(1) TREKKIN’ WITH FILLION? Here’s some clickbait for you – “Rumor Mill: Nathan Fillion New Star Trek Captain?” asks SciFi Obsession.
Many noticed how much weight Nathan lost for the final season of Castle. Now that it’s 8 year run is over, could he be sitting in the center seat for the new 50th Anniversary Trek series on CBS All Access?
(2) CAPT. JACK VAGUEBOOKS. And here’s a second helping of clickbait – Den of Geek quoted John Barrowman’s comments about coming back to Doctor Who.
Adding fuel to the fire that he could return to the live-action Doctor Who universe in the near future, John Barrowman has now instructed fans to “keep watching.”
Asked on The One Show whether he’d be returning to either Doctor Who or Torchwood, the Captain Jack Harkness actor said, “I’d love to, keep watching. Keep watching. I’d love to! I don’t know!”
“It’s not up to me,” he added, “but keep watching!”
(3) DOZOIS REVIEWS SHORT FICTION. Locus Online has posted an excerpt from the magazine edition, “Gardner Dozois reviews Short Fiction April 2016”, covering Clarkesworld 1/16, 2/16, Asimov’s 2/16, and Interzone 1-2/16. With the link, Greg Hullender passed along his theory that Dozois is Lois Tilton’s replacement.
(4) WHAT’S OPERA? Andrew Liptak recommends “15 Space Opera Books for Firefly Fans” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
We don’t need to tell you that Firefly has transformed from failed TV series to cultural phenomenon in the years since its 2003 cancellation after an inauspicious 12-episode run on Fox. Joss Whedon’s Western-styled space opera might be missed, but in the years since, its fans have found ways to cope with its absence, turning to other TV shows, writing fan fiction—or searching out books that scratch their Big Damn Heroes itch. We always find ourselves reaching for a solid space opera novel during the summer months, so we’re offering up 15 space opera books for Firefly fans, each embodying one or more of the qualities that made that show so great.
(5) CHECK REJECTS. SJPA, the organization behind Anime Expo, has partially retracted its recently announced Youth Protection policy. Anime News Network has the story — “Background Checks Not Mandatory for Anime Expo, Except for Its Employees, Volunteers”.
The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), the California-based non-profit organization behind Anime Expo, announced on Friday that the criminal background check requirement it introduced as part of its Youth Protection Program are now only mandatory for its own employees and volunteers. Background checks are optional but strongly encouraged for Artist Alley participants, exhibitors, press, Guests of Honor, performers and vendors.
SPJA is partnering with the Nonprofit Risk Management Center to launch the Youth Protection Program to protect young attendees at Anime Expo. The Nonprofit Risk Management Center began streaming an introduction video for the program on Tuesday. The organization also began streaming a video on April 29 that explains the responsibilities of being a partner to the Youth Protection Program.
SPJA noted the other elements of the program that will remain in place:
We are creating SafeSpace kiosks and other means for youth to report and receive immediate help. Significantly increased private security and LA Police officers will be present onsite. To protect minors from exposure to adult content, spatial separation and ID checks will be enforced at AX. Exhibitors will be required to keep adult materials behind closed pipe and drape, and to conduct ID checks at entrances to adult areas. Similarly, adult programming will be physically separated from other programming spaces and IDs will be required for access.
The policy originally required all employees, volunteers, panelists, performers, guests, members of a guest’s or performer’s entourage, and Artist Alley participants to consent to a background check, as well as completing certain online youth protection training courses. Exhibitors, press, and vendors were also required to affirm that all representatives complete a background check. Some exhibitors had already signed to agree with this previous policy and submitted information to comply.
(6) WISB AWARDS. Shaun Duke of The World in the Satin Bag has distributed the 2016 WISB Awards – including some for File 770!
The fiction section is led off by Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Signal To Noise. The Best Non-Fiction Work was Eric Flint’s “A Response to Brad Torgersen.”
Now that awards season is in full swing, it’s time to release the winners of the 2016 WISB Awards. As with every year of the award, the winners are selected from my reading and viewing experiences throughout 2015 and during my annual Hugo Awards reading binge. As such, the long list included works published decades ago.
Unlike previous years, the 2016 WISB Awards included a long list, which you should check out to see all the great stuff I enjoyed. You might also check out the 2016 Hugo Awards Reading/Watching List, which includes works from my original list and works suggested by readers.
As with every year of the awards, these selections are based entirely on my own tastes, which are imperfect, narrow, and weird….
(7) ALPHA GAME. The Traveler at Galactic Journey found a classic in “this month’s” F&SF — “[May 21, 1961] Pineapple Upside-Down Month (June 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction).
Cordwainer Smith’s Alpha Ralpha Boulevard is one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. Most tales of the future are either frustratingly conventional or completely opaque. Not so in Boulevard, which features a world dominated by “Instrumentality”, an omniscient computer dedicated to the happiness of humanity. 16,000 years from now, after a placid, highly regulated existence, people are, at last, offered the luxury of uncertainty (or at least the illusion thereof).
(8) PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I guess readers are supposed to be shocked and dismayed that if you leave a flag outside in the sun for 50 years it isn’t going to stay looking brand new.
On the other hand, nobody has any photos showing “The American flags on the Moon have all turned white”.
(9) OPPOSED BY MARS. But this story you can see with your own eyes. NPR tells you how easy it will be to view Mars this weekend.
Sometimes astronomy can be challenging, but spotting Mars this weekend should be a breeze.
Step 1: Head outside right after sunset and look toward the southeastern sky.
Step 2: Find the full moon. (So far, so good, right?)
Step 3: Look up and to the right, and find what looks like a bright red star.
That’s Mars, our planetary neighbor — getting up close and personal.
This weekend is the “Mars opposition,” when the planet shines most brightly; at the end of the month, in a related event, we’ll have the “Mars close approach,” when there’s the shortest distance between the two planets.
(10) YOUR ROBOTIC FUTURE. Robin Hanson’s The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth will be released by Oxford University Press on June 1.
Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human.
Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.
Some say we can’t know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems.
The book, set 100-150 years in the future, is “speculative nonfiction” by an economist. The publicity blurbs come from David Brin, Vernor Vinge, Gregory Benford, and Hannu Rajshiemi, among others.
The website includes a TEDx talk Hanson did which got 2.2 million hits.
(11) GOOD, IF YOU LIKE ADS. “Goodreads has found a new way to get money from authors while annoying their use base,” says DMS. “Opt out of ads features are just so wonderful.”
“Goodreads Deals: A New Way to Promote Your Ebooks to Millions of Goodreads Members (U.S. Market)”
With the launch of Goodreads Deals in the U.S., we’re now offering authors and publishers a new way to amplify ebook price promotions to our millions of members. The Goodreads Deals program comes with built-in personalization options based on members’ Want to Read shelves, the authors they follow, and the genres they prefer—all designed to help your deals reach the readers with the highest interest in buying your books. Goodreads Deals is unique because we’ll enable you to reach existing fans and introduce your ebooks to new readers:
- Existing Fans: Every second, our members add 6 books to their Want to Read shelves—that’s 15 million books per month that have captured the interest of readers. With Goodreads Deals, you can now tap into that interest. We’ll email members when a book on their Want to Read shelf has a price promotion. We’ll also email any members who follow the author on Goodreads.
(12) IT IS SO. Writer and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan Emily Spahn, after learning that MLP is up for a Hugo because of the Rabid Puppies slate, wrote “I Have a Pony in this Race” to tell Hugo voters why the show (and that particular episode) are good sci-fi worthy of serious consideration rather than being just a troll nomination:
You know, it’s kind of appropriate that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was nominated for a Hugo in order to troll people. Our entire fandom was built on some trolling.
Way back in 2011, some guys on 4Chan started posting My Little Pony pictures and memes from the then-new series, Friendship is Magic. Other people complained, and being 4Chan, they responded by flooding the site with pictures of ponies.
But somewhere in there a strange thing happened. People checked out the show, whether because they thought the characters were cute or because they thought it would be dumb and wanted to mock it, and they liked it. Not ironically, and not because it was subversive or slipped adult humor in under the radar. They just really liked the simple stories about Twilight Sparkle and her pony friends. And Bronies were born.
Three weeks earlier a post written by Horizon, “MLP’s Hugo Award nomination: Into the culture wars”, provided historical context and got picked up by Equestria Daily, MLP fandom’s biggest website.
It is ambiguous whether the nomination was serious and ideological (the episode in question is about Starlight Glimmer’s “equality cult”, making it a potential political statement), or whether it was a “joke” nomination in the same vein as short-story finalist Space Raptor Butt Invasion, but in either case it was pretty transparently proposed as a slap in the face to Hugo voters.
If you don’t give a crap about SFF or American culture wars, that should be all the context you need to understand what has other people upset, and help you avoid falling into the drama if you stumble into someone slamming MLP.
(13) SCHOOL’S IN! SF Crowsnest points to this Eighties-style trailer for the new X-Men movie. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters is now open for enrollment… (X-Men: Apocalypse in theaters May 27.)
[Thanks to DMS, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Petrea Mitchell, Paul Weimer, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Hey, not fifth, but first!
(and a contributor for today, Huzzah!)
(1) and (2) Yes please!
(4) That too.
(5) Fame has its privileges.
(10) I’m dubious about the premise, so it’s not going on Mount TBR.
(12) Is it okay if we just don’t think it’s worth a Hugo no matter how it got on the ballot?
(13) If only the movie would be that good.
(4) WHAT’S OPERA?
Am I really the only person who was exposed to Firefly and didn’t think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread?
Never been a Robin Hanson fan.
Primordial fifth!
[Godstalk!]
I am not a number.
snif
Oh, about the colors. When I was involved in sign-making, we learned which colors faded fastest. Red, by a long shot! Once I saw a pickup in our parking lot with a THESE COLORS DON’T RUN bumper sticker, printed in two colors. the word “DON’T” was in red, and therefore had already run by the time I saw it. (The things you see when you don’t have a camera in your hand.)
4) Some very good suggestions there. Lots of books that I’ve either read or that are on Mount TBR.
I agree that Firefly had a massive influence on the space opera genre, though it’s interesting what writers chose to keep from Firefly and what to discard.
Meanwhile, the latest addition to Mount TBR, delivered by the mailman today, is “The Vagrant” by Peter Newman of Tea and Jeopardy fame.
[ticky]
A somewhat eccentric person I knew drove an old battered 2CV. In the back window they had a sticker that had once said “I’m against racism”. Unfortunately the “against” had faded far more than the other words, so the sticker appeared to say:
“I’m racism”
Not quite as ironic as your example 🙂
Kip W on May 21, 2016 at 8:55 pm said:
I’ve seen flags that had pink stripes, they’d faded that much. The blue hadn’t faded as badly – but in my area, flags usually shred before they’re seriously faded.
Clicky.
And cough, cough. Don’t develop asthma, folks. And don’t smoke around kids or I’ll come beat you up during a period of not-coughing. Spare the next generation!
Nancy Sauer on May 21, 2016 at 8:42 pm said:
No, I was seriously underwhelmed by it. I bounced off it completely when it was on the air. I’m not a fan of westerns in the first place, and actual western recycled-in-space was just too silly of a premise for me. It was too hard to suspend my disbelief.
I ended up watching it all on Netflix later, and my appreciation for it went up. The second half, which has less recycled cowboys and more actual SF, was actually pretty decent. Good writing can make up for a lot, but the good writing had a lot to make up for here, in my opinion. There are episodes I will gladly never watch again.
(6) WISB AWARDS.
[sarcasm]Clearly Shaun Duke is doing it wrong setting up his award when what he should be doing is trying to game an existing one. What an amateur![/sarcasm]
@Nancy Sauer,
I only watched Firefly after it was cancelled, on DVD, and while I have reservations about aspects of it (the economics of space travel & trade, uncomfortable civil war undertones, “where are the Chinese?”), the charisma of the actors drew me in, and the “created family” theme kept me watching.
Today’s read — The Empress Game, by Rhonda Mason
In what is, I can only assume, the dumbest Galactic Empire, tradition dictates that the Empress-elect shall be chosen by Trial By Combat. To be completely fair to the book, the main characters apparently agree with me that this is idiotic and so decide to cheat (by subbing in a holographically disguised ringer for their princess.) Nonetheless, the book never completely overcame the ridiculousness of the premise, and as unlikely subplots piled one atop the other I found my already tenuous interest waning. I will not be picking up the sequels.
> “Am I really the only person who was exposed to Firefly and didn’t think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread?”
No, you are not.
I quite liked the movie, though.
Red pigments reflect red light, and absorb other colors: the ones with shorter wavelengths and hence more energy per photon. Blue pigments reflect blue light (the most energetic of the visible spectrum) and absorb the less-energetic colors. It makes sense, then, that molecules of red pigment would be the quickest to break down.
(10) I think you’re mentioning a blurb from Hannu Rajaniemi.
@Nancy Sauer et al.: you’re not alone. I liked Firefly, I’ll say that much. Perfectly fine, enjoyable show. I think it’s substantially over-hyped by its fan base, though.
YES! You are the only one in the entire world who was underwhelmed by Firefly!
As Book said in one episode “there is a very special place in hell” for people who were underwhelmed by the show.
Garth of Izar fought an entire interstellar war over acceptance of the show, and won! (That’s why the competing studios are suing him!)
Killer Kane has a compliance helmet waiting for you. It won’t hurt, and very soon now you will love Firefly with all the gorram love there is in the verse.
Not too soon after; you will have purchased your own browncoat and will be debating between a purchase of Firefly Yahtzee or Firefly Monopoly; after a suitable period of dithering, you will purchase both, because they are both just so shiny!
OK, (1) might be the only way CBS will convince me to pony up for their VOD.
The Car-Mangled Banner
Oh, say, did you see
On the truck that just passed,
Some poor star-spangled banner
Is waving its last.
With six stripes and nine stars
Threadbare on a stick,
Do they think it’s respectful?
It’s just kind of sick.
If they can’t take good care of
The flag that they wave,
How can they care for the land
Of the free and the brave?
I got to see more examples of patriots punishing the object of their affection in the recent trip (of which maybe twelve days were spent on the road, as opposed to being somewhere). Usually, it’s a flag that gets shorter and shorter, but I saw one this time where the bottom red strip was semi-detached. How the hell long has it been like that? I use present tense on the assumption it’s still that bad or worse. And this is the flag they love? (“Ah, what love?” “The love of the damned.”)
The western elements in Firefly were too on-the-nose, and made for a jarring viewing experience on first exposure. The movie ‘Serenity’ integrated these elements into an SF milieu more successfully.
Do I detect a different approach in the Locus short fiction reviews? Lois Tilton would take you through a magazine story-by-story, giving you her opinions on the good and the less-good. Gardner Dozois seems to be giving us just the highlights of each issue — the best 2 or 3 stories.
1) Firefly was quite good, but if Serenity was where Whedon was going with it, I’m glad it died an early death.
7) The best thing about the Journey (besides the friends I make) is discovering forgotten classics I might never have read. Of course, I also have to slog through the bad stuff. There’s a perverse satisfaction in that, I suppose.
13) My daughter, who has been raised in a childhood designed to mirror mine (we are 30 years apart, but she has full familiarity with rotary phones, record players, and Atari computers) watched that trailer and wondered what the joke was…
It’s very good, though!
Serenity strikes me as AU Firefly. It’s perfectly nice as that. It just doesn’t fit the continuity established in the TV show. I love the opening scene of Serenity, where Simon, my favorite character, gets River out from the clutches of the people who’ve been experimenting on her. It’s wonderfully paced and Sean Maher outdoes himself as an actor.
But had it “really” happened that way, the Simon of the TV show would have known far more about the problems afflicting River, and several plot lines and at least one episode would have made no sense. Also, the arc of the TV show is about the crew achieving genuine integration as a little community (“family” if you prefer). Serenity pushes the reset button on everything they achieved emotionally and socially in the series. We are back to suspicion and backbiting as if the beautiful helical path of the television season had never been traced.
@Jim
that’s a good point. And the Simon we see rescuing River in that scene does seem much less of a “skittish horse” that he was at the beginning of the show.
3) [and Clack]: Just to point out that the reviews in Locus Online (other than the “Special To” items) are selected from the magazine, and the linked Gardner piece is his regular monthly column. I’m not on the decision-making end of things, so I can’t say whether there’s been some change in website policy/content, but all I’m seeing right now is the usual pickup from the print incarnation.
Nancy Sauer says ‘Am I really the only person who was exposed to Firefly and didn’t think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread?’
It was ok but not great. My biggest annoyance is how it’s now became a meme for describing any space based novel with a small starship that may or may not be crewed by like likeable rogues. Come on publicists — be more creative!
@Jim @Paul: I just assumed that Serenity was designed to include a recapitualization of the series for people who hadn’t watched Firefly, with an ending.
Nancy Sauer asked:
No. I saw the movie and hated it.
I disliked Firefly pretty much unreservedly. I also think the musical episode of Buffy was greatly overrated.
I loved Firefly but I think it was the charisma of the actors that drew me in. If that weren’t my thing I could see finding it annoying. Even I was going “oh come *on*” when it came to cattle as cargo.
Regarding MLP is there a lot of pony-hating going on out there? I have kind of a blinkered POV and a tendency to attribute my reaction (it’s a hostage; I will watch it and see what I think and rate on that basis) to everyone, so I genuinely wouldn’t necessarily know.
12) That Horizon post on MLP is generally good, but someone should tell them that the accusation of recruiting GamerGaters wasn’t just blowing smoke; there are screenshots. Which is not to say that G8ers can’t be science-fiction fans too, but only that there was a very specific effort made to bring them into the Hugo nominations process.
13) It really jarred me that they pronounce the X in “Xavier” all the way thru. Is that movie-canon and I just missed it until now?
@ Nancy: No, you aren’t. Westerns in space? BTDT, 50 years ago and without the Confederate overlay.
I didn’t see Serenity, largely because the advertising posters I saw in London conveyed a generic hot chick slaughters people with lots of blood vibe which removed any chance of my looking closer. By that point hot chick slaughters people with lots of blood was an uninteresting cliche.
The remainder of the crew were in the distance, which was a distinctly odd marketing move for the story, unless they were deliberately ignoring Firefly; I think that Jim has nailed it in his comment.
I agree on this – and while I like Firefly and Serenity quite a bit, I don’t actually think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Buffy, on the other hand, is vastly overrated.
It’s also notable that most of the recent space operas that were more or less openly inspired by Firefly ditch the western elements and focus on the motley crew in a patched up spaceship. A lot of them also ditch the more problematic sexist behaviour of Mal and Jayne and are basically what Firefly would have been like if Zoe had been the focus rather than Mal.
[3] Specifically, it was Gardner’s April Locus column that was posted
I’ve seen some complaint that the Locus website hadn’t been reviewing short fiction since my departure
It makes sense to pick up the reviews from the print edition, and it’s consistent with what I understand the direction of the site is to be
That doesn’t mean Rich Horton’s column won’t also be used
To be honest, I don’t entirely get Jim Henley’s comment on Firefly. It might be a Marvel Universe reference, or it might just be an “alternate universe” reference (which makes a bit more sense in context), but in any case “Serenity” threw out a lot of subtlety developed in the TV episodes in order to fit a coherent story into the length of a single movie.
I liked ‘Firefly’, but I don’t mind that it only got one season. I think the longer it went on, the more that the relationship between Mal and Inara would have felt jarring to me–the show tries to present it as a tempestuous romance, but Mal is really creepy, entitled and possessive. In a one-season show, I can pretend that this was intentional and he was going to learn how terrible he was being. In a two-season show, I think that Inara would have been made to realize that the “problem” was that she was a sex worker and I would have had to throw things at the TV or the showrunners. 🙂
And I think there’s a middle ground with MLP; I think it’s definitely a very good kid’s show that adults can enjoy too, which is the case with many of the best kid’s shows, and I think there’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in being an adult fan of it any more than adult Harry Potter or adult Marvel Comics fans have anything to be ashamed of. That said, I don’t necessarily think that the nominated episodes are the best things on the ballot and deserve to win a Hugo. And I think you can say that last part without insulting MLP fans, just like you could (if not for the author’s patented shoulder-chip technology) say that Larry Correia wasn’t a Hugo-worthy author without suggesting he’s untalented.
Oh, if only Larry Correia’s shoulder-chip technology were patented. I would love for someone to point Larry at Brad Torgerson and goad him into suing Brad for infringement.
I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never heard of Fillion before Joss Whedon’s fine version of Much Ado, in which he was the 2nd funny Dogberry I’ve ever seen. Then I started to look out for more of his work.
For a long time I hoped Firefly could be revived. Now, no. They’d either have to have Adam Baldwin or not have him and either choice is bad. Then there’s the no Chinese problem and killing off Book and Wash. So, no. It’s dead. Let it lie.
I’ve read a fair bit of ‘Firefly’- inspired space opera. None of these authors have Whedon’s ability to create 9 immediately vivid, differentiated, and compelling characters, and have them then interact in dynamic ways when placed in the close quarters of a spaceship.
‘Nova’-era Samuel Delany could do it. Can’t think of anyone since.
I was not drawn to Firefly. I found its sexual politics extremely dicey and the “Western in space” concept was not one designed to draw in viewers like me.
As for who plays Bobbie Draper… Everybody knows the role will be recast at least three times.
Just finished: “The Lie Tree” by Frances Hardinge. It continues to cement her rep, for me, as a writer of exceptionally sophisticated YAs. I’m not even sure what makes “The Lie Tree” YA except the age of the protagonist, and the fact that there’s no sex and little violence. No-one’s motives are simple or unlayered, there’s a good deal of description of setting and character … aha, that’s what it reminds me of! Joan Aiken! But with extra layers of complexity in the characters. I think I need to re-read “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” for comparison purposes.
Msb:
The *second*-funniest Dogberry, eh? Who was the first? For me, Fillion’s is the best I’ve ever seen.
Just for the sake of contra-contrarianism, let me note that I freaking adore Firefly.
I for one have never been that fond of sliced bread.
Msb didn’t say “second-funniest”, they said “second funny”. I read this as saying that they have seen several productions of Much Ado and only two of them had actually funny Dogberries, and the movie was one.
Jim
I don’t see that as contra-contrarianism; if you hadn’t really loved Firefly you wouldn’t have been so pissed off that they completely junked it in the movie…
David Goldfarb:
You’re right, I mis-read. Sorry, Msb! What was the first one?
For me, it’s possible Fillon’s is the *only* truly funny Dogsberry I’ve ever seen — and I’ve seen a *lot* of Much Ado productions.
@Stevie: The odd thing is, I wasn’t actually pissed. I enjoyed Serenity for itself, and as a take on the Firefly characters. That scene that opens the movie with Simon & River in the lab? Riveting. It just wasn’t compatible with the TV-show continuity.
For years that was strangely comforting, in that it cashed out as, “They can totally bring Wash back if the series ever gets revived!” In the event, the series never was revived and never will be.
The “contra-contrarianism” was just that this thread evolved into the “People declare they didn’t like Firefly” thread, and I actually did like Firefly. Actually, I loved it. Probably not as much as my wife and daughter, who have rewatched it a bunch more times than I have, but a lot. Which isn’t to say everyone else has to like it: they don’t! But we do.