Pixel Scroll 4/24/17 Let Us Sit Upon The Ground And Scroll Sad Pixels

(1) UNORTHODOX APPROACH. Beginning July 18, a weekly podcast will be hosted by Sixth & I in Washington DC — “Harry Potter and The Sacred Text”.

What if we read the books we love as if they were sacred texts? What would we learn? How might they change us? Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is a podcast the reads Harry Potter, the best-selling series of all time, as if it was a sacred text.

Just as Christians read the Bible, Jews the Torah, and Muslims read the Quran, Harvard chaplains Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile embark on a 199 ­episode journey (one chapter per week) to glean what wisdom and meaning J.K. Rowling’s beloved novels have in store.

The chaplains read the beloved series through the lens of instructive and inspirational text and extract lessons that can be applied to our own lives.

At the end of 199 weeks will something more emerge from these readings?

(2) JUSTICE IS BLIND. At Sharps & Flatirons, Peter Alexander says blind orchestral auditions have leveled the playing field — “Women in Classical Music: Some Good News, Some Bad News” .

First the good news: professional orchestras are filled with women today, a vast contrast to 40 or 50 years ago when orchestras were almost entirely male. This is now a viable career for the most talented women instrumentalists.

The bad news is that the picture is not nearly as rosy for women composers, who are not well represented on orchestral programs. And women conductors are no better off than composers.

The growing numbers of women in professional orchestras at every level can be traced to a single innovation that began around 1970: “blind auditions,” where competing candidates for open orchestral jobs play behind a screen. The selection committee does not know if it is hearing a man or a woman. The rapid change in the makeup of orchestras since 1970—casually visible and backed up by the numbers—is compelling evidence of the opposition women orchestral players faced before that innovation.

… In an article titled “Orchestrating Impartiality,” published in 2000 in The American Economic Review, researchers Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse concluded that “the screen increases—by 50 percent—the probability that a woman will be advanced from certain preliminary rounds and increases by severalfold the likelihood that a woman will be selected in the final round.” Their conclusion is backed up by 25 pages of charts, graphs and statistical studies.

(3) CON OR BUST AUCTION. The Con or Bust annual fundraising auction has begun and runs until May 7 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Con or Bust, Inc., is a tax-exempt not-for-profit organization that helps people of color/non-white people attend SFF conventions.

The available items include a signed galley of Ann Leckie’s next novel Provenance (to be published in October.) When I last looked, bidding was already up to $120.

Here are a few examples of the wide variety of auction items –

The whole list of auction tags is here.

(4) EMOJI CODE. There are four summaries, and I didn’t understand even one. Your turn! “Can you guess the Doctor Who episodes told in emojis?”

Test your Doctor Who knowledge by deciphering these emoji plots and guessing the episode!

If you’re stuck, answers are at the bottom of the page…

(5) LOOK, UP IN THE SKY. Talk about timing! Carl Slaughter referenced Larry Page in the other day’s flying car roundup, and today the news is “Larry Page’s flying car will be available to buy before the end of the year”

The Kitty Hawk Flyer is an electric aircraft that, in its current version, looks a bit like a flying Jet Ski. Cimeron Morrissey, who test flew the aircraft, wrote in a review that the final version would look quite different from the prototype, which doesn’t look all that practical.

A New York Times profile of the Flyer describes it as “something Luke Skywalker would have built out of spare parts.” The vehicle weighs about 100 kilograms and, according to Morrissey, can travel up to 25 mph. She likened the Flyer to “a toy helicopter.”

(6) PETER S. BEAGLE. Initially Barry Deutsch was signal-boosting an appeal for funds — “Peter S Beagle, author of ‘The Last Unicorn,’ is in dire need! Here are three ways you can help.” However, Beagle’s fans immediately came through on the short-term goal, which still leaves two longer-term needs:

LONG-TERM:

Go to the Support Peter Beagle website and use the button there to contribute to a fund to help pay for Peter Beagle’s legal costs. You can leave a message for Peter in the paypal field; I am told he will receive and read all messages sent this way.

BUY THE HUMBLE BUNDLE!

Peter Beagle has curated a Humble Bumble of unicorn fiction, called “Save the Unicorns.” You can pay as little as $1 to get a ton of novels to read, and support Peter Beagle at the same time! Important: In “choose where your money goes,” pick 100% Tachyon Press. Peter Beagle will get royalties and such from Tachyon for these Humble Bumble sales.

To be kept up-to-date on Peter Beagle news, follow @RealPeterBeagle on Twitter.

(7) UNGRADED HATE MAIL. Margaret Atwood answers Patt Morrison’s questions in the LA Times.

I can imagine your fan mail. I can’t imagine your hate mail.

I’ve gotten lots of hate mail over the years. I’ll probably get more once the television series comes out. But I’m not advocating for one thing or the other. I’m saying that what kind of laws you pass — those laws will have certain kinds of results. So you should think carefully about whether you want to have those results or not.

If you’re going to ban birth control, if you’re going to ban information about reproduction, if you’re going to defund all of those things, there will be consequences. Do you want those consequences or not? Are you willing to pay for them or not?

Listen to the “Patt Morrison Asks” podcast and read the full interview at here.

(8) WHO’S THAT SHOUTING? Two writers here for the LA Festival of Books indulge in shenanigans. (Hm, just discovered my spellchecker has a different opinion of how shenanigans is spelled than I have – dang, it did it again!)

(9) CITIZEN SCIENCE. And they call the wind aurora whatever-it-is… Steve? “Aurora photographers find new night sky lights and call them Steve”

Relatively little else is known about the big purple light as yet but it appears it is not an aurora as it does not stem from the interaction of solar particles with the Earth’s magnetic field.

There are reports that the group called it Steve in homage to a 2006 children’s film, Over the Hedge, where the characters give the name to a creature they have not seen before.

Roger Haagmans of the ESA said: “It is amazing how a beautiful natural phenomenon, seen by observant citizens, can trigger scientists’ curiosity.

“It turns out that Steve is actually remarkably common, but we hadn’t noticed it before. “It’s thanks to ground-based observations, satellites, today’s explosion of access to data and an army of citizen scientists joining forces to document it.”

(10) A CERTAIN GLOW ABOUT THEM. If you don’t already know this story, you should: “Dark Lives Of ‘The Radium Girls’ Left A Bright Legacy For Workers, Science”,an interview with the book’s author Kate Moore.

In the early days of the 20th century, the United States Radium Corporation had factories in New Jersey and Illinois, where they employed mostly women to paint watch and clock faces with their luminous radium paint. The paint got everywhere — hair, hands, clothes, and mouths.

They were called the shining girls, because they quite literally glowed in the dark. And they were dying.

Kate Moore’s new book The Radium Girls is about the young women who were poisoned by the radium paint — and the five who sued United States Radium in a case that led to labor safety standards and workers’ rights advances.

(11) WHILE YOU WERE OUT: One big step for…. “Astronaut Peggy Whitson breaks new space record”.

Peggy Whitson has broken the record for most days in space by a US astronaut.

Dr Whitson already holds records for the most spacewalks carried out by a woman astronaut and is the first woman to command the International Space Station (ISS) twice.

Now she’s beaten the record previously set by Jeff Williams, who had a total of 534 days in space.

President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have called Dr Whitson to congratulate her.

(12) AN EYEFUL. Forbes has a gallery of “The Top Cosplayers From Silicon Valley Comic Con”.

This weekend the second Silicon Valley Comic Con took place, featuring robotics, virtual reality and a wax statue of Steve Wozniak. But everyone knows that Comic Con is really about one thing, and that’s the jaw dropping cosplay. From menacing Jokers to an adorable Hatsune Miku costume, enjoy this roundup of some of the most eye-catching costumes at the show…

 

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My cape means business ??

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(13) DOC WEIR AWARD. British Eastercon members voted the 2017 Doc Weir Award to Serena Culfeather and John Wilson.

The Doc Weir Award was set up in 1963 in memory of fan Arthur Rose (Doc) Weir, who had died two years previously. Weir was a relative newcomer to fandom, he discovered it late in life – but in the short time of his involvement he was active in a number of fannish areas. In recognition of this, the Award is sometimes seen as the “Good Guy” Award; something for “The Unsung Heroes”.

(14) SCIENCE QUESTION. I thought you could only get hit by a meteorite? (Unless it’s being smacked by a wet echinoderm he’s worried about.)

(15) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 24, 1184 B.C. – Traditional date of the Fall of Troy, calculated by Eratosthenes.
  • April 24, 1990 – Hubble Space Telescope launched.

(16) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY SCHLOCK MEISTER

  • Born April 24, 1914 – Filmmaker William Castle

(17) CARTOON OF THE DAY. “Cat City” by Victoria Vincent on Vimeo explains what happens when a cat runs away from home to become a hairdresser and drinks too much!

(18) WILL WORK FOR CLICKS. Camestros Felapton renders another much-needed public service: “See how your favourite Games of Thrones Characters are related”. Go there to see the family trees.

(19) NOVELLA INITIATIVE. The Book Smugglers published the first 2017 entry in their Novella Initiative last week, Dianna Gunn’s novella Keeper of the Dawn.

In Keeper of the Dawn, the first novella from Book Smugglers Publishing, author Dianna Gunn introduces readers to strong-willed Lai. All her life she has dreamed of following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother and becoming a priestess in service to her beloved goddesses. But even after lifelong preparation, she fails trials and her next instinct is to run away.

Off in the north kingdom of Alanum, as she works to recalibrate her future, Lai becomes the bodyguard of a wealthy merchant, who is impressed by her strength and bravery. One night she hears stories about a mountain city where they worship the same goddesses she does. Determined to learn more about these women, these Keepers of the Dawn, Lai travels onward to find their temple and do whatever it takes to join their sacred order. Falling in love with another initiate was not part of the plan.

Keeper of the Dawn, rich with female empowerment, is a multi-layered LGBTQIA YA Fantasy story about fate, forgiving yourself, and the endurance of hope.

Gunn also wrote a post about her inspirations and influences.

In many ways Lai’s story also mirrors the story of my own career. I’ve dreamed about being an author since the age of eight, and as a child I stubbornly believed I would have my first novel published before my eighteenth birthday.

Well, my eighteenth birthday came and went some years ago, and only now is my first book coming out. But I have already been a working writer for six years, writing marketing materials for many different companies and non-profits. More importantly, my dream still came true—just a few years later than planned.

(20) CLARKE AWARD CONTENDERS. A couple of Shadow Clarke jurors take their turn discussing what have proven to be group favorites, while another visits less familiar ground.

Part of the way it reworks things is that it’s not about the Up and Out, but the ups and downs. The rigors of life are always present: people make decisions, those decisions impact life, and they rarely have anything to do with that giant monstrosity towering from the south that hurls people into outer space. The Central Station of Central Station is a mere landmark, an economic hub and cultural icon, but as Maureen K. Speller points out in her review, “…even in science fiction, that so-called literature of the future, nothing lasts forever. The symbolic tropes – space ships, robots, AIs – will all eventually be absorbed and become part of the scenery.” The Central Station of the future is the airport of today: not that big of a deal.

This is a difficult, intractable, Gordian knot of a novel, the kind you recommend to like-minded friends more out of curiosity to see what they’ll make of it than from any reasonable belief that they’ll enjoy the book. Whether this novel – formally and stylistically perfect though it is, a rare gem of a debut that hints at that rare beast, a writer who knows precisely where he’s going and what he wants – can be enjoyed on anything other than a purely intellectual level is a debatable point; whether it can be enjoyed as science fiction still more so.

The Underground Railroad is about as significant a novel as American literary culture is capable of producing in the first quarter of the 21st century.

If you care enough about books to be reading this kind of essay then chances are that you have either purchased or taken an interest in this novel. Far from being organic and spontaneous, your decision to purchase Colson Whitehead’s latest novel is the result of almost every facet of American literary culture coming into alignment and choosing to imbue a single work with as much cultural significance as those institutions can conceivably muster. Already a winner of many prestigious literary awards and a beneficiary of both the Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, Colson Whitehead has now seen his sixth novel celebrated not only by Pulitzer and National Book Award judges but also by the – arguably more influential and economically important – face of Oprah’s Book Club.

(21) DOCTOR TINGLE AI. Applied Digital Studies Project uses a twitter bot to form new titles based on novels by Dr. Chuck Tingle. Not surprisingly, there is a good deal of butt and pounding in these titles. Still, some of them are funny.

(22) MYTHIC FIGURE. Today Chuck Tingle is busy burnishing his legend.

(23) READERCON. Tracy Townsend announced she will be at Readercon in Quincy, MA from July 13-16.

Guests of Honor:

Naomi Novik & Nnedi Okorafor

Memorial Guest of Honor:

Tanith Lee

Although Readercon is modeled on “science fiction conventions,” there is no art show, no costumes, no gaming, and almost no media. Instead, Readercon features a near-total focus on the written word….

(24) MOVIE RESTORATION. The Verge says those who have heard of it should be pleased — “Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic Stalker is getting an HD restoration”. And those like me, who haven’t, will be intrigued.

Cinephiles, rejoice! Criterion Collection will be adding a major science-fiction classic to its roster this summer: a restored version of Stalker, directed by Solaris filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.

Based off the 1971 Russian science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Stalker was originally released in 1979. The film follows a man known as “the Stalker” as he leads an expedition into a mysterious, forbidden area known as “The Zone.” In the book, the mysterious Zone is the location of an alien visitation decades before the story, littered with fantastic pieces of technology and dangers; in the film, its origins are more obscure. But in both cases, reality there is distorted, and somewhere inside is a room that will grant visitors’ innermost desires. The journey to get there is physically and philosophically arduous, and it tests the trio of men traveling there.

(25) SUBTITLES IN I KNOW NOT WHAT LANGUAGE. The Justice League Official International Trailer dropped today.

Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.

 

(26) A VISIT TO MARVEL. SlashFilm leads readers on a “Marvel Studios Offices Tour: A Behind-the-Scenes Look”. (Photos at the site.)

The Marvel Studios offices are located on the second floor of the Frank G. Wells Building on the Walt Disney Studios lot. When you exit the elevators, you are greeted by a wall-to-wall mural featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy, and a big Marvel Studios logo.

Marvel Studios began in a tiny office in Santa Monica that they shared with a kite factory. After that, the company moved to an office above a Mercedes dealership in Beverly Hills. They were based out of Manhattan Beach Studios for a few years before Disney asked them to move onto the Burbank lot in 2014. But it wasn’t until a few months ago that Marvel fully decorated their offices….

(27) BOMBS AWAY. A new record for a domino toppling specialty was set in March.

A group of domino builders in Michigan created the world’s largest “circle bomb” using nearly 80,000 dominoes.

The Incredible Science Machine team broke the Guinness World Record for “Most dominoes toppled in a circle bomb/circle field” by creating a series of 76,017 dominoes that toppled from the center of a circle to its outer edge.

“The Incredible Science Machine Team is very passionate about domino art and sharing it with an audience to amaze and inspire them,” team leader Steve Price, 22, said.

A total of 18 builders from the United States, Canada, Germany and Austria spent 10 days constructing the domino formation at the Incredible Science Machine’s annual event in Westland, Mich.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mart.]

133 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/24/17 Let Us Sit Upon The Ground And Scroll Sad Pixels

  1. “If in the first file you have displayed a pixel, then in the following one it should be scrolled. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

  2. 27)
    For a couple of years, a bunch of Dutch folks would break their own domino toppling record every year, sponsored by a TV station which broadcast the whole thing.

  3. (24) love that film and also have probably alienated friends by trying to make them watch it.

    Oh and guess what I’m doing in a couple of hours?

    GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOLUME 2!!!!!!!!!!

  4. @1: I suppose the screen would need to be much larger, but I find myself wondering whether boards should be compelled to listen to auditions of conductors (selected by musicians rather than boards) with the boards’ orchestras conducted behind a screen (although that wouldn’t cover the need for the candidate to occasionally say something to the players as well as leading with a stick). I’ve sung major performances for only two women, one of whom is now a professor and the other of whom created her own opera company; I hope to see this change before my voice finishes decaying.

    @12: AAUUGGHH! I’m going to have to floss my brain for weeks to get the first image out of my mind!

    @27: Why is this part of the domino chain a separate record? Is a circle bomb especially unstable to set up, or especially unlikely to fall to complete? (I suspect the former, as I understand chains are set up with gaps just large enough to prevent a bit of carelessness from triggering the entire chain; I don’t think this would work with a bomb.) I found the towers more impressive as they all collapsed in a single direction rather than scattering; modern drop-the-building-in-place demolition experts couldn’t have done a better job.

  5. For anyone here who is interested?

    I have a free full weekend membership / pass to Stokercon 2017 in Long Beach, California available. I now have other plans for this coming weekend, and will not be able to use it.

    So, if anyone here would like to go or was already planning on attending but has not yet purchased a membership. You are more than welcome to have mine.

    I will give it to the first person who wants to claim it.

    Be advised that the con this year is being held on The Queen Mary (its a boat) in Long Beach, California for those who might be prone to sea sickness.

    I spoke to two of the administrators via email, and was given the ok to transfer it to someone else.

    The membership does not include a banquet ticket to the Bram Stoker Awards on Saturday night, but tickets can still be purchased for $80, should you wish to attend. I will just need your name and email address to transfer the membership to the administrators.

    Stokercon 2017
    Thursday April 27 – Sunday April 30

    Toastmaster Nancy Holder
    Guest Of Honors
    Bill Bridges
    Peter Crowther
    Tananarive Due
    Elizabeth Hand
    Stephen Graham Jones
    Gretchen McNeil
    George R.R. Martin
    Becky Spratford
    Chuck Wendig

    Location:
    The Queen Mary
    1126 Queens Hwy
    Long Beach, CA 90802

    More details about the con are here. A good time will be had by all I am sure.

  6. Not much to say on this end today. I binge-watched season four of Orphan Black yesterday, and I’m just now starting the second episode of Westworld. (The repurposing of pop music in the first episode was interestingly bizarre.)

  7. (12) Forbes did not try too hard — I saw a lot better costumes, not even counting the costume contest. Also, they somehow missed the actual Steve Wozniak there…

  8. Wow, I really like Steve! Very cool. And purple. Amazing how this stuff can just be sitting around under our noses. (Or over our heads.)

    And why has cosplay and ComicCons become a thing? I’m not complaining, but it seems a bit odd that people have decided those two are what go together. Other cons have some cosplay, but ComicCons seem to have become CosplayCons. And I honestly don’t know why. Is it just because of Sandy Eggo?

    (And I almost forgot to tick the box before posting. *whew*)

  9. Xtifr: And why has cosplay and ComicCons become a thing? I’m not complaining, but it seems a bit odd that people have decided those two are what go together. Other cons have some cosplay, but ComicCons seem to have become CosplayCons.

    I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the big media cons are willing to pay the female cosplayers who specialize in detailed-and-accurate-but-very-skimipy costumes, to make appearances as a way to draw in male fans.

    This has become such a thing that the cosplay-for-pay people have now started sending solicitation letters to fan cons offering to come to the con for a hefty fee, resulting in head-scratching on the part of the concoms, who think “Why would you expect us to pay you to come, when all of our other cosplayers come for free?”

    ETA: If you google silicon valley comic con cosplay, you’ll see a lot of photos of cosplayers who are clearly doing this as a “profession”.

  10. (24) Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” is very long and very slow and very very philosophical in a gloomy Russian way. I found it hard going, and I enjoyed his “Solaris” very much. It’s an important work of cinema, but… be prepared going in.

  11. And on a different note, I wonder if the people planning a TV version of Glen Cook’s “Black Company” books have noticed they’re a fantasy take on the Waffen-SS?

    (To quickly summarise my reading: the Lady and her armies are the Nazis; the faceless evil of the Dominator is communism, the Black Company use a lot of skull imagery and have a reputation for atrocities but fight bravely for the lesser evil against the greater one. It helps to triangulate on Cook’s politics from his other books, particularly “A Matter of Time”, in which our hope against the International Communist Conspiracy is the John Birch Society.)

  12. After two episodes of Westworld, I’m seeing one massive hole in the defined world: knives.

    We know from the first episode that the “hosts” can’t detect guests and thus don’t modify their behavior according to whether they’re interacting with guests or hosts. The fix for this is magical guns that can apparently tell the difference – which is problematic on its own, but okay, let’s roll with that.

    How do the hosts know not to stab guests, then? I have a hard time believing the park has magical flatware to go along with the magical guns.

  13. 14)
    That reminds me that for a while, the AMNH once had on display a car and the meteorite that had fallen and struck it. They still have the meteorite on view, but no longer have the car (it used to be in the big hall in the first floor where the large canoe is)

    12 to quote Edna Mode in The Incredibles: NO CAPES! 😉

    @ghostbird I never thought of that mapping of politics on Cook’s books. I’ve not read A Matter of Time, though. I’ve just seen the Black Company as a rather dark grey band in a dark world, and the Lady-Dominator conflict just one of those “Evil can’t cooperate” sort of worlds (c.f. how much the Ten scheme against each other, with the Black Company as pawns in that too)

  14. @Paul Weimer

    It’s not something I like to dwell on because I quite like his books, but I’m pretty sure it’s there. A charitable reading might be that they’re Cook’s take on Sven Hassel, and more about the pulp than the politics.

  15. @Mark

    They don’t, in general. He wrote those later and was doing something different with them.

  16. Well what do you know. I get a title credit on a day when it’s mostly news that I find interesting, uplifting, and have nothing to say about.

    Still: yaaay!

    I *was* willing to share with Chip Hitchcock for their addition of “…of the death of Files” though.

    For today I shall stay Shakespearean: Once more onto the Scroll, dear Pixels.

  17. I was not aware that I am perceived by some as a purple light. I most definately am not ‘common’.

    Who do I see about collecting my fee for all those photos you’ve all been taking?

    (“steve davidson” is so common, I identified 40 PAGES of ‘me’ on Facebook before I stopped counting)

  18. @JJ: are the ~skin costumes the chicken, or the egg, or just another commercial tactic? A Google search gets a few skin costumes (and one so top-heavy as to look like superhero antics are impossible) and a lot of not-particularly-exposing costumes. Is it possible that the commercial cons simply get so many people that there are a lot of photo-worthy costumes? Since “media” tends to mean “visual media” (AFAICT), it’s not surprising that any “media” con would have a greater visuals-to-words ratio than an old-line SF con.

  19. Chip, the top-heavy one could be there because “Silicon” and “Silicone” are so similar.

    steve davidson, I once saw a printout of other Kip Williamses at a big box store. To be precise, it was a printout of Kip Williamses who had purchased extended warranties on electronics. It was a lengthy list, too, and it made me wonder how many Kip Williamses there might be who didn’t buy the extended warranties, or even shop at Best Products at all.

    (Note: Extended warranties on Walkman-type tape players are a good investment. It was like buying two or three units a year and only paying once.)

  20. @steve davidson

    I was not aware that I am perceived by some as a purple light. I most definately am not ‘common’.

    Relax. We all know you’re really Amazing. 🙂

  21. 10) My Dad owned one of the old radium-painted wristwatches, though he only wore it occasionally. Sometimes, when I was a kid and the parents were out, I’d go in their room and pick the watch up from the dresser, go into the closet and shut the door, and hold the watch up to my eye to admire the glow. (“Ooh, cool!“)

  22. Mark on April 25, 2017 at 6:30 am said:
    There’s a short term giveaway on Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire.

    Thank you for that (he says, falling upon it with a merry cackle of vulturine glee.)

  23. Just finished Kameron Hurley’s The Stars are Legion. Ug. She’s kind of the anti-Becky Chambers – I can’t read the Chambers books because everyone is so nice, everyone in a Hurley book is a psychopathic killer (not quite all, but most). I think this one is the end of me trying to read Hurley – it suffers from her usual issues of really erratic pacing (the ending in particular felt rushed),, and worldbuilding full of holes (particularly around the scale of things – number of people, etc) Jul jbhyq jbeyqfuvcf sybngvat guebhtu fcnpr unir gragnpyrf gb pbyyrpg fghss? Gurer’f abguvat bhg gurer… nyfb, vs lbh’er fubeg bs erfbheprf, rkcybevat lbhe bja jbeyq svefg zvtug or n tbbq vqrn orsber unevat bss gb pbadhre gur arvtuobef.

    Not really a fan. Some nice visuals though.

  24. The repurposing of pop music in the first episode was interestingly bizarre.

    That’s my favorite part of Westworld. A really good job was done on making the songs fit the period in spite of their modern pop or rock origins.

    As for the show itself, I haven’t been able to finish season 1. The premise of giving real intelligence to androids who have to suffer repeated death and other horror for the amusement of human tourists is incredibly morbid. It’s like playing D&D for years only to be told all those orcs you killed had children and now they’ve starved.

  25. Around 1980, a music teacher explained to me that the blind auditions thing had been intended to address racial discrimination. That it fixed gender discrimination was, in his telling, a pleasant but entirely unforseen result.

  26. @Chris S

    it suffers from her usual issues of really erratic pacing (the ending in particular felt rushed),

    I listened to a podcast (Ditchdiggers perhaps?) with her about it and you are absolutely and literally correct about the ending being rushed – she got stuck and then had to charge through the second half of the book at high speed.

    I was prepared to forgive it as part of enjoying the overall gonzo tone – including the worldbuilding being more spectacular than coherent – but I can certainly see others not going for it.

  27. Im too clumsy to be a part of a dominoes team. Id be the clutz who knocked them over early, end up in a viral youtube video wirh people laughing at me.

    Ill bet when they set these up they purposely limit risk by not allowing all dominoes to fall until the end, so each section will be separate, in case someone is clumsy.

  28. @Rev Bob: Westworld has alot of plot holes. You have to just accept them to enjoy the show. I thought it was kind if boring. You may want to watch it once a week. I dont know of its good enough to be binge worthy.

    If you have Amazon Prime, check out Fortitude. Its reveals itself as a genre show later in the first season.

  29. @Rev Bob:
    Havent seen it, but why stop at knives? If the hosts kill each other – or the guests – I guess they could do it by a lot of ways: Suffocation, drowning, dopping a 10 ton weight on them.
    So I guess there must be some kind of failsafe in place. You know, like in the holodecks of Star trek 🙂

  30. @Guess:

    I’m used to overlooking plot/setting holes, but I prefer them to be a bit less egregious. This reminds me, incidentally, that I’ve just reached the part in Leviathan Wakes where the “2.5 square meters” office with the “large desk” hosts a meeting between four people. Definitely regarding that size as a mistaken rendering of “2.5 meters square” now; there’s just no other way for that scene to make sense.

    No Amazon Prime here – no Netflix, either. (I’ve got enough media to consume that’s already bought and paid for to justify paying for a subscription service. I only have HBO because my cable provider bundles it free with my internet service.) I actually started Westworld because I was killing time until the new Supergirl episode became available via On Demand. The CW’s usually pretty good about having it ready by midnight, but not this week.

    Speaking of bought-and-paid-for media, I’m finally seeing the light at the end of December’s big Open Road tunnel. Since Goodreads has no good way to mark a bunch of books as purchased from X retailer on Y date, I shoveled those 450 or so books into a special temporary list so I could manually do so later. I knocked the number down to 400 a while back, 300 last week or so, and I chopped that in half to 150 this morning. At least I was able to find a rhythm and make fairly short work of that chunk – it’s not as satisfying as being “in the zone” creatively, but it’s a distant cousin. All the same, I’ll be glad when I get the rest of that slate cleared in one or two more sessions.

    ETA, @Peer: “Why stop at knives?”

    Knives were on my mind due to the interaction with Old Prospector in the second episode.

  31. @Guess:

    Im too clumsy to be a part of a dominoes team. Id be the clutz who knocked them over early, end up in a viral youtube video wirh people laughing at me.

    OMG I thought the same thing. Klutz fistbump!
    *misses fistbump*
    *stumbles*
    *steps on cat*
    *knocks over DVD tower*

    😉

  32. @Ghostbird

    No offense but at that level of spinning you can say any evil empire story is about the Nazis.

  33. (2) I’d have thought that blind fiction submissions would be further down the pike. I briefly thought of setting up a company to provide secure anonymization to help companies use a truly blind submission process given all of the discussion about various biases in the industry. I suspected that the costs associated with such a process would be prohibitive given the volume of slush reading, unsolicited submissions, etc.

    @rcade

    The payoff in the final few episodes is worth the effort, IMHO.

    @Rev. Bob

    The Westworld Wiki links to an article suggesting that blade use, as well as fisticuffs, are subject to programming to limit the pain/harm a guest receives. Of course, that leaves open the possibility of a guest-on-guest donnybrook.

    I’m still wondering about the guest/robot ratio. Too many guests and guest-on-guest violence becomes an unattractive risk. Too few guests and profitability declines.

    Regards,
    Dann

  34. @Mark – well, that makes sense, as it comes through in the writing. And why a bone knife turns to obsidian blade in the third act. At least it isn’t a bloated trilogy.

    Yeah, the visuals are awesome – geniryyvat va n fxvafhvg ba n ovbybtvpny fcnpr plpyr cnfg jnivat gragnpyrf, naq prcunyncbq thaf. Ubjrire vs lbh pbafvqre gung gur fuvcf ner irel pybfr gbtrgure naq ner qrpnlvat, gur fgngvba xrrcvat znxrf zl fhfcrafvba bs qvforyvrs tb “smmmg”

  35. Meredith Moment, with advisories…

    Currently marked down to 99 cents at Amazon: the omnibus of Robert Bevan’s Caverns and Creatures Books 1-4, as well as each of the four short story collections, aptly named d6 through 4d6. The first novel is also 99 cents, but why buy it by itself when you can buy the omnibus at the same price and get books 2-4 included for free?

    The books could use some editing (as expected for indie work), and there’s a lot of juvenile potty humor, but I’ve found them funny enough to be worth the read so far. The markdown is good for the next week, as a way to commemorate the publication of the fifth novel.

    This series is based on the now-common trope where a gang of roleplayers gets transported into the game world and transformed into their characters, and they then proceed to search for a way back. The big differences here, as compared to Guardians of the Flame or other more serious takes on the concept, are that they’re more beer-and-pretzels types than Serious Roleplayers (leading to some early mistakes in what passes for their strategy) and that their GM remains In Control when he deigns to pay attention. It’s definitely played for laughs, and won’t be to everybody’s taste.

    I should point out that the short stories don’t really fit into the novels’ continuity. As I recall, the shorts work best when read after the second novel, as either a different path or as “untold adventures” taking place during that book. They’re mostly written as ways to put the party into embarrassing situations, so don’t think too hard about it.

    4d6 and Book 4 have actually bubbled up near the top of my TBR massif lately, so I’m already caught up in terms of the sale, but I’ve flagged the new book for imminent purchase.

  36. Here is a cool thing: Mad Max Fury road trailer remade with shots from Is a mad mad world:

    As the pixel scrolled, each of us in our own way was filed.

  37. @Rev. Bob: “We know from the first episode that the ‘hosts’ can’t detect guests”

    I don’t think that’s true, and I’m having trouble thinking of anything in the first episode that might’ve given you that idea. Teddy in character doesn’t know that he can’t kill the Man in Black, but that’s part of the fictional context of the game; it doesn’t mean he can’t perceive such things on an unconscious level. It’s like when a host sees a photo of the outside world and reflexively says “That doesn’t look like anything to me”– in-character, they’re not allowed to perceive it, but in order for that rule to work, their brain must have been able to understand it enough to recognize it as being in the category of forbidden things. And distinguishing hosts from guests would be much easier than that on a technical level, given that the park system overall always knows who is in the park.

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