) and I appreciate them now that I know a lot more about the history and culture of the times. I actually enjoyed Moby Dick, and IMHO Nathaniel Hawthorne’s contribution to American fantasy literature is sadly overlooked. I’ve never, though, as far as I can remember, seen a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress (yeah, I know it’s way earlier) or come across someone who’s read it. It does get mentioned quite a bit in 19th century novels as one of those uplifting books people should read.

    Never understood why some people think Russian naming practices are difficult: given name, patronymic, family name, with slight variations in the latter two based on gender. The nicknames aren’t any worse than extracting “Peg” from “Margaret” or “Ned” from “Eddard”. But then I grew up with Polish, which forms similar diminutives.

    If I ever happen to meet John Ringo I’ll have to ask him about his role in the Earp/Clanton feud. Here in 5808 we’ve got that time travel thing mostly figured out…

  48. @Magewolf

    The question isn’t Ringo’s past success, or even their comparative sales, but whether he’s right to say “nobody but people who pay close attention to the industry and awards has ever heard of her….That indicates she’s not particularly popular”
    The sales figures above put her comfortably into “well-known genre author” territory, so Ringo is clearly wrong.

    What I just noticed was that Ringo also wrote “Her Amazon rankings are pretty low. Her bookscan ratings are low.” Sean Wallace just looked on Bookscan for us and came to the opposite conclusion….so either Ringo did a very lazy job of looking for figures, or he’s just making stuff up.

  49. The thing with Mieville is that he seems like he’s become one of the standard go-tos for conservatives to “prove” they’re not actually against good writing by leftists, just horrible message fiction (Like Seanan McGuire’s ballroom dancer cum monster hunter in the first Incryptid novel. Totally a serious message fiction story with no action or comedy anywhere.)

  50. How on earth DOES one find out career sales by an author? Is there a Box Office Mojo for writers?

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