(1) HOW POWERFUL IS SF? When their joint book tour brought them to San Francisco, Goodreads members had a chance to quiz this dynamic duo: “The Authors@Goodreads Interview with John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow”.
GR: Goodreads member Lissa says, “When I read the description of Walkaway, I was wondering ‘Will he have written the book we need to wake us up and get us to pay attention, or the book we need to prepare us for what he thinks might be coming?'”
DOCTOROW: I think…we overestimate the likelihood of things we can vividly imagine and spend a lot of time worrying about our kids getting snatched by strangers and not nearly enough time worried about them getting killed by food poisoning or car accidents. We have this giant war on terror but no war on listeria despite the fact that inadequate refrigeration kills a lot more Americans than terrorism does. It has to do with how vividly we can imagine those things…..
GR: Are the worlds you create the kind of worlds you want to live in?
SCALZI: No! I write terrible universes where horrible things are happening, I like where ‘m living now. Some years are better than others, but altogether ‘m OK with who I am and where I am in the world.
(2) NEED IT RIGHT AWAY. What’s the next thing collectors absolutely must have? Could it be — “Pint Size Heroes”! (They remind me a lot of the Pet Shop pets my daughter used to love, except completely different, of course.)
This series features characters from some of your favorite science fiction movies and television! Including Martian from Mars Attacks, Neo from The Matrix, Leeloo from The Fifth Element, Predator and many more! Collect them all this Summer!
(3) TIME ENOUGH FOR CHEESECAKE LOVE. Here’s what Neil Gaiman will do for half a million dollars — that isn’t even for him. Let Yahoo! News set the scene:
The Cheesecake Factory‘s menu is the In Search of Lost Time of the restaurant industry, in that it is far too long and probably includes a madeleine or two.
Neil Gaiman is a very famous author (American Gods, Stardust, Coraline) with a notably soothing British accent, who has nothing to do with the Cheesecake Factory but has been dared to read its convoluted bill of fare anyway.
How’d this happen?
It all began with writer/comedian Sara Benincasa, a self-professed cheesecake addict…
She has secured Gaiman’s agreement and has launched a fundraiser at Crowdwise. — “Neil Gaiman Will Do A Reading Of The Cheesecake Factory Menu If We Raise $500K For Refugees”.
I have said Yes. If she makes it happen, for charity, I will do this thing. https://t.co/vkJWVDiYTJ
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) May 20, 2017
Will the appeal be strong enough for the fund to meet its goal? Only $2,321 has been pledged as of this afternoon.
(4) IT NEEDED SAVING? In the opinion of the Chicago Tribune “Novelist Timothy Zahn is the man who saved ‘Star Wars,’ according to fans”. There’s no doubt they’ve been good for each other.
Timothy Zahn, who is 65 and bald and carries an ever-so-slight air of social anxiety, is nobody’s image of a superstar. And yet as he sat behind table No. 26 and waited for fans, he did not wait long. The doors to the convention hall at McCormick Place opened at 10 a.m., and by 10:10 a.m. the line of people to meet Zahn was the second-longest at C2E2, the massive Chicago comic book convention held each spring. Only Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and the Hulk, could boast longer lines. This was a few weeks ago, just as “Thrawn,” Zahn’s latest “Star Wars” novel, was debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times’ best-seller list.
(5) GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE. Tyrannosaurus rex is still nature’s most-feared predator: “Woman In T-Rex Costume Charged With Scaring Horses”.
Growling at carriage horses while wearing a full-body Tyrannosaurus Rex suit is illegal, a South Carolina woman has learned.
As two horses pulled a carriage of tourists through Charleston, South Carolina on Thursday evening, the horses came face to face with an unfamiliar animal: a six-foot, orange dinosaur. The extinct beast, however, was actually a person in an inflatable T-Rex suit. And when the person allegedly growled at the carriage, the horses became startled, backing the carriage into a parked car, unseating the carriage driver, and running over his leg.
Though multiple onlookers captured photos and video of the incident, the agitator’s face was concealed inside the dinosaur suit, leaving police without a suspect until 26-year-old Nicole Wells turned herself into police Friday night. She was charged with disorderly conduct and wearing a mask or disguise.
Wearing a mask is illegal in South Carolina, and Charleston has particularly strict anti-mask ordinances. City residents over the age of 16 are prohibited from wearing masks in public places, even on Halloween. And after Wells allegedly spooked the carriage horses, locals placed a bounty on her T-Rex head.
(6) THIS WON’T BE DIRT CHEAP. A sack of gold dust wouldn’t bring as much as this NASA artifact is predicted to fetch at auction.
A small white pouch marked “Lunar Sample Return,” which Nancy Lee Carlson bought two years ago for $995, is expected to fetch as much as $4 million at an upcoming Sotheby’s auction. That’s because it’s sprinkled with moon dust.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong filled the bag with rocks from the lunar Sea of Tranquility during his historic trip to the moon on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. He turned the bag over to a Houston lab, which emptied it of the rocks and then lost track of it. It eventually turned up on a U.S. Marshals auction website.
Enter Carlson, a Chicago-area attorney. She bought the pouch — along with some other items, in a kind of space-memento grab bag — for $995 and sent it off to NASA for testing. NASA claimed the bag belonged to the agency, and wouldn’t return it until after a long court battle. You’d think Carlson was asking for the moon.
The bag is expected to go for such a sky-high price because NASA doesn’t allow anyone to own any bit of the moon –except for the bag.
Sotheby’s senior specialist Cassandra Hatton called the auction of the “modest bag” her “Mona Lisa moment.”
To infinity & beyond! Artifacts from the #Apollo11 mission come to Sotheby's NY this July #SothebysInSpace https://t.co/mulpmCSXwt pic.twitter.com/nr4LUoP86y
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) May 21, 2017
(7) TAKE THE TEST. The Guardian will let you audition: “Ignore or delete: could you be a Facebook moderator?” Looks like I won’t be working for FB anytime soon — I only matched their decision 9 out of 16 times.
(8) TODAY’S DAY
History of Goth Day
The history of Goth Day stretches back in odd and meandering paths to history. Musically it can be traced back to 1967 when someone referred to the music of the Doors as “Gothic Rock.” This term was soon being bandied about, used to describe music like Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, and Siouxsie and the Banshee’s described as one of “Goth Rocks Architects”.
But why “Gothic”? It’s an odd term considering that it originally referred to the Visigoths whose claim to fame was sacking Rome. So how did Goths become Goths? Well, we can trace the term back a bit further to 1764, where Horace Walpole wrote a story called “The Castle of Otranto”, granted the subtitled “A Gothic Story” during its second printing. So what is Gothic in this context? It describes a “pleasing sort of horror”, and was seen to be a natural extension of Romantic literature. This, of course, implies a sort of romance with the darker side of life, something that can be said to describe the little blossoms of gloom described at the beginning.
Goth Day celebrates all these souls, and the part of them that celebrates the darkness within us all through music, art, and media.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born May 22, 1859 — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(10) HIGH FRONTIER CULTURE. The Washington Post’s Sarah L. Kaufman describes the Washington Ballet’s forthcoming, space-themed production — “For a Washington Ballet premiere: Dancers, spacesuits and Velcro. Lots of Velcro. “.
“Frontier” will have its world premiere May 25, with performances continuing through May 27 at the Kennedy Center Opera House. It tells the story of a group of ASCANS –the NASA acronym for astronaut candidates –and flight technicians preparing for a mission, and the stage effects include a rocket launch and travel to a distant planet.
Just 25 minutes long, the ballet is a big event for everyone involved, but especially for Stiefel, the retired American Ballet Theatre star who is unveiling his first major commission as a choreographer, and for Washington Ballet Artistic Director Julie Kent, who asked Stiefel, her friend and former dance partner, to tie his ballet to the Kennedy Center’s John F. Kennedy centennial celebration. That’s where the space theme came from, reflecting the former president’s expansion of the space program.
(11) SHADOW CLARKE. Another pair of reviews from the Shadow Clarke Jury.
The other day, when I was reviewing Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton, I noted that it was one of two books I still had to write about from my initial list that hadn’t made either the Sharke Six or the official Clarke Award shortlist. I then proceeded to detail why I thought the Brooks-Dalton hadn’t made the lists (it’s not really very good science fiction).
This is the second, and the reasons The Gradual didn’t make either list are, well, I don’t know.
One of the most common accusations levelled at genre fiction is that it is… generic: a typical police procedural will see a detective with a troubled home life win out over bureaucratic incompetence to catch a killer, a standard romance will see two seemingly ill-matched individuals coming together across geographical and social divides to reach a perfect understanding, and we’ve all watched horror movies where we spend the first half of the film yelling at the characters not to go into the house. The reason we still enjoy such stories is often related to their very predictability — we find a formula that works for us, where each new iteration is a pleasure that is doubled in its anticipation, like slipping back into a comfortable pair of slippers.
I would suggest there is something folkloric in such archetypes, something of the mythical, and what genre’s detractors often fail to notice about archetypes is how flexible they are, how ripe for re-imagining and subversion…
(12) BACK IN THE LIMELIGHT. Last year’s Clarke Award winner begins a multi-part rundown of this year’s shortlisted works.
- “Clarke Award Shortlist 2017 Part 1 : Faith in the Future” by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Because I didn’t get the chance to do a Clarkeslist post last year, for what I hope are excusable reasons, I was denied the opportunity to laud Chambers’ first outing, A Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet. This book was one of the ones I would have been happiest to lose to. It was also the subject of a mixed bag of reviews, which may be because it’s SF about, not the space beyond our atmosphere but the space between people (which €˜people’ very emphatically includes nonhuman sentience).
(13) DIVERSE AWARDS COMMENTARY. Cora Buhlert has “A few words on the 2016 Nebula Awards, the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Awards and the Shadow Clarkes”.
…In other awards news, the shortlist for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award has been announced as well. It’s a pretty good shortlist, consisting of a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee (Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee), a Hugo nominee, sequel to one of last year’s Clarke Award nominees (A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers), this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction and the literary speculative fiction novel of the year (The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead), a new novel by a former Clarke Award winner (Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan), a new work by an author nominated for multiple BSFA, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards (Central Station by Lavie Tidhar) and a Locus Award nominated novel by an established and talented, but somewhat overlooked writer (After Atlas by Emma Newman). It’s also a nicely diverse shortlist, ranging from space opera and military SF via dystopian fiction to alternate history. The writer demographics are diverse as well — after the debacle of the all male, all white shortlist in 2013, in spite of a jury consisting of several women — and include three men and three women, two writers of colour, at least two LGBT writers and one international writer. At the Guardian, David Barnett also reports on the 2017 Clarke Award shortlist and praises its diversity…
(14) NONREADERS DIGEST. At Lady Business, Ira and Anna try to help readers evaluate one of the nominees for the Best Series Hugo by presenting “The Vorkosigan Saga in 5 Books”.
Ira
Friends! One of my favourite things made of words ever is up for the Best Series Hugo this year! That is correct, The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold is a Hugo Finalist. And I am here with the lovely frequent Lady Business guest poster forestofglory (Anna), a fellow Vorkosigan fan, to present you with two ways to skim the highlights of this series in 5 books each.
Anna
Five books is kind of an arbitrary cutoff, but it’s a lot fewer than 17!
Ira
Isn’t that right!
Now, you may have seen that your Hugo packet includes Borders of Infinity as the sole representative of the Vorkosigan Saga. This is a collection of novellas/short stories with some interstitial material that constitutes its own (very) short story. If Baen, the publisher, had to pick ONE book, this is not a bad choice, as it gives several interesting adventures and tones from this series. However, Anna and I think it doesn’t really cover the breadth of the series, and we’re here to fix that.
This post is intended for two audiences: (1) People who have never encountered a Vorkosigan book in their life, or maybe have read one or two but don’t really know the full series, so we can suggest a subset of the series that is readable by the Hugo voting deadline; and (2) Fans of the series so they can come argue with us about our picks. BOTH ARE SO WELCOME….
(15) PALATE CLEANSER. Need a change of pace before diving back into the Hugo Voter Packet? Maybe Short Story Squee & Snark can help. “The Thule Stowaway,” by Maria Dahvana Headley is their latest discussion pick.
“The Thule Stowaway,” by Maria Dahvana Headley. Novelette. Published in Uncanny Jan/Feb 2017.
Suggested by Mark Hepworth:
I love “secret history” style stories, which this combines with a carefully crafted nest of narratives.
This one has reactions all over the map, which should make for some interesting discussion!
Charles Payseur echoes our recommendation: “This story is something of a Master’s course in nested narratives, unfolding like a puzzlebox that defies reality and is much larger on the inside than it appears.”
Tangent Online reviewer Herbert M. Shaw calls it “overlong and burdensome,” and “a rejected plot from the Doctor Who storyboards, featuring Edgar Allan Poe.”…
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Lovestreams by Sean Buckalew on Vimeo explains what happens when two people who have only “met” through IM messages step through a portal to “meet” in cyberspace.
[Thanks to Sam Long, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
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1) Interesting addendum from Scalzi:
(Interestingly but not entirely surprisingly, what they didn’t put in this interview transcript was the question where we were asked to offer our opinions on Amazon, which is the parent company of Goodreads. My answer to that was, basically, that Amazon had done some great things for my career and also had done some not so great things for my career, and that I don’t operate under the impression that Amazon cares about me more than it cares about itself. I suggested that other authors operate likewise.)
Not surprised that Amazon would edit out the remarks.
“Gosh, folks, I’m speechless!” —The Cowardly Lion
#2 — Brilliant! Must have some!
#3 — Brilliant!! Would listen to in a flash!
(2) NEED IT RIGHT AWAY.
A few years ago, a local gas station franchise did a loyalty scheme where for every x dollars you spent, you got a random DC superhero miniature a.k.a. BlokHedz. It became a bit of a craze.
(14) NONREADERS DIGEST.
Those are good choices, though if you haven’t already read them, beware spoilers…
(It’s not easy giving a good description of why the series is great without spoilers.)
TAKE THE TEST. I did worse than you, Mike–I only got 7 out of 16, because I marked “delete” on a heckuva lot more things than Facebook did. (Although I must have something of a black sense of humor, as I let the picture of Barbie with Ken’s head in the freezer remain.)
I guess I’m reading the Vorkosigan Saga ass-backwards, as I just started Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. However, I could not pass up a 76-year-old protagonist.
Wow, I wasn’t even intending to make a title suggestion–it was just a fancy way of saying ‘ticky’. Not that I’ll complain.
I got 10 of 16 on the FB mod test. It said that might be good enough for a second interview. But yeesh, after that sample, I’m pretty sure it’s a job I don’t want.
On the topic of “gothic”–it’s my understanding that the term, as applied to architecture, was originally supposed to be somewhat insulting. Which is a bit boggling, considering how awesome all those flying buttresses and stuff seem today. But apparently it was considered a bit pretentious and show-offy back in the day. It is bizarre how it eventually evolved into a description of The Cure and Peter Murphy’s Bauhaus and the like…
As for the Vorkosigan suggestions–I lean more towards Ira’s choices, though I’d probably say skip the shenanigans with the omnibus, and just start with Barrayar. Anna’s list is an interesting approach, though. Not what I would have chosen, but the reasons for the choice made me stop and think, so that was good.
6) That is a nice bag of rocks! Minus the rocks?
Cheesecake is the bestest american invention EVAH!
Germans have cheesecake, too, though ours is slightly different than the American version. Both are delicious, though.
One of my students, a young man from Syria (I teach German to refugees), got a job in a café and promptly fell for the cheesecake. One day, when we discussed compound words and cheesecake was one of the examples, he told his classmates, “Yes, I know cake with cheese sounds weird, but it’s so delicious.”
PS: Thanks for the link, Mike.
2- I want that Zoidberg so much.
5- My wife essentially lives in the middle of the Venn diagram of Trex and Horse fans so I showed her this and then didn’t get the computer back for a while. She’s not pleased about someone spooking horses intentionally, however I think that a person in a Trex costume might not be the worst thing an inner city carriage horse might encounter that day so we disagree.
And I agree of anything Cheesecake might is potentially the greatest american invention.
(5) On a related noted, I saw a dino doing a dyno recently. (Note: the person in the suit is Shauna Coxsey, the 2016 overall female bouldering world cup winner, and is currently (marginally) leading in the rankings so far this year)
Cheesecake is the bestest american invention EVAH!
So great that it traveled back in time so that Cato the Elder could include a recipe in his De Agricultura. (Includes 2 cheese-based cakes, libum and placenta. Placenta looks an awful lot like a baked cheesecake as we know it today except with a pastry crust instead of crumbs.)
Wasnt Cheesecake invented by two russian ladys in Leningrad?
Hope youre better, Mike! Because, you know, “A scroll a day keeps the Filers at bay” as they say.
The Pixel Scroll Was Invented By A Little Old Lady From Leningrad
Btw, I believe the reason for those “no masks” laws in SC and Charleston has to do with the Ku Klux Klan and their habit of wearing masks in public.
(15) PALATE CLEANSER.
While I can admire the evocative prose and the interesting nested story execution, this story is not my “thing”. I’m not sorry I read it, but it does not excite or enthuse me, either. I am sure that this is due to a deficit in my own reading taste. 😐
(3) TIME ENOUGH FOR CHEESECAKE LOVE.
I thought that $500,000 was a ridiculously-high goal.
Then I saw on the fundraising page that the menu in question is 8,000 pages long.
Okay, 4th book in the Rivers of London series finished.
Now with 90% less gratuitous lecherous digressions, zero cracks about the lesbian sergeant with the jar full of mens’ balls on her desk, and not a single temptation to hurl the book at the wall with very great force. So yay!
But that ending is a heartbreaker.
Re T-rex, my initial thought was the guy was an idiot who knew nothing about horses. Having read two stories, watched the video and looked at pictures, I can’t tell if this was incompetence or maliciousness. Those poor horses were so scared! Clearly good-tempered, because they just kept trying to back away.
ETA – I wouldn’t want to be a Facebook moderator, and they won’t want me either. I was 6/16.
(15) Hey, thanks for the link!
I’ve been a little dull on SSS&S for a couple of weeks, since I was traveling with family and had less free time than I’d anticipated (i had anticipated having zero free time). Back home now, and diving back in. 🙂
This Scroll contains even more endearingly weird stuff than usual.
2) I’ll probably pick up Kirk and Spock, if they aren’t outrageously priced. The others not so much — I’m funny about collectibles, I only pick them up if they appeal to me personally.
7) I already know I don’t have the temperament to be a moderator, unless it’s on my personal blog.
@ JJ: In the very first clip from that collection. you can see Chekov smirking as he looks back down at his board. I don’t know about the other clips, but in that one I definitely think he was putting them on!
(7) TAKE THE TEST. Tough without knowing the guidance they’re given, but (trying to think like Facebook) I got a second interview with 11/16.
ETA: Just to make sure it’s clear – I was trying to guess what Facebook did – not doing what I might do if I were in charge.
@JJ: LOL at that clip compilation. I swear, I’ve seen most (if not all) of TOS, but I didn’t recognize most or all of those lines. And congrats on making it to book 4 – I’m only half a dozen chapters into book 4 so far (my pace is mostly controlled by the audiobook & my only listening to/from work – so I lost 3 hours last week ‘cuz I was sick!). I’m glad you no longer felt like throwing the book against the wall with very great force!*
* Er, does that mean you only wanted to throw it with light force? 😛
There’s a swedish cheesecake, but I’ve never learned to like it.
(7) TAKE THE TEST
I only got 10 despite reading an article yesterday detailing how their mod policies work.
(12) BACK IN THE LIMELIGHT
I’m glad to be reading some discussion of Becky Chambers that doesn’t sneer at her books for being too nice, too cosy, too bourgeoisie, too commercial, etc etc. I mean, would the Grimdark version of Planet where everyone hates each other and characters can’t resolve anything be a significantly better book just because it’s not as nice?
Interestingly, having typed that I now wonder if A Closed and Common Orbit actually is the darker Planet? Certainly the origin story for one character comes from a much darker place, albeit they’ve resolved a lot of it by the ‘present day’ of the book.
(14) NONREADERS DIGEST
This is a fun idea. They have a couple of good thematic lists there, of which Ira’s is clearly best because it correctly includes a Cordelia book 🙂 But what if you wanted to be ridiculous and miss out on Cordelia by only reading about Miles? Here’s my Miles Five, in which I’m including the collection Borders of Infinity because it’s already in the packet. The idea is to go through all the stages of his character development.
(I’m not sure this is really spoiler-y beyond disclosing that this is a long series where the main character develops, but I’ve rot13ed just to be safe.)
1) Zvyrf ungrf Oneenlne: Gur Ibe Tnzr -Guvf zrnaf vtabevat Gur Jneevbe’f Ncceragvpr, fb lbh zvff fbzr vzcbegnag frghc, ohg V guvax Gur Ibe Tnzr vf n zhpu fgebatre obbx. Lbh nyfb trg Gur Zbhagnvaf bs Zbheavat sebz Obeqref bs Vasvavgl va guvf pngrtbel, juvpu urycf frg hc gur ceboyrzf jvgu Zvyrf naq Oneenlne.
2) Pninyvre Zvyrf: Ynolevagu naq Obeqref bs Vasvavgl, sebz Obeqref bs Vasvavgl – guvf crevbq vf Zvyrf nf n serrjurryvat cynlobl, jurer ur vf ershfvat gb pbasebag nyy uvf ceboyrzf jvgu Oneenlne (be Oneenlne’f ceboyrzf jvgu uvz) ol pnerrevat nyy bire gur tnynkl. Ynolevagu vf n sha ebzc, naq Obeqref bs Vasvavgl vf unaqf qbja zl snibhevgr Zvyrf fgbel, cnegvphyneyl orpnhfr bs gur qvssrerag ivrjcbvag.
3) Gheavat Cbvag: Oebguref va Nezf – ol gur raq Zvyrf npprcgf gung ur unf gb znxr fbzr erny pubvprf nobhg uvzfrys naq Oneenlne. Cyhf, fyvtugyl nofheq cybg gung npghnyyl znxrf gbgny frafr va gur pbagrkg bs nyy gur onpxfgbel.
4) Zvyrf svaqf uvzfrys: Zrzbel – Zvyrf svaqf n cynpr ba Oneenlne, naq ubj gb fbyir n ceboyrz jvgubhg guebjvat n syrrg bs zrepranevrf ng vg.
5) Zngher Zvyrf: Xbznee – bxnl, fb Zngher Zvyrf vf n irel eryngvir grez, ohg guvf vf uvz orvat frafvoyr naq fbegvat guvatf bhg jvgubhg rzcyblvat n qnatrebhfyl ynolevaguvar cybg. V npghnyyl guvax N Pvivy Pnzcnvta vf gur zhpu orggre obbx va guvf crevbq, ohg vg jbhyqa’g znxr n yvpx bs frafr jvgubhg ernqvat Zveebe Qnapr be Xbznee, naq V’ir eha bhg bs obbxf….
@JJ
Yeah, the ending of #4 is a bit of a twist
Hampus Eckerman: Huh. I wonder if it’s the “frozen, then heated in an industrial kitchen” variety not entirely uncommon in schools (well, “not uncommon”, back in my day) that put you off? I must confess that it’s not a dish I frequently miss, but Right Now, I could be somewhat sarcastic at someone for a plate (so not nearly enough to “murder for”, but definitely more than “would not mind”).
(3) The One True Cheesecake is the ricotta pie with a pastry crust, not a crumb bottom as other versions incorrectly have it. Cato the Elder was on the right track. This version, which is Right, and also delicious, has been passed down through many generations of my mother’s Sicilian family.
Other versions, while not Right, can be very tasty, though, so extensive research into Almost Right may be found necessary by anyone not lactose intolerant, or, as we call it in my family, Cursed By The Gods.
(5) Of course it’s illegal to frighten the horses, but Tom Galloway has silenced my original impulse to be disturbed at the ban on masks.
3) Cheesecake
An ongoing theme at the Australian podcast Galactic Suburbia has been explaining what is and what isn’t cake, including Cheesecake, and, thanks to me bringing it up, Boston Cream Pie. Apparently the latter is not to be found or even heard of in Australia. And apparently, the American notion of pie is not common in Australia either…
14) I like this. With such a large and varied series as Vorkosigan is, evaluating it as best series for someone who hasn’t read the series is really tough. At least, if you were dedicated, reading the entirety of the Rivers of London or the Craft Sequence is pretty doable. Reading all of Vorkosigan is probably beyond the practical time budget of most people who haven’t already investment in the series.
Ingvar:
Long time since I tried, but I have never found any version of it that I liked.
And seated there he gave his son his commandment."Go forth," he said, "before these days of mine are over, and therefore go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know, till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is only told of in song."
"It is far from here," said the young man Alveric.
"Yes," answered he, "it is far."
"And further still," the young man said, "to return. For distances in those fields are not as here."
"Even so," said his father.
"What do you bid me do," said the son, "when I come to that palace?"
And his father said: "To wed the Scroll of Pixel's daughter."
So I am assuming that JCW was prompted to write a story about a world where the filthy SJWs won and Political Correctness became law, because Teddy (and he) thought it would be funny to force it onto the Hugo ballot so that all the filthy SJWs were forced to face the consequence of their actions. Also, Asimov pastiche.
Is all his writing like that these days? Obviously the thought that driving people to read something that was actually, y’know, good, might prompt some people to actually pay money for his future works, did not occur.
NickPheas: So I am assuming that JCW was prompted to write a story about a world where the filthy SJWs won and Political Correctness became law, because Teddy (and he) thought it would be funny to force it onto the Hugo ballot so that all the filthy SJWs were forced to face the consequence of their actions.
My impression is that the story is actually intended to be a “sincere” one. Which is creepy and scary, because ephebophilia and child torture and murder being portrayed as virtuous reactions is seriously whacked-out.
They labelled the pr0n story in the packet with a Content Warning. I think that his story should have been labeled as well — because it’s much worse than pr0n. 😐
2) Oh no, they are so cute, and everyone likes them, and yet… I’m going to have to say it… I can’t not say it… *whispers* where are the women …
3) I’m an equal opportunity cheesecake consumer, though I will say I’ve had more substandard baked cheesecakes than I have no bake/gelatin ones. My family’s favourite is a no-bake Mars Bar* Cheesecake recipe which I believe we have the Australians to thank for – it’s surprisingly sophisticated for a chocolate bar dessert!
I do already have a standing donation to UNHCR… wonder if Neil and co. will let me count that towards his total?
5) Has South Carolina woman ever met Florida man? Sounds like they would get along great!
7) 10 out of 16…
12) This is good stuff. Closed and Common Orbit was a lot more My Thing than Central Station is, but the parallels between the two are interesting to see laid out.
14) Some interesting choices! As someone who enjoyed some of the standalone books (Ethan of Athos is definitely the best of the first three published *ducks tomatoes*), I think a reader who is starting from zero, wants enough to judge but also doesn’t want to preclude later enjoyment of the Miles arc could do much worse than Cordelia’s Honour -> Falling Free -> Ethan of Athos -> Borders of Infinity. I read Borders first and its a good introduction to Miles’ basic internal conflict without spoiling anything really meaty in the early novels (personally I wouldn’t consider the Dendarii to be a spoiler, though YMMV). If we’re counting Cordelia’s Honour as one book and one has a decent tolerance for the internal monologue of thirsty young men, throw in Cetaganda as well, for the same reason as Borders and because it’s a mystery with lots of political shenanigans and unconventionally awesome women, and you can’t go wrong with those.
That way you’ve got some highlights of Bujold’s writing (Barrayar, Mountains of Mourning, arguably Falling Free), a sense of most of the major players in the early and mid series, a sample of the genres the books skip between, and a promise that it gets even better if you stick with it. But you also still have the opportunity to follow Miles’ main arc from the Warriors Apprentice to Memory to Civil Campaign and beyond at your own pace, without ruining any of the big reveals.
*USians, this is like a Milky Way candy bar but yummier 🙂
Cheesecake the best American invention ever? No way. The best American invention ever is without a doubt the dry martini.
Martini (cocktail)
5) First thing I thought about: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html
(7) 12/16 for me.
I suspect that is because I would need far more context that documents a negative purpose before hitting the ban-hammer.
Regards,
Dann
Arifel: We do have Mars Bars in the USA. I buy a bag or two of Mars Minis for Halloween every year.
(7) 8/16
I was obviously rather more prepared to allow archive images through. As Dann says, context is everything. An image of Hitler as a tutonic knight with a swastika banner is OK in a discussion of Nazi iconography, not if randomly posted to the timeline of friends wishing each other a happy Hanukkah.
#14 NONREADER’S DIGEST
Ahem. As one who had not read the series until recently, I have to thank Mike and the Filers for their suggestions on which of these to read. I also stuck to what I could get from my library, which was actually pretty good, with the magic of interlibrary loan.
So these are what I have read so far:
* Borders of Infinity
* Komarr
* The Warrior’s Apprentice
* Memory
* A Civil Campaign
In general, I can see why this is a Best Beloved series. I think it would have been a BB for me if I had read it when I was younger. My fave so far is A Civil Campaign, because it is really funny!
::ducks and covers::
@Beth. Why are you ducking on liking A Civil Campaign?
BUTTERBUGS!
Speaking of Martini:
Roger Moore died 🙁
RIP
2) Oh no, they are so cute, and everyone likes them, and yet… I’m going to have to say it… I can’t not say it… *whispers* where are the women …
This.
@Beth
You’ve probably had a pretty good flavour of the Miles part of the books from those.
I was thinking that A Civil Campaign wouldn’t work so well without knowing the Mark backstory, but it sounds like I was wrong!
Moonraker wasn’t my first Bond, but it was the first one I saw in the theater. RIP, Sir Roger.
I missed one! I read Mirror Dance as well, so I got to know about Mark.
And yes, the Butterbugs were awesome.
RIP Roger Moore.
Awww, Sir Roger Moore has died. Damn. RIP
@Cat Rambo
There are more female characters in some of the other boxes. Most of the other boxes are reasonably SFF related. I saw a more complete display at a local B&N and that issue was less pronounced.
That being said, these collectibles reflect leading characters and there’s a bit of a historical imbalance in terms of lead character genders.
To quote that famed philosopher, Lepus Cimex, “Why did they put the Sout’, so far Sout’?”
Regards,
Dann
Arifel on May 23, 2017 at 4:23 am said:
Yeah that is odd. That set seems really imbalanced, and one of the two women (Trinity) are retailer exclusive.
The rest of their collections appear similarly balanced with most having 2-3 female characters at best, with the exception of Disney, Steven Universe, Despicable Me 3, and Batman.
I didn’t realize they’re also Funko, which seems to make a lot of money making smaller and smaller versions of characters I like.
(4) IT NEEDED SAVING?
You could make the argument that it did. When Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire, Star Wars was probably at the nadir of its popularity. Return of the Jedi was well in the rearview mirror and to that point the hypothetical ‘other 6 Star Wars movies’ that Lucas originally meant to make were dubious at best. There were occasional video games and comic, but Dark Empire and Heir to the Empire were published in 1991 and sort of rejuvenated a franchise that had been sitting in the doldrums for quite awhile.
Arifel on May 23, 2017 at 4:23 am said:
@Matt —
In the spirit of pedantry I just have to point out that there are actually 3 women in the set. Because Alien, of course, is female. 🙂
Also, if you really want to stretch it, the Borg character is pretty much nonbinary. 😉
And the “facehugger” figure is of undetermined gender.