(1) TINGLE IN YOUR PACKET. Maybe this helps explain why the Hugo Voter Packet wasn’t released on May 23.
my story will have TWO WARNINGS in Hugo Awards packet, one for explicit content and one for spelling. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/oJPgfU3T0u
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) May 26, 2016
(2) RUNAWAY TRAILER. The Hollywood Reporter analyzes “’Ghostbusters’: How Sony Plans to Out-Slime the Online Haters”.
When Sony Pictures’ second trailer for its female-fronted Ghostbusters reboot appeared online May 18, fans initially had to find it on Facebook. The studio had switched from YouTube, which hosted the first trailer, in a deliberate effort to combat a cacophony of negative reaction emanating from a very vocal minority online.
With the YouTube trailer, bloggers could embed the player on their sites to congregate negativity on Sony’s official YouTube channel, a move akin to spraying toxic green slime all over the studio. As a result, the Ghostbusters teaser was dubbed the most disliked trailer ever — not the kind of buzz Sony or director Paul Feig want just months before the $150 million comedy’s July 15 release.
Given the high stakes riding on the franchise reboot starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, the studio was determined not to let the anti-Ghostbusters contingent mar the movie’s perception. “What tends to happen with a beloved property is the fanboy or the fangirl shows up and says, ‘How dare you remake this?’ ” says Sony domestic marketing president Dwight Caines.
But the umbrage taken has been even more pronounced than for the average reboot, and many believe it’s because Ghostbusters marks the first major film to get a female-centric redo (plans for others are in the works, from Ocean’s Eleven to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Gender politics is rearing its ugly head, some say, with even Donald Trump weighing in last year on Instagram: “Now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women. What’s going on?!”
To some extent, Sony was expecting negative reaction to the first trailer, which contained very few special effects scenes because they mostly weren’t ready. When the studio launched the first footage of Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man, it scored a 65 percent negative rating. For the 2012 reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, it was 60 percent negative. And Daniel Craig’s first James Bond film, Casino Royale, drew a 55 percent negative rating.
(3) TORCHWOOD. ScienceFiction.com tells about an audio reunion of the Torchwood stars.
Big Finish has been issuing new ‘Torchwood’ adventures and not only have the original actors been returning to provide their voices, but the stories are set before the third series ‘Children of Earth’ meaning that fan favorite Ianto Jones played by Gareth David-Lloyd is still alive in them.
Recently, Eve Myles, who played one of the show’s two focal characters Gwen Cooper announced she was retiring the role, but it appears she has one more go-round for the character. Myles will reunite with John Barrowman/Captain Jack Harkness, Kai Owen/Rhys Williams and David-Lloyd for the newest Big Finish miniseries ‘Torchwood: Outbreak’ which will be released as a three-part boxed set this November. Previously, the stars each headlined their own solo installments, except for Myles and Owen who appeared together in ‘Forgotten Lives’. But this will be the first time all four will participate together in one audio story.
(4) HUMBLE AT TWENTY-ONE. The Small Beer Press fiction HumbleBunde offers up to 21 books worth as much as $184.
Pay $1 or more for Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich, Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson, The Fires Beneath the Sea by Lydia Millet, Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks, The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett, Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand, Tyrannia by Alan DeNiro, The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories by Joan Aiken, and Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link. Pay more than the average price to also receive A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, Couch by Benjamin Parzybok, Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, The Entropy of Bones by Ayize Jama-Everett, Kalpa Imperial by Agelica Gorodischer, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge, and North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud.
Pay $15 or more for all of that plus Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop by Kate Wilhelm, After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh, and Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace.
The bundle supports charities and buyers can direct where the money goes — between Small Beer Press, Worldreader, and, if you’d like, a second charity of your choice via the PayPal Giving Fund.
(5) SFWA HANGOUT. SFWA President Cat Rambo announced a new series of online chats.
Starting May 30 at noon Pacific time, every two weeks I’ll be hosting a chat on Google hangouts talking about what we’re doing, what’s coming up, recent issues and achievements, and the state of the industry overall. The chat will be broadcast live as well as recorded for the SFWA Youtube channel, and will feature a small group (4-5 people) of SFWA officials, staff, volunteers, members, and other visitors as appropriate each time.
Both SFWA members and non-members are encouraged to submit questions and comments for use on the show. You can submit them by mailing them to [email protected] or by posting them here.
(6) SWIRSKY GUESTS. At Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Rachel Swirsky has written a meditative memoir piece about painful moments where lives intersect with oppression.
(7) WHAT MADE THEM MAD. University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) hosts “Aliens, Monsters, and Madmen: The Art of EC Comics” through July 10.
Aliens, Monsters, and Madmen celebrates the achievements of the most artistically and politically adventurous American comic-book company of the twentieth century: Bill Gaines’s Entertaining Comics, better known to fans all over the world as EC. Specializing in comic-book versions of popular fiction genres—particularly Crime, Horror, War, and Science Fiction—the company did far more than merely adapt the conventions of those genres to the comics medium. In the case of the now legendary Science Fiction and Horror titles, Weird Science and Tales from the Crypt, the creators at EC actively extended those genre conventions, while simultaneously shaping the imaginations of a subsequent generation of writers and filmmakers, such as Stephen King, George Lucas, John Landis, George Romero, and Steven Spielberg.
EC also broke new ground in the realm of satire as the publisher of MAD, an experimental humor comic that parodied the very stories that were elsewhere its stock in trade. EC Comics offered a controversial mix of sensationalism and social provocation, mixing titillating storylines and imagery with more overtly politically progressive material. Alongside comics about beautiful alien insect-women who dine on unsuspecting human astronauts, for example, they also tackled subjects that other popular media of the era avoided, including racism, corruption, and police brutality. As a result, the company attracted the disapproval of parents, politicians, and moralists everywhere, and was ultimately driven out of business as the result of a conservative “anti-comics” backlash in 1954. (Only MAD survived, by becoming a magazine in the mid-1950s; it remains in print today.)
The exhibition is curated by Ben Saunders, professor, Department of English. Saunders curated the JSMA’s previous comics exhibitions, Faster Than A Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero (2009) and Good-Grief!: A Selection of 50 Years of Original Art from Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts (2012).
The JSMA is located on the University of Oregon Campus in Eugene.
(8) COOKE. Thomas Parker writes an appreciation of the late Darwyn Cooke at Black Gate – “Hope, Heroism, and Ideals Worth Fighting For: Darwyn Cooke, November 16, 1962 – May 14, 2016”
I was surprised and deeply saddened on May 14th to learn of the death from cancer of comic artist and writer Darwyn Cooke, at the much too early age of 53.
Over the past decade, I have gradually lost most of my interest in current comics, especially ones from DC and Marvel that deal with long established characters; the medium (always with some honorable exceptions, of course) has largely grown too violent, too jaded, too self aware and self indulgent to produce much work that engages me.
The shock for shock’s sake taboo breaking, the endless restarts and reboots, the universe-altering big events that promise to “change everything” — they all long ago began to merge together into one dull blur, like an old chalkboard that has been written on and erased too many times. How often can you really “change everything” before you are in danger of eradicating the ties of memory and affection and shared history that connect a medium and its audience? That’s what happened with me, anyway. What the hell — maybe I’m just getting old.
There are exceptions though, as I mentioned, and Darwyn Cooke was one of them. I was always eager to see anything he produced; when a new Cooke was in my hands, I felt as young as I did the day I bought my first comic book (House of Mystery 175, July-August, 1968).
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- May 25, 1953 – It Came From Outer Space premieres. Although credited to Harry Essex, most of the script, including dialogue, was copied almost verbatim from Ray Bradbury’s initial film treatment.
- May 25, 1977 — George Lucas’ Star Wars was released.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born May 25, 1944 — Frank Oz (born Richard Frank Oznowicz), age 72.
(11) CONNECTIONS. On Twitter yesterday comedian and CNN United Shades of America host W. Kamau Bell mentioned that he and N.K. Jemisin are cousins together in Mobile, Alabama.
Here’s the Tweet. (And Jemisin dropped in with a couple of replies.)
So proud of my cousin! We were just 2 weird kids in Alabama talking about doing big things. https://t.co/emHiaO0Vxq https://t.co/cp1wuEX0R8
— W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) May 24, 2016
Admittedly @nkjemisin's big thing was always to be a fantasy writer whereas mine at the time was to be bitten by a radioactive spider.
— W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) May 24, 2016
(12) A HEARTFELT APOLOGY. From The Jimmy Kimmel show.
The most recent episode of “Game of Thrones” was particularly upsetting for fans of the show. Even now people are still talking about the shocking turn of events at the end of the show – and producers DB Weiss and David Benioff took the extraordinary step of apologizing to their fans.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Marc Criley for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ian P.]
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Ninja!
Furiously downloading the book bundle to my e-reader….
psecond!
[godstalk]
Every time I see TINGLE, I smile. That man is a treasure.
LOL! I feel like I should send Tingle a thank-you card for making the Puppy mess amusing instead of just very, very tiresome.
fifth?
::ticky::
Also, Second Fifth!
Retro-fifth
At a minimum, sixth!
Disney theme park fans tracking the integration of Star Wars into the company will want to check out the last couple pictures in the photo section of this week’s WDW update at MousePlanet.
(For the rest of you: the art is Star Wars-ified versions of some well-known rides.)
4) This comes at the wrong time of the month for me, but it’s fortunately going for two weeks, so I’ll get it in about a week. That’s got some great books in there. One or two I think I have in printed copies, so getting ebooks isn’t a problem with them in any case.
I don’t usually read porn, but I may just have to read the Tingle just to see if it’s as funny as Tingle’s comments have been thus far!
That was a moving piece by Swirsky.
This comment is not Fifth. It is just Best.
(1) TINGLE IN YOUR PACKET. – Sooooo…a “Tigger Warning”?
(1) Definitely not voting Tingle this year, but next year’s looking good for him.
So…erm…I really am not trying to sell anything by posting this link. I don’t want anyone to buy; I just think the Filers are the sort of people that might appreciate looking at this thing what I did.
etsy link
@Robert Reynolds
Yeah, I’m really curious about Tingle’s story as well.
(6) That’s a lovely little blog post by Rachel Swirsky. Thoughtful and poignant.
@jayn. Quite striking! The descriptive text is nearly as great a work of art as the item itself. 🙂
The more I hear from Tingle the more I like the guy. I’m also thinking next year might be his year.
I just finished reading the Rachel Swirsky piece. Life is hard enough for most people without going out of your way to injure someone because, to you, they are “different”.
The more I see of people, the better I like animals.
Mike, you may be interested in linking to this video interview of Bill Campbell on Fast Forward.
http://www.fast-forward.tv/fast-forward-284-interview-with-bill-campbell
Clicky.
Review of Fifth Season posted.
(1) TINGLE IN YOUR PACKET.
I feel like there was a missed opportunity to use “package” here. Yes, I’m twelve.
According to one San Francisco bookstore’s promo email, Tingle’s already a Hugo Winner (I emailed a correction that he’s just made the shortlist, when the actual results will be announced, and a short explanation of why he’s on the shortlist. The email was acknowledged).
@Robert Reynolds:
I don’t usually read porn, but I may just have to read the Tingle just to see if it’s as funny as Tingle’s comments have been thus far!
IMO, “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” was, apart from the classic SF inspiration that it wears on its sleeve, not the peak of his craft. It was selected to mock Rachel Swirsky, rather than to showcase Tingle at his Tinglest. But “Slammed in the Butt By My Hugo Award Nomination” was wonderfully off-the-wall and surreal and quite funny. Mark Oshiro read it live at some convention, you can find his reading on Youtube. (That has the added benefit of cutting the embarrassment factor with some group comedy, if you’re not a reader of explicit fiction.)
Star Wars as a single frame. I think of it as a 2D vertical scroller (and given it’s composed of pixels, too, is entirely apt to mention it here).
Soon Lee: Star Wars as a single frame.
That is so amazing. I can’t believe how much effort the creator put into it. I don’t feel up to scrolling the whole thing right now — it will take quite a while — but I’d like to try it later on.
Another fun aspect of The Fifth Season is the choices people make in how to summarise the plot when they review it. 🙂
Is Rachel Swirsky promoting a new book or something?
Lela E. Buis:
She is campaigning against harassment.
@Lel E. Buis
Rachel Swirsky is promoting a fundraiser for LGBTI in reaction to the malicious harassment fictional story written about her & which the RPs put on the Hugo shortlist. I’m hoping the Hugo Admins don’t include it in the packet as it will only encourage more harassment works in the future.
Does somebody need your permission to link to Rachel?
Because you know what Google is, so if that was a real question you could easily find out.
(1) Obviously TWICE as good as all other Puppy nominations. Godspeed, Chuck.
(3) Wait, I can get “Torchwood” with Jack and Ianto, but no Gwen and Rhys? Why was I not informed of this earlier?
(6) Just lovely, like all of her work.
(7) If a Filer gets to see it, please report back!
@jayn: Brilliant (but you already knew that).
Annoying dickery for Alexandra Erin fortunately now resolved.
http://www.alexandraerin.com/2016/05/the-plot-thickens/
nickpheas: Annoying dickery for Alexandra Erin fortunately now resolved.
You know, I’m tempted to throw another bill in that kitty, because fuck whoever would pull such a low, despicable stunt.
Does somebody need your permission to link to Rachel?
Because you know what Google is, so if that was a real question you could easily find out.
Oh, okay. I think I get it.
Cribbed from elseweb:
If instead you prefer an Old School ASCII animation of STAR WARS…
@lurkertype
Well kind of. Jack and Ianto separately not together. At least not until July when there is a Jack/Ianto story. There have been some pretty good stories among the 8 or so I have already listened to.
Abigail Nussbaum wrote some very excellent Tweets on the problem with “Secret Nazis”:
It’s a point that speaks to me very strongly. To a large extent, it’s about what we’re paying attention to in our narrative; where we understand society’s problems as coming from; what we’re trying to achieve.
Interestingly, my first association was to another essay by Scott Alexander, “Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness”. Interesting because he’s actually less concerned than Nussbaum is about publicly attempting to pursue coordinated meanness; instead he sees public coordination as a winnowing mechanism – he says we can effectively ignore attempts at coordination, which may be outrage-inducing, but don’t actually represent more than a limited group.
He basically says that the problems are (A) people being mean in spite of public coordination against that meanness (in which case you can punish the defectors), and (B) societies in which the meanness has taken hold of the majority (which is awful but there might be little that can be done to fight it). It’s an interesting distinction, and there’s a common element, I think, with Nussbaum saying “the problem isn’t small groups of secret Nazis; it’s large groups embracing Nazism.”
Nussbaum and Alexander are each thought-provoking on their own, but juxtaposed with one another I find myself positively fascinated.
Oh, hey, I was sure that post would be flagged for moderation, for mentioning a certain 20th century political party often referred to in vigorous arguments.
So, awesome, people can actually talk about this!
4) “No,” I said to myself, “I don’t need to buy another one of these bundle deals – it seems so wasteful, given that I’ve got who-knows-how-many-megabytes of things that I haven’t got round to reading yet, already. I promised myself I would only consider these things if they had books in them that I’d heard of and that looked interesting… like Fire Logic, I’ve heard of that one, oh, and Archivist Wasp too… oh, and I was thinking about getting that Gorodischer book anyway… and North American Lake Monsters now I come to think of it… and Naomi Mitchison and Kate Wilhelm are always good… (Pause, accompanied by sounds of tabs opening, files downloading, debit card whimpering and pleading for mercy, etc.) … drat you and your tempting wiles, Mike Glyer!”
Oh, well. It’s something to do before the Hugo packet arrives, and it’s not like I’m the only person round here whose obituary will read “perished in an ill-advised attempt to climb Mount TBR without oxygen.”
I have not read A Game of Thrones nor its sequels and have only seen the very first episode of the show. Seeing the way fans are getting upset over nonsense does not give me any desire to join that cult.
1) Chuck keeps on giving. I’m in the “I’d prefer him under NA this year, but damn if I’m not enjoying the snot out of his antics” category.
@Paul_A,
I’m currently mad at one of the most prolific Fantasy authors of our time because he killed off a Horse (FOR NO REASON) when took over a series from an author who died.
Fans getting upset over made up nonsense is pretty much how Fandom works.
Steve Wright: it’s not like I’m the only person round here whose obituary will read “perished in an ill-advised attempt to climb Mount TBR without oxygen.”
I am so stealing that.
That’s how I feel about Dune.
I think we can all agree that fan enthusiasms I don’t personally share are cults.
Which reminds me that I’m thinking of holding a bracket for cult movies. Reason not the least because I want tips on what I have missed. Will have to wait a few weeks though until I’m less choked at work.
@Cat @lurkertype
Thank you, that means a lot to me.
Hampus writes: I’m thinking of holding a bracket for cult movies.
@NickPheas
Thanks for letting us know the situation with Alexandra Erin.
@Kevin Standback
I read the two pieces you linked and I don’t see their relationship the same way you do. To me Nussbaum seems to be saying that coordinated meanness is–or should be–more scary than the occasional nut. Alexander seems to be saying that coordinated meanness–of which one would have the include the Nazis as an example if this is going to be generally relevant–at least provides a society where everyone understands the rules and what to do to stay on the right side of them, and this makes for a better life for more people (I guess?) than a society in which the “rules” are in flux and you never know what will get you in trouble.
I am…not sure I agree. One can actually make an argument that in cases where meanness can get physical the numbers are with him (see The Better Angels of Our Nature for a deeper exploration of how percentage of human deaths resulting from violence have declined over time.). But still.
Especially when he includes shaming promiscuity (which, excuse me for noticing, is nearly entirely directed against women and in practice is used to keep women subordinate) as some kind of arguably laudable goal and he’s just arguing with the scattershot nature of the *method*. I wonder what kind of draconian oppression (“coordinated meanness”) the Puritians directed against women to make their out of wedlock birth rate “near zero.” I can think of several ways to achieve that, and a society that included witch hunts directed largely against women wouldn’t have shrunk from the darkest of them.
Given the number of responses to the post this person seems to be a fairly influential individual. Hmm.
I don’t think that’s really what he’s saying.
Better to have one set of rules that trigger meanness than two or more sets of contradictory rules that trigger meanness from different people. Public shaming of people who have sex outside marriage is better than having one bunch of people who will condemn you for premarital sex and another group of people who condemn you if you don’t have premarital sex. And if you can’t get most people to agree on what people should be shamed for, then no shaming is allowed.
He’s not taking any position on whether particular instances of shaming – for sex, or diet, or religion, or greed, or … – are good or bad, that’s a separate argument. But
The more I hear fans talking and writing about STARWARS the better I like animals. And books about animals.
The book bundle is very tempting, but at present I am in the market for cheerful works with minimal angsting, since we appear to be living in a dystopia* already.
Can anyone comment on the contents from this admittedly somewhat bizarre perspective?
* Ok, I may be overstating it a bit but you get my drift…