(1) CHINESE NEBULA AWARDS. Regina Kanyu Wang, linking to the Chinese-language announcement, informed Facebook readers about three people who will be guests at the Chinese Nebula Awards this year: Worldcon 75 co-chair Crystal Huff, SFWA President Cat Rambo and Japanese sf writer Taiyo Fuji.
Crystal Huff responded:
I am so very honored and pleased to reveal what I’ve been quietly psyched about for a while now:… I am thrilled to go to China for my first ever visit, and meet new friends in Beijing and Shanghai! So thrilled!
Cat Rambo told File 770 she’s more than excited about the trip:
I am super!! stoked!! about it and have been spending the last month and half trying to pick up a little conversational Mandarin. Post Beijing, another Chinese SF organization is taking me to Chengdu for a similar ceremony involving SFF film awards. This trip is – next to being able to tell Carolyn Cherryh she was a SFWA grandmaster — one of the biggest thrills of being SFWA president I’ve experienced so far, and I’m looking forward to getting to know the Chinese publishing scene a bit better in a way that benefits SFWA and its members.
(2) ANIME EXPO HARASSMENT POLICY. Sean O’Hara reported in a comment, “Anime Expo just went hardcore with a new Youth Protection program that requires all employees, volunteers, vendors and panelists to submit to a criminal background check and take an online courses.”
Read the policy here [PDF file].
SPJA Youth Protection Policy
- Purpose and Goals
The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA) recognizes the importance of protecting youth participants in SPJA events and activities, including online activities. SPJA has adopted a zero tolerance policy with regard to actions or behaviors that threaten the safety of young people, including violence, bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other inappropriate or potentially harmful actions or behaviors. SPJA views the safety and security of all participants—especially young people— as a top priority.
All participants at SPJA events and activities (including online activities) are encouraged to report any unsafe or inappropriate behaviors, conditions, or circumstances, including any violation of this Youth Protection Policy or violation of any other policy or rule intended to promote a safe environment….
(3) LIVING HISTORY. Ted White, the Hugo-winning fanwriter, pro, and former editor of Amazing, was interviewed for his local paper, the Falls Church News-Press, on May 6 – “F.C.’s Ted White Reflects on Comics, Sci-Fi and the Little City”. The reporter asked about his interests in sf, jazz, writing, and comics.
N-P: How were you introduced to comic books?
White: They were there. I found them. I mean, I can’t remember what the first comic book I ever saw was but it was probably one that one of the neighborhood kids had and it very likely didn’t even have a cover….We’re talking the war years, the ‘40s, early on [and] comic books just sort of passed from hand-to-hand. It was a long time before I bought my first comic book.
There’s an interesting story involved in all of this….One day, I think it was between the first and second grade, the summer, and…Madison had a swimming program for the summer.
And I would walk over to the school, which was a mile away but it didn’t matter because I used to walk everywhere, at a certain time in the morning and join up with a motley crew of other kids and be taken into Washington, D.C. to 14th and K Streets where there was the Statler Hotel….At the end of that we were brought back to Madison and it was time for me to walk home.
But I didn’t walk directly home. For some strange reason I followed N. Washington Street north…I’m not sure where I was headed to but north of Columbia Street there is a bank that used to be a Safeway, a tiny Safeway…and I’m walking in that direction and I’m almost opposite that Safeway when I meet a friend of mine who is pushing his bicycle up the sidewalk…and in the basket of his bicycle he has several comic books.
And we stopped and we talked and he showed me the comic books and I don’t know how I did it, but I talked him out of them and he gave them to me and one of them was an issue of Wonder Woman.
Now I had never seen Wonder Woman before – this was a brand new comic book to me. And it was strange. The art was strange…it was almost Rococo and the writing was even stranger….I started reading this comic book as I was coming along Columbia Street to Tuckahoe and I’m just sort of very slowly walking, reading intensely. It would be the equivalent of someone obliviously reading their cell phone while walking down a sidewalk….I was about halfway home when I look up and I see my mother rapidly approaching and she does not have a happy look on her face.
I am hours late because I’ve been spending all my time dawdling, reading comic books. And my mother took the comic books out of my hand and took the ratty dozen or so that I already had, most of them coverless, and took them out to our incinerator and burned them all.
This profoundly upset me but it also changed me. I was six or seven then, and I decided two things which I was happy to share with my mother. One of them was that she was never ever going to destroy anything of mine again and she never did….and the other thing it did was make me into a collector…from that point on I became a comic book collector…and by time I was in high school…I was written up in a newspaper called the Washington News as the boy with 10,000 comic books.
(4) SF DRAMEDY. Seth MacFarlane will do an sf comedy/drama series reports Collider.
Between Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show, prolific writer/producer/voice actor Seth MacFarlane has voiced a lot of characters on television and created even more, but now he’s heading into the live-action realm for his next TV series.
Fox announced today that MacFarlane is developing a new, though still untitled comedic drama for the network for which he’ll executive produce and star based off a script he wrote. Here’s what we know: the series will consist of 13 hourlong episodes and takes place 300 years in the future where the crew of the Orville, “a not-so-top-of-the-line exploratory ship in Earth’s interstellar Fleet,” deal with cosmic challenges on their adventures.
(5) MARKET OPENS. Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-speculation edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Wieland, which was funded by a Kickstarter appeal, now is open for submissions.
Submissions for fiction and poetry are open until June 4th. Submissions for line art and coloring pages are open until June 30th.
We want this anthology to reach outside Western and Anglophone traditions of speculative fiction, showcasing the way environment and environmental issues are talked about and perceived in all parts of the world. We encourage and welcome submissions from diverse voices and under-represented populations, including, but not limited to, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, those with disabilities, and the elderly. Authors of all walks of life should feel encouraged to send us stories and poems celebrating these diverse characters and settings all around us.
(6) NO SH!T. Here’s some more good news — the No Sh!t, There I Was – An Anthology of Improbable Tales Kickstarter has funded, reaching its $8,500 goal. The anthology is edited by Rachael Acks.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- May 8, 1985 – Theodore Sturgeon passed away.
(8) SELECTIVE QUOTE. A responsible blogger would have chosen a tweet about the writer’s Amazon sales, his con appearances, or his charitable causes. But noooo…!
The tragedy of my life is that I am burdened with the constant knowledge that sooner or later, I will have to put on pants.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 7, 2016
(8) YOUR BARTENDER. Marko Kloos shares his recipe for “frontlines: the cocktail”.
Just in time for the upcoming Manticon (where I will be Guest of Honor), I present to you the first Frontlines-themed cocktail: the Shockfrost.
Those of you who have read ANGLES OF ATTACK will know that the Shockfrost is featured in the novel as the specialty of the bars on the ice moon New Svalbard, and that it’s supposed to pack quite a punch. Andrew mentions the look (blue) and the flavors of the drink when he tries one for the first time (notes of licorice, mint, and God-knows-what-else). So I made a trip to the liquor store for ingredients and experimented with the flavors a bit to create a real-world replica….
(9) A SMASHING TIME. The Traveler at Galactic Journey reviews a monster movie: “[May 8, 1961] Imitation is… (Gorgo)”.
…Is it art for the ages? Absolutely not. Though there is some morality tacked on, mostly of the “humanity mustn’t think itself the master of nature” sort of thing, it’s an afterthought. Characterization is similarly abandoned around the halfway mark. This is no Godzilla — it is knocking over of toy cities for the fun of it.
At that, it succeeds quite well. Gorgo makes liberal and reasonably facile use of stock footage (though the planes all inexplicably bear United States markings!) The cinematography is well composed, the color bright, the screen wide. The acting is serviceable, and for anyone who wants to see what London looks like in this modern year of 1961, there are lots of great shots, both pre and post-destruction…
(10) INTERPRETING AN ICON. In “Captain America and Progressive Infantilization” Jeb Kinnison replies to Amanda Marcotte’s widely-read post about Cap.
…In her piece, “Captain America’s a douchey libertarian now: Why did Marvel have to ruin Steve Rogers?”, Marcotte is upset because the Cap didn’t knuckle under to “reasonable, common-sense” restrictions on his freedom to act for good. It’s not worth a detailed fisking — generating clickbait articles for a living doesn’t allow much time for careful writing — but she does reveal the mindset of those who believe every decision should be made by a committee of the select. The “unregulated” and “uncontrolled” are too dangerous to tolerate. Some key bits:
Steve Rogers is an icon of liberal patriotism, and his newest movie turns him into an Ayn Rand acolyte…
Most corporate blockbuster movies would cave into the temptation to make the character some kind of generic, apolitical “patriot,” abandoning the comic tradition that has painted him as a New Deal Democrat standing up consistently for liberal values. Instead, in both the first movie and in “Captain America: Winter Soldier,” we get Steve the liberal: Anti-racist, anti-sexist, valuing transparency in government and his belief that we the people should hold power instead of some unaccountable tyrants who believe might makes right.
Steve is All-American, so he is classically liberal: believing in the rule of law, equality of opportunity, and freedom to do anything that doesn’t step on someone else’s rights and freedoms. Amanda does not believe in individual freedom — she believes in “freedom,” approved by committee, with individual achievement subordinated to identity politics aiming at equality of outcome. No one should be free to judge the morality of a situation and act without lobbying others to achieve a majority and gaining approval of people like her….
(11) AN ORIGINAL MAD MAN. Ben Yakas, an interviewer for Gothamist, spent some time “Hanging With Al Jaffee, MAD Magazine’s 95-Year-Old Journeyman Cartoonist”.
His career took off in earnest in the early 1940s, initially while he was still in the Army. He taught wounded airmen how to do figure drawing at a hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, then was recruited by the Pentagon to create posters, illustrated pamphlets, and exercise pieces for soldiers in hospitals around the country. Once he was discharged, he worked at Timely Comics and Atlas Comics (precursors of Marvel Comics) with his first boss, Stan Lee. “He had been discharged from the military and took over from a substitute editor,” Jaffee said. “He said, ‘Oh, come ahead.’ He even wrote a letter to tell them that I had a job to go to so they favored my release. That’s how my career really got going.”
Jaffee explained his unusual working relationship with Lee, whom he first met when he was just 20 years old: “Usually in the comic book business, someone writes a script, an artist is called in, the artist shows pencils, and if the pencils are approved, the artist is told to finish with ink,” he said. “Each step is edited by the editor who approves of each stage. I didn’t have that with Stan Lee. He and I apparently hit it off so well that he just told me, ‘Go ahead and write it, pencil it, and ink it and bring it in.’ It was never rejected. I was very fortunate because it was so smooth working and we enjoyed each other’s company and he was a very, very bubbling with ideas kind of guy.”
That loose set-up turned out to be the norm for Jaffee throughout his career, even as he left Lee and ventured out into the uncertain world of freelancing: “We were responsible for our own income and upkeep. What you do is you wake up every Monday morning and you say, ‘What am I going to produce now to make a buck?'”
(12) AUDIO TINGLES. Starburst’s The BookWorm Podcast hosted by Ed Fortune enters the Hugos debate. Mostly by laughing: “Enter the Voxman”.
Ed reviews Star Wars Bloodline by Claudia Gray and Ninfa returns to review Victoria Avayard’s The Glass Sword. Extended chatter about the awards season and the usual silliness.
(13) SHORT SF VIDEO. Hampus Eckerman says, “This nice little gem became available on Youtube just a few days ago:”
The Nostalgist A Sci-fi Short Based on a Story From the Author of Robopocalypse
In the futuristic city of Vanille, with properly tuned ImmerSyst Eyes & Ears the world can look and sound like a paradise. But the life of a father and his young son threatens to disintegrate when the father’s device begins to fail. Desperate to avoid facing his traumatic reality, the man must venture outside to find a replacement, into a city where violence and danger lurk beneath a beautiful but fragile veneer…
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Sean O’Hara, Paul Weimer, Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Doctor Science.]
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I’ve always liked Ted White; mostly because he published my letters and name-checked me in an editorial in Amazing (I started reading the magazine just before he took over as editor), but now I have another reason:
when I was about the same age as he was, I used all of (MY) piggybank money (the money I was told I could “save or spend on anything I wanted”) to purchase an entire box of Batman trading cards. (Which were sorted and complete sets were given to friends.)
When my mother learned what I’d done with (MY) money – all of them went into the fireplace.
I too collect, and neither did my mother ever destroy anything of mine again (because if I thought it might end up in the fireplace, she never knew I had whatever it was.)
Is there a support group for Collectors Who Were Traumatized By Early Childhood Possession Destruction Into Collecting? (Maybe not. Who gets to keep the empty coffee cups?)
If you are going to be involved in law enforcement, you shouldn’t do it as a an ordinary civilian.
Well, maybe. The problems with “regulating supers” are myriad. Right now, if you are an ordinary civilian and you intervene to break up a mugging or something similar, we don’t require you to have training before you do that. Or if you are investigating a crime on your own, that’s also okay to do – reporters, for example, do this sort of thing all the time.
Most places require that private investigators get a license and undergo some training to get it (although to be honest, the training requirements for such a license are pretty much a joke in many states), but that license doesn’t give the state the authority to give the investigator orders. The same holds true for security guards. The Sokovia Accords don’t just require training – they place a certain group of people under UN direction and control, which is considerably more than simply licensing a particular activity.
The other problem is how you define “supers”. Would Lang have been covered by the Accords had he not joined up with Captain America’s side? Is he a “super” that is covered? If Captain America took off his costume and ran around fighting crime, would that put him at odds with the Accords? In the movie, Black Panther pretty much launches himself at Bucky without any sanction (and without anyone knowing he even existed before he showed up chasing Bucky through the streets). Why wasn’t he arrested as being in violation of the Accords? Would Spider-Man be subject to the Accords even though he pretty much only fights crime in New York? Is Daredevil a “super”? His only real power is the ability to see while blind. And so on and so forth.
One thing that came up in a discussion I had this past weekend is this: If the Accords name specific people as being subject to their regulation, then they may not be enforceable in the United States, as that may run afoul of the prohibition against Bills of Attainder.
@aaron. Yeah, the “ordinary human in a super suit” super is distinctly different than people who just are awesome but half of the supers we see are like that, from T’Challa to Tony. Take away their gear, they are really ordinary mortals. (I am assuming T’Challa is just a badass normal with vibranium gear, anyway)
@Stevie and now every vendor every convention volunteer and every member of the convention staff is working with kids?
@Hampus: If training were all that the Accords called for, I don’t think that Steve Rogers would have had a problem with them.
(Just saw the movie yesterday. Full of thinky thoughts about it. I’ll try to not babble randomly at y’all.)
Training is what Steve was trying to do with the Avengers.
I don’t think it was an accident that the writers picked Thunderbolt Ross to be the interface between the Accords bureaucracy and the Avengers. His first appearance in the Norton Hulk movie established him as the sort who would think the Winter Soldier program had it right: keep the supers on ice until he decided they were needed.
Tony Stark had to ask Ross’ permission to suit up and go after the fugitive Captain America. Rogers didn’t even do that in The First Avenger; he took off without permission to rescue the men who would eventually become the Howling Commandos.
I also don’t think that the extremely poor kid from Brooklyn would have cared for the classist reaction to the triggering event. He probably didn’t think it through like this, but the basic argument the people pushing the Accords were making was that the Avengers shouldn’t have let upper class people get killed while trying to save poor and working class people. Jnaqn gevrq gb erzbir n obzo sebz n pebjqrq znexrgcynpr naq ena bhg bs gvzr, oybjvat bhg gur hccre sybbef bs n fxlfpencre.
Or perhaps the Avengers should have let the terrorists they were chasing get away with gur ovbjrncba gurl unq fgbyra?
OK, on to one tiny Easter Egg that still delights me: Gbal Fgnax. My parents were Steve’s generation, and my mother learned the Palmer Method, which fell out of fashion in the 1950s. She had problems for years with people misreading her lowercase “r” as an “n”.
Aaron makes good points. I would add:
1. In most of the cited cases, it’s hard to argue that supervision by the UN or whomever would have meant less harm to civilians. e.g. the “Battle of New York” was basically a war zone; the infiltration of SHIELD happened under the noses (at the very least) of multiple governments. what precisely would the UN have done to prevent Sokovia from being nearly destroyed in Age of Ultron?
2. State and UN sponsorship of violence-dealing organizations is no proof against “collateral damage” or corruption: as often as not, such sponsorship serves to legitimize collateral damage and enable corruption.
It’s noteworthy that Cap never says the others should not sign the accords and doesn’t go to “war” to prevent them from doing so. He’s really arguing for multiple centers of power, some of them at the level of the individual conscience.
I wouldn’t mind if OGH put up a “spoilery discussions of Civil War” post. When he wakes up, that is …
The comics version is supposed to have general mildly-superhuman abilities, though it’s not clear yet whether the film version does or if it’s all the suit.
Training is what Steve was trying to do with the Avengers.
The other question is just how much training do people think most of the Avengers need?
Rogers is a World War II veteran who has dozens of covert combat missions with the Howling Commandos under his belt.
Wilson is a trained combat pararescue veteran.
Rhodey is a U.S. Air Force officer with 130+ combat mission to his credit.
Black Widow is a highly trained espionage agent.
Hawkeye is a trained former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
Bucky (to the extent he counts in the calculation) is a former Howling Commando and has had further (involuntary) training.
I guess one might question Stark’s training, or Wanda’s, or even Vision’s, but they have a cadre of highly trained individuals working with them who seem to be training them already.
As presented in the movie version of the Marvel universe, the Accords don’t seem to have been about training, but rather about control. They pretty much can’t be about training, as the Avengers lineup contains some of the most highly trained people in the world already.
Is not trolling, taken generally, a skiffy art of becroggling the mind by arguments; which is practiced not only on blogs and online slanshacks, but in private Facebook groups, having to do with all matters, faanish as well as mundane, sercon and fuggheaded alike, and is in all equally right, and equally to be esteemed.
@Paul: Not in the comics. The Black Panthers have their own version of a super-soldier serum. There’s some mysticism involving the Panther God mixed in there as well.
I have to admit, I was choking down delighted giggles when one of the Dora Milaje made an appearance in the movie.
@Aaron: Exactly. What they don’t have is much in the way of law enforcement training, and I can’t see Steve objecting to having international law enforcement training added to the list.
(Running out of edit time. Next rock.)
My point is not that superheroes should join the accords. My point is that they shouldn’t be superheroes unless they are educated in risks and can show proof that they are educated. They should also be responsible to the courts which means being unmasked.
I am not joining any discussion about the mivie (which I haven’t seen yet and most likely will not as the last superhero movies have bored me). I’m joining the more philosophical discussion.
@Aaron (cont’d): The Accords were entirely about control, hence my comments above about Ross.
Interestingly, the Avengers have for much of their comics history operated under a special UN law enforcement status. But there was never any thought until Civil War of turning them into any sort of “special agent” under orders.
My point is that they shouldn’t be superheroes unless they are educated in risks and can show proof that they are educated.
Except we don’t require that for people to engage in private action as a general rule. In general, the only people who have to be licensed to investigate and fight crime (for example) are people who are selling those services to the public. If you want to do it on your own, there isn’t a requirement that you get any training to do so, at least not in any U.S. state so far as I am aware. I would be very surprised if, for example, many European countries had a training requirement for people that they had to meet before they could voluntarily intervene to stop a crime in progress.
@Rail: Thanks. I’ve been really scattershot in reading comics the last decade, and Black Panther was never one I really followed when I did.
We’ll see in the BP movie, maybe, if he IS enhanced, as well as having vibranium tech. Based on Civil War, I am interested to see what they will do it with. He had a real character arc in the movie, a pleasant surprise.
I assume this will be of interest … Small Beer Press is Kickstarting a John Crowley limited edition.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2142694884/the-chemical-wedding-by-john-crowley
@Paul: You really should pick up the new solo Black Panther written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The first issue was very promising.
@Hampus: That is a lot closer to the original argument in the comic “event” Civil War, where the triggering event was a super-hero reality TV show that didn’t take their location and the villain’s powers into account before jumping him. I think Captain America was making a slippery slope argument in opposing it there; the writers twisted other characters all out of recognition to make him right.
Superhero movies are at their best when they remember that the super powers are only a complication in a story about people. The team who made Civil War never forgot that.
Which is why I’ve always been a Marvelphile. Stan Lee knew that.
The Knights who say “Pi(xel)”
He’s not a Scroll. He’s a very naughty Pixel.
What have the Pixels ever done for us?
Blessed are the Scrollmakers
Your Mother was a Scroller and your Father smelt of Pixelberries
@ULTRAGOTHA
I’m a pixel scroll and I’m okay.
ETA
Actually… I’m a filer and I’m okay, I sleep all night, I scroll all day.
Aaron:
I think that depends on country, as you say. Nor surprisingly, I have a more european perspective. 😉
Rail:
Yes, that is how I remember it, even if I think they retconed it.
I think that depends on country, as you say.
So, are you saying that if you were walking down the street in Sweden and saw someone mugging another person to steal their wallet, you would be required to have training before you would be allowed to intervene and stop the crime in progress?
Hugo the sad puppy (TW for all the puppy-related feels):
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/05/09/hugo/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=web&utm_content=latest_comments#comment-1611491
No. I am saying that if you want to patrol the cities, you will be judged much harder if something happens and you don’t have an education. And you are prohibited from doing some work and guarding that superheroes do sometimes.
If you ser a muggery, it is the law of proportional violence which is much harsher than in US.
Yes, that is how I remember it, even if I think they retconed it.
Well, sort of. The Civil War story in the comics was a huge mess that mostly made no sense. One of the first problems was that Maria Hill tried to arrest Captain America for refusing to comply with the registration law. Except that when she did that, the registration law had not even been enacted into law yet. And Cap didn’t refuse to comply – he refused to help S.H.I.E.L.D. arrest people who might refuse to comply with the law. The last time I checked, refusing to help enforce a law is not quite the same as breaking the law.
Essentially, the pro-Registration forces tried to enforce a law that wasn’t even in effect, and tried to “enforce” it in a way that made no sense, making Captain America a fugitive in the stupidest way possible,
@Aaron: I’ll note that there are some states in the US that don’t shelter paramedics from other states under Good Samaritan protections.
I think the question of when superhero activities cross the line from citizen intervention to vigilanteism is a good one. The Civil War movie is the closest I’ve seen to a decent attempt at confronting it.
No. I am saying that if you want to patrol the cities, you will be judged much harder if something happens and you don’t have an education.
What law would you be breaking?
And you are prohibited from doing some work and guarding that superheroes do sometimes.
Yes. If they were selling their services, they would have some requirements they would have to follow. But doing so voluntarily? That’s not the same thing.
I was at a comic convention this weekend, and remember how they on one panel mentioned that almost troes to make a European superhero comic failed ad it was such an american concept. The few who made it were mostly satires or sometimes short philosophical takes.
I do believe that is true. The few swedish tries I have seen have looked everything from strange to ridiculous.
@Hampus: The sole exception being Fantomen?
I’m sorry, but my english is not good enough for legal terms. :/ Law of Arbitrary Decision? Don’t know how to translate this.
And sorry, named the wrong law. Gah.
@Hampus: If you are going to be involved in law enforcement, you shouldn’t do it as a an ordinary civilian. The early comics often involved law enforcement; the movies involve supervillains that even a SWAT team would be useless against (except to get civilians out of the way, as in Avengers). A common real-world issue is conflating ordinary malefactors with imaginary supervillains, claiming that the one is really the other and therefore requires extraordinary measures; attempting to fit real-world standards to the fantasy universe of super{heroes,villains} is also problematic. It can be interesting to debate the internal inconsistencies of the fantasy universe; for instance, Furey in Cap 2 sometimes argues the ]statist[ position even though he’s seen the idiocy of the state (in the directorate he is supposed to answer to).
@2: it’s possible the Expo is being hyper-cautious because it’s a big target with a lot to lose; cf the SCA having to cover a six-figure damage award out of funds when one of their insurance companies didn’t pick up its share of the claim, and their following implementation of a never-just-one-adult policy. (This is a summary from the outside; IANAL, and I don’t know the details or the strength of the case.) I note some comments not differentiating among someone who regularly works with minors, someone who is planned to work with minors at-con, and someone who may run into them at-con; I doubt that CORI etc. will ever be fast enough to answer queries from an at-con gopher desk, but I wonder whether cons need to assign only pre-cleared people to the small parts that are specifically for minors.
Interesting that European tries at superheroes have gone awry; it lines up with an argument I made a long time ago about the different approaches in two adjacent Brunner novels. The Shockwave Rider is a U.S. genius superhero, although ISTM that supergeniuses are more often villains; the Brits in The Stone That Never Came Down are ordinary schmoes handed the “superpower” of not ignoring the facts, and the tool to give other people this power. Do Filers see this sort of split more generally in written SF?
As for Norway: You can stop a crime in progress, but you run a real risk of getting yourself in trouble if you use too much force, or if you “detain” someone you yourself consider a criminal. A citizen arrest requires clear evidence for non-trivial crime.
In addition, it’s illegal to organize vigilantism – i.e. while you can stop a crime if you happen to see one, you can’t round up a few mates and start patrolling the streets. Security guards are excempt from this, but they need authorization (and are generally limited to private property.)
@steve davidson,
I played Magic. I had a three inch binder full of rares and uncommons, including the Serendib Efreet misprint, and some other cards that were not unvaluable. My mother GAVE THEM away. To punish me for a completely unrelated set of transactions.
I have been unable to bring myself to go back into collecting.
My point is not that superheroes should join the accords. My point is that they shouldn’t be superheroes unless they are educated in risks and can show proof that they are educated.
What risks are involved with using an Infinity Gem to open a portal? How does one educate itself on the risks of giant flying murder machines or goods taking their conflicts to Earth?
Given the Marvel movies are usually dealing with Out of Context problems, I’m not sure what sort of risk assessment or education would apply.
If you make a habit of doing it, the cops are going to tell you to knock it off.
If your use force beyond what’s necessary for self defense or defense of a bystander, you’ll be charged with assault and battery.
If you injure a criminal, they can turn around and sue you.
If you wear a mask that you refuse to take off when the cops arrive, and you won’t tell them your real name or produce ID, they’re going to haul you to jail.
If you show up to court to testify in a costume, and you refuse to give your name, the judge is going to hold you in contempt.
If you conduct any sort of investigation, a judge can determine that you’re acting on behalf of law enforcement and hold your evidence to the same standard as that gathered by the police.
The legal system isn’t run by idiots. They can determine the difference between some guy who happened to stop a crime and a vigilante, which is what superheroes are. Vigilantes are not something society can tolerate.
Oh yeah, number four is about the moving goal of the registratoon act on the comic book.
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2016/05/08/top-five-continuity-conflicts-from-marvels-civil-war/
If you make a habit of doing it, the cops are going to tell you to knock it off.
Possibly. In the U.S., at least, there are individuals who have made a habit of doing this sort of thing and have had no issues resulting from it.
If your use force beyond what’s necessary for self defense or defense of a bystander, you’ll be charged with assault and battery.
That is a risk. That doesn’t make taking action in self-defense or defense of a bystander illegal though.
If you injure a criminal, they can turn around and sue you.
They could. That doesn’t make taking action to stop them illegal though.
If you wear a mask that you refuse to take off when the cops arrive, and you won’t tell them your real name or produce ID, they’re going to haul you to jail.
Perhaps. Oddly, in the MCU, the identities of most of the superheroes are publicly known. The only ones whose identities are not common knowledge are Scot Lang as Ant-Man, T’Challa as Black Panther (although that changes over the course of the movie), and Peter Parker as Spider-Man. The true identities of Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Scarlett Witch are all public record.
If you show up to court to testify in a costume, and you refuse to give your name, the judge is going to hold you in contempt.
Maybe. People have been allowed to testify with their identity withheld in the U.S.
If you conduct any sort of investigation, a judge can determine that you’re acting on behalf of law enforcement and hold your evidence to the same standard as that gathered by the police.
Not necessarily. There have been cases in which a private individual engaged in activity that law enforcement could not – searching a place without a warrant for example – and the fruits of their search have been used in court. A distinction is made between a private individual taking such action on their own, and a private individual taking such action at the behest (either actual or implied) or law enforcement.
In this part of Europe, there could be additional issues for superheroes:
http://www.twisteddoodles.com/image/143548425587
(“Six degrees of separation” is almost unimaginably far apart in Ireland)
Sean writes: Vigilantes are not something society can tolerate.
Real society, of course, you are right. But real vigilantes are not like Marvel superheroes.
Marvel Universe society is different, too, since it would have been overrun by superhumans/aliens/robots/gods/flying nazi battleships etc. long ago if not for the costumed vigilantes.
One thing that might be of interest considering this conversation is the existence of the non-government sanctioned volunteer organization Guardian Angels, who actually do engage in vigilante patrols, and have chapters across the globe.
Oddly enough, I got an e-mail this morning telling me that Hugo nominations are now open, and that the deadline is March 31, 2016.
Has anyone else received such a hiccup?
@Hampus We (we as in we Europeans) have our own versions of superheroes that work. Asterix for example :-D. Not the same as Marvel and DC of course but sometimes much more biting and political astute.
Mike, either you stop hunting baby-Hitler or you get that time machine under control.
@Aaron
+1 all along, FWIW.
@Aaron
The Guardian Angels in New York at times can make an exceedingly poor argument for a vigilante group. The level to which they could act as enforcers for the racial status quo of 1980s and 1990s New York, their tendency to fabricate tales of derring-do that fell apart under scrutiny, all gave them a certain lurid glow. Curtis Sliwa, their founder, makes for an interesting google.
re (10), Civil War
I’m ready to consign (10) to the same category as large assault rifles, the revving of excessively noisy motorbikes, grills the size of jet turbines, and the fiction of manly men making the manly men “hard” choice of being violently brutal as signs of a certain fragility in some masculinity.
Civil War as a whole was a great movie, said as someone with only a limited interest in the comic books. Chris Evans ability to make what could be a boring straight arrow character into a nuanced and engaging performance is a real sign of his skill. It’s probably the one thing that makes me disagree with Marcotte: Steve Rogers seems to be a man with deep moral concerns about the Accords, and the their unintended consequences. Very unlike the more militant libertarians I know, to whom freedom is often the freedom to dismiss concerns about consequences as vile attempts on their their liberty.
I also think that there would Bill of Attainder problems with the Accords. I also think that Senate ratification would be a stretch. (“The UN? YOU MEAN THE VILE SOCIALISTS WHO WANT TO TRANS UP THE BATHROOMS!!!???”) Of course, so much is done be executive agreement these days, precisely because of that.
Anime Expo’s silly volunteer policies aside, it’s not a very appealing event anyway: it’s way too big and commercial. IIRC, there’s a second more fannish anime con, called Anime LA, in the LA area that seems more appealing.
The Guardian Angels in New York at times can make an exceedingly poor argument for a vigilante group.
Oh, I’m not endorsing their specific activities. I’m just pointing out that there is an organized non-governmental vigilante group that has been operating continuously in the U.S. and elsewhere for decades without legal regulation or much in the way of legal repercussions. They aren’t the only group of this general type that exists either, so the notion that if superheroes existed people would “obviously” demand that they be trained and regulated by the government seems not to hold up very well when compared to the real-world reaction to such groups.