(1) TO THE MAX. George R.R. Martin’s never-produced Christmas script for Max Headroom finally came to life — at the Jean Cocteau Theatre: “Merry Xmas to All, and to All a Good Max”.
Our week-long M-M-Maxathon concluded on Satuday night at the Jean Cocteau with a staged table reading of “Xmas,” my thirty-year-old unproduced (until now) MAX HEADROOM script. And I have to say, we went out on a high note. We had a sold-out theatre, and the audience seemed to enjoy every moment of the performance, laughing and applauding at all the right places. After thirty years, I was not at all sure how well my old script would hold up… especially with an audience of Max Headroom fanatics, many of whom had just sat through an entire week of Max, watching every one of the produced episodes. MAX HEADROOM was a really smart show, with some fine writing… tough acts to follow. But most of the viewers seemed to think “Xmas” was just as good as what had gone before, which gratified me no end…
Had a great time watching my Max Headroom script come to life! Read my breakdown of the whole night on my blog: #http://ow.ly/4G4Q30bXkLr pic.twitter.com/Jwj84K8taU
— George RR Martin (@GRRMspeaking) May 28, 2017
(2) SUPER SNIT. There was some huffing and puffing at the London Comic Con between a pair of famous actors although no blows were actually struck, no matter the New York Post’s headline — “Flash Gordon and The Hulk fight at Comic Con”.
It was a real-life battle of the superheroes at a comic fest over the weekend — when Hulk actor Lou Ferrigno got into a brawl with “Flash Gordon” star Sam Jones, and fans had to jump in and break them up.
“I don’t know if I was the real superhero, because if there was a clash of the Titans, I would have got squashed,” said Darryn Clements, who stepped in to help separate the musclebound actors at London’s ComicCon on Saturday, according to the Sun.
In fact, the duo were back at their adjoining tables the next day peaceably signing for fans.
(3) TROLL PATROL. A Twitter troll prompted a question during an MSNBC interview: “George Takei shuts down racist criticism of new “Star Trek’ series”.
“People are finding the time to hate on “Star Trek’ for having diversity,” host Joy Reid prompted. “What?”
“Well you know — today, in this society, we have alien life-forms that we call trolls,” Takei replied.
He explained: “And these trolls carry on without knowing what they’re talking about and knowing even less about the history of what they’re talking about. And some of these trolls go on to be presidents of nations.”
(4) URSINE DESIGN. I don’t know why this surprises me. Build-A-Bear offers a whole flock of Star Wars-themed products, including Darth Vader Bear.
Never underestimate the power of the dark side. Our exclusive Darth Vader Bear comes with his signature helmet, cape and control chest panel, permanently attached. Complete your destiny and add Darth Vader’s iconic Breathing Sound, Imperial March Song and his red Lightsaber.
(5) THE (DONUT) HOLE TRUTH. Scott Edelman writes: “Yes, I know, the William F. Nolan episode of Eating the Fantastic was only released Friday — but I couldn’t resist bringing live this donut celebration of Balticon as it was ending, to assuage the sadness of the guests who’d have to wait another year to return — Eating the Fantastic — 13 guests devour 12 donuts and reminisce about 51 years of Balticon.”
Since last July’s Readercon Donut Spectacular episode of Eating the Fantastic has proven to be so popular, I thought I’d try harvesting memories about another long-running con, and so plopped myself down in a high-traffic area of the Balticon hotel with a dozen Diablo Donuts. But first, I shared this photo on social media so the hungry hordes would know to be on the lookout for me.
(6) UNRAVELING THE SLEEVE OF CARE. Camestros Felapton, recognizing the world’s hunger for quality writing advice, nevertheless has decided to let them starve a little longer — “If You Want to Write a Book, Write Every Third 5 Minute Interval in a Period of 15 Minutes, Also Never Sleep”.
Here at Felapton Towers and via our leading Science Fiction/Fantasy/Military History publishing arm Cattimothy House, we meet and train many aspiring authors — people who we’ve turned from mere robotic vacuum cleaners into leading voices in modern fiction. We’ve compiled all our experience and writing advice into this one article that WILL help you turn your dreams into a book!
So you are about to write a book? Remember, on the day you start, millions of others will be starting a book also. Worse, BILLIONS of people live on Earth and many of them are also capable of thinking about starting a novel. Bear in mind that approximately only SIX books are published each year and of those FOUR are guide books to Disneyland. In order for your book to be published, it has to be better than the books those several billion people on Earth might write. Most of those people have more interesting lives than you and also probably nicer personalities.
Lesson 1: You have to defeat your rivals. Your book has to be better than your rivals. Looking at that the odds, that implies you’d be best trying to sabotage them from finishing their book. But how? Well, articles like this can help! Find a blog, a writers group or maybe a popular online media organisation and instead of writing a book, write an article full of bad writing advice! BINGO! All those billions of rivals will read it, follow your advice and either write a terrible book or give up in exhaustion…
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born May 29, 1889 — James Whale, who said: “A director must be pretty bad if he can’t get a thrill out of war, murder and robbery.”
(8) COMIC SECTON. Cat Eldridge recommends xkcd’s “Opening crawl”.
(9) HOW THE DRAGON ROLLS. Click to read Declan Finn’s recommendations for the Dragon Awards. Hey, you got to respect the guy’s frankness —
DISCLAIMER: I have not read all of the following. In some cases, I’ve had less and less time to read the more I write. And I’ve submitted to … a lot this year, so I’m a little all over the place. Also, there are some genres I just don’t read, usually. I tend to avoid Horror and Alternate History, even though there are some books that are going to change my mind (Brian Niemeier and Lou Antonelli, for example, for horror and Alt History, respectively). If you have thoughts or suggestions, then by all means, COMMENT. And now, UNLEASH THE DRAGONS
(10) WORDS & PICTURES. Joe Sherry resumes “Reading the Hugos: Graphic Story” at Nerds of a Feather.
We continue our Reading the Hugos series with a look at Graphic Story. I can’t help but compare a bit to the five finalists from last year’s ballot and only Invisible Republic would make the cut here. I was already impressed with Monstress, Saga, and Paper Girls as each collection was on my nominating ballot. Heck, I was impressed enough by Paper Girls to include both of the published collected editions on my ballot – so I was definitely glad to see the first book make the cut. Beyond that, this list is dominated by two publishers with an even split between Marvel and Image. Granting that these are generally some excellent books and were on my ballot, I still would have liked to have seen a wider variety of publisher’s on the list. I just can’t say specifically what because I’m not well read enough in what’s going on in comics today – which I would also guess might be the case of a lot of voters. Or maybe I’m just projecting. Either way, let’s get to this year’s finalists.
(11) FILMMAKER TEASES NEXT PROJECT. Popular Mechanics says “It’s Humans Versus Aliens in Neill Blomkamp’s New Sci-Fi Project” .
Teasing a new sci-fi studio called Oats Studios since April, Neill Blomkamp’s ready to show us what he has in store for his future sci-fi ambitions. A new trailer, released today, for a short film currently named “Volume 1” will stream on Steam “soon.” But while the particulars of the movie are lacking in detail, the trailer is nothing short of a top-notch sci-fi film.
(12) ONLY A MEMORY. Carl Slaughter recalls:
At age 27, Josh Trank became the youngest director to open a film at #1 with Chronicle. He was hired to direct a standalone Star Wars film and assigned to direct the Fantastic 4 reboot. The Fantastic 4 set was plagued with production problems and received a 9% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Lucasfilm fired him when Fantastic 4 controversies spilled onto the Internet. He has not been seen on the speculative front since.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Scott Edelman, Cat Eldridge, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Rambo.]
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(9) HOW THE DRAGON ROLLS.
A Puppy recommending nominating and voting for books they haven’t read. I am shocked, SHOCKED, I say. 🙄
I see that, as with File 770 and drinks, Camestros’ writing advice fees are charged in €uros. 😉
@JJ, it’s ok, they’re all good people, Declan said so.
I guess for the Dragon awards, it’s more about the people you like than the quality of the work.
(12) “At age 27, Josh Trank because the youngest director” .
.. became the youngest director?
(3) Dear Uncle George, never change.
(6) UNRAVELING. I’ll go appertain.
(9) JJ, I too am SHOCKED (Wee Declan’s already rounded up the usual suspects).
Ita and lurkertype: Fling wide the doors to the chambers of appertainment!
(6) Camestros, this is fantastic 😀
Oooooh.
“Seed to Harvest,” Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster omnibus, is on sale at Amazon for a song.
I’ve read Wild Seed, but not the others. Recommended.
And thanks to Bogi Takacs for the recommendation!
Thanks it was fun to write but my laptop is now covered in salt.
“This will be Lou Antonelli’s first DragonCon ever! Can you imagine that?”
“I think that we should do something nice to commemorate this, and see if we can get him a Dragon Award for his book Another Girl, Another Planet.”
This is the lamest reason for wanting someone to win an award that I’ve ever heard of…especially since Finn later makes it clear he hasn’t read the book. And since really the only things the DA has to do with the DC is using the same mythical animal as the name and having their almost unattended award ceremony at the con. That and getting DC to allow them to associate themselves with DC. Yep, those Dragon Awards really are prestigious.
(4) URSINE DESIGN
D’aww Vader?
May the paws be with you
The fur is strong with this one.
::sigh:: Here I’m imagining the Declan Finn award categories.
The Declan Finn Award For Author’s First Convention Attendance.
The Declan Finn Award For Likeliest To Be The Best Novel Although I Personally Haven’t Read It.
And of course, the Declan Finn Award For Author Most Adored By Declan Finn.
I wish the Dragon Awards all the best, and I hope they can gain some attention beyond, well, Declan Finn.
I suddenly realized how well this maps to another Scott Alexander essay I read recently, “Freedom on the Centralized Web.” He makes a very interesting point about how, when you’ve got a splinter group breaking off from “the mainstream” (or whatever’s currently dominant), then your new group is likely to be most attractive to the people shunned by the mainstream — which is a pretty hideous seed group to start out from.
I feel like the Dragon Awards demonstrate this pretty well. Even if there’s plenty of room for more awards, and even when the Hugo award is certainly not flawless and shouldn’t be the only game in town… it’s still a bad idea to kick off as “the anti-Hugo” or “like the Hugo, but fixed,” because the userbase you’re going to attract with that is not conducive to a healthy award of any type. 🙁
@Tom Galloway
And while grumbling about the pups, what is it with their picking names for their works that don’t come up on Google? I had not heard of the song before, but this is obviously how the Big 5 publishers try and repress indie self pubbed works, by forcing them to have names that folks won’t be able to find!
ETA. nothing by CUL even comes up for ‘Another Girl Another Planet book’
@NickPheas: I actually get three different titles showing for “Another Girl Another Planet book”; one by Martin Day and Len Beech (1998); one by Valerie Phillips (2016); and then Lou’s.
So it goes.
@Standback
To be (slightly) fair to the Dragon Award, there’s no sign that they had any sort of “anti-Hugo” plan as such at kick off, it’s just that when they attracted that particular group they didn’t run screaming. That’s a very interesting point about splinters and mainstream though, I think that’s definitely a pattern in such things.
Yup, CUL appears as item 11 of the page, and I always assume that unless Google gets you into the first page of results then only the people who already knew what they were looking for will find it.
6: following the spirit of Cemestros’ intent:
MY writing advice book is better than his as it has only 1 lesson: hire trolls, hackers and enforcers and MAKE your audience like your book more than any other.
@Standback: What I’ve said for decades is “Marginal movements attract marginal people.”
12) I am so over dark, edgy revisionings. That said, maybe they should release his director’s cut. I doubt he’s right, but it’d be interesting to know.
Mark: My memory of the Dragons is that even from the start they were taking up some standard anti-Hugo talking points – ‘this award will represent all fans! You don’t need to pay to take part’ etc. There’s no sign there was anything specifically Puppyish about it, but these complaints had a much wider currency than that, and were only exploited by the slaters.
@Andrew M
Fair point, I think I recall elements like that. I’d say those were more a matter of positioning themselves in the awards spectrum though (i.e. populist vs juried/restricted) than being specifically anti-Hugo. I’d certainly agree that by setting themselves up as they did and not backing away quickly when the pup-like element glommed onto them, they’ve brought this slightly silly situation on themselves.
I had hopes that the involvement of Eric Flint might have helped them find the wider popular vote they were searching for, but with him being ill that obviously hasn’t happened.
Camestros does have a very positive and forceful way of predicting success for followers of his method, but I already committed my fate and fortune to someone even more certain of my success, and if I quit now, I’ll be letting the team down!
https://flic.kr/p/G4hzx7
(Harry McCracken made this for APATOONS back in, urg, the 90s, I think.)
2- Woah, I hope it was staged and not real bad blood between those guys, I imagine both of them do a lot of autograph signings at the same conventions through the summer.
6- Awesome.
9- This was really surprising to me. Not the nominations or the assumption of quality of things not read, but that he nominated a book by his cover artist. I had assumed his cover artist was MS Paint.
Bear Discovers Force-Lightning.
How do we scroll when our files are burning?
(Its too hot today to spoof the lyrics. Maybe tmorrow. Maybe not. Maybe someone else)
[The paws that refresh]
[godstalk]
Hugo fights, Puppy bites, yummy Kinder Egg delights,
Hotel walks, author talks, edifying squeaks and squawks,
Evidence represents thoughts of SFWA presidents,
Movie news, sequel clues, interplanetary blues
We didn’t start the Glyer
He’s been right here filin’ with th’ issues pilin’
We didn’t start the Glyer
While he does the vitals, readers write the titles.
Camestros, loved it!
Mike, would you consider hosting a page of links to the various Hugo finalist review posts that you link to? I don’t like to read reviews until after i have finished the reading myself, concerned it might color my view. Afterwards, though, I find them helpful to coalesce my own thinking. Feel free to ignore this request. It is always easy to find more work for someone else to do! ?
@11: trailer is nothing short of a top-notch sci-fi film. Looks more like another stupid shoot-em-up to me… [Yawns.] Reminds me that it’s been decades since someone (Harlan??) observed that “sci-fi” was used by people who thought Lost in Space was as good as Star Trek.
9 – are the Dragon Awards still a thing? – I thought they’d faded into irrelevance over the long history of the award.
Recent reading – Revenger, Alastair Reynolds. Really interesting worldbuilding and premise, but then about the least imaginative possible plot you could do with it, which is really really annoying. And for some reason the repeated use of the word “cove” (and not related to water adjacent geography) annoyed the heck out of me. Also the reactions of the non-lead characters gur perj bs gur frpbaq fuvc, nsgre svaqvat bhg gurl’ir orra yvrq gb naq znavchyngrq, nccrne gb fueht naq tb “bu jryy”. Grrr. Lead character is a bit Mary Sue, too. It ends set up for a sequel, not sure I’d bother. I do see on Al’s blog that the is returning to the Revelation Space universe with his next book, let’s hope he’s fought off the suck fairy with that one.
(9) HOW THE DRAGON ROLLS
I notice that of the 7 written awards, Finn nominates himself for 3 and at least one well-known Puppy for each of the other 4. Outside their ranks, there’s not a single author whose name I recognize nor is there a single book I’ve ever heard of.
My focus is short fiction, not novels, so maybe that’s not a surprise, but I really did expect to see one or two books I’d at least heard someone talk about.
I see Build a Bear has a Poe Dameron™ Star Wars Bear. In this case, wouldn’t that be Pooh Dameron?
Also two Boba Fett bears which could be Bobo Fett if you’re a Charles Montgomery Burns fan.
(9) I tried to read this, but every time he put one of his covers up on the screen, I just couldn’t. Apologies to whoever his cover artist is, I’m sure they’re trying their best, but if you’re going to do computer-generated poser covers, you really need to shell out for the top-flight software. Otherwise it just looks like you weren’t trying even when you were.
I have read the Martin Day book “Another Girl, Another Planet”, which was a Doctor Who spin-off featuring space archaeologist Bernice Summerfield. It’s not bad, but not as good as, say, “Ghost Devices”, by frequent commenter Simon Bucher-Jones. (Really, that’s not just flattery. “Ghost Devices” is a brilliant head-trip of a time paradox novel, and it’s well worth tracking down.)
I’d like to crowd-source a question of community standards/expectations regarding reviews. I hope it’s ok.
I collect up online reviews of my books, both to cite on my author website and to pass along to my publisher for inclusion in their website and blog. But I run into some qualms around different community practices in trying to decide what is intended as a public review (that would be appropriate to cite and quote in this sort of circumstance) and what should be treated as a more private/personal review (where citing/quoting it might be viewed as an unwanted intrusion of an author into reader-space).
At one end of the scale, obviously, are reviews that appear in formal book review websites, or as part of online magazines. I don’t think there’s any question that these are fair game (and I only wish there were more that were this clear-cut). Next along the scale, it seems to me, are personal blogs/journals where people post their opinions of books, but which do not present themselves specifically as book review sites.
At the far opposite end of the scale (to my mind) are things like reddit threads, discussions within facebook groups, and similar spaces where it feels like people might have an expectation that whatever they say is meant only for the immediate participants. And slightly more to the middle of the scale from that end would be things like goodreads reviews, where people are posting reviews of a book, but may not feel that they have signed up for having an author highlight that review in other spaces.
One of my major problems in trying to negotiate this question is that I can’t go by the usual practices of my publisher’s reading community (lesfic) because those practices are often overtly at odds with the norms of the SFF community…and I can’t reliably tell which reading community a particular reviewer is operating in. So what are the instincts of people here regarding having your book opinions quoted and cited? I don’t mean specifically opinions posted on this site, just thinking that we have a nice cross-section of people here all along the scale from “professional reviewer” to “gosh, that was just meant to be a chat with my friends about the book I just finished.”
@Jack Lint
Ahh, but why not Boo-Boo Fett and Yogi Wan Kenobi?
Heather: Citing personal blogs or forum discussion threads strikes me as a pretty marginal practical promotional tactic–though I am not exactly up to speed on promotion in the age of viral marketing, niche audiences, indie publishing, and such. Maybe it’s the current analogue of hand-selling by bookstore employees or an extension of the “build a platform” approach I keep hearing about. And if it’s a blog or official website belonging to [insert prominent writer/celebrity here], then one presumes that there’s some promotional juice available.
I assume that anything I post here or on Boing Boing or Facebook is public, and if a writer were to find some remark of mine useful in a marketing effort, I wouldn’t be offended. Surprised, yes, but then I’m surprised when a snippet from a Locus column appears as a blurb. And that’s familiar standard practice. A citation from an online conversation (which is how I think of discussion threads) is more like reporting on cocktail-party chatter, or maybe a letter to the editor on the hometown paper’s op-ed page. But then, I’m old and out of touch and frequently puzzled by the world that tramps across my lawn. (You can quote me on this, though I can’t imagine why anyone would.)
Eat donuts? I haven’t eaten any for years. I did see the round things at Balticon and wondered about that display.
Donuts are just capitalism’s way of saying “air isn’t free.”
Vader: If only you knew the power of the Dark Side. Yogi-Wan never told you what happened to your Care Bear.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!
Vader: No, I am your Care Bear.
Luke: [shocked] No. No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!
Vader: Search your feelings; you know it to be true!
Luke: NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!!!
[appluase]
They used to say that audiences would pay tribute to Marian Anderson’s performances with complete silence after she finished.
So, consider this complete silence….
Heather Rose Jones on May 30, 2017 at 10:43 am said:
Personally, I’d be happy to see anyone quote/link any review I posted in a public place–including Reddit and Facebook (public posts only). There’s no real privacy in such places, and it’s not going to change that if a few people try to pretend otherwise just to be nice.
I’d be unhappy to see things I said in private e-mail get quoted–even if I didn’t specifically ask not to be quoted.
I agree with Russell Letson that I’m not sure it’s useful to quote reviews from anything other than official-looking sites, but who knows these days?
Yes, I would like to host that. We did it last year, but the curator is too busy to take it on again in 2017. I’ll talk to a couple of people and see if they are interested.
There’s some destroyed lyrics if I ever heard them!
Regarding the usefulness of quoting relatively casual, low-circulation reviews: there is a certain performative usefulness to giving the appearance of a frequently-reviewed book, regardless of the individual juice of the reviews. In a context where there are no “big name” reviews to cite, even an obscure reviewer can lead people to give a book a second look if the pull-quote sounds attractive. (One of the reasons I’m stressing over this is because, 6 months after release, my recent book only has 3-4 reviews total outside of Amazon/Goodreads. When my publisher asks me to send them review links, I have to find some meeting point between what they’re willing to quote and what I’m willing to have quoted. So I’m trying to get a better handle on how to adjust the latter metric.)
(6) After carefully studying the instructions, Kahuna earned himself an advance on his forthcoming book: Boarded Over Memorial Day: a Grimdark Odyssey of Terror and proceeded to spend the whole thing on a Kinder egg.
With regard to small reviews, I can imagine a wide range of reaction from “woohoo, a famous author noticed me!” and “omg don’t out me!” so I can’t imagine any general theories applying.
Heather, Green Man Review for twenty years now has had the same policy: if you quote us, credit us. Sometimes that gets more than a bit silly as with the editor who decided ‘Astounding!’ on the cover was the quote they wanted, other times it might a full paragraph.
Publishers which to say the editorial, not the publicity, will always, if available, pull quotes Publishers Weekly, RT Reviews, NYT Times, Locus… Well you get the idea. We get used a lot for anything of a fantasy nature. It’s really a matter I think of throwing darts blindfolded and hoping they hit the right spot.
What have you published that we should review? You can email me here.
Heather, I don’t have a blog, and would bill myself as just “a reader who sometimes posts reviews on books they choose to read”. I post reviews on Amazon (and here, as well).
If someone were to pull a quote from one of those reviews for use somewhere else, I’d be surprised as all get-out, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it. (But then, I have a philosophy of not saying something in an e-mail or internet post if it’s something I would not be willing for the world to see.)
Hey Bruce, I think you spelled Hugo Award wrong in your post.
Bruce A on May 29, 2017 at 10:34 pm said:
I guess for the Dragon awards, it’s more about the people you like than the quality of the work.
Honestly, the Dragons seem to be allowing the fans to make their picks without having to join a clique of snooty elitists (many right here at File 770) or swearing fealty to a political ideology (Social Justice or Death!!!).
You’ve got your Hugo, let them have their Dragon. Meanwhile, y’all just sound like a bunch of whiny 2-year-olds who spilt their juice box last month and can’t get over it.
Declan made his recommendations. They’re just recommendations to look into. It’s his prerogative to recommend what he wants on his website. Are y’all really that hateful that no matter what someone posts, if they’re the “wrong” person, you have to go hit them on it? Talk about intolerance.
Anyway, I happen to agree with many of his recommendations, especially that of Star Realms: Rescue Run for best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy, which many reviewers on Amazon seem to agree was well! Definitely should check it out as it’s on Kindle Unlimited. Otherwise, go vote for it here: http://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_nominations.php
And if you want the leading Hispanic voice in Science Ficton’s based recommendations, as I hear he’s an extremely well-read and well-versed person in the field (Mike Glyer can confirm this for you insta-haters), here you are: http://delarroz.com/?p=896
Cheers. Settle down and read some good books, fam! 🙂