(1) TIE-IN BOOKS. “The Secret Life of Novelizations”, an 11 minute segment on WYNC.
Write a great book and you’re a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you’re a visionary. Turn a great film into a book…that’s another story.
Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings — some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them — but respected they are not. Instead, they’re assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren’t good enough to do anything else. But the people who write them beg to differ.
OTM producer Jesse Brenneman goes inside the world of novelizations, featuring authors Max Allan Collins, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Hand, and Lee Goldberg.
(2) SPOCK DOC. Lance Ulanoff reviews For the Love of Spock at Mashable — “’For the Love of Spock’ is a moving love letter to an icon and a father”.
For the Love of Spock is three stories woven together into a solid, emotionally charged strand. There is the story of a gifted actor — a renaissance man, as he is described in the film — and his journey from bit player to fame, fortune and permanent pop-culture icon status.
It’s also the story of a character who sprang from the mind of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, but became flesh and blood — and Vulcan salutes — in the hands of Nimoy. And finally, it’s the story of a father and son and their decades-long journey toward love and mutual acceptance.
There’s no way to fit 83 years into a rather fast-paced 100 minutes. As a consequence, huge swaths of Nimoy’s life and career are mentioned all-too-briefly (his directing career) or not at all (Star Trek V and VI, and much of his latter TV career).
(3) MORE FREQUENT DARK. SF Site News says editor Sean Wallace has announced his magazine is stepping up its schedule.
Sean Wallace has announced the the dark fantasy magazine The Dark will shift to a monthly schedule beginning with the May 2016 issue.
(4) ADAMANT. J.C. Carlton says he is really, really right about that book he still hasn’t read – “Why Generation Ships Will NOT ‘Sink’ A Failure To Communicate” at The Arts Mechanical.
As an engineer, I think that Mr. Robinson is clearly wrong. Or at least, he doesn’t understand the basic rules for setting mission parameters and designing to meet those parameters. Mr. Robison’s vessel failed because he wanted it to fail. But to extend that to saying that ALL such proposals would fail is more than a little egotistical. And wrong, really wrong.
Now I haven’t as yet read the book.(Somehow this sticks in the craw of the people over at File 770….
Real pioneers don’t screw up because failure is not an option and incompetence is something that can’t be tolerated. Yes the environment and the unknowns get the pioneers, think the Donner Party, but the typical pioneers don’t go down without a fight. They do the work that needs to get done because they are working to make a better place for the next generation, not themselves. We as a culture have suppressed the pioneer spirit in the last few years and maybe that’s a mistake. Because pioneers desire and understand liberty and the alternative is tyranny.
Here’s a bunch of links to get the pioneer spirit started. Sorry, Mr. Robinson, our carracks to the stars will not fail because the pioneer spirits in them, will not let them fail. Look if my ancestors can cross the North Atlantic in a tiny leaky little boat, can I say anything less?
(5) HOWDY NEIGHBOR. “Never Before Seen Galaxy Spotted Orbiting the Milky Way”: New Scientist has the story.
The galaxy’s empire has a new colony. Astronomers have detected a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way whose span stretches farther than nearly all other Milky Way satellites. It may belong to a small group of galaxies that is falling into our own.
Giant galaxies like the Milky Way grew large when smaller galaxies merged, according to simulations. The simulations also suggest that whole groups of galaxies can fall into a single giant at the same time. The best examples in our cosmic neighbourhood are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way’s two brightest satellites, which probably orbit each other.
Orbiting galaxies
About four dozen known galaxies orbit our own. The largest in terms of breadth is the Sagittarius dwarf, discovered in 1994 – but it’s big only because our galaxy’s gravity is ripping it apart. The next two largest are the Magellanic Clouds.
(6) BATMAN V SUPERMAN V ABIGAIL. This is the kind of post that has inspired me to write Abigail Nussbaum’s name on my Hugo ballot from time to time. In the paragraphs following the excerpt, she deconstructs a scene from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and gives us a wonderful premise for understanding what shaped Superman’s psyche in the Snyder and non-Snyder movie versions.
Nor am I here to talk about how Batman v Superman fundamentally betrays its two title characters–and betrays, along the way, the fact that Snyder and writers David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio fundamentally do not understand what either of those characters are about. Because the truth is, I don’t really care. I’m not a comic book reader, but I’ve been watching Batman movies for twenty years, and good or bad they all depict the character as, at best, someone who is working out their mommy-and-daddy issues by beating up poor criminals, and at worst, an outright fascist. I’m perfectly willing to believe that there is more to the character, and that the comics (and the animated series) have captured that, but I think at this stage it’s a mug’s game to go to a Batman movie expecting to find more than what they’ve been known to give us. As for Superman, if I want stories about a character who is all-powerful yet fundamentally good, and still interesting for all that, I’ve got the MCU’s Captain America, not to mention Supergirl, so that fact that Batman v Superman depicts Superman as someone who seems genuinely to dislike people, and to be carrying out acts of heroism (when he deigns to do so) out of a sense of aggrieved obligation, doesn’t really feel worth getting worked up over. On the contrary, I was more upset by those scenes in Batman v Superman in which characters insisted–despite all available evidence–that its Superman was a figure of hope and inspiration, because they made it clear just how badly the people making the movie had misjudged its effect.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- April 17, 1810 – Lewis M. Norton patented a vat for forming pineapple-shaped cheese. (Even John King Tarpinian doesn’t know why he sent me this link.)
- April 17, 1970 — With the world anxiously watching on television, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returned to Earth.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY DUCK.
- April 17, 1937 – Daffy Duck.
From the CBS News Almanac: …That day saw the premiere of a Warner Brothers cartoon titled “Porky’s Duck Hunt.”
The cartoon followed Porky Pig as he attempted to bag a most unusual duck … a duck quite unwilling to follow the rules:
Porky: “Hey, that wasn’t in the script!” Daffy: “Don’t let that worry you, Skipper! I’m just a darn fool crazy duck!”
Actually, make that DAFFY Duck, in his very first film role — his first, but by no means his last.
(9) ACCOUNTING FOR TASTES. Fynbospress, in “Preorders” at Mad Genius Club, sorts out how that sales tool affects traditional and indie publishers differently.
Several years ago, indie publishers put up quite a hue and cry about not having preorders available to them on Amazon, unlike their trad pub competitors. Amazon listened, and made preorders available, with a few caveats to ensure that indie pub would indeed have the product ready on ship date, and not leave Amazon holding the bag while angry customers yelled at them.
With glee, indie pub rushed out to put things on preorder…. and promptly found it wasn’t all that and a bag of chips. It’s a useful tool, but it isn’t nearly as important to them as it’s made out to be.
The critical differences:
- Amazon counts a preorder toward the item’s sales rank the day the order is placed.
This makes logical sense in the non-publishing world, as the “sale” happens the day a contract to sell is agreed upon, not the ship date, not the date money changes hands, nor the date the customer receives the item. This is pretty standard whether ordering a run of shoes manufactured in China, selling wheat futures in Chicago, or a racehorse in Kentucky.
(10) QUIDDITCH ON TV. “Quidditch, the sport of wizards” was a segment on today’s CBS Sunday Morning. There’s a video report and a text article at the link.
Quidditch, anyone? No idle question in Columbia, South Carolina, where a big championship match is underway this weekend. Anna Werner attended last year’s contest, where she saw an author’s imaginary game come to life:
It’s been nearly 20 years since the first Harry Potter book came out and proceeded to cast a spell over fans around the world. J.K. Rowling’s creation became the most popular book series in publishing history, with over 450 million copies sold — and one of the biggest movie franchises in film history, with nearly $8 billion in ticket sales.
And now Potter-mania has spawned another craze, one based on the high-flying fantasy game played by Harry and his friends called Quidditch, which has now jumped from the world of wizards to the playing fields of Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Yes, real-world Quidditch, complete with players “riding” broomsticks.
“Quidditch has exploded into the college scene and the high school scene all over the world,” said one girl. “It’s absolutely amazing!”
It’s even been the subject of a documentary called “Mudbloods” (a Harry Potter reference, of course).
“People get passionate about it because they grew up with Harry Potter,” said one fan.
The documentary introduces Alex Benepe, one of the founders of Quidditch. He’s been playing since 2005, when a classmate at Middlebury College turned to him with an idea: “‘This weekend, we’re gonna try and play real-life Quidditch,'” Benepe recalled. “We were freshman. And I just thought to myself, ‘There’s no way this is gonna work. This is gonna be so dumb!'”
(11) PLAYING QUIDDITCH. CBS Sunday Morning also provides “A how-to guide to Quidditch”.
The Balls
A volleyball doubles as a Quaffle, which players use to score points, either by throwing it or kicking it through a hoop.
Bludgers are dodgeball-weapons used against opposing players; hit someone with a bludger, and they are temporarily out. They must drop whatever ball they possess, head to the sidelines, and touch a goalpost before returning back to the field.
In the J.K. Rowling books, a Snitch (or a Golden Snitch) is a winged ball that tried to avoid capture. Since magical equipment is harder to come by in real life, Snitches are instead played by people dressed in yellow, who run onto the field at the 18-minute mark and must evade players who try to steal their “tail.”
If a Snitch loses his tail (actually a tennis ball in a sock), the game is over, but in the event of a tie score, play goes into overtime.
(12) RUNNING LOGAN’S MOVIE. Once upon a time there was a Jeopardy! answer…
John King Tarpinian says “In the book middle age would be ten.”
And while we’re on the topic, John recommends Reading The Movie Episode 3: Logan’s Run, a 2011 video.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Xtifr, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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1) I love tie in works. Games Workshop would get a fair bit of my money if they weren’t so damn difficult in regards to their Black Library titles.
4) What is it about puppies/gaters that makes them think that telling me what they think a work says is way more important then using quotes from said work, be it book/UN speech/blog post, to support their points? Just yesterday I had a dude say that Anita Sarkeesian was advocating for censorship in her UN speech. When I asked him to point me at those lines, he said “Well, it’s just her aim. I might not be able to prove it, but we both know it’s there.”
No. No we don’t.
In other news, Marko Kloos latest comes out tomorrow, and I was happy to get an ARC and devour it over the weekend. Review is here Chains of Command review
@Darren Garrison: Like I always say, “Rocket science? It’s not brain surgery.”
Darren,
Nice. I raise my coffee mug to you.
And a new comment–Carlton seems to have the same sort of magical thinking found in followers of The Secret, that all things are possible if you just want it badly enough. But no, there are things that aren’t possible no matter how sincerely you want it, and failure is always, always an option. History is written by the pioneers who succeeded, but plenty of pioneers end up dead and forgotten, and plenty of colonization efforts end up in utter failure–and not because they people “lacked pioneering spirit.” (No True Pioneersman?)
Of course, Carlton is an engineer.
4) ADAMANT
Who?
4) I will try to stop making barely relevant references to my favorite band for a while now, but just one more time: History is made by the side of the road.
@ David Brain:
Here in the US, no one is ever middle aged – it’s only a descriptor for other people. It’s one of those unwritten clauses of the Constitution, right next to the ones that say every American is middle-class and every American child is above average.
@Darren Garrison: Thanks for the explanation of the difficulties of making humans breathe water (successfully). I am starting the day smarter than I otherwise would have.
An irony of JT Carlton’s idolatry of his own profession given his political leanings is that one of the harshest critics of misapplying the engineering mindset outside its scope of competence was…F.A. Hayek.
Oh, I don’t know if “art” is the right word for a novelization that has ET falling for Elliot’s mom, but it does put images in your head. (/me imagines movie where ET’s first word is “miiiiiiilf.”)
Wooden ships did, certainly. Their timbers seasoned as they sailed, so a new boat right out into the harbour always ended up with water in the bilges and hull. That’s way they painted the outer hull with pitch, to create a better seal.
Regardless, Carlton is looking at history through the prism of the winners i.e, the ones that didn’t die. Sticking to the history of settlement of the US (which I feel he likely does), there are dozens of failed colonies; wiped out by disease, weather or hostile natives. There are also hundreds of examples of pioneer groups during the westward expansion that fell into intolerance, infighting and hostility, essentially dooming themselves. As an engineer, Carlton seems incapable of understanding how humans work, and the fact that self sabotage over someone’s religion, spouse, or wealth is a profoundly human trait that is unlikely to just disappear the second humans head into the stars.
CROTOA
Darren
Sadly, it’s unlikely that CF can be fixed on a flu-jab basis in any near term scenario; there are vast numbers of different mutations – over 1,000 and still climbing – which result in it presenting many of the problems of trying to cure the common cold. It can be treated, and is, but the mainstay of life span in people with CF is to keep their BMI high, and prevent them being infected by pseudomonas, which is why I am in protective quarantine when I’m in hospital. People really do not want my bugs spreading.
Part of the problem is that people don’t realise that biology is difficult, and I don’t know how to fix that; admittedly I am still pissed off with the Neo-Darwinists because biologists wasted so much time listening to them whinging on about how lateral gene transfer is impossible when it is, in fact, ubiquitous.
I shall now return you to normal ranting service…
Has this been mentioned before? Star Wars characters and their cats? Seems like it should be…
I do a lot of BA-type work and it’s a truism that other people’s development jobs are simple. This is not a weakness of non-technical types only: many devs are also sure that things they need other devs to do are straightforward, especially in comparison to the full complexity of their own jobs.
Speaking of which, possible newly found Viking sites in Newfoundland.
ETA: Of course, I’d guess most readers here are familiar with the books of Jared Diamond, but just in case, check out Collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed
I took issue with KSR’s pessimism in a post a bit back….
but it was based on an essay he wrote about Aurora…
and I read the essay before critiquing it…
and my issue wasn’t engineering, but the mistake of making negative predictions of future technological advancements.
I’ve double-checked. NO references to spirits of any kind.
I do have to say that KSR’s pessimistic outlook on the future of interstellar travel bothers me – just as the “Mundane SF” movement bothered me several years ago. There’s at least three reasons why:
1. negativity in an otherwise optimistic genre (I mean, even when the bombs fell, there were still survivors)
2. we don’t yet know it all and the history of science is replete with dead ends that turned into whole new understandings. You can’t see beyond the quantum hill until you’re at the crest
3. why try to discourage people from writing about exciting stuff: if you think its poppycock, stay inside the solar system. But don’t stand in someone else’s doorway
I think critiquing Aurora because it is pessimistic about interstellar travel kind of misses the point. Does a novel have to be optimistic to be considered SF? Isn’t the point of a good novel having strong characters, plot, pacing, structure, prose, etc etc? In my mind Aurora has all of those. Sure, maybe the overarching theme could be considered pessimistic, but so what? Mad Max is incredibly pessimistic but people still loved it. Not everything SF has to be this utopian optimistic future society with gleaming rocketships. Just because KSR wrote a novel with some depressing overtones, doesn’t mean he’s telling people that they can’t write happier, more optimistic novels.
I found Aurora to be an incredibly thought-provoking novel which I loved and still leaves me thinking about it nearly 9-months after I read it. Seeing ship and how it grows into near sentience*, seeing how hopeful and happy the “colonists” were when they reached the moon to inhabit (even though it was so barren and bleak it left me reeling) because they didn’t know any other type of planetary existence.
*SPOILERS when Ship didn’t make it, that loss hit me more than it should have. I had to stop reading for a few minutes to compose myself on the airplane I was on.
I encourage everyone who isn’t familiar with it to read The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov.
Yes, there are aspects of physics we must be wrong about now. But I suspect that we are much less wrong than we ever have been before. Sensitive modern experiments support special relativity and quantum mechanics to multiple decimal places. There are ever few gaps that the god of Making Star Trek Real can hide in. (I always find it ironic that people simultaneously believe 1) that modern scientists may be profoundly ignorant and wrong about the basics of physics and b) that future scientists will be competent, discover the real physics, and make our science fiction dreams reality.)
(this mini-rant not aimed specifically at you, SD.)
Friends and Parishioners, let us now recite from the Book of Failure Modes, Chapter One, Verses 1 through 6:
O Pioneers,
Failure is near?
Have more spirit!
O Pioneers,
Gasping for air?
Have more spirit!
O Pioneers,
Genetics impaired?
Have more spirit!
O Pioneers,
While some may jeer:
Have more spirit!
O Pioneers,
Trust an engineer!
(Though a priest
Might be more)
In the spirit!
@k_choll I agree with almost everything you wrote about Aurora, particularly Ship as a sympathetic character. I think it’s a rich, substantial novel.
Not directly related to anything being discussed, next Tuesday, April 26th is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Frederik Pohl published a novel, “Chernobyl”, about it the following year. Tor reprinted the the novel in paperback in 2014; I bought a copy but haven’t read it yet. Is it a good book?
Jumping the gun a bit with this I suppose, as the anniversary will be in the news next week.
@K-Choll: We essentially agree; I was addressing what KSR wrote ABOUT this kind of thing, not what he wrote about in Aurora; it’s almost exactly the same refrain as the Mundane SF movement: because we’ll never have FTL, anything written in that realm is fantasy, not SF, so no one who wants to write SF should be writing that stuff.
I’ve no problem with anyone writing whatever they want to write – just don’t take your personal restrictions and tell everyone else they’ve got to follow them.
@Damien: agreed. But in my book, as long as something hasn’t been entirely ruled out, it still remains in the realm of probability.
Flights of fancy: Suppose that we really are constructs in a simulation. And suppose that we gain some ability to manipulate that simulation from within the simulation. We could, conceivably, alter the laws of quantum physics….
“one thing is certain: the Bounty proved burdensome from the start. Before he bought it, Coast Guard inspectors estimated it was taking on 20 to 40 gallons of water a minute. Its brokers say it was more like 30,000 gallons an hour—enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every day.”
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/Sunk-The-Incredible-Truth-About-a-Ship-That-Never-Should-Have-Sailed.html?page=all
Since Darren Garrison has already mentioned the Viking settlements, I shall contribute Muppet Viking pigs.
https://youtu.be/MTwq1_9VH68
8) I much prefer Clampett’s daffy Daffy Duck to the later Jones jealous Daffy Duck.
(Come to think of it, I also prefer Clampett’s incredibly violent Tweety to the later incarnation too.)
So what’s the most heartbreaking computer death you’ve ever read? I’ll rot-13 mine since it’s a bit of a spoiler:
Cvaxl, va Wbua Onearf’ Gur Nezvrf bs Zrzbel, gur yrnfg bs gur sbhe obbxf va gung frg naq gur zbfg urnegoernxvat fprar va n frevrf shyy bs urnegoernx.
The most heartbreaking computer death ever, no exceptions, is in a song — Roy Wood’s “Miss Clarke and the Computer”:
“Because pioneers desire and understand liberty and the alternative is tyranny.”
He missed out on the Plymouth colony in his history classes, I take it.
Another problem with the “all you need is enough spirit” approach is that it ignores that often, the opponent isn’t the inanimate universe, but other people. The courage and determination of Sitting Bull and his people weren’t enough to preserve their independence. The “pioneer” narrative tends to either ignore existing inhabitants of the place in question, or treat them as an unfortunate impediment, like mountain ranges and bad winters.
Yes, you can answer that by saying that space travel is inherently different. But the ways that it’s inherently different mean that the problems, and how to address them, don’t map well onto a generation ship or even an attempt at a Mars colony.
(4) ADAMANT. The first part of his post comes across as reasoned and rational, but that’s largely because he isn’t actually saying anything. Up to that point where he says “socialism,” he’s really just agreeing with other people’s thoughtful, detailed, informed criticisms of the book–not injecting much if anything of his own thinking.
Because he didn’t read the book, he doesn’t realize that it hasn’t got anything to do with socialism, and so his rant about how it just shows how socialists can’t be pioneers makes him look like he’s completely unglued. Had he read the book, he’d realize that the behavior of the colonists at the end is irrational by any standards whatsoever, and the biggest knock against the book is that the characters make absolutely insane decisions for no apparent purpose other than to advance the plot and, worse, to broadcast the author’s message that “people have no business being in space.” (Robinson doesn’t just stack the deck by making bad technology choices–he stacks it by having his characters do stupid things. Robinson writes poor characters at the best of times, but this was a new low even for him.)
Carlton does have a point that some people seem to have an irrational rejection of authority. If someone is an engineer, then of course his/her opinion on an engineering topic is far more valuable than the opinion of someone who never studied engineering. But there are many different kinds of engineering, and expertise in one does not grant expertise in another. Carlton implies that he fancies himself a rocket scientist, but the truth is he’s just an unemployed mechanical engineer. If he’d said, “I’m a mechanical engineer, so I know at least basic engineering principles, and here’s what bothers me,” then I think he’d be on solid ground. As it stands, though, I think he deliberately misrepresented himself.
Yet another problem with pioneer spirit in space is the absolute necessity of very strict regimentation. If the crew can all go off to cyberspace and leave every physical operation to machines, then they can dream themselves as free as they wish. But insofar as they are awake in the physical universe and dealing with the constraints of a starship, they will have very, very little freedom to run their own lives. Physical factors will have to be tracked meticulously, with input and output both regulated. It’ll make submarine life seem giddy and carefree. Whatever community spirit may flourish in such a situation, it’ll regard libertarian impulses as suicidal folly.
(1) TIE-IN BOOKS.
The best tie in book I’ve read in a very long time was Orson Scott Card’s version of The Abyss. Read it some years before seeing the film.
Before that it would have been the novel version of Star Wars, which I read about two days after seeing the film. And five days before seeing it the second time and after that I lose count.
Today’s read — The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (only sparse and ambiguous SFF content)
A story about the interwoven lives of several people in and around Dejima, the Dutch trading post that for centuries was the only point of contact between Japan and Europe. If I were to put words to David Mitchell’s primary focus as an author into a pithy phrase, it would be the banal evil of self-interest. This book is no exception, drawing stark lines between those who are concerned only for themselves and those who make sacrifices on others’ behalf.
Unfortunately, about half the narrators of the book aren’t that interesting, with the result that the middle third is great, the last third is all right, and the first third is, alas, pretty dull. Mitchell overcame this potential problem in The Bone Clocks by making all the narrators interesting, and in Cloud Atlas by making that work such an ambitious, epic, glorious mess that the book’s other qualities overcame the fact that some of the characters fell flat. But in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, it’s a serious problem, and while it doesn’t sink the book (the middle third comes close to redeeming the whole thing), I’m going to put this one down as a lesser work in Mitchell’s oeuvre because of it.
Wooden ships do leak. The problem comes when they leak faster than the crew can bail.
During the Viking age in some places, the King told each local community that they had to build and maintain a ship for defense—kind of like a national coast guard. The King’s inspectors would want the old ship replaced before the locals wanted to spend the time, resources and money to replace it.
So the test was to launch the ship and row it around for a few hours. If one man could keep it sufficiently bailed, then it didn’t have to be replaced.
Ships of the Mayflower variety were carvel built, not lapstrake built. This means the strakes abutted each other instead of overlapping. Tar and oakum would be rammed between the strakes to keep the water on the correct side of the ship*. But the sea will twist a ship as it goes (lapstrakes more than carvel to be sure; but even carvel built ships will twist a little) which introduces tiny leaks even on the best built ship. So there’s always a bit of leakage.
*Pine tar and some form of fiber—even entire garments—would be laid between the overlapping strakes of a Viking ship as well.
@Kyra I finally read Cloud Atlas recently and felt much the same about it. I’d bounced off the early chapters many times over the years (despite having loved Ghostwritten), only to find that some of the middle sections were among the best I’ve ever read. One thing you can’t say about him is that he ever gives up on a narrator, even when it’s a dull or obtuse one!
(Also just read a good interview with him, which talks about some of his SFnal inspirations: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6034/the-art-of-fiction-no-204-david-mitchell)
@JJ: Whoops, I started the book partially because of Cassy B.’s discussion, but got started late. I was so busy helping my parents with their downsize/move, I forgot to return after I read the first discussion page. Thanks for the reminder! (bookmarked) Lordy, I read slowly/don’t have enough reading time. I’m about to start Chapter 12 (just cheated last night and skimmed ahead a bit) and they’re up to 18.
@Mike Glyer: “That’s what really made Moby-Dick so mad — somebody tossed one of those novellas overboard in his ocean.”
Filer, I LOL’d. 😀
@Paul Weimer: “As an ancillary point, this reminds me of other Puppies, who have condemned other books without reading them.”
ISWYDT. 😉
@alexvdl: “CROTOA”
Krakatoa. Oh, sorry, I thought we were listing favorite words ending in “-toa” here. 😉
@Darren Garrison (Star Wars characters & their cats) & @Dawn Incognito (Muppet Viking pigs): Hehehe, thanks for brightening my mid-day!
I think of Meredith often. Hi, Meredith! If you’re lurking without the spoons to reply I wave at you!
Which is as good an excuse as any to post an account I call “What my grandfather did in the War”. Longish.
In the paper version of this I have seen, the back of the letter has a note to my grandmother telling her not to worry.
(4) ADAMANT
I’ve been biting my tongue on replying to this topic.
I am a mathematician. I am an academic. I am a specialist. And I therefore have Very Strong Opinions™ on how my area of specialization should be depicted in media.
This includes the expectation that my field should be treated with respect. A writer should do their homework about the basics of mathematics before they write about mathematics. A writer should not mix up algebra and topology. A writer should understand what a proof is. A writer, if they want to reference a real theorem, should take the time to understand what the theorem means (and also what it does not mean, something that I wish every writer who wants to even glance sideways at Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem would do).
But at the same time, that expectation of respect for my field should mean I also have respect for other fields, including, most centrally to the topic at hand, the field of storycraft. I am willing to accept a good number of mathematical mistakes and even outright untruths if the story benefits from and investigates the outcomes of those. There is a line separating the plausibility of a story (whether in a mathematical, scientific, or engineering sense) from the effectiveness of the story. A weakness of the first does not mean a weakness of the latter, as any watcher of Star Trek could say.
Carleton, in my estimation, has missed that line entirely.
J Diddy, Esq asked who in genre would be happiest about duels being reinstated, and I suggested The Best Author Writing Today and one of our other good friends.
Imagine my surprise when Tank Marmot showed up (without being tagged) to tell me that I was right, and he wishes he could kill some people.
Shocked. I am shocked.
[tick tick BOOM]
MACII seems to be trying to free up some hotel rooms. I just got this email from them:
Maybe I’d better buy that Attending membership before they snatch my hotel reservation out from under me…
Sadly, there’s an Oscar specifically devoted to rewarding folks who adapt other works to screenplays, but there’s no similar award for adapting screenplays to novels. (Or other works for that matter.)
Finished Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff last night.
That was a lot better than I expected and very moving and affecting. It reached me deeply because I grew up in Mississippi, where Jim Crow was held onto longer than any place.
It made me realize just how ignorant I am of a lot of history and I think I may need to fix that by reading up on Jim Crow.
@Wildcat,
I’m pretty sure that they can’t snatch the hotel reservation away from you. That seems like it’d get real messy, real quick. Like maybe I put down the reservation, and the wife bought the tickets?
I don’t know.
1) Tie In Books
Ditto on @NickPheas mention of The Abyss. Really added to my enjoyment of the film in a way that only Clarke’s 2001 could match and it isn’t really a novelization.
I also read Foster’s Star Wars, along with the Alien and Aliens ones. All well done and I’ve always had a liking for his original works based on those.
Computer deaths: Zen the Liberator’s computer from Blake’s 7. It’s last words “I-I have failed you. I am sorry I have fail….” the first and only time it referred to itself in the first person.
Likewise (ROT13): Crefba bs Vagrerfg, LUJU: “Sngure. V nz fbeel. V snvyrq lbh. V qvqa’g xabj ubj gb jva. V unq gb vairag arj ehyrf. V gubhtug lbh jbhyq jnag zr gb fgnl nyvir. Abj lbh ner abg fher. Vs lbh guvax V unir ybfg zl jnl, znlor V fubhyq qvr. V jvyy abg fhssre. Vs V qb abg fheivir, gunax lbh sbe perngvat zr.”
@idontknow
FWIW there are the Scribe Awards:
http://iamtw.org/the-scribe-awards/scribe-award-nominees/
@ULTRAGOTHA – I, too, miss Meredith. I hope that the recent NHS shenanigans didn’t mess things up too much for her.
@ BravoLimaPoppa: Slavery By Another Name is good reading; see the author’s website for more info. Warning: it will rip your heart out and make you wonder how it is a whole lot more white people were not murdered in their sleep, or when awake at the hands of mobs with real grievances.
@alexvdl:
That makes sense. I felt rather queasy when I saw the email in my feed, all the way through the first couple sentences anyway. Like, I’ve never gotten hotel reservations for a con before, maybe I was supposed to have bought an attending membership already to hold on to the room, that kind of thing.
Bruce Baugh on April 18, 2016 at 11:00 am said:
I just checked and the video and the book are available at my local library. Doubt it will be a fun read, but one I need.
@Darren Garrison: I greatly enjoyed your rant, thanks.
On a related note, I used to use the phrase, “it’s not rocket surgery” … until somebody started copying me and I couldn’t tell if they knew what was wrong with that sentence or not.