Pixel Scroll 5/2/16 Ancillary Mary Sue

(1) COSTUMES ON TRIAL. The Hollywood Reporter says “Supreme Court to Hear Fight Over Cheerleader Uniforms”, an issue that some argue can affect fans doing cosplay.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that is nominally about cheerleader uniforms, but could have some impact on Hollywood merchandising as well.

The eight black-robed justices will be reviewing an opinion handed down last August from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed Varsity Brand to pursue copyright claims over similar cheerleader uniforms made by Star Athletica. The ruling held that the stripes, chevrons and color blocks incorporated into these uniforms were purely aesthetic.

…An amicus brief from Public Knowledge in this cheerleader costume case also spoke of the many people who cosplay at comic conventions.

“The multitude of contradictory separability tests that currently stand means that a costume replica may be non-infringing at a San Diego convention but infringing in New York,” stated that brief. “The situation is absurd, abstruse, and – owing to the historical lack of copyright protection for any article of clothing – functionally obfuscated from the people whom it stands to impact most.”

(2) TODAY IN FICTIONAL HISTORY

  • MAY 2 — ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF HOGWARTS. With the help of the Harry Potter Wikia we salute the Unidentified fallen fifty:

They moved Voldemort’s body and laid it in a chamber off the Hall, away from the bodies of Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Colin Creevey, and fifty others who died fighting him.

—Description of the post-Battle

The unidentified fallen fifty of the Battle of Hogwarts (d. 2 May, 1998) were the unknown people who were killed fighting Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters in the final conflict of the Second Wizarding War. They did not die in vain as their cause had been won after their deaths. At the end of the battle, all of the bodies were placed together in the Great Hall.

(3) FROM PKD TO PHD. Be the Professor of Future Crimes! University College of London is hiring. I am not making this up.

The nature of the crime and security problems we face has transformed in recent years and continues to change rapidly. Most obviously, the digital revolution has created new challenges in the form of cybercrime and other cybersecurity threats, while developments such as the Dark Web and the Internet of Things are exposing new problems. But the issue is wider than digital technologies: developments, for example, in nanotechnology, robotics and cybernetics are creating new opportunities that can be exploited for criminal and terrorist purposes. And nor do the new threats solely involve technological developments: social changes associated with population growth, changing migration patterns, and climate change all have the potential to drive crime and insecurity in as yet largely unforeseen ways.

(4) AWESOME. Jim C. Hines launches a new series of posts with SF/F Being Awesome: Books for Kids.

For close to 20 years, Balticon and the Baltimore Science Fiction Society have been raising money to provide books to kids — particularly kids who might not otherwise be able to afford them — and to school libraries as well.

I spoke with Kelly Pierce, who’s been coordinating the Bobby Gear Memorial Charity Auction at Balticon since about 2002. The auction raises the bulk of the money for Books for Kids each year….

Since it all began, Balticon and BSFS has probably raised around $50,000 to provide books to libraries and kids in need, with the bulk of that money comes from the annual auction….

For more information:

(5) DROPPING THE PILOT. io9’s new editor Rob Bricken previews the future in “io9’s Mission Isn’t Over”.

Hello, I’m Rob Bricken. Some of you may know me as the guy who writes the FAQs, or the guy who hates everything, or a deluded SJW, or perhaps the person who will shortly be turning io9 into a garbage fire. I would like to present myself as something else—the new editor of io9.

Yes, I have been given the monumental, terrifying task of taking over here, a job that I can promise you I did not have designs on. Like all of you, I would have been content with Charlie Jane Anders running io9 until the heat death of the universe. As I told her as she said goodbye, she is io9. Always was. Always will be.

But as Charlie Jane herself wrote, io9 has a mission

(6) FLASH FICTION. Cat Rambo answers the question “Why Write Flash Fiction?” on Medium. She defines flash fiction, then gives writers reasons to try it.

At any rate, writing flash fiction is both a useful and productive exercise for writers. Anything that makes us practice writing is surely a good thing, and sitting down to write a flash piece fulfills that. Beyond that, it’s very satisfying to rise from the desk knowing you’ve written something in its entirety, as opposed to the tiresome nature of a novel, which swallows hours and hours of writing while swelling as slowly as ice accreting on a glacier.

You can use flash to try out new techniques. One of the exercises I often use in class draws on a piece I heard Gra Linnaea read at World Fantasy Con, written all in future tense, which I read to the class before challenging them to write their own pieces in future tense. Another draws on Randy Henderson’s most excellent THE MOST EPICLY AWESOMEST STORY! EVER!!, which I use to challenge the class to think about bad writing vs. good.

Many new writers are hungry for publications, and writing flash is a good strategy for garnering some. Flash markets, by their nature, consume a lot of pieces, and where a market that publishes one story each month is buying only that one story, a flash market is buying a much larger number. One of my favorites is Daily Science Fiction, which mails me a story every weekday. Every Day Fiction, as another example, runs a flash piece each day. The shorter a piece is, the easier it is on an editor’s budget.

(Cat Rambo’s full-length short story “Left Behind” was published in the May issue of Clarkesworld, which you can read online, or you hear read to you by Kate Baker.)

(7) RHINO RUNNER. Jim Mowatt has written about his transcendent experience running the London Marathon run for Save The Rhino.

“That last mile is absolutely amazing” she said, “and when you turn to go down the Mall it’s the most incredible experience that you could imagine.” I did try to imagine it and reckoned it would be akin to some of the feelings that I have previously experienced when I have finished a particularly gruelling run. The actuality was was nothing like that. It was a massive emotional assault on a astounding scale.

I shuffled along the Embankment in a world of pain and then turned right at the Palace of Westminster. Then I ran along Birdcage Walk curving around toward the Mall and Buckingham Palace. All the while the noise grew louder and louder until it became completely unbearable. There was a kind of mass hysteria going on all around me. I’d got a shop to print Jim on the Save The Rhino tee shirt so people could shout out my name and, in a way, join in with my run. What felt like thousands of people were shouting my name. Faces were looming out of the crowd telling me that I was awesome or amazing or incredible. It was absolutely terrifying but quite exciting too. My mind couldn’t cope with this assault and tried to shut down to get me through. I went with it for a while but realised that this was a very special moment and I had to savour it. I forced myself to engage again. I could hear everyone shouting and screaming, all caught up in this amazing event. I zoned in and out as we progressed further down the Mall trying not to break down and cry with the massive waves of emotion rolling over and around me. At the final turn I saw the finish line and focussed in on that, lurching forward until I crossed the mat with arms held aloft….

(8) IT’S ALWAYS NEWS TO SOMEONE. I have not previously reported the announcement made last November by BSFS and WSFA that the 2018 World Fantasy  Convention will be held in Baltimore. Nor does Google show that it has been picked up anywhere else. Let this be a placeholder ‘til more information comes out.

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (bsfs.org) and Washington Science Fiction Association (wsfa.org) shall be hosting the 2018 World Fantasy Convention on November 1 – 4, 2018 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel (the location for next year’s 50th anniversary Balticon (balticon.org)). Many of us who were involved with the management of WFC 2014 are working on this exciting new project.

(9) AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CAT. Ursula K. Le Guin serves as amanuensis for “My Life So Far, by Pard” at Book View Café.

In the first place there were Mother and Sister and me with a mother and an aunty human who had a lot of kittens. Some tom humans came around now and then and either paid no attention to anybody but the queens, or were dangerous to kittens, pretty much like real toms. Mother and Sister and I kept out of their way and had no worries except sometimes the younger kitten humans, who will pull your tail as soon as their eyes are open. And some of the bigger ones played too rough, or tried to hug. Hugging, even when well meant, is horrible.

Life was often quite exciting in the first place, and we were happy together. I am hardly ever sad, but sometimes when I am going to sleep I hear purring around me that is not mine, and it seems that Mother and Sister and I are all curled up like one warm cat. And then I am happier than usual.

The kibbles there were all of one species, but there were plenty of them, except when there weren’t any of them. When the bowl had been empty for a while and then the kibbles were turned loose in it, Sister and I did a lot of growling and shoving to see who could get more first, but it wasn’t serious, it just made hunting and killing the kibbles more exciting….

(10) GRRM’S ANSWER. George R.R. Martin cleans off some of the mud that’s been hurled his way in “A Response To John C. Wright”.

…All that being said, I do not know why Wright seems to believe that by purchasing and publishing one of his stories seven years ago, I am therefore somehow required to like everything that he writes subsequently, to the extent that I would feel it Hugo worthy.

It should be pointed out that “Guyal the Curator” was not itself nominated for a Hugo (there being no Puppies around in 2009 to push it). None of the stories from SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH were Hugo finalists, truth be told. Do I think some were worthy of that honor? Sure I do. I cannot pretend to be objective, I’m proud of the anthologies I edit and the stories I publish. Do I think that all the stories in SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH (or ROGUES, or OLD MARS, or OLD VENUS, or LOWBALL, or any of my anthologies) are Hugo-worthy? Of course not. In a normal year, the Hugo finalists are supposed to represent the five best stories of the year in that word length. Was “Guyal the Curator” one of the five best short stories (actually, it might have been a novelette, after so long I do not recall the word length) of 2009? No. It was a good story, not a great story. The Hugo Awards demand greatness. It was an entertaining Vance tribute, but it was not a patch on real Vance, on “The Last Castle” or “The Dragon Masters” or “Guyal of Sfere.” And truth be told, it was not even one of the five best stories in SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH. A good story, yes, I’ll say that again. But there were better in the book. (And how not? We had an amazing lineup of contributors).

Which brings us back to Puppygate, and last year’s Hugo ballot.

I read every word in every story in the anthologies I edit, as I’ve said. I did not read every word in every story on last year’s Hugo ballot, no (or on any Hugo ballot, for that matter). I start every story and give them a few pages. If they grab me, I keep reading. If they bore me or offend me, or fail to interest me for whatever reason, I put them aside. Mr. Wright seems convinced that I did not read his stories on last year’s ballot. He’s half-right: I did not read all of them. But I started all of them (there were five), finished some, set others aside. The same as I do with any story I read; no special treatment.

I did not find any of them Hugo-worthy. Not one of them was as good as “Guyal the Curator,” in my opinion. No doubt others liked them better.

(11) THE POWER OF FIVE. Does the title of John Scalzi’s post show that he’s tuned to our wavelength? That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it — “Two New Books in 2016 That Have Me In Them. Well, Three. Actually, Five”.

So, to recap:

  • The Books That Changed My Life — already out.
  • Mash Up — out June 7.
  • Black Tide Rising — also out June 7.
  • The Dispatcher — scheduled for this year in audio.
  • Secret SubPress Project — also scheduled for this year (I think!).

And the mass market paperback of The End of All Things, out May 31st.

(12) MORE THOUGHTS. Mark Ciocco at Kaedrin comments: “The 2016 Hugo Awards: Initial Thoughts”.

Fortunately, at least part of the Puppy success this year was driven by the inclusion of works from mainstream authors on the lists. The Rabids had folks like Neal Stephenson , Neil Gaiman, Alastair Reynolds , and Lois McMaster Bujold on their slate, which, well, these are all people who don’t need any help getting nominated. In addition to those names, the Sads even included the likes of Ann Leckie, John Scalzi, Nnedi Okorafor, Naomi Novik, and Cat Valente, most of whom don’t seem to exactly fit the puppy mold if they aren’t actively hostile towards each other. I am, of course, not the first to mention this, but it does seem to have the effect of softening the impact such that the scortched-earth No Award response feels less likely this year. There are some who are calling these mainstream choices “shields” and coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories about their inclusion, but who knows? I mean, yeah, I could dig through the muck and try to figure out what the Rabid intentions really are, but jeeze, who wants to get into their head? I like a lot of these authors and hell, I even nominated some of them (completely independent of recommendation lists or slates, imagine that!). Of course, this has been my approach all along, but others, even strident opposition, seem to be getting on board that train.

(13) FLASH ROMANCE. The BBC reports there has been a preemptive protest about casting the movie version of The Flash — “Superhero fans rally to keep The Flash’s love interest black”.

The announcement that DC Comics and Warner Bros are to put comic book character The Flash on the big screen in two forthcoming movies was good news for many. There is already a successful TV series based on the character, and fans were expecting more of the same.

But some were alarmed by the suggestion that one of the supporting characters might undergo a transformation for the cinema version. Although full details of the film’s cast are yet to be announced, one blog reported “industry rumours” that the race of one of the characters may be changed.

The report suggests that a white actress, Imogen Poots, could be cast as Iris West Allen – a part played in the successful TV version by black actress Candice Patton.

Although the rumour remains unconfirmed, some fans began accusing Warner Bros of “whitewashing”, using the hashtag “Keep Iris Black”. The phrase has now appeared more than 7,000 times.

(14) HALLOWEEN AUCTION. Mark V. Ledenbach’s auction of vintage Halloween stuff runs through May 8. He is also blogging about some of the items, such as a tin noisemaker that went for $117.

This tin litho noisemaker, made by an unknown manufacturer during the 1930s, is very cleverly designed. I have my suspicions that it was made by Bugle Toy of Providence, Rhode Island, but they were disciplined about marking their tin litho items and this tin item has no mark. It has their characteristic clever design. Take a close look at it to see the almost Art Deco integration of four orange cat faces bordered by two bats and two owls.

Tin as a genre has been ice cold for years now. This was an aggressive ending price. Does this presage an upward movement for tin litho items?

(15) IN THEIR OWN WORDS. From the May issue of Smithsonian magazine, “An Oral History of ‘Star Trek’”.

The trail-blazing sci-fi series debuted 50 years ago and has taken countless fans where none had gone before…

In the teleplay for the first pilot, “The Cage,” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Christopher Pike, Roddenberry described the establishing shot in detail: “Obviously not a primitive ‘rocket ship’ but rather a true space vessel, suggesting unique arrangements and exciting capabilities. As CAMERA ZOOMS IN we first see tiny lettering ‘NCC 1701- U.S.S. ENTERPRISE.’”

Walter M. “Matt” Jefferies (production designer, “Star Trek”) I had collected a huge amount of design material from NASA and the defense industry which was used as an example of designs to avoid. We pinned all that material up on the wall and said, “That we will not do.” And also everything we could find on “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” and said, “That we will not do.” Through a process of elimination, we came to the final design of the Enterprise.

Gene Roddenberry I’d been an Army bomber pilot and fascinated by the Navy and particularly the story of the Enterprise, which at Midway really turned the tide in the whole war in our favor. I’d always been proud of that ship and wanted to use the name.

Roddenberry’s attention to detail even extended to the ship’s computer at a time when computers were punch card–operated behemoths that filled entire rooms. In a memo on July 24, 1964, to production designer Pato Guzman, Roddenberry suggested, “More and more I see the need for some sort of interesting electronic computing machine designed into the USS Enterprise, perhaps on the bridge itself. It will be an information device out of which the crew can quickly extract information on the registry of other space vessels, spaceflight plans for other ships, information on individuals and planets and civilizations.”

Gene Roddenberry The ship’s transporters—which let the crew “beam” from place to place—really came out of a production need. I realized with this huge spaceship, I would blow the whole budget of the show just in landing the thing on a planet. And secondly, it would take a long time to get into our stories, so the transporter idea was conceived so we could get our people down to the planet fast and easy, and get our story going by Page 2.

Howard A. Anderson (visual effects artist, “Star Trek”) For the transporter effect, we added another element: a glitter effect in the dematerialization and rematerialization. We used aluminum dust falling through a beam of high-intensity light.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

215 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/2/16 Ancillary Mary Sue

  1. Thanks for the laugh, Nigel.

    (And just in case, that is intended will all of the positive connotations that one might envision. We do live in a world with many forces shaping how we talk and how we think. On this end of the wire, socialist theory and corporate PR flacks are both bad, but socialist theory is considered worse….much worse.)


    Regards,
    Dann

  2. The Earth Green Lantern order’s actually a bit trickier than what Daniel wrote. In the post-Crisis, pre-Nu52 continuity, the first Terran GL was Alan Scott, albeit with a ring powered by the Starheart. That was constructed by the Guardians as a receptacle for much of the universe’s magic, so there was some (retconned in) tie-in to the GLC.

    Then Abin Sur crashes on Earth and recruits Hal Jordan as the first Terran to be Sector 2814’s Green Lantern. The next Terran GL we see is Charlie Vicker, an actor who played GL on tv. For reasons he ends up becoming the GL of Sector 3319 and is hardly ever seen after that.

    Now, Guy Gardner is introduced…but he’s not a Green Lantern. Rather, it turns out that Abin Sur’s ring found two qualified candidates and picked Hal because he was closest. Hal learns of this, has the ring do a “what if?” bit as to what would happen if Guy had gotten the ring, and then makes Guy’s acquaintance as Hal.

    Later on, Guy was injured while rescuing his students from a bus accident. Since he’d be out of commission for a while, the Guardians told Hal to get and train another backup, John Stewart, who appeared as GL a few times. Guy recovered, stood in for Hal for a short time, then was injured by a power battery explosion, went into a coma, and around Crisis came out of it with the previously unseen jerk persona. Hal quit the Corps shortly before that, and John took over as GL (fun trivia question; what major DC hero makes no appearance in Crisis On Infinite Earths; GL Hal Jordan). After Crisis, all the Terran GLs have been active as such.

    A while after that, we got Kyle Rayner. More recently, we also got Simon Baz, and per solicitations, Terran Jessica Cruz who’s been wielding the Earth-3’s Power Ring’s power ring will be getting a Guardians ring and becoming a GL.

  3. Dann665:

    “I think we are divided by changes in our language imposed by socialist ideology! Where I look at Orwell’s “1984” as a cautionary tale, it appears that others view it as more of an instruction manual.”

    Feeling a bit passive aggressive today?

  4. I equally hesitate to jump in on this, but I second the notion that “cuck” was not created ironically. It was intended as an insult against manliness when used by trolls and people like VD etc and in the last couple of years has spread beyond purely sexual characterisations into things like political leanings and video game playing (as in you are a cuck if you like X candidate or Y game or type of game. Pretty much the same way “fag” or “gay” had been used as an insult or descriptor without literally meaning that the person called that is homosexual (the implication always being, tho, that the name caller would not be surprised if they were…(

    Cuck comes from cuckold, a word with a long and rich history in English as a name for a man whose mate is cheating on him, back to at least Shakespeare and likely Chaucer.

    But in more recent years it has also come to denote a sexual fetish that more and more men are willing to own up to and seek to have satisfied—the mix of titiilation and humiliation of encouraging his wife to have other partners, sometimes with him watching, sometimes with him just knowing about it. It mixes with some pretty queasy racial stuff too. The end of the spectrum that is less focused on the humiliation aspect is the “hot wife” scenario–the guy has a wife so hot everyone wants her and gets to have her, but she goes home with him at the end of the night. Anyway I digress–the point is that a fair number of men and fetishists in general had been turning the whole cuck idea into something sort of positive at least in terms of owning your own fantasies and making them happen, and claiming a particular identity within the world of kinky folk.

    The rediscovered use of the word cuck in MRA and associated circles came right afterwards, probably not coincidentally. Men feeling empowered by claiming/enjoying a position of weakness would be terribly threatening to the insecurities of the wanna be alphas.

  5. Regarding Chuck Tingle, performance art, and possible usage by the Rabids:

    I should note that several months ago, the inestimable Mr. Tingle wrote Oppressed in the Butt by my Inclusive Holiday Cups which was a riff built on the ‘War on Christmas’ freak-out some of the louder American evangelical types, specifically in this case over Starbucks bringing out red coffee cups that didn’t have the usual Christmas imagery on them.

    I find it highly unlikely that anybody willing to write a sex story based on parodying that would want much of anything to do with people like Day or Wright, who are the sorts doing the freak-out in the first place.

  6. @emma Yep. All women on the fantasy novel ballot, too. 3:2 odds that James May or someone like him thinks its a quota system or something. (I recall some Puppy getting a nose out of joint because of a recent Nebula season that had an all-woman category or a slate of women winners or something)

  7. (I recall some Puppy getting a nose out of joint because of a recent Nebula ballot that had an all-woman category in it)

    It was probably Torgersen. The year women won all of the Nebula categories, he got really sulky.

  8. @aaron that might have been what I was remembering, Aaron, thanks.

  9. Anyone who’s been following Tingle’s Twitter account today probably has a fair estimate of his relationship with Vox Day and John C. Wright. Let’s just say he’s only 4,960 words short of a new Chuck Tingle story, and I suspect the RPs have stopped retweeting him.

  10. @Aaron:

    Didn’t Beale announce that he was going to try to freep those as well?

    Yup, and it looks like he failed. Some of the popular stuff he tried to slate got on there, but none of the less-popular (or obviously trollish) stuff managed, so it looks like even those popular picks can’t be traced back to him. Write-in picks that weren’t on the Locus list (like Aeronaut’s Windlass, Son of the Black Sword, etc.) completely failed. He failed to get noms for either himself or his micropress. He failed even in less-popular categories. Basically, I don’t see anything on this ballot that could even remotely plausibly derive its nomination from his freeping.

  11. Aaron on May 3, 2016 at 3:00 pm said:
    Didn’t Beale announce that he was going to try to freep those as well?

    Another one of his great successes.

  12. Aaron: Didn’t Beale announce that he was going to try to freep those as well?

    Yep. It’s likely that the Locus admins took action to stop that from having any effect, like Charles Stross predicted a couple of days ago:

    “It’s run by Locus, in previous years they changed the rules retroactively when they got a sniff of organized voting via the internet: this looked questionable at the time, but in retrospect the Puppies wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  13. Unlike the Hugo Awards, but like Goodreads, the Locus Awards could decide they were being freeped and take action. They also don’t have to say that they’ve done so. I don’t know that this happened, but they would be within their rights to do so, and I wouldn’t criticize them for doing so.

    There are people who wish the Hugo Award Administrators would simply quietly and without telling anyone drop ballots from certain voters. It’s actually to the Administrators’ credit that they don’t do this or other extra-legal action but instead stick to the rules imposed by the World Science Fiction Society.

  14. Women winning all the awards feels like a Harrison Bergeron moment, to me. Women have thrown off some of the weights that had been inflicted on them, and now they can fly.

  15. I can’t help but notice from the Locus Awards:

    MAGAZINE

    Asimov’s
    Clarkesworld
    F&SF
    File 770
    Tor.com

  16. Re. Iris West: I’m not sure if it can be called “whitewashing” or not. Tom Galloway has good arguments, but Rose Embolism has a good rebuttal. Ultimately, though, I’m not sure if it matters whether that specific term applies or not. There are few enough roles for blacks in non-Medea Hollywood movies (see “token”) that I can understand them wanting to cling to any they’ve managed to land. And frankly, until Hollywood manages to eliminate a lot more of their systemic racism, I think saying “once you’ve gone black, you’ll never go back” about roles is a good thing. 🙂

    Furthermore, Candice Patton has done a really good job with the role. She’s proven that a black Iris West works, and works well. Bonus points for the fact that her father is a fairly major character as well, so we basically get two black roles for the price of one. And if the interracial relationship makes racists uncomfortable, well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s icing on the cake! 🙂


    Re. Tingle: I don’t think it should win, but I think it would be amusing if it managed to come in ahead of No Award, as long as it doesn’t win. I can’t think of a clearer way to send a message: we’d rather read humorous gay erotica than the racist, sexist message-fic stuff we were offered last year. But I certainly won’t object if it does finish below Noah.

    For those who may think that it somehow “besmirches” the awards, may I remind you that in 2011, we had “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” as an honest nominee on the final ballot. Did that “besmirch” the award? Would it have been horrible if that had won? Would it have been an embarrassment if the MC had had to announce that name from the podium? My answer in all cases is a resounding no!

  17. @Mike

    Is that the first ever Locus finalist slot for F770?

    In fact, I can’t see any sort of fanzine making the final 5 in recent years.

    Did you have plans for June…?

  18. No longer remember who posted Mark Oshiro’s reading of SRBI. Thank you it was entertaining and I now know how I’m going to deal with SRBI when voting opens up.

    This will be my first year putting some works under NA instead of leaving everything off once I’ve voted NA. I believe I’ve determined my strategy for this year which is a relief. Now to read the works I haven’t which I’m willing to consider and make notes so when voting opens I can fill out as much as possible in the first couple of days. Hopefully we won’t have similar database problems as we did with nominating.

  19. Anyone who’s been following Tingle’s Twitter account today probably has a fair estimate of his relationship with Vox Day and John C. Wright

    This is brilliant–thanks for the ref!

  20. Mark: Never been a finalist. The SF Awards Database says File 770 finished 15th in last year’s poll. The highest the zine has ever ranked before was 11th in 1988.

    On the other hand, I won the fanzine category in the Science Fiction Chronicle poll five times in the 1980s.

    I don’t expect to beat four prozines for the Locus Award, but it’s bad to tempt fate. I may need to prime somebody who’s going to Locus Weekend with a contingency acceptance speech.

  21. Anyone who’s been following Tingle’s Twitter account today probably has a fair estimate of his relationship with Vox Day and John C. Wright

    This is brilliant–thanks for the ref!

    And I am now following Chuck Tingle on twitter.

  22. Pixels Fall from the Scroll
    Up the Pixels of the Scroll
    The Pixels Scrolls Don’t See
    Scroll Songs of an Old Pixel
    The Pixels Scrolled Up Forever

  23. Ok, I was on the fence about whether Tingle was a genius or not, but then I saw “I have become the end of time” followed by “I did not become the end of time, I just left the TV on downstairs, sorry for confusion” and had to go have a moment.

  24. @RedWombat: I was slain by the description of his trilogy as a “transhumanist masterpiece.” He also refers to Frederick Brown. I’m beginning to think he’s a one of ours.

  25. Paul Weimer said:

    All women on the fantasy novel ballot, too. 3:2 odds that James May or someone like him thinks its a quota system or something.

    On the other hand, the young adult category (traditionally friendly to female authors) is all male this year. I’m not saying that James May types won’t still be shocked and horrified by the all female fantasy category, of course. I’m just saying that if they are, it’s even more than usually hypocritical of them.

  26. Somebody upthread [ Ah! found it!]

    Steve Wright on May 3, 2016 at 9:00 am said:
    Incidentally, given that Chuck Tingle is (ahem) a performance artist producing deliberately outrageous material and enjoying the attention…

    and given that one possible view of Vox Day is also as a performance artist producing deliberately outrageous material and enjoying the attention….

    How sure are we that they’re not the same person?

    …was asking How sure are we that they’re not the same person?

    Well,even ignoring the obvious ‘ideological’ differences, they’re actually pretty easy to tell apart:
    Chuck Tingle is both quick-witted AND witty, and funny and smart, and a talented writer – – and Beale is none of those things.

  27. I saw a some of those Chuck Tingle posts here, in isolation, and didn’t think much of them. But I just checked out his Twitter feed, and if you read a whole bunch of them together, their weird internal logic has a chance to build and I actually did end up laughing out loud. Shame on File770 for taking these quotes out of context!

    Adding to the ‘cuck’ discussion, how can people not love a term that makes angry racist alpha-male wannabes sound like angry chickens? And the best part is, when you laugh at them for using the term, they think ‘Aha! Our enemies are trying to make us stop using this term! I must use it more, ahhaha!’

  28. My goodness, UKL’s cat is a handsome one. So perfectly symmetrical, such a snappy tuxedo. I lurve him.

    (13) I think we’re pretty much guaranteed that Iris WON’T be black in the movies. Because Snyder is an insecure hack. He has no concept of what’s good about any of the characters. And he loves to say how different his movies are from the TV shows and gets pissy whenever someone says the TV versions are better. Which they pretty much all are. So he’ll do the opposite of what a TV show’s done, even if it means cutting off his nose to spite his face.

    Tingle is definitely performance art (but not averse to making a couple bucks). I don’t think he’s that funny, but he’s consistent. Humor’s so subjective that there probably are people who do think he’s a hoot. I’m sorry he’s taking up a Hugo space that a real story should have gotten, but he’s carrying on in fine form. Go on with your weird self, Chuck, it takes all kinds. Laugh all the way to the bank. I’m putting him on my ballot immediately after No Award — he shouldn’t win, but I wanna note his amusement value. I’d be interested to hear who he really is some day and the whole back (ahem) story, maybe in a couple more years. @Arifel: Ooh, that Matrix-related Tweet with the pic of Teddy is several layers deep (and funny), which further proves Tingle isn’t a Puppy.

    I nominated Alexandra Erin for everything she was eligible for and possibly some things she wasn’t. Heh. Her “Scalzi” book and Sad Puppy reviews were timely, well-written, and genuinely funny. I hurt myself laughing at Scalzi’s dramatic reading of the book. Hope she gets a really nice Alfie.

    +1 to BG Hilton for “omnimiffed”. JCW is Omnimiffed In Lake Victoria.

    Hunger Games? Good stuff. The revolt of the 99% average people against the corporate 1% who had all the money (much of it inherited), owned all the media, cut education and health care, fostered artificial divisions, and ginned up fake wars for poor people to die in while their own children never serve. Bernie Sanders couldn’t have written it more left-wing. The people! United! Will never be divided!

    @Aaron: Considering the Locus nominees closely resemble my Hugo nominations, looks like the dead elk couldn’t be bothered to vote there, even for free.

    @OGH: In all modesty honesty, I’d vote you 4th in that list. But at least it’ll be funny if you come in… fifth.

    AND FINALLY:

    I repeat a comment I made over at Camestros’, which Kathodus liked:

    I can’t fathom why he thought that, in particular, would make librul heads asplode. Is not SRBI quite literally “You ARE a Dinosaur, My Love”?

  29. On the other hand, the young adult category (traditionally friendly to female authors) is all male this year.

    The Locus YA category has traditionally been extremely friendly to male authors. Since 2003, when the YA category began, 35 of the nominated books have had male authors, and only 29 have had female authors. (Those numbers exclude one nominated book that had one male author and one female author.) 10 of the winning novels have been male-authored, 2 have been female-authored, and one has had male and female dual authors. Cat Valente is the only woman to have ever won the YA Locus Award (not counting the male-and-female-authored book). Before this year, there had never been a year with all-male nominees, but there also hasn’t been a year with all-female nominees. (There have been three years with four male nominees to one female nominee, and one year with the opposite occurring.)

    YA may be female-dominated, but the YA Locus Award never has been.

  30. Haven’t seen anyone mention Doris Sutherland’s piece going over the 2014 non-puppy shortlist for short story and novella. Sorry if I missed it, but otherwise here ya go.

  31. Emma said:

    YA may be female-dominated, but the YA Locus Award never has been.

    I will note that I said “friendly to female authors,” not “female-dominated.” 35 male authors to 29 female authors doesn’t actually look unfriendly to me; that’s very close to equal numbers. (I hadn’t realized the winners were so male-dominated, though. That’s definitely a point against my argument.)

    By comparison, look at the Locus SF and Fantasy Awards for those same years. The SF Award had 57 male authors and 13 female authors, with six all-male years. The Fantasy Award had 47 male authors and 23 female authors, with two all-male years and one all-female year (the current one). That’s four times as many male authors and twice as many male authors respectively in those categories. Now that’s unfriendly.

  32. @Dawn Incognito: Rachel Swirsky & I were just tweeterating about a similar recap, though it doesn’t go into the splendid depth of Sutherland’s. As I mentioned* before, this is why both 2015 and this year really were victories for the RPs. They kept people they hate off the ballots: Rachel; Anita Sarkeesian; others. Even the Torgersens of the world must’ve been delighted that Ruthana Emrys’s amazing “Litany of Earth,” a prime example of all that revisionist stuff Nutty Nuggeters hate, was deprived of a chance at the prize.

  33. @Doctor Science: The Scrollfly Solution?

    Or

    Your Scrolls, O My Pixels! Your Scrolls Filled of Light!

  34. A brief note on George Orwell, given the ridiculous attempts to transform him into a right wing figure. Orwell was though his life, a committed socialist, so committed that he traveled across Europe to fight in Spain in the name of a socialist republic with the POUM, a small radical Marxist organization that frequently allied itself with the anarchist CNT-FAI. Incidentally, Yevgeny Zamyatin, whose novel We plays a heavy influence on the novel 1984, was also a Bolshevik, who played a role in the 1905 insurrection in Russia. (Incidentally, Phillip Wegner has a pretty good chapter on 1984 in his book, Imagined Communities: Utopia, The Nation, and The Spatial Histories of Modernity.)

  35. Hmm, I can’t bring up enough energy to care what they do with the DC Movie Universe. They have one chance to win me back, and if they bollocks up Suicide Squad like I suspect they might (and I’m already concerned about their doofy Joker), the Movie Universe is basically dead to me.

    I’ll continue to watch their tv series’ though (with the exception of Legends of Tomorrow, which.. oh man, I couldn’t even make it through the first episode)

  36. I recently read Patricia McKillip’s new book, Kingfisher. I thought it was remarkable. An engaging, complex, beautiful, and pleasant fantasy novel. Not to be read on an empty stomach, however; it includes some mouth-watering descriptions of food.

  37. Well, I tried to read that SAH piece, but it quickly became apparent that it’s just one more in a large catalogue of her word-salad pieces. Same-old, same-old.

    I am convinced that she’s really playing a game whereby she wrote 1,000 different sentences, each of which had to contain at least one keyword (SJW, Socialist, Marxist, Nazi, CHORF, Puppy-Kicker, Librul, They, Them, etc), then cut them up into individual strips of paper, one sentence per strip, and threw them into a bowl.

    Now, whenever she has a blog post due, she just pulls a bunch of strips out of the bowl at random, and puts them in the post in whatever order she draws them out.

    Which explains why all of her posts are pretty much interchangeable, and all pretty much have the same level of complete irrationality.

  38. Mark: Is that the first ever Locus finalist slot for F770?

    It’s made the Locus Longlist quite a few times, under various categories (they have changed several times; Fanzine was added to Best Magazine/Fanzine in 1981 and dropped in 1987):
    1981 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 17
    1982 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 15
    1983 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 14
    1984 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 13
    1985 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 13
    1986 – File 770 – Best Magazine/Fanzine – 14
    1988 – File 770 – Best Magazine – 11
    1990 – File 770 – Best Magazine – 14
    2001 – File 770 – Best Magazine – Nominations Below Cutoff
    2015 – File 770 – Best Magazine – 19
    2016 – File 770 – Best Magazine – Finalists

  39. Also, perhaps of interest, the nominations for the SF Chronicle Awards (which were last given in 1998):

    1983 – File 770 – Fanzine – Win
    1984 – File 770 – Fanzine – Win
    1985 – File 770 – Fanzine – Win
    1985 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Nomination
    1986 – File 770 – Fanzine – Win
    1986 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Nomination
    1988 – File 770 – Fanzine – Nomination
    1989 – File 770 – Fanzine – Nomination
    1989 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Win
    1990 – File 770 – Fanzine – Nomination
    1990 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Nomination
    1991 – File 770 – Fanzine – Nomination
    1991 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Nomination
    1992 – File 770 – Fanzine – Nomination
    1995 – Mike Glyer – Fan Writer – Nomination

  40. And, of course, the Hugo noms:

    1980 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1981 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1982 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1983 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1984 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Win
    1985 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1986 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Win
    1987 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1988 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Win
    1989 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1990 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1991 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1992 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1993 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1994 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1995 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1996 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Withdrawn — Ineligible
    1997 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1998 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    1999 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    2000 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    2001 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    2002 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    2003 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination
    2010 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nominations Below Cutoff
    2011 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nominations Below Cutoff
    2012 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nominations Below Cutoff
    2016 – Mike Glyer – Best Fan Writer – Nomination

    1980 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1981 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1982 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1983 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1984 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    1985 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    1987 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1988 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1989 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    1990 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1991 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1992 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1993 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1994 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1995 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1996 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Withdrawn — Conflict of Interest
    1997 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1998 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    1999 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2000 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    2001 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    2002 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2003 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2004 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2006 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2008 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Win
    2009 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2010 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2012 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination
    2016 – File 770 – Best Fanzine – Nomination

    1982 – for keeping the fan in fanzine – Special Awards – Win

  41. JJ: I better add a note here. In 1996 I was chair of the Worldcon and announced I would not accept a nomination in advance of the voting. I think this list gives a different impression of what happened than actually did.

  42. Mike Glyer: In 1996 I was chair of the Worldcon and announced I would not accept a nomination in advance of the voting. I think this list gives a different impression of what happened than actually did.

    Fair enough, I already knew what those were, and didn’t add a note, since you’d mentioned that here so recently. 🙂

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