Pixel Scroll 5/3/17 As The Pixel Is Bent, So Grows The Scroll

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(1) DUBLIN IN 2019. Life is short. Bid is long. “Reflections From the Bid Chair: James Bacon”. He tells about the genesis of the Irish Worldcon.

Even at this early stage, people at home and far afield were willing to spend time and effort on the concept of a Worldcon in Ireland. Prepared to keep a secret. By Octocon the same year, it was clear that a bid would be viable, and a moment I will never forget was when Gareth Kavanagh with a level of seriousness that was impressive, asked for videos to be halted, recording devices turned off, and at the closing ceremony in front of a large chunk of Irish fandom, I asked the room to keep a secret. Even with site visits, with huge levels of engagement and public gatherings, no one spoke. No one publicised it, hundreds were now so committed to the idea of a Worldcon in Ireland, but they kept it quiet.

Five years after that meeting in the CCD, it is now 100 days until the vote in Helsinki.

There is a lot of work going on right now, and there will be a lot more in the next 100 days.  Thanks to work by so many people we are where we are, looking at a place where we could be a seated Worldcon.

(2) KEEP ‘EM COMING. James Davis Nicoll has another request for the next round of Young People Read Old SFF:

MY current Young People suggested it might be an idea to toss in a handful of modern stories — let’s say post 2000 — so they can see where the field is. Also open to suggestions on that.

(3) I KNOW THAT NAME. T. Kingfisher’s highly-awaited new collection Jackalope Wives And Other Stories is available. Feel free to buy it under a pseudonym of your own.

From award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes a collection of short stories, including “Jackalope Wives,” “The Tomato Thief,” “Pocosin,” and many others. By turns funny, lyrical, angry and beautiful, this anthology includes two all-new stories, “Origin Story” and “Let Pass The Horses Black,” appearing for the first time in print.

(4) EISNER CORRECTION. Yesterday’s Eisner Awards list has been updated with a new nominee.

Following the announcement of the nominees on May 2, the IDW Publishing/DC Comics anthology Love is Love has since been added in the “Best Anthology” category. Eisner Awards organizer Jackie Estrada said that the book was originally overlooked due to Amazon listing it as a January 2017 release, despite being on-sale with comic book retailers on December 28, 2016 – just inside the cut-off for these awards, which are for 2016 releases. The original list of nominees below has been amended to include Love is Love.

I have made the change to the File 770 post “2017 Eisner Award Nominees”.

(5) CASSINI TAKES A DIVE. These images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show the view as the spacecraft swooped over Saturn during the first of its Grand Finale dives between the planet and its rings on April 26.

As the movie frames were captured, the Cassini spacecraft’s altitude above the clouds dropped from 45,000 to 4,200 miles (72,400 to 6,700 kilometers). As this occurred, the smallest resolvable features in the atmosphere changed from 5.4 miles (8.7 kilometers) per pixel to 0.5 mile (810 meters) per pixel.

“The images from the first pass were great, but we were conservative with the camera settings. We plan to make updates to our observations for a similar opportunity on June 28 that we think will result in even better views,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team based at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

 

(6) LUCKY FOR US. Flyover Fandom has the first part of an interview with Walter Jon Williams, who never planned to become a science fiction writer.

DAF: You brought up the Maijstral series which was the first series of science fiction you converted to ebooks. What is it that brought you to science fiction? Because you first started with historical fiction right?

WJW: Yes, I started with historical fiction. I started writing it because I was qualified for it, and secondly there was a historical fiction boom in the late 70s.  I wrote five books of a projected ten-book series, and then the boom turned into a bust and I had no work. So I madly started sending off proposals in all directions for books that I thought I might be able to write: literary novels, mysteries, historicals with a different approach, and then there was this old science fiction proposal that had been bumping around for a few years. And the science fiction proposal was the one that sold.

I honestly hadn’t intended to become a science fiction writer, but it turned out lucky that I did—  the response I got to all my other proposals is that they were just too weird. You hardly ever hear that as a criticism in science fiction.

(7) POLISHED PROS. Nerdlacquer is offering nail polish colors named for SF authors (apparently inspired by color schemes for their book covers). Here’s screen full of samples to look at. So, you can wear Abercrombie, Scalzi, Corey, Leckie, Le Guin, Jemisin. Or, if you don’t like authors, Ithaqua, Azathoth, Cthulhu, General Effing Leia, Kylo, etc.

File 770 covered this in May 2016, but with John Scalzi tweeting images of his polished nails this week, a reminder is timely.

(8) FATAL PERSONAL PRODUCT. The Book Smugglers have released the second title in their Novella Initiative – and you can buy it or try to win a free copy here — “Reenu-You: Michele Tracy Berger on Inspirations & Influences (& Giveaway)”

What if a hair product harbored a deadly virus?

Reenu-You, a sci-fi thriller novella from newcomer Michele Tracy Berger, opens on a summer morning in 1990s New York City. Five women of color wake up with disfiguring purple lesions all over their bodies. Though doctors dismiss it as skin rash, caused perhaps by a new hair product known as Reenu-You, hysteria grows as this unknown disease spreads throughout the city.

At the center of a looming epidemic, these women begin to develop strange powers while medical providers face charges of conspiracy, cover-up and coercion from minority communities as this new malady begins to kill.

Inspired by a true story of company negligence and reminiscent of the early AIDS crisis, ?Reenu-You tackles important ideas about hair, identity, and minority women. Berger also explores friendship and the hidden strength of unlikely heroines forced to confront their deepest fears to save themselves—and their city.

(9) ALSO APPEARING. Who can you see at Worldcon 75? The con has posted a list of program participants with nearly 150 names.

The following are just some of the people who we expect to appear at Worldcon 75. This may include appearing on panels, holding signing sessions, participating in literary beers and Kaffeeklatsches, or taking part in Strolling with the Stars. We will publish more detailed information in the programme guide shortly before the convention.

(10) TODAY’S DAY

Paranormal Day

How to Celebrate Paranormal Day There are lots of fun and interesting ways to spend this day. If you’re a fan of scary movies, you’re in loads of luck because ghosts, unidentifiable monsters and aliens are among the most popular horror movie topics in existence. In fact, there is even a movie you may have heard of titled Paranormal Activity about a couple witnessing increasingly disturbing paranormal occurrences in their house. You may have never thought a sheet could be scary, but you may well change your mind after and evening spent watching this movie in the dark!

(11) ANOTHER TV OPTION. “Hulu launches Live TV beta” – SixColors’ Dan Moren has the story.

As anticipated, streaming site Hulu has officially launched its Live TV service—albeit with a “beta” tag hung on it because, you know, it’s a web service and that’s just the way those things are done—offering a large slate of channels for one $40-per-month price tag….

But one place where Hulu has set itself apart from its competitors is by bundling in access to its extensive library of on-demand shows. When you sign up for the Live TV plan, you essentially get the Hulu service—which costs $8/month on its own—for free.

Sadly, it’s not the commercial-free plan; you’ll still get ads unless, it seems, you pony up the additional $4 monthly fee to go without them. (And even if you do, you won’t be able to skip commercials in the Live TV content; for DVR shows, you’ll need to pay extra for the “Enhanced DVR” plan which also includes more storage.)

(12) GETTING CONNECTED. Doug Ellis at Black Gate explains “Why You Should Go to Conventions”, especially if you’re an art collector. Not all con art shows are what they once were, however, there’s another big reason to go:

In thinking about it further, I think that my answer was unintentionally deficient in one regard, tied in to conventions. While conventions are often a great place at which to find art, perhaps even more importantly, they’re an incredible place to meet dealers, artists and fellow art collectors and make friends. A network of collecting friends is invaluable if you want to collect; I think that’s likely true no matter what it is that you collect. At least I’ve found that to be true when it comes to collecting pulps – my first collecting passion – as well as illustration art. I’ve probably bought or traded for dozens of pieces of art (and bought thousands of pulps), not at conventions, but through friends that I made at conventions.

(13) THE CREATORS. The Society of Illustrators in New York will have “Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics” artwork on exhibit from May 2-June 3.

 

Drew Friedman’s two recent books Heroes of the Comics and More Heroes of the Comics, published by Fantagraphics books, depicted the great early comic book creators who entered into the dawn of the business between 1935–1955, a milestone in the early history of comic books. The Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators is proud to present 100 original, meticulous color illustrations from Friedman’s two books.

Among the colorful subjects are comics pioneer Max (M.C.) Gaines, the creators of Superman Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, and Superman publishers Harry Donenfled and Jack Liebowitz, and comic book legends including Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Will Eisner, (the subject of a large concurrent exhibition also at SI celebrating his 100th birthday), Jack Kirby, Martin Goodman, Harvey Kurtzman, Stan Lee, Wally Wood, William M. Gaines, C.C. Beck, Joe Kubert, Jack Cole, Steve Ditko, Al Jaffee, Carl Barks, Jules Feiffer, James Warren, and many more. Also included in the gallery will be several early female creators including Marie Severin and author Patricia Highsmith who began her career writing for comics, and several African American creators, among them Matt Baker, Alvin Hollingsworth  and Orrin C. Evans. The greats and the near greats, many long forgotten with the passage of time but who deserve recognition for their work, now revived in Friedman’s two books and this exhibition.

(14) KEEP CALM. ScreenRant sends word that “Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water Receives an R Rating”. Why is that news, you wonder, because when did Del Toro ever make a G-rated movie? Well, that track record seems to be creating issues with the picture he’s making this time.

Del Toro announced on his Twitter account on Tuesday that the Motion Picture Association of America has officially given The Shape of Water an R rating. Perhaps to quell concerns about the movie venturing into horror territory, del Toro later clarified on Twitter that The Shape of Water is not a horror movie but a “bit of a fairy tale” and a “fable set in early 1960’s America.”

(15) OKAY, DON’T KEEP CALM. Terence Eden is plenty pissed-off about “Amazon Alexa and Solar Panels”. People who write software will probably enjoy his rant the most, but even I understand this part —

This isn’t AI. Voice interfaces are the command line. But you don’t get tab-to-complete.

Amazon allow you to test your code by typing rather than speaking. I spent a frustrating 10 minutes trying to work out why my example code didn’t work. Want to know why? I was typing “favourite” rather than the American spelling. Big Data my shiny metal arse.

(16) A DIFFERENT VELDT. WWF Hungary–Paper World, on Vimeo, is an animation in which pieces of paper turn into large animals, and was done for the Hungarian branch of the World Wildlife Fund.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Steven H Silver, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Andrew Porter, and Mark-kitteh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day clack.]

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79 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/3/17 As The Pixel Is Bent, So Grows The Scroll”

  2. 13) Turns out a local guy did a long video interview with Kirby shortly before his death and now has a movie coming out. There’s other stuff happening with Kirby. His Prisoner comics are being finished. And I saw a splash page redone by his inker into a wedding invitation. One of the great modernists gets his due at last.

    4) If they need a theme song, my friends from Fayetteville have one:

    Unfortunately, the band broke up a while back. I really loved hearing them. Such good people, too.

  3. 3) Nabbed (twice! <whoops>) and reading! Don’t know if they’re new works or I just happened to have missed them, but there are several stories that I’ve not seen before.

  4. “Golly, Captain Patronizing! We’re really in a pickle now!”
    “(chuckle)! That’s right, Billy!”

  9. @16 is beautiful but @5 is stunning — 2 huge whirlpools just in that tiny band covered in that tiny pass! What’s at the bottom of those — does Saturn have hundreds of hurricane/tornado hybrids?

  11. Post 2000 Young People read SFF:

    Daddy’s World, Walter Jon Williams (this is a cheat since it came out 1999)
    Tyche and the Ants, Hannu Rajaniemi
    Jackalope Wives, Ursula Vernon (The Tomato Thief is a close contender)
    A Colder War, Charles Stross (may not actually resonate with a younger audience)
    Salt and Cement and Other Lies, Sara Saab (just for weirdness)

    Argh and a lot more, plus a ton of stuff from the 80’s and 90’s

  12. (2) Alyssa Wong – Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers or maybe A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers?

    E. Lily Yu – The Cartographer Bees & the Anarchist Wasps

    Maria Dahvana Headley – The Cellar Dweller

    Xia Jia – A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight

    Hao Jingfang – Folding Beijing

    All of the above selected on merit and by no other criteria, naturally 🙂

  14. (2) KEEP ‘EM COMING. “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky. “Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders. “The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere” by John Chu. “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu. “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang. “Troika” by Alastair Reynolds. What do these have in common? Most or all are stories I got in Hugo Packets past that I kept after reading them. (I don’t usually keep the short fiction. Granted, I haven’t read all the Hugo Packet short fiction I ever got – never enough time.) I probably missed a few others along these lines in skimming lists of files.

    ETA: Don’t take this to mean only these 6 stories have stayed with me from SFF short fiction I’ve read from 2000-present. 😉 I’m lazy and just skimmed a folder.

    BTW it says “SFF” so I’m taking it as such, but IIRC a couple of people questioned whether the request was just for SF. 4/6 of the stories above are fantasy (or many would classify as fantasy), if that matters, @JDN.

    (9) ALSO APPEARING. Cool! There are various people I look forward to seeing at Worldcon who’re always interesting a nice to little fen like me, but I noticed several recent-to-me authors I’d like to listen to at a panel or reading. Yay!

  15. Meredith Moment™: The Six-Gun Tarot (Golgotha #1) by R.S. Belcher is $2.99 at various U.S. ebooksellers from Tor (no DRM). Anyone read this “weird west” novel? I’ve been intrigued by it and by Nightwise, but haven’t gotten around to either sample yet. So many men, I mean, so many samples, so little time. 😉

    ETA: For that matter, also I’m intrigued by The Brotherhood of the Wheel. He’s got three series going (two of them UF)! Look at, @Marshall Ryan Maresca! 😉 j/k

    Unrelated: City of Miracles came today! But I just started the first Chambers the other day, so yeah, I Must Wait. I can listen to one book and read another, but adding a third is probably beyond me.

  16. Stoic Cynic:
    A Colder War, Charles Stross (may not actually resonate with a younger audience)

    A year ago, I would have agreed. But today, looking at the North Korea shenanigans, I’m not so sure anymore. (If I was going to pick a second Stross story to recommend, that would have been it.)

  17. Weird Audible.com thing o’ the day: The sample for The Boy on the Bridge starts with chapter 33. WTH, Audible?!

  19. @Kendall has a great list. Also anything by Oor Wombat, and All The Kage Baker.

    @OGH: Nonsense. Everyone knows 5 is the best chapter.

  20. lurkertype: @OGH: Nonsense. Everyone knows 5 is the best chapter.

    Now that you remind me….

  21. lurkertype on May 3, 2017 at 11:39 pm said:

    @OGH: Nonsense. Everyone knows 5 is the best chapter.

    I’d just had a big gulp of merlot which then exited via my nose.

  22. My current reading is very limited, relatively speaking, but these three stories, which I guess make up a book, are the recent short fiction which has most stuck with me:

    “Adult Children of Alien Beings”, “Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main”, and “Once More Into the Abyss”, by Dennis Danvers.

  23. 9)
    And it includes yours truly on the list. I’ll be easy to spot, with my Charisma of 3 and my DSLR in tow…

    @Soon Lee A Colder War is depressing, downbeat…and suddenly now more relevant than ever, yeah.

    11) This reminds me of the news I head about HBO’s intention on pulling their stuff from Amazon Prime once their contract runs out in a year and change. Atomization of streaming services seems to be the wave of the future. The days where Netflix and Amazon together got you just about everything worth streaming are probably dead.

    I’m old fashioned enough to still want copies of things of my own that I really like. (I don’t go in for music streaming, either). Discovering stuff on streams is fine, but if I like it, I want to own it.

    Reading: Going to start Doctorow’s WALKAWAY today.

  25. 2) Really appreciating all the short story recommendations coming out of this. I’d add The Deepwater Bride by Tamsyn Muir and The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (could be particularly interesting in conversation with the movie), if people haven’t already recommended those?

    3) Hells yes.

    7) Its great to see Scalzi is so comfortable with his lack of nail painting skill. He got a fantastic colour out of them though! I’m now on the website and also envying Le Guin and Polar Bear (not quite so convinced by Biohazard Zucchini, however)

    8) Sample ordered. This is shaping up to be a fascinating line (and on a selfish note, I’m pleased they’re no longer in their Superhero year – the stories I read of theirs last year were objectively great but personally not my thing).

    I’m up a hill, and there are goats, and I’m simultaneously trying to read War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells, and Crucible of Gold (Temeraire 7). Considering DNFing the Wells if it doesn’t pick up soon; it’s well-written but I was hoping that there would be more motorbiking space-witching fun to balance out the motorbiking space-witching grimness, and I don’t get on well with books where nobody is nice to anyone else. War for the Oaks is great after 50 pages but I wish it wasn’t set in the USA (shaping up to be another “European mythology transplanted without comment to America”).

    Crucible of Gold is the first Temeraire I’ve got to that isn’t a reread – first third is heavy on the Perils of the High Seas stuff, but now they are in South America its doing what the series IMO does best, which is fun speculation on how societies might organise themselves around dragons and how that could change the balance of power in the Age of Sail. Have also recently read Within the Sanctuary of Wings, the last of Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent Books, which uses a somewhat similar period setting for the human world but a very different outlook on dragons, and I still prefer Brennan’s series to Novik’s mostly on the strength of characterisation, but these books are keeping me consistently entertained too despite the occasional thinness or dullness of the guys we are supposed to be rooting for (especially Lawrence! Get a personality, son!)

    In new releases: I did enjoy both City of Stairs and City of Blades while reading, but the latter made me increasingly uncomfortable with its “of course the colonists presiding over this decimated culture are sympathetic characters, don’t you know they were once colonised by the people they’re now oppressing and that makes the genocide and cultural cleansing of their antecedents totally fair game (also sure they are the arbiters and gatekeepers of the colonised culture, why wouldn’t they be)” business — and complete lack of Continental POV characters to balance that out, unless I am forgetting someone in City of Stairs. That discomfort only grows the more I think back on it. A question for a future scroll comment section, perhaps: Is City of Miracles going to call out some of that nonsense or am I going to have to moderate my expectations/be cool with leaving this trilogy unfinished?

  26. @ Soon Lee:

    A year ago, I would have agreed. But today, looking at the North Korea shenanigans, I’m not so sure anymore.

    In one of my writers’ groups, I’ve noticed that people in their twenties are writing after-the-bomb stories again. It’s kind of depressing.

  27. @Soon Lee

    I’m still not sure the right resonance is there. I put it on my list as a personal top story of the last twenty years. Nuclear saber rattling does make it more relevant. That said, it references Iran-Contra which is likely, at best, a history book paragraph in their experience. Also, it hooks the Chthulu mythos. For a presumably SFF unlettered audience this also drains some of the impact. If James picks it I’n expecting ambivalence even though for me it packs a gut punch.

  28. @Soon Lee: I’d never read A Colder War. I’m not sure whether it’s more or less depressing than Missile Gap, which is really saying something.

    Less, I think, because the horrors in Missile Gap were more familiar; more, I think, because it brought back the humanity of my realization that I got, intimately and personally, why Oliver North thought his arms deal was such a cool hack. So the real horror of A Colder War is even more familiar.

    I’m going to call it a draw and go take a nice warm bath.

  29. Not sure if this has been linked before, but Fantastika Journal has their first issue out and it’s free to download. Looks like loads of articles and reviews. From their website:
    “Fantastika” – a term appropriated from a range of Slavonic languages by John Clute – embraces the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but can also include alternative histories, gothic, steampunk, young adult dystopian fiction, or any other radically imaginative narrative space.
    The goal of Fantastika Journal and its annual conference is to bring together academics and independent researchers who share an interest in this diverse range of fields with the aim of opening up new dialogues, productive controversies and collaborations. We invite articles examining all mediums and disciplines which concern the Fantastika genres.
    http://www.fantastikajournal.com/fantastika-issues.html

  30. @ (12) – It was at a very early DragonCon that my wife and I found out that there were 4x size final page, pen and ink drawings of comic pages available. We eventually picked up at Cons, through direct author contact, or on ebay many pieces of comic art which are framed in my home office.

    We have pieces from Jonny Quest; Doc Savage, Zot, Liberty Project, Mr. Monster (including my favorite splash pages from the run), Green Lantern, Dr. Strange and Batman. But we have more from Grimjack, Airboy and Skywolf than anything. I stopped buying when I ran out of office wall space.

    Art should make you happy when you see it. And the comic art in my home office does so for me.

  32. Unfortunately, the Dr. Strange was from a 70s artist and was a stand alone signed splash. Same thing for the Green Lantern which was a stand alone, signed splash from Kane (I think, have to look in my wife’s studio) with the “railroad lantern” being held. But this was not from the comic itself.

    Almost all of the other art is from a published comic page.

    I had 1940s era Green Lanterns (and Captain Americas) comics purchased as investments – but those were sold in the 2000s before the crash. I could not read them anyway due to allergies sparked by normal pulp paper decay over time.

  33. Thanks for the mention of City of Miracles–I see that it just came out a couple of days ago. It is gonna have to bump my re-read of American Gods off the top of my queue.

  34. As for modern short-ish stories for Young People to read, how about Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt, Eight Episodes by Robert Reed, A Billion Eves by Robert Reed, Palimpsest by Charles Stross, Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter by Geoff Ryman, The Astronaut from Wyoming by Adam-Troy Castro and Jerry Oltion, Recovering Apollo 8 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis, and Neal Gaiman’s How to Talk To Girls at Parties, which is unexpectedly available in comic book form?

  35. @Dr. Abernethy: I like Gene Colan’s work on Dr. Strange quite a bit, too. Just not as much as I like Ditko’s. Very different styles. It’s a good thing Ditko did so much of the early art. He’s got a whole different cosmic thing going on than Kirby did, and while Kirby is The Master of that, Ditko is not to be sneezed at.

  36. 2) Looking at Hugo winners, the most easily accessible SF (using the narrow definition) stories are “For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal, and “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer. Of the two, I think”Cst Pictures Please” would appeal to the reading group more. Both ate abalone online.

  37. 2) I totally second Daddy’s World by Walter Jon Williams. I don’t read a lot of shorter fiction, but that one has stuck with me more than almost anything I’ve read.

  38. We have pieces from Jonny Quest; Doc Savage, Zot, Liberty Project, Mr. Monster (including my favorite splash pages from the run), Green Lantern, Dr. Strange and Batman

    I may have worked on at least two of those…

  39. I would use short stories from different times, maye one post 2000, one from 70-99, one from before 70. would be interesting to compare what have changed, how they compare.

    Scroll a body, File a body, God stalk through the rye

  42. Rose Embolism: Can you recommend any other stories that eat abalone online?

  43. I went home for lunch. We have 29 framed comic art prints. Forgot the Baron Strucker/Hydra page that has the Hydra chant, a page from the Black Knight that has Dr. Strange, a John Sable Freelance stand-alone, and a Dave Stevens Rocketeer page.

    I also have two color masters of Captain America – but these are not generally considered “collectable.”

    Some of the pages are personal favorites my wife and I tracked down that have no great meaning to anyone else. For example, the Zot page is where they are summoning 9Jack9 the assassin. I have an Airboy where Vern (Skywolf’s elderly and wheel chair bound Mom) blows away intruders with a shotgun. Neither the Zot nor this Airboy have any of the main characters – but we loved those pages.

    We just buy art that makes us happy. I at least have low-brow, comic book art tastes for original work.

  46. Stoic Cynic: I’m still not sure the right resonance is there. I put it on my list as a personal top story of the last twenty years. Nuclear saber rattling does make it more relevant. That said, it references Iran-Contra which is likely, at best, a history book paragraph in their experience. Also, it hooks the Chthulu mythos. For a presumably SFF unlettered audience this also drains some of the impact. If James picks it I’n expecting ambivalence even though for me it packs a gut punch.

    If anything it would be a more intriguing story to use, to see how much the “Young People” (TM) get from the story. Lovecraftiana is fairly common these days, so even if they haven’t read Lovecraft, they might already be familiar with the Cthulhu mythos based on works of contemporary writers. (I don’t know if you’re aware, but the readers James Nicoll has for this project are already genre readers, but of contemporary fiction, not “the classics”.)

  49. Okay, I finished Aaronovitch’s Midnight Riot (Rivers of London, to you lot over the ditch) yesterday. I generally enjoyed the snarky humor (bonus points for the cunning plan), but I have to ask: did that deus ex machina at the end piss anyone else off?

    Ubj qvq Tenag xabj gung Zbyyl pbhyq ovgr uvz naq fraq uvz onpx va gvzr? Jurer gur uryy qvq gung pbzr sebz?

    Also, I really hope that Grant’s descriptions, of how he reacts physically when any female of any species wanders within 10 pages of the current scene, taper off in subsequent books. It’s getting rather tedious.

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