(1) PLANE SPEAKING. CollegeHumor shows what happens when a ticket agent has to deal with the argument that “My Dinosaur Is a Service Animal” (features Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard).
(2) EARLY RETURNS ON 451. Phil Nichols of BradburyMedia saw a preview screener of “HBO’s new Fahrenheit 451” and weighed in on his blog:
…The new Fahrenheit does take many liberties with Bradbury’s story (what, no Millie? Clarisse as a police informant?), but it knows what it’s doing. Specifically, it knows what Guy Montag has to learn, and what he has to become; and it knows what Beatty is in relation to Montag. Most importantly, it knows how to show the relevance of Fahrenheit to today’s world of sound bites, clickbait headlines and fake news. Bradbury said that you don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture; you just have to get people to stop reading. And that’s exactly the world Bahrani has created here….
(3) MORE WORK FOR HOLLYWOOD LAWYERS. “Stan Lee Files $1B Lawsuit Against POW! Entertainment for “Stealing” His Name and Likeness” says The Hollywood Reporter.
The epic battles in Stan Lee’s comics may be nothing compared to the array of legal fights he’s waging — which now includes a billion-dollar lawsuit against the company he co-founded.
Lee is suing POW! Entertainment for fraud and conversion, claiming the company and two of its officers conspired to steal his identity, name and likeness in a “nefarious scheme” involving a “sham” sale to a Chinese company.
POW! was acquired in 2017 by Hong Kong-based Camsing International, and Lee says POW! CEO Shane Duffy and co-founder Gill Champion didn’t disclose the terms of the deal to him before it closed. At the time, Lee claims, he was devastated because his wife was on her deathbed and they took advantage of his despair — and his macular degeneration, which rendered him legally blind in 2015.
Lee says last year Duffy and Champion, along with his ex-business manager Jerardo Olivarez, whom he’s currently suing for fraud, asked him to sign a non-exclusive license with POW! for the use of his name and likeness in connection with creative works owned by the company. Instead, what he purportedly signed was a “fraudulent” intellectual property assignment agreement that granted POW! “the exclusive right to use Lee’s name, identity, image and likeness on a worldwide basis in perpetuity.”
According to the complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Lee has been selective about licensing his name and likeness and will only authorize the use on a non-exclusive basis.
(4) AWARD NOMINEE. Congratulations to Cora Buhlert! Her story “’Baptism of Fire’ is a nominee for the 2018 eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Award”.
I was going to put the link to the announcement into the weekly link round-ups at the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene respectively, but first I took a gander at the list of nominees and all but fell from my chair, because there, a bit down the page, was my name. For it turns out that “Baptism of Fire”, my contribution to the science fiction anthology The Guardian, edited by Alasdair Shaw, has been nominated in the “Best short story” category. I had absolutely no idea about this, until I saw the nominee list.
(5) BLABBAGE. Derek Stauffer, in “Star Wars Comic May Hint At Leia’s Episode 9 Fate” in ScreenRant, says that Marvel’s Poe Dameron comic may have clues about what will happen to Leia Organa in Episode 9.
Given Leia’s weakened state in the comic, it seems even more obvious that she will end up passing the torch to Poe as leader of The Resistance at some point in the near future. The only real question is if that passing will come with Leia’s retirement, or her death.
(6) ARTISTS TO BE INDUCTED. The Society of Illustrators will honor the following artists at its Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony on June 21.
2018 Hall of Fame Laureates
Robert Crumb
Hilary Knight
Jim McMullan
CF Payne
Kate Greenaway
Rene Gruau
Jack Kirby
Heinrich Kley
Kay Nielsen
(7) NEW TO SHORT FICTION? Lady Business offers a “Short & Sweet Roundtable Discussion: Short Fiction Reading Habits” with A.C. Wise, Bogi Takács, Brandon O’Brien, Vanessa Fogg, and Bridget McKinney.
One thing I’ve learned from talking to people about short fiction is that there are many different styles of reading short fiction. There are people like me who read one story (generally online) and then stop and do something else. There are people who sit down with a print or ebook magazine and read the whole thing cover to cover. There are people who only listen to short fiction in podcast form. So I was thinking about the different ways people read short SFF, and I wanted to find out more about these differences. I also thought that since lots of people have different short fiction reading habits, people who want to try short fiction might find that different pieces of advice are helpful to different people. So I’ve invited several guests to the column to talk about their short fiction reading habits and to share advice for people new to short fiction.
This roundtable features prolific short fiction readers, so they have a lot of great ideas for where to find short fiction, but I know it can be a little intimidating when there’s so much to choose from and people who read so much! I hope this roundtable gives readers a taste of how many ways there are to read short fiction and how many entry points there are, and that there’s no wrong way to read, including how much you read or at what point in life you start reading short fiction.
(8) LEND ME YOUR EARS. From Tested in 2013, “ILM Modelmakers Share Star Wars Stories and Secrets”. News to me — the crowds of the pod races in Star Wars Episode I were half a million painted q-tips.
Don Bies: One of the cool things, whenever we’re working together, is people thinking outside the box, and trying to come up with practical solutions. And in the early days, certainly it was ‘let’s see if we can beat the CG guys at their own game.’ Michael Lynch, one of the modelmakers–he was always really good at looking at things this way–he was looking at the crowds. And when you see a crowd in a stadium you’re really just seeing shapes and colors, you’re not really seeing people or individual faces.
So he came up with the idea…of using q-tips, cotton swabs, colored, in the stands of the Mos Espa arena. So there were something like 450,000 q-tips painted multiple colors, and he even researched it to find out how many reds versus yellows and blues and greens that should be in there.
And it was a process of just days of painting. Think about 450,000 cotton swabs, how you paint them, and then how you put them in. Everyone took turns at one point sticking them into the stands. And by blowing a fan underneath they kind of twinkled, like people moving around. Ultimately they did put some CG people on top of it, but I always thoght it would be funny if they caught to a close-up of the stands and you saw a cotton swab sitting in the stands next to the aliens…
(9) ALFRED THE GREAT. Hollywood Reporter headline: “’Gotham’ Boss Sets New Batman Prequel Series at Epix (Exclusive)”. Premium cable network Epix will air Pennyworth. The series has some behind-the-camera personnel ties to Gotham, but is not a prequel of that Fox series. No cast has been announced.
Epix is getting into the DC Comics business.
The MGM-owned premium cable network has handed out a 10-episode, straight-to-series order for Pennyworth, a drama set in the Batman universe from Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller.
The series will revolve around Alfred Pennyworth, the best friend and butler to Bruce Wayne (aka Batman). The series is not a Gotham spinoff but rather an entirely new story exploring Alfred’s origins as a former British SAS soldier who forms a secret company and goes to work with Thomas Wayne — Bruce’s billionaire father — in 1960s London. Sean Pertwee, who plays Alfred Pennyworth on Fox’s recently renewed Gotham, is not involved. Casting has not yet begun and the series is set in a completely different universe despite hailing from Heller and producers Warner Horizon. (Others who have played the Alfred role include Jeremy Irons, Michael Gough, Michael Caine, Alan Napier and William Austin, among others.)
(10) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
Hershey Kisses were named after the “kissing” sound made by the nozzle that drops the chocolate onto a cooled conveyor belt during their production. Hershey started making its version in 1907 but “kiss” was commonly used as a generic term for candies wrapped with a twist as early as the 1820s. Hershey managed to trademark the term in 2000 after arguing that consumers almost exclusively associated the word “kiss” with their brand versus other candies.
Source: Time
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- Chip Hitchcock learned space isn’t easy from Rhymes With Orange.
- But it can be warm: Arctic Circle.
- And time travel can be even warmer, as Lise Andreasen witnessed in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s “Hindenburg”.
(12) SCALZI FREE READ. The Electronic Frontier Foundation enlisted John Scalzi to help make their point: “EFF Presents John Scalzi’s Science Fiction Story About Our Right to Repair Petition to the Copyright Office”.
A small bit of good news: Congress designed a largely ornamental escape valve into this system: every three years, the Librarian of Congress can grant exemptions to the law for certain activities. These exemptions make those uses temporarily legal, but (here’s the hilarious part), it’s still not legal to make a tool to enable that use. It’s as though Congress expected you to gnaw open your devices and manually change the software with the sensitive tips of your nimble fingers or something. That said, in many cases it’s easy to download the tools you need anyway. We’re suing the U.S. government to invalidate DMCA 1201, which would eliminate the whole farce. It’s 2018, and that means it’s exemptions time again! EFF and many of our allies have filed for a raft of exemptions to DMCA 1201 this year, and in this series, we’re teaming up with some amazing science fiction writers to explain what’s at stake in these requests.
This week, we’re discussing our right to repair exemption. Did you know the innards of your car are copyrighted?
… The use of DRM to threaten the independent repair sector is a bad deal all-around. Repair is an onshore industry that creates middle-class jobs in local communities, where service technicians help Americans get more value out of the devices they buy. It’s not just cars: everything from tractors to printers, from toys to thermostats have been designed with DRM that stands in the way of your ability to decide who fixes your stuff, or whether it can be fixed at all. That’s why we’ve asked the Copyright Office to create a broad exemption to permit repair technicians to bypass any DRM that gets in the way of their ability to fix your stuff for you.
Our friend John Scalzi was kind enough to write us a science fiction story that illustrates the stakes involved.
(13) HOUSE OF REPUTE. Real estate news site 6sqft profiles a celebrity abode which once housed sf author Robert Silverberg: “Former home of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia lists for $3.5M in Fieldston section of Riverdale”. Numerous photos of the inside and outside.
A stately English Tudor mansion in the historic Fieldston neighborhood of Riverdale, considered one of the city’s best preserved early 20th century suburbs, has just hit the market for $3.5 million, and it’s oozing history filled ghosts, science fiction, New York master politicians, and urban planners. Former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia moved to 5020 Goodridge Avenue after serving three consecutive terms as mayor and living in Gracie Mansion….
In 1961, Robert Silverberg, a well-known science fiction author – and not as well-known as the prolific writer of erotica novels for quick cash – bought the house. In his 1972 novel, The Book of Skulls, Silverberg mentioned the neighborhood, writing, “How unreal the whole immortality thing seemed to me now, with the jeweled cables of the George Washington Bridge gleaming far to the southwest, and the soaring bourgeois towers of Riverdale hemming us on to the right, and the garlicky realities of Manhattan straight ahead.”
(14) PROBLEM FIXER. Michael Z. Williamson’s advice is to ban the people who complain about a convention GoH.
…Your only rational, immediate response to avoid “controversy” is just to ban the person making the public scene. They’ve already told you by this action that they intend to cause trouble for at least one of your guests and that guest’s followers.
“I wouldn’t feel safe with this person at the con!”
“We’re sorry you feel that way. Here’s a full refund.* We hope to see you at a future event.”Then stop responding. You’ll only give attention to an attention whore.
Having seen this happen to guests at least three times, any future guest invitations I accept will involve a signed cancellation clause and a cash penalty for doing so, because once a guest has made arrangements for your event, they can’t schedule something else, and you’re eating up their writing/art/production time. They are there for YOUR benefit, not you for theirs. In my case, I currently have three novels, a collection, an anthology, all contracted, another novel offer, three on spec, an article request, three short stories and a lengthy stack of products to test and review, and an entire summer of professional bookings. I have a not-quite four year old and a teenager. Don’t waste my time then roll over for some worthless whiner….
(15) MAKING PLANS. John Ringo, in a public Facebook post, advises writers —
…With every other convention, assume you’re being set-up at this point and don’t be played for a sucker.
Oh, yeah, and as fans and lovers of liberty, never, ever attend Origins again if you ever have. Or ConCarolinas. (Sorry, Jada.) Or ArchCon. Or WorldCon.
We need a list. They never will be missed. No they never will be missed.
(16) ALTERNATE SPORTS HISTORY. Counterfactual: “Blimps Full Of Money And 30 Other Sports Fantasias In ‘Upon Further Review'”. What if football had stayed boring, or the US had boycotted the Berlin Olympics, or …?
Mike Pesca assembled the new book titled Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs In Sports History and a companion podcast. In an interview, he explained some of the book’s 31 different scenarios written by 31 sportswriters.
(17) SYMBOLISM. “Henrietta Lacks’ Lasting Impact Detailed In New Portrait” — shoutouts to unwitting donor of a cell line that has been used all over biomedicine.
When Henrietta Lacks was dying of cancer in 1951, her cells were harvested without her knowledge. They became crucial to scientific research and her story became a best-seller. Since then, Lacks has become one of the most powerful symbols for informed consent in the history of science.
On Monday, when the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., honored Lacks by installing a painting of her just inside one of its main entrances, three of Lacks’ grandchildren were there.
(18) BIRD IS THE WORD. “Dinosaur parenting: How the ‘chickens from hell’ nested”. “How do you sit on your nest of eggs when you weigh over 1,500kg?”
Dinosaur parenting has been difficult to study, due to the relatively small number of fossils, but the incubating behaviour of oviraptorosaurs has now been outlined for the first time.
Scientists believe the largest of these dinosaurs arranged their eggs around a central gap in the nest.
This bore the parent’s weight, while allowing them to potentially provide body heat or protection to their developing young, without crushing the delicate eggs.
The feathered ancient relatives of modern birds, oviraptorosaurs lived in the Late Cretaceous period, at least 67 million years ago.
(19) SF TV ARCHEOLOGY. Echo Ishii’s tour of old sf TV leads this time to “SF Obscure: Cosmic Slop”.
Cosmic Slop was a 1994 TV anthology series on HBO featuring three short black science fiction movies. (I have also seen the broadcast date listed as 1995.) It features three short “Space Traders” based on the Derrick Bell short story; “The First Commandment” and “Tang”. It’s kind of a Twilight Zone vibe with George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic during the intros. (It’s as bizarre in the way only George Clinton can be.)
(20) TREK MEDICINE TODAY. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination hosts “Star Trek, the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE & the Future of Medicine” on June 2, with Qualcomm XPRIZE Tricorder Prize winner Basil Harris, Robert Picardo (actor, Emergency Medical Hologram, Star Trek: Voyager), and Dr. Rusty Kallenberg, Chairman of Family Medicine and Director of the UCSD XPRIZE Test Program.
June 2, 2018
5:00-7:00pm
Liebow Auditorium
UC San DiegoArtificial intelligence is already impacting healthcare is numerous ways. Are we far from the future portrayed in Star Trek: Voyager, of an AI holographic doctor with encyclopedic medical knowledge? What are the pathways that will yield the most profound results for AI in medicine? And what are the ethical and regulatory issues we need to consider as we develop these technologies?
Hosted by Erik Viirre, associate director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Medical Director of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, The Future of Medicine is an exploration of these questions and more, as they impact the UC San Diego innovation ecosystem and beyond. Our master of ceremonies is Robert Picardo, actor and star of Star Trek: Voyager, where he left a cultural impact as the face of AI medicine as the Emergency Medical Hologram, known as “The Doctor.” Basil Harris, founder of Basil Leaf Technologies and winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE to develop a real-world Tricorder-like medical device, will share his experience developing DextER, an autonomous medical diagnostic device, and the future of this pathway for innovation. And leaders from UC San Diego will join a panel on artificial agents in medical technology development.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Standback, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, Lise Andreasen, Chip Hitchcock, and rcade for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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@Ctein
Well, Game of Thrones is in school libraries over here so as far as mature content goes there’s a lot of leeway. I’m told excessive swearing might be more of an issue (I need to get one of the librarians to look over The Collapsing Empire for me if funding exceeds my wildest dreams), and from personal experience as a previously young adult reading adult fiction there was a point where if they started getting into specifically adult concerns too much then I lost interest, but so long as there aren’t long digressions about mortgages and so on then I don’t think that would be an issue. I don’t think I ever noped out of an sf/f book because it was too grown-up (therefore boring to snotty teenager me), just some mysteries.
Is there anybody here who’s read SATURN RUN and knows the current YA scene and can tell me?
I would call it YA per se, but then, the second word in YA IS adult. I imagine there are older kids who would enjoy it.
@steve davidson: “that’s largely directed at gaming conventions, I presume?”
Not necessarily. I’ve helped coordinate his appearances at two local SF cons – yes, that includes LibertyCon, which he has since gone on to attend on his own dime – and I assisted a third SF con with their invitation (which fell through due to a scheduling conflict). In all three cases, there was a gaming area at the con, but it was not the point OF the con.
The “convention registry” form on that site even includes a dropdown to indicate the level of gaming at the con, from “our only activity” to “none at all.”
@David W: I’m aware of that Wiscon 35 disinvited Elizabeth Moon, but as far as I am aware that was much more of a one-off thing and more bad timing connected with temporary bad judgment and a con sensitive to those issues. If we stopped every possible GoH choice in perpetuity for any temporary stupidity, our list of candidates would be very short.
Elizabeth Moon was the GoH at GAFilk 2016 (where I was present), and she did a great job there.
If instead of Islamophobia it had been antisemitism would you be as willing to play down the seriousness of the episode? Asking for a friend.
@Karl-Johan Norén, Moon continues to be a GoH at other conventions too and I’ve heard no complaints about her.
Well, I’m not playing it down. What Moon said was very problematic and that it blew up like it did was predictable. Whether or not it could have been better handled is another question. I think Moon did learn from her experience though.
I’ve put on more than a few conventions over the years and I don’t invite someone to be a Guest without knowing (or finding out) about them. Once I invite someone, I wouldn’t uninvite them unless, I suppose, they did something egregious after they were invited. But if they presented me with a contract demand such as John Ringo proposes, I would immediately withdraw my invitation. It would signal to me that they are, at least, expecting me to discover something truly terrible about them or they are going to be such a pain to work with that I’ll be sorry I ever asked.
And Michael Z. Williamson’s suggestion of banning people who complain. Really?? Well isn’t he the great defender of freedom of speech and people’s rights. Let’s not hear him describe others as snowflakes.
@ Rev Bob:
That is a good outline, very professional, readily available, posted by someone in demand at conventions.
But it doesn’t address the problem Correia and Ringo face, which is that the con’s attendees vendors, and/or exhibitors object to them.
Wondering how that could be added in a professional-sounding way…. Maybe?
“Compensation specified if you cancel on me because attendees object to me being an honored guest.”
Oh, dear. I just keep laughing.
WRT to Elizabeth Moon and her essay. I went and googled it and read the entire thing, and I gotta tell you, that essay, while guaranteed to set off the howling mobs, was not hateful. It was nuanced. It was thoughtful. And it in no way sets Elizabeth Moon up as an Islamaphobe.
Either we believe in reasoned discourse or we don’t. Either we live in a free society that allows for differences of opinion to be debated and discussed, or we don’t.
Elizabeth Moon was not spouting alt-right neo-Nazi crap.
Nazis aren’t giving us things to debate, they are simply giving us hate.
She didn’t do that.
Whether WisCon was right or wrong is long past moot. I just think it’s wrong to characterize what Moon wrote into a caricature of itself.
YMMV as always, but I think a short trip to the original essay might be in order.
In the comments on the linked Facebook post by John Ringo, Williamson’s lawyer, Benjamin Blatt stated that he is developing said contract (which I assume will be made public for use by other authors).
If instead of Islamophobia it had been antisemitism would you be as willing to play down the seriousness of the episode? Asking for a friend.
Not really Islamophobia. She felt that building a mosque close to the WTC ground zero wasn’t a very good idea. One can hold that opinion without being Islamophobic and nothing in her behavior before or since has indicated otherwise.
@ Craig Miller:
Well, yes, that’s their conundrum with such a plan.
In genres where writers are expected to behave more professionally than has typically been expected in sf/f (where people skip program items they’re assigned to; hijack program sessions for their own bugaboos; waste an audience’s time by appearing on program items where they know nothing about the topic; disrobe during their programs; etc.), written public appearance or conference agreements are not at all unusual–especially where an honorarium is being paid in addition to expenses covered. (In other genres, in fact, writers typically prepare programs in advance, rather than just showing up an bullshitting off-the-cuff about a given topic.)
But surely it would give anyone pause to see a clause, amendment, or rider to such an agreement that says, “If you cancel on me because people think I behave like a raging asshole, you have to compensate me.”
I suppose something more along the lines of, “If you cancel on me for any reason, you will compensate me, etc.” could work…
The same Benjamin Blatt who couldn’t write a first comment able to make it through moderation here? I’m looking forward to reading that.
In and around the blog
Pixels come out of the file
And just scroll there
…
Seven-seven-oh, my love,
You’ll see I’ll be there for you
The Ringo link didn’t send me directly to that quote so I scrolled.
ICK.
I already don’t read Michael Z Williamson and he solidified that.
Sarah Hoyt got her name added to the ‘toss aside to look for something else” list. I mean, K Tempest has made me roll my eyes at times but they’re just over the line.
My there’s a lot of talk about how cons need them, not the otherway around because ‘independently published” is king. I love how the words “self published’ seem to be Kryptonite now. Maybe if the book covers didn’t look like children’s refrigerator art, they’d be taken more seriously.
Because Muslims are, as a community, responsible for there being at the time a couple of holes where two skyscrapers used to be? Lots of people hold that opinion, including my parents: but that doesn’t make it any less bigoted. Or any less wrong, for that matter.
Dear David W, Anna, Techgrrl, et al.
How many of you attend(ed) Wiscon or are involved in some way with running Wiscon? Show of hands, please?
Then you don’t really have standing in the disinvitation of Moon.
Repeating some basics that, really, everyone should know by now: not every author is a good GoH fit for every convention. The GoH needs to be one who will bring in attendees of the sort the convention wants AND will make the convention more fun for the attendees. Think “Featured Entertainer.”
Fact: very large numbers of the Wiscon attendees and shakers and movers, both, considered Moon’s remarks anti-Muslim. I’m one of them, and I could cite blatant specifics, but … it really doesn’t matter. Any more than it matters whether it’s better or worse than some other kind of prejudice.
The only thing that mattered was that Moon’s comments were going to be a ongoing point of friction and contention at the convention between her and attendees. A major (unpleasant) distraction and a derail.
Being Wiscon, there was process and discussion. Moon was not summarily dismissed, there were conversations between her and Wiscon to see if there were some way out of this problem that would be acceptable to both parties. Neither could come up with anything. That was the point at which the invitation was rescinded.
At some other convention, and in some of your minds, this wouldn’t or shouldn’t have created an issue. Doesn’t matter. For Wiscon’s demographic, it was.
End of story. Let it rest.
– pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. Dragon Dictate in training! ]
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— Ctein’s Online Gallery. http://ctein.com
— Digital Restorations. http://photo-repair.com
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Benevolent Airships Oops, I would be one of those people who are not on Facebook. I have a half set up account that I never finished and insofar as I can tell, never will finish. Unless I have to for this. If we can’t find another appealing option, I guess I can bite the bullet and get Facebook.
@Mike Glyer – Oh most Gracious Host and Master of All the Scrolls we survey? Would you be willing to set up a thread for us? I am more than happy to be the US Dirigible but in terms of keeping up with disparate comments in the vast scrolls, I am going to fall down on the job. I have a huge pile of grading to do and revisions on a journal article that are imminent. After next Wednesday I might be able to take a breath and catch up.
@Meredith – oh dear – I haven’t read what happened yet but please take care. I was rear ended in a car accident last month and while okay am still not really firing on all fours. Thank you!
Good question about the whole – lots of places fewer books vs fewer places more books. I imagine it largely depends on what kind of donations and sponsors we manage to get.
As for the non-fiction science idea – I added that for two reasons – 1) for a mission statement outlining long term goals (sigh, I hate writing mission statements) and 2) the possibility of applying for STEM/STEAM grants at some point in the future. If we pair nonfiction books with themes in the fiction we donate we might be able to parlay that into curriculum development for classrooms. I wasn’t planning to attack that idea initially though – more dreaming.
I attended WisCon for 15 years, until 2008, The Plague Year. I stopped going because the politics were being worn so much on the sleeve that it stopped being fun for me. I dislike litmus tests for many things, including fandom.
For good Selfpublished stuff ask Cora, she publish regulary in her blog about indiewriters.
Techgrrl1972:
It was openly racist and hateful. The only reason people can call it “nuanced” is because hatred of arabs and muslims is part of the mainstream.
Dear Anna,
Moon also went down the “I know not all Muslims are terrorists” and the “it will be better for everyone if they learn to act like ‘normal’ people” roads.
Before someone points out that those were not her exact words, it accurately represents the conbtent. I’m not going to look up the exact words, waste of time. I’m just saying this to shut down the “you haven’t quoted her” cant, before it gets started.
I’m sure there many people who won’t read the huge implicit (and sometimes not) bigotry in those roads. I’m sure many of them are well-meaning and broad-minded people. So not the point. A great many of the Wiscon people did.
pax / Ctein
~~~~
Dear Meredith and rhochrist,
There is no even mildly explicit sexual content in the book (John and I both find that boring to write), Although there is reference to “sexual situations” as the disclaimers like to put it. There is a moderate amount of death and killing on camera (because, thriller), and there is a lot of swearing. It is one of John’s style things, and it worked for me.
Every time one of his books comes out, there are letters from readers complaining that the last one was acceptable but the new one had way too much swearing in it. John’s son, who maintains his website, put together a whole article about it, with textual analyses of all of John’s books, plotted on graphs — total number of swearwords, density of swearwords, break down by particular swear word. Turned out to be remarkably constant from book to book.
John’s son is a fan and a geek. Shocker, huh?
Anyway, you’ve given me enough reassurance that I’ll happily donate a dozen paperback copies. Worst that happens is that some libraries move them over to the adult shelf — I doubt they’ll be upset at getting a free bestseller.
– pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. Dragon Dictate in training! ]
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— Ctein’s Online Gallery. http://ctein.com
— Digital Restorations. http://photo-repair.com
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Dear David,
Ok, so noted!
I will admit I’m a little trigger-happy to the Monday morning quarterbacking of fandom, especially when it comes to social conduct policies and related matters.
But… I have trouble imagining a Wiscon where the politics weren’t worn on the sleeves. And the collars, the shoulder bags, and every undergarment. Really?!
I can’t recall my first Wiscon, but I don’t think we overlap there. Probably other conventions, though. (And if you’re someone I’ve known for like 30 years, my apologies — I am really bad at remembering people. It’s not you, it’s me… And I mean that!)
pax / Ctein
techgrrl1972: Moon’s original essay was half the problem at most. It was the comments, where she doubled and tripled down, then deleted them all in a wave of pique, where the most of the reason for the disinvite happened. It’s also among the many reasons a significant number of anti-racism and anti-Islamophobia advocates are very allergic to people who wholesale delete comments. But in short, reading what’s left as evidence now is not likely to tell you the whole picture, and trying to second guess a decision nearly a decade old based on what you can read in the present may not be quite the thing.
That being said, Moon was a terrible fit for Wiscon, both as a convention in general, and at that specific time in particular, when they were still dealing with a lot of flack for not being as proactively welcoming to PoC or as willing to take a line on racism within the convention.
This does not automatically preclude her being a better fit for other cons, where the specific issues Wiscon, an explicitly feminist convention trying hard to become intersectional, are not as important.
Personally I agree somewhat with what Anna is trying to say – but I also believe it is well within each other convention’s range to decide what and how much they are willing to tolerate a case of foot in mouth on racial and social justice issues.
The intersection of feminism with SF&F I had no problem with. It’s the politics of left versus further left that got old for me.
@Lenora Rose
Moon’s memory holing the entire discussion on her LJ was what really ticked many off, regardless of their faith or lack of same. Of course much of it was archived anyway so she might as well not have bothered and instead just not allowed further comment.
As for Moon’s fit, I’d say her politics certainly weren’t congruent with WisCon’s, but the fact was that Moon also was very much a feminist SF writer, if not a particularly leftist one. I think Moon really wrong-footed herself on the issue of there being a mosque sited near the location of the Twin Towers in NYC, and it wasn’t surprising that WisCon disinvited her.
Since then though Moon’s not done more of the same, so there’s that. Moon was recently the Writer GoH at Keycon in Winnipeg and I think it went well there.
The three things fans collected most–
The pixel, file, and holy scroll.
Alas Moon’s visit to Keycon was a year I missed for unrelated reasons, but my impression is that she was considered good guest
Meredith, I hope the shoulder will pop back in cleanly very soon, and stay there.
Cora – congratulations!
Benevolent Airships – maybe worth contacting the Science Fiction Outreach Project? They do something vaguely similar, meaning not to schools, and not YA-focused, but still distributing free SFF books.
Re WisCon, next week’s will be my 22nd, and I’ve been on the concom since, I think, 2011. The Moon discussion was before my concom time, but I lived through the various harassment fails, which were eventually made as right as we could manage. I have not noticed WisCon becoming more political. I have noticed it becoming more POC-friendly, more accessible, and more Trans- and Genderfluid-friendly. I have also noticed a number of older white long-time attendees decide the con is less welcoming than it used to be. Since I am white and 60 years old, and don’t feel at all less welcomed, I have wondered if the different racial mix was making some white folks uncomfortable, probably in a completely unconscious way. But another possibility is just that as the leadership transitions over time, and those folks’ close friends are no longer in charge, they feel less like they belong. Since I’m on the concom, I’d be less subject to that feeling. I don’t know. It’s a sensitive subject.
@Mike Glyer: Same guy. Especially if he peppered his post with explicit or implied homophobic slurs. Nice guy.
His Facebook page is public, for those who care to do a search. He is currently writing strongly worded letters to Origins, and crowd sourcing ‘collection of evidence’ for an anti-trust suit involving them.
Yes, I would be glad to. Somebody write what they want as the post text, and then the discussion can latch on in comments. Email the text to me — mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
@Laura: “But it doesn’t address the problem Correia and Ringo face, which is that the con’s attendees vendors, and/or exhibitors object to them.”
True enough. Then again, SJ’s not the most controversial of people.
“In the event that circumstances result in the guest being unable to attend as a result of actions taken by the convention, the convention agrees to specified compensation,” perhaps? That way, it covers everything from revoked invitations to the con being canceled or rescheduled… and it’s deliberately neutral. Con made the invite, guest accepts, con changes the deal such that the guest can’t attend, con pays up.
@Kip W:
For just a moment, I thought you were doing a riff on Tom Smith’s “307 Ale.” 😀
@Christopher Hensley: “strongly worded letters”
Ever notice one seldom hears about strongly-lettered words? 😉
You can’t gafiate in a fannalo herd.
Bujold’s novella “The Flowers of Vashnoi” is up and ready for purchase!
Links to various e-tailers in her Goodreads Post.
People are still reading Vorkosigan books here in 4947.
@ctein: what I wrote was:
I made no comment nor opinion on whether WisCon was right or wrong. I haven’t been to WisCon, even though it’s been on my list of things to do since I live close enough that day trips are practical.
And for the person that mentioned Moon’s deleting the comments, she left the essay up. (Besides, isn’t there an Internet rule that goes something like “don’t read the comments”?)
We’re back to, unless there’s a pattern of behavior that makes it fairly easy to interpret where a person is coming from, unless there’s more recent behavior/writings that aren’t 8 years old to indicate that Moon is a racist Islamophobe, I think plonking her into that bucket is a tad … much.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Woot!
Regarding Elizabeth Moon and Wiscon, back in the day I clicked on the objectionable post to see what all the uproar was about.
I remember that the problematic bit came at the end of the very long and rambling post, which I probably would never have read in full, if I hadn’t specifically looking for something. The comment in question was definitely islamophobic, though it was more of a polite middle class islamophobia than puppy-style frothing at the mouth hatred. However, polite middle class racism and islamophobia are just as insidious than the frothing at the mouth type and can easily pave the way for the latter.
I’ve never been to Wiscon, but given what I know about the convention Elizabeth Moon wouldn’t have been a good fit, especially not in that particular year.
However, I haven’t heard anything negative about her since and I happily read her Kylara Vatta books.
Dear David,
Oh, I get it, or I think I do**. And I do think it is a shame that the movement has passed you by. Please don’t take that as snark; it is not. It has been a concern that feminism has had to grapple with since the second wave, and especially since wave 2.0 turned into wave 2.5 and then 3.0. Two ongoing issues — the first is that the paramount concerns of the younger generations are simply not the same as the ones of the older generations. Partly because major battles have been won and we’re in the mopping up phases on those, partly because sensibilities simply change.
That’s not a new thing nor is it unique to feminism, it’s been a part of transformative politics since forever. If you’re old enough to remember the political movements of the 60s, consider how different our parents’s perspective on what was important was from ours (I am guessing you’re baby boomer).
The second, and one there has never been a comfortable answer to — how do you accommodate different political perspectives… if you do? To give two examples, genuine feminists (not the faux lot that the right keeps trying to foist off on us) who are conservatives or who are antiabortion. They exist, even within fandom. Janet Wilson, who started A Women’s Apa, for example. The movement as a whole hasn’t figured out how to deal with those uncomfortable intersections; neither has Wiscon. We are not THAT far ahead of the curve. mostly only “just don’t talk about it.”
You are correct about Elizabeth — if she hadn’t made those anti-Muslim remarks, she would’ve been a perfect fit for Wiscon. That’s why they chose her. Sadly, that made the relationship unworkable.
(**if there’s been a drift leftward, I wouldn’t have noticed, because I’m so far out there that I feel like they’re just finally catching up to me.)
~~~~
Dear Techgrrl,
I have not noticed anyone plonking Elizabeth into a present-day bucket. We are discussing how she presented herself back then, because the subject under discussion is Wiscon disinviting her. Not who Elizabeth Moon is today.
The comments we are referring to are ones that she herself wrote. Not what other people said. She’s a professional writer and a good one. She doesn’t get to say, “well I don’t stand by my words, because they were in comments.” I don’t imagine she would; she knows better.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with everything Elizabeth wrote on the subject at the time; if you’re not, then you are lacking information. If you are, then a difference in how you read it does not mean we are turning it into a “caricature of itself.” Honestly, that’s vaguely insulting — you come across sounding like you are the one who has the true and correct interpretation and the problem is that the rest of us just don’t see things as clearly as you do.
I think you are working way, way too hard to defend Elizabeth, who really doesn’t need any defense. Nobody here has faulted her in general, nor for anything she has done recently.
– pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. Dragon Dictate in training! ]
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— Ctein’s Online Gallery. http://ctein.com
— Digital Restorations. http://photo-repair.com
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Saddest SF story in five words: “For Sale: Ringworld. Never circumnavigated.”
Moon’s essay wasn’t the worst and might have been overcome or worked with. Wiscon tried hard. Moon handled it badly, and it was an especially fraught issue at the time (the WTC mosque, which many didn’t realize was a replacement, not a new thing that hadn’t been there), and Wiscon and Moon were already not an obvious fit, and it was really not a surprise that this episode ended in disinvitation.
But a wholly different situation from certain Puppies who seem intent on proving they’re not a good choice for any confusion that isn’t 100% aligned with them on politics and the culture war.
Lenora Rose: Moon’s original essay was half the problem at most. It was the comments, where she doubled and tripled down, then deleted them all in a wave of pique, where the most of the reason for the disinvite happened.
And what I remember most, apart from the Islamophobic aspects dressed up as social psychology, was how angry it made me that her words read as Christian-centric, and as if she felt she was speaking for all Americans — because she sure as hell wasn’t speaking for me, and I objected to her ready assumption that a Christian point-of-view was the default and that of course all of the rest of us real Americans would agree with her.
It’s regrettable that she chose to delete her comments and that no screenshots were saved (as far as I know), because any discussions which take place now are missing a great deal of context.
4) Congratulations, Cora. I had a similar experience with the eFestival Award. City of Masks was nominated (and oddly won) for best YA novel in 2016, but neither myself nor my publisher were notified. I found out through a random review search. It’s a fun surprise though, isn’t it? Hope you win.
If anyone is in Vancouver this weekend, the Creative Ink Festival is going on with no-drama (well, they can write dramatically) GoH’s Kevin Hearne and C.C. Humphreys.
@JJ
This Christian centric view lies at the heart of a lot of islamophobia and also antisemitism in western countries. It’s why certain people complain about hijabs and kippas and wondering why “those people” can’t dress normally, but see absolutely nothing wrong with a nun in a habit. It’s why a mosque with a minarett is apparently a visual afront, no matter how architecturally pleasing it might be, but an ugly cross in the lobby of a public building is part of “our culture”. It’s also why we have lots of Christian holidays as public holidays, but the idea of maybe striking one or two of the lesser Christian holidays (we could probably live without Easter Monday, Pentacost Monday, Ascension Day, Corpus Christie Day or Reformation Day) and adding a Muslim and a Jewish holiday and maybe a Hindu holiday instead is met with frothing at the mouth.
Thank you and congratulations on your win, even if it was back in 2016.
Come to think of it, a year or two ago, I remember congratulating a writer I know on Twitter regarding their eFestival of Words nomination and that was the first they’d ever heard of it.
Looks like somebody already decided we could live without those in the U.S. But they were given to capitalists (i.e, made “regular work days”) rather than another religion.
For the first decade I was there, the garden center chain I worked for in Virginia had three paid holidays a year: Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day.
LOL.
I attended Wiscon for I think three years, 2003-2005. I thought of it as hime. After the last one I realised that personal enmity with some regular attenders had made it not a fun place to be for me. Also travelling to the States became increasingly scary.
I think somewhere along the line the fact that I completely agree has been lost?
I need to add that my deciding to stop going to Wiscon was personal and related to personal relationship – it had nothing to do with politics or intersectionality. It was just a poly relationship that failed catastrophically.