(1) CATS TRIUMPHANT. Naomi Kritzer has had a big week. Her YA novel Catfishing on Catnet won an Edgar Award today, and won a Minnesota Book Award on Tuesday. Here’s an excerpt of the Q&A she did for the St. Paul Library:
How does it feel to be a Minnesota Book Award finalist?
It is a huge honor and feels amazing!
Tell us something about your finalist book that you want readers to know?
It is loosely based on my (Hugo Award-winning) short story Cat Pictures Please, which you can still find online:
Share something about your writing process and preferences. For instance, where is your favorite place to write?
When I’m outlining or brainstorming, I use a notebook of unlined paper, like a sketch diary. I like to write in my sunny living room but discovered at some point that the ergonomics of a couch, hassock, and lap desk will lead quickly to back problems, so I usually write at a desk in my home office.
(2) BOOKSTORE LOVE. LitHub tells the world “Now you can use your favorite indie bookstore as your Zoom background.” Like this shot of Vroman’s – where John King Tarpinian and I got John Scalzi to sign our copies of The Collapsing Empire a few years ago. The complete list of bookstores with notes on each one can be found on the Lookout + Ecotone blog.
(3) INGENIOUS. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand blog gives a good rundown of Alison Scott’s plans for “The Virtual GUFF Tour”, since she can’t travel there in person this year. It’s an effort completely worthy of a former editor of the fanzine Plokta, “The journal of superfluous technology.”
Alison Scott is the recently elected European GUFF delegate. The plan was for the winning delegate to travel down under to meet local fans and addend the 2020 Worldcon – CoNZealand. Of course because of you-know-what the borders are closed and CoNZealand has gone virtual. But Alison appears undaunted – she now plans to take a virtual tour of Australasia visiting Australian and New Zealand places and fans before attending the virtual worldcon. There will be a proper itinerary mimicking a physical journey and Alison even plans to adhere to the local timezones (yay jetlag!). You can read more about her plans and follow her progress over on the facebook group dedicated to the trip.
(4) RAMPING UP TO THE APOCALYPSE. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society has completed the ADA compliant ramp in front of their building. The January 20 Pixel Scroll ran details about the permits coming through. Club President Dale S. Arnold said today –
Although the COVID-19 emergency and related closures caused some delays, eventually the weather and logistics worked to allow completion. Many years ago when the plan for renovations to the BSFS Building was announced the author Jack Chalker commented that if a bunch of SF Fans were able to pull off that complex of a plan it would be a sign of the coming apocalypse. With the completion of this ramp (except final painting the door which was altered in the ramp design) we have now realized the dream from 1991 having completed everything planned when we bought the building.
And BSFS didn’t finish a moment too soon, because the apocalypse appears to be just around the corner.
(5) NOT GENTEEL. Errolwi points out how well today’s Merriam-Webster tweet complements James Davis Nicoll’s famous quote about the English language:
(6) AIMLESS, IF NOT LOST, IN SPACE. And by no coincidence whatsoever, the next item is about James Davis Nicoll’s latest Tor.com post, “Far From Any Star: Five Stories About Rogue Worlds”.
It’s been weeks since you last socialized (in the flesh) with anyone outside your household…or with anyone, if you live alone. Loneliness is tough. But things could be worse: you could be a rogue world, ejected from your home system billions of years ago. You could be a pitiful world formed far from any star. Such worlds are commonplace in our galaxy. They are not quite so common in science fiction. Still, a few of them feature in books that you may have read…
(7) JEMISIN AND GAIMAN. The Fisher Center will present “UPSTREAMING: Neil Gaiman in Conversation with N. K. Jemisin” on May 2 at 7:30 p.m. EST. However, the website says, “Tickets are not currently on sale. Call the box office for more information, 845-758-7900.” So if you’re interested, call.
Join Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman for a remote, live streamed conversation with Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin (Broken Earth trilogy), whose new work The City We Became was released in March to great acclaim. The conversation is part of an ongoing Fisher Center series in which Gaiman discusses the creative process with another artist.
(8) LE GUIN IN ’75. Fanac.org has posted a video recording of an Aussiecon (1975) Worldcon panel with Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood and others, “Worlds I Have Discovered.”
AussieCon, the 33rd Worldcon, was held in Melbourne, Australia in 1975. This panel centers on questions to Guest of Honor Ursula Le Guin’s on her writing for young adults (or at least classified as for young adults). The panelists, moderated by Fan Guest of Honor Susan Wood, are Ursula herself, Stella Leeds, Peter Nicholls, Anna Shepherd, and Ann Sydhom. The video quality leaves a lot to be desired, but the discussion on Le Guin’s process of writing, the panel’s views on children’s literature, and children’s literature as a literary ghetto remain interesting and very pertinent. Remember, this was decades before the phenomena of Harry Potter.
Andrew Porter sent the link with this reminder that the same year his Algol Press published Dreams Must Explain Themselves, a 36-page chapbook whose title essay is about how Le Guin got ideas for books.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- April 30, 1955 — Science Fiction Theatre’s Y.O.R.D. episode first aired. Directed by Leon Benson from a screenplay by him and George Van Marter as based on a story written by Marter and Ivan Tors. Truman Bradley Was The Host and the cast included Walter Kingsford, Edna Miner Louis, Jean Heydt and DeForest Kelley. The latter would be playing Captain Hall, M.D. You can watch it here.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge. Bonus typos provided by OGH.]
- Born April 30, 1913 — Jane Rice. Her first story “The Dream” was published in the July 1940 issue of Unknown. Amazingly, she’d publish ten stories there during the War. Her only novel Lucy remains lost due to somewhat mysterious circumstances. Much of her short stories are collected in The Idol of the Flies and Other Stories which is not available in digital form. (Died 2003.)
- Born April 30, 1920 — E. F. Bleiler. An editor, bibliographer and scholar of both sff and detective fiction. He’s responsible in the Forties for co-editing the Best SF Stories with T.E. Dikty. They later edited Best Science-Fiction Stories. He also did such valuable reference guides like The Checklist of Fantastic Literature and The Guide to Supernatural Fiction. (Died 2010.)
- Born April 30, 1926 — Edmund Cooper. Pulpish writer of space opera not for the easily offended. His The Uncertain Midnight has an interesting take on androids but most of his work is frankly misogynistic. And he was quite prolific with over twenty-four novels and a dozen story collections. A lot of his work is available at the usual digital suspects. (Died 1982.)
- Born April 30, 1934 — William Baird Searles. Author and critic. He‘s best remembered for his long running review work for Asimov’s where he reviewed books, and Amazing Stories and F&SF where he did film and tv reviews. I’m not familiar with his writings but I’d be interested to know who here has read Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction and Reader’s Guide to Fantasy which he did, as they might be useful to own. (Died 1993.)
- Born April 30, 1938 — Larry Niven, 82. One of my favorite authors to read, be it Ringworld, The Mote in God’s Eye with Jerry Pournelle, or the Rainbow Mars stories which I love in the audiobook version. What’s your favorite Niven story? And yes, I did look up his Hugos. “Neutron Star” was his first at NyCon 3 followed by Ringworld at Noreascon 1 followed by “Inconstant Moon” (lovely story) the following year at L.A. Con I, “The Hole Man” (which I don’t remember reading) at Aussiecon 1 and finally “The Borderland of Sol” novelette at MidAmericaCon. He’s not won a Hugo since 1976.
- Born April 30, 1973 — Naomi Novik, 47. She wrote the Temeraire series which runs to nine novels so far. Her first book, His Majesty’s Dragon, won the Astounding Award. She most deservedly won the Nebula Award for Best Novel for Uprooted which is a most excellent read. I’ve not yet her Spinning Silver, so opinions are welcome.
- Born April 30, — Gal Gadot, 34. Wonder Woman of course in the DC film universe. Other genre work, well, other than voicing Shank on Ralph Breaks the Internet, there really isn’t any. She did play Linnet Ridgeway Doyle in the Kenneth Branagh production of Murder on the Orient Express which is quite lovely but hardly genre or even genre adjacent.
(11) SOUNDTRACK. Steve Vertlieb would like to introduce the world to French film composer, Thibaut Vuillermet.
(12) REVENGE OF THE GRINDHOUSE. SYFY Wire reports ”Trolls World Tour Rocks $100 Million On Vod”.
The decision to skip a theatrical release in the age of coronavirus was a wise move that led to big returns for DreamWorks’ Trolls World Tour.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the animated movie has racked up nearly $100 million in the three short weeks since it arrived on VOD and digital platforms Friday, April 10. With approximately 5 million rentals at $19.99 a pop, Universal has generated over $77 million from a digital release model that allows studios to keep an estimated 80 percent of profits. Since the traditional theatrical model relies on a 50-50 kind of split, a film playing in a physical venue has to make a lot more money in order for a studio to turn a profit.
The real point here is that Trolls Would Tour has brought in more tangible revenue during its first 19 days on demand than the first movie did during five months in theaters.
However, one theater chain intends to punish Universal for their plans to reproduce the success by simultaneously releasing movies in theaters and through video-on-demand, presumably trimming their revenue. The Hollywood Reporter covered the announcement: “AMC Theatres Refuses to Play Universal Films in Wake of ‘Trolls: World Tour'”.
AMC Theatres on Tuesday delivered a blistering message to Universal Pictures, saying the world’s largest cinema chain will no longer play any of the studio’s films in the wake of comments made by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell regarding the on-demand success of Trolls World Tour and what it means for the future of moviegoing post-coronavirus pandemic….
“The results for Trolls World Tour have exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability of PVOD,” Shell told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the numbers. “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats.”
In a strongly worded letter to Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Donna Langley, AMC Theatres chairman and-CEO Adam Aron said Shell’s comments were unacceptable. AMC is the largest circuit in the world.
“It is disappointing to us, but Jeff’s comments as to Universal’s unilateral actions and intentions have left us with no choice. Therefore, effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theaters in the United States, Europe or the Middle East,” Aron wrote.
“This policy affects any and all Universal movies per se, goes into effect today and as our theaters reopen, and is not some hollow or ill-considered threat,” he continued. “Incidentally, this policy is not aimed solely at Universal out of pique or to be punitive in any way, it also extends to any movie maker who unilaterally abandons current windowing practices absent good faith negotiations between us, so that they as distributor and we as exhibitor both benefit and neither are hurt from such changes….”
(13) CHICKEN EATER OF THE SEA. [Item by Chip Hitchcock.] From the Harvard Gazette: “Water Beast: New paper argues the Spinosaurus was aquatic, and powered by predatory tail”.
New paper argues the Spinosaurus was aquatic, and powered by predatory tail
Back in the Cretaceous period, 145 to 66 million years ago, dinosaurs dominated the land and sky. They also, a new paper argues, terrorized the aquatic realm. Recent fossil evidence has revealed that Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, among the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, was a creature of the water, with a center of gravity and a giant tail fin perfect for swimming. The same paper shares robotic modeling by two Harvard scientists that shows how that large, flexible tail fin — unique among dinosaurs — would have given the giant predator a deadly propulsive thrust in the water, similar to a salamander or crocodile tail.
The paper, “Tail-Propelled Aquatic Propulsion in a Theropod Dinosaur,” in the April 29 issue of Nature, uses new fossil evidence and robotically controlled models created by Harvard co-authors Stephanie E. Pierce and George V. Lauder, professors of organismic and evolutionary biology, to show its power.
Pierce said the new fossils were necessary to make their argument, as much of the fossil evidence of Spinosaurus, unearthed by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer, had been destroyed in World War II. University of Detroit paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim, the Nature paper’s lead author, had located more traces of the dinosaur in Morocco in 2014, and in 2018 he went back, successfully excavating extensive Spinosaurus remains. The fossils included tail vertebrae with meter-long spines that seemed to form an expanded paddle, raising questions as to what the tail was used for.
“The working hypothesis was that Spinosaurus used its tail to swim through water,” said Pierce, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Ibrahim and his team reached out to Pierce, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, to test their idea. She was immediately intrigued by the 5-plus-meter-long tail.
Yes, Dave, “Predatory Tail” would be a great name for a band.
(14) YOUR MISSION… “Nasa names companies to develop Moon landers for human missions”
Nasa has chosen the companies that will develop landers to send astronauts to the Moon’s surface in the 2020s.
The White House wants to send the next man and the first woman to the Moon in 2024, to be followed by other missions.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Alabama-based Dynetics were selected to work on landers under the space agency’s Artemis programme.
The 2024 mission will see astronauts walk on the Moon’s surface for the first time since 1972.
Combined, the contracts are worth $967m (£763m; €877m) and will run for a “base period” of 10 months.
“With these contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface,” said Nasa’s administrator Jim Bridenstine.
“This is the first time since the Apollo era that Nasa has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis programme.”
(15) RECIPES WITH CHARACTERS. “Need new recipes for quarantine? Pixar’s YouTube channel is here to help”. Entertainment Weekly shares some examples.
As Pixar taught us, anyone can cook… and now the animation studio is giving you something to cook.
The Pixar YouTube channel features a series called “Cooking With Pixar,” a collection of recipes inspired by the studio’s films. At the moment, the series only has three videos, but they should provide some inspiration if you’re in need of something new to cook — which, it’s fair to say, most of us probably are at this point.
(16) YOU’RE MELTING! “Nasa space lasers track melting of Earth’s ice sheets” – BBC has the story.
Scientists have released a new analysis of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed, from 2003 to 2019.
The study shows that ice losses from melting have outpaced increases in snowfall, resulting in a 14mm rise in global sea-levels over the period.
We’ve had a number of very similar reports to this recently.
What makes this one of interest is that it uses data from the highest-resolution satellite system dedicated to studying the poles – IceSat.
This system flies space lasers over glaciers and other ice fields to track their constantly shifting shape.
The US space agency (Nasa) has now launched two of these altimeter instruments.
The first, IceSat, operated between 2003 and 2009; the second, IceSat-2, was put up in 2018.
Thursday’s report is a first attempt to tie both satellites’ observations together.
(17) BROTHER GUY’S AIR. “Antarctic meteorites yield global bombardment rate”
A team of UK scientists has provided a new estimate for the amount of space rock falling to Earth each year.
It’s in excess of 16,000kg. This is for meteorite material above 50g in mass.
It doesn’t take account of the dust that’s continuously settling on the planet, and of course just occasionally we’ll be hit by a real whopper of an asteroid that will skew the numbers.
But the estimate is said to give a good sense of the general quantity of rocky debris raining down from space.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Horizon on Vimeo is a short film by Armond Dijcks based on images taken by the International Space Station.
[Thanks to Joyce Scrivner, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, Errolwi, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
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First!
13) Saw that. That’s wild!
RE: Niven, my first Niven was a collection of his Known Space shorts that my brother had. The last Niven I read was a re-read of a couple of his novels in 2017, including Ringworld..
(2) BOOKSTORE LOVE.
My device does not support a virtual background, which means the only way I’ll be able to have one is if I rig up an actual “greenscreen” behind me. I have not yet reached a sufficient level of FOMO to do it.
(5) NOT GENTEEL.
On plurals, sometimes genre can alter English. Thanks to Tolkien (and “Lord of the Rings”) “dwarves” is now an accepted plural of “dwarf”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/corrections/errors-and-omissions/errors-amp-omissions-a-plural-question-that-disney-answers-better-than-tolkien-2340760.html
Paul Weimer says RE: Niven, my first Niven was a collection of his Known Space shorts that my brother had. The last Niven I read was a re-read of a couple of his novels in 2017, including Ringworld..
I’m reasonably sure that was my first Niven as well. I have read Niven more recent than what you’ve read including all of the Lerner novels set in that universe which are actually quite good if not terribly Niven like. And the Rainbow Mars and Draco’s Tavern stories are both excellent.
(1) Congratulations Naomi. I read “Catfishing” a week or so ago, and enjoyed it thoroughly.
(10) “Spinning Silver” was great.
(10) Happy Birthday Larry! “Inconstant Moon” is a favorite (but I like almost all of his stuff).
(5) There’s an episode of Lingthusiasm (12: Sounds you can’t hear – babies, phonemes and accents) which covers the f/v distinction in English, amongst other things (including sounds/distinctions that appear in other languages and how they’re difficult to distinguish in English, etc)
Edit: it’s a podcast, found in most major podcast apps
My favorite independent Niven story is probably the novella “Rammer” (which I like a lot better than the novel he later spun out from it). I also think very highly of the first chapter (the original first chapter, that is) of Ringworld.
Second fifth!
@Paul Weimer
the anthology “Neutron Star”? My introduction to Niven also. 1968, IIRC.
gottacook says My favorite independent Niven story is probably the novella “Rammer” (which I like a lot better than the novel he later spun out from it). I also think very highly of the first chapter (the original first chapter, that is) of Ringworld.
So how different was the original version of that chapter? If I read It, and I may well have, I’m not remembering this many years on. What made it better than the chapter that now exists? And why the change?
(10) Niven also wrote his Kzinti into the animated Star Trek,
(12) I hear Cineworld is joining the boycott.
When I think about Larry Niven, most of his works blend together in my mind except for “Flash Crowd,” which came as close to predicting Internet behavior as anything could without an the existence of an actual Internet.
Niven — I still have a soft spot for A World Out of Time (was that the novel spun out of “Rammer”?). And pretty much all of the Known Space books through, say, Ringworld Engineers, with a special shout-out to Protector (which even when I was reading it I knew it was ridiculous but still enjoyed it).
I’m not sure about my first Niven. In my mind I’ve started to combine Beowulf Shaeffer and Louis Wu. (Beowulf Wu.) It’s been a while since I read any of his stuff since I last reread Ring World maybe 12 years ago. Might have been the short story with the flash crowd after someone knocks out the surveillance drones over a park.
(10) It is Keir Dullea’s birthday. Given his name, I always thought he must be European, but he was born in Cleveland. Best known for 2001 (and 2010) he was also in The Starlost and TV attempts at Brave New World (NBC) and Fahrenheit 451 (HBO). Anyone see Welcome to Blood City from 1977 with Dullea and Jack Palance?
Also Colm Meaney who was in two Star Trek series, three episodes of Stargate Atlantis and was apparently a go to guy whenever they needed an Irish police officer or priest.
Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a Pixel Scroll, and think things over.
Rob Thornton says When I think about Larry Niven, most of his works blend together in my mind except for “Flash Crowd,” which came as close to predicting Internet behavior as anything could without an the existence of an actual Internet.
If you enjoyed those stories, do not go anywhere near the Red Tide shared universe affair he did with with Matthew J. Harrington and Brad R. Torgersen that’s based on those stories. It seriously stinks. Think Puppy politics on full display and truly bad storytelling as well. Shudder! I actually paid for it thinking it’d be fun reading. My was I wrong.
(4) You mean they’re not going to leave the door that lovely purple color? Dang.
After the first printing of Ringworld (1970 Balllantine paperback original), it was pointed out to Niven that Louis Wu, wanting to extend his 200th birthday for more than 24 hours, should have been traveling to the west (i.e., one jump every hour to keep switching time zones) but instead was going east. All the city names in chapter 1 were therefore changed for the second printing. But I had the first printing (still do) and I believe Niven carefully chose the original city names for sound and rhythm – e.g., the single-sentence paragraph “In Cairo he walked,” later changed to the less felicitous “Munich” – not that there were any real differences between the cities themselves; indeed Louis laments to himself that they’re all becoming indistinguishable.
In the original, the birthday party that he abandons and later returns to is in Greenwich, and therefore the mention of how his lawncare had been done according to the old British method (“seed and roll for five hundred years,” chapter 2) makes a lot more sense. Louis jumps first to Munich, then Budapest and Cairo, before dialing for Tehran and finding himself in the hotel room where Nessus is waiting for him.
My favorite thing about “Flash Crowd” is that the unit of currency is the “chocolate dollar.”
gottacook says My favorite thing about “Flash Crowd” is that the unit of currency is the “chocolate dollar.”
Was that some sort of fannish joke on Niven’s part? He’s also got a story that refers to chocolate manhole covers if memory serves me right. It’s cute but really makes no sense.
@gottacook
The first edition is the one I refer to as having the world rotating backwards. Yes, it does read better than the fixed version.
(There’s a tradition that every one of his books has an error in the first edition. His usual reaction is “Oops”.)
Cat – I always assumed that “chocolate dollar” referred to a currency whose value was backed by chocolate (rather than gold, silver, etc.).
gottacook wisely suggestS that Cat – I always assumed that “chocolate dollar” referred to a currency whose value was backed by chocolate (rather than gold, silver, etc.).
Given that I gift all of my female medical care providers really good dark chocolate on a frequent basis, I can get behind a currency based on that backing!
My osteopathic manipulation therapist tomorrow is getting Spanish dark chocolate dipped orange slices that I found at the Italian grocer which is one of the few places open downtown currently. Of course they’re an essential business.
Nonfunctional!
Went out today to the post office, and barely made it safely down the outside stairs. My knee objected to being called on for such demanding work as stairs. (I made it, and back up again later. I’m fine.)
@5: that’s certainly a … colorful … metaphor. The more specific answer is in the original quote; English lures different languages into dark alleys, and robs them all. But even that doesn’t account for some irregularities, e.g. the plural of “dwarf” (which Sondheim riffed on, just in passing, in Into the Woods).
@10: the level of misogyny in Cooper’s work varies. The Cloud Walker assumes conventional roles but isn’t otherwise vicious — at least about women; it unloads hard on organized religion, but that was an easy target once SF started shedding rivets. (See, e.g., Davy.)
@10 bis: Searles was sometimes a boundary-stretcher in the Merril mold: one of his F&SF columns pushed Monty Python and the Holy Grail as a good fantasy (not just a comedy), which probably helped it to get a Hugo nomination.
@10 (Niven): one can a correlation (although not a direct causation) between the end of his Hugos and the beginning of his collaborations. I have warm memories from the 1970’s of a number of his stories, but in retrospect a lot of them have been visited by the Suck Fairy — A Gift from Earth is probably the worst example at novel length, but it’s not alone.
@10 (Novik): I was blown away by Spinning Silver; I know some people objected because gur zbfg-cevapvcyr punenpgre jvaqf hc zneelvat fbzrbar jub unf zvfgerngrq ure, but I think they’re simplifying a complex relationship.
I loved it to death. Personally, I liked it much better than Uprooted, even though I really liked Uprooted too. Three female MCs power the action, and the whole book is essentially about claiming your own power and shaping your own life.
@Chip —
Yeah, phhht on them, I say. She zneevrf uvz ba URE grezf, abg uvf, naq fur unf abg bayl gnhtug uvz gb inyhr ure crefbanyyl ohg nyfb gb inyhr gur uhzna enpr va trareny.
Niven) My first, probably rather unconventionally, was The Ringworld Engineers. Possibly even more unconventionally, I was in sixth grade at the time. If I had to pick a favorite today, it might be a short story collection; once upon a time it would have been the last third of Protector.
12) AMC needs Universal far more than Universal needs AMC. That letter is a suicide note.
I remembered that Niven was born 30 years to the day before me, of course, and I think I remembered Gal Gadot, but somehow I’d forgotten Baird Searles and Naomi Novik.
I’m pretty sure my first Niven was The Mote in God’s Eye and…I didn’t like it much. I didn’t hate it but I was disappointed with it but I’m not sure what I expected.. I tried Ringworld and I liked the ideas more than the execution. Legacy of Heorot I enjoyed much more even though there was a lot I didn’t like about it. I think there are multiple components to Niven’s work that I’ve liked but never all together in a single novel.
Yay, title credit! I had forgotten I’d suggested that one.
I’m pretty sure my first Niven was Footfall, which I still remember with some fondness though the Suck Fairy’s wingprints are pretty visible even from a distance.
Some potential good news for UK Filers, as the planned removal of VAT from ebook sales and digital magazine subscriptions has been brought forward to today.
However, from a quick glance at my Amazon wishlist not too many publishers seem to be passing on the saving to customers yet.
One of the things I remember about Footfall is the bit where the government had assembled a team of well-known SF writers to consult about the alien invasion, and how darned clever I felt when I figured out who, e.g., “Robert Anson” was a lightly-disguised stand-in for.
@ Joe H.: Where else have authors wrote in their fellow authors as stand-ins? The only ones that I have recognized were the barely disguised white magicians in Blish’s Black Easter. In that case, Heinlein was “Father Anson, a brusque engineer type who specialized in unclouding the minds of engineers.”
@16
No wonder the ice is melting: we’re shooting them with lasers!
@10 Bay Searles
His death hit me like the loss of a friend, though we never met or corresponded.
RGtSF was my favorite book as a kid. It’s still worth a read, as it captures a particular moment of sf development.
@Rob Thornton — I’m not sure if I’ve run into the barely-disguised-author thing elsewhere, although Niven & Pournelle did something slightly similar with their Inferno, where part of it takes place at an SF con room party and everybody is distracted from the protagonist because “Isaac” had just walked into the room.
10) — I missed Baird Searles’ name in the birthday list. I still have a copy of his Reader’s Guide to Fantasy, which I think is where I first encountered mention of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, amongst other things.
Rocket to the Morgue comes to mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_to_the_Morgue#Portrayal_of_science_fiction_culture_in_the_Golden_Age
Niven and Gerrold’s The Flying Sorcerers has a lot of references to SF authors.
Thinly disguised SF authors and fans also show up in Niven, Pournelle and Flynn’s Fallen Angels (including OGH as Mike Glider).
Note on predictive SF: I just read “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang (in Exhalation), which was written in 2010. This line caught my eye strongly
“The economy goes into a recession after the latest flu pandemic, prompting changes in the virtual worlds.”
@Andrew — Yes! Flying Sorcerers, where the one character is consistently referred to as “Purple” because the Universal Translator translated his name as “As a Color (shade of purple/gray).”
(Or something to that effect — it’s been years and I don’t have the book to hand to get the exact quote.)
@Contrarius: just so.
@Patrick Morris Miller: AMC needs Universal far more than Universal needs AMC. That letter is a suicide note. Who gets hurt worse by this remains to be seen. e.g., what fraction of their respective market shares does each hold? (Wikipedia says AMC has 8200 screens in the US and 2200 in Europe (but doesn’t give total screens for either area); it cites Universal as one of the historic “Big Five” with no context.) (Locally, AMC serially inherited a near-monopoly on mainstream movies, but three other chains have a presence — the newest multiplex is one of theirs, walking distance from the home I’m going to have to leave sometime.) AMC has been preparing for some time for a massive drop in ticket sales; all their new theaters have those horrid monster recliners (at least 50% less capacity than conventional seating) and the older one (itself a replacement) that I go to most often converted to these from conventional seating, so they may figure they can just double/triple/… up (easy to do with digital projectors) on fewer titles and expect that people who can’t get tickets for the time they want will hang around eating (and drinking — the newest AMCs have full liquor licenses) until the next show. AMC may lose some kids’ parties, but they may not think that’s a worthwhile market.
@Camestros Felaptron: Mote is Niven&Pournelle, not Niven; condemning him for a joint bore wasn’t exactly fair. (Mote was especially noisome locally; after an especially (and effectively) sardonic fanzine writer ripped it up one side and down the other, Pournelle reportedly attempted to raise a boycott of the local convention. The convention grew, and Pournelle was thoroughly burlesqued in a fannish musical a couple of years later.)
@Rob Thornton: I got up late this morning and was ninja’d by Mikey, but there are other older examples of authors-a-clef. We’ve periodically discussed the many disguised authors in Randall Garrett’s Too Many Magicians; mystery detective characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin also appear, but many of the magicians (“Sir Edward Elmer”, “Lyon Gandolphus”, …) are SF authors. I’m not sure about de Camp’s Goblin Tower, which ends at an obvious parody of an SF convention (including an invocation of whichever of Rotsler’s Rules “No costume is no costume” is) but didn’t have obvious people the last time I read it.
It may be news that a not-so-small mammal was abroad in the time of the dinosaurs, but is anyone surprised that it resembled a badger?
@David — Happy belated birthday!
@Chip
I was surprised that the reconstruction/artist’s conception looked so much like a long-legged badger. (I’ve seen a dead badger. Not a live one – though I saw a German shepherd that had tangled with a badger. It had been a beautiful dog…)
We don’t need no stinking badgers!
(12) I think Universal may be over-refining on results during the pandemic shutdown.Nearly everyone has been deprived of nearly all their usual sources of entertainment. On the other hand–I think AMC and Cineworld may kidding themselves, too. A lot of people will have discovered the comfort and convenience of “Hey, let’s stream a brand new movie tonight!”
Those “monster recliners”–Love them! I was previously never able to be comfortable in a movie theater seat.
Spinning Silver–I liked the ending, too.
@ Cat Eldridge; I’m pretty sure that ‘chocolate dollars’ refers to those disks of milk chocolate, covered with gold-colored foil, that pop up in the stores on the holidays.
And, I hope that you feel better soon!
(10) I really don’t understand how one can talk about Baird Searles without mentioning so many of his major achievements. Most importantly, The Science Fiction Shop (in Manhattan), a magnificent enterprise that was a gateway to the worlds of fanzines, small presses, and genre works that weren’t marketed within the SFFH categories, as well as something of a small work of art in itself. Also published an articulate reviewzine for a few years in the mid-1970s.
(Much of what turns up online about the shop isn’t terribly accurate: for example, the often-deplorable Wikipedia says the shop had four locations over time, although it really had only one. There’s even a small debate over its actual address. It would be nice to get an accurate “bio” of the shop; there are still folks around who worked there.)
Then there’s all his radio work, including dramatizations, dramatic readings, and interviews and panel discussions of sff works and writers, at least one theater piece in collaboration with Joanna Russ. There’s an extensive catalog at the Pacifica Radio Archives site, although little or none of it is freely available. That’s really unfortunate, because it’s the major part of his work, and isn’t limited to the genre.
The Reader’s Guide to Fantasy is excellent and as close to comprehensive as could be expected given the constraints of length and format; the SF Guide is very good, but more constrained by length in the subjects it can explore. His other books are less substantial.
I first met Baird at an undergraduate SF seminar taught by Allan Danzig when he was a “guest star”; and began shopping at the SF Shop shortly after it opened. I believe the first book I bought there was the hardcover To Die in Italbar, My most vivid memory of him is a visit to the shop where he inexplicably doing a deadpan impression of Ray Walston’s Uncle Martin, complete with intermittently appearing antennae. It was a perfect piece of stage business, never letting on that anything unusual was going on.
Thanks for adding information. We’re doing a birthday listing — a memory tickler — not an obituary or an encyclopedia article. We’re hoping they add something to the Scroll that kindles discussion in the comments. A piece that says everything there is to say stifles discussion.
There’s a story by Philip K. Dick in which (IIRC) some time travelers from the future trying to rebuild their civilization come back to the past to look for invention ideas—and they go to a science fiction convention. PKD names names, including himself, I think—something like “Phil Dick was crying in a corner somewhere.” (Like I said, IIRC, it was a long time ago and I probably can’t find the book of short stories just now). It was pretty hilarious.
Also, if memory serves, “Too Many Magicians” also featured at least a cameo from a Spanish surnamed secret agent who was clearly Napoleon Solo of “The Man from UNCLE.” Forget if Illya Kuryakin also appeared. (I’m on a rereading Man from UNCLE books kick right now.)
@John M. Cowan: yes, that story also includes a reference to a character’s uncle from (the island of) Man.
Missed the editing window, but wanted to add, re: Edmund Cooper, I read “Sea-Horse in the Sky” as a kid over and over. Reread it a few years ago, and it didn’t strike me as overly sexist. But that’s the only one I ever read.
Another SF-author-referencing book is Stirling’s “In the Court of the Crimson King” which opens at Worldcon, with many SF authors watching the landing of a probe on Mars.
The first SF magazine I subscribed to was Asimov’s when Searles was the book reviewer, and I bought many books on his recommendation (many many books…) – if he liked, I ended up liking it, which was really convenient for me.
10) I enjoyed Spinning Silver a great deal as well.
@Chip:
Would you happen to have a link?
Very true and I did try other Niven books afterwards. My point was more that what I did read, had parts I liked and disliked but often in different ways i.e. I never found a novel by him that I really clicked with but the ones I read implied that such a book existed 🙂
@Andrew: this was ~contemporary, a couple of decades pre-web. The commentary was in Don D’Ammassa’s fanzine Mythologies , whose page says pieces may be on line sometime. From the ToCs given, the barracking probably started in issue 11, and wasn’t by Mark Keller (who was co-responsible for the musical) as I’d thought; I don’t remember the names George Fergus or Tony Dalmyn at all, or what which one of them said — and there were probably lots of comments in the lettercol, which was substantial and active.