(1) WEATHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. “NASA reveals stunning images of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft” – Yahoo! has the story.
The breathtaking images show swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere.
Scientists said the photos allowed them to see the planet’s weather system in greater detail.
According to the space station, the brighter colours in the images represent clouds made up of ammonia and water, while the darker blue-green spirals represent cloud material “deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere.”
(2) HOW TO MAKE MAGIC. Fantasy-Faction’s Aaron Miles advises writers about “Creating A Magic System”.
The naming of a thing gives you power over it. Sorcery is the will and the word. Cast fireball now and you won’t be able to again until tomorrow and have finished your revision.
Magic systems exist in scores of fantasy novels. Diverse in their rules, varying in complexity, they instruct us in how the magic of the world of the story works and in any rules that govern it. Some authors disdain them, preferring to keep their magical arts shrouded in mystery, while others will provide exhaustive explanation and runic charts in the back of the book. I’ve always believed that a good magic system can only enhance a book, serving to develop the world, engage the reader and open up the scope for storytelling. Clever use of such a system can create new plot opportunities, allow an author to foreshadow and enact hidden twists, not to mention being interesting creations in their own right.
A common stop on the road to worldbuilding, many authors love to craft their own systems with various casting protocols, methodologies and effects. It can be great fun to develop your own magic system but if the groundwork is poor it will quickly become difficult to manage or hard to understand for the reader. This article will cover the various aspects involved in creating a magic system and how to make it interesting and effective….
(3) BET AWARDS. Black Panther and its king won hardware at last night’s BET Awards, but another of the movie’s stars was responsible for a highlight of the evening:
[Jamie] Foxx brought “Black Panther” star Michael B. Jordan to the stage and asked him to recite the powerful line from the film, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, cause they knew death was better than bondage.”
Best Actor Award
- Chadwick Boseman *WINNER
Best Movie Award
- Black Panther *WINNER
(4) PUPPY ADJACENT. N.K. Jemisin’s Twitter thread on bigotry and artistic mediocrity begins here.
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1010980092464558086
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1010980094620454915
(5) NO LONGER THE WILDER AWARD. BBC reports “Laura Ingalls Wilder removed from book award over racist language”.
The US Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) has removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from one of its awards over racist views and language.
The association had received complaints for years over the Little House on the Prairie author’s “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work”.
The ALSC board voted unanimously on Saturday to remove Wilder’s name from the children’s literature award.
The medal will be renamed as the Children’s Literature Legacy award.
(6) FANTASTIC POSTER. Yet another brilliant poster heralds Portugal’s Forum Fantastico, to be held from October 12 to 14 in Lisbon.
(7) WHAT TO CHARGE? Peter Grant’s comment at Mad Genius Club sheds new light on indie authors’ book pricing strategies.
Kindle Unlimited changes this equation dramatically, depending on the length of a book. I’ll be writing at greater length about this in a couple of weeks, but here’s a potted summary.
KU pays out just over $0.0045 for a single page read by a subscriber. If your book is (say) 100,000 words, that translates (in KENP, or KU equivalent pages, according to Amazon’s calculations) to about 360 pages. That means a KU “borrow” of your book will earn you about $1.62. If you sell that same book for $2.99 via Amazon, with a 70% royalty rate, you’ll earn about $2.00 after Amazon’s charge to download the book to the purchaser. In other words, a $2.99 price point is barely better, from an earnings perspective, than a KU “borrow”. It’s probably not economical. You’ll make more money pricing it at $3.99 or $4.99.
However, that brings up the question of what readers will pay. For a relatively unknown author, $2.99 might be all that most buyers are prepared to pay. For someone better know, $4.99 might be feasible. I’ve been charging that for my books for some years, and I’m getting sales at that level; but there’s also growing resistance even to that price from some readers. I’ve actually had e-mails saying that I’m being greedy to charge that much, and that I should price it much cheaper, otherwise they won’t spend their money on me – or they’ll use KU instead of buying the book. Even Amazon’s beta price recommendation service from KDP recommended, for my latest trilogy, that I price it at $2.99 per volume, to maximize sales income. Of course, it didn’t factor KU into that pricing equation.
I now take KU into my pricing calculations. If I won’t make much more per sale than I know I’ll earn on a KU “borrow”, it’s frankly not worth my while to sell the book at all! Why not just make it available in the subscription library?
(8) WHAT’S BREWING AT CAPE CANAVERAL? Galactic Journey’s Traveler popped back to the present long enough to inform beer drinkers about the Mercury program: “[June 25, 1963] It’s showtime! (A musical and educational performance on the Mercury 7)”.
We’ve a special treat for you, today! As you know, the Journey frequently presents at conventions and venues across the country. Our last event was at the science-themed pub, The Wavelength Brewing Co.
Not only was a fine selection of craft beers on tap, but also the Young Traveler, performing a suite of current musical hits. I followed things up with a half-hour presentation on the recently concluded Mercury program, discussing all of the flights and the folks who flew them.
(9) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
Max Brooks wrote The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. His parents are Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 25, 1976 – The Omen premieres in North America.
(11) RINGO. As two departed Dragon Con staffers (Pixel Scroll 6/9/18 Item #3) anticipated, the con is inviting John Ringo as a guest. Ringo shared the news on Facebook along with a request:
My Letter of Agreement to Dragon Con has been sent in and the announcement will go out this week that I am, again, going to be a guest of the con.
Due to various ‘stuff’ the leadership of DCon already knows/suspects/has-been-informed there will be ‘push-back.’
I am hereby asking my fans to STAY OUT OF IT. Don’t respond on any page especially any DCon page. Let the (extremely professional) con management handle any response.
Rpt: STAY OUT.
DragonCon has handled far worse in their time and they’re not worried about this particular kerfuffle.
“Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”
(12) HOWEY SHORT FICTION. Jana Nyman reviews Hugh Howey’s collection for Fantasy Literature: “Machine Learning: Thoughtful and thought-provoking stories”.
Odds are good that you’ve heard of Hugh Howey — whether you’ve read one of his novels or short stories, or even if you’re just aware of the runaway success of his SILO trilogy, which began with Wool. Machine Learning (2017) is the first collection of his short stories (and one novelette), most of which were published elsewhere in various times and places, and it’s an excellent display of his range, insight, and talent. Each story is followed up by a brief Afterword from Howey, giving him the opportunity to explain where the story came from and what his goals were in writing it. When necessary, I’ve marked stories that were previously reviewed at Fantasy Literature, so that you can compare/contrast my thoughts with those of our other reviewers.
“The Walk up Nameless Ridge,” previously reviewed by Kat Hooper. A mountain climber hopes to be the first to summit a frighteningly tall peak, thereby receiving the honor of having it named after him, which is something he cares about more than anything else in his life. Howey gets deep in this man’s head, examining what motivates him to keep going despite literal loss of limbs and the emotional and physical distance placed between him and his family….
(13) TAKEI V. TRUMP. George Takei compares his family’s internment during WWll to Trump’s family separation policy and says the situation on the Mexican border is much worse. He shares a lot of background, offers a lot of insight, and sets the records straight on many counts. From CNN: “George Takei: Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric is ‘grotesque'”
(14) REDEEMING MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA. Future War Stories analyzes a controversial game: “FWS Video Game Review: MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA”.
Among the icons of military science fiction are some legendary video game titles that have reinforced the fans and forged new ones. One of the most beloved was BioWare’s Mass Effect series that spanned across three primary games, a number of DLCs, books, and comics. It was a beloved universe for its fans that caused them to cosplay, wear N7 gear, and even tattoo themselves. When 3rd and final Mass Effect game was released in 2012, we fans wondered if this was indeed the end of the journey after the mishandling of the ending to the trilogy. Then came happy news of a new game that was a fresh start with new characters and a focus on exploration in a new setting. When 29th century centered game was released in March of 2017, there was understandable disappointment and many fans felt deeply betrayed by EA and BioWare. But it is worth the hate and loathing? I decided to embarked on the journey to the Andromeda galaxy to see if it was a betrayal of the heritage of the Mass Effect games or a merely misunderstood entry into the franchise.
The GOOD
There is much made about the broken nature of ME:A and its ugly or underwhelming graphics…but under all of the noise and press is a semi-solid game that does delivery a long, relatively enjoyable campaign that becoming more and more rare these days. Overall, the concept of the Andromeda Initiative expedition to the nearest galaxy is maybe something that has been seen in sci-fi, but it a great way to separate this new ME game from the previous titles…
(15) SOUNDTRACKS. Courtesy of Carl Slaughter:
- Hobbit soundtrack
- Lord of the Rings soundtrack
(16) NAZIS IN SPACE – NOT. Revell has taken off the shelves in Germany a model kit for the Haneubu II aircraft because it is convincing customers that the Nazis had camouflaged-covered flying saucers with zap guns. Gizmodo reports: “Flying Saucer Toy Recalled For Teaching Kids That Nazis Achieved Space Travel”. The model kit has been recalled because it promotes the idea that Nazis not only had the capability for space travel, but could use their saucer-type spacecraft to blast Allied aircraft. Quoting the article:
If you’ve ever watched the History Channel at 3AM, you know that the Nazis had a secret program during World War II to develop flying saucers. The Nazi’s UFO experiments never actually flew, but the model toy company Revell recently released a set in Germany that makes it look like one of the Nazi saucers actually worked. And historians are pissed….
The toy company has pulled the 69-part set, known as the Haunebu II, from store shelves. But you can still find plenty of the toys available for sale online. The Nazi UFO is even seen on the box blasting Allied planes out of the sky—a disgusting image to promote, to say the least….
“Unfortunately, our product description does not adequately express [that the Nazi saucer program was unsuccessful] and we apologize for it,” Revell said in a statement.
(17) WESTWORLD’S FALLOUT PROBLEM. BBC says “Westworld game hit by Bethesda legal claim”.
Game publisher Bethesda is suing Warner Brothers over a game based around the HBO series Westworld.
Bethesda alleges the Westworld game, released last week, is a “blatant rip-off” of its Fallout Shelter title.
Included in the legal challenge is Canadian developer Behaviour Interactive, which helped Bethesda develop Fallout Shelter in 2014….
The Westworld game gives players the job of managing the titular theme park and its robotic inhabitants.
The facility managed by the player can be expanded underground and includes many of the locations seen in the TV series.
Many reviews of the game mentioned its similarity to Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter, which gives players the job of managing and expanding an underground facility….
(18) TURING TESTER. The classic WWII device has a new home: “Codebreaking Bombe moves to computer museum”. (Chip Hitchcock suggests it’s another tourism opportunity for people willing to travel a distance before/after Dublin 2019.)
The UK’s National Museum of Computing has expanded its exhibits celebrating the UK’s wartime code-breakers and the machines used to crack German ciphers.
On Saturday it will open a gallery dedicated to the Bombe, which helped speed up the cracking of messages scrambled with the Enigma machine.
The Bombe was formerly on display at Bletchley Park next door to the museum.
A crowd-funding campaign raised £60,000 in four weeks to move the machine and create its new home.
… The initial design of the Bombe was drawn up by Alan Turing and later refined by Gordon Welchman. The gallery is being opened on the 106th anniversary of Turing’s birth.
(19) BIRD IS THE WORD. Scientists say “Bird family tree shaken by discovery of feathered fossil”.
The turacos, or banana-eaters, are today found only in Africa, living in forests and savannah.
A beautifully preserved fossil bird from 52 million years ago is shaking up the family tree of the exotic birds.
The fossil’s weird features suggests it is the earliest known living relative not just of the turacos, but of cuckoos and bustards (large long-legged birds).
And the fact the remains were unearthed in North America shows the distribution of different birds around the globe would have been very different in the past.
(20) GOOD TO THE LAST PROTON. Ars Technica says the retirement party will be happening soon: “Russia’s Proton rocket, which predates Apollo, will finally stop flying”. With over 400 launches under its figurative belt (and about an 89% success rate) the Proton rocket family is nearing retirement. Dating from tis first launch, the Proton will turn 56 in mid July. That means it predates the Saturn V used in the Apollo program by more than 2 years.
The Russian-manufactured Proton rocket has been flying into space since before humans landed on the Moon. First launched in 1965, the rocket was initially conceived of as a booster to fly two-person crews around the Moon, as the Soviet Union sought to beat NASA into deep space. Indeed, some of its earliest missions launched creatures, including two turtles, to the Moon and back.
But now, Russian officials confirm, the Proton rocket will finally reach its end. In an interview with a Russian publication, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said production of the Proton booster will cease as production shifts to the new Angara booster. (A translation of this article was provided to Ars by Robinson Mitchell, a former US Air Force Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst). No new Proton contracts are likely to be signed.
…With a capacity of 22.8 tons to low-Earth orbit, it became a dominant player in the commercial market for heavier satellites.
It remained so during much of the 2000s, but as Ars has previously reported, the lack of technical oversight began manifesting itself in an increasing rate of failures. At the end of 2010, one Proton plunged into the ocean because too much propellant had been mistakenly loaded into its upper stage. In 2013, another vehicle performed a fiery dance seconds after liftoff because flight control sensors were hammered into the rocket’s compartment upside down.
…Whether the Angara booster can capture anything close to the Proton’s once highly profitable share of the global launch market remains highly uncertain.
(21) LIZARD WRASSLIN’. In this tweeted photo set, a T-Rex finds it’s no match for Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson)
https://twitter.com/FakeEyes22/status/1011057864838991873
[Thanks to Carl Slaughter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day O. Westin.]
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In my eyes, Patricia McKillip does a very good job of keeping magic magical. There may be rules but they aren’t explicit. And I’ve never, ever wanted to throw one of her books across the room.
File my Pixel Scroll down, sport
File my Pixel Scroll down.
Mike – Oh yeah. If there weren’t good points in those books, I wouldn’t still like them so much.
Though I point out that the Army kicking the Ingalls family off that land, and also Ma’s brother Tom off the land he’d illegally settled, was portrayed as a bad thing. And, indeed, later the Government kicked Native Americans off that land and opened it to White settlers. If only Pa had waited a couple more years we’d have had Little House in Kansas.
@Jim C. Hines, Thanks! I admit I was rather hoping that a European egg would hatch a Mr. Mime… <wry grin>
@Rev. Bob, in this case, about halfway through the book a character shows up that speaks in medium-gray text. Everyone else (so far) speaks in black text. I haven’t gotten far enough to see if any other colors show up…
(I’m reminded about my old copy of The Princess Bride, which has the snarky comments printed in red. The more modern printings have those comments in italics, I understand.)
I adored the Little House books as a child. But I was rather disillusioned when I found out later in life that Wilder and her wildly libertarian daughter carefully falsified stuff in them to conform to their ideology (for example, Mary went to college for the blind with government aid, but Laura wrote that Pa sold a cow to pay for college – god forbid her family be shown to have taken gummint handouts).
Does that make her work fantasy?
Honestly, it depends on the story. Some stories are enhanced by a rigorous and consistent magical system, but others may lose their sense of mystery. It depends on what the writer is trying to achieve.
Rigorous rules can be good for a puzzle piece or a mystery. Something where you want to challenge the reader to work things out for herself. On the other hand, they’re likely to add little (and just be a distraction) from a work focused primarily on character development, or from a mood piece.
Similar things are true of physics and SF. Some works are enhanced by rigorous physics–for others, it can be an irrelevant distraction that detracts from the actual story.
Neither approach is inherently “better”, though. It depends entirely on what you want to achieve.
Yay, I got my first friend-egg today (thank you, Soon Lee). I will have to take care more of when I hatch eggs.
Are you there, Scroll? It’s me, Pixel.
jayn on June 26, 2018 at 11:58 am said:
It’s been sold as fiction from the beginning.
I haven’t had a chance to read Prarie Fires yet, but I suspect both are true. The Ingalls sent Mary to college with government help *and* they had to sell their cow to cover other travel- and school-related expenses. Not that Laura mentions any of the help her family received from the government, nor the debts Charles defaulted on, in her books.
Jayn, it makes it a memoir, and probably about as accurate as most memoirs. <wry grin>
And far be it from me to be the last to mention the speculation about how much of the books her daughter, Rose, may have written.
@Cassy B: I’ve got a few extra Mr. Mimes if we’re ever at a convention together and you want to trade 😉
Hampus., Cassy b, I missed the earlier discussion, but was just trying to pluck up the courage to ask for friends. I’ve sent you requests.
I’m Doiredoire based in the UK.
Soon Lee are you accepting friends requests? J C Hines, are you or do you just know about the game?
Oh no edit option today
J C Hines, I see you do play. It’s a pity traded Mon can’t be re-traded on across the world. Though the stardust cost for a courier would be horrendous.
It’s probably not a coincidence that defined magical systems in fiction became more prominent alongside the rise of fantasy role-playing games.
Going to Africa in August. Will store up on the location specific pokemons there for Dublin 2019. Will try to level up som Mr. Mimes too (but I guess they can be found in Dublin anyhow). Oh, and seems I’m going back to Australia to work there for a few months in September.
I’m always happy to have new friends. My trainer code is 1164 5215 9203 for those who missed it.
@Ultragotha
I made the comment a bit tongue-in-cheek. I knew they were fiction, but I remember when I first started out to research Wilder as an avowed fangirl, what I first found was fairly hagiographic material (probably originating from her own foundation) about how minutely accurate Wilder’s memory was for a little girl, because X, Y and Z facts had been researched and were true. Which sounds to me now like they were trying to have it both ways.
Systems of magic. Fletcher Pratt’s The Mathematics of Magic and sequels in which magic was essentially based on symbolic logic.
7) The one thing that Amazon and the Kindle have managed to do is devalue books to the point where they’re roughly competitive with toilet paper.
Mike Glyer on June 26, 2018 at 12:22 pm said:
Prarie Fires is on my list to read after Hugo season. But based on what I’ve seen in other readings so far, it appears Rose was an editor and adviser more than a writer. I could be proved wrong the minute I open the that book.
jayn on June 26, 2018 at 12:43 pm said:
Didn’t Laura do a lot of research and also write to many family members to get details more correct? I read that in one of the other biographies.
@Jim C. Hines, so, will you be coming to Windycon….? <hopeful look>
(I still remember your Snoopy masquerade costume from a few years back. I was the photographer’s assistant.)
It’s funny; thanks to File770 I have far more Pokemon Go friends on other continents than I do locally…
@ ULTRAGOTHA: Yeesh. I read a couple of the LHotP books as a kid, but they didn’t grab me at the time. I think I’m glad now, because I don’t have to deal with a massive Suck Fairy visit to something I loved.
Oh, and that business about white people moving into indigenous homes while the owners were away and then refusing to leave? One of Ogden Nash’s horrible racist WWII poems accuses the Japanese-Americans of doing this. Whether it was written before or after we stole their homes and land and put them in the camps I don’t know.
@ Joe H: So I might get to read Starlight before I die? YAY!
(16) Kit is now at £200 from third party sellers on Amazon UK, with a suggestion that it’s been pulled completely. Seems a bit daft TBH.
Xtifr: Oh, yes. My personal *preference* is to include some numinous in my magic, and leave unanswered questions, but if one is in it to explore the idea in depth and extrapolate all the possible conotations, then you might need to lose the numinous to gain the necessary conditions.
Lee; Pretty much my opinion re LHoP. I never got into them, but a friend adored them hard (and has had a lifelong fondness for the idea of homesteading since – including doing some serious research on modern equivalents including a lot of the Green housing models, and exploring the possibility of acquiring land) — and I think is now feeling very much stuck in the realm of not wanting to reread them again to have to handle the problematic content.
@Lee:
What’s weird is how long that poem kept appearing in collections. I have a paperback that’s probably from the 60s, and I think it’s in there.
Lots of folks revealed racism, or xenophobia, or something, during WW2. I discovered Ted “Dr Seuss” Geisel’s really potent political cartoons in bound copies of PM at the library at William & Mary, and went back over a period of weeks to photocopy them all. They were in semi-storage, and on their way to off-site storage, so I had a deadline, and did much of my pre-scanning work in what was basically a closet. Imagine how surprised I was, though, to run across a cartoon where the good Dr depicted what looked like every Japanese man living in California, lining up to receive a bomb and instructions. Betrayal describes it pretty well, and I’m talking about Geisel, not any Nisei.
The poem in question, “The Japanese,” is published in Nash’s Wikipedia entry . Not that it matters, but it was apparently first published in 1938.
(5) NK Jemison Twitter Comments
2 points I would make about the comments NK Jemison had on Twitter:
1. Back during the bad old days of Sad Puppies 3 I remember Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen writing a lot of rambling, non-specifc essays about perceived attacks and slights. I thought it was stupid then and I think it is stupid now. If you are going to call out “SP Bigots” then call them out by name. If you are talking about Vox Day and John C Wright then I agree that they are both bigots and crappy writers. If you are talking about Larry Correia then I think he is a right wing jerk but I like his writing and don’t think he is a bigot. If you are talking about people the Sad Puppies used to support like Jim Butcher and Marko Kloos, they both seem like good writers and good people. I recall GRRM writing a response to Larry Correia asking him to stop with the generalities and start naming names. “But WHO called you a liar? How many people said this stuff, where, in what context? One person, ten people, a hundred?” I would ask NK Jemison to do the same that GRRM asked of Larry. “But WHO are the bigots? What did they say, where, and in what context? One person, ten people, a hundred?”
2. A lot of her comments brought up the puppy trope of “Wrongfun”. Here are some snips from the conversation:
“So. I have actually tried to read the Noisier Bigots’ work, on occasion.”
“But the warning signs are usually on the first page. Cliched dialogue, weak sentences, openings that make me yawn instead of gasp.”
“But sometimes I’ve forced myself to read more. I don’t need to tell you which authors; this isn’t about anyone specific. Because consistently, when I’ve done this, the writing gets *worse* past the first page.”
“And in itself, that’s fine. There’s a place in the market for mediocre, “comfort food” books. I read lots of ’em myself. A nice mental palate-cleanser.
But when the authors of those books decide to market themselves by attacking the authors of better books…”
This comes across like she is looking down on those of us that like those books and not reading her “better books” and are having “Wrongfun” with cliched dialogue and bad writing. One of the things I love about John Scalzi is that he is an extremely humble and introspective person. He recently wrote a post about a bunch of 1-star reviews and instead of attacking a bunch of SP Bigots that hate diversity and good writing he instead stated that they are just a subset of that and most of the bad reviews are probably from normal nice people that just bounced hard off the book. NK Jemison could learn quite a bit from John Scalzi, no one has been attacked as much as he has and he is still has a positive outlook.
The Wilder books are problematic and those issues were visible to me fairly early on…but only after many rereadings at a young age (I was an early reader and obsessed on the Little House books to the degree that a teacher strictly forbade me to check them out of the library). This has led to a certain degree of “must buy every literary analysis of the Little House books” so I also became aware of the issues around them quite a while ago which has inspired a desire to contribute…but it’s been a low-priority “must write someday” project.
For example: if you want to compare Laura Ingalls Wilder to Rose Wilder Lane’s work using the same sources, look up Lane’s books Free Land and Let the Hurricane Roar. They’re basically adult versions of Wilder’s settlement stories. Unfortunately, it’s been a while since I’ve read them (30 years), so I am not certain of details, but I remember being struck by stronger pro-Libertarian themes than were present in Wilder’s books. There’s been a lot of argument about the degree to which Lane rewrote Wilder, and it’s clear that there were more than a few hard feelings between mother and daughter about the nature of the rewrites.
Also keep in mind that while Wilder’s leanings can be excused as lack of exposure, for the most part, Lane’s cannot. Wilder did travel and live in the South for a while, but she did so as a subsistence farmer. Lane traveled internationally as a correspondent.
Another point for consideration–Rose Wilder Lane was also a virulent and active Libertarian. There’s some sketchiness about what became of her estate (including Wilder’s) that ties into that political activity as well as some other behavior on Lane’s part. But again, it’s been a while since I’ve done reading in that area, so I don’t want to overstate things.
It’s not an easy issue. I personally think the right thing was done, in this era, by changing the name of the award. But I think there are many positives to balance the negatives, so I do want the books to continue to be used…but mindfully, with full disclosure of Ma’s racist and classist notions as well as the truth about the Ingalls’s incursions upon Indian Territory (including the nastiness involved with Tom Ingalls’s participation in that Black Hills gold mining venture–which I did not learn about until recently).
I’ve been wanting to sit down and review what I know to write something about Wilder, including revisiting the Lane books in modern context (seriously, it’s been 30 years since I read them which is not a good thing to do when trying to write an analysis). I have a lot of published source materials available. Sounds like maybe that project should move up on the priority list. I have opinions of my own about the mix of Lane and Wilder in the Little House books….
One of the most irritating aspects about Nash’s vile little bit of race-based character assassination is that in reality, the opposite occurred. Melanin-challenged neighbors of the Japanese Americans who were put in camps would find it convenient to move into their businesses and take them over. When the Nisei were finally released and returned to their old establishments, the new “owners” were not always inclined to step aside, and probably said so in terms reminiscent of the last sneering line of the poem: “So sorry, this my house now.”
@Jesse H: On what basis are you saying that “nobody has been attacked as much as [John Scalzi]”? Do you know what VD did to get kicked out of SFWA?
I also disagree with your interpretation of Jemisin’s tweets: It reads to me like she is saying something closer to “sometimes people want comfort food books, and that’s fine, but there are standards even for that, and some people prefer to flaunt their bigotry rather than work on producing satisfying comfort food books.”
Running with Jemisin’s “comfort food” analogy,a turkey sandwich on white bread with mayo and shredded lettuce is food. If you want that, you might grab a loaf of bread from the supermarket, or you might walk into a deli and have them make you one. But you have a legitimate complaint if you order and pay for a turkey sandwich, and get a roll with nothing but shredded lettuce and mayonnaise. And if you are going to make a sandwich at home and see that the bread is moldy, you’ll probably throw it away, not feel that you have to eat it because “it’s just a turkey sandwich.”
Back to actual books: even with comfort reading, I don’t expect the hero’s name to change randomly, and the prose should include some verbs. A murder mystery doesn’t have to be incredibly clever, but the characters shouldn’t wander off to a picnic halfway through, then organize a pickup softball game, and never mention the murder again. That’s not even Nutty Nuggets: that’s bringing home your box of cereal and finding that it contains a half ounce of bran flakes and a few bolts and thumbtacks.
Jesse H; I would ask NK Jemison to do the same that GRRM asked of Larry. “But WHO are the bigots? What did they say, where, and in what context? One person, ten people, a hundred?”
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then you must not have been reading File 770 from 2015-2017.
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I’m personally tired of repeatedly having to trot out quotes and URLs to back up statements about what Puppies said and did for people who weren’t paying attention at the time. Jemisin probably is, too.
There’s a link at the top of File 770 labeled “The Compleat Litter of Puppy Roundup Titles”. It goes to a page of links to posts which contain a great deal of substantiating evidence during the first 8 months of 2015. Camestros Felapton has also done yeoman’s work in putting together The Puppy Kerfuffle Timeline, which documents many things which were said and done between 2015 and now, with links.
Jesse H: NK Jemison could learn quite a bit from John Scalzi, no one has been attacked as much as he has and he is still has a positive outlook.
Yeah, no. You don’t get to criticize a black woman, who has in her lifetime put up with a great deal of bigotry and abuse — including being publicly called an “ignorant half-savage” by one of the Puppy leaders because she’s black — for not having a “positive outlook”. Seriously, get a clue.
And her name is spelled “Jemisin”. 🙄
[POKEMON]
@Doire,
Yes, I am accepting friend requests but I’d rather not post my Pokemon User ID publicly & get hit by randoms. You can email me at soonlee.nz at the gmail place & I’ll reply with my user code. Let me know your IGN (In Game Name) so I know it’s you. My IGN is the oh-so-imaginative “SoonLeeNZ”.
@Hampus, thank you too. I’ve got a Swedish Meowth from your egg.
@Cassy, your 7km egg is about to go into the incubator.
My current method is to open gift boxes from far-away-friends as soon as I’ve hatched one. That way, I know I have an egg space available.
Missed the edit window: I’m happy to accept Pokemon friend requests for any other Filers who are keen.
Kip: Everything you say about the treatment of Japanese-Americans is totally true, but I’d like to believe it has less connection with the Nash poem than you seem to think. When the poem was written, Imperial Japan had been expanding its borders for a generation and was occupying Korea and large areas of what is now territories of China and Russia. (When I was in Korea in the early ’80’s, there was still a noticeable coolness toward Japan.) They would soon, of course, take over most of Southeast Asia.
Maybe because I don’t want Nash to be awful, I’m reading the poem as parallel to what might be written about Russian expansionism today.
I certainty don’t want to quarrel –I owe you for introducing me to H. Allen Smith through your comments here.
Steve, I hope I didn’t leave the impression that they got the idea from Nash. I’m just saying it’s annoying that he in effect was projecting our behavior onto them. With flourishes.
As a nation, yeah, they were grabby. Many of their neighbors remember that. It may be what Nash was getting at, you’re right.
Short-Short SF in The Onion. Seriously.
16) Buy American, says I;
http://pegasushobbies.net/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Haunebu+II&osCsid=hgv9g2f98mpnteql1ovessfso6&search.x=0&search.y=0
They also have models of the Space Ark, the Cosmostrator, and the Destination Luna spaceships.
16) Here’s a review of a Haunebu II by Squadron Models : http://finescale.com/product-info/kit-reviews/2017/07/squadron-haunebu-ii-build-review
@vicki Rosenzweig Thanks for responding! Here are thoughts on your 2 points:
1. Scalzi – I was using the Sad Puppy 3 timeframe for my evaluation because that is when I think it was most controversial. I am very aware of Vox Day, his failed run for SFWA, his extremely racist and vile comments toward Jemsisin, and his all around assholeness. That was the reason I defaulted to calling him a bigot in my original comments. I was more thinking of the primary targets of the SP3 campaign and my recollection is that Scalzi for Redshirts and Swirsky for If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love were the main targets of vitriol at that time.
2. Tweet Interpretation – I didn’t fully follow the food example but I would put it this way, I have been to a James Beard Award restaurant and I have been to The Salt Lick BBQ by Austin. I prefer the Salt Lick and I don’t begrudge anyone else that preferred the James Beard Award winning location but I don’t like being told that what I like is mediocre and crap. That is how I interpret it. If her singular point is that fiction based on bigotry and racism is bad then I wholly agree.
Joyce – I’d be very interested to read that when you’ve finished it.
@JJ Thank you for the response! Here are my thoughts on your 2 points:
1. List of Bigots: You directed me to 2 lists of puppy related materials. I am reasonably familiar with them but reviewed them again to make sure. While looking I found 2 major items that were called out for racism/bigotry:
a. Vox Day – A speech that Jemisin gave in 2013 about the SFWA elections and her calling Vox a racist, misogynist, and all around asshole. I am in agreement with her and stated in my previous post that Vox is a bigot.
b. Larry Correia – The statement “For the other Best Novel noms, Lois Bujold is awesome, but she’s won like 8 Hugos. Mira Grant is cool as heck. In person, she’s really great, and I like her, but notice that since she is beloved by SMOF, she is nominated in every Hugo category except Car of the Year. Saladin’s a nice guy, and beloved by SMOF (we were up for the Campbell at the same time), but I’m predicting he’ll come in last, becasue this is his only book and he’s not built up a huge SMOF backer faction yet, but just having nominated a guy with an ethnic name will make the SMOFers feel all warm and tingly inside and good about themselves, so that’ll be enough for them.” I don’t personally view this as Larry saying that Saladin is inferior because of his ethnicity or religion, I think it is more of a comment on Larry’s views of an insular Worldcon fandom.
I would ask for additional help in finding other examples, with the caveat that I am defaulting the fact that Vox Day and John C Wright are racists and am not looking for further examples of them. Thanks!
2. Positive Attitude – My personal perspective is that when having a discussion or when trying to influence the views of people that you win over a lot more people by being positive than by being negative. Regardless of your personal history, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc…, you can control your attitude when interacting with others.
I apologize for the spelling error and have attempted to fix it since you noted it. Thanks!
Jesse H: I would ask for additional help in finding other examples
Since you clearly haven’t bothered to read the items linked on the Puppy Kerfuffle Timeline — many of which contain stunning examples of bigotry — I don’t see why I or anyone else should expend time and effort pulling them out for you.
Jesse H: Positive Attitude – My personal perspective is that when having a discussion or when trying to influence the views of people that you win over a lot more people by being positive than by being negative. Regardless of your personal history, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc…, you can control your attitude when interacting with others.
I’m going to give this one more try. Above, what you essentially said was:
White Guy: “If a wealthy white man who’s taken a lot of abuse can have a positive outlook, surely a non-wealthy black woman who’s taken a lot of abuse can manage to have one, too!”
Just think about that one for a minute. Here’s a white guy lecturing that a black woman who’s experienced a lifetime of bigotry and abuse should have a better attitude.
If you can’t understand why what you have said is a huge, huge problem, there’s probably not much hope of you being capable of enlightenment.
As far as your claim that “nobody has been attacked as much as [Scalzi]”, it’s just wrong. Ludicrous levels of WRONG. As bad as some of the things are which have been aimed at Scalzi on social media, the things which have been aimed at Jemisin have been far, far worse.
Please, go do some extensive research before making yourself look any more like a tool than you already have.
@ Jesse H:
Larry Correia’s remark shows that he thinks the only reason Saladin could possibly have gotten his nomination was his ethnic name – he entirely discounts the possibility that Saladin’s quality as a writer could have been a factor. It is the same attitude that pervaded other Puppies’ assumption that nominees not white and male (including Jemisin) must have been beneficiaries of affirmative action and therefore lacked quality – a notion blared by Vox Day that both strains of Puppy supported uncritically.
I’d say Correia’s reflexive assumption – without the least examination or criticism of Saladin’s actual work – that that work WAS inferior and only got recognition because of an ‘ethnic’ name is a pretty racist assumption to make…and that kind of knee-jerk assumption was what the whole Puppy campaign was based on.
@Jesse H–
Jemisin.
On lists of Puppy bigots.
All the Puppy leaders endlessly, relentlessly, told us that we didn’t like the works we voted for in the Hugos, and hadn’t been voting for things we liked for, well, maybe five years, maybe ten years, maybe twenty years…the date of the start of the Awful Betrayal kept moving backwards.
No, we weren’t voting for works we liked; we were voting for works that checked off the right demographic categories. That’s why women won, that’s why non-whites won, and they really had no coherent explanation for why Scalzi won, except their insistence that this white, male, cisgender, barely left of center writer of milsf is a wild-eyed extreme leftist beloved of the evil SMOFs.
When they can’t believe that we voted for the works of women, or nonj-whites, or Muslims, or other “minorities,” on the basis of the work of those writers, that’s bigotry.
And Brad Torgersen, Kate Paulk, and all the crew over at Mad Genius Club kept saying these things, over and over and over and over again.
Torgersen kept making up demeaning nicknames and acronyms to express his contempt for everyone. Michael Z. Williamson was nominated for a half-assed collection of his tweets that was full of racist claims, assertions, and “jokes.”
He’s saying Saladin’s work isn’t good enough to win on its merits, that it is so obviously inferior that “SMOFs,” by which he means people who actually give a shit about Worldcon and the Hugos, not just the much smaller group of people more typically called SMOFs, can’t possibly be voting for his work because we like it. We’re only voting for it because Saladin checks off the right demographics.
More broadly, he’s saying the stuff we like is so obviously bad that even we can’t really like it.
And what was that you said earlier?
The Puppies have been telling us for years that the stuff we like is unreadable crap, so bad that even we don’t really like it; we just vote for it because it has the right politics and demographics.
And they forced a bunch of the stuff they say they like, that they say is the really good stuff, the Nutty Nuggets that everyone loves, onto the Hugo ballot.
And in fairness and in honesty, we had to read it.
And it ranged in quality from mediocre to gobsmackingly awful.
Now you want us to not say so because it might hurt their feelings? What the fuck?
In their years of hacking the Hugo ballot, they haven’t offered us more than three or four items, total, that were worth reading–and they weren’t Hugo worthy. Not remotely.
And they insist that only politics and bigotry can explain our claiming not to love this crap, and voting for Jemisin and Grant and a host of other really fine writers, who offend their ideas of who is able to produce worthwhile work.
If I weren’t exhausted, and stressed, and depressed, I could do a better job giving you the list you asked for, but don’t waste my time telling me that people who tell us that only voting based on race, gender, gender identity, sexual preference, ethnicity, can explain why we vote for writers who aren’t white, male, straight, cisgender, and of obvious, recent European extractions aren’t fucking bigots.
Personally I thought Jemisin’s point – that insular bigoted thinking makes it harder to create a wide variety of characters well because it depends on assuming whole groups are unworthy of study, and that bigotry gives mediocre writers a reason to claim superiority without evidence, and thus not to do the self-examination necessary to level up – is worth considering as a general rubric about bigots.
I’d rather focus on that than get caught up in arguments as to whether a specific puppy-adjacent writer is a bigot (since some might not be, and arguing the edge cases between not-a-bigot-though-they-hold-the-unexamined-assumptions-of-subconscious-racism-endemic-in-society-and-don’t-strive-to-overcome-them-because-it-grants-them-privilege-they-don’t-want-to-have-to-acknowledge and bigot is a mug’s game at best) or whether a specific bigoted writer might actually be any good despite that disadvantage (which will lead us down the Lovecraft rabbit hole, if it doesn’t tie into the Wilder discussion instead).
@ULTRAGOTHA: thanks for that link to the live Tweet read of “Prairie Fires”. Dumpster fire you can’t help but stare at. I read the whole multi-part thing. It’s a whole lot of racism, hatefulness, epic Libertarian Fail, and possibly child molestation.
@Kip W: Kinda like so many people went apeshit nutso after 9/11. That’s been almost 17 years and most of them are getting worse.
@Jesse H: When having a discussion, it’s also polite to note that the issue was extensively discussed 2-3 years ago and someone gave you the links which would answer all your questions and provide more examples than you could ever want. It’s not at all positive to ask them to reiterate 3 years of discussion just because you want to talk about it NOW and haven’t read the reference material. That’s a bad attitude. Practice what you preach and come back when you’ve caught up. We’ll still be here.
@JAA: By golly, it is SF.
I like popcorn media as much as the next rabid Fast and the Furious fan, but I don’t quibble when someone points out that your average Oscar nominated flick is objectively a better film. (… Much.) What would be the point? There are a lot of qualities that contribute to making something “good” and fun is outnumbered. Saying that’s so isn’t being insulting.
Especially here, where a pretty substantial portion of the community spends a few months a year finely slicing a selection of good work to figure out how to rank them, and that means making decisions about which is better.
@Jesse H: If you can’t see that it’s somewhat problematic for Larry to claim that Saladin Ahmed was on the Campbell shortlist for the optics and nothing more, then that’s your issue. Remember that Larry, when he says that, is not basing his statement on reality but is instead sharing his own worldview that someone of Ahmed’s ethnicity couldn’t possibly be legitimately nominated for a major award.
FWIW though I found Throne of the Crescent Moon to be a vastly more readable novel than Mary Sue International.
@Jesse H: “I prefer the Salt Lick and I don’t begrudge anyone else that preferred the James Beard Award winning location but I don’t like being told that what I like is mediocre and crap. That is how I interpret it.”
Not to pile on, but your interpretation is simply wrong.
Foodwise, my tastes appear to be close to yours. I like my comfort food, love barbecue, and although I enjoy watching Food Network game shows and “check out what these local places are serving up” shows, I’m far more comfortable at a buffet than any fine-dining establishment. But I can recognize that there’s a difference in quality – of craft, of preparation, and of ingredients – between Red Lobster, a seaside food truck that sells lobster rolls, and a Beard-winning lobster restaurant’s specialty dish.
With that in mind, take another look at Vicki’s analogy:
In each of those cases, we’re talking about ordering or making the same dish: a turkey sandwich. If you buy what purports to be a turkey sandwich and you don’t get any meat, or the bread is moldy, then you should complain about the dish. It’s not about the sandwich not being a gourmet meal, but about it failing as a turkey sandwich.
Cardboard characters correspond to getting one thin slice of what might be turkey on a sub roll that should have a solid helping. Bad plotting and pages-long infodumps might correlate to taking a big bite and getting nothing but stale bread – where’s the turkey, and why isn’t the bread fresh? If the characters are supposed to be policemen solving a murder, but they spend chapter after chapter doing stuff that has no connection to doing that, maybe you’re wondering if the “turkey” is actually tofu, because something doesn’t taste right.
Yes, there are some objective quality standards which can be applied to any piece of fiction, whether it’s high-falutin’ litrachure or cheap cookie-cutter crap… and they have nothing to do with the type of story being told. Is the characterization consistent? Are the sentences structured properly? Does the author know how to keep his homophones straight, or does he have his Western’s gunslinger hero loading up a burrow before handing the reigns to his trusty Indian* companion from the Crowe tribe?
When we talk about quality of writing, it’s not about fine dining versus barbecue. It’s about rancid meat that’s been burned on the outside while staying raw in the middle, compared with the stuff that Grampa Joe gets straight from the farm and cooks low and slow for ten hours after treating it with the spice recipe that’s been in the family for generations. The dishes may be called the same thing, but which would you rather eat?
Take it back to books, now. Let’s say I’m in the mood for a good, light superhero graphic novel. In one corner, I’ve got Ms. Marvel, a series that constantly gives me a great balance between teenage problems, superhero challenges, culture clashes, and social issues… some of which are completely outside my experience, so I might even learn something while being entertained. In the other, I’ve got Spider-Man/Deadpool, which is pretty much cover-to-cover “two guys in similar costumes exchange wisecracks and occasionally fight some bad guys.” Now, I can and have enjoyed both (as my Goodreads history will show)… but the former is a far more satisfying read than the latter. If you’ll forgive a culinary image, it’s a full meal instead of a dessert laden with empty calories.
Perhaps now Vicki’s explanation will make more sense to you:
She’s not dissing your taste. She’s not saying you should shun barbecue and refine your palate to appreciate fine dining. She’s saying you should get what you order, whatever that is, and that subpar ingredients make for a low-quality meal. Wrietrs hoo rite liek tish dew nought delver a kwaliti produkt. Neither do writers who can’t decide whether the love interest’s name is Julia or Julie. Those aren’t forgivable “comfort reading” mistakes, but flat-out bad writing, and you deserve better than that. We all do.
* Yes, I used “Indian” deliberately. It would be anachronistic for a character in a Western to call anyone a “Native American.”
Jesse H:
It is kind of easy. John C Wright and Michael Z Williamson both had bigotted works directly on the ballot. Just as Moira Greylands nominated work was extremely bigotted. The people who put those bigotted items on slates, voted for them as finalists or voted for them to win are the bigots. That’s several hundreds. Including the Sad Puppy organizers.
@Chip Hitchcock
I’m surprised nobody mentioned a Wizard of Earthsea. In the original trilogy, magic is very well thought out and its abilities and limitations are discussed in the text.
Not at the same level, but the magic in the Rivers of London series for the Mage scan last seems highly systemized and defined, though the main character is in a very limited position regarding knowing about it. Also, from some recent hints, there may not be as much difference between mages and the supernatural creatures like the gods, as the mashes think. In fact I think they all may be of one kind.
Oh! Oh! OH! I forgot an excellent series where the magic is extremely defined and systemized. Fullmetal Alchemist. Though we learn more about the source of alchemy, the basic rule of “equivalent exchange” is true to a horrifying degree.