Pixel Scroll 4/30/17 Scroll Like No One Is Filing You

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(1) IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? What did Ray Bradbury think would happen when he left his personal books to the Waukegan Library?

When I covered the legacy in 2013, Bradbury’s daughters had approved trading some of the books to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies to get other books for the library’s collection. That was before plans for a Bradbury statue got off the ground. The latest on that front is told by The Verge in “Ray Bradbury’s hometown is crowdfunding a statue in his honor”:

The committee is looking to raise $125,000 to fund the project, and launched its campaign earlier this month. Donors who give more than $150 will be given a book from Bradbury’s library. Thus far, the committee has raised around $13,000, with another $20,000 promised. Richard Lee, the Library’s executive director and chair of the statue committee, told The Chicago Tribune that he hoped that the statue will remind area children of the famous author, and that it might inspire them to become writers themselves.

The link for donations is here.

Gifts of any amount will make this project reality. Donors supporting the project at $500 and above will be recognized permanently near the statue on the grounds of Waukegan Public Library….

Gifts of $150 and higher will be acknowledged with a book from Ray Bradbury’s personal library, which was left to Waukegan Public Library after Bradbury’s death in 2012.

(2) COSPLAY MELEE WINNER. Jacqueline Goehner won Season 1 of Syfy’s Cosplay Melee. See her interview here.

(3) CHARON DUNN HAS LAUNCHED AGAIN. And this time she’s following Camestros Felapton’s marketing advice: “I had my cat interview me this time, but he’s not nearly as articulate as Timothy. So much for idea stealing.”

“An Interview with Charon Dunn, author of Retrograde Horizon, by T.B. Kahuna”

I interviewed myself to promote the last book I launched, and it worked! People actually bought copies! I was feeling all self-congratulatory about my self-inflicted promotional ability, when I reflected that everything on the internet is better with a cat in it. Maybe I could get my own cat to interview me to promote my current book!  So I woke T.B. Kahuna from his nap, and bribed him with some catnip and a bilateral ear massage.

Me: Kahuna, I really appreciate your being able to fit this interview into your busy schedule.

T.B. Kahuna: I have food in the square kitty dish but not the round one! Please move it to the round one right now. It’s kind of an emergency.

Me: Sure, but before I do that, I just wanted to talk about my most recent book, Retrograde Horizon….

… T.B. Kahuna: Oh no, my catnip-filled squirrel got stuck behind the couch again.

It’s interesting that you should bring up politics. I did a little rewriting after the U.S. presidential election, since one of my villains is a politician – I toned down the violence and opinion-slinging, and I made my bad guy more generic. My stories take place far in the future, long after the corpses of current politicians have decayed into dust and the social problems we’re fighting about have been solved for the most part, leaving room for a whole bunch of new ones (for instance: if we create sentient life, do we have to consider it a sovereign nation?). My goal is escapism for people taking a breather from politics, not to browbeat people about the world they’re trying to escape. [Retrieves squirrel.]…

(4) WELCOME TO THE CLUB. Well said.

https://twitter.com/SFLangridge/status/858769110947291136

(5) DOING JUSTICE. Is the studio doing enough to promote Wonder Woman? Here’s an uptick in marketing from the past couple of days. “Wonder Woman: Diana, Steve Trevor & Etta Candy Arrive in New Photos”

Warner Bros. has released a handful of new images for the “Wonder Woman,” featuring Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Saïd Taghmaoui as Sameer and Lucy Davis as Etta candy.

The photos arrive amid criticisms that the studio isn’t promoting director Patty Jenkins’ film as heavily as it did last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad.” However, it was revealed late last week that advertising spending for “Wonder Woman” is outpacing that for “Suicide Squad” at the same point in pre-release

Also:

(6) HOW PLASTIC WAS MY VALLEY. Silicon Valley deconstructed by In the Circle, on NPR: “In ‘The Circle’, What We Give Up When We Share Ourselves”.

The Circle, the film based on the novel by Dave Eggers, presents a dystopian view of the direction Silicon Valley is taking the world. And, as a longtime Silicon Valley correspondent, I have to say there is a lot that this comic and spooky film gets right.

Let’s start with the main character, Mae, a recent college grad played by Emma Watson. Mae is eager, idealistic and versed in the kind of marketing verbiage that rolls off the tongues of way too many young people in Silicon Valley. When she goes for a job interview at the Circle — the world’s biggest tech company — she impresses her interviewer with a comically perfect description of the company’s main service.

Sounding like a commercial voice-over, she says: “Before TrueYou, it was like you needed a different vehicle for every single one of your errands. And no one should have to own 87 different cars. It doesn’t make sense. It’s the chaos of the Web made elegant and simple.”

(7) THE ROADS MUST BURROW. More SF from Elon Musk: underground highways to reduce traffic jams: “Ted 2017: Elon Musk’s vision for underground road system”.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Ted curator Chris Anderson, the founder of Tesla and Space X said that he was inspired to consider a tunnel system to alleviate congestion because he found being stuck in traffic “soul-destroying”.

Chip Hitchcock sent the link with a comment, “The Big Dig may have been exceptionally expensive, but I don’t see this happening for under a billion dollars a mile.”

(8) FEELS MUGGY. There is a fantasy design, and several of the other designs also include one or two sff writers.

This sturdy 11 ounce (i.e., normal size) white ceramic mug is both microwave and dishwasher safe. There are books all the way around it, so it works beautifully for both coffee and tea drinkers, and for both righties and lefties.

This set is of 20 of the most beloved fantasy books of all time, including Game of Thrones, The Fellowship of the Ring, Stardust, and The Last Unicorn.

You know I’ll never hear the end of it unless I show you the one with a Bradbury reference. (It’s the third book from the right.)

(9) PINNING AWAY FOR THE FJORDS. The same outfit sells book pins like these. Use your psychic powers to figure out which one John King Tarpinian now owns.

(10) ZAHN’S STAR WARS NOVELS. THRAWN by Timothy Zahn, was published by Del Rey on April 11.

One of the most cunning and ruthless warriors in the history of the Galactic Empire, Grand Admiral Thrawn is also one of the most captivating characters in the Star Wars universe, from his introduction in bestselling author Timothy Zahn’s classic Heir to the Empire through his continuing adventures in Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and beyond.

But Thrawn’s origins and the story of his rise in the Imperial ranks have remained mysterious. Now, in Star Wars: Thrawn, Timothy Zahn chronicles the fateful events that launched the blue-skinned, red-eyed master of military strategy and lethal warfare into the highest realms of power—and infamy.

Other Thrawn novels:

Thrawn Trilogy:

  • Heir to the Empire
  • Dark Force Rising
  • The Last Command

Hand of Thrawn:

  • Specter of the Past
  • Vision of the Future

Star Wars Legends:

  • Outbound Flight
  • Choices of One

Carl Slaughter notes, “I have not been able to find material in Wikipedia, Amazon, or Good Reads about the previous Thrawn novels that provides insight into the development of the Thrawn character and his place in the Star Wars Universe.  I would appreciate anyone linking to or writing such material. “

(11) PAINFUL BUT GREAT. Review of The Handmaid’s Tale TV show by Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica. “The Handmaid’s Tale is the most horrific thing I have ever seen”

What’s really stunning about The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t its evocation of a dark political future, however. It’s the way we’re drawn into the personal perspective of June, a book editor who paid very little attention to politics until one day her credit card stopped working. Because she’s fertile, June is sent to a reeducation camp for handmaids. Eventually she’s renamed “Offred” when she becomes the property of a man named Fred and his supposedly infertile wife. Other women aren’t so lucky. The infertile are sent to die cleaning up toxic waste in the colonies. Lesbian “gender traitors” are hanged in public places, where their bodies are left on display for days.

(12) A HANDMAID’S TRAILER. You might be curious to compare the trailer for the 1990 adaptation of A Handmaid’s Tale with the current one.

(13) ONE ADAM-12. Grammar brawl in progress. Proceed Code Three.

(14) IT’S GREAT TO BE A GENIUS OF COURSE. C. and Matt make a promising beginning as two snooty critics in “The 2017 Hugo Awards shortlist: a conversation between two SFF fans” just before completely embarrassing themselves:

C. …So when I say I looked at this year’s list with a sigh, I’m being pretty literal. I’m quite resigned to the fact that the Hugo isn’t the best award for my tastes.

Matt …So over the last last three years I have tried to get involved.  The Hugos are not perfect they have been prone to white US male for a long time but it’s changing.  This year I think we have an almost puppy free list and that finally allows a debate on the quality of the books!

Be that as it may – they decided to go ahead with their debate although each admits not having read half the nominees for Best Novel. Here’s a scorecard —

All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

  • C: (Quit at page 150)
  • M: (Finished book)

A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers

  • C : (Refused to read – didn’t like first book)
  • M. (Read)

Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu

  • C: (Read)
  • M. (Hasn’t read)

Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee

  • C. (Read)
  • M. (Read)

The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin

  • C. (Read)
  • M. (Hasn’t read)

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)

  • C. (Hasn’t read)
  • M. (Hasn’t read)

Yet they confidently offer this opinion about the award –

So, let’s face it: both of some of the most popular novels on the list aren’t novels that, to me, bring something new to the genre. They are certainly crowd pleasers but I really wonder at their future legacy.

How the hell would they know? And then they go on to cover themselves with even more glory, discussing what they haven’t read in the rest of the award categories.

(15) FIVE MISCONCEPTIONS. Vintage Geek Culture seeks to convince readers there are places where the narrative and factual history part company: “Top Misconceptions People Have about Pulp-Era Science Fiction“. There are five, which, as we know, is the magic number.

“Racism was endemic to the pulps.”

It is absolutely true that the pulps reflected the unconscious views of society as a whole at the time, but as typical of history, the reality was usually much more complex than our mental image of the era. For instance, overt racism was usually shown as villainous: in most exploration magazines like Adventure, you can typically play “spot the evil asshole we’re not supposed to like” by seeing who calls the people of India “dirty monkeys” (as in Harold Lamb).

Street & Smith, the largest of all of the pulp publishers, had a standing rule in the 1920s-1930s to never to use villains who were ethnic minorities because of the fear of spreading race hate by negative portrayals. In fact, in one known case, the villain of Resurrection Day was going to be a Japanese General, but the publisher demanded a revision and he was changed to an American criminal. Try to imagine if a modern-day TV network made a rule that minority groups were not to be depicted as gang bangers or drug dealers, for fear that this would create prejudice when people interact with minority groups in everyday life, and you can see how revolutionary this policy was. It’s a mistake to call this era very enlightened, but it’s also a mistake to say everyone born before 1970 was evil.

(16) SPACE AT ANY SPEED. CBS Sunday Morning’s  “Book excerpt: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry'” inspires me to paraphrase Emily Dickinson’s line about death – “I could not slow for astrophysics, so astrophysics kindly slowed for me…”

Time is relative, but some of us still don’t have enough of it to fully take in the most salient aspects of such topics as dark matter, exoplanets, the Big Bang, and why so many objects in outer space are spherical.

Fortunately, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose latest book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” (published Tuesday from WW Norton), offers a shortcut to scientific literacy, with entertaining, bite-sized chapters that explore cosmic questions.

Read the excerpts below. And make time for Martha Teichner’s interview with Tyson on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” April 30!

Excerpt from the chapter entitled “Dark Energy”

So what is the stuff? Nobody knows. The closest anybody has come is to presume dark energy is a quantum effect — where the vacuum of space, instead of being empty, actually seethes with particles and their antimatter counterparts.

They pop in and out of existence in pairs, and don’t last long enough to be measured. Their transient existence is captured in their moniker: virtual particles. The remarkable legacy of quantum mechanics — the physics of the small — demands that we give this idea serious attention. Each pair of virtual particles exerts a little bit of outward pressure as it ever so briefly elbows its way into space.

Unfortunately, when you estimate the amount of repulsive “vacuum pressure” that arises from the abbreviated lives of virtual particles, the result is more than 10120 times bigger than the experimentally determined value of the cosmological constant. This is a stupidly large factor — a consequence of what may be the most embarrassing calculation ever made, leading to the biggest mismatch between theory and observation in the history of science.

(18) SHARPEN UP THOSE SKILLS. CinemaBlend says “Machete Kills Again In Space Is Actually Happening”.

If you saw Machete Kills in theaters, then you probably also saw that hilariously ridiculous trailer for something called Machete Kills Again…in Space. At the time, we thought that was all we were going to get of the supposed third installment of the Danny Trejo-led franchise, but the man himself has confirmed that this is in fact in the works. Yes, we will be seeing Machete going berserk…in space! Trejo told Halloween Daily News that he and Robert Rodriguez, his Machete director, will be filming Machete Kills in Space. (Apparently they thought the “Again…” part was unnecessary.) We won’t even have to wait too long for it, as he also said that they will be “working on it this year.” If Trejo can’t land a part in Star Wars: Episode 7, 8 and/or 9, he’ll at the very least be able to brandish a lightsaber machete.

This is the 2014 teaser —

[Thanks to JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Mark-kitteh, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

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168 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/30/17 Scroll Like No One Is Filing You”

  1. (11) I saw the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and it was really good except for one thing.

    For some reason there was an invisible person in my room punching me in the stomach every few minutes. Had to keep taking breaks.

  4. Spent the weekend in New York City for a record fair and wanted to check out a Brooklyn SF bookstore (Singularity & Co) that I saw on Google Maps. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of business or maybe they aren’t open on Saturdays. So I ended up getting Stapeldon’s Odd John and the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic from the Strand.

    [sacrificial fourth!]
    [Amtrak-stalk]

  6. @Iphinome — that was about what I was expecting from the reports that it was a a worthy adaptation. I don’t have nearly as much past or current stress in my life as some Filers do (judging by the previous Scroll); however, I see no reason to subject myself to this. (No, it won’t make me more activist; I found out some time ago that I’m good at getting groups of people to move in the opposite direction from the one I’m trying to move them.)

    edit: @Nancy Lebovitz — that looks fascinating even though I’ll have to view it in pieces.

  7. THIS MACHINE SCROLLS PIXELS

    (14) Just the title. I was in “Damn Yankees” around 1976, and realized that the core of the show is pure anti-intellectualism. Not only “oh, it’s FINE to be a genius, BUT you gotta have Heart,” but little details like the Devil talking about Psychology. He’s an Intellectual! At the time, I found other confirmation as well, what with rehearsals and all.

  8. (5) I was doing my grocery shopping today and saw a huge soda display in WalMart with Wonder Woman Coke and Dr Pepper cans.

    (8) Any link to the site where these are made? I wonder if you could request a custom mug with books from your own library. I have quite a few of the how-to-write books in the third picture.

    (14) *headdesk*

    some of the most popular novels on the list aren’t novels that, to me, bring something new to the genre.

    Come on. Neither one of these goofs has read Too Like the Lightning and they make a cockamamie statement like this?

    (In my own reading, I’ve finally gotten to a point in the book–past the meeting at Madame’s–where something is actually happening. I doubt if it’ll knock Ninefox Gambit out of the top spot for me, but I think I’m finally getting some appreciation for it.)

  9. @Chip Hitchcock It’s a good adaptation, and some expansion, also in a good way.

    I worry about people who haven’t read the book and aren’t prepared if my reaction was so strong.

  10. Who the hell are C. and Matt and why would anyone care what they thought? Seems kind of relying on Amazon stars.

  11. Bonnie McDaniel and Robert Reynolds: I forgot the links — they’re added now. Appertain yourselves your favorite beverage — even if you don’t already have one of these cool mugs to pour it into.

  12. I toned the “Reservoir-Dogs-in-the-oval-office” scene way down … thanks Trump. Anyway, all my e-books are free until Wednesday. Happy Mayday.

  13. They have a cookbook mug too! (It’s as interesting as the fantasy mug, for me.)

  14. Well, I haven’t read today’s Pixel Scroll yet, but I’m really looking forward to it!

    However, it’s pretty clear that Pixel Scrolling is nothing but a popularity contest and doesn’t bring anything new to reporting within SFF Fandom, and I really have to wonder about its future legacy.

  16. Totally off topic of anything in today’s list:
    Catching some driblets of a new book titled “The Alexander Inheritance” which seems poised to go down the path of “modern group of people dumped in pre-technic past oh noz now what”.

    In this case it’s a cruise ship that just happened to have gotten fully fueled and is dumped into 321 BCE off the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

    Of course with 5,000 people on board, one of them is a historian specializing in the era.

    The ‘ruling group’ of the ship has just been told that the ship would be highly desirable to any ruler of the era because it could deliver thousands of troops anywhere on earth.

    Okay, first, let me confess that I really enjoyed S.M. Stirling’s trilogy about Nantucket Island getting moved by alien space bats 3500 years into the past.

    This one, though, and since it’s only chapter 2, doesn’t seem to be as … survivable. The ship has two weeks of food and fuel on board. You have the crew, which is trained to keep the ship running. You have 5,000 people on board who, if the demographics of my cruising friends are any indication, will be useless even as slaves in that time and place. (I include myself in that assessment, BTW. If I were to find myself in that sort of situation, suicide would seem to be quicker and cleaner.)

    The first thing that occurred to me is that by the time the locals and the uptimers even learn to communicate, the boat is out of fuel and food. And I don’t think you can distill the proper fuel to drive a modern turbine back in 321 BCE.

    Am I being too cynical in my old age?

  17. Am I being too cynical in my old age?

    I don’t think so. The food problem is solvable…but the fuel problem is much more difficult. (I’m remembering “Hawk Among the Sparrows”, where a modern fighter-bomber gets shifted to WW1 Europe – fuel was just doable, if they carefully filtered kerosene. ISTR that it was most effective simply blowing through a group of airplanes; the turbulence would take most of them out.)

  18. Techgrrl1972: And I don’t think you can distill the proper fuel to drive a modern turbine back in 321 BCE.

    Reminds me of the premise of Dean McLaughlin’s “A Hawk Among the Sparrows,” about a pilot with a state-of-the-art warplane that somehow finds himself in WWI France and why the plane isn’t a miracle weapon on that battlefield.

  19. JJ: …and doesn’t bring anything new to reporting within SFF Fandom, and I really have to wonder about its future legacy.

    I’ve been worried about that since 1978, when I decided it would be too risky to order the personalized license plates saying “File 770.”

  22. @Techgrrl1972

    Flint’s entire Ring of Fire/1632/Assiti Shards series tends to be glorious pulp smashed up with surprisingly well researched historical details. So you get the pulpy heroes and moderately improbable coincidences but the settings and interaction tend to generally avoid active impossibility.

    I haven’t read this one yet, but I’d be surprised if the obvious problems are not at least waved at. The wild mess of authors and co-authors that play around in Flint’s sand box are pretty good at picking the problems of their initial conditions so that they can show you how clever they are at solving them. The solutions tend to be pretty pulp-y, but that’s kind of what you sign up for.

    Not really everyone’s cup of tea, but they are having SO MUCH FUN writing and sharing the big damn sprawling mess that it feels churlish to hold any of it against them. It’s like Turtledove as interpreted by the Drunk History people.

  23. (8) Am I the only one annoyed that these “ideal” bookshelves are not obviously sorted in any way?

    I look at them and just want to pull the books out and file them alphabetically.

  24. @Techgrrl1972 I’ve been thinking of the advances they could bring if you could get past the language barrier, it’s far less than the people in 1632 could do. They’re basically jump starting the industrial revolution in the early modern era. There’ already a decent tech base, blast furnaces, plenty of iron, plenty of (not great) steel, plenty of trade across Eurasia. In 321 BC not so much. They could teach Roman concrete, some math, the Archimedes stuff (water pumps?), soap, that’d be a good one, black powder but the cannons would be more useful for shock value than as a useful weapon of war. Carpentry hasn’t advanced much in thousands of years, only the tools have… Invent the methane digester, but why You’d never get enough to run the ship. Windmill maybe?

    Just spit-balling…

  25. re: “The Alexander Inheritance”
    All good comments. The whole “Ring of Fire” set of stories seemed far more um, plausible, to me because of points made by iphinome.

    I SUSPECT, from the prologue and comments made by the history professor, that Ringo and his other authors are going to have the group hook up with Alexander’s widow and the wife of his heir, both of whom came to bad ends in ‘real’ history.

    One more chapter is about all I’ll give it though — in my mind, it is too easy for one of the engineering staff to cripple the ship beyond the ability of even the uptimers to fix, much less the locals. For that matter, making something go wrong so that the ship can’t sail is almost trivially easy. And the people on the ship, with very very few exceptions, aren’t going to be very useful, ISTM.

  26. @Anne Sheller:

    Click through and read the last page. That will give you a good idea why they were closed. It got pretty nasty and didn’t stop when Mike said stop.

  27. (13) ONE ADAM-12. Grammar brawl in progress. Proceed Code Three.

    John Scalzi:
    “Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, reaching out from beyond the grave to be FUCKING GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT”

    Dave Thomas:
    “My recipes are always centered around the basic”.

    John Scalzi:
    “Folks, I’m not going to argue with you about all the ways you’re wrong when you try to defend “centered around.” You’re free to be wrong!”

    In all fairness, one guy here writes NY Times best sellers. The other guy here flipped burgers for a living.

  28. @Techgrrl1972 In 1632 they also had a town library and highschool, a cruise ship is going to have less in the way of reference material.

  29. Iphinome on April 30, 2017 at 7:48 pm said:
    Introducing stirrups and the horse collar (and maybe the basic steam engine) would be doable. The rest – I’m not sure what would be useful. (Knitting, maybe? If they have metalworkers who use mandrels, it would be easy to start. When did chain mail come in?)

  30. OOO just got an email from Amazon. Kris Longknife – Emissary is ready to download to my kindle.

  32. Sean Kirk: It’s “BASICS.”

    And, honestly, I haven’t recognized an error yet. Sounds like you have — so what is it?

  33. @P J Evans The Romans had chain-mail. Knitting yes, I didn’t think of that. Fulling wool too using water powered hammers. The same could be used for crushing grain. maybe… Maybe crushing rocks. There are innovations but there’ a hard limit on how far you could go. Look at the pyramids, hell look at Ozti’s gear. People knew how to do things, it was the resources and the metallurgy that held them back and it’ll hold uptimers back.

    Ever watch the primitive technology youtube channel? His new water hammer is neat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9TdoO2OVaA

  34. Sounds like you have — so what is it?

    One centers on things. If one is centering around them, that’s not the center.

  35. Mike Glyer: And, honestly, I haven’t recognized an error yet.

    Ah, so that’s why you put it in the Scroll — so that someone here would explain it to you. 😉

  36. I spent much of Saturday at three different library book sales. I spent a fair amount of time Sunday going though the bounty that resulted therefrom removing stickers and cataloging the couple hundred books I acquired. The highlights of the haul included (but are by no means limited to) a copy of Dragonbreath by our very own Wombat, a copy of The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and a copy of Ninefox Gambit. I also picked up some DVDs at the sales, including volume two of Superfriends. I’ll probably put up a blog post with pictures later.

  37. (8) Not really worth it unless you can pick your own books. I mean, there are some horrible books there, and some problematic ones. Shannara doesn’t deserve to be in the same stack with Tolkien, for example. Or, frankly with the others.

    (11) I’m sure it’s great, but I don’t have the spoons to watch it right now.

    (14) Hello, pretentious incompetent internet douchebags! It’s not like we didn’t already have millions of you.

    @Techgrrl: I don’t think you are. Cruise ships barely work with our current tech; send them back then and no way. Stirling’s book had a proper wooden sailing ship, repairable with technology of most eras and not requiring megatons of diesel. Also, some of them were military and many were young; cruise ships are full of old people who are going to make terrible soldiers or slaves. It’d be much more likely that the natives would take the boat, eat all the gourmet food, enslave or kill everyone, and then abandon the ship when it runs out of consumables.

  38. I don’t see why you can’t “center around” something. There’s the center, and then there’s the stuff around it. I guess it might not sound as precise as “centered on,” but it still makes sense.

  39. Just saw COLOSSAL. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes satirical magic realism about fairly dark psychological/relationship stuff (the trailers don’t really suggest quite how dark it gets, although I had some idea just from having seen a Nacho Vigalondo movie before). I appreciate it when fantasy is used in a way that feels allegorical, but can’t be reduced to being an allegory for just one thing—there’s a lot going on there. Just about my only slight complaint about it is that it does eventually get around to providing a very broad explanation for why the supernatural thing happened the way it did, and it’s OK as those things go, but I would’ve been totally fine with no explanation at all.

  40. @JJ: Thanks for taking the ansible message from OGH for me the other day. Obviously I need to call an ansible repairman (checks time… too early to call Langford, too late to call LeGuin). But seriously, since I don’t do the ticky, if I forget to go back, I miss things.

  41. @ Mike
    “It’s “BASICS.”

    And, honestly, I haven’t recognized an error yet. Sounds like you have — so what is it?

    Yes “the basics” poop dammit! Thank you.

    Scalzi is pointing too Dave Thomas’s or Wendy’s improper use of “centered around” as opposed to centered on.

    “My recipes are always centered around the basics.”
    “My recipes are always centered on the basics.”

    I have poorly developed grammar skills myself, and rely heavily on programs like MS Word, to correct that defect. I could not see the issue myself so, I typed it into Word to see what the problem was.

    This is what Word says:

    Preposition Use
    Some words work together in pairs: “inferior to,” “superior to,” “authority on,” “comply with,” “centers on,” “conform to,” “object to,” and “opposite of.”
    It is incorrect to interchange the parts of these pairs.

    Instead of: This report centers around the southwest regional sales.

    Consider: This report centers on the southwest regional sales.

    I am so toast if the power goes out.

  42. @lurkertype re (8): but then the temptation to order a mug with all of Tingle’s dinosaur-themed titles and have it shipped to Ted c/o Castalia House’s public address may just be too strong…

  43. My big question about the fantasy bookshelf mug is, what’s so special about Philip Pullman that he gets a His Dark Materials omnibus, when every other series on the shelf (and there are quite a number) has to get by with just one representative? Even Tolkien has to settle for just Fellowship.

    I also think that the Pratchett could have been better chosen. I’d pick Mort as my “just-one-Discworld”, though I recognize that tastes may vary. (And it isn’t the case that series have the first volume only: both Harry Potter and Narnia are represented by later ones.)

    @Aaron: If that Collected Works of Buck Rogers is the one I think it is, be prepared for some disappointment that it doesn’t live up to the title. Quite a number of stories later on in the book start in medias res and then end on a never-resolved cliffhanger. (I.e., you get to read stuff in the middle, without the start or end.)

  44. I’m pretty sure that Jacqueline Goehner won an episode of Cosplay Melee, not a season. I just watched that episode, and it seemed to be just like all the other episodes: four cosplayers compete, one wins, and none of the four are ever seen again. Next episode gets four completely different cosplayers.

    I don’t like the show as much as Face Off (which does have season winners), but it’s not bad. The focus of both shows is on making stuff, which is the part I like.

  45. Xtifr: You may be right. The interview didn’t make that distinction. And although the Wikipedia entry hasn’t been updated to include the episode she won, she’s not listed as a contestant in any earlier episode, so it’s presumably not a serial elimination series where they gradually boot off contestants.

  46. I like the complex topological idea of ‘centred around’ – presumably if you normally centre on a point, you centre around a circle i.e. the centre of the object is a point which follows a circle (which then has its own centre. So the recipes centre around a circular locus of ‘the basics’ which move over time. Presumably returning to the same conception of ‘the basics’ at regular intervals. As the recipes are also moving, the combination forms a torus in recipe space. This would seem more appropriate for a bagel shop or a doughnut shop than a burger restaurant.

  47. (3) Oh no, my catnip-filled squirrel got stuck behind the couch again.

    That did cause Timothy some concern when he read this but I assured him that Charon’s cat must be using it for target practice and is not one of those lousy no-good squirrel sympathisers

  48. @David Goldfarb: Mort (or another one centred around [take that, Scalzi!] Death) would be my pick for a Discworld book too. Alternatively just a mug with ALL of the Discworld titles on it.

  49. (12) A HANDMAID’S TRAILER.

    I do not think I’ll be able to see this. Mostly because it is hard to see anything while in fetal position.

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