(1) MARKET FOR DIVERSITY? ICv2’s interview with Marvel’s VP of Sales David Gabriel spawned a controversial discussion about retailer or customer resistance to female characters (As you can see from the following excerpt, Gabriel has subsequently tried to walk back some of his comments.)
Part of it, but I think also it seemed like tastes changed, because stuff you had been doing in the past wasn’t working the same way. Did you perceive that or are we misreading that?
No, I think so. I don’t know if those customers with the tastes that had been around for three years really supporting nearly anything that we would try, anything that we would attempt, any of the new characters we brought up, either they weren’t shopping in that time period, or maybe like you said their tastes have changed. There was definitely a sort of nose-turning at the things that we had been doing successfully for the past three years, no longer viable. We saw that, and that’s what we had to react to. Yes, it’s all of that.
Now the million-dollar question. Why did those tastes change?
I don’t know if that’s a question for me. I think that’s a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.
[Note: Marvel’s David Gabriel reached out to correct the statement above: “Discussed candidly by some of the retailers at the summit, we heard that some were not happy with the false abandonment of the core Marvel heroes and, contrary to what some said about characters “not working,” the sticking factor and popularity for a majority of these new titles and characters like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl, continue to prove that our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes. And let me be clear, our new heroes are not going anywhere! We are proud and excited to keep introducing unique characters that reflect new voices and new experiences into the Marvel Universe and pair them with our iconic heroes.
“We have also been hearing from stores that welcome and champion our new characters and titles and want more! They’ve invigorated their own customer base and helped them grow their stores because of it. So we’re getting both sides of the story and the only upcoming change we’re making is to ensure we don’t lose focus of our core heroes.”]
(2) RISE OF YA COMICS. Discussion about the Gabriel interview led Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson to do a wide-ranging commentary on the contemporary comics market, “So About That Whole Thing”. This excerpt is the last half:
STUFF THAT IS ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE:
- This is a personal opinion, but IMO launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure. Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?
- Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*
- Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.
- The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.
- Not for nothing, but there is a direct correlation between the quote unquote “diverse” Big 2 properties that have done well (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Batgirl) and properties that have A STRONG SENSE OF PLACE. It’s not “diversity” that draws those elusive untapped audiences, it’s *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.
AND FINALLY
On a practical level, this is not really a story about “diversity” at all. It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.
(3) BOMB HATCHES. Variety’s weekend box office report says “’Boss Baby’ Tops ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Bombs”.
The animated comedy bottled up a leading $49 million from 3,773 locations, edging out Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” a box office juggernaut that’s dominated the multiplexes since debuting three weeks ago. “Beauty and the Beast” added another $48 million to its mammoth $395.5 million domestic haul. The weekend’s other new release, Paramount’s “Ghost in the Shell,” bombed, taking in a demoralizing $19 million.
(4) GOFUNDME SIGNAL BOOST. “The 17-year-old son of a woman in my writing group has been diagnosed with an osteosarcoma in his right shoulder,” writes Nick Tchan, a Writers of the Future winner and Aurealis nominated author. “It’s an aggressive and rare form of bone cancer. At the very least, he’s going to have an extensive regime of chemotheraphy and a bone replaced in his right arm.
“Both he and his single mother are keen speculative fiction fans and writers. I’m putting together a GoFundMe to help pay for the time she’ll have to take off work as well as the other costs that tend to accumulate. Any funds left over from cost-of-living and treatment expenses I’m hoping to put towards something like Dragon Dictate so that he can write even if they have to amputate his arm.”
The GoFundMe link is — “LachlanB’s Recovery Fund”
We are the friends of Lachlan, a 17 year old Australian student and aspiring speculative fiction writer who has been struck by cancer. Lachlan is a compassionate, creative, bright young man who embraces life to the fullest. A few weeks ago, he was enjoying his first week of university, planning a 3rd anniversary surprise for his girlfriend Sarah, organising his Dungeons and Dragons mates for their bi-monthly weekend session, and starting edits on the first draft of his YA fantasy novel. Cancer has interrupted his short and long-term plans. His first two weeks of university were spent undergoing a series of medical tests and consultations. Fifteen minutes into his 3rd anniversary date, he became unwell and had to go to Emergency. He has now been diagnosed with osteosarcoma (an aggressive, painful bone cancer), and been forced to defer his university studies in order to receive the treatment he urgently needs.
The fundraiser has incentives, such as books from Grimdark magazine or John Joseph Adams’ Seeds of Change anthology, as well as print editions of Alliterate magazine.
(5) A CONVIVIAL EPISODE. Scott Edelman interviews Sunny Moraine at Washington DC’s Convivial restaurant in Episode 33 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Sunny Moraine
We discussed the best writing advice she’s heard, how being named the most promising author of 2013 messed with her mind, her favorite Ray Bradbury story (which is one of her all-time favorite stories period), why she writes Walking Dead fan fiction, the contradictions of writing a breakout book, how she decided her trilogies were meant to be trilogies, and more. (She refused, however, to tell me for whom the bell actually tolls or why birds suddenly appear every time you’re near.) Plus—I reveal how Tim Burton prevented me from eating a perfect sticky toffee pudding!
Edelman recently launched a Patreon in the hope that he’ll someday be able to afford to do episodes more frequently. He says, “Biweekly will never be enough to capture all the amazing creators out there!”
(6) PLEASE SAY THAT AGAIN. Astronomers have discovered three more Fast Radio Bursts:
FRBs have baffled scientists ever since the first one was discovered in archived data in 2007. The longstanding mystery of their origin, which is further compounded by the fact that only about two dozen such events have ever been detected, has spawned a plethora of scientific (and some that sound not so scientific) theories, including the occasional speculation that aliens are responsible for them.
For some reason, FRBs never seem to repeat, and, as a result, most theories about the origin of these mysterious pulses involve invoking cataclysmic incidents that destroy their source, for instance, a star exploding in a supernova, or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.
This changed in 2012 when the first and only known repeating burst, named FRB 121102, was discovered by scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. And, in January, over four years and several recurring bursts of this FRB later, astronomers were able to directly trace the mysterious burst to its point of origin, a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years from Earth.
So far, this is the only FRB whose source has been pinpointed — although even that hasn’t brought scientists any closer to understanding what birthed it.
(7) HOLLYWOOD ACCOUNTING. In a BBC video, Disney animators explain why characters have only three fingers.
Chip Hitchcock adds, “The answer’s obvious but there are some interesting bits about drawing animation scattered through the clip.”
(8) SINGLE-CELL. If E.T. phones anyone, Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts the call will be for him: “The Future of Science: What Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks About Aliens, Elon Musk and Traveling”
Neil deGrasse Tyson has no plans to meet advanced life on Earth or other planets anytime soon. The famous astrophysicist told fans this weekend he won’t be traveling to Mars via private space exploration and he doubts humans will make contact with complex organisms—that is, alien life— within his lifetime.
Tyson’s remarks came up during an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit Sunday where he promised to divulge his views on “life, the universe and everything.” Asked by one commentator whether “we will ever make contact with complex organisms within the next 50yrs?”, Tyson was not encouraging.
“I think they (we) might all be too far away from one another in space and possibly time. By complex, I’m presuming you mean life other than single-celled organisms. Life with legs, arms, thoughts, etc. It’s all about our capacity to travel interstellar distances. And that’s surely not happening in the next 50 years. Not the rate things are going today,” he wrote back.
(9) BACK TO THE FUTURE. Making the rounds of film festivals, Fight for Space recalls, “In the 1960s and 70s, the Space Race inspired a generation to pursue careers in science and technology, and then it all ended. Fight for Space looks at why.”
“FIGHT FOR SPACE” is a documentary film that asks, why haven’t we gone back to the Moon, or sent humans to Mars? Weren’t we supposed to be there in the 80s? What lead to the decline of NASA’s budget and why is it stuck in low earth orbit?
Filmed over the course of 4 years, Fight for Space is the product of thousands of Kickstarter supporters who believed that the exploration of space is worth fighting for. Over 60 interviews were conducted with astronauts, politicians, educators, historians, scientists, former NASA officials, commercial space entrepreneurs, and many other experts in the space community. It is a film like no other that tackles issues no other documentary has touched, featuring newly restored 35mm and 16mm footage from the National Archives NASA collection.
(10) APRIL 1 LEFTOVERS. Never realized that you’d need firmer biceps when your jetpack finally arrives. “Real-life ‘Iron Man’ flying suit built by British inventor” says a British Marine has invented and flown a turbine powered suit.
A British inventor has built his very own jet-propelled ‘Iron Man’ suit, which he says can carry him at several hundred miles per hour, thousands of feet in the air.
The suit, designed by entrepreneur Richard Browning, allows the pilot to vertically take off and fly using the human body to control flight. Browning has recently founded Gravity, a technology start-up, which has filed patents for the human propulsion technology that could re-imagine manned flight.
(11) LAST TO KNOW. Dave Freer tells a painful story about the announced mass market paperback edition that never happened.
I want to start by apologizing to readers here: at the end of February I said here that CHANGELING’S ISLAND was now available in mass market paperback, and provided a link. Some 96 people clicked through that, and I assume some of those good folk ordered the book. If you were one of them: I must ask you please to check your credit cards.
If you have been charged for it: you have been the victim of a fraud in which I had no part other than advertising my book in good faith. I was sent the proofs of the mmpb on the 9th of December and returned them – giving up a rather lucrative little casual job to do my bit, to have them back in time. Baen advertised the book on its website, Amazon listed it on its website. As this near non-effort appears to be the only form of publicity I actually get, I did my best, and kind folk on Facebook gave me nearly 200 likes and over 40 shares. I had some shares on Twitter, and the release of the mmpb was up on Instapundit, as well as on several other blogs besides this.
Prior experience – TOM — says this could produce around two thousand sales. I’m a minor author, and I’m very grateful for that support, be it ten or ten thousand. There’s always a few new people, and reaching new readers is vital. Mass Market Paperbacks are great as tryouts, as they’re quite cheap, and given that CHANGELING’S ISLAND seems to have been a hit with readers across a broad spectrum, I hoped I’d get more readers.
Unfortunately… the mass market paperback of the book does NOT exist. It was cancelled back in early fall of last year. That, of course is their decision, which they’re perfectly entitled to make. However, they didn’t tell me – or, it seems anyone else. The formatting, the proofs, the listing on Baen.com still went ahead. Simon and Schuster, who distribute for Baen, put the book up on Amazon – and presumably other venues. Well, possibly….
(12) WRIGHT ON RELIGION IN SFF. Angelo Stagnaro interviews John C. Wright for the National Catholic Register. The views will be familiar to readers of his blog.
- What do you think is the place of such elements in science fiction?
Hmm. Good question. Science fiction is by and large based on a naturalistic view of the universe. When penning adventures about space princesses being rescued from space pirates by space marines, religion does not come up, except as local background and local color, in which case, the role of religion is to provide the radioactive altar to the Snake God of Mars to which our shapely by half-clad space princess is chained, that our stalwart hero can fight the monster.
Now, any story of any form can be used as a parable or as an example of a religious truth: indeed, my latest six-book trilogy is actually about faith, although it is portrayed in figures as being about a man’s love for his bride.
Fantasy stories, on the other hand, once any element of magic or the supernatural is introduced either declare for the Church or declare for witchcraft, depending on whether or not occultism is glamorized.
Note that I speak of occultism, not magic itself. Merlin the magician is a figure from King Arthur tales, of which no more obviously Christian stories can be found, outside of Dante and Milton, but no portrayal in olden days of Merlin glamorized the occult. Again, the way characters like Gandalf in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Coriakin in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, or Harry Potter, even those they are called wizards, are clearly portrayed either as commanding a divine power, or, in Potter’s case, controlling what is basically an alternate technology or psychic force. There is no bargaining with unclean spirits, no rituals, not even a pack of tarot cards. These are like the witches in Halloween decorations, who fly brooms and wave magic wands, and nothing like the real practices of real wiccans, neopagans or other fools who call themselves witches.
Fools, because, as I did when I challenged God, they meddle with forces of which they have no understanding. I meddled with bright forces, and was spared. They meddle with dark, and they think they can escape the price….
Fantasy stories generally are hostile to Christianity, some intentionally and some negligently. The negligent hostility springs from the commonplace American desire for syncretism, that is, for all religions to be equal. Even some fairly Christian-themed fantasy stories yield weakmindedly to this temptation, as in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising or A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by American writer Madeleine L’Engle, where the forces of light are portrayed as ones where Christ is merely one teacher among many, each equally as bright and good, but makes no special nor exclusive claim. Or tales where the crucifix will drive back a vampire, but so will any other sign or symbol of any religion, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, because all religions are equal, dontchaknow.
(13) ANCIENT VIDEOGAME HISTORY. It may be a long way for some but, for Nigel, Tipperary was once a short commute.
It's a long time ago and a Galaxy far, far away to Tipperary, but my Star Wars video games were made there. https://t.co/t0re7D7rHk
— Niggle By Leaf ? (@Nigellicus) April 3, 2017
Apart from the employment and the return of the Jedi computer games, what has #StarWars ever done for Tipperary Town?@tippstar 10 Sept 1983 pic.twitter.com/8mu1tjjA1x
— Tipperary Studies (@TippStudies) April 3, 2017
(14) WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH THE TICK. Carl Slaughter explains:
Like superheroes in the “The Spirit” movie and the “Ax Cop” animated series, The Tick is a superhero that requires a special appreciation. Amazon is bringing “The Tick” to the small screen again in 2017. Unlike Netflix, which greenlights an entire series, Amazon commissions a pilot, posts it for a month, and gives the thumbs up/down based on fan reaction and news coverage. The pilot for the Amazon reboot was released in 2016. Here is a documentary on the history of The Tick.
(15) BLASTS FROM THE PAST. Secret Screening also asks if you remember Eerie Indiana? Remember Goosebumps?
(16) NOT A CAREER MOVE. Is it true? Why Dick Grayson Doesn’t Want to Become Batman, and Why Bruce Wayne Agrees.
[Thanks to Nigel, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Nick Tchan, Carl Slaughter, mlex, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]
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First! 🙂
12)
“or Harry Potter, even those they are called wizards, are clearly portrayed either as commanding a divine power, or, in Potter’s case, controlling what is basically an alternate technology or psychic force. ”
Err, its magic. What’s more, there are many kinds of magic in the HP universe, and they are most definitely magic. Methinks Mr. Wright doesn’t want to admit to liking something with magic, so therefore it can’t have magic if he likes it.
Scroll, brothers, scroll!
Scroll with care!
Scroll in the presence of the editare.
[godstalk]
[thrilling third]
12) But the important thing is that JCW has found a way to imagine himself superior to L’Engle.
First fifth.
At least JCW is consistent. ly unpleasant, that is.
What a pity. I had gone many moons without having read any of the tripe peddled by that bit of flatulence-made-flesh. Time to reset the counter.
(14) WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH THE TICK.
For me, it’ll always be the comic version first, followed by the animated version. The Patrick Warburton live action just didn’t do it for me.
(12) “Or tales where the crucifix will drive back a vampire, but so will any other sign or symbol of any religion, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, because all religions are equal, dontchaknow.”
Waitwaitwait — as a puppy, isn’t John Wright supposed to LIKE Jim Butcher?
What I’m getting from Wright’s argument is that magic users in fantasy stories are not satanic enough or maybe not christian enough. Kind of limits the scope and exploration usually available to an author.
(11) LAST TO KNOW.
You know, this is a really shitty thing for an author to have happen to them, and I had a huge amount of sympathy for Freer — right up until the point where he compared Simon and Schuster to Adolf Hitler.
And these are the people who complained when Puppies who support white supremacists were called Nazis. 🙄
(12)
Isn’t changing water to wine a form of magic? Or does “magic” apply only to non-Christian forms?
(11)
Ugh, sounds like Freer got totally screwed on this by several other parties and after doing everything right.
@10: Interesting bits — at least he’s not getting into other people’s airspace (like the type discussed here recently) — but a long way from “several hundred miles per hour, thousands of feet in the air”; I wonder whether he’ll ever get there with 2/3 of the motive power on his arms. (Imagine supporting yourself between parallel bars for long enough to reach those numbers.)
In other interesting items, Girl Meets Robot:
Doesn’t “magic” presuppose a reproducible result?
A miracle is supernatural. In Christian theology they are evidence of God displaying His power. He decides whether that happens.
When I think of “magic” I expect the human involved to be deciding when something happens, based on the application of knowledge or reliance on something besides God.
So basically if you roll holy, then you can only cast holy spells like rez and heal, and if you try casting Firebolt or Iceblock, it counts as an alignment hack and you get banned. And warlocks/mages can’t cast holy spells or they’ll get their account suspended. Something like that.
When I think of “magic” I expect the human involved to be deciding when something happens, based on the application of knowledge or reliance on something besides God.
That would seem to undercut Wright’s claim that Merlin, Gandalf, and Coriakin are “wielding divine power” and not using some sort of non-divine magic. Then again, Wright isn’t particularly coherent on even his best days, so the fact that his argument doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny isn’t really surprising.
12. It seems JCW hasn’t read A Canticle For Leibowitz, Dune or The Book Of The New Sun, just to mention the first three titles to come to mind in which “religion does not come up, except as local background and local color”.
Most of Wright’s… peculiarities have been discussed at length, so I won’t mention those, but something about his writing has always struck me as odd, and I couldn’t put my finger on it until recently. I can’t believe that it took me so long to realize what it was.
(For the record, I’ve never read any of his fiction; this is based on the blog posts and interviews that I’ve seen linked here and there, so take it for what it’s worth. This is just my limited observation.)
I can probably count on one hand the number of contractions that I’ve seen him use. I’m not typically one to harp on someone’s stylistic choices, but it strikes me as the technique of someone who’s particularly desperate to come off as academic–or of a student trying to meet an essay’s minimum word count. All that it does for me is draw attention to the prose; I’d find it distracting even if I agreed with the content.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that while I’ve been a reader of this site for some time now (nearly two years, I think), this is my first comment here, so I’d like to say hello to all of you. I know that you’ve had a commenter post under the handle “Will R.” in the past, so I just wanted to prevent any potential confusion by clarifying right away that I’m a different fellow. 🙂
@Mister Dalliard: Not to mention A Case of Conscience, Project Pope, and The Sparrow.
@Mister Dalliard: Or A Case of Conscience. Or The Sparrow. Or Sofia Samatar’s Olondria duology. Or Planetfall.
ETA: Semi-ninja’d by Aaron.
Boucher’s The Quest for Saint Aquin.
Aaron: People have devoted a lot of effort to working out what Gandalf is, and some of them will probably be along shortly to straighten me out. But I thought in Tolkien’s scheme of things he was calling upon the power of the Holy Spirit.
12: screw the magic. could his depiction of SF be any more of an insult? Clearly he does not like the genre. Perhaps he should get out of the biz and go found a messianic church…probably wouldn’t need kickstarters for rent if he did that.
Reminds me of the time Larry Janifer had a book “published” without reaching the public — Doubleday printed the book (in hardcover), lost the books in a warehouse move, and when they eventually found them, remaindered the whole run.
No copies ever hit bookstores through the usual channels.
(9) BACK TO THE FUTURE. Tasmin Archer knows. Great lyrics, I mean beyond just the intro bit I quote here, and I love her voice. (The video is just weird, though.) I’d like to see that film, BTW, though it sounds depressing as hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzmJuXAgD8
Huh, Kim Wilde does a version of the song – nope, the original is better, sorry.
(11) LAST TO KNOW. That bites. What also bites is the idiots in the comments who use this as a bizarre reason to slam Tor (without naming them, of course, ‘cuz it’s MGC). I especially rolled my eyes at the one who was like, “OMG if Baen who is so awesome does this, how horrible must the BIG publishers be?!” Uh, this is not a normal thing to have happen; no doubt B.S. can happen anywhere, but don’t go tarring other publishers with Baen’s f’ups, good grief.
– – – – –
@JJ: D’AAAWWW! Cute vid, thanks. 😀
@Mister Dalliard & @Aaron: Or Victoria Strauss’s “Way of Arata” duology, to throw a less-well-known but awesome pair of books into the mix.
@William R.: Welcome! 🙂
(2) Definitely worth a read. It made me think of Cecilia Eng’s advice in a lyrics writing workshop earlier this year: always try to look for the common emotional core in a specific character, situation, or story (or the work you’re basing your filk song or fan fiction on). You also can’t add on diversity (or whatever you choose to call it) after the fact, or it will be bullshit.
(10) For what it’s worth, flying jetpack news are just next to flying car news: always ten years away for the inventors.
(12) I tried to make sense of whatever JCW tried to say, and failed. However, as far as I understand it, the Merlin myth developed separately from the Arthur myth, and only started to merge with it with Geoffrey of Monmouth.
@Mister Dalliard: Do note that JCW mentions Gene Wolfe with approval in another place in the interview.
(1) Open mouth, insert foot.
(2) I like her as a writer and a person.
(4) I thought Aussies — particularly those still legally children — had all their medical stuff covered?
(11) Somehow, it’ll turn out to be the fault of those darn SJWs and TOR. Oh, and calling your distributors Nazis is always a good career move. Maybe Puppies simply don’t understand the Nazis = white supremacists thing? Along with all the many, many words and concepts they don’t understand. Was anyone of the <100 people charged for it, or is it just an excuse for Freer to rant again?
(12) "Fantasy doesn't lurve Jesus, except when it often does or if it's something I like. SF never has any religion in it, except all the times that it does which I don't know to mention." Who ya gonna believe, JCW or your own lying eyes?
@Mr. Dalliard named a few famous SF books that have religion in. "Canticle", works of Anthony Boucher, James Blish, and Mary Doria Russell even have JCW's beloved Catholic church in the future — it's the most common religion in SF. There's another thing Puppies don't understand — the history of SF/F. They really aren't well-read in the genre they claim to love.
(And isn't Gandalf actually an archangel or some sort of assistant creator thingy? Who wasn't mortal. Ergo, not a wizard like Potter, et al.)
(14) Spooooon! I liked both the cartoon and the original live-action series. I'm not sure about this new one
(15) "Eerie, Indiana" was a fun little show. I can't burp Tupperware without thinking of those twins.
@JJ: "I wuv you, wobot!" I hope her parents are buying her real (toy) robots. Maybe she'll grow up to work on real ones.
@William R: Hello! Welcome! A lack of contractions is usually a) someone who wants to sound “important” or b) someone who isn’t very good with English.
lurkertype: I thought Aussies — particularly those still legally children — had all their medical stuff covered?
I think that the issue is not paying for his medical care, but providing a salary supplement to his mom for all the unpaid time off work she’s going to have to take to be with him during his treatments over the next year.
@JJ: Ah! Yes, good. Hopefully, Australia isn’t as nasty as the US and she’ll get to take time off without being fired.
I think they should get him the dictation software right away — even if he doesn’t lose the arm, it’s not going to function correctly for a while and keeping busy writing will help him. Or at least he can teach it Aussie swear words. 🙂
@Karl-Johan: Yes, original Myriddin was a prophet and wild man, probably a Druid. Even later versions of the Arthurian mythology after Geoffrey of Monmouth had Merlin being the son of a demon, and many versions state he was never baptized. So, not a Christian magician at all.
@ Karl-Johan – You’re right. He does mention Wolfe later on in the interview, and Miller – both with approval. I guess he forgot what he said about SF not giving a toss about religion. He contradicts himself so many times in that piece I’m not sure what he thinks about anything. He manages to give nearly as many exceptions to his claims as we have.
He also says “It is a sad, sad commentary on the modern age that portraying a faithful Christian as a hero is as rare as unicorns.” I wish him good luck dealing with the unicorn plague.
Meredith Moment:
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters is £1.99 on the Amazon UK Kindle store.
@Kendall: Ha haha! I called it without even looking. Of course a screw-up by Baen is somehow Tor’s fault. (Though since the MMPB market has shrunk so greatly, mid-list and below authors are almost never published in MMPB nowadays anyway.)
Wasn’t it *Baen* that sent Freer the proofs and asked him to approve them AFTER they’d already canceled it? Aren’t THEY the terrible Nazi-like ones, in that case? S&S and Amazon were just in good faith going on what they were told by Baen, same as Freer was.
Then Puppies wonder why Baen editors don’t win Hugos. They don’t edit, nobody proofreads, and now they’re having their own authors do busy work on stuff that’ll never exist. Methinks whoever decided to cancel it but didn’t tell anyone else deserves *ALL* the opprobrium for wasting everyone else’s time.
Maybe Freer should go elsewhere, if they’re going to jerk him around like that; sounds like they don’t promote him even when they do publish him. Why is he letting them take a big chunk of his money if he’s doing all the work and they’re showing him such disrespect? I am certainly no fan of his, but he’s been thoroughly screwed over and authors shouldn’t have to take that nowadays.
Gandalf is basically an angel, if I understood it correctly.
I believe that JCW is trying to make a distinction between “fantasy” magic users who basically have some sort of inborn power and are therefore somehow more acceptable. A pedantic distinction thst allows him to enjoy Bewitched but not The Craft.
(1) MARKET FOR DIVERSITY?
That interview links back to a discussion with retailers and (as his attempts to walk back his comments show) that discussion doesn’t support the premise that diversity in comics has caused a problem – there were also comments that it was good for retailers, e.g. that they were getting a new demographic in.
I also saw elsewhere (but can’t find a link to now, natch) an analysis of sales ranks etc showing that once you corrected for the usual drops over time in a run the idea that the readers were going back to core characters didn’t actually hold up either.
(11) LAST TO KNOW
Well, that loss of income must hurt, but watching Dave dance around trying to work out how far he can criticise Baen in front of that audience was painful as well.
(12) WRIGHT ON RELIGION IN SFF
That is a thing that I read.
—
If I’ve not messed up the timezones, then the Hugo finalists are announced 3pm GMT.
Mark: Yesss…. I keep double-checking the time conversion so I’m in synch for the announcement.
Hugos midnight Sydney time I think – so I’ll be asleep
Hugo announcement: It’ll be 2am New Zealand time.
I’ll catch up when I wake up (not at 2am).
(11) Poor Dave Freer. One would think that this is bad business, as well as bad manners.
(12) “six-book trilogy”
???
@ Welcome, William R!
Merlin isn’t a magician? I mean, never mind the obviously pagan source texts such as the Mabinogion, has NoRelation* even read Thomas Malory? (I went to the trouble** of checking my copy of Le Morte d’Arthur, and yep, that bit about Merlin disguising Uther as Igraine’s husband so he could sleep with her, by magic? Second chapter of book 1, plain as day.)
IIRC, Gandalf is one of the Maiar, the angels or tutelary spirits that are one step down in power from the Valar (the first entities created by Eru/Iluvatar, roughly equivalent to the Greek Gods**** in power and responsibilities.)
*I know I harp on this, but… fat, pompous, middle-aged white guy, with remnants of a classical education, called Wright, it’s like he’s my evil twin from the Mirror Universe or something.
**standing up, taking three steps across the room, pulling it off the shelf***
***which last was the hardest bit – it’s a very substantial hardback edition, with Aubrey Beardsley illustrations; a very nice book, but also about the size of a young paving stone.
****OK, Greek Gods plus Satan, err I mean Morgoth/Melkor.
oh bloody hell that’s 11pm here. I’ll be safely reading Last First Snow in bed by then (or watching the last half of Moana with my girlfriend maybe – I saw it on the plane and loved it, so I’m making her watch it with me now). Oh well, it’s not as if the list will be unavailable to read tomorrow morning.
@Mark: yes, and you can never unread it! 😛
The announcement is 17:00 Finnish time, according to the Worldcon75 twitter account. Finland is in East Europe Summer Time, which is GMT + 3, according to this map https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/ (i.e. one hour east of most of Europe.)
So the announcement is 14:00 GMT
(However, since UK also uses summer time, it’s 3 pm local time in London.)
(Time zones are fun.)
Also, I have Opinions on this magic thing, but that’ll have to be for another time.
Things that usually trip me up with timezones:
a) Remembering who is on summer time where; and
b) Remembering which way the Earth spins.
Incidentally, if we’re talking about religion getting a serious treatment in SF, Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker certainly needs a mention. (My copy is almost next to the Silmarillion, one shelf down from the Mabinogion, two up from Le Morte d’Arthur. My, those are some serious bookshelves, aren’t they? Malory, Tolkien, Stapledon, Celtic myth…. Frank Herbert… A.E. van Vogt… Fritz Leiber… E.E. “Doc” Smith…. OK, maybe some day I ought to sort those shelves.)
I have nothing to say, and not even the horrible abuse of making me read some John C. Wright can make me talk.
Re 11) is their any justification for the charge of fraud (rather than error). I can imagine Amazon, for example, mistakenly taking payment for an advance order, but that wouldn’t be fraud.
So its been a while but I do remember a bit in the Last Battle where Aslan is like “yo if you worship any God with good in your heart you’re worshipping me, if you’re worshipping me with bad stuff going on inside you’re actually worshipping the racially coded bird dude”. Which even young me thought was kind of gross, but now I’m really curious despite myself as to how that fits with Jonsee’s thing about “NO LITERALLY ONLY THIS GOD OR HEATHEN MORLOCK WICCAN FROTH FROTH”? I mean, given his very specific “talents” I’m sure he could write many paragraphs about why that’s not a problem, but for some reason evidence as to why these guys don’t even read much/know the books they love all that well still has the power to surprise me.
I’m getting the Hugo announcement at 8:30pm which is unusually good timing for international events here – I deliberately put off starting a new book yesterday* so will be able to get home from work, cook some food, grab a beer and plan out how to fit in the inevitable series catchups I’ll need to do. Usually the things I’m paying attention to in the rest of the world happen overnight, which has not led to many nice wake-ups in 2016/7…
*I am, however, in the process of listening to the 2007 full cast recording of Dune, which at the risk of outing myself as a canon-ignorant fakefan I am experiencing for the first time in this medium – so far so good!
@Stewart
Doesn’t seem to be – any retailer would simply be acting on publishers info in good faith, and simply returning any money taken in good time ought to cover them. Also, Amazon for one don’t charge you for the pre-order until it’s dispatched.
Further up the food chain, between Freer and the companies, well…it’s one of those things where even if you have some contractual basis for complaint the real question is whether it’s worth the risk in money and reputation to pursue it.
@ Arifel : You’re not a canon-ignorant fakefan, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.
Nice to meet you, William R.
John C. Wright thinks Madeline L’Engle isn’t Christian enough? <blink> And in addition to all the excellent cites above of books that he’s apparently never read, there’s also Katherine Kurtz’s oeuvre. The Deryni books are fantasies that are not only Christian, they’re very, very Catholic! Especially the Camber books.
But I thought in Tolkien’s scheme of things he was calling upon the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sort of. It is subtle, but when Gandalf confronts the Balrog on Durin’s Bridge he calls upon the “flame imperishable”, which some take to mean the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Gandalf’s power seems to rely heavily upon his possession of Narya, the elven ring of fire, and a fair amount of “learned” information – at the gates of Moria he says he “once knew all of the spells in all the tongues of elves or men or orcs”, and later he talks about using a spell to bar a door in an effort to halt the advance of the Balrog.
As a whole, the evidence seems to be mixed – Gandalf has some innate power, but he also has some of what JCW would probably term “occult knowledge”. At the very least, his powers aren’t miracles, using your definition above, as they definitely seem to be under Gandalf’s command, rather than the result of divine choice.