Pixel Scroll 5/30/16 You Only Five Twice

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.]

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

  1. Just finished reading Uprooted. Enjoyed it so much that I decided to buy the full novel myself, rather than taking up the publisher on their Hugo packet offer.

    Wow! What an incredible take on folk tradition. Awesome scenes of magic and combat. I had liked the other three novel nominees I had read just fine (Getting started on Fifth Season now), but compared to Uprooted, they suddenly seem to be lacking in… polish.

    Ba n fvqr abgr, tvira ubj frevbhfyl ZvqNzrevpba gnxr gurve frk gevttre jneavatf, V jbhyq nethr gung Hcebbgrq pbagnvaf n orqebbz fprar gung vf pbafvqrenoyl fgrnzvre guna nalguvat va Fcnpr Encgbe Ohgg Vainfvba. Vf gur ynpx bs n jneavat qhr gb gur abiry fgnlvat njnl sebz gur “Frira Jbeqf”, be vg n znggre bs orvat whfg n srj cntrf va n abiry if. gnxvat hc zbfg bs gur jbex?

  2. @Jim Henley

    There’s probably some good Slipstream/New Weird work to be done by taking minor superpowers “seriously” though.

    Wouldn’t Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata be a good example of this?

  3. I started to read Uprooted, liked it very much in the beginning, but somewhere after two thirds I started to loose interest. Took a break to read other things a few weeks ago and will finish it later on. Was a bit too light for my taste, Young Adult stuff. There were some parts that could have been genuinely scary, but was more or less brushed off. 3.5 of 5 as yet. Will see if that changes when I finish it.

  4. i recall the Inferior 5 from my few years of comics reading in the mid-60s… Somehow they weren’t as funny as i thought they should be.

  5. Trying to decide what to do with The Aeronaut’s Windlass. I am not sure I can judge it fairly without reading the entire thing, but I’m also not inclined to go out and buy it. Normally I would just rank it lowly on my ballot, if it didn’t grab me enough to purchase it, but this year The Fifth Season has really thrown off my calculations. It’s earned my number one spot largely on the strength of the last 50 pages or so, and how they reveal the subtle complexity of the earlier chapters. I would have definitely ranked it differently if I only read an excerpt, so it seems uneven to rank others on excerpts alone.

  6. The problem of the Legion in the last 20 years has been not enough Arm Fall Off Boy.

  7. Back in those old Infinite Crises days, I thought the only way to redeem the story arc was for the entirety of DC comical creation to be saved by the Inferior Five, possibly with the help of Angel and the Ape. Of course, they didn’t do that. My next thought was wishing I could buy the rights to all the detective chimps and talking dogs and near-Kryptonians and start my own line of comics. Maybe call it AC.

  8. I have requested Aeronaut’s Windlass from the local library and I’m optimistic I’ll get it in time.

  9. I have it on hold at the library, but I’m skeptical my turn will come around in time. It’s always possible.

  10. In Re Useless Chinese Super Heroes (lol):

    1. some things may get lost in translation
    2. their culture am not our culture(s)
    3. I really enjoy these posts from Amazing’s two Chinese contributors as we get a window into an allied fandom that – is far different from ours in many unexpected ways; potentially the size of NA fandom; is deliberately seeking out connections to traditional fandom in NA (and, at least from my perspective are doing so “the right way” – referencing Liu’s strong request that Chinese fans not try to flood the Hugo Ballot – as would be SO easy for them to do – and their ready acceptance of that request once they were made aware of the spirit of things (unlike some of our own who…)

    While I greatly enjoy discussion here at File 770 (well duh, the guy is on every post and just won’t shut the F up!), I’m sure that Hu would appreciate some commentary on his post directly….

  11. I heard Phil Foglio wanted to do an Inferior Five miniseries in the ’90s but he got handed Angel and th Ape instead.

  12. I think I was preteen when i read the Inferior 5… maybe i was too young.

  13. @Arifel,

    Thanks for that. I just finished the second of PIerce Brown’s trilogy and wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing myself over by buying the third.

    The trilogy is VERY MUCH recommended by me though. Amazing.

  14. > “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.”

    It’s not a point in the story per se, but the author makes note of the meaning in the afterword, so it was clearly chosen deliberately for tone.

  15. The other advantage Hydrox has over Oreo cookies is that they know where the name came from. Hydrox from the molecular formula for water in an attempt to convey “purity and goodness.” (See? Cookies can be educational.) No one knows why Oreos are called Oreos.

  16. I feel obliged to point out that Polar Boy (who is one of the ridiculously broken characters like Light Lass and Star Boy when you think about what he’s actually controlling) did eventually join the Legion proper and was even elected to leadership…just in time for the catastrophic difficulties of the end of the Levitz/Giffen run.

    And if you’ve never read it, you need to hunt down the Subs Special from that era of comics for some of Giffen at his most Giffen (but without the metatextual ‘screw you we got cancelled’ ending).

  17. …well, even in this coarser age, I can’t write THAT.

    Fortunately there’s Google.

    Here in this dank sub-basement, with the flickering light of the single candle casting its wan glow across our conspiratorial faces, I can now reveal to you the insidious particulars of the Great Hydrox / Oreo Conspiracy…

  18. I’m partway through Red Rising. In some ways it’s promising, other ways not… The plot seems pretty standard: naive young man has his beloved wife (who honestly sounds like a more interesting character than him) murdered by the oppressive regime, and then is picked up by revolutionaries who tell him he’s a hero the people need and set out to mold him into someone who can infiltrate and take down the regime from within. Let’s see what Brown can do with this. The reason I think it might go interesting places is because the writing has good style: zingy and distinctive, with a flow. The dystopian society has a decor familiar from many recent YA novels, with lots of pseudo-Roman trappings and stratified social classes coded by colors. There’s some pretty wacko racism which the main character is oblivious to.

  19. I’m partway through Red Rising.

    I suspect I’m a bit behind you. Wife just killed. Right now I’m feeling somewhat tempted to dump it in favour of Fifth Season.

  20. @Jack Lint

    Hydrox from the molecular formula for water in an attempt to convey “purity and goodness.”

    I’ve never actually heard that before. I always thought it was a terrible name, it sounds like a harsh chemical solvent.

  21. Back a few years, there was a website (I guess it’d be a Tumblr today) devoted to Less Than Useless Superpowers. The best, I thought, was “invulnerable to the 13th bullet“.

    In the reign of underpowered superhero teams, let us not forget Section Eight, who appeared in the pages of Garth Ennis’ HITMAN.

  22. @Bartimaeus: Thanks for mentioning Alyssa Wong has four stories in there; I haven’t read her PDF yet (just opened it once), so I thought it was a single story. Yay!

    @microtherion: Good point re. Uprooted and “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” and I suspect you’re right. Either that or the packet assemblers/warners simply haven’t read Uprooted. 😉 At least, I dearly hope it’s not simply because “Raptor” is gay, though that’s very common thing (gay sex = worse than het sex, requires more warnings/protecting the innocent/etc.) (sigh). But I suspect the first explanation (“Rator” is erotica & has tons of secks, thus gets warning).

    @tofu: Everyone’s different, but for me, if I wasn’t moved to get it, then it must not be Hugo worthy (again: for me), and I’d just move along. The Fifth Season may wind up being lucky with me, though it has an uphill battle against Ancillary Mercy and Uprooted, since I picked up the audiobook. So I’ll listen to the whole thing, even if I’m not feeling it’s Hugo worthy as I go. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book I rated below great, then the last 50 pages made me up it to amazing, though – sorry, but that sounds like a gimmicky book. But we’ll see (maybe the ending won’t shift the book upscale for me, or maybe I’ll love it after I move past the intro).

  23. My superpower is killing houseplants. The dog’s is to sleep 22.75 hours per day. Together we are, er, well not invincible exactly, but some damn thing.

  24. My superpower is an ability to smell ketchup at larger than normal distances.

  25. @Paul

    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.

    Well, he probably takes the title literally and finally sees his worst nightmare become flesh.

    @bbz

    My superpower is killing houseplants.

    Mine, too.

  26. I heard Phil Foglio wanted to do an Inferior Five miniseries in the ’90s but he got handed Angel and the Ape instead.

    At which point he combined the two and made Angel into Dumb Bunny’s half-sister, and the Ape into Gorilla Grodd’s grandson.

  27. @Kendall I’m interested to see how that goes for you on audiobook. I have been listening to Too Like Lightning by Ada Palmer and thinking how I would probably love it if I were reading a hardcopy, but as an audiobook there are too many names to follow it easily. (Also, I glanced at the physical book and learned that it employs typesetting for effect at some points, which is obviously just absent from the audiobook.) I’ve been thinking about other books which would suffer in a different medium, and Fifth Season is one of them.

    (Before this, I was listening to the audiobook of Arcadia by Iain Pears and had to give it up because there were so many quick POV changes. I really need the visible break to quicklycatch the switches.)

  28. @ Hampus: If you put it down before they get back to the forest, you’ve definitely not gotten to the Scary As Shit part yet. My take on the book was that it was “interesting, but not gripping” until they get to the palace, and then suddenly the plot starts dipping and swooping like a roller-coaster and becomes impossible to put down.

  29. A friend of mine said his superpower was “the ability to get to the front row of any concert.”

  30. @Rob Thornton – Depending on how he goes about doing that exactly could make him either a superhero or super villian lol

  31. I seem to have the superpower of finding whatever my husband (or previously, my brother) were looking for. I do sometimes fail to find things *I* was looking for, though i seem to have a greater than average chance of doing that, too.


  32. @ Hampus: If you put it down before they get back to the forest, you’ve definitely not gotten to the Scary As Shit part yet. My take on the book was that it was “interesting, but not gripping” until they get to the palace, and then suddenly the plot starts dipping and swooping like a roller-coaster and becomes impossible to put down.”

    Ok, around there I quit, so will have to start again then!

  33. Stone Boy (turns into immobile stone form)

    A comatose immobile stone form, I think. Which had he been accepted into the LSH would have made him the second member whose powers require him to be unconscious.

    “Stop. Or I’ll stand very, very still for a surprisingly long time!”

  34. Personally, I’m still waiting for DC Comics to revive ‘Mazing Man. (Because it was clearly a lie in Ambush Bug when he was revealed to be on death row)

    I wouldn’t mind another attempt at Stanley and his Monster either.

  35. I have read the extract from The Aeronaut’s Windlass and am sufficiently interested that I want to read the rest – which was not true of Butcher’s work from last year. Some things remain a bit puzzling – e.g what exactly is a habble – though this will no doubt be resolved in due course. (It took me a while to realise that ‘Habble Morning’ is an indication of place, not of time.)

    It does not strike me, by the way, based on what I have seen so far, as particularly steampunkish. I wonder if some people have been misled by the term ‘airship’ – as far as I can see, these are not the gas-filled things we are familiar with, but things broadly similar to ocean-going ships, only sailing in the air.

  36. Andrew M on May 31, 2016 at 12:12 pm said:

    I have read the extract from The Aeronaut’s Windlass and am sufficiently interested that I want to read the rest – which was not true of Butcher’s work from last year. Some things remain a bit puzzling – e.g what exactly is a habble – though this will no doubt be resolved in due course. (It took me a while to realise that ‘Habble Morning’ is an indication of place, not of time.)

    It does not strike me, by the way, based on what I have seen so far, as particularly steampunkish. I wonder if some people have been misled by the term ‘airship’ – as far as I can see, these are not the gas-filled things we are familiar with, but things broadly similar to ocean-going ships, only sailing in the air.

    The fake-historic-Englishness is the other marker (the heroes are from “Albion”). I actually felt that it was closer to a video game sensibility – crystals and airships and distinct classes of people with distinct abilities had a Final Fantasy-ish vibe to it.

    The gradual worldbuilding (e.g. your example of him not saying what a ‘habble’ is) is something I liked. He credited readers with enough sophistication to just go along with things.

  37. I finally, finally! finished Seveneves. The first 550-pages or so absolutely FLEW by, then the last third started up. I didn’t want to believe what a lot of people were saying about the latter part of the book. But man, I just don’t know how I feel about it. Definitely not terribly enthused though…

    Originally (pre page 550) I said I was content that Aurora by KSR didn’t make the ballot as Seveneves was scratching a similar itch. However, now I retract that statement and wish Aurora was nominated instead. I actually cared about the characters in Aurora, which is more than I can say for just about anyone in Seveneves. I did think some of the ending was pretty interesting, but was not what I wanted after the first 2/3s was so good.

    I started The Aeronaut’s Windlass and am really, really enjoying it. It is reminding me of a feeling I get when I read Harry Potter, which most books don’t give me. (And I don’t know what that feeling is…nostalgia? euphoria? simple happiness?) So far, even though I’m only about 1/5 into the book, my ranking goes
    Ancillary Mercy
    Aeronaut
    Seveneves
    but I still have Uprooted and The Fifth Season to read.

  38. It does not strike me, by the way, based on what I have seen so far, as particularly steampunkish. I wonder if some people have been misled by the term ‘airship’ –

    Surely airships are as reliable a marker of steampunk as taverns in the snow are of fantasy? 🙂

  39. My superpower is the ability to always find a decent parking space. Pretty sure I inherited it from my dad. It’s pretty useful!

  40. 11) It figures that the cool kids would be panning Gods of Egypt. Fun movie, worth the ticket. Not deathless Ahhhht for the ages, but I view that as a good thing.

    3) LLAMA THUMBS DOWN. “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.”

    This is clearly the type of guy panning Gods of Egypt. “Geek Femminist Revolution” gets a double eye roll from me just on the strength of the title (What, all five of them started a revolt?), but if this guy didn’t like it… might be worth a look.

    6) WISCON WARNING. Wondering what happened.

    Somebody wasn’t obeying the pronoun stickers? Just a guess…

    7 & 8) “Anyone upset about #CapHydra has never read “Flashpoint” or, in fact, any DC comic since “Crisis on Infinite Earths” “

    There’s a lot of us out here who gave up on DC over that fiasco. Torgersen, as usual, is being far too kind and far too polite about the whole thing. It’s not just the subject matter, Cap being a Nazi. It’s also the timing. Big Cap movie out there, comic release just before Memorial Day…

    Almost as if somebody were trying to deliver a message.

  41. @Camestros
    I totally agree with Aeronaut being somewhat similar to a video game. That’s how I described it to my wife last night: “It’s like I’m reading a video game and I’m loving it!” Since she really doesn’t understand why or how I could possibly play games like Final Fantasy, she didn’t see how that was a good thing 🙂

  42. @Vasha (and NickPheas)

    Yeah. I was sort of impressed that Pierce Brown took the bogstandard plot line and managed to do some things with it that I didn’t expect. The set up is pretty standard, but it isn’t the type of Chosen One competence porn, that these things sometimes devolve into. I think that the payoff is more than worth the setup.

  43. The two aspects of Aeronaut I found not so enjoyable were:

    * The exorbitant attention spent on people defending their or others’ honor and/or impugning others’ honor (German has the excellent word Ehrpusseligkeit for this). That aspect, to me, was a bit of a puppy smell.
    * The airship battle scene was rather drawn out, with endless exchanges between a bunch of Ehrpusselige officers. I’ve seen this before in MilSF, presumably professional military types enjoy this kind of CO/XO banter, but as a retired militia soldier, I found it boring (And actually using “XO” seemed un-steampunkish). The actual combat was not all that exciting either.

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