Pixel Scroll 5/15/17 Scroll Sat Alone On His File Of Stone, And Pixeled And Godstalked A Bare Old Bone

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(1) ADVANCED ALT-MARKETING. Jon Del Arroz is convinced you can sell more books if you fight with the right people. And the right people are on the left.

His business had a good day on Monday, as he garnered negative attention from Paul Weimer, and tangled on Twitter with SF Bluestocking’s Bridget McKinney.

Things got rolling after this Weimer tweet:

Jon took all that back to his blog and positioned himself as a staunch defender of Anne McCaffrey against a benighted feminist in “The Cult Of The New And Its Destruction Of Culture”.

…It started because I was talking to a Tordotcom reviewer. A Hugo Nominated Fanzine writer chimed in to tell me how irrelevant I am by referencing my last novel, how she looked up “Rescue Run” and found that there was “nothing in sci-fi that returned on a google search”.

I corrected, of course, stating not only is there my extremely highly regarded, award nominated and well-reviewed book, but that I chose the title intentionally as an homage to the late great Anne McCaffrey, who wrote a book by the same name. This work was demeaned by her first as “it’s only a short story” (It’s a novella, actually) and this person who is nominated for the Hugo Award for fanzine work, retorted to that by calling Anne Mccaffrey “old and irrelevant.”

… And of Hugos? This fanzine writer who writes self-described “feminist” commentary on science fiction is attacking the first woman ever to win the award! For shame! It boggles my mind to see this kind of lack of reverence for her.

When it comes to protecting the reputation of Anne McCaffrey, I didn’t know Jon had a dog in this fight. Now I know he’s got at least a puppy.

(2) HIGH ON KYLO. If you think the death of Han Solo might make people question having children at all, that’s because you haven’t met last year’s crop of new parents: “Turning to the Dark Side: Kylo is the fastest growing baby name in the US in honor of the latest Star Wars villain” — the Daily Mail has the story.

  • The name, inspired by Star Wars’ Kylo Ren, has jumped a massive 1,467 spaces
  • Popular culture also inspired parents to name their girls after popstar Kehlani
  • The most popular boys’ name is still Noah and it’s Emma for girls once again
  • Despite being in news every day, Donald and Hillary proved unpopular names

… The Social Security Administration released its annual list of the 1,000 most popular baby names for 2016 on Friday.

(3) ANOTHER CAPTAIN ON ANOTHER BRIDGE. This part is obvious – The Verge says “Seth MacFarlane’s upcoming TV series looks like a parody of classic space adventure shows” – but the idea that it takes inspiration from GalaxyQuest is hopeful.

https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/864112087634780160

(4) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Why do the Imperial Stormtroopers all appear to be left-handed?  It’s because their ammunition magazines on their weapons are on the left side, so it’s easier to hold the guns left-handed.

So is this Lego Storm Trooper inaccurately showing a right-hander?

(5) BONUS TRIVIAL TRIVIA

And while we’re on the subject of Star Wars, did you know….? (Via Scifihistory.net.)

(6) BOOTHE OBIT. Powers Boothe, who appeared in Deadwood and Sin City died May 15 at the age of 68. Boothe also played Gideon Malick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first in The Avengers (2012), then on TV in ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born May 15, 1856 – L. Frank Baum

(8) HEADQUARTERS IN THE SADDLE. Gamer and comic owner lives the life as a jouster: “The boss who lives as a medieval knight”.

Given how Jason spends his weekends, you might imagine that his day job is equally daring, that he is some sort of professional stuntman.

Instead, he is the chief executive of one of the UK’s largest computer games companies – Rebellion Developments.

Jason set up the Oxford-based business with his younger brother Chris in 1992, and today it has an annual turnover of more than £25m.

Still wholly owned by the two siblings, its best-selling titles include Sniper Elite and Rogue Trooper.

For the past 17 years the company has also owned cult UK comic book series 2000 AD, and publishes a range of novels.

(9) CALLING DR. DYSON. Maybe there is a Ringworld? “The most mysterious star in the galaxy”.

The starlight dips in an irregular pattern, suggesting that something is intermittently blocking the star. This bizarre behaviour, first reported in autumn 2015 and not seen in any other star, has scientists baffled. Researchers have proposed a myriad of explanations, including black holes, comet swarms, and interstellar clouds. But a conclusive answer remains elusive. And one hypothesis in particular has raised eyebrows: aliens.

Yes, aliens.

Perhaps, researchers have posited, an advanced alien civilisation has constructed a vast structure encircling their star, maybe an enormous power plant that harnesses the star’s energy. When parts of the structure pass in front of the star, it creates dips in the starlight.

(10) I HEARD THE NEWS TODAY. A local Albuquerque TV station recently  devoted 1-minute video bio to — “George R.R. Martin Living and Loving New Mexico”.

(11) UNLUCKY STRIKE. The Chicxulub asteroid hit “the worst possible place”:

Scientists who drilled into the impact crater associated with the demise of the dinosaurs summarise their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary on Monday.

…It is becoming clear that the 15km-wide asteroid could not have hit a worse place on Earth.

The shallow sea covering the target site meant colossal volumes of sulphur (from the mineral gypsum) were injected into the atmosphere, extending the “global winter” period that followed the immediate firestorm.

Had the asteroid struck a different location, the outcome might have been very different.

“This is where we get to the great irony of the story – because in the end it wasn’t the size of the asteroid, the scale of blast, or even its global reach that made dinosaurs extinct – it was where the impact happened,” said Ben Garrod, who presents The Day The Dinosaurs Died with Alice Roberts.

(12) ORION DELAYED. And we’re getting farther from returning to the Moon — “NASA nixes Trump’s moonshot plan” reports The Register.

NASA will miss its deadline for the first flight of the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System, with the launch moved from 2018 to 2019.

The agency’s Bill Gerstenmaier also told media in a briefing last Friday that as well as delaying the first flight (designated Exploration Mission One, EM-1), the EM-2 mission that will carry astronauts will probably miss its original 2021 date.

In February, the new Trump administration asked NASA to assess the feasibility of changing the EM-1 mission, planned as an uncrewed jaunt into cislunar space between Earth and Luna, to instead carry human cargo around the moon.

NASA has concluded that it can’t justify the cost of such a change to the schedule.

(13) FLYING TOYOTA IN YOUR FUTURE? The car maker pushes in a big stack of chips: “Toyota ‘backs flying car project’ in Japan”.

Japanese carmaker Toyota has announced its backing for a group of engineers who are developing a flying car.

It will give 40 million yen (£274, 000) to the Cartivator group that operates outside Toyota city in central Japan.

The Nikkei Asian Review reports Toyota and its group companies have agreed in principle to support the project.

So far crowdfunding has paid for development of the so-called Skydrive car, which uses drone technology and has three wheels and four rotors.

(14) GIFTED CHILDREN. Here is the trailer for Fox’s series The Gifted, set in the X-Men universe. It will air this fall.

(15) INSTANT CLASSIC. Bill filed the numbers off an old earworm in this update to “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”

With apologies to Allan Sherman

Hello Scrolls and Hello Pixels
Many posts are just for ticks. You’ll
Find that some are entertaining.
But not those that end up being all mansplaining.

I follow daily the blog of Glyer.
And I’ve become a faithful Filer.
You remember Rabid Puppies?
Their campaign to win the Hugos got them bupkis.

Some folks come here to rant and foment
But I’d prefer a Meredith Moment
A nice movie for my Roku,
Or a book to put on top of Mount Tsudoku.

[bridge]
Let’s go scroll, we pixel filers
Let’s go scroll, my reading pile has
Climbed so high. It’s not so long til the
Ballots are due in Helsinki.

I see my comment is second fifth.
It’s regarding Bob Asprin’s Myth.
But it’s missing a URL link
So I shall leave and appertain myself a cold drink.

[Thanks to Lex Berman, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to  File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

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166 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/15/17 Scroll Sat Alone On His File Of Stone, And Pixeled And Godstalked A Bare Old Bone”

  1. I’ll just correct the record in the interest of accuracy since there aren’t really retractions here:

    1. Paul picked a fight with me originally.
    2. This lady also then came on paul’s thread and picked a fight and tried to defend her position by calling Anne McCaffrey old and irrelevant. And yes, I take exception to that.

    https://twitter.com/jondelarroz/status/864304965317083136

    Above is my periscope where I show off my Anne McCaffrey collection. I’m the real deal baby. Anne McCaffrey is sacred to me.

  2. Shucks, y’all just keep going on about that parody. Thanks for the many nice words.

    Having done just the one, I will certainly appreciate even more those who knock them out regularly.

  4. @Jon Del Arroz —

    I’ll just correct the record in the interest of accuracy

    Interest of accuracy?? You didn’t even quote McKinney correctly.

    She said, and I quote: “Just tried to google both those titles and no books in the first page of results for either. ”

    Which you managed to translate into: “found that there was ‘nothing in sci-fi that returned on a google search’.”

    That, of course, is not at all what she said.

    How about cleaning up your own inaccuracies before you start accusing other people?

  5. Mr Del Arroz:

    I own quite a few Anne McCaffrey books also. I don’t read them as much as I used to, because I recognize there are some squicky aspects to her work. Namely:

    F’lar’s rape of Lessa
    F’nor’s rape of Brekke
    Jaxom’s rape of Corana
    Pern being pretty much, as far as I can tell, a white people’s planet
    McCaffrey’s first book, Restoree, being a slightly embarrassing, wish-fulfillment Mary Sue romance, and also heavy on sexism, chauvinism and toxic masculinity (and hey, I have that too! I just recognize its limitations).

    Now, if you can look past all that, that’s fine, and that’s your business. I’m certainly not advocating you toss all of McCaffrey’s books out and vow never to read her again. I’m not doing that either. But it might be nice if you acknowledge that some people find problematic aspects to her writing, and not just reflexively knee-jerk at any criticism of her.

  6. The Scroll goes ever on and on
    All that is Scroll does not Pixel
    Sing hey! For the Scroll at close of day
    Scroll-white! Scroll-white! Oh Pixel Clear!
    Pixoniel! O Elberscroll!
    Pixel-galad was an Elven-scroll
    Tall Scrolls and Tall Pixels, three times three

  7. (1) ADVANCED ALT-MARKETING.
    This seems like a good time to bring up something I mentioned in a previous Scroll:
    “Does drama = sales?”
    In comics, the answer appears to be that you might get an initial sales boost, but long-term, it costs you sales. I expect that what applies in comics applies equally to other forms of publications.

    (2) HIGH ON KYLO.
    So in less than 20 years from now, we’ll be celebrating the weddings of Kylos to Khaleesis?

    (15) INSTANT CLASSIC.
    \o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/

  8. So I took a stroll through del Arroz’ tweets and found this gem:

    With my heavy credentials, people are requesting I write for #SpaceOperaWeek for Tor.com

    “heavy credentials”. This is the funniest thing I have seen all day. 😀

  11. (1) ADVANCED ALT-MARKETING.

    10 years ago, I thought I would try to read some classics, so I found a list on the net with top 100 best science fiction books, ranked by peoples input from a usenet-group or something like that. The Crystal Singer was on it. So I did read it and it was not bad, but neither was it that good. It just seemed old. Of the not well aged kind.

    I did try 5-10 more books from the list and concluded that all of the books had aged kind of badly. Then I gave up on the list.

  12. Hampus Eckerman: 10 years ago, I thought I would try to read some classics, so I found a list on the net with top 100 best science fiction books, ranked by peoples input from a usenet-group or something like that. The Crystal Singer was on it. So I did read it and it was not bad, but neither was it that good. It just seemed old. Of the not well aged kind.

    I think that this is yet another case of people who have read deeply in a small niche/time range of SFF, but not terribly widely across the genre, opining very loudly based on their limited experience (a la Jeffro Johnson). 🙄

  13. (1) The wonderful thing about assertions regarding search engine results is that they’re easily tested.

    When I searched for “rescue run,” I got lots of results for running events, either to benefit homeless animals or search-and-rescue teams. The top result was rescuerun.org, benefiting El Paso County’s SAR. Since I’m on an iPad, I also got several hits for cute-animal-adventure apps. The first book-related hits are from Amazon and don’t show up until the fourth page of results.

    “For steam and country” brought up several pages of results related to international issues with the Steam videogame service, home pages for “steam fairs,” and exhibitions of steam-powered technology, with references to STEAM education (think STEM plus Arts) earning an honorable mention. The first book-related hit was on the seventh search page, an internal text result from Google Books for a work published in 1916. The first Amazon hit – on the tenth page of results – is for a book called Byways of Steam, which from the result snippet appears to be a historical reference. I had intended to search through at least page 20, but Google stopped with a “no more results” message as page 18. JDA’s book did not show up at all unless I cheated by searching for “for steam and country del arroz” – at which point Google indeed found it.

    From an SEO perspective, this is completely understandable. “For Steam and Country,” as a search query, is immediately downgraded to “steam country” as the two unindexed* words are dropped, and then the results are no surprise. STEAM and Steam are much more common topics of discussion than Del Arroz’s novel – or just about any novel, for that matter. My purely mercenary advice would have been to put some more unique term in the title, to make it a distinctive phrase. “Rescue Run” suffers from exactly the same problems.

    FWIW, I tried Pern when I was younger and got through a couple of novels, but it didn’t really click for me. (I have a vivid image-memory of my paperback copy of The White Dragon sitting on the bookshelf with a bookmark at maybe the twenty-page mark, waiting patiently.) I was and am much more of a Crystal Singer fan. Even so, I feel like someone should at least mention that Anne McCaffrey is not simply old, but has been deceased for some time now.

    * Extremely common words will be used for an exact-phrase search, but not in a simple query, where they simply get dropped.

  14. Even when I first read the Harper Hall trilogy as a teen back in the day, I thought Anne McCaffrey had some serious issues. First, Menolly finds out her mother botched her medical care on purpose, and Menolly forgives her with a line about she wasn’t sure what she would have done in her mother’s position. I remember thinking back how perverse it was to have Menolly give post-facto consent to her maiming, because it made her mother’s life a little easier. Second, I was then and am now totally squicked out by teen Menolly having sex with grandfather-figure Robinton.

    I stopped with her book on Robinton because she retconned two major things from earlier books. First, Robinton was now a great musician and child prodigy, whereas in the original version, he is not a great musician. He became masterharper, he tells Menolly, because of his other skills, which aren’t spelled out but are implied to be political. And, worst of all, apparently women were always welcome to be harpers, which completely detroys the premise of the two Menolly books. You can spot a true nerd by how angry we can get over minutiae.

    I still read some of my old favorites but I would never recommend her books to anyone born after 1980, for all the reasons Bonnie spells out above.

  15. I’m the real deal baby. Anne McCaffrey is sacred to me.

    That reads a lot like virtue signaling.

    “I’m authentic, for I have the proper tastes!”

    I read McCaffrey until the rape-fantasy aspects of it got too much for me — I think the only two of her books I have left are the two Menolly books that don’t have dragonrape in them. So I guess I’m not the real deal.

    Been a working writer for 35 years as of this week, though. To each their own.

  16. @Rev Bob —

    FWIW, I tried Pern when I was younger and got through a couple of novels, but it didn’t really click for me.

    I loved these to death back in the day — I probably read most of them about as soon as they were published, up to the co-written ones. I’ve read most of the series at least twice, some more. But they really do show their age in many ways, and it’s just silly for anyone to deny it.

  17. Wow, now we got a guy mansplaining and white-knighting someone who’s been dead for years — and never needed nor wanted either in her lifetime. That there’s a puppy.

    Not to mention “Rescue Run” (a novelette, maybe) is super-rapey and misogynistic and IIRC racist. A harem of Asian women in the complete control of a literal murdering old white dude (Saved by a young white dude). Makes the rest of the Pern stories look like Happy Kumbaya SJW Hour.

  18. WRT problematic elements in “Dragonriders of Pern”.

    I read them when I was younger and lots more naive, and there are lots of things that seem squicky in retrospect, but let me throw this out here for a rational discussion:

    If I’m a dragonrider (male or female, for green dragons) of a female dragon, I pretty much know going in what the deal is going to be when my mind-partner goes into heat. So, is there not an element of consent there? If you can’t imagine yourself submitting to and participating in the sexual emotional storm of your dragon, don’t present yourself as a candidate to be a dragonrider.

    For greens, especially, they could go isolate themselves far away from any male dragons, although I don’t know if there would be any ill effect on the dragon. Lots of species have females going into heat and not having sex with males without any ill effects.

    For the gold dragons, given the need for the survival of the species, there may be a sense of duty involved that would prevent the rider of the gold dragon from feeling comfortable NOT letting her dragon be ridden. And the woman gets to be the ruler of a small clan out of her role.

    As a metaphor, isn’t this what very many women have done throughout history? Submitted to being the means of a royal line to continue by bearing children? “Close your eyes and think of England” comes to mind.

    It seems as though the woman doesn’t have to have sex with her mate except when her dragon rises. Other times, she’s in control of the relationship. ISTR situations where this is explicitly mentioned, where the weyrleaders don’t get along and the weyrwoman basically stays far away from the male weyrleader as possible. Since leadership of the weyrs is not hereditary, she has no obligation to bear children of her own body to insure the succession.

    Don’t accuse me of trying to defend rape in any form — I’m not. I am throwing a possible interpretation of the whole dragonrider mating situation out there that suggests Anne McCaffrey was not acting as a rape apologist, or writing rape fantasies.

  19. McCaffery is in sort of limbo for me–I’ve still got her books on the shelves and she’s survived a couple of book-purges but I’ve not been inspired to re-read her PERN series. But then, I’m sure I’m like everyone who has tons of books that you may or may not ever read again but still can’t bring yourself to get rid of them. Just in case.
    Now, I’ve re-read “The Ship Who Sang” which I think still holds up but that may be because it’s the first one of hers I read so there’s a soft spot for it. I still like her “Pegasus” series and parts of the “Tower and Hive”.

  20. I read my share of Anne McCaffrey in my teens (and I’m 44 now), though I always preferred the Pegasus/Rowan/Talented books/stories and Crystal Singer to Pern. And though I enjoyed the books back in the day, the problems (lack of consent, outright rape, massive ableism, a very white universe) were visible even back then and are even more notable now.

    None of this dismisses Anne McCaffrey’s contributions to the SFF genre. But her books were products of their time and are not really the best introduction to the genre for younger readers, unless they are explicitly interested in the history of the genre.

    Meanwhile, Jon Del Arroz falls into the same trap as Jeffro Johnson and other pulp revolution folks. Just because they are only now rediscovering the books and authors the rest of us read as teenagers and left behind ages ago, doesn’t make those writers/books suppressed by a malicious SJW conspiracy, but simply left behind by changing times and tastes.

  21. @Contrarius:

    I remember enough Pern to be vaguely nostalgic for the concept behind it, especially once Dragonsdawn filled in the origin story. I mean, toxic Thread as a long-cycle recurring threat that inspires the colonists to genemod flying fire lizards into full-size dragons? That sounds neat! I just wasn’t keen on the more mundane details of what happened in those vast stretches between Threadfalls.

    By contrast, I think Crystal Singer hooked me with what I now regard as a drug addiction metaphor (whether intended or not). Killashandra has this valuable skill that’s intoxicating to use and can be lucrative, but doing so comes at the cost of her memories. That battle between the urge to do something you’re good at and the drive to preserve your mind and sense of self, all to risk getting a potential payoff… that’s powerful stuff, for me. If the Tsundoku range weren’t so extensive, I might reread the trilogy just to (ahem) refresh my memory of it.

  22. Yep, the Suck Fairy got to my Pern collection, which meant a lot to me as a teen (before the later retconned books). I looked what Rev Bob likes about the Crystal Singer stories, and still have The Ship Who Sang on my shelves.
    @ Techgrrl1972
    I think that’s McCaffrey’s justification, but she undercuts that with Brekke’s distaste for the mating ritual, which she presumably knew she signed on for by impressing a gold. And the more I remember M’rim being asked if her green “was proddy”, the more it sounds like “she’s on her period” as a dismissal of a woman’s anger. YMMV, of course.

  23. I don’t think it’s rape-apologism so much as rape-fantasy. It has all the aspects of rape fantasy that made it such a staple in bodice-rippers — the woman gets to be virtuous by not consenting, the man gets to be passionate and powerful, and in the end, the rape is a way of overcoming her resistance and letting her admit the truth, that she really does love the guy (but she was pure enough to resist). It’s a very old-fashioned view of sexual propriety, but it had a long run in romance fantasies of being dominated by the right guy.

    [McCaffrey even wrote a romance about a rape victim who is forcibly gotten past her trauma by “the right guy” having non-consensual sex with her. It’s something she apparently considered exciting, or at least commercial.]

    In the Pern novels, though, she’s tailored it — it’s got all that exciting fantasy stuff, but without the guilt. It’s just dragon biology. So even though it fits all the old rape-fantasy patterns, with the virtue and the passion and the subjugation and all, it’s excused. It’s been made into an okay-rape, an okay-fantasy, because that’s the way the world works.

    But McCaffrey’s the one who built the world to work that way, to accommodate that fantasy. It’s not just an accident of biology, it’s the deliberate creation of a writer who wanted those rape-fantasy romance tropes, so she built a world that excused them, while still having her virtuous heroines overpowered and dominated by “the right guy.” There are references to other weirs where things didn’t work out so swimmingly, but they’re not the focus. The focus is the fantasy, the okay-rape that works out because it’s the right guy.

    Have the riders consented? Well, the ones who knew what they were getting into, though not all of McCaffrey’s heroines get filled in on that aspect before they wind up bonding with a dragon.

    In a world where marital rape is legal, as it was often in the past, has the wife consented? The courts would say yes.

    Me, I just don’t find rape-with-excuses as thrilling as McCaffrey apparently did.

    I also didn’t like how, the minute the heroine gets okay-raped, the mate seems to then be in charge. I stopped reading the books long enough ago that I don’t recall the details, but it seemed the pattern was of independent women who get subjugated and are thereafter subservient — with banter, but still in their place. So after the third or fourth example of a spunky independent heroine who gets okay-raped and then becomes subservient to the natural order of things, I gave up.

    But I don’t think McCaffrey was excusing real-world rape. She was romanticizing a rape-fantasy scenario imported from romance novels into SF, and giving it a new context where it could play out the other patterns with exciting new context.

    I would rather read about characters who get to make their own choices, rather than characters who are forced to “lie back and think of England.”

  24. Meredith moment: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet eBook 99p on Amazon UK

  27. (4) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

    Why do the Imperial Stormtroopers all appear to be left-handed? It’s because their ammunition magazines on their weapons are on the left side, so it’s easier to hold the guns left-handed.

    So that would also explain why they miss so much – they’re right-handed, but the design of their guns forces them to shoot left-handed.

    Personally, I’d thought that an empire capable of building a Death Star would also be capable of manufacturing and issuing guns that are correctly handed for their troopers. Or at least make a standard model that’s suited for the majority of their troopers and usable if awkward for the minority(*). But that’s just me.

    (*) I’ve never heard of a rifle that’s so unusable for left-handed shooters that a left-handed person will prefer shooting right-handed. Weapons drills may be awkward for left-handed people, but they’ll shoot left-handed nonetheless.

  29. 1)
    Not exactly how I wanted to make the scroll…

    As I have said a few times…I feel bad for the Superversive publicist who time Jon wasted in asking them to ask me if I wanted a review copy of Jon’s book.

    Jon, since you are here, are you going to apologize to the publicist for wasting their time?

    As far as your “HE STARTED IT!”, well, you reacted to a quote tweet I tweeted from someone you were tangling with. I never tweeted you directly until you decided to tweet at me.

    Anyway, re: Pern, haven’t read any Pern in years. I suspect the Suck Fairy might hit rather hard but currently not inclined to find out.

  31. @Kurt Busiek It’s a very old-fashioned view of sexual propriety, but it had a long run in romance fantasies of being dominated by the right guy.

    One interesting thing I remember from a history of romance novels (IIR, it was Jay Dixon’s “The Romantic Fiction Of Mills & Boon”, which I very much recommend) is that the this is largely a post-WW2 phenomenon in genre romance(*). In the 20s and 30s, the ideal love interest was slight, young, and/or sickly, and needed looking after. Which, if nothing else, explains Zeppo Marx and the interchangeable baby-faced crooners of Busby Berkeley musicals. (IIRC Dixon links this to the “lost generation” of WW1, which seems plausible.)

    (*) I suspect there are a lot of caveats and exceptions to this. “The Sheik” and its imitators were tremendously popular, as was Eleanor Glyn… although I suppose you could argue they were from an earlier generation.

  32. @Johan P: Can’t think of a rifle, but there are definitely submachine guns that are outright dangerous to shoot from the left shoulder, what with having a small metal handle whipping back and forth at a frightening pace (the classic example would be the m/45 in pretty much all its variants). I suspect many sharing the same basic design characteristic (shooting from a heavy, non-locking, bolt).

    @Camestros Felapton: That… also works, I guess it boils down to what you want to verb and “scroll”, I would say, is closer to already-verbed.

  33. I’ve never heard of a rifle that’s so unusable for left-handed shooters that a left-handed person will prefer shooting right-handed

    The Stormtrooper main weapon was based on the British Sterling sub-machine gun which has the magazine horizontal on the left hand side. For two handed use the left hand would usually hold the curved (it bends forward) magazine with the right on the pistol grip, looks like for the film props the curved magazines were replaced with shorter straight magazines which would be awkward to hold and in the way if you tried to hold the barrel with the left hand, hence the switch.

  36. there was “nothing in sci-fi that returned on a google search”
    Of course, this phrasing is a bait and switch.

    (6) I liked him as Marlowe. The series had problems, but I don’t think he was one.

    Rev. Bob: Don’t search results often depend on your search history, so that two people Googling the same thing will get different results?

    Also, that thing I was going to say and then forgot.

  38. Thanks for the Scroll title credit, Mike and belated congratulations for the Locus Award nomination to File770.

  40. When I read
    “something that old and irrelevant, though.” I don’t think something is a person.
    So, I fail to understand ‘Speaking of Anne McCaffrey as “old and irrelevant” ‘
    But english is not my first language, so maybe I’m mistaken.

    The conversation about the problematic views in her books is really interesting. Reading them as a teenager, I think I was a bit bothered by the most troubling points, but if you had asked me one hour ago, I would not have remembered that feeling.

  41. The scroll was young, the pixel green, no stain yet on the file was seen
    No words were stored on Nook or phone when Godstalk woke and walked alone

  43. It’s worth pointing out that the very popular and well-regarded and successful Star Realms: Rescue Run is currently ranked #69,927 in sales on Amazon (or a whopping #1,109 best seller in Military Science Fiction). Jon makes the same mistake that Declan Finn often does: you can’t pretend to be a highly successful writer when the entire world can see, in real time, how much you actually sell.

  44. @World Weary: Teen Menolly had sex with Robinton?! I’ve never heard of that – but I never got to “Renegades,” “All the Weyrs,” or the Robinton book – was it in one of those? Hmm, This thread discusses it (expand some collapsed threads to read the whole thing) and the consensus seems to be that didn’t happen, though it sounds like one or two passages are a little open to interpretation. Anyway just curious because that’s news to me.

    @Pern People: I loved the books back in the day, but as with many writers with very long careers, I felt quality waned over time. I lost interest after “Moreta” or maybe Nerilka’s Story. It was great to read the truth of Moreta’s story – I like that sort of thing sometimes (you know the myth, but here’s the truth, e.g., she didn’t really have abilities like Lessa, at least not nearly as strong), but then I got the impression (heh) she kept making characters special by saying they could talk to all dragons, which made me roll my eyes as it was supposed to be be almost unheard of, but two in the “present day” just weren’t enough for her. (I can think of reasons it would be more common in the present day, but it still felt like she was cheating to just reuse this supposedly hyper-rare power.)

    The Ship Who Sang was awesome. I liked Crystal Singer a lot, but the sequel not quite as much, and the third one a lot less, IIRC, when I finally read it. I haven’t reread Pern or the other books in a long time, but I suspect I’d still enjoy some of them a lot. (Years ago, I re-read the two Harper Hall ones periodically.) But then, that’s frequently the way for me & books I loved when younger. McCaffrey was a giant in the field in her day, IMHO, but her heyday was a long time ago at this point. (shrug)

    Of course, I would have to have a soft spot for Pern – my handle years ago on BBSs was “Blue Rider.” 😉

    P.S. @Techgrrl1972 and @Kurt Busiek: Interesting comments, thanks.

  45. @Harold Osler: I had always appreciated the Brainship books, too, but when I reread The Ship Who Sang 7 years ago, I ended up getting squicked out a lot by the whole system of shutting up people with disabilities up behind ship consoles. It really put me off on the concept in general (The Ship Who Searched is marginally better given that Tia was at least a bit older and had a better idea of what she was into before being brainshipped).

  46. Oooooo, a great discussion on Anne McCaffrey, and I turned in my grades yesterday (two hours before deadline), and am on vacation! YAY!

    As is often the case, my experiences are very similar to a number of the Filers: I read “Weyr Search” when it was first published or soon after–and it exploded across my adolescent event horizon like a big golden comet! FEMALE PROTAGONIST! (Seriously, how rare was that in SF at the time (1966 Wikipedia reminds me–I would have been in junior high then). DRAGONS!!!!!!!!!!!! I have to say that about a gazillion times because it cannot be said too much that I stayed with Pern mostly for the dragons. But also female protagonist!

    And yes, in the late 1960s in small town WASPY Idaho in a place where the 60s never actually came and there was no sex education and nobody ever talked about it and nothing out there, really, yes, the implied sex was rather exciting in the “I’ve never read anything like this OMG!” kind of way. And SF was in some ways had even less of the sanitized heterosexual relationships than did other genres. I agree with Kurt 100% right on in regard to rape-fantasy coming from romance–while agreeing with the extent to which those elements are very much rape apologism today–because of all the feminist work on rape which has been done since the 1970s. There was a huge popular genre of historical romance/bodice rippers that were predicated on rape fantasy back in the day–one of the most famous authors being Kathleen Woodiwiss — sort of the “50 Shades of Grey” of the 70s. (Romance as a genre has changed as well—although I will still say that the genre elements of rape fantasy carried over into a lot of slash fiction, at least in the areas of fandom where I hung out, but that’s sort of another topic).

    And I loved “The Ship Who Sang” and while I was never as fond of some of her other series (I thought Kilishandra was an obnoxious elitist asshole and most importantly, there were no dragons), I read them because there were so *few* sff series with a “strong female protagonist” (and there’s a reason why, as I tell my students these days, that while SFPs may have been innovative/feminist back in the 1960s/70s, they aren’t really anymore—and one of the reasons is that the “strong female protagonist/exceptional woman” can be read as remarkably sexist, i.e. she’s “different” from all the other women therefore better). Pern was always my favorite McCaffrey though because DRAGONS, and I did like the way the “fantasy” became “science fiction” with the whole lost colony thing (though the Lost Colony genre—I could never stand Bradley’s Darkover—has its problems.).

    And eventually, I couldn’t take it any more–I hit the wall (a lot later than the Heinlein wall, and in McCaffrey’s case, I kept the books around a lot longer because of DRAGONS and because of my memory how groundbreaking they were). People have pointed out the rape issues and the race issues, and I’d add to that class issues (connecting to the earlier discussion about feudal societies in Tolkien, I read Pern as reflecteing a lot of the popular 20th century ideas of a feudal society which of course is not the same thing as what the historical scholarship shows about feudal societies!)

    In “Weyr Search,” all the dragonriders (except the Queen dragon’s) are male (and that was pretty much true throughout all the series, with a few exceptions. And the dragon mating/heat spirals out and everybody has to have sex (unless you go really really far away). And the only women in the Weyr are the “drudges” (the women who work in the lower caverns–although the term also applies to the lower class men, probably–my memory is a bit fuzzy here because mostly those characters are not named, but I’m pretty sure women do all the cooking and cleaning in the all-male Weyrs). So the dragonriders are all having sex with each other or raping the women who do the drudge work (and I don’t think “agreeing to work at a crappy service job in one of the few places where you can be relatively safe from thread attacks” can be read as consenting to having sex with whatever dragonrider grabs you during the mating flight”).

    And I don’t think McCaffrey spent a lot of time worrying about those elements of her world, not in the early stories, but then she became part of fandom history and NOT in a good way with the “tent peg statement” in the 1990s when the homophobia of Pern became a part of fandom discussion.

    Back to the feudal society: the dragonriders are the “nobility” (sustained by tithing and labor to defend the populace from Thread–although in WS, the lack of thread attacks for so long had resulted in support diminishing). And elite men’s access to lower-class women is and has been a part of rape culture. Women’s lives in general was never something McCaffrey was concerned with: her focus was on the Exceptional Woman, the Woman who is More Amazing and Better than all those other mundane women, the WOMAN who is a major leader (although of course isn’t truly happy until she finds an amazing ALPHA MALE to dominate her sexually–and I’m making BLECH faces as I type this while remembering that in the late 60s/early 70s, yes, this could be and was read as feminist.)

    I did not realize just how classist Pern was until the collection of stories that turned me off the series came out — I cannot remember the title, and a quick search of the books isn’t helping, but it was a “retcon” of sorts where a lot of events covered in earlier novels or stories were retold from the point of view of a lower-class type of character, and I was never able to go back to the Pern novels because the classism *and* the rape could not be unseen.

    In the 1990s I remember a lot of fascinating discussion in the science fiction sessions at Popular Culture Association as the feminist scholars I knew debated McCaffrey’s work in relation to feminism. That was when I started evolving my theory that “feminism” in a work cannot be solely based on textual elements but is part of a reader response because listening to some of the younger women who found her work feminist/ transformative/ powerful, and remembering my first response to the work at the time it was published, yes, it was feminist—although I’d argue that is context specific (a certain time, or certain readers). (I doubt the feminism is that important for del Arroz, though there’s the usual “you SJW’s don’t like this Famous Exceptional Women therefore YOU are the sexist ones” subtext going on in some of his comments). .

    But her work was also intensely problematic in ways that were hard for many of us to see who were reading the books when they were first published (plus, I have to say, I still treasure the dragons, Menolly’s lizards, and that aspect of her worldbuilding.) (I gave up on reading Pern before her son took over writing it—I don’t think I realized how much was still being published).

    One of my favorite feminist sf scholars, Robin Roberts, loved McCaffrey’s work and gave some great presentations on it during those years, and wrote a biography of McCaffrey).

    So I’m with the “it’s complicated, but” area: especially Cora’s point: Meanwhile, Jon Del Arroz falls into the same trap as Jeffro Johnson and other pulp revolution folks. Just because they are only now rediscovering the books and authors the rest of us read as teenagers and left behind ages ago, doesn’t make those writers/books suppressed by a malicious SJW conspiracy, but simply left behind by changing times and tastes.

    @Ghostbird: I am going to go find Jay Dixon’s book because it sounds fascinating, and I’ve never heard that, but it makes a LOT of sense. I read an argument once (and I’m cudgeling my brain and may have to try to track it down) that argued that rape fantasies made sense in a rape culture (not that the writer used that term!) because of how as the fantasies could serve to eroticize the inevitable (my very simplified view). This was in the period when, as Kurt points out, marital rape was legal (and rape was even more under-reported and ignored than today). I don’t think this argument was about published fiction: more and more I’m thinking it may have been in Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden which I’ve just ordered the Kindle version of to check. (Dang, the Dixon Kindle book is $44! Maybe I’ll read it via interlibary loan first.)

  47. @Rev Bob
    Following on from your searches, “For Steam And Country” on UK google, not a sign of a book.
    Country fairs are a thing over here, and it’s very common to have steam vehicles as a major draw at them, traction engines especially. Don’t know if that’s a thing in the states.
    Absolutely nothing on Amazon.co.uk either.

  48. On the tweet about the Simpsons in (3): Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood produced more than 800 episodes over its run, which still outdoes both Gunsmoke and the Simpsons. I can’t say for sure that every last line was scripted, but it was a lot more planned out than it appeared to many people. American National Biography Online says “By all accounts, however, [Rogers] was also a perfectionist who believed that children deserved only the best; programs were carefully scripted, no deviations were allowed, and distinguished guests, used to being in charge, were often surprised to learn that they were forbidden to ad-lib.” (The full article is here — I’m not sure from my current on-campus location if it’s paywalled, but the Wikipedia article on the show gives some of the same information.)

    Mr. Rogers isn’t the show with the most scripted episodes– that would be _Guiding Light_, the daily soap opera that aired over 15,000 episodes from its radio origin in 1937 to its TV ending in 2009– but it’s one of the shows I have the fondest memories of. I forget if it’s already been mentioned here, but Twitch is currently streaming all 800+ episodes of Mr. Rogers for free for the next couple of weeks.

  49. Re: The Simpsons in (3): Also, the Japanese anime series One Piece is already pushing up against 800 episodes. (And, since I gave up on the Simpsons somewhere around season 14 or 15, may be the series of which I’ve watched the most episodes.)

  50. Wow, now we got a guy mansplaining and white-knighting someone who’s been dead for years — and never needed nor wanted either in her lifetime.

    Calling it “white knighting” to defend an author’s critical reputation — because the author is female and the fan male — is absurd. We have debates here all the time about whether an author of the past still holds up. Many of us have spoken up for a favorite whose work others believe hasn’t aged well.

    I’ll fault puppies for a lot of things, but when they engage in debate over a classic SF/F author’s work I’m all for that. This McCaffrey discussion is great.

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