(1) HANG ONTO YOUR TOWEL. Britain’s Radio 4 has provisionally ordered a six-episode Hitchhikers sequel.
Radio 4 has commissioned a new series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, over a decade since the last series aired.
It will become the sixth series for the sci-fi comedy on radio, with the show’s last run – Series 5 – having broadcast in 2005.
Expected to be titled ‘The Hexagonal Phase’, the British Comedy Guide understands that the new episodes will primarily be based around the book And Another Thing….
This news comes after Towel Day, the annual celebration of the work of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams. The writer, who launched the hit series on Radio 4 in 1978, died in 2001.
In 2009 author Eoin Colfer was commissioned to write And Another Thing… featuring the same characters as seen and heard the previous radio series and books written by Adams. Although Colfer had the blessing of the creator’s widow, the announcement proved to be controversial at the time. Colfer has recognised that there was “semi-outrage” at the idea of another author contributing to the series, but he has been pleased by the reaction the book has since publication.
(2) THEY SAID NO. Esquire shows “This is What The Lord of the Rings Would Have Looked Like With Its Original Cast”.
7. Liam Neeson as Boromir
Details on this one are a little sketchy, so let’s file it under woulda, coulda, shoulda. “I have a particular set of skills… and a big ancestral horn.”
(3) HVP WARNINGS. Vox Day told his readers there will be warning labels on two items in the Hugo Voter Packet (the one for Tingle has already been reported here.)
The WorldCon convention has also issued at least two other “warning labels” to two other Hugo-nominated works in the packet, one a Best Related Work by Moira Greyland, the other a Best Short Story by Chuck Tingle.
(4) BEYOND CHARACTER POSTERS. ScreenRant has nice, large images: yesterday, “Star Trek Beyond: Jaylah & Bones Character Posters Released”, and today, “Star Trek Beyond: Spock and Chekov Character Posters”.
[The] the studio has unveiled two more posters that are obviously meant to highlight the film’s action quotient and its (new) cast of characters – two elements that have appealed to summer blockbuster fans over the series’ seven-year run thus far, and which Paramount clearly is banking on happening yet again. Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard McCoy is featured in one of the posters, while series newcomer Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service, the currently-in-production Mummy) as the mysterious Jaylah takes center stage in the other (see below).
(5) GENERATION HEX. At Observer, “A Millenial Reviews: ‘Star Trek’ Is a Blantant, Boring Rip-Off of ‘Star Wars’”.
I recently watched Star Trek because I never actually watched it growing up (I was busy having sex and hanging out with my friends after school) so I decided to marathon The Original Series. Let me tell you, good Yeezy almighty, Star Trek sucks earbuds. Now I’m a total geek, but I don’t understand how anyone can be expected to actually watch this stuff. Every episode is an hour long. Do you understand how long an hour is? That’s half of a podcast. If I don’t have 10 minutes to listen to Marc Maron talk about his dead cats then I don’t have 60 hours to watch a dudebro white-privilege his way across the galaxy in a deep V-neck. I tried though.
(6) ARISTOTLE! Atlas Obscura carries a Greek report that Aristotle’s tomb has been found.
A group of archaeologists in Greece say they have found the lost tomb of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and likely world’s first true scientist….
The archaeologists had been digging for 20 years at a site in the ancient northern Greece city of Stageira, where Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. Aristotle died 62 years later in Chalcis, about 50 miles north of Athens.
Ahead of the official announcement, the Greek Reporter has some more details on the tomb, saying that “literary sources” say that Aristotle’s ashes were transferred there after his death. It is located near the ancient city’s agora, apparently intended to be viewed by the public.
From the Greek Reporter
The top of the dome is at 10 meters and there is a square floor surrounding a Byzantine tower. A semi-circle wall stands at two-meters in height. A pathway leads to the tomb’s entrance for those that wished to pay their respects. Other findings included ceramics from the royal pottery workshops and fifty coins dated to the time of Alexander the Great.
Will R. asks, “I wonder if the tombstone reads, ‘Here Truths Aristotle.’”
(7) BIRDS OF A FEATHER. Scott Tyrell’s pictures of great authors as owls is heavy on British fantasy writers – Rowling, Tolkien, and Pratchett among them.
(8) BIRTHDAY BOYS AND A BAT-GIRL
- Born May 27, 1911 –Vincent Price
- Born May 27, 1922 — Christopher Lee
- Born May 27, 1934 – Harlan Ellison.
Jason Davis of HarlanEllisonBooks.com figures the celebration is incomplete without people buying Harlan’s books and here’s his encouragement for ordering the latest volume of unfilmed scripts, Brain Movies 7.
If you’ve popped by HarlanEllisonBooks.com in the last couple days, you’ll have noticed that I surreptitiously announced that the sixty pages of bonus BRAIN MOVIES 7 content for those who pre-order will be Harlan’s unfinished motion picture adaption of his first novel WEB OF THE CITY; it’s called Rumble, as the book was known when this movie—which was to have starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello—was in development. It’s a very interesting adaptation and illustrates that Harlan was not averse to having a little fun with his own source material.
- Born May 27, 1935 — Lee Meriwether
(9) PUPPIES FOR PEACE. The Huffington Post explains the TV host’s advice — “Samantha Bee Bets On Adorable Puppies To Reconcile Bernie And Hillary’s Feuding Supporters”.
So, in a bid to stop the “Democrat on Democrat violence” that’s been taking over people’s social media feeds, Bee’s team have created a new website: TotallyObjectivePoliticalFacts.org.
Clicking on the link brings up a picture of an adorable animal, alongside a salient quote — such as, “Why can’t we all just get long?”
“Just post that link in any thread where your liberal friends are tearing each other apart and end the argument,” Bee said in a YouTube clip on Thursday.
“Seriously, Democrats, just look at a picture of a puppy and hug it out before it’s too late…”
“She might regret going there….” says Steve Davidson.
(10) PREPARING TO VOTE. First-time Hugo voter and game writer Martin Ralya outlines his approach.
Will I be able to read 100% of the Hugo nominees? Realistically, probably not. I’ll do my best in the time I have, though.
I vote in the ENnie Awards every year, and I don’t even attempt to read/play every nominated work — doing so would entail giving up too much of my time. Instead, I play/read the stuff that interests me, and vote for stuff I feel familiar with. Unlike the Hugos, the ENnies don’t offer up a voter packet, but I make a point of visiting nominated blogs and checking out nominated free products.
I also don’t feel obligated to read every Hugo-nominated work, because fuck the Rabid Puppy agenda. I have a horseshit filter, and you know what? It didn’t stop working when I became a Hugo voter.
If a nominated work stands on its own merits, like Seveneves does, I don’t care if it also appears on the Rabid slate. If a slated work doesn’t stand on its own, or if it advances or supports Rabid Puppy horseshit, it’s going below No Award on my ballot.
(11) RECOMMENDED. Rachel Swirsky finds another story to love — “Friday Read! ‘The Traditional’ by Maria Dahvana Headley”.
I’m a big fan of science fiction that takes vivid, strange images into the future. I think, actually, I always have — and if you look at a lot of classic SF, that’s what it’s doing. That’s obvious when reading someone like Stanislaw Lem, but I think it’s still true about folks who we consider more traditional now. It’s just that some of the weird images they used have been carried on in the conversation so far now that they’ve become standard, and have lost their newness. Stories like this, and space opera by people like Yoon Ha Lee, bring a contemporary disjunctive strangeness to the genre. I look forward to seeing what happens when the next generation gets bored with it.
If you like odd surrealism and lyrical writing, Maria Dahvana Headley is worth perusing.
“The Traditional” by Maria Dahvana Headley….
(12) CHINESE SF MOVIES. Linus Fredriksson has posted the “Chinese Science Fiction Fimography (1958-2016) with lots of links to films, some with subtitles. He explains some of his idiosyncratic choices.
Even though we are faced with some small hindrance when setting a date for the birth of science fiction film in China we are facing an even bigger obstacle when it comes to defining what science fiction really is. According to me science fiction film is a film which uses some form of idea, invention, geographical discovery to convey an image of an alternative society different from the one were living in now. So the appearance of futuristic technical gimmicks and/or inventions in the film is not necessary for defining a film as science fiction. On the contrary, some of the films I’ve watched has not gotten in to the list much because the science fiction elements in the movie is merely a way to get the story going and in the end they’re absent of context and doesn’t bring any further narrative development of the impact that scifi-gimmick might have had.
Take for example Bugs … a catastrophe film from 2015 which begins with a foreign scientist trying to develop a protein, in order to end starvation in the world, by experimenting with insects. Instead of relief for starving people he creates a giant bug which sends out smaller bugs that eat human beings and then returns to its host to feed it. The entire movie, except for the first minute or two, is about escaping these bugs and then killing the big bug. It’s lack of motivating the science in the film and being consistent with it, made me choose not to have the film in my list. It’s pretty much the same when it comes to the rom-com film Oh My God … but here I reasoned differently mostly because the film has been advertised as a scifi-comedy whenever I read something about it. Therefore Oh My God is on the list.
Yes, the genre labeling for the films in the list might be a bit arbitrary and inconsistent at times but that’s also why I’m writing this blog post so that other people can have the chance to have a second opinion on the selection of films. At the end of the list I will add all those films which has been labeled as science fiction but which I personally didn’t consider to fulfill the requirements of falling under that category.
(13) THE TOUGHEST AROUND. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog selects “6 of the Most Fearsome Warbands in Fantasy”.
Kailen’s Twenty, Snakewood, by Adrian Selby
This recent epic fantasy about a disbanded mercenary company plunged back into in their twilight years brings together an instantly iconic collection of gruff warrior types. The Twenty once turned back armies and toppled nations through chemical warfare, tactical cunning, and brute force, but the world has moved on. Kailen, their mastermind and leader, has gone into hiding, and the surviving members of this band of brothers are far past their prime, having retired to more peaceful pursuits or counting down their days working small mercenary contracts. When a shadowy assassin begins hunting them down, offing them one by one and leaving a single black coin on the bodies to signify an act of betrayal, and two of the Twenty, Gant and Shale, receive a desperate message from Kailen himself, they must embark on a journey to save their remaining friends from the legions of people who want their heads—but two past-their-prime swordsmen and an eccentric tactician may not be enough to turn the tide. The deeds of the Twenty were epic, but what truly makes them a warband for the ages is the chance to see what happens to a merc after the battles have ended.
(14) DESPERATELY SEEKING FRED’S TWO FEET. In Key West, they’re threatening to tow this car if they can’t find the owner.
The City of Key West, Fla., put out a call for help to find the owner of a most unusual illegally parked vehicle — a replica of a car from The Flintstones.
The city said in a Facebook post that a Stone Age vehicle resembling that driven by Fred Flintstone and company in the classic cartoon series (and live-action films) was found illegally parked without anyone around to claim the unique piece of property.
How long do you figure it’s been overparked, about 30,000 years?
[Thanks to Will R., John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, and Steve Davidson for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
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Kind of funny that Seveneves is the only one that is full length – it’d do better in the voting if it just had an extract, then it wouldn’t appear as repetitive 😉
I’ve read 4 out of 5 best novels, anyway, so unless the Butcher blows my socks off (unlikely) the top three and bottom one (below no award) are already fixed.
Whoops, cross posted that, sorry. That’ll teach me not to refresh before clicking the Post Comment button!
Do do dee do-do
@Chris S: See my two comments upthread; Seveneves is not the only full-length novel there. The Fifth Season is, as also another one (check the last page of Uprooted) – you can ask for the full version.
@Chip Hitchcock: Gotcha, thanks. (Also: Boyfriend, not girlfriend.)
@Hampus Eckerman: Re. this:
LOL!!! Hmm, I’m not sure I can properly evaluate what’s apparently a different version than the nominated work! 😉
@Charon D.: You missed my comment upthread; another novel is also complete. The Fifth Season (I didn’t name it, sorry) is over 400 pages and includes the end stuff (like excerpts from other novels). Also, as I mentioned upthread – check the last page of the others; one has an offer on it. 😉 But still, I can guarantee that if a 100-200 page excerpt doesn’t leave me champing at the bit for the rest, it’s not Hugo-worthy, so for me, getting only a very large sample is fine. I’d prefer the whole thing, sure! Of course, some categories (e.g., Graphic Novel) don’t include all items – Dramatic Presentation includes nothing, naturally. Surely an excerpt is better than nothing? No offense intended.
BTW other stuff was in multiple formats, not just Tingle’s story, and IMHO his cover isn’t professional looking. YMMV. 😉 “Dr. Tingle” is probably the best name, though. 😉
@David Langford: Heh, I guess the people complaining about no PDF don’t understand there are EPUB readers for all platforms? Anyway, I’m just asking for EPUB – didn’t mean to say or imply people shouldn’t include PDFs, though IMHO they’re a lot less useful. And I do understand it’s more work depending on the source, but most things in the packet have electronic sources and simple layouts and no graphics. So, print zines aside, it’s really not much work to add an EPUB for a short story, for example.
But I do appreciate everything included in the packet, and if I sound ungrateful in my griping, I don’t mean to!
@kathodus: “I recently read a .doc version of Pratchett’s short story “The Sea and Little Fishes” on my computer and, literally, died.” Literally?!?!?! 😉 At least doc file (a) can be read on most mobile devices (I believe) and (b) is easier to convert to an ereader format, if that’s your preference, than a PDF. My preferences go EPUB > doc or other word processing > text > any other ereader format > PDF.
You’ve reminded me, though, I do have Calibre installed; I’m kinda skeptical of decent PDF to EPUB conversions, but I should see how it comes out.
@Eric Franklin: It’s whatever publisher send them; they may have different reasons. Hopefully none of the reasons are “it’s an excerpt,” which seems like a silly reason to me.
@IanP: CV as PDF makes sense, but that’s a wildly different purpose/format than a book, story, etc.
In fact The Fifth Season is full length as well, despite telling you it isn’t.
Is The Aeronaut’s Windlass in paperback yet? (It isn’t in the UK, but it might be possible to order a copy from foreign parts.) No way am I buying the hardback. It’s not that surprising that they give us only an extract, given that Butcher did the same last year, but it is annoying, given that he of all people, one might think, could afford to give away a few copies, perhaps unlike some of the other authors.
BTW if anyone hasn’t gotten to the Campbell part of the packet yet, there are a couple of novels in there, including de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade. I’ve read some praise for this, including from @dan665 here, so I’m looking forward to trying it out.
So, Ted Beale just showed up briefly in a video done for the Trump campaign: a unity speech at the Washington State Republican Convention. Of course I don’t think most people recognized him. But still.
Google WSRP unity speech. The video starts around 1:56.
@Andrew M: Butcher’s book hits paperback in the U.S. on July 5th, same as in the U.K. I believe voting closes at the end of July (???), though, so maybe that’s enough time for you? Anyway, FYI.
@Rose Embolism: Ah, you have Beale Watch today? Ping me when it’s my turn on watch. 😀
@Kendall: I had just come back to my browser to point out that Traitor’s Blade isn’t just an excerpt this year.
I liked the excerpt last year. I just never got around to getting the whole book.
Sandman: Overture‘s artwork looks quite low-res in the pdf they provided. The text is sharp but everything else is sorta blurred. I’m comparing it to a print copy I have and the art looks much sharper in that.
So if you have access to a library, do get it from there. J. H. Williams’ artwork is glorious in hi-res 🙂
I just read Traitor’s Blade, following on from comments on Ken Marable’s blog about the Campbell nominees… it’s fun, in many ways. It is completely implausible, but it’s fast-paced enough to slide past the dicey bits by throwing new incidents at the reader all the time. There’s things wrong with it, certainly – the protagonist is Valiant and Honourable and Skilled and Put-Upon and also Extremely Thick, in the best tradition of swashbuckling protagonists. But a) the Campbell award is supposed to go to new-ish writers in the early days of their careers, so you have to expect some rough edges, and b) anyway, the best definition of a novel I ever read is “a prose fiction of some length that has something wrong with it.”
Short version: Traitor’s Blade is a pretty decent debut novel, and de Castell is a legitimate Campbell nominee, IMHO.
@Andrew M: Butcher’s books are pretty easy to find in libraries here.
@Steve Wright: I imprinted early on Captain Blood, so I’m looking forward to Traitor’s Blade. Our weekly Champions game just got canceled; I’m hoping to make some reading time tonight.
You could almost hear the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped
Rose Embolism: I looked both at 0:01:56 and 1:56:00 and didn’t spot him. Perhaps I had the wrong video? At 0:01:56 there’s a wide shot of the convention hall with mostly the backs of heads of tiny unrecognizable people, and at 1:56:00 they’re introducing Cruz.
Switching gears to 2016 books (what am I thinking!), has anyone read Smoke by Dan Vyleta? Here’s the gimmick:
Here’s the rest of the description at Amazon.com, ending with, “. . . a narrative tour de force, a tale of Dickensian intricacy and ferocious imaginative power, richly atmospheric and intensely suspenseful.” Reading elsewhere, it sounds like almost-but-not-quite YA and one of those SFF books that (due to the author’s historical/litfic background) some people/sites contort themselves to avoid calling SFF (e.g., “genre bender”). 😉 Whatever; it’s a fantasy novel, the way I categorize things. He’d even writing a sequel called Soot.
Anyway, the gimmick and description intrigued me, and I liked the sample, so I’m curious if anyone’s read it and Has Thoughts they’d care to share. 😉 Sorry to ramble.
@Cally: the video starts around 1 hour 56 minutes, and is about ten minutes long. He’s in there at some point- I’m not about to go back and get a precise time.
Rose Embolism: Thanks, I’ll look again.
It would have helped on the recognising front if he’d remembered to pack the burning sword; it’s small things like this which can change the world…
Ok, he’s just after the two hour mark. About 2:00:10ish. Amusingly, he’s one of the few people in the video who’s actually got his name displayed; most are either anonymous people or, I suppose, people who you’re supposed to recognize on sight.
@Cally: His real name? Will anyone outside SFF recognize the name, though? 😉
Also: And here I thought he avoided this country.
His nom de net. And it’s a prerecorded video made up of snippets of other videos, and it looks like he’s sitting in a fancy dining room chair, so he’s probably in his home.
@Cally: Ah, okay, thanks!
FYI, folks, Tor.com is giving away everything they’ve ever published to one lucky winner. Open only to U.S. & Canada (excluding Quebec), for some legal reasons or other. You have to sign up for their e-mail newsletter via this page to enter; if you’re already signed up, this will still enter you.
I’m just the messenger (who just signed up, though I already get the e-mails). 😉
ETA: Don’t sign up – that way I have a higher chance of winning. 😉
Kendall on May 28, 2016 at 7:46 pm said:
Note: this is “published by Tor.com”, not published by Tor Books. So, it appears to be a list of 25 books. Which is certainly nice enough, but not quite the full-sized-shipping-container-full-of-books I imagined when I first saw the announcement! 🙂
@Xtifr: LOL, yeah, I would’ve phrased it quite differently in that case, and perhaps not even mentioned it. 😉 Wow, that would be quite a haul (shudder); Tor’s been around many years and is the most prolific U.S. publisher! Sorry to disappoint you. 😉
@Kendall
But literally and figuratively are now synonyms, so when I said I literally died I literally* meant I figuratively died. And I really meant I didn’t enjoy the experience all that much, aside from the story, which was wonderful.
* by the old definition of the term literally.
“Literally” is often used figuratively and has been for a long time. It’s effective hyperbole. And in most cases it’s easy to tell which sense of the word is meant.
A prescriptivist might inveigh against it but as in so many cases, they are wrong.
Maybe it’s petty, but it’s been a pet peeve of mine for a while. I have been trying to let go of it now that dictionaries have acknowledged that the meaning has changed, but I still occasionally make a bad joke about it.
I don’t always rail against changes in the language: I was happy when nauseous became synonymous with nauseated. I always felt like nauseous sounds like how it feels to be nauseated.
For some reason, “literally” is one that became popular to peeve about for no apparent reason. (You’d think that three centuries of attested use among writers considered to be our greatest would count for something, but peeving isn’t usually logic-based.) Me, I like to be different, so I peeve about people who use “really” for things that aren’t real. 😀
Zzzzing!
@kathodus & @Jim Henley: Thanks for over-explaining what I already knew, with what feels like a bit of extra snideness from Jim for some reason. Sorry I pushed your button, dude! FWIW, being aware how “literally” has changed doesn’t mean I can’t still poke fun when someone says something hyperbolic like that they “literally, died.”
Yup, and hopefully it’s easy to tell I didn’t believe kathodus was writing from beyond the grave, either. 😉 😉 😉 (Extra smileys so you know I’m kidding; of course I knew he was writing from beyond the grave.)
@kathodus: On the other paw, I didn’t know nauseous used to mean something else, so thanks for mentioning that. I’m probably someone who helped corrupt that word, whoops. Learn something new every day.
BTW I did understand you didn’t like the .doc file reading experience.
@Xtifr: Really? Another snide person? Thanks for that. 😉 😉 😉
Re: the Tor.com competition.
I have a suspicion that I played a role in the entry restrictions, for they didn’t used to be limited to USA & Canada people. I used to enter their giveaway competitions regularly, never winning anything. Until that one time I won a Vernor Vinge book. Very soon after that the restrictions were implemented. Coincidence? You decide.
I am literally decimated that as a sophisticated reader, words no longer mean what they mean. At this time we should table the motion and consider it a moot point. Oh the humanity!
My apologies, Kendall. I wasn’t intending to be snide at all, just clarifying I knew I was using the term… well, I guess not incorrectly… but making a joke.
Someone I knew – maybe a teacher, maybe an older family member, I’m not sure – was very adamant about the “proper” use of nauseated (feeling sick) vs. nauseous (something that makes you feel nauseated), and consequently, every time I tried to use that term I’d lock up and stumble and usually say queasy or something else. I was greatly relieved some years back when I read that saying “I feel nauseous” is appropriate even if you aren’t some sort of slimy horror from beyond.
Oh yegads… now I’m over-explaining my over-explaining. Extra apologies.
@Soon Lee: As long as that wasn’t a mute point. 😉 I would say you win, but, well, given you live outside North America. . . . (OW! I’m kidding!)
@kathodus: I was about to post something to say sorry to you three, ‘cuz I’m probably being too touchy.* I was kidding but it obviously failed, so I should’ve just not replied to the word stuff.
* Not touchy-feely, the other kind. No, not that one, sheesh! 😉 See, I just should not be allowed a keyboard today. Ahem.
Anyway, sorry if I got my feathers ruffled for no reason.
That last line came out a bit wrong. I mean: sorry I overreacted and got a little snippy.
@Kendall – We got Soon Lee’s literal decimation out of it, at least, right? I think I came off more pompous than I’d intended. Cascading kidding failure.
“Decimate” is a particularly interesting case. Pedants love to claim that it means killing one in ten (which is certainly what it meant back when it was Latin), but lexicographers have yet to turn up any recent instances of it being used with that meaning in English!
(And really, how often does that come up, now that the Roman Empire is gone?)
Although…when I saw a headline recently about some company laying off 9% of their world-wide workforce, I did comment to a friend that they’d obviously been elevencimated. 😀
@kathodus: I’m always happy when there’s a good decimation! Anyway, you were fine, not pompous – remember, the nauseous/nauseating thing was new to me, which invites more information. It’s all good.
@Xtifr: Isn’t that because everyone uses it wrong? 😉 (Kidding!) And LOL at your new word, though it appears to require higher math I’m not up to right now. (11, carry the 2, minus 9, alternate Thursdays….)
kathodus: ,I>Someone I knew – maybe a teacher, maybe an older family member, I’m not sure – was very adamant about the “proper” use of nauseated (feeling sick) vs. nauseous (something that makes you feel nauseated), and consequently, every time I tried to use that term I’d lock up and stumble and usually say queasy or something else. I was greatly relieved some years back when I read that saying “I feel nauseous” is appropriate even if you aren’t some sort of slimy horror from beyond.
I think that “nauseating” now serves the purpose that “nauseous” used to, before its meaning morphed.
@Kendall: (Red Rising copyright dates)
I think the significant part of that puzzle is the January 2014 release date. Books have to be printed and bound and shipped and stocked, all of which takes time. I still remember picking up a book “waaaaay back when” that was on the shelf in December YYYY but listed January YYYY+1 on the copyright page; it felt a little bit like time travel.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that this is a similar situation. The text was locked in 2013 and thus earned that copyright date, despite the intent that it would reach shelves early in 2014. There could even be legal implications that would make the 2013 date advisable.
@Rev. Bob: Thanks, actually, I got things turned around, so it’s weirder.
The hardback says Copyright 2014 Pierce Brown.
The paperback says 2014 Del Rey Trade Paperback Edition, and below that, Copyright 2013 Pierce Brown.
Wacky, but your explanation still may be right, and someone messed up what was in the hardback. Or something; my brain is getting tired here. 😉
This might be flogging a dead horse but…
My Word of the Day is “contronym”, or is it “auto-antonym”? Language. So confusing.
Correction noted re The Fifth Season, which I didn’t check very carefully since I actually bought that one well before the packet was released.
@Kendall:
Hmmm. Maybe the manuscript was finished in 2013 – which legally means it has a 2013 copyright, even if not registered – and the hardback said 2014 where it should’ve said 2013. Then, when the paperback came out, they fixed the error by putting the correct copyright date in there.
Boundary conditions are always wonky. I’ve come to accept this. 🙂
@Soon Lee: I didn’t know the word “contronym”; thanks! Aw, they don’t list “literal” on that page (I know, it’s not an exhaustive list).
I guess this would be the wrong place to say I find language pedants correcting everyone on the internet annoying? What I like about File770 is this stuff ends in apologies, new words, and jokes instead of flame wars.
Tsk, tsk, it is ‘pedants correcting everybody‘ not ‘pedants correcting everyone‘ because of this rule wot I just made up. 😉