(1) BIAS IN REVIEW SPACES. In a series of Twitter threads, Silvia Moreno-Garcia has tackled issues of bias in review spaces against marginalized authors, such as through the misuse of trigger warnings.
One thread starts here.
A second thread starts here.
A third thread starts here.
Adiba Jaigirdar check out what reviewers on Storygraph had reported about her book and found this:
(2) DJINN FIZZ. The Odyssey Writing Workshop Blog features a Q&A with one of the genre’s leading new storytellers: “Interview: Guest Lecturer P. Djèlí Clark”.
Some of your work has been described as Lovecraftian horror. What draws you to the genre? How do you create such an atmosphere in your stories?
Cosmic horror is already entrenched so much in genre, it’s hard to not be drawn to it. When I use it in my own stories, I’m often attempting to convey a sense of the strange, the otherworldly, and at times inconceivable. That might be done by translating a bit of folklore through a cosmic horror lens, drawing on a favorite trope but finding a new way to present it, or by adding some well-placed tentacles. You can never go wrong with tentacles.
(3) MOVIES MAKING MONEY AGAIN. A Quiet Place Part II on Friday became the first movie in the pandemic era to cross the $100 million mark domestically upon finishing the day with $101 million in ticket sales: “’Quiet Place II’ Box Office Sets Pandemec-Era Record With $100M” in The Hollywood Reporter.
(4) NOT-SO-SUPER 8. Craig Miller shares an entertaining reminiscence about his visit to the Conquest of the Planet of the Apes set in 1971.
…Nearly 50 years ago. And I was 16 or 17. I was a science fiction fan and a film fan. And I lived just a few miles from the 20th Century-Fox lot.
I no longer remember what prompted me to try this but, for some reason, one evening I decided to drive to the studio. I parked in the studio lot and walked through the gate. It was long before 9/11. Long before security theater took over. You could walk onto any studio lot in town, right past the security guards, as long as you looked like you were meant to be there. And so I did.
What was shooting on the lot that evening were scenes from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. These were outdoor scenes, not on a sound stage. Not having to sneak into a sound stage, it was especially easy to approach and watch….
(5) FIRST ORBIT. Cora Buhlert’s new Galactic Journey contribution is a review of Damon Knight’s Orbit 1 anthology which had a whopping 50% female contributors – in 1966: “[June 14, 1966] Aliens, Housewives and Overpopulation: Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight”.
… Of the nine stories in this anthology, four are written by women. If we count Jane Rice and her collaborator Ruth Allison separately, we have five male and five female authors. Of course, women make up fifty-one percent of the Earth’s population, so an anthology with fifty percent male and fifty percent female contributors shouldn’t be anything unusual. However, in practice there are still way too many magazine issues and anthologies that don’t have a single female contributor, so an anthology where half the authors are women is truly remarkable.
(6) HEALTHY APPENDIX. Cora also visited the Appendix N Book Club podcast to discuss the Clark Ashton Smith collection Xiccarph with hosts Jeff Goad and Ngo Vinh-Hoi: “Episode 97 – Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Xiccarph’ with special guest Cora Buhlert”. And that’s not all they covered, as the conversation ranges afield to —
…German science fiction, pulp magazines, morbid beauty, vampire flower women, Jirel of Joiry, the Dark Eye, foreshadowing, Gary Gygax’s exclusion of Clark Ashton Smith from the Appendix N, Alphonse Mucha, doomed protagonists, the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, and much more!
(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
- June 1973 — On this month in 1973, Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love was first published by Putnam. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama would beat it out for the Hugo for Best Novel at Discon II. It was later given a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. It’s the life of Lazarus Long told in exhaustive detail. Really exhaustive detail. Critics including Theodore Sturgeon loved it, and John Leonard writing for the NYT called it “great entertainment”. It’s currently priced at just six dollars and ninety-nine cents at the usual suspects.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 14, 1908 — Stephen Tall. His first published work was “The Lights on Precipice Peak“ in Galaxy, October 1955. Not a prolific writer, he’d do about twenty stories over the next quarter of a century and two novels as well, The Ramsgate Paradox and The People Beyond the Wall. “The Bear with the Knot on His Tail” was nominated for a Hugo. He has not yet made into the digital realm other than “The Lights on Precipice Peak“ being available at the usual suspects. (Died 1981.)
- Born June 14, 1914 — Ruthven Todd. He’s here for his delightful children’s illustrated trio of Space Cat books — Space Cat Visits Venus, Space Cat Meets Mars and Space Cat and the Kittens. I’m please to say they’re available at all the usual digital suspects. He also wrote Over the Mountain and The Lost Traveller which are respectively a lost world novel and a dystopian novel. (Died 1978.)
- Born June 14, 1919 — Gene Barry. His first genre role was in The War of the Worlds as Dr. Clayton Forrester. He’d have a number of later genre appearances including several appearances on Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Devil and Miss Sarah, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Dynamite, multiple appearances on Fantasy Island and The Twilight Zone. He’d appear in the ‘05 War of The Worlds credited simply as “Grandfather”. (Died 2009.)
- Born June 14, 1921 — William Hamling. Author and editor who was active as an sf fan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His first story “War with Jupiter”, written with Mark Reinsberg, appeared in Amazing Stories in May 1939. He’d write only short stories, some nineteen of them, over the next twenty years. Genre adjacent, his Shadow of the Sphinx is a horror novel about an ancient Egyptian sorceress. He would be the Editor of two genre zines, Imagination for most of the Fifties, and Imaginative Tales during the Fifties as well. He published four issues of the Stardust fanzine in 1940, and contributed to the 1940 Worldcon program. (Died 2017.)
- Born June 14, 1939 — Penelope Farmer, 82. English writer best known for children’s fantasy novels. Her best-known novel is Charlotte Sometimes, a boarding-school story that features a multiple time slip. There’s two more novels in this, the Emma / Charlotte series, The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter. Another children’s fantasy by her, A Castle of Bone, concerns a portal in a magic shop.
- Born June 14, 1949 — Harry Turtledove, 72. I wouldn’t know where to begin with him considering how many series he’s done. I’m fairly sure I first read novels in his Agent of Byzantium series and I know his Crosstime Traffic series was definitely fun reading. He’s won two Sidewise Awards for How Few Remain and Ruled Britannia, and a Prometheus for The Gladiator.
- Born June 14, 1958 — James Gurney, 63. Artist and author best known for his illustrated Dinotopia book series. He won a Hugo for Best Original Artwork at L.A. Con III for Dinotopia: The World Beneath, and was twice nominated for a Hugo for Best Professional Artist. The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honor of him.
- Born June 14, 1972 — Adrian Tchaikovsky, 49. He is best known for his Shadows of the Apt series, and for Children of Time which won an Arthur C. Clarke Award. (He’s also won a BFA for The Tiger and the Wolf, and a BSFA for Children of Ruin.) The After War series is multi author. He wrote the first, Redemption’s Blade, and Justina Robson wrote the second, Salvation’s Fire.
(9) IT TAKES A CREW. Den of Geek questions Charlie Jane Anders, Laura Lam and Elizabeth May, and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne about “How Science Fiction’s Ensemble Stories Humanize Space”.
It’s a formula that has been repeated over and over for about as long as there has been science fiction on television—starting with the likes of Star Trek and Blake’s 7, through the boom in “planet of the week” style TV in the 90s and 00s with Farscape and Firefly, to more recent stories like Dark Matter, The Expanse, Killjoys, and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Most recently Sky’s Intergalactic, and the Korean movie Space Sweepers have been carrying the standard, while last month saw people diving back into the world of Mass Effect with Mass Effect Legendary Edition. While Commander Sheppard is ostensibly the protagonist of the video game trilogy, few would argue that it’s anything other than the ensemble of the Normandy crew that keeps people coming back.
As science fiction author Charlie Jane Anders points out, it’s not hard to see the appeal of a family of likeable characters, kept in close quarters by the confines of their ship, and sent into stories of adventure.
“I love how fun this particular strand of space opera is, and how much warmth and humour the characters tend to have,” Anders says. “These stories have in common a kind of swashbuckling adventure spirit and a love of problem-solving and resourcefulness. And I think the ‘found family’ element is a big part of it, since these characters are always cooped up on a tiny ship together and having to rely on each other.”…
(10) HYPERTEXT PETS. “HTTP Status Dogs” is a collection of photos about “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Response status codes. And dogs.”
It is inspired by “HTTP Status Cats – The original”. Which Daniel Dern said he’d understand if I made that the primary link in this item. Because cats.
(11) CARDS AGAINST VET EXPENSES. Do you need a feel-good story today? Here it is: “8-year-old boy sells beloved Pokémon cards to save severely sick puppy”.
Bryson Kliemann loves his Pokémon card collection, but when he found out his beloved puppy Bruce was sick and might not survive, the 8-year-old did what he could to save his best friend. He set up a stand on the side of the road in Lebanon, Virginia, with a sign: “4 Sale Pokémon.”
…”I’m a realist with my kids,” Woodruff said. “I told him Bruce was sick and said ‘When you get home today from school, he may be at the vet’s office or in heaven.”
When Bryson got off the school bus that day, he showed his mother and stepfather a business plan he created to sell his Pokémon cards and snacks to help raise money to get Bruce the best possible care.
“I told him no, we’ve got this,” Woodruff said. “And then he later asked my husband and we decided to say yes, because this was also an opportunity to teach him responsibility.”
Bryson set up his stand on the side of the road, complete with a colorful umbrella and handmade signed, and started serving customers.
The first day he made $65. Within two afternoons, Woodruff said her son had made $400 and even received some Pokémon cards from kind strangers who wanted to help….
(12) ETCH-A-SKETCH. Wow! Princess Etch (Jane Labowitch) made an Etch-A-Sketch of the ship that blocked the Suez Canal.
(13) WAKANDA IS THE ARENA. Gamebyte is there when “Black Panther And Wakanda Shown Off In New Marvel’s Avengers Trailer”.
The new update is called “Black Panther: War for Wakanda”. You’ll face off against classic Marvel villain Ulysses Klaue in what seems to be a fight over vibranium. That’s the rare metal in the world of Marvel that can only be found in Wakanda.
This will be the first time that the Black Panther has appeared in the Marvel’s Avengers game, so it’s great to see him finally team up with the Avengers.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Ben Bird Person, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(10) A “Ray Roll” is the equivalent of a Rick-Roll where instead of being taken to a clip of Rick Astley singing, a reader is deceptively led to even more File 770 Ray Bradbury content under the disguise of being offered pictures of cats. Unlike a Rick-Roll the additional content is usually welcomed.
(8) A couple of years ago for reasons too silly to elaborate I tried to estimate how many Turtledove books I had read: it was a large number. I’ll call out his short piece “A Death in Vesunna” (an Iverson work) for special praise – I had been in a glum teenage mood when the Asimov’s arrived, but after reading that story, I was smiling.
Birthdays ….
Stephen Tall was the pseudonym Baltimore based Compton Crook. The Baltimore SF Society gives out the Compton Crook Award for Best First novel. Winner receives $1000 and two trips to Balticon. Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_Crook_Award
William Hamling in addition to an extensive career in the genre also spent some time in a Federal jail due to “During the Nixon Administration, Hamling published an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hamling_(publisher)
#8: Stephen Tall is the Pen-Name of Dr Compton Crook, a longtime Professor at Towson State University (Now Towson University) Shortly after his death, his family gave funds to the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) to establish an Award for the Best First Novel in the Genre. The Compton Crook Award has been awarded annually since 1983, with the prize being given at Balticon. The Award consists of a Certificate, Membership and Travel to 2 consecutive Balticons, and a cash award.
I’m told the pen-name “Stephen Tall” was an inside joke, as his son Stephen was very tall.
9) I assume your technically accurate description of Hamling’s role in SF and fandom itself was a deliberate exercise in incomplete truth. If so: well played.
(8) Gene Barry (as one of the rotating stars of The Name of the Game, NBC’s 90-minute series in 1968-71) also appeared in its only genre episode “LA 2017,” which I saw at age 14. As has been mentioned here before, it was written by Philip Wylie and directed by young Mr. Spielberg.
Michael J. Lowrey: We’re not here to furnish you with daily opportunities to express your contempt for us. Do better.
8
Then there’s Turtledove’s “The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump”. Fantasy, more or less…
(7) Really glad that wasn’t the cover of the copy in my high school library.
(8) By the time I read the “Space Cat” books, we of course had been to outer space and sent probes too, so I knew they were scientifically wrong. But I loved them anyway. Have now added to my wish list.
There are 4 books, BTW, the first simply titled “Space Cat”, where he meets his human.
I rilly rilly loved both “Ruled Britannia” and “Toxic Spell Dump”. No sequel to either, sigh. (I’ve asked Harry. He says he put it all in one book both times and didn’t have any more to do there.)
(10) I read about the dogs and thought “didn’t cats do that years ago?” and indeed they did. I hadn’t looked at that photo set for a while, though, and I was glad to again. Still funny. I see a couple of cats made it into the doggo set. As they do.
7) Oh, my! “Time Enough to Read It.” The much-overlong life story of Lazarus Long, told in exhausting detail. Oh, how I wish RAH had originally named the guy Solomon Short (as in solitary, impoverished, nasty, brutish…you get the idea). In my opinion, LL in “Methuselah’s Children” was a funny-once. I bought the thing in 1973 and was woefully disappointed, as I generally was (and am) with all his work post-1965.
I agree the listing for Mr. Hamling is incomplete; Wiki says he was a lifelong member of First Fandom. Surely worth mentioning in a memorial note.
outofprint.com sells Space Cat t shirts, as well as shirts and so on featuring many book covers, quite a few SFF. I’ve done business with them a few times and can recommend them highly.
4) I have my own studio lot story: I went to the Paramount offices in 1990 for a beat-sheet meeting for my ST:TNG script “Clues” (which I’d sold with a telephone pitch); a “beat-sheet meeting” was to go over the submitted script for consistency, timing, possible revisions, etc. The meeting lasted several hours in the morning, a lunch break, and several hours more in the afternoon.
Because I’d been very lucky and skipped almost all the years of submitting scripts and failed pitches most newbie scriptwriters went thru, I wasn’t very familiar with the practices and traditions of the business. So I dressed up for the occasion.
In a suit and tie.
Suit-&-tie is NOT a “writer’s uniform”. (PREMIERE magazine actually did an article a few months later on typical clothing choices for writers and other Hollywood jobs. If I remember correctly, a writers’ unofficial uniform was supposed to be jeans, sneakers or hiking boots, a casual button-up shirt –NO TIE!– with either short sleeves or rolled-up sleeves, and a baseball cap for headgear.) Both Michael Piller and Hilary Bader, as I recall, looked a bit askance at me as I arrived for the meeting. I realized pretty quickly that I’d committed a bit of a faux pas, and removed the tie and loosened my collar about ten minutes into the meeting.
When the meeting broke for lunch, Piller and Bader went off on their own. I went to the studio cafeteria. Tie-less, but I still had on the rest of my suit. I loaded my tray with a few items and a drink, picked it up…and the drink cup started to tip over into an imminent spill…
…and one of the cafeteria workers virtually teleported across the room to grab the cup before it could spill more than a portion of its contents. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked. I assured him I was and took my tray into the dining are, where I thought about how the worker had acted, and what he’d said. Because I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called me “sir”. Years, at least.
And I also remembered some of the looks I’d gotten from other people walking to the meeting, and from meeting to cafeteria. And I realized…
…that, wearing a good suit, people hadn’t realized I was a writer, and had thought that maybe I was somebody actually important. An executive, maybe, or a money guy or something.
And I also realized if that was the impression I was giving…I probably had a heck of a lot of leeway in where I could go on the Paramount lot without anyone questioning me.
Because I’m not (usually; there have been exceptions) an asshole, I didn’t push this realization as far as I might. Didn’t try to get into any closed sets, etc. But I was all over that lot, more than I would have otherwise, before heading back to Piller’s office for the rest of the beat-sheet meeting.
I went back to Paramount a few more times for in-person pitch meetings, but always wore “suitable” writer attire on those occasions.
lurkertype: It has been known to happen that the identical birthday listing is rolled over from a previous year without picking up corrections from the comments, so I went and looked to see if this one had a history. 2020 is the first time we ever ran a listing for Hamling, it’s verbatim the one used today, and nobody complained about the one from 2020.
Not that File 770 has never looked at the items raised today in other contexts — Hamling’s work on the Presidential Commission report was discussed in my obit for Earl Kemp, and his First Fandom status was mentioned in a 2011 post.
At a guess, the comment I posted a few moments ago went to moderation because it included the a-word. Guess the filter couldn’t parse I was referring to myself.
8) birthdays: I haven’t read remotely all of Turtledove’s output (that would be an endeavor!) but what I have read has nearly all had good helpings of Jo Walton’s “I-want-to-read-itosity”. Plus there’s a character in one of his long-running series that has the same name as me, which gives me a kick. (Not actually a Tuckerization, just a coincidence of names.)
12) etch-a-sketch: That’s pretty amazing. Although “Evergreen” is the name of the shipping line, not the ship itself, which is “Ever Given”.
(7) Yeah, that’s a cover I would have found, let’s say, “off-putting.”
(11) That’s not just “teaching him responsibility.” That’s respecting his agency and his choice to do what he had in his power to do, to take responsibility for his puppy.
And they are definitely raising that boy right.
Mike Glyer, you do invaluable work for us all and I would never feel contempt for you. If I somehow conveyed such a thing, I profoundly apologize!
Lis Carey says Yeah, that’s a cover I would have found, let’s say, “off-putting.”
Yeah when I was putting that piece for the Scroll together, I looked at that cover and thought WTF? What were they thinking?
@Bruce Arthurs: “Clues” was a very good episode. Thanks!
lurkertype says I agree the listing for Mr. Hamling is incomplete; Wiki says he was a lifelong member of First Fandom. Surely worth mentioning in a memorial note.
They’re not memorial notes, they’re birthday notes. And if I miss anything, I fully expect, without fail, that a Filer will note it here. You always do.
Now reading: Neal Asher’s Jack Four, his newest Poility novel
5: I have an astonishing coincidence to report. I complained on twitter that I had most of the Orbit run and no valid excuse to review them all so my web person then asked me to review all 21 Orbits. The first one was posted to my site on the 12th and went live today.
James Davis Nicoll, your contact button isn’t working on your website. I was going to send you a correction about your latest post, but I couldn’t.
Cat, I am sorry but I don’t know why it didn’t work so I cannot fix it. I just ran a test and it worked for me. My email is jdnicoll at panix dot com.
David Goldfarb
Yes, and Evergreen, the company name, was indeed what was written in huge letters on the side of the boat as the etch a sketch depicted, with “Ever Given” in much much smaller letters on the prow, and invisible at this scale. You can check most photos of the incident to see.
1) I got into an argument a few years ago with someone who was insisting content warnings applied to the library books was a great idea, and I actually lost a friend over a whole sequence of conversations along those lines, and this is exactly what I said would happen.
11) I’m with the people who say stories like this are less feel-good than examples of the horrible dystopia we live in– a more accurate way to form that headline would be “Boy Forced to Sell Beloved Collection for Pet’s Life.” It’s not heartwarming; it’s messed up that America’s income and prices of things are so out of whack that the family couldn’t afford the good vet care without doing this.
@Kit Harding–I didn’t quite read it that way. Not saying my reading is right. I understood that they told him his dog was very sick, but when he said he wanted to sell his Pokémon cards to pay for the dog’s care, they said, “we got this,” i.e., they were able to pay. But the boy wanted to be a part of that care, and they agreed because he wanted to take responsibility for his dog’s care.
And for a kid who has decided he wants to, that can be empowering. I remember all the stuff I had to do as a kid, and also things that I understood were important, and could see a way to help, and basically being told to stay out of the way. So that’s probably affecting my reading of it. He wanted to help, in a real way, and they decided to allow him to take responsibility in that way.
1) I find myself interested and puzzled by attempts to design a predictive algorithm for readers. Of course, as a one-time English teacher and long-time reviewer, I’ve been in that business for most of my life. On the other hand, I wonder how useful mere** statistics can be at the “if you liked X, you’ll like Y” process. I used to marvel at the way the late Scott Imes (manager of Uncle Hugo’s) would recommend books for customers after a few questions about their preferences–what in the trade is called “hand-selling.” (He also worked on one of the What Do I Read Next? reference-book series.)
I don’t know exactly what was going on in Scott’s head, but the results were pretty impressive. How, I wonder, does one emulate that in software? One problem, of course, is the source data, which would seem to be the subjective reactions of a range of readers–and my experience as a teacher and an observer of other-folks’-preferences is that for taste and comprehension and notions of objectionable content there’s no accounting.
On the third hand, conversations about books (or movies or music or food) can be complex and multidimensional and nuanced, which is why a site like this one is both useful and interesting.
**Maybe not so mere–I have a fuzzy memory of the role of Bayesian statistics in natural-language analysis for search-engine design that may suggest an approach. But even that needed humans in the loop in order to stay on target.
@Kit Harding
If you were making the argument for socialized medicine for people, I could understand it, and see the point (even though I wouldn’t necessarily make that argument myself). But the idea that veterinary care for pets (a luxury item if ever there was one) should be subsidized is a completely new one on me.
@bill: You’re assuming I agree that pets should be classed as a luxury item. Given the extent to which they can help with mental illnesses, even ones that aren’t official service animals can be essential, to say nothing of the fact that “pet owning” is not something that should be confined solely to people with money.
@bill–A pet is not a luxury item. A pet isn’t equivalent to an expensive leather couch, or a zippy little red sports car.
Nor is a pet a status object, reserved for the wealthy among us.
Pets are family. They help us get through our days. They bring substantial health benefits, both physical and mental.
Dora was my service dog–but not originally. She arrived in my life as “just a pet,” and as we bonded, she learned how to respond to needs I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge.
She did become my service dog, but she was helping me a lot well before that.
I need to find a successor, but that dog will not be a replacement for Dora. That dog will be a new family member, a new partner, a new part of my life.
And making the end of her life easier was worth every penny I spent, and everything I had to do. She did at least as much as me.
@Kit Harding —
“You’re assuming I agree that pets should be classed as a luxury item.”
No. I’m making the statement (whether or not you agree with it) that, in general, pets are luxury items. (500,000 service dogs in America vs (89 million dogs; also 90 million cats)
And yes, I’m aware of “Emotional Support Animals”, but that doesn’t mean that everything that makes a person feel better should be provided by society (a hot tub makes my back feel better, and a gin and tonic does wonders for my mood sometimes, but they are luxury items).
This is a fact?
@Lis Carey — I too have had pets. I loved them dearly, and when they were gone, there was a hole in my life. But that didn’t mean that anyone else was responsible for their upkeep.
You refer to “service dog”. If you mean “service animal” as the ADA defines them, I am glad for you that you were able to get help from your dog. If your pet was never trained to that standard, though, then I think referring to your pet that way does a disservice to the disabled who have actual trained service animals. This is not to belittle you or your dog or your relationship, but the term has meaning and it shouldn’t be abused.
My issue with Kit’s statement is not with how important animals are to people but with his statement about the costs of owning one are “messed up”. Things cost money. Sometimes owning a pet costs a lot of money. When I first got married, my wife brought two cats into the deal. The last weekend one of them lived (diabetes and kidney failure) went into four figures. We were lucky that we could pay for it, but it was our burden to bear, and not one that we had any expectation that anyone else should pay (who? the vet? Medicare? I’m not sure what it is that Kit Harding sees as a better system.)
@Kit Harding
And sometimes they own you. It’s always a surprise when one decides that you’re it’s person – even at the first meeting. (I was born into a home with a three-month-old kitten. I’ve always known my place – and I still remember that cat.)
@bill
Contributing to an atmosphere of doubt over whether someone is really as disabled as they say they are or whether they really need or use the accommodation does a hell of a lot more of a disservice to us all than Lis naming a dog who is trained to perform tasks related to assisting her with her disability as a service animal.
The legal definition requires no more than that.
I will not hear anything against Dora, who was a wonderful little being. Also what Meredith said, totally. I’ve heard “you don’t LOOK disabled” way too much.
I’ve often wished I could have put our cats on our medical insurance (it certainly would have saved a LOT of money), but we knew the job of cat servant was expensive when we took it.
Out of the goodness of their hearts, Filers contributed to our cat’s last operation a couple of years ago. Had they not been people who value credentials, we would have dug into the savings and paid for it all. Just like this boy’s parents could have covered their dog’s bill without his help.
Decades from now, which do you think will be more important to him — some cardboard with imaginary animals on it, or the memory of how he helped save his dog? It gave him a feeling of helping and control today, and plenty of warm fuzzies in the future. He’s a good kid, with good parents.
@Meredith
I said nothing about Lis’s disability(ies), or lack thereof. If you read my comment to question her status, that’s on you.
bill says I said nothing about Lis’s disability(ies), or lack thereof. If you read my comment to question her status, that’s on you.
Yes, you did by your inference here.
You refer to “service dog”. If you mean “service animal” as the ADA defines them, I am glad for you that you were able to get help from your dog. If your pet was never trained to that standard, though, then I think referring to your pet that way does a disservice to the disabled who have actual trained service animals. This is not to belittle you or your dog or your relationship, but the term has meaning and it shouldn’t be abused.
Neither you nor anyone else gets to decide if Lis is disabled, period. Nor how she defines her relationship with her companion animals.
@Bill
Doubting our (dis)abilities and doubting our right or need for accommodations are different but part and parcel of the same problem, hence why the ideas were combined but separated by an “or”. Even if you’d only done the latter you’d still be contributing to general atmosphere of doubt that clouds over any discussion of disability.
However, this bit: “then I think referring to your pet that way does a disservice to the disabled who have actual trained service animals” implied both that Lis didn’t belong to the group labeled “the disabled” and that she was faking Dora’s service animal status.
I’m willing to accept that it was an error of phrasing that you implied the former, but the latter is baked into your whole presumption that you might know better about Lis’ needs and Dora’s – or the soon-to-be new credential’s – function and training than Lis does. That’s not better. Such condescension and clouds of doubt do far, far more harm to us all than a single mis-labeled emotional support animal – which, again, Dora wasn’t and you had no evidence whatsoever to suggest that she might be – ever could.
@bill–Yes, Dora is a service animal, if you insist. The only other species approved to be service animals are horses, specifically miniature horses.
So no, I don’t feel obliged to say service animal. She was a dog, who was my service animal, and therefore, she is a service dog.
The ADA, the law you seem to think requires me to say service animal instead of service dog, protects the right of the disabled to owner-train our service animals. They have to perform tasks that help with our disabilities, and they have to behave appropriately in public. If you’re renter, they can’t damage the property or create actual problems. “Actual problems” means things the dog or the miniature horse does, not objections from those who either hate animals generally, or think poor people like me have no business having animals.
What’s required for the animal to be a legal service animal, is a letter from your doctor, on letterhead, saying that you require the service animal and the particular animal meets needs related to your disability.
They are not required to be the product of an expensive service animal program, although that is one of the options. Guide dogs essentially always are, but beyond that, it depends on whether there is enough demand for animals for your particular disability, and whether it is, you know, fashionable enough.
Many medical alert dogs, especially, are former pets who “volunteered,” i.e., started alerting to a medical problem the owner had–often the first even that led to diagnosis.
Dora, since you think you’re entitled to pass judgment on these things, started alerting to incipient panic attacks, and redirecting and refocusing me.
And remember, she was “just a pet.” She became a service dog because dogs are very, very good, better than humans are, at reading our body language and other signals that humans don’t catch.
You think only the rich should have pets, but homeless people and their dogs often keep each other alive, and more or less sane.
I had a dog before Dora, the little white dog that is my avatar, Addy, was just as good as Dora at responding to my panic attacks, but she was too reactive, even after a lot of work with her, to ever be a dog I could take everywhere. Despite that she made an enormous difference in my ability to cope.
But I’ve had pets nearly all my life, and there is no one in my extended family who would agree with your sad belief that living beings who give us love and affection, and improve our lives and health in a variety of ways, even, yes, as “just pets,” are disposable consumer goods and status symbols.
By the way bill, emotional support animals are not defined under the the ADA as you state they are, period. Only service companion animals that provide physical support needs are. Since I know you’ll disagree with me saying that, I’m going to quote the ada.gov website here:
Are emotional support, therapy, comfort, or companion animals considered service animals under the ADA?
A. No. These terms are used to describe animals that provide comfort just by being with a person. Because they have not been trained to perform a specific job or task, they do not qualify as service animals under the ADA. However, some State or local governments have laws that allow people to take emotional support animals into public places. You may check with your State and local government agencies to find out about these laws.
(Also, following up on Lis’ first point there, using “service animal” casually is a surprisingly effective way of getting into a number of extremely tedious conversations with people who think that the only option is “dog” and how ridiculous that anything else should count! So unless you’re determined to spread the word of Miniature Horse Possibilities and if you’re not literally in possession of a service miniature horse… it’s really much easier to just say dog. So much time saved.)
I have heard that parrots and their other large smart kin can be trained as service animals for select specific purposes, but I don’t know if that applies in the US.
I think Bill is reacting to the entitled and ablist people who get fake service vests for obviously and totally untrained animals, which is a valid peeve I share, but does not apply to Lis or Dora, or, so far as I can tell, anyone in this conversation. It would be nice if he confirmed this as a correct interpretation before things get more heated.
(That horrible fake-vest trend also makes “This is a legit service animal, yes, even if it was not trained by an Association that costs tens of thousands” discussions harder. THOSE people ruin it for everyone.)
@Lenora Rose
IIRC the legal definition in both the USA and the UK defines “service animal” as either a dog or a miniature horse, but that’s certainly not to say that other smart creatures can’t be trained to perform necessary tasks. They just aren’t given the legal protections.
Any animal causing a disruption can be ejected, even if they actually are a service animal. Bad behaviour voids the right to entry.
Meredith says IIRC the legal definition in both the USA and the UK defines “service animal” as either a dog or a miniature horse, but that’s certainly not to say that other smart creatures can’t be trained to perform necessary tasks. They just aren’t given the legal protections.
The only service animals are those defined by the ADA are support animals which do physical tasks and by federal law those are only canines who are trained in a specific task, ie person who has epilepsy must have a dog that is trained to detect the onset of a seizure and then help the person remain safe during the seizure. The ADA doesn’t recognise emotional support animals, only states do that.
No, miniature horses aren’t covered it turns out under the ADA. Though some states do cover them.
@Cat Eldridge
No, miniature horses are also protected as service animals under USA federal (and UK) law – there has to be an alternative to dogs because some people are either allergic or phobic. They aren’t common by any means but they’re out there – I think they were chosen partly because as well as the obvious trainable aspect they’re large enough to physically support a human who is in danger of falling over.
Emotional support animals are a separate category and rarely have much legal stuff attached; some may be capable of performing some tasks as well but if they’re not a dog or miniature horse they can’t qualify for the service animal upgrade even if they’re doing the actual job.
Yes, miniature horses are authorized as service animals.
The miniature horse is not included in the definition of service animal, which is limited to dogs. However, the new ADA regulations contain a specific provision which covers miniature horses. Businesses must make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures to permit the use of a miniature horse by an individual with a disability if the miniature horse has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of the individual with a disability.
I’ll add that miniature horses are really good as guide animals and mobility assistance animals because they live a lot longer than dogs, typically, and are better designed for taking weight.
Meredith says No, miniature horses are also protected as service animals under USA federal (and UK) law – there has to be an alternative to dogs because some people are either allergic or phobic. They aren’t common by any means but they’re out there – I think they were chosen partly because as well as the obvious trainable aspect they’re large enough to physically support a human who is in danger of falling over.
You’re right, I missed that amendment to the ADA that covered them which says that if they’re trained to do a specific task, that they’re considered support animals.
Again there’s still no coverage for emotional support animals. It’s a little odd that the ADA hasn’t been amended to cover this area of the law.
@Cat Eldridge
ESA’s are a bit of a weird category – it’s harder to make a legal justification for an animal to get into anywhere when all most of them are doing is existing rather than a task(s). I’m not sure whether anyone’s working on getting something into federal law. (If they are I’d be curious to know what.)