Pixel Scroll 5/6/16 Waggin’ Train

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(1) WELL WISHING. James H. Burns, the frequent File 770 columnist, is in the hospital – keep him in mind.

Hey, folks: Quite unexpectedly, I’m in Mercy Hospital, in Rockville Center, at least through the weekend. Cards and visitors welcome! Room 245A.1000 N Village Ave.Rockville Center, NY.11570

(2) NEW BEST FANZINE FINALIST. Lady Business acknowledged its nomination in “Hugo Ballot Finalist Announcement, or More Ladies and Queers on Your Ballot”.

We at Lady Business are excited to announce that we have accepted a place on the final ballot for Best Fanzine in the 2016 Hugo Awards.

This is a strange year to be be a Hugo finalist. If you’ve been following the Hugo Awards, you know that the last couple of years have been controversial. We prefer not to dwell on the controversy here, but if you’re unfamiliar and would like a summary, Fanlore has a good overview. After the 2016 finalists were announced, one of the original five Fanzine finalists, Black Gate, withdrew from consideration. The Hugo administrators contacted us to let us know that we were next in the voting tally, and offered us the open slot. After some conflicted deliberation, we decided that we wanted to acknowledge the people who voted for us in the nomination phase, and we accepted a place on the final list….

(3) KRITZER ON SHORT STORY NOMINATION.

(4) PARTY PLANNER. George R.R. Martin welcomes “The Replacements”. And contemplates their impact on the Alfies.

…((Though I am curious as to whether these two new finalists were indeed sixth. It seemed to take MAC a rather long time to announce the replacements after the withdrawal, something that could presumably be accomplished in minutes just by looking at the list and seeing who was next up — unless, perhaps, there were other withdrawals along the way? We’ll find out come August)).

Short Story and Fanzine were two categories where the Rabid Puppies had swept the field, top to bottom. Accordingly, they were also two categories that I had earmarked as being in need of Alfies. But the withdrawals and replacements broke the Rabid stranglehold, leaving me with a decision to make — do I still present Alfies in those categories, or no?

I am going to need to ponder that for a while.

(5) KNOCK-ON EFFECT. With SF Signal’s announcement fresh in mind. Adam Whitehead discusses “Blogging in the Age of Austerity” at The Wertzone.

…For bloggers who do have day jobs and families, it’s become clear that the lack of material reward for blogging means greater pressure to step away and spend that time instead with loved ones or doing other things. And that’s why it’s easy to see why the guys at SF Signal decided to step away. If I get one of the several jobs I’m currently going through the recruitment process for, the amount of blogging on the site will have to fall as I devote time to that instead.

Is there a way around this? Should there be? Kind of. For a lot of bloggers, blogging is a springboard into writing fiction and once they make that transition, the blogging is left behind. For me, I have no interest in writing fiction day in, day out. I may one day try my hand at writing a short story or a novel if a story demands to be told, but I’m never going to be a career fiction writer. I much prefer writing about the genre as a critic, but the paid market for that is much smaller. After over five months doing the rounds with my agent, A History of Epic Fantasy has failed to garner as much as the merest flicker of interest from a professional publisher, despite the people nominating it for awards (and in any year but this one, it might even have stood a chance of making the shortlist) and clamouring for the book version (look for an update on that soon). But even if that takes off, that’s just one project. Being an SFF critic isn’t much of a career path these days, especially with venues drying up (even the mighty SFX Magazine seems to be in financial trouble and may not last much longer)….

(6) WITHOUT MUMBLING. At Fantasy Literature Sam Bowring takes up the perpetual challenge — “Coming Up with Fantasy Names: A Somewhat Vague and Impractical Guide”.

One of the hardest aspects of writing a fantasy story, I find, is conjuring a bunch of made-up names that don’t sound like I spilled alphabet soup on a crossword puzzle. It’s important to get names right, of course. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has flung away a potential read in disgust because the blurb said something about a protagonist called ‘Nynmn’dryhl of the Xyl’turym’. Can I buy a vowel, please? I’m also guessing this is one reason why so few fantasy worlds include any equivalent of telephones, for everyone would be forever spelling their names over them.

That said, personal appreciation of fantasy names is about as subjective as it gets. One person’s ‘Nynmn’dryhl’ may be another’s ‘Bilbo Baggins’. It would be arrogant for me to sit here (I really must get a standing desk so I can sound more authoritative when I type) and tell you what does or does not make a good fantasy name, especially when I myself have created names I know for a fact that others find cringe-worthy. One of my good friends, for instance, never lets me forgot that I named a place ‘Whisperwood’. ‘Whisperwood,’ he will say, years later, out of the blue, shaking his head in dismay.

Thus instead I’ll merely tell you about general approaches I find to be useful. One such, which I imagine is a common starting point for many authors, is to simply diddle around with various syllables, rearranging them in different ways until striking upon a pleasing combination. I do not own the patent for this, and mind altering drugs are optional. Losara, Olakanzar, Lalenda, Elessa are all the results of such a ‘process’, as we shall kindly call it…

(7) SCIENCE TOO. The Traveler at Galactic Journey begins “[May 6, 1961] Dreams into Reality (First American in Space)” by connecting the dots.

I’ve been asked why it is that, as a reviewer of science fiction, I devote so much ink to the Space Race and other scientific non-fiction.  I find it interesting that fans of the first would not necessarily be interested in the second, and vice versa.

There are three reasons non-fiction figures so prominently in this column:

1) I like non-fiction;

2) All the science fiction mags have a non-fiction column;

3) Science fiction without science fact is without context.

(8) SENSE8. From SciFiNow, “Sense8 Season 2 sneak peek photos give a look at what’s to come”.

Sense8‘s co-creator Lana Wachowski shared a tonne of brand new Season 2 production stills on the show’s official Tumblr page recently (sense8.tumblr.com if you’re bored…), and they are absolutely delightful. They also look potentially spoilerific, so browse through the above gallery with caution.

(9) TRIBAL THEORY. Damien G. Walter takes up the topic “Have the Locus awards been hit with ‘myopic sexism’” at The Guardian.

Taken as a whole, the Locus awards were broadly representative of a sci-fi field that is continuing to grow in diversity: 18 female to 17 male writers, with many upcoming writers of colour among the voters’ top picks. Placed in that context, the way the YA category has turned out seems less like myopic sexism, and more indicative of the older demographic of readers who read Locus magazine and see the YA genre from their own preferences. When I caught up with Joe Abercrombie, nominated twice in the category for his Shattered Seas trilogy, he agreed.

“I think this has much more to do with adult SF&F readers voting for the authors they recognise, and tending to read YA that crosses over into SF&F territory.” Abercrombie’s popularity among adult readers has carried over to his YA books, which in America have been sold and marketed as adult fantasy; it’s that adult readership, who recognise Abercrombie as one of their tribe, whose votes count in the Locus award. “I’m pleased people voted for me,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s ever a good thing when someone’s on the same shortlist twice.”

(10) SF IN PORTUGAL. Luis Filipe Silva’s new entry on Portugal for the Science Fiction Encyclopedia chronicles the past century of sf/f there. The focus is on fiction, as one would expect, with this being the only comment about the interaction between literature and national politics:

Nevertheless, if utopia bewitches the faithful, it frightens the unbelievers. A decade of political and social turmoil, following the Regicide in 1908 that turned Portugal into an uneasy Republic, inspires some highly pamphletary Dystopian fiction: in A Cidade Vermelha [“The Red City”] (1923) by Luís Costa, the misguided Portuguese people welcome a full Republican/Communist government, only to see the country devolve into absolute chaos; it is not surprising that the people then cry for the return of the unjustly deposed monarch, who comes back from exile and sets things right again. Amid such strong ideological trends, any text that pictures an ideal future based solely on the workings of science and technology becomes a rarity: in the landmark vision of Lisboa no Ano 2000 [“Lisbon in the Year 2000”] (1906), Melo de Matos (years) turns Lisbon into a major world economic hub thanks to advances in Transportation and Communication made by Portuguese Scientists.

I was curious, after reading many posts by Sarah A. Hoyt.

(11) COMMONWEALTH SHORT STORY PRIZE. Locus Online reports a speculative story by Tina Makereti is one of five winners of the 2016 Pacific Regional Commonwealth Prize.

The 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize judges have announced this year’s five regional winners, including the speculative story “Black Milk” by Tina Makereti (New Zealand) for the Pacific region.

…The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded to the best piece of unpublished short fiction in English, and short stories translated into English from other languages (stories may be submitted in their original language if not in English). Five winning writers from five different Commonwealth regions receive £2,500 (USD $3,835), and the overall winner receives £5,000 ($7,670)….

(12) BLAME HARRY. Fantasy causes brain damage, according to a school headmaster in the UK — “Nailsworth teacher claims Harry Potter books cause mental illness”.

A headmaster has urged pupils not to read Harry Potter – claiming the books cause mental illness.

Graeme Whiting also said other fantasy titles such as Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games and Terry Pratchett encourage ‘difficult behaviour’. He told parents to steer clear of JK Rowling’s ‘frightening’ books and they should read classics like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare. Writing on his blog, Mr Whiting, head of the independent Acorn School in Nailsworth, Gloucester, thinks that people should have a ‘special licence’ to buy fantasy books. He wrote: “I want children to read literature that is conducive to their age and leave those mystical and frightening texts for when they can discern reality, and when they have first learned to love beauty….”

(13) AFTERMATH. Anne Heche and James Tupper have been cast as the leads in Syfy’s forthcoming post-apocalyptic series Aftermath. Deadline reports the former Men in Trees co-stars will reunite on screen  as a married couple who “have to contend with supernatural creatures as well as their own teenage children after a series of natural disasters finally sticks a fork in life as we know it.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

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215 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/6/16 Waggin’ Train”

  1. People like Graeme Whiting used to gall me. Now there are so few left I feel there should be rules against hunting them, and funding campaigns to preserve their habitat.

  4. Re #4: Speculating base on announcement speed as to whether the newly added nominees were sixth or further down the line is pretty useless. It’s not possible to tell the difference between the concom contacting and being rejected by multiple people with more nominations and somebody who is out of town, or whose agent was out of town, or who simply asked for a couple of days to mull it over.

    *insert obligatory statement about first five here*

  6. Second Fifth!

    The licence to buy fantasy sounds like something VD could get behind.

  7. 1) WELL WISHING – I certainly do and the link is broken. Or at least unavailable to me.

    4) PARTY PLANNER – I kinda hope GRRM hands out Alfies to Black Gate and Thomas May, as well as people and ‘zines that might have been on the list except for slating. However, they’re his hood ornaments and it’s his party.

    12) BLAME HARRY – As someone who read Shakespeare very young, I can only conclude the headmaster doesn’t know much about children. Or classics. I had vivid nightmares for years about everything from the nephews to Ophelia and I still start crying halfway through Othello, reading or watching, because I know what’s going to happen. It’s worse than Old Yeller and Beth March ever were.

  9. Re: 5 (Adam’s post)
    Blogging does take time and money. There are plenty of small blogs out there, many of them underappreciated (a lot of them run by women, and I don’t doubt that is a factor, sad to say). But a lot of the previously larger voices have stepped away or moved to paid gigs and other things.

  10. So Graeme Whiting wants children to steer clear of JK Rowling and her “frightening” books and stick with classics like Shakespeare, because he wants them “to read literature that is conducive to their age and leave those mystical and frightening texts for when they can discern reality…”

    Because we all know the pile of dead and mutilated in Titus Andronicus, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Richard III never gave anybody nightmares. Not to mention Midsummer Night’s Dream and the nasty father who would rather his daughter be dead or in a nunnery than marry the person she wants instead of who he wants, and the jerk King of the Fairies who puts an ass’s head on some poor schmoe and then used magic to make his queen fall for the ass as a way to ridicule her because they were fighting over a child slave. I mean, that’s not frightening at all.

    It does sound like a parody, but it’s not The Onion or anything…

  12. [12]: so going by Whiting’s post, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare which he wants children to read are the best for them, but children’s fantasy books–not? (Shakespeare mumble mumble elves!).

    Yeah, this was the crap being passed around in the 1950s which carried over into the 1960s which had bookstore clerks and librarians lecturing my parents on letting me read Oz books….

    *headdesk*

    (And my ongoing default comment to acquaintances/friends lamenting their children are reading juvenile trash like sff is more or less: your kids are reading books, and you are complaining about that because?????????”)

    ***ADORES RHIANNA PRATCHETT***

    Now imagines Mr. Headmaster Whiting hiring Susan Sto-Helit one year, ahahahahahah!

  13. Cory Doctorow has weighed in on Chuck Tingle’s epic trolling of VD over at boingboing:

    The crowning glory of Tingle’s campaign, though, was his announcement that his Hugo Award, should he win it, would be accepted by Zoe Quinn, the reigning bogeywoman of the Gamergate/neoreactionary right. In other words: every time a “Puppy” casts a vote for Tingle’s work, they cast a vote for giving Zoe Quinn a podium from which to address the entire World Science Fiction Convention about the importance of diversity and representation in fiction.

    It is truly glorious.

  14. 1. I wish James Burns a speedy recovery.

    12. I’ll be happy to send all the students a copy of Shelley’s Men of England and Woodworth’s Argument for Suicide.

  15. As far as moral panics go, “may encourage difficult behavior” is a whole lot better than “inevitably leads to devil worship, drug use, and wild sex orgies.” So I guess there’s that. 🙂

  16. >(9) TRIBAL THEORY. Damien G. Walter takes up the topic “Have the Locus awards been hit with ‘myopic sexism’” at The Guardian.

    Without checking, I’d say this is Puppy influence. Vox Day posted a list of recommendations for the Locus Awards.

  17. Lela E. Buis: Without checking, I’d say this is Puppy influence. Vox Day posted a list of recommendations for the Locus Awards.

    You’re late to the party. This was already discussed at length in another thread. The Rabid Puppy influence on the Locus Finalists appears to have been negligible.

  18. Lela E. Buis says Without checking, I’d say this is Puppy influence. Vox Day posted a list of recommendations for the Locus Awards.

    Not likely as Locus weights the votes by giving each subscriber two votes and non-subscribers one vote. I seriously doubt that the Puppies extending that much money just to vote.

  19. The puppies did their doggone best to chase that cat away,
    They enlisted some assistance from Sailor Tom Mays,
    When Tom took a whiff, as soon as he was able,
    He said, “Rather than eat a shit sandwich, I choose to get up from the table.”
    And then the cat came back, the very next day.
    The cat came back, we thought she was a goner, but the cat came back.
    She just couldn’t stay away.

    [I’m quoting Mr. Mays so the meter is his fault; a good singer could make it work.]

  20. (5) KNOCK-ON EFFECT

    I had a similar reaction, in terms of the overall dynamics of online blog-zines (if that’s a word?). Monetization isn’t adequate to the time and effort–especially in the sort of fan-oriented culture of SFF–so bloggers have to keep a close watch on their commitments to avoid burnout.

    On the other hand, there are other reasons to blog than as a stepping stone to professional publication, or with the intent to monetize the blogging itself. I have a rather demanding day job, I’m working on establishing a schedule of one novel a year, and I very rarely miss my goal of five blog posts per week. To some extent, the blog is meant to serve as publicity for my paid writing. (“Hey, she writes interesting stuff. Maybe I’ll shell out for her novels.”) But a lot of what I blog on isn’t directly related to my fiction–I think I”d burn out pretty quickly if it were. It also helps that I can cough up a thousand words on anything that amuses or inspired me at the drop of a hat. I think what makes it sustainable for me are that last and keeping a diverse mix of topics.

    To some extent, I blog because I love teaching. And I had rotten timing if I wanted to end up with an academic career. It gives me a chance to share all the research I do rather than letting is just sit in my head.

    (6) WITHOUT MUMBLING

    And speaking of topics I can blather on about at the drop of a hat…

  21. (1) WELL WISHING
    I get an error to that Facebook link. Hope it’s nothing serious & wishing James well.

    @JJ,
    Thanks for the Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing) link. Marvellous!

  22. So there is a Neal, a Neil, a Nora, now two Naomi’s, and a Nnedi on the ballot. Clearly a disproportionate number of N’s. I may ask Dave Freer to work out the odds of this being a conspiracy – have the non-n’s been disNfranchised? 😉

  23. (1) Get well soon!

    (2) Have now glanced at “Lady Business”. Looks pretty darn good. Congrats to them.

    (3) WOO-HOO to Kritzer and “SJW Credential Pictures, Please”.

    (4) Why not have a few extras on-hand just in case, George?

    (12) Exactly the sort of chap JRRT and pTerry knew was an idiot. Shakespeare is damn well scarier than Discworld. And Shelley’s such a swell role model for the kids… and the Battle of Hogwarts has got nowt on Titus Andronicus. Protip, Mr. Head Teacher — don’t suggest that millions of children are mentally ill if you want them to pay money to attend your school. And don’t say things that cause my brain to pop up a mental GIF of Graham Chapman saying “You’re a loony.” (Of course he’s such an old stick in the mud he probably hates Python)

  24. @ Steve Simmons

    It’s not possible to tell the difference between the concom contacting and being rejected by multiple people with more nominations and somebody who is out of town, or whose agent was out of town, or who simply asked for a couple of days to mull it over.

    Or the time it takes to contact all six contributors to Lady Business and then allow them time to consult before accepting…

  25. Steve Simmons: It’s not possible to tell the difference between the concom contacting and being rejected by multiple people with more nominations and somebody who is out of town, or whose agent was out of town, or who simply asked for a couple of days to mull it over.

    I was surprised GRRM thought there was anything odd about the elapsed time between withdrawal and announcement of new finalists. I’m sure that he knows how the process works. It’s really bizarre that he even mentioned this, much less actually considered that it had some significance.

  26. (12) so he summons the wholesomeness of Shelley to prevent mental illness and difficult behavior…

  27. Rolling over a comment from the tail-end of the last scroll:

    I happened upon S.K. Dunstall’s “Origin Series”, including “The Atlantis Gene”. Have any of you read it? Is it Stargate Atlantis fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, or is that just the way it sounds from the blurb?

  28. (3) I suspect I’m in the minority here, but I’m very disappointed that “Cat Pictures Please” is the story that got on the ballot. I didn’t think it was bad, just . . . if I hadn’t kept seeing it on rec lists, I think I’d have forgotten about it a few minutes after reading it. I suspect I’ll still be No Awarding this category.

    (9) This is the first year that YA has had all-male finalists, but it’s come very close to that multiple times in the past. I’m not sure that having four male finalists to one female finalist was really less sexist than what we got this year. And notice how only two women have ever won in the YA category (one of them for a book co-written by a man)? Wondering if the YA Locus Award has been “hit” with sexism is kind of ignoring the fact that the YA category has never been particularly friendly to women.

  29. Emma: I suspect I’m in the minority here, but I’m very disappointed that “Cat Pictures Please” is the story that got on the ballot. I didn’t think it was bad, just . . . if I hadn’t kept seeing it on rec lists, I think I’d have forgotten about it a few minutes after reading it. I suspect I’ll still be No Awarding this category.

    Don’t feel bad. I haven’t read one of the Novella finalists yet, but of the other 4, I am seriously considering putting 2 of them under No Award — not because they’re bad, but because I read 30 of the 2015 Novellas, and I’d put those two solidly in the middle of the pack. When I’ve read a dozen which I thought were much more deserving, and those 2 stories really didn’t make me squee, it’s hard to feel enthused about ranking them on my ballot.

    I’ve also read 2 of the 5 Novelettes, and frankly, I’m probably going to put both of those below No Award — and I’m not expecting that any of the remaining 3 are going to impress me, either. 😐

  30. (6) makes me think of the lead story in the Analog that landed in my mailbox this week. Lots of long, complex names, and it appears to be a piece of something longer, but I am not (currently) interested in having to make cheat-sheets to track the characters and their affiliations.

  31. @robinareid

    so going by Whiting’s post, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare which he wants children to read are the best for them, but children’s fantasy books–not? (Shakespeare mumble mumble elves!).

    Yeah, this was the crap being passed around in the 1950s which carried over into the 1960s which had bookstore clerks and librarians lecturing my parents on letting me read Oz books….

    In Germany, you still had this crap going on well into the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, Michael Ende, author of The Neverending Story and Momo among others, was attacked for filling kids’ brains with silly fantasies, classmates of mine had copies of the Perry Rhodan and Ghosthunter John Sinclair pulp novelettes confiscated, comics were considered bad for language development and even Grimm’s fairytales were considered too violent. Instead, children and young people were supposed to read dreary stories about drug addiction, suicide, department store theft and the evil of dares, because these books supposedly reflected the life realities of young people.

    Meanwhile, the classics weren’t perfect, but they at least offered an escape from the dreary life reality fiction (which certainly did not reflect the life reality of anybody in the middle class semi-rural suburb where I grew up). Because the classics gave us Faust and his pact with the devil as well as poor abused Gretchen and the Sorceror’s Apprentice (both by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) and the Giant’s Plaything (by Adalbert von Chamisso), all of which were – gasp – fantasy, as well as Friedrich Schiller’s famous ballad “The Hostage”, which was just so wonderfully bloody as well as a tale about friendship and loyalty.

    As it is, Mr. Whiting’s arguments could be borrowed straight from a 1970s piece of German pop culture criticism. And in fact, when I went to university and read my way through vintage pop culture criticism in the university library, I realised that many of my teacher had been quoting these books verbatim.

  32. I’m really unhappy and resentful that “Damage” by David D. Levine was kept off the ballot. That was an absolutely fantastic story, and I suspect that it will be near the top of the Longlist. 😐

  33. >You’re late to the party. This was already discussed at length in another thread. The Rabid Puppy influence on the Locus Finalists appears to have been negligible.

    Dang. You mean I missed all the fun?

    I did go ahead and check. Day scored several hits: 3/5 of YA, 3/5 of Best Collection and 4/5 of Best first novel. That’s not to say he didn’t choose recommendations that were already popular. You’re right that his contingent wasn’t big enough to get any of the low quality/parody stories into the list of finalists.

    Best SF novel:
    Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
    A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

    Best Fantasy novel:
    Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

    Best YA book:
    Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Harper Voyager UK)
    Half the World, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey)
    The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)

    Best first novel:
    Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Ace; Macmillan UK)
    The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
    Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
    The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury)

    Best collection:
    Dancing Through the Fire, Tanith Lee (Fantastic Books)
    Three Moments of an Explosion, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey 2016)
    The Best of Gregory Benford, Gregory Benford (Subterranean)

    Best anthology:
    Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington, eds. (Haikasoru)
    Old Venus, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Bantam)

    Best novella:
    Penric’s Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum)
    Slow Bullets, Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon Publications)

    Best novelette:
    Folding Beijing, Hao Jingfang (Uncanny Magazine)

  34. >I’m really unhappy and resentful that “Damage” by David D. Levine was kept off the ballot. That was an absolutely fantastic story

    Well, he did ask to have his name removed from the Puppies’ list, didn’t he? They seem to have driven the Hugo nominations. Levine has made the list of Nebula finalists.

  35. As for #12: ““I want children to read literature that is conducive to their age and leave those mystical and frightening texts for when they can discern reality, and when they have first learned to love beauty….””

    I wonder if he’s read Keats’ Lamia….

    I find Flannery O’Connor stories more frightening than any horror or fantasy I’ve read, to be honest.

  36. Lela E. Buis: Well, he did ask to have his name removed from the Puppies’ list, didn’t he? They seem to have driven the Hugo nominations. Levine has made the list of Nebula finalists.

    Thank you, Captain Obvious. 🙄

  38. @Xtifr: As far as moral panics go, “may encourage difficult behavior” is a whole lot better than “inevitably leads to devil worship, drug use, and wild sex orgies.” Damn it! I read the wrong books!

    @JJ: I’m really unhappy and resentful that “Damage” by David D. Levine was kept off the ballot. That was an absolutely fantastic story,

    I’m continually fascinated by how tastes differ: I thought that was a terrible, would-put-it-below-No-Award story.

  39. fivethirtyeight has a post by Walt Hickey, “We Give Captain America 4-To-1 Odds Against Winning The Civil War.” (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/captain-america-civil-war-who-would-win/) He calculates power rankings (college-football-style, not hammer-vs-shield style) for all the Avengers, and uses that to come up with a data-driven estimate for the Civil War.

    To quote Hickey, “I spent two hours writing the simulation out in Python because I have completely lost control of my life.” Anyone who enjoys wonkish posts about EPH might enjoy this, footnotes and all.

  40. PhilRM: I’m continually fascinated by how tastes differ: I thought that was a terrible, would-put-it-below-No-Award story.

    Clearly, you are a wrongfan having wrongfun. 😉

    As I recall, your opinions and mine on a number of novels have been quite similar, so I’ll put it down to taste.

    I hadn’t read any of the Bolo stories until last year, when a couple of Bolo-wannabes got gamed onto the ballot. Prompted by the discussions of Filers, I went out and found what are widely considered to be the 3 best of Laumer’s Bolo stories, and the little light came on — oh, that’s what they were trying to achieve with their stories, but badly missed on. Then someone suggested “Damage” and reading that was like the difference between night and day. I thought that Levine succeeded where the Puppies failed.

    Because I read mostly Novels, but worked really hard at reading the Novella category for 2015 as well, I was only able to read about 25 of the 2015 short stories and 25 of the novelettes. I’m sure that there are some others I would have raved about, if I had only gotten to them. I imagine that the short fiction Longlists will have some good reading for me.

  41. Well, he did ask to have his name removed from the Puppies’ list, didn’t he? They seem to have driven the Hugo nominations. Levine has made the list of Nebula finalists.

    As far as I can tell, the Sad Puppies seem to have had hardly any impact on the Hugo nominations at all, so annoying a handful of them due to not wanting his name associated with their list very likely hasn’t harmed David Levine’s chances. I also suspect that “Damages” would have been on the Hugo shortlist, had the Rabid Puppies not messed it up, because it was a good story that got a lot of buzz.

    BTW best wishes for a speedy recovery to James H. Burns.

  43. @JJ: As I recall, your opinions and mine on a number of novels have been quite similar
    That’s my recollection also.

    I haven’t gone back to reread it in ages, but I have fond memories of Laumer’s original Bolo.

  44. Doctor Science: I happened upon S.K. Dunstall’s “Origin Series”, including “The Atlantis Gene”. Have any of you read it? Is it Stargate Atlantis fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, or is that just the way it sounds from the blurb?

    I went looking for this, and I think the author is A.G. Riddle? (Damn all those 2-initial authors, making everything so confusing!!!)

    It’s a self-pub, but it’s been picked up for a movie adaptation, so it might be good. It kind of sounds as though it’s got some of the same plot elements as that TNG episode.

    And… my library has it available on Overdrive, so I’ll let you know what I think. 🙂

  46. Also, Doctor Science, I meant to say, it’s nice to have you back. 🙂

    I hope that Mr. Doctor Science is recovering well (though I am dismayed to hear his assessment of The Cold Between, which is near the top of Mount Tsundoku). 🙂

  47. Cheryl S.: 1) WELL WISHING – I certainly do and the link is broken. Or at least unavailable to me.

    I found James’ Facebook profile, and it appears that post is Friends-only. But I hope that it’s not serious, and that he’s better soon.

  49. Lela E. Buis: I thought “Damage” was satire.

    It’s not satire. It’s a clever subversion on Bolo-style stories.

  50. (12) comes across like he’s never actually read any of those people he named.

    Edit: tenth fifth?

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