Pixel Scroll 4/29/17 Let Us Now Pixel Famous Scrolls

(1) YA AWARD NAME. Annalee Flower Horne makes a preemptive strike.

Is this just gratuitous Heinlein hatred? Dude hatred? Have I missed a news item? Or maybe I haven’t. Kevin Standlee recently wrote that if the YA Award passes the Helsinki Business meeting, then the Business Meeting can take up the issue of what its name should be.

There was a nonbinding survey  asking fans’ preferences among six names (Anansi, Lodestar, Ouroboros, Spellcaster, Tesseract, and Worldcon), but that places no limits on the Business Meeting.

(2) A REAL VIKING. Hampus Eckerman recommends, “For those Filers that will combine their visit to WorldCon with a visit to Sweden, a new Viking Museum, called Viking Life, opened this weekend. Some comments about being the only real place to see Vikings in Stockholm has already sparked a fight with the Historical Museum. The Historical Museum retorted that they had largest Viking exhibition in the world and that all authentic artifacts displayed at the Viking Museum had, in fact, been borrowed from the Historical Museum.

“But the thing that put Swedish twitter on fire was not this spat. It was the pictures of the Swedish king at the inauguration. Please enjoy a real Viking King.”

(3) HE’S THIRSTY. OK, Steve Drew is sold on going to the Worldcon.

(4) VON BRAUN’S HUGO. Bill Mullins visited a space shrine:

I was at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center today for my son’s graduation from Space Camp. After the ceremonies, we toured the museum and saw Wernher von Braun’s retro-Hugo (1954, from Boston’s Noreascon 4 in 2004) in the Best Related Work category, for his book Conquest of the Moon, co-written with Fred Whipple and Willy Ley. His office at Marshall Space Flight Center has been recreated there as a permanent exhibit, and his award is sitting on his desk.

Patrick Molloy also wrote about it here in 2012.

(5) CONTROVERSIAL EDITS. Natalie Luhrs articulates how “Failures of Empathy” are an sff community issue.

Recently, Seanan McGuire (1, 2, 3) and J.Y. Yang (thread) have talked on Twitter about copyeditors making changes which fundamentally alter the story, and not for the better. The change in question: redacting the use of the singular they—used by nonbinary characters—to whichever binary gender the copyeditor felt like substituting. This is an act of erasure and, as Yang points out in the linked thread, an act of violence.

Many nonbinary people use the singular they as their pronoun—while this is a relatively new usage, it is not incorrect (copyeditors of the world, take note). I have seen it become more widely used over the last few years and at this point anyone griping about it is basically using it as an opportunity to be a prescriptivist jerk.

…We have an empathy problem in the SFF community. These failures are more obvious when a convention dismisses the safety concerns of their female Guest of Honor in favor of their friend the serial harasser, but you can also see it at a smaller scale: World Fantasy’s initial decision to retain the H.P. Lovecraft pin and Brian McClellan suddenly deciding to tweet about how unprofessional it is to talk about your bad copyedit is when a person of color is the one talking. It’s an entire spectrum of failure, this lack of empathy.

(6) COMPANIONABLE ALIEN. ScreenCrush catches up with “Karen Gillan on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,’ ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ and Nebula’s Near-Death Experience in ‘Guardians 1’”.

I think it’s fair to say that when the first Guardians came out, these were the most obscure characters to get their own Marvel movie. Now, of course, the first movie is beloved and everyone knows the characters. Did that change anything about how you guys went about making the sequel? Was there new pressure that wasn’t there before?

That was quite an interesting thing for me as well, because I was wondering if anyone was going to be feeling the pressure; like second album syndrome or something. Maybe they did and they didn’t really show it, but I didn’t because I didn’t feel I had the responsibility of the film on my shoulders. I just got to come in and play this fun character.

(7) ANCESTRY. I can’t believe a spellchecker did this – but how else would you get that typo?

(8) COMICS EVERYONE BOUGHT. You can infer these are not all that rare, right? Yahoo! News lists “The top 10 best selling comic books of all time”.

#10. The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #583 – 530,000 copies sold

This comic, featuring Spidey’s encounter with then President Barack Obama, became a must-have collectible after being highlighted on news programs around the country.

#9. The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 3) #1 – 533, 000 copies sold

After a yearlong storyline that involved Doctor Octopus posing as Spider-Man, fans were more than happy to celebrate this back-to-basics approach to the friendly neighborhood wall crawler.

(9) FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE. Here’s the moos – The Boozy Cow, a restaurant chain with a charitable foundation and donates all its profits to charity, has opened a fourth location in Scotland: “Charity restaurant chain opens fourth Scottish eatery”.

The Boozy Cow chain – launched by philanthropist Garreth Wood two years ago – already has premises in Aberdeen, Stirling and Edinburgh, has now opened a venue in Dundee.

Mr Wood also revealed that a further five charities will receive a share of the profits from The Boozy Cow chain – Hot Chocolate Trust, Mid-Lin Day Care, Dundee Woman’s Aid, Art Angel and Help for Kids.

This brings the number of good causes currently supported by the company to 18.

Last month, the organisation announced it was giving away £210,000 to charities including CHAS, The Archie Foundation and the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative in Edinburgh, with almost half a million pounds given away since the company opened its first venue in Aberdeen in 2014.

(10) DAVIS OBIT. SF Site News reports the death of Grania Davis (1943-2017) on April 28.

Author Grania Davis (b.1943) died on April 28. Davis was married to Avram Davidson for 3 years and served as his primary editor after his death. She co-authored several works with Davidson as well as writing works on her own.

(11) DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUE COMPAINTS. Nevertheless, back in 1962, The Traveler tells Galactic Journey readers he is giving a vote of no confidence in new F&SF editor Davidson’s handiwork: “[Apr. 28, 1962] Changing of the Guard (May 1962 Fantasy and Science Fiction)”

I never thought the time would come that reading The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction would be the most dreaded portion of my duties…and yet, here we are.  Two issues into new Editor Avram Davidson’s tenure, it appears that the mag’s transformation from a great bastion of literary (if slightly stuffy) scientifiction is nearly complete.  The title of the digest might well be The Magazine of Droll Trifles (with wry parenthetical asides).

One or two of these in an issue, if well done, can be fine.  But when 70% of the content is story after story with no science and, at best, stream-of-consciousness whimsy, it’s a slog.  And while one could argue that last issue’s line-up comprised works picked by the prior editor, it’s clear that this month’s selections were mostly Davidson’s.

Moreover, Robert Mills (the outgone “Kindly Editor”) used to write excellent prefaces to his works, the only ones I would regularly read amongst all the digests.  Davidson’s are rambling and purple, though I do appreciate the biographical details on Burger and Aandahl this ish.

(11a) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born April 29, 1923 — Irvin Kirschner, filmmaker, director of The Empire Strikes Back.

(11b) TODAY’S DAY

International Astronomy Day

Astronomy allows us to see the history of the universe with our own eyes. The stars that twinkle as you look out on a dark, clear night may not exist right now. They existed at whatever point in history they emitted that light, which has taken millions of years to reach Earth.

(12) LATE EASTER EGG STANDING. Hey, I’d already forgotten there was one — “Explaining the mid-credits scene in Suicide Squad”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

Suicide Squad’s mid-credits scene features a meeting between Amanda Waller and billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. The conversation starts off simply enough: Waller needs help when it comes to keeping everything that happened in Midway City (and her involvement) on the down low. In order to protect herself from Enchantress’ wrath and keep her reputation in the green, Waller makes a deal with Wayne to maintain damage control surrounding the movie’s events. Of course, she has to bring something to the table to make the deal happen…

(13) EXPANSIVE. Aaron Pound reviews Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey at Dreaming About Other Worlds.

Full review: The first book in the Expanse series, Leviathan Wakes is a kind of hard-ish medium future science fiction almost Space Opera story that feels a little bit like Firefly and a little bit like a Dashiell Hammett novel. The book is full of adventure, intrigue, and excitement, but it is the kind of industrial, oil-covered adventure, intrigue, and excitement that results in broken bones, bullet holes, and dead characters. Alongside the truckers and detectives in space in the book is just enough alien weirdness to shake things up and add a bit of inhuman horror to the impersonal dangers of living in a hostile environment that will probably kill you if you make a mistake.

(14) NEWS TO SOMEBODY. Vox (the website, not the Rabid Puppy) said in its February review,, “Forget ‘white saviors’: The Great Wall is really about fighting giant lizard monsters”.

A few things you should know about The Great Wall: It’s simultaneously 400 percent more movie than most and 10 percent as much movie as most — huge, bombastic, colorful, explosive, and containing almost no story at all. It’s roughly equivalent to watching the assault-on-Mordor bits of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for 103 minutes. It was filmed in 3D, and I ducked a few times while watching. It also made me seasick, but that’s my own damn fault for sitting too close to the screen.

(15) THE LONG VIEW. AI viewed with alarm: “Viewpoint: Is inequality about to get unimaginably worse?”. Chip Hitchcock snarks, “He probably wouldn’t have been paid if he’d just posted a link to ‘With Folded Hands’…”

Inequality goes back at least 30,000 years.

Hunter-gatherers were more equal than subsequent societies.

They had very little property, and property is a pre-requisite for long-term inequality.

But even they had hierarchies.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, however, something changed.

Equality became a dominant value in human culture, almost all over the world. Why?

It was partly down to the rise of new ideologies such as humanism, liberalism and socialism.

(16) AND THE THIRD LITTLE MARTIAN PIG… There may be no straw or timber, but — “Scientists just discovered something awesome about the soil on Mars”.

The research, which was published in Scientific Reports, reveals that the soil on Mars is particularly well-suited to brick making. In fact, the dirt is so easily formed into bricks that building a rigid structure out of it wouldn’t require any special substance or even heat to bake them, and it’s all thanks to the same material that gives the Mars surface its reddish hue.

At first, engineers at the university were trying to figure out exactly how much additional polymer would be needed for the Mars soil to be shaped into bricks. As they gradually reduced the amount of additive used with their soil simulant they eventually realized that they didn’t need any at all. The team was able to successfully compact iron-oxide-rich Mars dirt with a flexible container which was then pressurized. The result was small, firm blobs of soil which were stable enough to be cut into brick-like shapes.

(17) SHINY. The New York Times tells where to buy “A Solid Gold Darth Vader for the Sith Who Has Everything”.

For less than the cost of a trip to Tatooine, one lucky Star Wars fan will soon be able to own a solid gold Darth Vader mask — perfect for bartering, though perhaps not so good for heavy breathing.

On Tuesday, the Japanese jeweler Ginza Tanaka unveiled the imposing headgear and announced that it would go on sale at the company’s flagship store in Tokyo on May the fourth (do we need to spell this out for you?) to celebrate Star Wars’ 40th Anniversary.

The price? A mere 154 million Japanese yen, or about $1.4 million. Tax included!

(18) ON ICE. This is the lede of an article by Helen Brown in the April 22 Financial Times (behind a paywall.)

A survey recently found that the most popular song among prison inmates in the UK was ‘Let it Go,’ the big number from Disney’s 2013 blockbuster Frozen.

Despite the incongruity of old lags carrolling along to a song more easily associated with preschoolers dressed as animated princesses, anyone alive to the emotional truths of the film would not be surprised to find it resonating with prisoners struggling to own the guilt of the past and move on…..

(19) AI SCRIPTWRITER RETURNS. “It’s No Game–A Sci-Fi Short Film Starring David Hasselhoff” is a commentary on the forthcoming writer’s strike, featuring David hasselhoff as an android, that explains what happens when writers are replaced by the Golden-Age-Ophile and the Sorkinator.

 [Thanks to Dawn Incognito, Martin Morse Wooster, Bill Mullins, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to Fie 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]

Update: Corrected item one to the name Annalee Flower Horne. (Not Newitz, as I mistakenly wrote to begin with.) Apologies to all concerned.

115 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/29/17 Let Us Now Pixel Famous Scrolls

  1. 1) Rather irrationally, I want them to name it The Fargo.

    2) That’s not a real Viking helmet – it doesn’t have horns.

    3) The Finnish ambassador recently visited my son’s school and told them that Finland is known as the Land Of A Thousand Lakes, though in reality there are about 2,500 of them, and that Finnish drinking habits are similar to the Irish, which he thought was hilarious but slightly inappropriate for a school visit.

    3) THEY GAVE WERNHER VON BRAUN A FARGO I MEAN HUGO? And they say right wing science fiction writers never get no love.

  2. Nigel: Rather irrationally, I want them to name it The Fargo.

    It does seem odd that the scriptwriters named it The Golden Planet instead of The Golden Rocket, doesn’t it?

    Also, are they sucking up for a Best Dramatic Presentation nomination next year? 😉

  3. (2) well, at least the King looks like he’s having fun.

    (5) good for Luhrs. As the purpose of copy editing is to help the author achieve their aims as completely and correctly as possible, changing the intended meaning is a capital error. Sometimes this happens because “completely” and “correctly” conflict, but a more common cause is the editor’s allowing their personal or political views to color their work, a serious error in itself. “Erasure” is a fine description of what’s happened here. One of the biggest fights of my career was the struggle to introduce gender-neutral language in my workplace, in which one had to explain that “he contains she” was not true socially, intellectually or orthographically. Now we plainly need to redefine that term, and it will save us a lot of “he or she”s and ” his or hers”.

  4. “That’s not a real Viking helmet – it doesn’t have horns.”

    Real Viking helmets didn’t have them, as far as we’re aware. There’s a Straight Dope online column from 2004 summarizing how and when horned helmets got associated with Vikings later on in art, opera, and the like.

    I do like the idea of a tesseract design for a YA SF award suggested upthread, both as a way of honoring SF authors who have used it in their writing* and as a way of expressing the new dimensions and possibilities good SF introduces. The usual way I’ve seen a tesseract modeled in 3 dimensions is to have a smaller wire-frame cube inside of a larger one, with the corresponding corners of each cube connected by additional wires, producing additional distorted “cubes” amidst the connections. (This of course only approximates what a 4-D cube would be like, but in a way similar to the way that a 2-D edge-drawing of a cube approximates a real 3-D cube.)

    * Which include not only L’Engle (“A Wrinkle in Time”), but also Heinlein (“And He Built a Crooked House”). Recipients could decide which they want to acknowledge in their award.

  5. 13: heh. had to laugh at that. My first impression of Leviathan Wakes was “is this Firefly fanfic…?”

    Speaking of written violence, can we please knock off the gratuitous attacks on Heinlein? Critique – go right ahead. You can even cherry pick, but give us a little something more than “nya nya nya”

  6. If we can put in titles in advance for when Worldcon’s on, I’ll submit “And Now I’m Scrolling Pixels In Helsinki, And They’re Playing La Vida Loca Once Again”.

    Reference is here (bit of swearing don’t play too loud in sensitive company): https://youtu.be/VyuQvbpiAp8

  7. Because telling someone that they’re incorrect about their pronoun identity is gaslighting.

    Your premise is that the copy editor was manipulating the author so they would question their own sanity? That editor’s a real bastard.

    I find some irony in the way language is being misused in a discussion over how language was misused.

  8. Nigel, I appreciated your joke about the Viking helmets. Darn blog has no “larf” button.

    Instead of harking back to a specific writer/series/whatever, I think perhaps an award shaped like a flashlight might symbolize those days when the urgency of finishing your latest book ran afoul of a parental desire for you to sleep, so you ended up reading under the covers and trying not to react audibly.

  9. ‘Also, are they sucking up for a Best Dramatic Presentation nomination next year?’

    There were quite a few UFO sightings in season 2, and they had an unexpected and actually kinda lovely payoff, too.

    So if they keep it up, it could be Close Encounters Of The Third Season Of Fargo.

    (There were no sf/supernatural elements in season 1, but there was more than a whiff of Mephistopheles/malevolent trickster god about Billy Bob Thornton’s character.)

    (And thanks, Kip!)

  10. ‘Real Viking helmets didn’t have them, as far as we’re aware’

    I think everyone will agree that this historically accurate depiction of the Vikings in Ireland settles the horned helmet matter definitively:

    https://youtu.be/9QiySRDUvgo

  11. Nigel: I think everyone will agree that this historically accurate depiction of the Vikings in Ireland settles the horned helmet matter definitively

    I was just sure you were going to be linking to this:

  12. @JJ – with this preponderance of evidence, who can doubt the horny-helmetted sons of the north?

  13. Horns are okay, but for real fashion flair, it’s wings, man. I miss my old winged helmet. Chin strap gave way one day, and it vanished into the blue, never to return.

  14. It occurs to me that with modern drones you could have a new version of those old beanie hats with the propellers that actually flies. Or, at least, gives you a severe lingering neck injury.

  15. @John A Arkansawyer

    I love the flashlight! I don’t know if it’d speak to the Youth of Today. But I still love it.

    Judging by a sample of one: it would. Stepson has been swiping flashlights since about age 6 to read under the covers (and strongly believed for quite awhile we didn’t know it and he was getting away with something). Which at least has the advantage of we always know where to find the flashlights in an emergency 🙂

  16. Meredith Moment: Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is now available for $1.99 at the usual digital purveyors.

    [universe-stalk]

  17. Reddit posted a picture of three guys buying one of those 1000 packs of beer. They got the bucket for free.

  18. Regarding (1), comments in that post and elsewhere make a good point that for procedural reasons that probably will make most people’s eyes glaze over, it still may not be possible for the Helsinki Business Meeting to apply a name to the YA Award in a single step. That is, they can ratify the (unnamed) award, but the first Worldcon Business Meeting that could name it in one step (without a ratification) would be San Jose.

    I have suggested that the better (in the sense of least-controversial) course of action would be to strike out the special provision in the pending resolution and also the blank in the pending name (I’ve said that I’ll rule both of those to be scope reductions and thus not subject to re-ratification). If ratified, the meeting could then propose an award name as an ordinary constitutional amendment that if passed would be up for ratification in San Jose in 2018.

    Worldcon 76 San Jose next year would be the first to present the award, which would just be “The Award for Best Young Adult Book” without a Campbell-like award name. (I believe that the in the pending proposal, if left unfilled, is a Null, which is a non-printing space, and thus San Jose would not be obliged to engrave “” on an award trophy.

    The YA Committee will not be recommending the name of a person, no matter how popular. All personal names are problematic for different reasons. Many people are unaware of just how problematic. I suspect that it would be impossible to name the Hugo Award for Hugo Gernsback (or anyone else) today if we were starting it as a new award.

    The Business Meeting is not obliged to accept the recommendations of the YA Committee or of the Business Meeting Chair.

  19. the urgency of finishing your latest book ran afoul of a parental desire for you to sleep, so you ended up reading under the covers and trying not to react audibly

    My mother said once that she knew we did that; she worried only about whether we got enough sleep.

  20. Hampus Eckerman: “From context, I believe that should be from rather than by.”
    Yes, my mistake. Mike, could you please change?

    Taken care of now.

  21. Having British Isles ancestry, I hold to the theory that the Vikings had horns and the helmets had holes.
    (Full disclosure: my Swedish friends do not agree with this very logical idea.)

  22. 1) While the first SF I ever read (in 1955) was Rocket Ship Galileo, before that I went through a boxful of (mostly) boy’s-adventure books from 1910-1930, many produced by the Stratmeyer Syndicate. I never encountered a Tom Swift book, but those are arguably among ancestors of the Heinlein-Dalgleish branch of the YA/SF publishing category. And even those had precursors: dime novels such as the Frank Reade Library and various other segments of the books-for-young-people publishing biz. Of course, all those drag along their own cultural baggage. Even the (early original) Bobbsey Twins books generate cringes. There may be no label for a YA award that is both safe and historically representative.

  23. Surely, Viking helmets are purple.

    Scroll Pixels, let’s read this book,
    Scroll Pixels, off of your Nook,
    Next get that sequel,
    Maybe a prequel.
    Click ’em . . . Tick ’em
    Fifth! Fifth! Fifth! Fifth!
    Scroll Pixels, published by Tor.
    You’ll hear us yell for more. . .
    Scroll-P-I-X-E-L-S!
    Scroll Pixels, let’s go!

  24. Singular they: Generalising singular they (e.g. ‘if someone comes to the door tell them to go away’) has been around since time immemorial. Singular they for named individuals, on the other hand, is indeed something new, at least as widespread practice. (I’m not saying it shouldn’t be used – anything we do which meets this situation will be new, so clearly that can’t be an objection to it. But it is new.)

    YA award: Yes, I agree that it shouldn’t be called after Heinlein, or anyone, and that’s already established, but nevertheless I have a question; was Heinlein a YA writer? That is, what age-group are his juvenile works intended for? I have never seen a clear answer to this. He wrote, of course, before the YA age-band became a Thing in the way it now is, but there have always been some books specifically aimed at teenagers; were Heinlein’s books among them? Or were they, like many fantasy classics which people now refer to as YA, actually for Older Children? I certainly read them when I was an Older Child, but that’s not decisive; it’s well-known that many young people read books at the ‘wrong’ age.

    When it looked as if this award might be named after a person, I was hoping the person selected might help to clarify what we should take ‘YA’ to mean; but it was not to be.

  25. Another Meredith Moment – Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree is currently $3.99 on Amazon.

  26. @Andrew M – I remember (and Wikipedia cites back me up) Heinlein essays complaining about the editor of the juveniles always being on his case about elements that she didn’t think were suitable for the target audience, plus something about Starship Troopers definitely not being for that audience even though they were likely to read it. So the target audience was definitely in the teenager range, however that maps into Young Adult.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles

  27. I have a question; was Heinlein a YA writer? That is, what age-group are his juvenile works intended for? I have never seen a clear answer to this. He wrote, of course, before the YA age-band became a Thing in the way it now is, but there have always been some books specifically aimed at teenagers; were Heinlein’s books among them?

    Yes. Alice Dalgleish would refer to teenagers as the target audience, and fret over whether the material was suitable for them.

    I think it was clear enough that the books were aimed at teens, which would make them comfortably YA, had the category existed then.

  28. I remember (and Wikipedia cites back me up) Heinlein essays complaining about the editor of the juveniles always being on his case about elements that she didn’t think were suitable for the target audience, plus something about Starship Troopers definitely not being for that audience even though they were likely to read it. So the target audience was definitely in the teenager range, however that maps into Young Adult.

    I don’t quite see how that follows. ‘Elements not suitable for the target audience’ would be equally relevant if the target audience was older children, and likewise the claim that Starship Troopers is not for them would make sense (possibly more sense) if older children were what was meant. Also, the Wikipedia article you link to mentions something I wasn’t previously aware of, Heinlein saying he was fed up with being known only as a children’s writer.

    It may be relevant (or may not: practices sometimes differ between fields) that the Edgars have both a Juvenile award (of long standing) and a Young Adult one (of more recent origin). So for them, it seems that ‘Juvenile’ is definitely to be read as meaning children’s.

  29. OK, Kurt Busiek’s evidence seems to settle it. I guess that before the YA band was devised, writers for teenagers might have been known as ‘children’s writers’, because there was no better word for them.

  30. (5)

    The SFF community is the ONE space where I feel I can be openly NB, use they/them pronouns and have them respected.
    ****
    Going through the copyedits felt like I was getting slapped in the face. Over and over.

    Do those who take exception to the word “violence” being used believe that emotional and/or psychological violence exists?

    I feel that being in a situation where you are constantly told that the way you identify yourself is incorrect would be traumatizing. Living in a pervasively invalidating environment causes PTSD.

    I don’t think this CE was deliberately trying to invalidate a non-binary person, but they did. Their actions implied that the singular “they” is wrong or at best inconvenient. And
    J.Y. Yang experienced emotional harm from that.

  31. I recall the descriptor for the Heinlein books as “juveniles” at least from the 1960s onward. As to what they were called in the late 1940s in trade circles, I’d have to scan the second volume of Patterson’s biography and maybe Joseph T. Major’s Heinlein’s Children: The Juveniles for terminological info.

    As for the publishing environment of the 1950s, there’s also the Winston line of SF aimed at the teen readership–they were shelved in the kids’-books section of the public library.

    In the last few decades the market for non-adult fiction seems too have segmented beyond “children’s” and “young adult,” a distinction that has its roots going back to the Victorians. (I recall Capt. Marryat produced work that straddled the age ranges.)

    A memorial note: Too bad Mike Levy isn’t still around–he could have answered all these questions easily.

  32. I know I’m going to regret this, as it will likely accomplish nothing of lasting value, but here goes:

    I am disabled and I am old enough to know what that was like when people hid children like me away in hospitals and were forgotten.

    I have been on the receiving end of everything from indifferent dismissal and actual physical violence. I’ve been patted on the head, sat there while others were told I was stupid and could not be educated, as if I weren’t there or were a piece of furniture. I’ve had people “explain things” to me which I understood better than they did, in tones they’d use on their pet dog.

    Emotional and/or psychological trauma are quite real, devastating in their own way and completely and totally different from actual physical violence. On my first day at a new school, I might as well have had a target on me. I was teased, called names and belittled. It’s been decades (probably longer than some of you have been alive). I recall the name of every child and adult from whom I received a kind word. I remember their words and treasure them like gold.

    The only negative I recall from that day as vividly as I recall the kindness is the sole physical act of violence. I’ll remember it until I die. The kid bounced a soccer ball in my face and then laughed and walked away. It’s literally my only interaction with him in my life (a few days later, he left school because his dad was transferred) yet I remember his face, his name and his laugh and the sound the ball made on my face. The way it felt, everything about it, is in my brain. None of the verbal abuse is as clear.

    There is most definitely a distinction between physical and verbal abuse and harm and that’s why there should be a verbal distinction between them. Something being “like” a slap in the face is still far removed from an actual slap in the face. You see, when someone actually physically violates you, it carries everything in its wake-pain, mental and physical, trauma, physical and psychological, as well as emotional harm.

    That’s why the internet, for me, is far “safer” than the real world. I’ve heard it all and nothing anyone can say can faze me at this point. In the real world, they can actually lay their hands on me. That’s a very different proposition.

  33. @Russell Letson: I started to hand my kid the first Bobbsey Twins book, my old copy or maybe the wife’s copy, and then decided to give it a scan first, then put it back. That really bummed me out, more than I like to admit, but it was the right thing to do, little as I wanted to do it. I liked those books.

  34. I’d have to scan the second volume of Patterson’s biography and maybe Joseph T. Major’s Heinlein’s Children: The Juveniles for terminological info.

    The problem with the Pattersons is you just cannot trust his research. Case in point:

    Page 342 of the ARC:

    “Much of the islands civilian population [the Japanese soldiers] herded onto the heights of Mount Suribachi, where they were encircled. The Japanese forced civilians up – and over – the precipice as they defended the mountain to the last cartridge.”

    Most of the civvies were evacuated from Iwo Jima before the battle and that massacre never happened.

    From page 103 of the second volume:

    “Both of them were apprehensive about going into Argentina, the last fascist state left over from WWII.”

    I don’t even know where to start with that.

    One interesting omission, or at least if it was in there I managed to overlook it, is that while the movie and TV shows RAH was connected to get discussed, I didn’t see any discussion of Dimension X, X Minus One or Beyond Tomorrow, all of which adapted various Heinlein stories. Dimension X had what may have been the greatest ad lib in all history: immediately after one character makes an impassioned argument for a world government to keep the peace, the news breaks into the broadcast to announce the beginning of the Korean War.

  35. @Audible Members: Audible.com is doing a limited time offer of “buy 3 extra credits for $35.88,” which is $11.96 per credit. It’s been going on for at least a few days; I don’t know how much longer it’ll last.

    If you’re on the Gold plan, like me, and have several audiobooks you want to buy Real Soon Now, you may want to consider this. I bought three extra credits and used them on the next 3 Peter Grant/Rivers of London audiobooks, saving $9. Yay! Really, after two books, I can tell I’ll probably keep reading them till Aaronovitch stops writing them.

    Members on the Gold Annual plan would only save $2. Platinum or Platinum Annual customers pay less than $11.96 per credit already, so IMHO it’s a losing proposition for them.

  36. Russell Letson:

    In the last few decades the market for non-adult fiction seems too have segmented beyond “children’s” and “young adult,” a distinction that has its roots going back to the Victorians.

    Are you thinking of ‘middle grade’? The term, I guess, is new, but I think there was always a distinction within the children’s field; the core audience for Winnie the Pooh was not the same as the core audience for E. Nesbit or Narnia. (In the UK we don’t have middle grade anyway, since we don’t have grades, so it’s all still children’s; but there’s still a distinction between 5-8 and 9-12, or possibly 5-7 and 8-12). And picture books as a distinct thing go back to the 19th century: Lewis Carroll prepared a Nursery Alice, distinct from the regular Alice in Wonderland, for this market.

    In general ‘teenage’ and ‘YA’ seems to be treated as the same, but W.H. Smith’s has separate sections for Teenage and Young Adult. I have no idea what they mean by this: I have stared at the shelves and cannot work out any principle of distinction. Possibly it’s just ‘that’s what the publishers said’.

  37. @Robert Reynolds – There is most definitely a distinction between physical and verbal abuse and harm and that’s why there should be a verbal distinction between them. Something being “like” a slap in the face is still far removed from an actual slap in the face.

    I hope you don’t regret being so forthcoming, because only by telling our stories can we assert our humanity and our value in ways that move others. Who knows what story is the one that makes the difference and changes things for one or more people?

    And having been actually punched in the face decades ago, I can confidently assert that at least for me, a metaphorical slap is really unpleasant, but not nearly so unpleasant as 18 stitches.

  38. It’s literally my only interaction with him in my life (a few days later, he left school because his dad was transferred) yet I remember his face, his name and his laugh and the sound the ball made on my face. The way it felt, everything about it, is in my brain.

    I’m sorry you suffered that but glad you decided to tell your story here. I think we all benefit when people share their personal experiences, good and bad, to inform the normal gasbagging.

    Your comment reminded me of how vividly I remember being 12 years old in Burleson, Texas, riding my 10-speed home from a convenience store that carried SF/F paperbacks and getting hit square in the spine with a beer bottle thrown by older teens driving by in a truck. A random act of cruelty they probably forgot in a week that I’ve carried in my brain 38 years.

    (A more pleasant memory: The book I had bought was one of Michael Moorcock’s Elric novelettes.)

  39. This seems relevant just now: Liberal Fan Fiction.

    Instead of creating alternate-universe versions of politicians, some projected them onto existing fandoms, imagining the Democrats hitting the campaign trail for Clinton as the Avengers, or Clinton herself as fictional heroines like Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, or Daenerys Targaryen. I’m not exempt from this method of engaging politics either, casting Kasich and Cruz as the main characters of the first season of True Detective. This kind of playfulness can be harmless fun, and fun can be fine, even in politics. The problem comes, as with any other metaphor, when you return to it so often that you start projecting the characteristics of the metaphor back onto reality. If you envision your party’s politicians as superheroes too often, for example, you can start to lose sight of the fact that they aren’t noble guardians of truth, justice, and the American way, but rather rich people pursuing their own self-interest.

    The end of the article is like a quick, light slap in the face from Philip K. Dick.

  40. Well, since I’m full of regret for asking the question in the first place, might as well go all-in.

    You know what I said the first time I was told I should enter a trauma group? “Well, okay, but only if I’m not taking the spot from someone with real trauma.”

    If my elder sister is to be believed, I got beat with an electrical cord as a kid. I don’t remember that.

    What I do remember is the constant belittlement, and the implication that I had no right to be upset because I was not being physically abused. There were times when I wished that someone would hit me because I obviously deserved to be punished. There were times when I wished someone would hit me because then someone might take my hurt seriously. Didn’t happen.

    As I prepare for Cognitive Processing Therapy for my PTSD, my therapists assure me that my trauma is just as valid as those who have experienced physical violence. I don’t believe them. This is why.

    And as for safety or comfort? Even though I have cut ties with my abusive mother, her abuse still lives on in my head every time I tell myself to shut the fuck up because I don’t know what I’m talking about you stupid fucking bitch. She will live with me until the day I die.

  41. I have a broken nose after being headbutted. I also have been punched a few times. But the words that were screamed after me because of my sexual orientation are the ones I remember most vividly and are those that hurt the most.

  42. @Dawn Incognito:

    Trauma is trauma, whatever the cause. I’m most emphatically NOT saying that one kind is worse than another. It’s trauma and the damage left is very real.

    What I’m saying is that they are very different and that words mean things. Physical and verbal abuse are different things-both very damaging nonetheless, but different. That’s why violence being used in the context of the link is troublesome, at least to me.

    I wish you all the best in your therapy. What happened to you shouldn’t happen to anyone, under any circumstances and is as bad as any other kind of abuse. Abuse is abuse, whatever form it takes.

    The more I see of people, the better I like animals.

  43. @Cheryl S., @Dawn Incognito, & @Hampus Eckerman: My heart goes out to you as well. And to other people who may speak up later.

  44. Robert Reynolds on April 30, 2017 at 1:46 pm said:

    The more I see of people, the better I like animals.

    I expect that’s a big part of why we like to invent and read about aliens — to give us hope that there might be beings who are better than we are, and to console us that there might be beings who are even worse.

  45. @Robert Reynolds:

    I forgot to say that I’m sorry for all of the insults, condescension, belittlement and physical violence that you have experienced. I should have done that first.

    I guess where I’m coming from is that I believe emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse are types of violence. And possibly the whole thing would have been clearer if J.Y. Yang had used that phrasing as well. Damn you Twitter!

    (And now I need to go have a cry. Which is great because my therapy homework this week is to feel my stupid feelings. And also do a check the facts on “I’m stupid/a very bad word that starts with r that I regularly call myself”.)

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