(1) HUGO CONTENDING ART BOOKS. The Daily Beast gives a rundown — “These Are 2019’s Hugo Awards Art Book Finalists”.
… We compiled the six art book finalists below to give you an idea of what’s competing for the venerable award in August, along with some information about them from Amazon….
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, $36 on Amazon: Illustrated by Charles Vess, Written by Ursula K. Le Guin. “Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the timeless and beloved A Wizard of Earthsea, this complete omnibus edition of the entire Earthsea chronicles includes over fifty illustrations illuminating Le Guin’s vision of her classic saga.”
(2) LARSON & JACKSON TOGETHER AGAIN. NPR’s Linda Holmes says “Brie Larson’s Directorial Debut Glitters With The Charming ‘Unicorn Store'”.
“Bringing a unicorn here is not an easy or inexpensive endeavor. You have to be the right sort of girl.”
The right sort of girl.
The backbone of Brie Larson’s offbeat directorial debut, the comedy Unicorn Store, is the idea of what it means to be the right sort of girl. Larson plays Kit, a woman pushing 30 who lives with her parents and favors an aesthetic heavy on rainbows, glitter and — yes — unicorns. And after she receives a couple of mysterious magical letters, she finds herself in the company of a man who calls himself The Salesman (Samuel L. Jackson). He’s the one who says these words, who tells her that she’s in line for a unicorn of her own. But she has to earn it. She has to be stable. She has to make a home for it. She has to be an adult, ironically, to be the right companion for a unicorn.
(3) NICE TRY? BBC reports “Google’s ethics board shut down”.
An independent group set up to oversee Google’s artificial intelligence efforts, has been shut down less than a fortnight after it was launched.
The Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) was due to look at the ethics around AI, machine learning and facial recognition.
One member resigned and there were calls for another to be removed.
The debacle raises questions about whether firms should set up such bodies.
Google told the BBC: “It’s become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can’t function as we wanted.
“So we’re ending the council and going back to the drawing board. We’ll continue to be responsible in our work on the important issues that AI raises, and will find different ways of getting outside opinions on these topics.”
There had been an outcry over the appointment of Kay Coles James, who is president of conservative thinktank The Heritage Foundation. Thousands of Google employees signed a petition calling for her removal, over what they described as “anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant” comments.
(4) HEY RUBE. Steve Davidson complains that he can’t evaluate what technical changes make Archive of Our Own eligible in the 2019 Hugo category for which it was nominated, then, disregarding the argument he just made, asks why AO3 wasn’t nominated in another category that isn’t designed to recognize technical changes: “The Hugo Awards Best Related Work Category and the AO3 Nomination” at Amazing Stories.
In terms of AO3, since I can’t see the “change”, how am I to judge the substantiability? Maybe, in my mind, it isn’t transformative enough to warrant a vote. But I can’t make that judgement because I have no reference. I do not have the opportunity to weigh in on the Hugo Administrator’s choices.
Third: we’ve already determined that websites can qualify under the Best Fanzine category and we can read right in the definition of Best Related Work that works qualify for that category “provided that they do not qualify for another category”.
Why doesn’t a website featuring fanfic qualify for the Best Fanzine category? Call me a rube, but I can hardly think of a better category for a collection of fanfic than Best Fanzine. In fact, I seem to recall that a bunch of highly regarded professional authors published their fanfic in…fanzines. (The printed kind that some of you may not be familiar with.)
(5) BOOKS SHE LOVES. Shelf Awareness brings you “Reading with… Sarah Pinsker”:
Book you’re an evangelist for:
Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. It’s a wordless depiction of an immigration experience. The protagonist doesn’t share a language with anyone in his new country; their language is gibberish to him and gibberish to the reader. Any item we might recognize is rendered in such a way as to make it foreign to the reader as well, so we experience the confusion that the man feels: strange fruit, strange animals, strange monuments. Tan’s illustrations tell the immigrant’s story a thousand times better than words could have.
Book you’ve bought for the cover:
Saga Press is reissuing three Molly Gloss novels over the next few months (Outside the Gates,Dazzle of DayandWild Life) followed by her first collection, Unforeseen. I already had two of the books, but I’ve preordered all four of these both for her prose and the gorgeously stark matching covers by Jeffrey Alan Love.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- April 6, 1967 — Star Trek’s “City on the Edge of Forever”, written by Harlan Ellison, first aired.
- April 6, 1968 — 2001: A Space Odyssey was released.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born April 6, 1905 — Thomas P. Kelley. Writer of Thirties pulp novels that were serialised first in Weird Tales (The Last Pharaoh, A Million Years in the Future and I Found Cleopatra), Uncanny Tales (The Talking Heads) and Eerie Tales (The Weird Queen). (Died 1982.)
- Born April 6, 1918 — Kaaren Verne. She appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon as Charlotte Eberli. The film btw was very much fanfic bearing little resemblance to the original premise of Holmes. She also appeared in The Twilight Zone, Kraft Suspense Theatre and Fireside Theatre (freelance writers such as Rod Serling were a script source for the latter). (Died 1967.)
- Born April 6, 1935 — Douglas Hill. Prolific writer of short novels for both adults and younger of a sword and sorcery bent even when within an SF setting. Best known series include The Last Legionary, Demon Stalker and Huntsman. He served for a short period as assistant editor of the New Worlds magazine under Michael Moorcock. (Died 2007.)
- Born April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 82. He is best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, first appearing in The Empire Strikes Back. Other genre appearances include being Harvey Dent in Batman and voicing Two Face In The Lego Batman Movie.
- Born April 6, 1947 — John Ratzenberger, 72. In-house voice actor for Pixar whose roles have included Hamm in the Toy Story franchise, The Abominable Snowman in the Monsters, Inc. franchise, The Underminer in The Incredibles franchise, and Mack in the Cars franchise. He made minor live appearances in Superman and Superman II.
- Born April 6, 1948 — Larry Todd, 71. Writer and cartoonist, best known for the decidedly adult Dr. Atomic strips that originally appeared in the underground newspaper The Sunday Paper and his other work in underground comics, often with a SF bent. In our circles, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Science Fiction and Imagination magazines being three of his venues. He also did some writing for If magazine. He also did, and it’s really weird art, the cover art and interior illustrations for Harlan Ellison’s Chocolate Alphabet.
- Born April 6, 1981 — Eliza Coupe, 38. Tiger, one three main roles in Future Man, a web series where a video game apparently is actually real and deadly. She also had a recurring role on Quantico as Hannah Wyland, a series I swear is edging into genre. She was also in Monster Mash (also known as Monster Mash: The Movie and Frankenstein Sings), based on the Bobby “Boris” Pickett song “Monster Mash” and other sources.
(8) SPOTTED OWL. Mike Lawson has won the Spotted Owl Award for his mystery House Witness. The Spotted Owl Award is handed out by a group called Friends of Mystery, based in Portland, Oregon. Eligible are mysteries written by authors from the Pacific Northwest. The finalists were —
- Baron Birtcher – Fistful Of Rain
- Robert Dugoni – A Steep Price
- Warren Easley – Moving Targets
- G.M. Ford – Soul Survivor
- Elizabeth George – The Punishment She Deserves
- Stephen Holgate – Madagascar
- Mike Lawson – House Witness – winner
- Martin Limon – The Line
- John Straley – Baby’s First Felony
- Jon Talton – The Bomb Shelter
(9) CARTER BROWN. The winner of the inaugural Carter Brown Mystery Writing Award has also been announced:
- Alibi for a Dead Man by Wilson Toney
The award is named in honor of the prolific Australian author Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka Carter Brown).
(10) MARKETPLACE. Here’s a service someone should start:
(11) WATCH OUT FOR THOSE BOUNDERS. Jim C. Hines referees “Bounding Into Comics vs. Fonda Lee” and finds it’s definitely not a fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.
I got to meet and hang out with author Fonda Lee at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop a few years back. Recently, Lee was at Barnes and Noble and observed:
“This is what modern fantasy writers are up against. In my local B&N, most authors are lucky to find a copy of their book, super lucky if it’s face out. There are 3.5 shelves for Tolkien. 1.5 for Jordan. Here’s who we compete against for shelf space: not each other, but dead guys.” (Source)
Her Tweets got a lot of attention, leading to an article by John Trent at Bounding Into Comics that derides Lee and accuses her, among other things, of criticizing Tolkien. Not that Lee ever did this. Her second Tweet in that thread said, “Before you @ me about the importance of classics, I love LOTR too, okay?” One might almost suspect Trent’s comment, “Lee isn’t the first person to criticize Tolkien,” of being an attempt to stir up shit.
An effective attempt, it seems. Lee has been barraged by Tolkien Defenders over on Twitter….
(12) THE BREW THAT IS TRUE. “How Artificial Intelligence Is Used To Make Beer”.—Forbes has the story.
There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can make our world more productive and effective. There are even breweries that are using AI to enhance beer production. Is this brilliant or unbelievable? While it’s admittedly too soon to tell, using data to inform brewmasters’ decisions and the possibility of personalized brews makes AI-brewed beer definitely intriguing.
(13) SJWC RETRACTION. Yesterday’s NPR-headline Pixel was quickly corrected: “All Right. Some Cats Do Fetch”.
A tongue-in-cheek NPR.org headline comparing the fetching abilities of cats and dogs revealed a truth known by countless cat owners: Some cats do fetch.
“Cats Don’t Fetch, But Know Their Names As Well As Dogs, Researchers Say,” the original headline proclaimed. This didn’t sit well with some readers.
“In what world do cats not fetch?” Kate Haffey commented on Facebook.
“Artemis knows her name and fetches,” Brandi Whitson said on Twitter. “She’s obsessed.” …
(14) HAPPINESS IS… And while we’re pushing your buttons, read this article in the Portland (ME) Press-Herald — “Dog owners are much happier than cat owners, survey finds”.
The well-respected survey that’s been a barometer of American politics, culture and behavior for more than four decades finally got around to the question that has bedeviled many a household.
Dog or cat?
In 2018, the General Social Survey for the first time included a battery of questions on pet ownership. The findings not only quantified the nation’s pet population – nearly 6 in 10 households have at least one -they made it possible to see how pet ownership overlaps with all sorts of factors of interest to social scientists.
Like happiness.
For starters, there is little difference between pet owners and non-owners when it comes to happiness, the survey shows. The two groups are statistically indistinguishable on the likelihood of identifying as “very happy” (a little over 30 percent) or “not too happy” (in the mid-teens).
But when you break the data down by pet type – cats, dogs or both – a stunning divide emerges: Dog owners are about twice as likely as cat owners to say they’re very happy, with people owning both falling somewhere in between.
(15) HISTORIC GADGET. “Heath Robinson: WW2 codebreaking machine reconstructed” – BBC has the story. For any Filers not in on the joke: the US equivalent to Heath Robinson is Rube Goldberg — but this machine worked.
A World War Two codebreaking machine has been reconstructed after a seven-year project so it can run in public for the first time.
The Heath Robinson has been restored at The National Museum of Computing in Milton Keynes by a team of six.
The machine was an early attempt to automate code-cracking and, due to its complexity, was named after the illustrator W Heath Robinson.
Phil Hayes, of the museum, said the work was “quite an achievement”.
He said it completed using a hand-drawn circuit diagram along with replica circuits based on 1940s technology.
(16) OLD HABITS DIE HARD. CNN wondered why “Why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVDs in the mail”. They came up with six reasons. In the process, they made Cat Eldridge’s day: “Years ago I had an argument with a techie who insisted that new technologies always drive out old technologies. I said that’s simply not true. And here’s proof of that.” Cat and Bruce Sterling agree.
Remember when Netflix used to be a DVD-by-mail company? Well, for 2.7 million subscribers in the US, it still is.
The familiar red envelopes have been arriving in customers’ mailboxes since 1998 and helped earn the company a healthy $212 million profit last year.
Why are so many people still using this old-school service in the age of streaming? There are a number of reasons.
(17) FIRE IN THE HOLE. NPR watches as “Japan (Very Carefully) Drops Plastic Explosives Onto An Asteroid”.
Early Friday morning, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft detonated an explosive device over a small asteroid. The goal was to create a fresh crater that will later be studied by the spacecraft.
Researchers watched from mission control in Sagamihara, Japan, and clapped politely as Hayabusa2 released an experiment known as the Small Carry-on Impactor. The device consisted of a copper disk packed with HMX high-explosive. Once the mothership had safely moved out of the line of fire, the impactor apparently detonated, firing the disk into the side of the asteroid. A camera released by Hayabusa2 appeared to catch the moment of impact, which sent a stream of ejecta into space.
…”These particular asteroids are the precursors to what Earth was made from,” Connolly says. Ryugu is rich in carbon, and minerals on its surface contain water and so-called prebiotic compounds that could have started life on this planet.
“Ryugu is a time capsule,” says Connolly.
This is not Hayabusa2’s first attack. In February, the spacecraft physically touched down on Ryugu and fired a small pellet into its surface. The dust kicked up by that opening shot was collected and eventually will provide researchers with detailed information about the asteroid’s makeup.
But to really understand Ryugu, researchers also want to know what’s down there, and that’s why they created Friday’s crater. In a few weeks, after the dust has settled, the little spacecraft will survey the blast site to see what lies beneath. It may even land a second time to collect subsurface samples.
(18) CLASSIC APOLLO 11 PUBLICITY RESOURCE. In honor of the flight’s 50th anniversary, David Meerman Scott has scanned in his collection of Apollo 11 press kits:
Press kits prepared by the public relations staff at the major contractors for the Apollo 11 mission provided valuable additional information not found in NASA issued news releases. Reporters and editors from media outlets including television and newspapers had access to such documents from dozens of manufacturers while working on stories about the first lunar landing.
(19) STAR TREK FAN FILM. Gizmodo/io9 is drawing your attention to a fan film (“Temporal Anomaly is a Star Trek Fan Film Half a Decade in the Making”). The film appears as two parts, each from 24–27 minutes each.
First conceived and pitched to Kickstarter backers in 2013, Temporal Anomaly is an ambitious fan project set in the Star Trek universe, a nearly hour-long fan film created by Power543 Fan Films.
(20) DISCOVERY. The Popcast analyzes The Borg Paradox.
If you thought the last Paradox was good, you’re going to love this one. The Borg are here and Resistance is Futile!
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Stephen Cunnane, in “Gary the Gargoyle: Short and Breakdown” on Vimeo, offers a short fiilm about a gargoyle and an analysis of how the creatures in the film were designed.
[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Cora Buhlert, Conrarius, John King Tarpinian, Bill, rcade, Martin Morse Wooster, Dann, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
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Why the fuss about the release of a film Brie Larson made in 2017? Netflix is obviously trying to cash in on the success of CAPTAIN MARVEL, because UNICORN STORE got really blah reviews when first released (VARIETY called it “a creative misfire”).
First!
10) Indeed, I could make good use of such a service.
6) Didn’t realize they came out on the same day a year apart.
5) I second the recommendation for The Arrival (no relation to any movie of a similar name). It’s stunning, both visually and conceptually.
10) Well into young adulthood, I was under the impression that “segue” was pronounced “seeg”, and that “arraigned” and “harangued” were alternate spellings of the same word.
16) If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone online say things like “Who still even knows what a DVD is?” or “Who uses Blu-rays?” or “Why does anyone have a book?” or “Who even knows what the post office is?” or “Who’s still on Facebook?” or “Who uses checks?” or “Who uses cash?”, in all seriousness, like they really do not know any such people and therefore they assume the whole world is like them… well.
Eli notes If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone online say things like “Who still even knows what a DVD is?” or “Who uses Blu-rays?” or “Why does anyone have a book?” or “Who even knows what the post office is?” or “Who’s still on Facebook?” or “Who uses checks?” or “Who uses cash?”, in all seriousness, like they really do not know any such people and therefore they assume the whole world is like them… well.
It’s like the meme among RWNJs that the USPS is doomed because no one is using it and besides everyone knows that it’s subsidising that unltrarich SJW and his book buisness, so it serves no purpose anyways. And besides everyone knows that local bookstores are doomed to go out of buisness, well, aren’t they already out of buisness as I certainly don’t use them and nobody I know uses them either.
Here in Portland, Maine, we’ve three new bookstores downtown doing just fine thank you. And the Books-A-Million out by the Mall is the single most profitable in the entire buisness.
(4) HEY RUBE.
That piece is a logical mess, it wanders all over the place, and can’t seem to pick a lane and stay in it.
It reads to me like an “everything including the kitchen sink” attempt to discredit the AO3 nomination in as many different ways as possible — but it sabotages itself with the irrationality of the juxtaposition of the various reasons given.
Including the use of an iconic K/S slash image — which he couldn’t just post, he had to be sure and beat the reader over the head with the fact that it’s an iconic slash image, in an attempt to stir up anger about fanfiction. 🙄
@12 sounds cute at first, but ISTM it comes down to the same GIGO problem as (e.g.) sentence-setting algorithms; assuming that the 10 best- or worst-selling IPAs can be used as indexes without correcting for distribution, marketing, intent, etc. is rubbish. (Maybe the author just left out the details, maybe not.) And that completely leaves out taste; as far as I’m concerned, all of the western monster hops taste vile — beer should not taste like pine tar and/or boiled grapefruit rind — but they’re in fashion now.
edit: Fifth!
(10) MARKETPLACE.
Such a service would have saved me a lot of embarrassment in my early years; there are still a few words I have to consciously stop and pronounce correctly, like “eloquent” and “epitome”.
As a child, I learned to talk in the same way that the adults talked in the adult novels I read, and I mistakenly believed that was the way most adults talked. (At least in my small town, most of them didn’t.) It frequently got me accused of being a know-it-all or trying to impress people.
(13) SJWC RETRACTION. Yesterday’s NPR-headline Pixel was quickly corrected: “All Right. Some Cats Do Fetch”.
Cats are complex creatures. I’ve known ones that liked to swim, I’ve known ones that ate mushrooms off pizzas but ignored the meat on the same pizza. And today both of my companions were nowhere to be seen when Phil went to tend to them despite there have been one and always just one on sentry watch for the first month every day he’s been there.
HowardB: <rant>
WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE POSTS ABOUT THINGS I DON’T LIKE??? HOW DARE THEY???!!! 🙄
(1) This is a nice enough rundown of the category. But, uh…how much research did the author do?
I’m not so sure that I agree with ya 100% with your police work there, Lou. Or at least this article could’ve used some editing. Plus he just swiped the descriptions of the items from Amazon and Kickstarter. Hopefully some one comes out with an in-depth write-up of the nominees.
I had a cat that used to go with me when I took my infant daughter out in the stroller for a walk around the block.
(7) Ah, I loved Dr. Atomic comix! One of the endearing features of the strip was the ‘maker’ aspect. Todd loved to design elaborate pipes, and he would diagram them with great clarity. I once knew someone who followed one of his designs, and it worked perfectly. So I’m told. Gags and situations from the handful of issues of the title still return to tickle my mind. Besides being funny, he was always alert to SFnal situations for comedy.
I found out about the Ellison/Todd team-up a day too late to get a copy autographed by both. I decided to see if Mr. Ellison would autograph it anyway, and was still some ways away from the plastic tent where he was writing a story, and heard a voice bellowing at some unlucky soul, “NO! I’M NOT SIGNING ANY GODDAMN AUTOGRAPHS UNTIL I FINISH THIS GODDAMN STORY!” “Golly,” I said, turning left. “Harlan talked to me!”
Lodestar/Hugo finalists The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and Elevenfox Gambit —er — Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee are both on sale at Amazon UK. Also, previous Hugo finalist Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty appears to finally have a kindle edition in the UK, and wouldn’t it be nice if Amazon hooked up their “ask for a Kindle edition” thing to an email subscription to let you know when one is published so I don’t have to constantly stalk everything I’m hoping eventually gets released in a format I can hold. Hmph.
Re: Ao3 — given how many previous finalists and winners have been compilations of several years of work and this is the first year the archive has been on the ballot, I have no problem taking the Ao3 as a whole work, although there have also been changes during 2018 (the big one was the extensive search engine upgrade but there’s also been a bunch of other updates to everything from the log in authentication to tag wrangling). If it gets nominated in the future, then whether there have been significant changes compared to December 2018 would be more important.
I’ll be interested to see what the packet submission looks like.
I nominate a couple of fic writers every year in the Fan Writer category. I’d be delighted to see one make the ballot, but I’ve not seen any on the longlists yet. Maybe someday!
(1) Hugo Contending Art Books
I was a bit disappointed to see two books that aren’t exactly art books on the ballot (Earthsea is an work of fiction with some illustrations, and the Tolkien is more of a Related Work imo), but they’re all still good finalists and I like seeing the category tested. I’ll be curious to see what the longlist looks like, too.
(10) Marketplace
I could’ve used that, sigh. Still could.
(16) Old Habits Die Hard
Different old technology, but: Whenever I drop in on the home design blog world there are a bunch of LPs around. Cassette tapes don’t seem to have acquired the same retro appreciation, except in art, so I suppose it depends on the old technology.
@JJ
Adults called me precocious a lot. I could never figure out why it was said in such a disapproving tone — the dictionary definition didn’t seem so bad.
PS. Astolat, one of the founders of the OTW and the Archive* has responded to the nomination here. (Am trying not to break her “don’t make my pro name and fan name easy to find together on google” rule.)
*Also of earlier fandom-specific archive software, and Vividcon, and Yuletide. If there’s an award for creating fannish institutions, she really ought to be on the list.
(19) STAR TREK FAN FILM.
The production values on that are pretty amazing, and I give them kudos for it. I just wish they’d had a better script to work with.
Meredith: Astolat, one of the founders of the OTW and the Archive* has responded to the nomination here.
That’s a lovely post. I just wish she’d made a distinction between who should feel that they share in the recognition (all of the participants in the website, regardless of their role) and what is actually being recognized (not the fiction). But there are a lot of people who are just not willing to hear that.
JJ
I was just watching “Corner Gas,” Canada’s most popular sitcom, and in the opening scene, Brent and Wanda are looking at the videos for rent in the gas station. Brent complains, “All the good ones are taken. Nothing left but the ones with poor production values.”
Wanda says, “Production values don’t matter. What matters is good writing and characters.” While she’s talking, a boom mike comes down, almost into her face, and she pushes it away without looking up.
(14) I wonder about the direction of causality in pet owners’ senses of happiness. Taking myself as a handy example: I love dogs, and I’d love to own a dog. But I couldn’t take good care of it, thanks to my complicated and variable health problems, and I refuse to set up another creature for easily foreseeable suffering thanks to my own enervated sense of responsibility. I own cats, because I can take proper care of them, and I love them and they make me glad, even as my complicated and variable health problems make me sad.
Much thinkiness, not ready to say stuff.
7) John Ratzenberger also had a minor appearance in Empire Strikes Back.
16) Is me. Mostly for the much larger selection of DVDs vs. streaming options, especially for somebody with relatively niche tastes like myself. One minor correction, though — DVDs do vanish from the service all the time — in most cases I assume it’s because they originally purchased a finite number of physical discs, the discs are now out-of-print, and over time the available copies all end up either damaged or lost in the mail. My DVD queue has a fairly lengthy section at the end where the availability is listed as “unknown”, and items from elsewhere in my queue change status to “unknown” on a fairly regular basis.
It’s especially frustrating with TV series where they have discs 2, 4 and 5 available but 1 and 3 are unavailable.
13) My cat Sam (aka Mahasamatman) taught himself to catch his favorite Beanie Baby in midair. At one point he used to fetch drinking straws but now he doesn’t bother. If I could only get him to sleep on SF….
I’m always typing “pronounce {something or other}” into a search engine. It doesn’t reply, “oh, sweetie,” though.
7) Actually, John Ratzenberger has been in every Pixar feature film.
John Lorentz says Actually, John Ratzenberger has been in every Pixar feature film.
Did I say he hadn’t?
I’ve found so many genre short films that fit this description. Gorgeous looking stuff, but the scripts are lifeless and the acting matches them.
Marshall Ryan Maresca says I’ve found so many genre short films that fit this description. Gorgeous looking stuff, but the scripts are lifeless and the acting matches them.
All the Trek fanfic video productions I’ve watched have suffered form exactly that problem. They all look fantastic, but the acting sucks in a major way and the scripts are just plain awful. Even the ones that used the scripts from the original series managed to suck any life out of them.
2) “Don’t stop us from being evil ”
4) I continue to be confused of what this site you s nominated for. The category says ” “either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.”.
If I check out Wikipedia’s entry for Non-Fiction, it refers to text or content. A website, search engine or new emojis isn’t really content or text. And I can’t define source code or graphics as non-fiction. The content of the site is fiction, right?
So what is the Non-Fiction or content that was nominated?
13) Vlad used to love to play fetch when he was small. He had a favourite toy that was a faux foxtail. When he jumped up in the bed with it in his mouth, you knew it was time to play fetch with him.
Today I am one of the lucky 2.7 million. 😉
I get the discs for a few reasons.
1. As Joe noted, there’s a much better selection.
2. My only net access is through my phone’s hotspot. My cell reception is lousy at my house, AND Verizon limits my total high-speed GB from phone to computer (unlimited GB within the phone itself) so streaming is hit-or-miss.
3. I resent the move to make everyone reliant on streaming. Break the stream-iarchy, people!
4. My fourth reason can easily be interpreted as not-quite-legal, but I can live with it (no, I don’t distribute anything illegally). Refer back to Joe’s comment about DVDs going out of circulation.
Hampus Eckerman: The category says ” “either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.”.
I think you are mentally reading it as “noteworthy primarily for non-fiction” rather than “noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text”. The two phrases are similar, but not the same.
The noteworthy aspects don’t have to meet the dictionary definition of “non-fiction”; they just have to be something other than fiction.
He never said he was a god. But then, he’s a cat. He didn’t have to.
JJ:
I’m thinking of this part:
I think we can agree that a website is not “non-fiction” – if we aren’t talking about the user guide or specific pages. If so, it is the fiction that is nominated, but only because it is noteworthy because of the website it resides on?
Hampus Eckerman: it is the fiction that is nominated, but only because it is noteworthy because of the website it resides on?
The content of the site is fiction — but it’s not the fiction which is a Hugo Finalist. My reading of it is that it is the platform — the functionality — which is notable. Fan fiction is posted and published in lots of places, including in fanzines.
What is special about AO3 is the way that it has provided 1) a place free from corporate interference, profit-minded decision-making, and content restrictions, and 2) with a self-built UX which facilitates easy posting, tagging, warning, bookmarking, kudos, and extremely fine-tuned searching — which, in a database of half a million works, is no trivial thing.
Yes, but my point is that the platform does not seem to be eligible in that category. It can’t be defined as non-fiction. Neither interface, search engine nor categorization is non-fiction.
And if we look again at the description:
If it isn’t non-fiction the platform is nominated for, that leaves us fiction that is noteworthy for something other than the text.
Again, I have a very hard time understanding what the site is nominated for that fits with the rules of the category. When I read the rules, I see the only parts eligible as non-fiction (text) or fiction (text) with other noteworthy aspects. I just can’t see how a web platform can be described as text.
Note: There might a language barrier here and if so, I’d appreciate if someone told me if I make the wrong interpretation of “non-fiction. The swedish translation means something like “litterature of facts”. The english version seems broader, but does a search engine really fit into it?
Hampus says stubbornly Again, I have a very hard time understanding what the site is nominated for that fits with the rules of the category. When I read the rules, I see the only parts eligible as non-fiction (text) or fiction (text) with other noteworthy aspects. I just can’t see how a web platform can be described as text.
It’s not being nominated for the content at all, but rather for the technological platform that makes that writing and sharing in a community setting very user friendly.
Trust me — they’ve done something quite remarkable here. Indeed it’s science fictional in and of itself, as what they have done has been attempted and failed to be created before. They’re building a true virtual community platform.
So forget the content. Some other group may take this some day and decide to collect the stories of cosplayers. Or queer storytelling groups. Or whatever.
(4), and AO3 in general:
I’m very happy for AO3, and on the other hand you can count me among those who doesn’t really know how to interpret its place on the ballot.
I think my position is this:
If it’s being nominated as a venue for fiction, then I would say the correct category for such a nomination (if one exists) would be “Best Fanzine”. (This would be in line with how File770 and RSR have been nominated; not necessarily just for the original content — but also for the community-building, the indexing-and-search-tools, etc.)
If it’s being nominated for technical/infrastructural achievement, then I think the nomination should be clear on that! “AO3 tagging system” or “AO3 New Search Functionality” would be a whole different thing (although, alas, that probably wouldn’t have gotten the votes to make finalist…)
Both of those would be clearer and better-defined than the all-encompassing “AO3 for Best Related Work” situation we have at the moment.
And it’s all well and good to say “Well, it’s a nomination for all of it together” (it really is!), but I’m really not sure we’ve got a category that’s remotely appropriate for that.
—
It’s not that I’m worried about AO3’s worthiness, or about people misinterpreting or misrepresenting the nomination’s significance. It’s that AO3 qualifying for “Best Related Work” seems to me to drive towards unfortunate effects on “Best Related Work” as a category.
For one thing, if AO3 qualifies this year, I can’t help but assume it’ll qualify next year, too. And the year after that, and so on, hopefully for many many years. In that case, the problem can get much much worse — AO3 can be a perennial nominee without ever making clear what it’s being nominated for, what it’s content in a given year was. We already have that problem in several categories, particularly the ones keyed to people rather than works; I’d hate to see it in Best Related Work as well.
For another, if AO3 qualifies as a best related work, without any clear definition of what it’s being nominated for… I don’t like the doors that opens up. Can I nominate “Worldcon” for being a huge project I appreciate very much, that’s absolutely genre-and-fandom-related? Ultimately, I’m worried this might be a low-key hijacking of the award, pivoting it from one fairly clear focus to a very, very different one.
None of which changes the fact that AO3 is a fantastic project and it’s really nice to see that recognized. Come the Hugo voting deadline, I honestly don’t know if I’m likely to put AO3 at the top of my ballot, or under No Award — because the question that reduces to is “does this even belong in this category,” and I don’t feel I’ve found a conclusive answer yet.
@Meredith:
A million times this.
Gully File is my name
Pixels are my nation
To-read stacks my dwelling place
Hugo ballot my destination
Hampus Eckerman: If it isn’t non-fiction the platform is nominated for, that leaves us fiction that is noteworthy for something other than the text.
This is a false binary. It can be nominated 1) for its fictional content (in which case it belongs in the Fanzine category), or 2) for its non-fictional content (it doesn’t really have any), or 3) if its content is fictional, for notable aspects other than the fiction (in which case, it belongs in the Related Work category).
You are assuming that “notable aspects other than the fiction” = “non-fiction”. This is not the case.
Standback: If it’s being nominated for technical / infrastructural achievement, then I think the nomination should be clear on that!
I think it is clear. If the Hugo Admins felt that it was on the ballot for its fiction, they would have disqualified it, just as they disqualified the Writers of the Future Anthology from the Related Work category in 2002.
Standback: if AO3 qualifies this year, I can’t help but assume it’ll qualify next year, too. And the year after that, and so on
I don’t think so. I think it’s just like Walton’s or Bourke’s or Scalzi’s compilations of works which were individually-published in a bunch of different years leading up to the year when they were published as a compilation and made the ballot for Best Related Work. The AO3 platform as it existed at the end of 2018 was the sum compilation of all of the features and functionality which had been built into the site in previous years.
If Walton republished a new edition of her compilation with two more years of Hugo summaries added, it would almost certainly be ruled not re-eligible, for not having significantly changed. If she added 20 years, it would almost certainly be ruled re-eligible. Likewise, I don’t think that the AO3 site will be re-eligible unless and until its platform changes massively — in other words, probably never.
Which is why all of the AO3 contributors making jokes about their porn being Hugo Nominees are sabotaging what is probably the site’s only chance at a Hugo trophy — because at the rate they’re going, they’re going to piss off a lot of Hugo voters and get it No-Awarded.
@JJ:
But in any given year, a new summary post would be eligible; a new series of posts would be eligible; a clear continuation of an existing series would be eligible. “Walton’s 20xx Posts re: Hugo History” would be totally eligible, for any year in which she writes them.
Another difference is that Walton published a completed work, which makes it extremely clear on scope. Whereas AO3, as a whole, wasn’t “completed” in 2018 in any sense of the word; so it’s not being nominated as “this is a complete work”, and we can’t possibly define whether or not some future version is or isn’t “a substantial revision”. There’s no way to make the comparison; it’s not even clear what’s being compared.
I don’t think the Hugo Admins can be interpreted as taking a clear stance on eligibility here; certainly not an authoritative one. Hugo Admins generally tend not to do that; if people are willing to nominate it, specifically in a category as ill-defined as BRW, the Hugo Admins will very likely leave it up to the voters to interpret as they will.
That’s some of the issue here — there is no authority who can tell us what the AO3 nomination “means.” There are dozens or hundreds of people who nominated it (possibly not all in the same category!); probably different people meant different things by it; and neither AO3 nor the Hugos have royalty who can pronounce a One True Answer.
Which makes sense. It just introduces a degree of ambiguity over what’s even being recognized (and what, in the future, can be recognized) that I don’t think is great for the Hugos as an institution.
And another thought, if we’re already using Walton as a comparison:
Imagine, instead, that Walton had published her collection three years ago.
And then she came out with a new edition, with a couple of new essays, as you say.
Are you saying the new edition wouldn’t be eligible if the original collection had been nominated in its publication year, but would be eligible if it hadn’t been nominated previously?
That doesn’t make much sense to me. And that’s a lot of the problem with a “work” whose scope, whose boundary points, just aren’t defined. 🙁
JJ:
No, I am not. I have been talking about case 2 and 3 as you mention them, as they are the ones applicable for the category.
And I see that can’t be nominated on what you call 2 (and I called 1) as a website isn’t non-fiction. That leaves case 3 where the fiction is npminated because of the noteworthy aspect of being placed on AO3. I can’t interpate “if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text” in any other way.
Cat Eldridge:
I’m not discussing worthiness, heroic work, enormous value or anything else. I’m trying to understand what part of the rules people say make it eligible and how they interpret that rule and wording.
Standback: But in any given year, a new summary post would be eligible; a new series of posts would be eligible; a clear continuation of an existing series would be eligible. “Walton’s 20xx Posts re: Hugo History” would be totally eligible, for any year in which she writes them.
I think that Jo Walton’s “I’ve added 1 year of Hugo summaries to my series” would stand about as good a chance of making the ballot as AO3’s “We’ve added the ability to do an additional level of AND/OR on searches”. Generally speaking (though sadly not always), things that have sufficient support to make the Related Work ballot are significant works.
Standback: There are dozens or hundreds of people who nominated it (possibly not all in the same category!); probably different people meant different things by it; and neither AO3 nor the Hugos have royalty who can pronounce a One True Answer.
It doesn’t matter why any particular person nominated AO3. Joe Q. Hugo Nominator doesn’t get to decide whether something stays on the ballot. If the Hugo Admins couldn’t find anything notable about the site other than the fiction, they would have disqualified it (as they have disqualified other fictional works in the past). The fact that they did not disqualify it says that they felt that it does have notable aspects other than the fiction.
The Hugo Admins have disqualified a number of things over the years, even though they got enough nominations to make the ballot. It’s not a frequent occurrence, but it’s not an unknown occurrence, either.
Hampus Eckerman: And I see that can’t be nominated on what you call 2 (and I called 1) as a website isn’t non-fiction. That leaves case 3 where the fiction is npminated because of the noteworthy aspect of being placed on AO3.
That isn’t my case 3, and I think it’s an erroneous conclusion. It’s not the fiction which is nominated. It’s the platform.
Standback: Are you saying the new edition wouldn’t be eligible if the original collection had been nominated in its publication year, but would be eligible if it hadn’t been nominated previously?
Yes. A couple of years ago, a story by JC “tire iron” Wright was disqualified because, although it had been changed since its previous publication in an earlier year, the Hugo Admins ruled that the changes were not significant enough for it to be considered a new version of the story.
Whereas on a number of occasions where previously-nominated novellas had later been developed into novels of the same name, the nominated novels were ruled to have changed significantly enough to be considered a new work.
Standback: if AO3 qualifies this year, I can’t help but assume it’ll qualify next year, too. And the year after that, and so on
JJ: I don’t think so. I think it’s just like Walton’s or Bourke’s or Scalzi’s compilations of works which were individually-published in a bunch of different years leading up to the year when they were published as a compilation and made the ballot for Best Related Work.
I don’t think so. The award is for what was done in 2018, not for an accumulation of work up to that point. The Walton or Bourke or Scalzi situation is different IMO – in each case there was a new work published that year (as in first physical publication) which contained some extra text and required editing.
So if in 2019 AO3 implements another new feature, then I see no barrier for it to be nominated again. I see no barrier to ISFDB to be nominated if it adds a feature.
Like Standback I hope that what it is being nominated for is crystal clear, otherwise I fear this category may lose a fair bit of its rationale. IMO there is no Hugo Award category that recognises incremental work over years, or community (would AO3 be nominated without the community, without the masses of fanfic?), or even non-content based technical work.
@JJ:
I think you misunderstand my question. There’s no argument that Hugo Admins disqualify work that is “merely” a minor revision from a previous year’s work. My question is, why is 2018 the cutoff year for AO3 being “complete”?
Why wouldn’t one say that AO3’s “correct” year for eligibility was 2017, or 2015, or 2009?
It doesn’t make sense to me that the “correct” year should be determined as “the first year it got enough nominations to make the ballot.” It doesn’t make sense to me to assume AO3 will be ineligible as a 2019 work because it was nominated as 2018 (but that if it hadn’t made the ballot this year, then it could be on next year).
Either the work should be clear on what milestone is represented, or we simply assume every year is a significant enough milestone — in which case it can keep getting nominated forever.
As I say, I’m not persuaded that AO3 meets the criteria for BRW, but I’m also not persuaded that it doesn’t. I’d hesitate to disqualify. I’d hesitate all the more if I were a Hugo Admin.
Which is to say: I agree the Hugo Admins didn’t find AO3 inherently disqualified, but neither would I interpret them as endorsing AO3 as being a clearly-defined, category-appropriate nominee.
This is just like the time all us EU citizens won the Nobel Peace Prize…
Standback: It doesn’t make sense to me that the “correct” year should be determined as “the first year it got enough nominations to make the ballot.”
It does to me.
In 2017, a Tor.com non-fiction essay series “The Women of Harry Potter“, made the ballot in Related Work. 5 of the 6 essays in that series were published in 2016; the 6th was published in 2017. Only the first 5 essays were included in the Hugo packet, because they were all that was eligible.
In 2018, if that series had again gotten enough nominations to make the ballot, I am reasonably sure that it would have been disqualified, because 1 more essay was not enough to make it sufficiently different from the work which appeared on the ballot in 2017. If it had made the ballot again, and had not been disqualified, I would have put it below No Award, because in my opinion it would have been given its due the year before.
To me, the AO3 site is the sum total of all of the parts that have been published up to this point. Now that the site has made the ballot, I would expect the platform to have to have a significant amount of change before it would be eligible again, just as I would have expected a hypothetical “Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: Eleven Years of Whatever” by John Scalzi with 3 more essays added to the original 28 to not be eligible again just because he added 3 more essays.
Look, I’ve gone into exhaustive — and exhausting — detail here and on Camestros’ blog about my rationales for believing:
1) that AO3 is indeed eligible in the Related Work category;
2) that it is the synergy of the site’s functionality, platform, and archive as a whole, and not the fiction itself, which is the finalist;
3) that it will no longer be eligible after this year without substantial changes to its current form.
Ultimately, Hugo voters and the Hugo Admins will either agree with my reasoning, or disagree based on their own reasoning, and that’s fine.
At this point, I don’t really see that me giving any further explanations is going add anything to everything that I’ve already said. And I’m more than a little disgusted at the disrespect that’s been shown to the Hugo Awards by a significant number of AO3 participants at this point, and I think that I’ve more than done what I could to help their cause.
I don’t know where AO3 will go on my ballot this year, but it won’t be below No Award. If it makes the ballot again next year (or any year), and the Hugo Admins don’t disqualify it, I will be putting it below No Award, because in my opinion, as a discrete Related Work, it has had its due this year.
As a native English speaker, I say no, you’re right.