(1) DATA AND YAR AT TANAGRA. Seattle’s EMP Museum is opening Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds to the public on May 21. Tickets required.
Plus, be among the first to visit Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds and get an up-close look at more than 100 artifacts and props from the five Star Trek television series, spin-offs, and films, including set pieces from the original series like Captain Kirk’s command chair and the navigation console (on display for the first time to the public); Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and McCoy original series costumes; and the 6-foot U.S.S. Enterprise filming model from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Opening day is also when Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and Brent Spiner (Data) will appear – additional charge for photos and autographs, naturally.
(2) OMAZE WINNER. SFWA’s Director of Operations Kate Baker learned during the Nebula conference that she was the Omaze winner, and will join Chris Pratt on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 set.
Tired and sweaty after hours of work, I sat down to check my phone as we planned to grab something to eat. There in my Twitter feed was a message from a new follower; Omaze. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the company, they partner with a celebrity and charity, design a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a random donor, (and here is the most important part) — raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for deserving charities around the world….
I quickly followed them back and responded. That’s when I found out that I was a finalist for the grand prize and to satisfy their partners and sponsors, they wanted to do a short Skype interview that evening.
Unable to contain my excitement, I rushed around my room, curling my hair, refreshing make-up, doing cartwheels, moving furniture, opening blinds, you know — normal things.
As 6:00 CST hit, I took a deep breath and answered the call….. That’s when they sprung the surprise.
(3) CLARKE AHEAD. Award Director Tom Hunter has posted at Medium “14 ways I’m thinking about the future of the Arthur C. Clarke Award”.
8. Governance & succession planning
As mentioned in my section on charitable status, the Clarke Award is currently administered by just 3 volunteers. Could we do more if we had more people involved?
A fair few people have promoted themselves to me as viable candidates over the years, but while many have been keen to have a say in the running of the award (or just like telling me they could do a better job with it) right now one of the reasons the award has weathered its troubles so well has been because of our ability to move faster on key decisions than a continual vote by committee model would likely have allowed us.
Still, as I look to the future again, there are many potential advantages to be gained from our increasing our board membership, not least the fact that when I first took this role a decade ago I only planned to stay for 5 years.
I changed my mind back then because of the need to build a new financial resilience into the award to keep it going, but one day sooner or later I intend to step down after I’ve recruited my replacement.
Padawans wanted. Apply here.
(4) ANTIQUE ZINE. This APA-L cover by Bea Barrio glowed in the dark when it was originally made – in the 1970s. Wonder if it still does?
https://twitter.com/highly_nice/status/732782065591160833
(5) MASKED MEN. Comic Book Resources boosts the signal: “Dynamite Announces ‘The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice”.
What is the connection between the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet? Dynamite Entertainment’s new “The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice” series has the answer. CBR can exclusively reveal that writer Michael Uslan and artist Giovanni Timpano are reuniting for the new series, a crossover 80 years in the making.
According to an official series description,
The first chapter, entitled “Return With Us Now,” creates a world of carefully researched alternative history in 1936. Readers will learn whatever happened to The Lone Ranger and discover his familial link to the emergence of a man who is a modern day urban version of The Lone Ranger himself. What is the blood connection of The Green Hornet to The Lone Ranger? What is the link of Olympic runner Jesse Owens to The Green Hornet? What role does Bat Masterson play in The Lone Ranger’s New York adventure? What intense rift tears a family apart just when America desperately needs a great champion of justice? The shocking answers lie in the landmark new series ‘The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice!’
(6) DEARLY BELOVED. Lit Brick has done a comic about “If you were a dinosaur, my love”.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born May 19, 1944 — Before Peter Mayhew was Chewy he was Minaton in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, his first role.
(8) FLORSCHUTZ OUT. Max Florschutz explains why he pulled his book from a contest: “Unusual Events Has Been Removed From SPFBO 2016”.
All right, guys, it’s official. I just heard back from Mark Lawrence, the head of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, and now that the competition has begun, my book could not be moved to another reviewer, so instead, I’ve elected to withdraw my entry from the competition (for the reasons for doing so, see this post here). It’s sad that it had to be done, but I feel my reasons were sound.
Florschutz outlined reasons for asking for his book to be reassigned in a previous post, “When Did Ethnicity and Sex Become the Most Important Thing?”
Bear with me for a moment, and take a look at these few excerpts from a book review I read this morning, posted on a fantasy review blog (which you can find here, though I’m loathe to give them a link after perusing the site since it’s a little messed up). I’d been poking around the place since they are a participating member of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, a contest between 300 different self-published fantasy books, and Unusual Events is one of those titles. This site is the one that will be handling Unusual Events review.
I’m not sure how I feel about that now. In fact, I may request to have it passed to another site, since I’m pretty sure I can already see how its going to go. Because I’ve been reading their other reviews, and I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Let’s look at some quotes:
Otherbound is that last sort of book.
I’m fairly certain I discovered it on Tumblr, recommended by one of those blogs which include lists of books that are commendable for their diversity.
Okay, that’s … interesting. A little background on the title. I guess that’s important? Let’s see what happens if we go further.
… fantasy novels are written by and about (and quite possibly for) white men who like running around with swords saving the world.
Uh-oh. Okay. Sensing a theme here, but—
As I said, it’s an incredible story, and honestly, I’d probably have loved the book even if both of the leads were white and straight.
Wait, what?
So they’re saying that it’s also likely that they wouldn’t have liked the book had the main characters been, to use their own words “white and straight”? The book would be inferior simply because of the color of the main character’s skin or their sexual orientation?
….Now, to get back to something I said earlier, I’m considering contacting the SPFBO 2016 ringleaders and asking to have my book moved to another reviewer. And no, it’s not because my book is “… written by and about (and quite possibly for) white men who like running around with swords saving the world.” because it isn’t. But more because now I know that there’s a very high chance that that fact is what the reviewer is going to fixate on regardless. My sex, and my ethnic heritage, as well as that of the characters I wrote, is going to matter to her more than the rest of what’s inside the book’s pages. More than the stories those characters experience, the trials that they undergo.
(9) TEACHING WRITING. “’Between Utter Chaos and Total Brilliance.’ Daniel José Older Talks About Teaching Writing in the Prison System” – a set of Older’s tweets curated by Leah Schnelbach at Tor.com.
(10) PURSUED. David M. Perry profiles Older at Pacific Standard – “Daniel José Older and Progressive Science Fiction After Gamergate”.
The Internet trolls picked a bad week to call Daniel José Older “irrelevant.” As we meet in the opulent lobby of the Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago, his young-adult book Shadowshaper is sitting on a New York Times bestseller list. He’s in town because the book was been nominated for the Andre Norton Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America, which is holding its annual Nebula conference in Chicago. Best of all, he’s just signed a contract for two sequels. There’s also his well-reviewed adult fiction, the “Bone Street Rumba” series. By no standard of publishing is this person irrelevant.
So why the trolls? They’re coming after Older for the same reason that he’s succeeding as a writer?—?his urban fantasy novels actually look like urban America (including the ghosts) and he’s got no patience for the bros who want to keep their fantasy worlds white.
(11) DAMN BREAK. Kameron Hurley charts the history of hydraulic pressure in sf: “The Establishment Has Always Hated The New Kids”.
…Though there has been momentum building for some time, a backlash against the backlash, I’d say it wasn’t until about 2013 when publishing started to catch up. Ann Leckie wrote a space opera (a woman wrote a space opera! With women in it! AND PEOPLE BOUGHT IT SHOCKING I KNOW AS IF NO ONE HAD BOUGHT LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS OR ANYTHING BY CJ CHERRYH OR OCTAVIA BUTLER), and it swept the awards. We Need Diverse Books was able to organize the conversation about the overwhelming whiteness of publishing, bringing together disparate voices into one voice crying out for change in who writes, edits, and publishes books, while the first Muslim Ms. Marvel comic book (written by a Muslim, even!) broke sales records.
The water has been building up behind the damn for a long time, and it’s finally burst.
Watching the pushback to this new wave of writers finally breaking out from the margins to the mainstream has been especially amusing for me, as I spent my early 20’s doing a lot of old-school SF reading, including reading SFF history (I will always think of Justine Larbalestier as the author of The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction). I was, of course, especially interested in the history of feminist science fiction. Women have always written SFF, of course, but the New Wave of the 60’s and 70’s brought with it an influx of women writers of all races and men of color that was unprecedented in the field (if still small compared to the overall general population of said writers in America). This was the age of Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, Sam Delany, and nutty young upstarts like Harlan Ellison. These writers brought a much needed and refreshing new perspective into the field. They raised the bar for what science fiction was. And so the writing got better. The politics and social mores being dissected got more interesting and varied, as one would expect when you introduce a great wave of writers into a field that was happy to award the same handful of folks year after year. They shook up the field. They changed science fiction forever. The established pros had to write their hearts out to catch up….
(12) KEN LIU’S OPINION OF HOGWARTS. Rachel Swirsky did a “Silly Interview with Ken Liu who HAS THE SCHEMATICS for a Time Turner!”
RS: Speaking of Harry Potter, if you could send your kids to Hogwarts, would you?
KL: I’d have to ask my kids. Personally, I’m not a big fan of sending them away to boarding school because I want to spend more time with them. Parents get so little time with their children as is… But if they really want to go and learn magic, I’ll support them. And I hope they work hard to challenge the rather authoritarian system at Hogwarts and engage in campus activism.
(13) THERE WILL BE WALRUS. Steve Davidson did a silly interview of his own — with Timothy the Talking Cat, at Amazing Stories.
ASM: What kind of cat are you (alley, purebred,,,?), or is that kind of inquiry offensive? Do cats themselves make such distinctions?
TTTC: I’m glad you asked. Some people have claimed that I am a British Shorthair cat. However, my cousin had a DNA test and apparently my family are actually the rare French Chartreux breed. This is an important distinction and finally shows what liars those people are who have accused me of being a Francophobe, ‘anti-French’ and/or in some way prejudiced against France, the French and anything remotely Gallic. People need to understand that when I point out that France is a looming danger to all right thinking people in America and other countries as well, like maybe Scotland or Japan. I really can’t stress this enough – the French-Squirrel axis is real and it is plotting against us all. This why Britain needs to leave the European Union right now. I have zero tolerance for those who say we should wait for the referendum – that is just playing into their hands. But understand I am not anti-French as my DNA proves. Squirrels like to say ‘Timothy you are such a Francophobe’ as if that was a dialectical argument against my well thought out positions. They have no answer when I point out that I am MORE French than Charles DeGaulle. Squirrels just can’t think straight about these things. Notice that if you even try and type ‘Francophobe’ your computer will try to turn it into ‘Francophone’ – that is how deep the Franco-Squirrel conspiracy goes. Squirrel convergence happens at high levels in IT companies these days – that is how I lost my verification tick on Twitter.
I don’t talk to other cats these days. Frankly many of them are idiots….
(14) HENRY AND ERROL. The editors of Galactic Journey and File 770. Two handsome dudes – but ornery.
[May 14, 1961] In which me and Mike Glyer disagree: https://t.co/Wfo3w1nS0s #sciencefiction pic.twitter.com/72oPlswGjV
— Galactic Journey News (@journeygalactic) May 14, 2016
(15) CRITERIA. Dann collects his thoughts about “That Good Story” at Liberty At All Costs.
In a conversation I am having at File 770, I was asked to define what makes a science fiction/fantasy book “great” for me. Rather than losing these radiant pearls of wisdom to the effluence of teh intertoobery, I thought I would cement them here in my personal record….
Stay Away From Check Boxes Whoo boy. I can smell trouble burning at the other end of the wire already.
“Check box” fiction really undermines the quality of my reading experience. What is “check box” fiction? It is a story that includes elements indicating diversity in the cast of characters that has zero impact on the the story.
In a reverse of the above, I’d like to suggest N.K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” as a good example of not doing “check box” fiction. One cluster of protagonists included a character that is straight, one that is seemingly bi-sexual, and one that is decidedly homosexual. They have a three-way.
And while the more patently descriptive passages of those events didn’t do much for me, the fact that their respective sexuality helped inform their motivations and moved the story forward made the effort in describing their sexuality worthwhile reading. She also did a reasonable job at expressing how physical appearances differed based on regionalism. [There were one or two other moments that could be considered “check box(es)”, but for the most part it wasn’t a factor in this book.]
IMHO, including a character that is “different” without having that difference impact the story is at the very least a waste of time that detracts from the story and at the very worst insultingly dismissive of the people that possess the same characters.
(16) IT AIN’T ME BABE. The Guardian got some clickbait from speculating about the identity of Chuck Tingle. Vox Day denies it’s him. Zoë Quinn doesn’t know who it is. The reporter, despite taking 2,000 words of interview notes, also is none the wiser.
Theories abound online: is Tingle Lemony Snicket? The South Park boys? Some sort of performance artist – perhaps the “Banksy of self-published dinosaur erotica” as someone once called him on Twitter? Last year, Jon Tingle – apparently the son of Chuck – appeared on a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread to share unsettling insights into his father: “Yes, my father is very real. He is an autistic savant, but also suffers from schizophrenia. To make it very clear, my father is one of the gentlest, sweetest people you could ever meet and is not at all dangerous, although he does have a history of SELF harm … I would not let him be the butt of some worldwide joke if I didn’t have faith that he was in on it in some way. Regardless, writing and self-publishing brings him a lot of joy.” If this is all a joke, it’s hard to know where it starts or where to laugh….
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., JJ, and Tom Hunter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I would prefer NOT to be in the room when Chuck Tingle’s Raptor “goes off”.
Chuck Tingle stories are kind of like the Players in Tom Stoppard’s Existentially Slammed In the Butthole By Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: “We can do you dino jizz and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you dino jizz and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you love and rhetoric without the dino jizz. Dino jizz is compulsory.”
(Have you ever typed something and asked yourself, “What has my life come to, that I’m using these words in this particular order? Do I even understand the fundamental nature of reality?”)
I thought Chuck Tingle was another Henry Kuttner pseudonym.
Or maybe he’s B. Traven.
The Open Source Chuck Tingle Project.
(8) – well sorry, but that’s just puppy pee. I’m a white, bearded male who writes fantasy fiction, and Fantasy Faction gave my book 8/10. Clearly what we have here is a writer who can’t accept that a reviewer might (heavens forfend) say something justifiably critical.
“Dino jizz is compulsory”
THIS IS THE FUTURE THAT SJWs HAVE WROUGHT! *shakes fists at sky*
Check box SFF fiction:
SWM hero [ ]
SWM sidekick [ ]
SWM other members of Scooby gang [ ]
Villain (woman, POC, The Other/Outsider, might be SWM) [ ]
Mostly SWM villagers/travelers met along the way [ ]
Dragons/Aliens/other creatures [ ]
Women (mother, wife, prostitute) [ ]
Which is different from representational fiction:
Hero
Sidekick
Members of of Scooby gang
Villain
People encountered along the way
Dragons/Aliens/other creatures
Spouses and significant others
All of the above having characters representing People like you and me and others we encounter everyday of our lives at home, in the office, shopping, and in social situations because people don’t need a reason to exist so they shouldn’t in our stories.
@alexvdl
Shaking you fist at the sky may invoke The Dino Jizz That Falls On You From Nowhere…
This scroll is getting very strange.
@ Kip: EARWORM! EARWORM! And it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!
Further ruminations on “ticky-box stories”… Some of this also ties into Straight White Male being the unmarked case. If the only characters who get descriptions are those who vary from the default (or, more likely, if the only character descriptions the reader notices are those that vary from the default), then it becomes less surprising if the reader expects that the variation will be a plot point. The idea that it might just be a character description isn’t really on the table at all.
@IanP,
You can’t bring that up with out bringing the other puppy hate candidates
If you Were Dino Jizzed on, My Love
Jizzshirts
Ancilliary Dino Jizz
and my favorite
We Have Always Been Jizzed on by Dinosaurs
I’m wondering if we’ll see I AM CHUCK TINGLE and I AM NOT CHUCK TINGLE ribbons at Worldcon this year.
I’d want one that said “Am I Chuck Tingle?”
Also on Amazon UK for £2.07
I get why some people whine about ‘checklist fiction’.
A couple of sentences on a page can just distract you.
Not like, say, a page talking about ammo loads and calibers and whatnot with sexual undertones about caressing and exhilaration.
Lord knows, I’m really really tired of ‘ammo porn’ popping up when I’m trying to enjoy a lovely zombie apocalypse story.
Okay, you would really need to do contortions to call this SF related, but I like it, so I’m sharing it anyway.
Last night I was flipping through TV channels looking for anything interesting. I landed on Bones. I rarely watch Bones, but I thought I’d check out the episode description anyway. The first part of the description was:
“Now this I have to see”, I thought to myself. But it turned out that it was a body in a rat lab. I hate being deceived by false advertising.
(Also, on an unrelated note, I am now wondering what “dino jazz” would sound like.)
In the future, everyone will be Chuck Tingle for fifteen minutes.
@Darren Garrison
Thinking of Bones makes me think of Castle.
WHICH HAD A GOD AWFUL SERIES FINALE.
And you really don’t want the wrong 15 minutes!
(mandatory disclaimer) Tastes vary, of course. (/mandatory disclaimer)
@ Darren: My back-brain always insisted on classifying Bones as a SF show. I finally figured out that it was because of the Angelator, which was mapping to “holodeck” — and was certainly well ahead of any currently-available tech, although I know there have been some amazing advances in the area of holography.
@ alexvdl: So did Bones… and then the series didn’t actually die for another 4 or 5 years. (Yes, I quit watching after season 3, and I’m still bitter.)
@Lee – the Bujold followed A. Bertram Chandler’s Spartan Planet (also known as False Fatherland); Grimes (Chandler’s Horatio Hornblower character) rediscovers the Lost Colony of Sparta, where they are using “birth machines” to reproduce and exposing the “deformed” on the hillsides.
The novel is more remarkable for the date of publication (’68) and its treatment of the subject than anything else – or the fact that it saw print. Notes from the author strongly suggest that he had to walk back scenes between male characters due to “sensitivity issues” at the time.
Geez, Mike. Thanks! (that’s genuine…I hadn’t really thought of getting included in a Scroll as a possibility)
For those focused on the check box section, I’m the sort of person that enjoys reading about a Filipino hero of intergalactic wars and about a black, bi-sexual woman that willingly donated her body to receive a brain transplant. Whatever demons you are seeking to engage, they ain’t on this end of the wire.
I already see a diversity of characters without having the author point all of them out for me. Why can’t you?
For folks having an issue with “the question”…..erm.
I’ve supplied examples of works that I thought were worthy of being in the conversation and better than some recently nominated works. I’ve supplied examples of works that I thought were good, but not good enough (by comparison) to make the final cut. And I’ve supplied some general descriptions of story telling elements that make a work superior in my book.
What am I missing?
As others have noted, this is all subjective in the first place. Diversity of opinion is still supposed to be a good thing, I think.
8) I think Max is in the right ball park. A work is exactly what it is. Read it and review it based on what it is and not based on the particulars of the author or of alternative character configurations.
This is still the twenty-teens right?
@Cora
I concur with your concurrance. (Is this the right wordery for that?) **chuckle**
@Heather
Which hits pretty much what I am implying. A good story doesn’t suddenly become remarkable simply by sprinkling around a diverse cast where the extra exposition doesn’t impact the story. (similary, a bad/marginal story doesn’t suddenly become readable)
@Lee
Perhaps one should not assume so much. At least since nothing I have written suggests that I have a “gay guys are icky” problem.
Regards,
Dann
Outta curiosity, dann, what’s the first example that comes to mind when you think of a character who’s differentness was a check box?
Box-box-ticky-tikki-tavi!
although I know there have been some amazing advances in the area of holography.
(Going on a tangent here)
As I’ve ranted before (here and elsewhere) there will never be holograms like you see in science fiction, because light doesn’t work that way. With a tight beam of light like a laser, you do not see the beam path unless there is something in the way to “bounce” light towards your eye. The dimmer the beam, the more stuff there has to be “in the way” to make a beam of light visible. (Green and blue pointers are visible at lower strengths than red pointers because the eye is more sensitive to those colors.)
So, there are two possible things you will see from a laser– 1.) if too dim for conditions, the beam will be invisible, and you will sea a point of light when the beam hits an object (or a cloud of particles.) or 2.) if the beam is bright enough, you will see the beam path as well as the point of contact if there is one.
Never, ever, ever do you see a laser as an invisible beam terminated by a point of light “floating” an arbitrary distance away in clear air, because light does not work that way. Light moves forward infinitely until it hits something. So holograms (meaning clouds of “voxels” projected into clear air from an invisible or poorly visible projector) are simply as far outside the laws of physics as FTL travel. There are of course ways to kinda-sorta simulate the look (things such as VR goggles, partially-silvered “Pepper’s ghost” mirrors, and cylindrical/hemispherical frosted screens with lasers or a projector inside) but actual, free-standing holograms like in Star Wars, Bones, and other fiction will never exist.
To be fair, I misread that post the same way. So it’s more a problem of vague writing—or purposefully deceptive ambiguity.
Dann: What am I missing?
The question wasn’t “what makes an SFF book good”, but “which element in The Aeronaut’s Windlass are you saying you believe the Hugo voters don’t like about it and tend to overlook in awards?” It was a specific claim you made about the wider meaning of a specific book’s reception by a specific group of people. People have been trying to ask you to spell it out, because no one understands the “books of this type” dog-whistle you used enough to know what you meant.
If you are Chuck Tingle for longer than four hours, consult your physician.
@Dann665
Can you explain to me how you can see anything about a character that the author “doesn’t point it out to you?”
(If they don’t write it down….)
Further; where is the dividing line between acceptable character exposition in a story and “having things pointed out”? Does the author have to rely on implication and innuendo in order to avoid annoying you?
Shakes fist at the sky above Kip W, in the hope of summoning The Earworm That Falls on You From Nowhere to, you know, fall on him.
@Darren Garrison: Oh, come on. If I’ve learned anything about laser physics from watching The Flash – and I haven’t – you can solidify laser beams with freeze rays. And then break them. Which left me wondering, didn’t it even occur to the writers to wonder what would happen in this scenario when the frozen laser beams thaw out?
Actually, what my wife and I find even more SOD-breaking on Bones than the Angelator are their magical databases, in which everything (plants, insects, soil composition) has been catalogued and mapped to (evidently) ~ tens of meters precision.
@ steve davidson
I know Hornblower (himself inspired by nelson, of course) seems to be the default comparison for Grimes, not least because the books’ actual cover blurbs sometimes used it as I recall (at work, can’t check bookshelves), but I always thought William Bligh was the closer model: at least two of the novels were definitely based on episodes in Bligh’s life.
I suspect the blurb writers avoided mentioning Bligh because fewer people have heard of him, and many of those that have know him only from the various renditions of The Mutiny that paint him darker than he likely was.
Holy shit! Now I understand why that sockpuppet account showed up on my feed. Mark Lawrence read my statement and then didn’t read the retraction I posted FIVE HOURS before his post.
And isn’t that convenient that he uses the EXACT same word as the sockpuppet on my twitter that’s named after his main character and whose only other post is to retweet something of Mark Lawrence’s from 2015?
Did a best selling fantasy author just try to troll me?!
Ah, yes, those occur on all of the crime procedural shows.
Lab Tech: “Look at the plaster cast of this footprint! Embedded in it is a fragment of lapis lazuli dust. This grade of lapis lazuli is found only in one location in Afghanastan, and is traditionally mined by the x tribe. And this database says that a member of x tribe lives in the United States, and just got back from visiting his family. There’s your terrorist right there!”
I’ve supplied examples of works that I thought were worthy of being in the conversation and better than some recently nominated works. I’ve supplied examples of works that I thought were good, but not good enough (by comparison) to make the final cut. And I’ve supplied some general descriptions of story telling elements that make a work superior in my book.
None of which actually answers the question. You said there was a “type” of book, apparently exemplified by the Aeronaut’s Windlass, that was overlooked by Hugo voters. I suppose “books Dann thinks are cool” is a “type”, but it isn’t particularly illuminating as anything other than a note that a large number of readers don’t share your exact reading tastes, which is a banal observation. At this point, it looks like you’re simply trying to avoid answering the actual question.
I
AM
CHUCK!
@Darren Garrison
That can get subverted sometimes though. An early episode of Castle had them looking for a missing person in their database. A big stack of case files…
@Terry; glad you are familiar enough with the works to be able to make that comment. Of course Bligh is the closer model, but, as you say, his works more closely match Bligh’s career to Grimes’ and, as you say, “…the Horatio Hornblower of space!!!!” was pretty much the default blurb for many of those novels.
If you are sufficiently interested in Chandler/Grimes, I’ve a nascent “Rim Worlds Conoordance” I’ve been working on for years over here – http://www.rimworlds.com.
It’s largely not been updated since 2012 (gee, thanks amazing stories!) and the piece-de-resistance is the graph of the alternate time lines encountered in the rim worlds oeuvre, which has a much more comprehensive and updated version not shown there either.
Curiosity killed the cat we called a bastard – if interested just ask.
@Steve Davidson
Sounds interesting! Dead link though. Heck I even see references to it on other sites. Maybe a WordPress glitch?
@Amoxtli
Sounds like music that would go well with drinking myself blind.
Woof. I think the place to start is that I’m not saying that any other book is necessarily bad. Some of the other works that I have/will criticized/criticize are still very good books that may include many features that I enjoy in TAW. Sooo…
1. It connects with all of my reading “buttons”. I know that’s hard to define, but I think everyone can appreciate the point.
2. It has a positive view of humanity.
3. It has a positive view of the individual. In particular, there are flawed characters that want to be better people. We get to see them trying to be better people…and sometimes even succeeding!
4. It uses a level of detail that is sufficient to immerse me in the author’s vision without going overboard. (See #1 – yeah, I know)
4A. This world/setting does not seem terribly derivative to me. Of course, I haven’t read a lot of steam-punk to date because of #1.
5. It has some humorous moments between the characters.
6. There is a military angle to it.
6A. That angle includes some military-style gallows humor. (See 5)
6B. Mr. Butcher managed to provide sufficient insight into both sides of the conflict to permit respect and perhaps even a bit of empathy for people on both sides.
7. Mr. Butcher also didn’t overdo the general exposition in setting up his world. Most of the details flow through character experiences.
YMMV, as always!
Also, caught your kind note in the other thread. No worries. I’d rather chat with humans than most any other life form. The only downside to being human is that we all have the usual downsides that come along with being human from time to time.
@steve davidson
“Conan stepped into the tavern looking for just the right person. The sort that wouldn’t mind a little mud, a little blood, and perhaps a little bit of fun in between. He locked eyes with the rough group sitting quietly in the corner nursing a round of ale.
Perhaps Conan needed more than just one right person after all.”
So I’ve got a bunch of guys. One has a steel claw tied onto his left arm instead of a hand. One on the left is mostly white except for the red stripe running up his face and over the back of his head. There are two with their backs to us dressed identically. Based on the loose curls flowing over their shoulders and the frame of their bodies, they are probably women…and therefore obviously not “guys”…., but we’ll have to wait and see. Etc., etc…
What does your group look like? Amorphous lumps of flesh?
Or perhaps, what do you want your group to look like? It’s OK with me if your group doesn’t look like mine.
Just because I know someone will jump to a conclusion, the red stripe is not the chromatic factor that makes that character stand out in my group.
More later depending on time/need.
—
Regards,
Dann
Readers often create a visual conception of a character whether they’re described or not, filling in whatever details the writer doesn’t nail down. Or even ignoring some details the writer does mention. I’m thinking here of the Hunger Games character (Pru? Ru?) that some film viewers were surprised to see as black. Clearly they had a mental idea of what this girl looked like, regardless of what words were actually on the page.
Not answering for dann here, but for me it’s just whether it’s interesting and tells me something distinctive about the character or not. A subjective judgment for sure.
8) Every time Stephen Colbert said, “I don’t see color,” Max Florschutz didn’t get it.
Stoic Cynic: Somebody came along later with the right link — https://www.gofundme.com/ae2worldcon.
@Mike Glyer
Thanks! I was going to look for that one too. Like a lot of folks I really liked Alexandra Erin’s parodies last year.
I was actually responding to Steve Davidson’s Rim Worlds / A. Bertram Chandler site. At least for me it comes up to an un-configured WordPress page.
The cross up worked out though! 🙂
well duh readers create an imagined version of the character. Excuse me for thinking that the issue would be discussed without relying on the obvious.
Dann’s Conan example is pulp; the reader has already been primed to “know” what those rough characters look like as they will be hand-held by cover art, prior experience with the Hyborean age or basic assumptions that everyone in conan’s world looks like conan, except where told otherwise.
And besides, you are both referring to ‘CHARACTERISTICS’ rather than “character”
Howard used stereotypes and “pulp” style characterization, which restricted itself to broad culturally related brushstrokes, much like Burroughs. These are both from an era that is not really under discussion with the issues raised.
Finally – have you not heard anyone on this subject who has mentioned that they would like to read about characters they can more easily identify with? I’ve not met any Cimmerians and doubt I ever will. At least white southern gentlemen could identify with Carter, for a little while at least….
Alexandra, if you see this, I tried to donate and GoFundMe wouldn’t take my donation and told me to tell you to log in and check your account.
I will try again later; I really enjoyed your parodies and would love to meet you at WorldCon.
@Dann
Wow you have an amazingly vivid and visual imagination. I am pretty good at imagining sounds and the way three dimensional things fit together but I am very bad at imagining people. I won’t know someone is black unless the author says it in so many words: “her coral bracelet glowed against her dark skin.” Nor will I picture them as female, nor handicapped nor non-binary or trans or whatever until the author actually tells me so in real words.
So I’m happy for you that stories filled with unmarked characters reel themselves out before your inner eye with a richly diverse cast. But for me to get the same diversity the author must actually use their words.
And that is why I want them to bring it up even when it isn’t a plot point.
Are you okay with it when the woman-love-interest is described to the point where you know what color her hair and eyes are and how long (or not) her skirt is? If you are, I don’t understand why details about other characters–the Asian bartender whose hair is coming loose and falling over her lined face, the black man with a fallen leaf on his shoulder and his walking stick in his hand, the two young men sitting with their arms around each other in the corner–would be a problem for you.
Liverpool is pretty Irish, not actually Irish but not entirely not Irish
what’s the first example that comes to mind when you think of a character who’s differentness was a check box?
Gimli and Legolas?
Timothy thinks “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” contains a grammatical error and a spelling mistake in the title, but he is happy about the interview and is sorry about the carpet.
Lee on May 20, 2016 at 11:09 am said:
I’ll come back to this, but first I want to say that one of the things which attracted me to Bones initially was that it was the first show I’d seen with an openly atheist protagonist. And not an annoying straw atheist either. (Usually.*)
It probably helps that the show was loosely based on a real person.
But I got very annoyed when, after several seasons of being a generally pro-science show, they introduced some straight-up fantasy elements. One was actually a stealth pilot for another show**, so I was able to ignore that by pretending it wasn’t canon, but then they had the episode where a spiritualist helps solve the murder by talking to ghosts, and that just pissed me off!
So…yeah, I’d say it is a fantasy show, because ghosts and psychics are apparently real. But it’s such a minor and ill-fitting part of the show that I truly wish it weren’t!
* It depended on who was in the writers’ room that week.
** That other show, The Finder, was actually fairly decent on its own right. Among other things, it was one of Michael Clarke Duncan’s last works, and I really like him.
@Dann and so many others like him
Here’s my problem:
1. Character description: Male, brown eyes, brown hair, has a wife and kids
Or Big brawny male, raven hair, black eyes, has a girlfriend whose shorter, leaner, and a great cook
2. Character description: Female, brown skin, golden eyes, has a wife and kids
Or Big brawny male, raven haired Wabanaki tribe American Indian, black eyes, has a boyfriend whose Cherokee, shorter, leaner, and a great cook
I don’t see how the first advances the plot but I read tons of descriptions like it in SFF. Why does the 2nd need to advance the plot when the 1st doesn’t?
@Isabel Cooper: “assuming that anyone unmarked is a white guy, or assuming that all mentions of race/gender/etc which don’t have plots centered around them are the equivalent of the three paragraphs about castle buttresses in bad fantasy, betrays a lot about the person making those arguments.”
Agreed. I always seem to end up citing Heinlein’s Friday when the subject of “unmarked means white” comes up, because despite Whelan’s classic cover illustration, the title character explicitly isn’t white. Her skin color is never described, but Boss’s letter about her heritage (construction? design?) is very explicit about her being a mix of practically every race.
I remember an indie novel that doesn’t mention one main character’s race until about a third of the way through the book, confirms that a secondary character is black very late in the story, and leaves it totally ambiguous whether an offscreen couple is gay or straight. (It depending on how the reader interprets a shortened name. Is “Ronnie” short for “Veronica” or “Ronald”? Doesn’t matter, so it’s never clarified. Scalzi does something similar in Lock In, doesn’t he?)
I like that sort of thing. Letting readers form a mental image based on their assumptions and a few subtle clues, and later adding a few concrete bits that might conflict with – what’s the right term, “default defaults”? – is fun and can wake people up to their unconscious assumptions.
But it’s not Nutty Nuggets!
Hey, have you heard about the the problem the Space Raptor Appendage awards have with reaching a consensus of what’s worthy because there’s such a wide diversity of excellent novel-length works so everyone has a different favourite?
It’s the Long Tale Problem.