Pixel Scroll 5/30/16 You Only Five Twice

Posted on by

july-1942-patriotic-pulps

(1) MEMORIAL DAY. Honoring service and sacrifice — James H. Burns’ 2015 tribute to the WWII generation:

Yet, one of the biggest influences on that generation has remained generally uncommented on. Decades later, it can almost be viewed as a secret text, or a  vast compendium, that may well have helped prepare our country’s youth for the immense challenges that awaited them.

In the 1930s, during the height of the Great Depression–still the toughest economic calamity that ever faced the United States–ANYONE could tune in, on the radio, to the terrific adventure series, comedies and dramas that were performed LIVE, for national broadcast.

It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, or what race or creed you encompassed. There was a wide array of delights simply waiting to be discovered….

(2) LLAMA DROP. Kameron Hurley has a book out tomorrow that she expects to be controversial. She recommends several rules of engagement to her readers, beginning with —

Hey, hey folks, my first essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution, drops TOMORROW, May 31!

In anticipation of its release, here are some things you should know that I know and some things you should know about how I’ll be comporting myself online during the launch:

  1. Some people (the minority, but oh, what a vocal minority!) will HATE this book, even and especially those who’ve never read it and have never heard of me and have no idea what it’s actually about. I fully anticipate several pile-ons. I expect lots of garbage in my social feeds. But fear not! All of my email is screened, I’ve muted the majority of the worst accounts and keywords on Twitter, and buttoned up other things to ensure this goes as smoothly as possible. I WILL BE FINE. CHIN UP.
  2. This leads us to THIS point, which is: NO WHITE KNIGHTING. All I ask if there’s a pile-on is for you to NOT tag me if you argue with trolls. My troll policy is mute and ignore. I’ve found that very effective. You are, of course, free to argue with whomever you want on the internet, but as a courtesy, I ask that you keep me out of it, or I’ll have to mute you too, and we don’t want that! In related news: DON’T POINT ME TO BAD REVIEWS or TELL ME TO READ TERRIBLE COMMENTS. I mean, unless you’re a troll? But I don’t think you’re a troll. Like, I mean, for real, folks? I never, ever, read the comments, and I’m not going to be reading bad reviews, even funny ones, for months yet. Thank you….

(3) LLAMA THUMBS DOWN. At Fantasy Literature, reviewer Bill Capossere’s verdict is “The Geek Feminist Revolution: Just didn’t do it for me”. I’ve heard of “damning with faint praise,” on the other hand, this review is devoted to “damning with faint damns.”They follow after a three-paragraph confession of the expectations he brings to a book of essays.

The pieces certainly aren’t badly written, but there just wasn’t enough there for me, whether in terms of style or content. Often, the thrust of the piece wasn’t all that fresh. What does it take to succeed in writing? Persistence. How does one succeed? One has to be willing to fail. Women are horribly trolled on the net. Writers have a responsibility to consider the impact of how they present their worlds and the people who inhabit them, etc.

Now, I don’t have an issue with covering territory that has been covered extensively for a long time or, in the case of more contemporaneous issues, has been covered extensively elsewhere (well, maybe I have a little issue). But if you’re going to present me content I’ve seen lots of other places or have been reading for some time, then you need to do something else for me. When I talk to my students in creative writing I call this the “so what” issue with non-fiction. You have to give the reader a reason to keep reading something they’ve seen before. Maybe it’s the beauty of the language, maybe it’s the stimulating structure. But something.

With regard to structure, the essays in The Geek Feminist Revolution are almost strictly linear and mostly singularly focused. As for language, it’s adequate for communicating the ideas, but rarely rises above that. It’s conversational, passionate, but nothing will have you linger over the phrasing or is particularly dense with meaning.

(4) CHINA SF CON. Shaoyan Hu’s article at Amazing Stories covers “A Time to Share, a Time to Enjoy – The Closing Ceremony of the 8th Shanghai Science Fiction & Fantasy Festival”.

In the main hall, the ceremony was incorporated with the final stage of a mind contest called ‘Useless Superpowers’, in which the participants were encouraged to come up with ideas of superpowers that had no practical values but could become interesting under certain circumstances. They were requested to present the ideas with any means of their choice, such as videos, pictures, stage performances, and so on.

The winner was a student from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The imaginary superpower he had fabricated was ‘Immovable’, which meant the owner of the power could prevent anything from moving by simply touching it. Now, just imagine, someday in the future, if an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth, guess who will be sent out to the space to stop it?

(5) BALTICON AUTOGRAPH MACHINE. See George R.R. Martin sign and sign and sign in Chris Edwards’ half-minute video on Facebook.

(6) WISCON WARNING. Wondering what happened.

(7) CAPTAIN AMERICA SPOILER WARNING. With the mandatory warning out of the way, here is Brad Torgersen’s warning about violating fans’ expectations for a franchise.

Of course, the whole Captain America = Hydra Nazi thing, is a stunt. It will be eventually written up such that this shocking reveal is just the top-most layer on a plot cake wherein good old Steve is still true-blue American, and so forth. But by then the writers will have gotten what they wanted out of said stunt: attention, eyeballs, chatter, and (theoretically) sales.

Or . . . not?

Sometimes, stunts like this can dramatically backfire. If the audience suspects that it …is being shown contempt (by the creators) then the audience may very well turn its back. Superheroes are treasured icons for fans across the spectrum, and if you mess with those icons too much, you truly are playing with fire.

(8) IN A CAPTAIN CRUNCH. Echoing one of Torgersen’s notions about the fans no longer accepting the authority of the creator, comics veteran Gerry Conway has been besieged by fans trying to tell him the history behind Captain America. Here are a few examples from the Twitter exchange.

However, not everyone is engaging in the Captain America controversy with the same firestorm intensity….

(9) AUDIO BANDERSNATCH. Diana Pavlac Glyer’s Kickstarter funded – in fact, later today it achieved its first stretch goal.

I’m walking on SUNSHINE!! We met our funding goal for “Bandersnatch Goes AUDIO!!” Michael Ward will be narrating this book, and I am absolutely THRILLED. We still have one more day to meet some delicious stretch goals: I’d love to give each and every backer a copy of the 20-page discussion guide, and I’m still wondering if James A. Owen can draw a bandersnatch blindfolded. But for now, here’s the important thing: this is a real dream come true. This  audiobook will really really happen, and I want to thank YOU for taking part. I’m so excited and so, so grateful. WOOT!! Bandersnatch is going AUDIO!!

10) FAMILY REUNION. Fanac.org has uploaded video of “Science Fiction’s 50th Anniversary Family Reunion” from Noreascon 3 (1989). After the Sunday brunch, many of the greats reminisced – including Isaac Asimov, Terry Pratchett, Jack Williamson, Samuel Delany, Fred Pohl, Forry Ackerman, David Kyle, Connie Willis, and others.

(11) IT WAS A NEEDLESS TRAGEDY. The Onion has learned “Leaked Documents Reveal Studio Executives Knew About ‘Gods of Egypt’ Before It Released Onto Public”. Gasp!

Suggesting that the disastrous events of three months ago could have been averted, federal investigators stated Wednesday that a trove of leaked documents confirmed high-ranking studio executives had full knowledge of Gods Of Egypt long before the film was released onto unsuspecting Americans….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Michael J. Walsh, and Leslie Turek for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

135 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/30/16 You Only Five Twice”

  5. I’m eagerly awaiting The Geek Feminist Revolution. I’m supposed to get it tomorrow.

    In other news, I’m on page 273 of Seveneves and am liking it far more than I expected to. (The pages-long infodumps are still there, though.)

    ETA: Oooo, actual fifth again!

  6. (7) / (8) – I think this all kinda depends on whether it’s a short term reveal (ie CapWolf), or a more significant change to the mythos (ie One More Day/ Clone Saga). It’s almost certainly the former, but who knows? Marvel could go through another bout of insanity again like they did with those latter storylines.

    Also, I wouldn’t trust that last guy. He’s the kind that would turn villains into fake/real heroes, thereby disrespecting canon – which DOES NOT CHANGE – and DESTROYING THEM FOREVER.

    Also, are those cookies real?

    (11) IT WAS A NEEDLESS TRAGEDY. – I saw this the other day. Gods above. This was just…awful. I mean. John Carter, despite being criminally mis-promoted, had it’s weak points. This movie though? I’m struggling to find anything good in it

    I haven’t thought this through, but using some of the effects and concepts, I think this would have worked better as an adaptation of Lord of Light. When I first saw the trailer, I was hoping it went for that kind of technology as magic kind of story, instead of this mess.

  7. Re: Bonnie on Seveneves – Lrnu, gur cebybthr vf cerggl fbyvqyl jryy qbar. Vg’f whfg n funzr gung Fgrcurafba qvq gur cnpvat fb bss ba gur jubyr; V’q unir cersreerq vs ur’q rkcnaqrq zber ba gur gvzr orgjrra gur frcnengvba bs gur syrrgf naq gur er-pbaarpgvba jvgu gur pnaavonyf, naq whfg yrsg bss gur jubyr svany abiryyn (jryy, n abiry va zbfg crbcyrf’ fpnyr, va vgf bja evtug) gb or rkcnaqrq vagb n frcnengr obbx bs vgf bja. Frirarirf fubhyq unir orra n qhbybtl.

    @snowcrash; that would have been great, or even the somewhat simpler kind of ‘powerful time-travellers’ angle that Bova’s GrecoRoman deities took in the Orion series. Instead of what we got. Which, well, was what we got.

  9. And a superhero who prevents the asteroid from moving relative to the superhero might not need any extra fuel to get home.

  12. In the main hall, the ceremony was incorporated with the final stage of a mind contest called ‘Useless Superpowers’, in which the participants were encouraged to come up with ideas of superpowers that had no practical values but could become interesting under certain circumstances.

    In A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun, Espers have the ability to change natural law in their immediate vicinity, because Quantum! (I think). Level fives are pretty impressive, Persons of Mass Destruction or at least Significant Mayhem. Level ones, the other hand, had … less impressive abilities. One character has the ability to keep things she is touching at a constant temperature; she doesn’t get any sort of immunity to temperature-related damage so she’s effectively limited to keeping her tea hot and her ice-cream unmelted.

  13. Hydrox cookies are real, yes, and they predate Oreos by four years. And they’re kosher, which apparently means that making jokes about them is somehow anti-Semitic, according to some.

    They do not actually come in a package labeled HAIL HYDROX, though.

  15. […]and her ice-cream unmelted.

    I would almost prefer this ability to being able to fire a penny through a car like the Railgun of Tokiwadai. Melted ice cream really sucks.

  16. Regarding “useless” superpowers, I am reminded of the Brit series “Misfits”.

    Oh, how they laughed at Monsieur Grand Fromage and his ability of lactokinesis – the ability to manipulate milk. And, oh, how they stopped laughing…

  17. More on “useless” superpowers:

    Gaming: there’s the mini RPG called Stuperpowers! (the exclamation is mandatory).

    Books:
    “Temps” & “Eurotemps”, shared world books featuring some notable writers.

    The Wildcards books (mostly edited by GRRM) had a spectrum of supers; individuals with what we regard as typical powers are called “Aces” but the ones with less than useful powers are the “Deuces”.

  18. @snowcrash
    I’m thinking that you meant Creatures of Light and Darkness, not Lord of Light? Or not?

  19. And there’s also the going back to the ’60s Legion of Substitute Heroes, whose membership consists of those rejected by the Legion of Super-Heroes for having powers not good enough (or under control enough) for the Legion. Original members were Polar Boy (cold projection), Night Girl (super-strong…but only in darkness), Chlorophyl Kid (cause plants to grow ridiculously quickly), Fire Lad (breathes fire), and Stone Boy (turns into immobile stone form). Next up was Color Kid (can change anything’s color; Mike Schiffer once wrote a “Color Kid Conquers the Universe” story which starts with CK obtaining a Green Lantern ring and of course being able to counteract that pesky weakness to yellow), followed by Infectious Lass (can give someone any disease), Antennae Boy (can pick up any audio broadcast from anywhere in space/time), Porcupine Pete (quill projection), and Double-Header (from a race that eventually splits in two; at this point, he’s a single body with two attached heads). AB and DH were officially in the Subs’ Auxiliary, “for heroes not yet ready to be full members of the Subs” (i.e. lamer than lame). (I’ve left out the temporary membership of full-fledged Legionnaires Star Boy and Dream Girl).

    I actually always liked the Subs, as they were one super-team working on pure heart and wanting to do good things, even if they were the butt of mockery from most.

  20. @Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy

    Definitely LoL. While Creatures… is more in line with Gods of Egypts source mythology, storywise it’s just….not straightforward or punchy enough to be adaptable.

    LoL on the other hand has a lovely mix of action thrown in.

  21. @Tom Galloway
    I remember reading the Legion of Substitute Heroes version with Duo Damsel, Bouncing Boy, and Cosmic Boy as a kid–such power!

  22. Stone Boy actually won membership to the Legion of Super-Heroes. This because he was good at standing very, very still.

  23. @snowcrash

    LoL was one of the texts I had to cut for my fall Modern Science Fiction class to make room for self-pub and the New Weird. I shall miss teaching it.

  24. He’s not a superhero but Dr. Horrible’s henchman has a great song (sadly an outtake) linking together the themes of rubbish superpowers and moisturiser:

    (Edit: OK I didn’t expect that to embed… am I allowed to directly put videos up here?

    Edit 2: well now it’s not embedded any more so problem solved either way!)

    Also: “Every Bark a Doorway”?

  25. Growing up, I always preferred Hydrox to Oreos. But I never thought of them as a local thing, I figured they were everywhere because there is even a reference to them in one of Harlan Ellison’s Glass Teat essays, wherein he compared the filling to…well, even in this coarser age, I can’t write THAT. 🙂

  26. > “I remember reading the Legion of Substitute Heroes version with Duo Damsel, Bouncing Boy, and Cosmic Boy as a kid–such power!”

    Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy eventually got married! Which … may have brought kinkier visions to my young child mind than the authors intended. Or possibly brought exactly the kinky visions to my young child mind that the authors intended.

  27. (8) Thanks, Kurt, now my wife is glaring at me because I woke her up with my laughing.

  28. Edit 2: well now it’s not embedded any more so problem solved either way!)

    Looks pretty embedded to me.

  29. @Kyra
    OMG, I’d forgotten that! That probably fueled many adolescent fantasies, and I would be surprised if the authors were totally oblivious. Maybe we should ask Kurt B about the purity of the Great Minds of Marvel, DC, etc.

  30. I admit to kinky visions regarding Duo Damsel, but could never fit Bouncing Boy in them.

  31. Today’s read — The Kingdom of Little Wounds, by Suzann Cokal (not SFF, but Ruritanian-style alt-history with fairy tale influence)

    In the Scandinavian nation of Skyggehavn, the royal family has been struck with a mysterious illness, and two servants are caught up in plots and counterplots to take the throne.

    Have you ever read about medieval medical, hygiene, marital, or legal practices and thought to yourself, oh god that sounds horrible? The Kingdom of Little Wounds is basically that feeling writ large, splashing dubious reasoning and copious bodily fluids around every vomit-soaked page. The author called the book “a fairy tale about syphilis”, and that’s a reasonably good description. For a book its size, it’s a fast-paced read, and it has a satisfying ending. I don’t think it’s the best book ever written, but I did like it and I’m going to call the queasy feeling it left me with a point in its favor. So if you’re willing to spend a day or so looking askance at your fellow disease-raddled, pus-filled sacks of putrescence as they go about their day, this one is worth giving a try.

  32. @Oneiros,

    How dare you malign melted ice cream! This shall not stand!

    *sits and eats my melted ice cream*

    My opinion on the Captain America thing is that Marvel succesfully pulled eyes off of DC Rebirth, and people’s outrage will sputter out and the rest of the arc will determine how antiquity feels about the matter.

    In addition to the Geek Feminist Revolution which even now sits on my Kindle, another release today is (review link) The Cupid Reconciliation by Mike Underwood

    His Kickstarter funded,a nd now he’s working towards Audio Stretch goals.

  34. @alexvdl Alyssa Wong has hungry daughters of starving mothers, Sebastian de Castell has Traitor’s Blade, Niemeier has Nethereal and Strange Matter. No Weir or Brown.

    @NickPheas so it has…

  36. (4) CHINA SF CON:

    The winner was a student from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The imaginary superpower he had fabricated was ‘Immovable’, which meant the owner of the power could prevent anything from moving by simply touching it. Now, just imagine, someday in the future, if an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth, guess who will be sent out to the space to stop it?

    It is probably silly of me to assume that basic physics applies to superpowers, but the description of the superpower and the example of what you can do with it doesn’t seem to fit. I mean, there’s a rather big difference between saying that “Immovable Man can prevent anything from moving by touching it” and “Immovable Man can stop a moving object just by touching it”.

    (And if Immovable Man can stop objects, he vould seem to be impervious to bullets. Which makes his superpower a poor fit for the premise of “no practical values but could become interesting under certain circumstances”.)

  37. Useless superpower: “The Drunkard, who was able to cloud his own mind after taking in a lot of Supersauce.”

    It is a bit different than Superpro, who has an inflated ego about where he fits in fandom after drinking the same supersauce. Is he or isn’t he a drunken puppy?

  38. Isn’t the Earth a rather large moving object? Either his powers don’t work on objects of sufficient mass or we have a problem…

    I suppose you could hand-wave it away with frames of reference (i.e., it’s not moving relative to him).

  39. Kyra:

    In the Scandinavian nation of Skyggehavn

    Does the name become a point? It’s not random, but means “Shadow Harbour” in Norwegian and (probably) Danish – which seems to fit the tone of the book.

  41. I think that “silly superpowers” as parody has been played out since sometime before I was born. This combined with the fact that every few years someone decides they’re being really clever by creating Stop Traffic Man or whatever is…wearying. There’s probably some good Slipstream/New Weird work to be done by taking minor superpowers “seriously” though.

  42. @alexvdl, Arifel:

    Alyssa Wong actually has 4 stories in there – Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers, The Fisher Queen, Santos de Sampaguitas and Scarecrow.

  43. (3) Bill Capossere’s review seems a bit self-involved, but there’s no arguing with “just doesn’t do it for me”. (He’s even happy to accept – when prodded in the comments – that he might not be the intended readership.)

    I’m only a little way into The Geek Feminist Revolution and I’m quite enjoying it so far – possibly because I wasn’t expecting either Hazlitt or radical new perspectives in feminist theory.

  44. Kyra – When I read The Kingdom Of Little Wounds after it got the Printz honor, I went into it thinking I was going to get a fantasy. By the time I realized I wasn’t, I didn’t care as I was enjoying it.

  45. Jim Henley on May 31, 2016 at 4:16 am said:
    Dude fansplaining Hydra to Gerry Conway was bitten by a radioactive Dunning & Kruger.

    LOL!

  46. Seemingly useless superpowers are the subject of one of the great cult computer adventure games, Super Hero League of Hoboken, written by Steve Meretzky in 1994 after he left Infocom. The leader of the League, the Crimson Tape, has the super power of creating organizational charts. Another hero, Mademoiselle Pepperoni, can see inside an unopened pizza box. It was all very funny, and I highly recommend it, if you can put up with playing a long 1994 computer game.

  47. Re: The Geek Feminist Revolution review.
    And oh look, my evil twin James May has shown up in the comments of the review as support.

  48. Robert Whitaker Sirignano
    The Drunkard sounds much like The Brown Bottle, a less than useful superhero who’s been in the pages of VIZ since the 80s. Nice enough fellow when he’s sober.

    I created a couple of substitute Legionnaires some years back. “Love Lass” takes out one villain per fight, and he comes back unharmed with a goofy smile. “Boy Howdy” is a super insurance agent who mostly ties up villains with a lot of high-pressure personality stuff and sometimes makes a sale.

  49. @Kurt Busiek – I extend a thanks like GSLamb as I was on the bus on the way to work and tried to stifle my burst of laughter and I feel like I blew my sinuses when I did that ha ha oh cookies

  50. “Worm”, by wildbow, for all its problems arising from being serialized as it was written (uneven pacing, excessive length, etc.), does treat the ‘spectrum’ of superheroism seriously. The main character even has a less-powerful power than is popular in the comic tradition.

    The superheros that run everything are not your invulnerable/strong types, but ones with useful mental powers. The ones that can make stuff also do so on an industrial scale, something that’s always bothered me about mainstream comics. Other than Iron Man suits, they only ever make one of things. Grr.

    (Warning: story is pretty good, but it’s 1.6 million words. Be warned. I believe an edited version is forthcoming. Link not included due to worries about spamtraps.)

Comments are closed.