Pixel Scroll 6/27/18 What Has It Got In Its Retro Packet?

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(1) ANAHEIM EVENT GOES DOWN THE TUBER. With dreams of rivaling VidCon, YouTuber Tana Mongeau tried to stage her own event in Anaheim. How did that go? New York Magazine titled its coverage “A Mouth to Hell Opened This Weekend at Tanacon, a Fyre Festival for the YouTube Set”.

Tana Mongeau wanted to throw an alt-VidCon. Instead, she threw a Fyre Festival redux.

Mongeau is a YouTuber. She has 3.5 million followers and her name might sound vaguely familiar if you’re at all versed in the surprisingly engaging world of vegan YouTube drama. VidCon is an annual YouTube-centric convention organized by brothers and YouTube royals Hank and John Green. Tanacon is the event that Mongeau organized — and named after herself — last week in California.

Tanacon was inspired by Mongeau’s self-professed dislike of VidCon. In a video you can watch if you have an hour and eighteen minutes to kill, Mongeau explained she would not be attending VidCon this year, citing drama over not being designated a featured creator at the event. And so, Tanacon was born. And, in a way, so Tanacon died. The event was barely six hours into its first day when it was shut down by officials for overcrowding, sending thousand of teens — many who had been waiting hours outside in the sun — into a tizzy. A dehydrated tizzy we can now recount for you to gleefully relive from the relative comfort of wherever you’re presently posted up. (We can only assume it’s not still the parking lot of the Anaheim Marriott Suites.)…

…The fan horde did not take well to the event cancellation. “After the lady said it was canceled, everyone started screaming, complaining, and cussing her out,” 13-year-old Alyssa, who bought a VIP ticket and waited six hours to be turned away empty-handed, said. “Everyone ran to the registration tent and threw the merch … pop sockets, Tanacon bags, stickers, Tanacon condoms, badges. This led to everyone destroying everything.”

Mongeau eventually came outside to calm the crowd. This, reader, will you believe … also did not end well, as evidenced by clips of screaming fans, phones raised above their heads with cameras at the ready, running through the parking lot to spy their queen….

 

(2) AND A BAD TRACK RECORD GETS WORSE. Louisville’s Fandomfest, which unaccountably did not go out of business last year after the loss of more than half its celebrity guests and a last-minute move to an old Macy’s store, (“Louisville’s Fandom Fest Shambles On”), has failed its attempt to relaunch in 2018. Co-promoter Myra Daniels announced on Facebook yesterday they’re “rescheduling” Fandomfest 2018 and plan to divide it into two more affordable events.

Hey Guys!!!

We are rescheduling Fandomfest 2018 this year.

A number of reasons why.

When we picked the date last year it was a different date range then we normally pick. It was the date closest to the previous few years of Fandomfest. The Omni is a great hotel and we wanted to have it there this year.

Unfortunately several things happened. The date we chose made it very difficult to get vendors and bigger named celebs for that date because there were 6 other big conventions on that date.

So many of our normal vendors had already paid and booked other shows for that date. That made it difficult to procure vendors which helps to pay for everything.

Another reason is the pre-sale tickets were at a lower rate then ever. The guests we have chosen to bring in to the event weren’t a big enough pre-ticket purchase draw for the fans.

Putting these shows on costs money. A lot of money. The idea is to have an idea of the excitement for your guest list and the pre-sales are a huge way for us to gauge that in our plan.

We worked with the great people at The Omni to try and find another date there at their beautiful facility but they are completely booked all the way into 2019.

So we are excited to announce that we are working to reschedule and instead of bringing one show in the summer we are going to bring 2 events to better serve you guys. We know we hear all the time how expensive the shows are getting with the autograph prices and the photo op prices as well as admission. We think the time is right to have shows that don’t cost the fans as much money.

All of us love meeting our favorites from our Superhero Movies or favorite TV Shows out there but lets face it, it can get expensive.

Daniels says they’ll “be refunding the few ticket purchases and vendor booths” starting on June 30.

(3) STILL EARTHBOUND. It was an open secret that the launch of James Webb Space Telescope would be delayed again; now it’s just plain open. The schedule now calls for a launch on March 30, 2021. Once launched, the JWST will be inserted into a solar orbit at the Earth-Sun L2 point.

NASA says —

The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. The longer wavelengths enable Webb to look much closer to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.

Quoting The Verge’s article “NASA’s next flagship space telescope is delayed again”:

NASA has again delayed the launch of its next-generation space observatory, known as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the space agency announced today. The telescope now has a new launch date of March 30th, 2021. It’s the second delay to the program’s timeline this year, and the third in the last nine months.

“We’re all disappointed that the culmination of Webb and its launch is taking longer than expected, but we’re creating something new here. We’re dealing with cutting-edge technology to perform an unprecedented mission, and I know that our teams are working hard and will successfully overcome the challenges,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a video statement. “In space we always have to look at the long term, and sometimes the complexities of our missions don’t come together as soon as we wish. But we learn, we move ahead, and ultimately we succeed.”

(4) TAKE NOTE. The Guardian answers the question:  “Who is Segun Akinola? The composer reinventing the Doctor Who theme”.

Segun Akinola has been announced as the sci-fi show’s new composer, and he’s in for a challenge almost as significant as hers: reinventing one of TV’s best-known theme tunes. The British-Nigerian musician’s unveiling continues the trend for bringing in fresh blood all around for the show’s new era. Composer Murray Gold worked on all 10 series of the revived show, winning acclaim for his blockbustery orchestral scores – despite many fans complaining they became invasive and overbearing.

Akinola, an alumnus of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and part of 2017’s Bafta Breakthrough Brit programme, could prove an altogether different prospect for a remodelled show. Could fans look forward to hearing something a little more pared down, modern and minimalist?

…Yet his latest challenge sets the bar high. Composing soundtracks for all 10 episodes of Whittaker’s debut series might provide the lion’s share of his workload – but he is also tasked with providing a ‘fresh take’ on the show’s theme music. That’s one of the most iconic elements of Doctor Who – just like the show itself, it’s always changing while remaining, broadly, the same.

Composed by Ron Grainer, the eerie, warping titles first emerged in 1963 in an arrangement now synonymous with Doctor Who’s renegade spirit….

(5) TRAVEL BAN CONSEQUENCES URGED. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision upholding Trump’s travel ban, several leading sff figures voiced a new resolve to deprive the United States of future Worldcons. Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Twitter thread starts here. Adam Roberts carried on the theme in his Twitter thread, and Paul Cornell ratified it.

https://twitter.com/pnh/status/1011642947878772737

https://twitter.com/Paul_Cornell/status/1011877547985047552

(6) CHRISTOPHER STASHEFF REMEMBERED. The daughter of the late Christopher Stasheff gave an interview about the author to the Champaign, IL News-Gazette.

A daughter of the prolific author who brought literary depth to the science fiction and fantasy genres with books like “The Warlock in Spite of Himself” said he used the people of Champaign as his muse.

“He gained inspiration from the people around him,” said Eleanore Stasheff, whose father, Christopher Stasheff, died June 10 at age 74.

“He always believed home is where the heart is, which is Champaign,” she said. “He found beauty anywhere we were at, but to him, people were more important than nature.”

(7) HEART OBIT. Frank Heart (1929-2018), a U.S. engineer who led the team that built the Interface Message Processor, heart of internet precursor ARPAnet, died on June 24 aged 89. The New York Times recalls his achievements: “Frank Heart, Who Linked Computers Before the Internet, Dies at 89”.

Data networking was so new that Mr. Heart and his team had no choice but to invent technology as they went. For example, the Arpanet sent data over ordinary phone lines. Human ears tolerate low levels of extraneous noise on a phone line, but computers can get tripped up by the smallest hiss or pop, producing transmission errors. Mr. Heart and his team devised a way for the I.M.P.s (pronounced imps) to detect and correct errors as they occurred.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born June 27 – Tobey Maguire, 43. Spider-Man films of course.
  • Born June 27 — J.J. Abrams, 52. Executive Producer of Alias, Lost: Missing Pieces, Star Trek, Lost, Fringe, Star Trek Into Darkness, Almost Human… Well you get the idea.
  • Born June 27 – Samuel George Claflin, 32. Performer, the Hunger Games film series, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Snow White and the Huntsman

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian spotted a Return of the Jedi joke in Brewster Rockit.

(10) KING KONG V GODZILLA. At Galactic Journey, The Young Traveler gives a blow-by-blow account of monstrous showdown: “[June 26, 1963] Double or Nothing (King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962))”.

Though the epic monster fight was the main spectacle of the movie, it also managed to have a plot too. Well, sort of. The movie follows a dying Pharmaceuticals company whose executive is trying to get business by gaining traction on TV. Obviously the best way to get TV viewership is to send two of your employees to a small exotic island in search of giant monsters you can exploit. So that’s just what they do, discovering King Kong in the process. An awesome fight breaks out between King Kong and a giant octopus, for some reason, and after a much too long “exotic” dance sequence from the island’s “natives” King Kong drinks some special juice and falls asleep.

(11) READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP. BBC reports “Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft reaches cosmic ‘diamond'”.

A Japanese spacecraft has arrived at its target – an asteroid shaped like a diamond or, according to some, a spinning top.

Hayabusa 2 has been travelling toward the space rock Ryugu since launching from the Tanegashima spaceport in 2014.

It is on a quest to study the object close-up and deliver rocks and soil from Ryugu to Earth.

It will use explosives to propel a projectile into Ryugu, digging out a fresh sample from beneath the surface.

(12) HISTORY ONLINE. Did you know the BBC once sold a home computer? “BBC releases computer history archive”.

A slice of computing history has been made public, giving people the opportunity to delve into an archive that inspired a generation of coders.

The Computer Literacy Project led to the introduction of the BBC Micro alongside programmes which introduced viewers to the principles of computing.

It included interviews with innovators such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak.

The BBC hopes the 1980s archive will encourage today’s youngsters to become involved in computing.

With the release of the archive, viewers can now search and browse all of the programmes from the project.

They will be able to:

  • watch any of the 267 programmes
  • explore clips by topic or text search
  • run 166 BBC Micro programmes that were used on-screen
  • find out the history of the Computer Literacy Project

(13)  DRAGON CON LOSES POC PARTICIPANT. Gerald L. Coleman, who withdrew as a ConCarolinas guest, has decided Dragon Con isn’t suitable either.

Here’s a little thread I just sent. I still haven’t heard back from Cisca Small after emailing her twice this month about whether #DragonCon intends to invite John Ringo. According to Ringo he’s been invited. If that’s true I’ll be withdrawing my participation as an Attending Professional. I don’t have the luxury of pacifying, appeasing, or normalizing these decisions with my presence. I’m sure a number of authors who aren’t people of color or women will find all kinds of justifications for why it’s ok to attend but still call themselves “allies”. Just know I don’t buy it. I understand though, selling a few copies of your books is more important than letting a Con know that who they invite says everything about who they are.

Coleman also wrote a Twitter thread, which starts here.

https://twitter.com/iconiclast/status/1011741826540277760

(14) MANIFESTUNG. The Daily Dot’s Michelle Jaworski shows that “‘The Last Jedi’ backlash ‘campaign’ demands to be taken seriously “.

More than six months after the theatrical release of The Last Jedi, just about every aspect of the backlash against it has already been argued and debated to death. But that hasn’t stopped old arguments appearing in new formats.

Last week, we saw an almost certainly fake campaign “raise” millions of dollars to remake a film that earned more than $1.3 billion at the box office. This week, we’re seeing a “manifesto” written by “We the fans of Star Wars” go viral several weeks after it was originally posted. The emergence of the post, which didn’t get that much traction when it was first posted, is almost solely so people can mock it.

The creators of the manifesto believe that “those in charge of a Franchise derives its power as a creative force from the consent of the fandom of that Franchise.” The creators take umbrage with the direction that Lucasfilm has gone since being purchased by Disney and the perceived “misguided political agenda” that it’s pursuing with the new films. It includes grievances against The Last Jedi and the newer films as a whole, characterizing the films as desecrating the legacies of characters we’ve known for decades. And they certainly have an issue with people assuming that they’re racist, sexist, or part of the alt-right for disliking a movie.

“To these ends, we pledge our merchandise, our honor, and our wallets,” the manifesto stated in its final line.

These Star Wars fans, you see, demand to be taken seriously.

For the historians among us, this June 3 Twitter thread contains both the manifesto and a flag (complete with explanation of all its symbolism).

(15) A FORK IN THE ROAD. NPR’s Jason Sheehan reviews Laura Anne Gilman’s novel: “‘Red Waters Rising’ Leads Old Friends Into New Trouble”.

In the Devil’s West trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman has given us an imagined history of the United States — one that feels nearly as true as facts, both crazier and more reasoned than our Old West reality. Silver On The Road defined that world. One where the Devil — the actual Devil, smelling warmly of whiskey and tobacco, dressed in a prim cardsharp’s suit — holds dominion over everything in the United States west of the Mississippi, and defends it and its people from the predation and influence of Washington, Spain, the French and all of the East. From a town called Flood, he makes his deals and sends his chosen out into the world — one of them being Isobel, a teenaged girl, raised at the Devil’s knee and then sent forth (along with her mentor, Gabriel) into the Territory as his Left Hand. She is the Devil’s cold eye, final word and, when necessary, his justice.

(16) LUKE CAGE. The Orlando Sentinel interviews “’Luke Cage’ showrunner on its controversial killing”.

Before Cheo Hodari Coker began plotting Season 2 of Netflix‘s “Luke Cage,” he had to address the elephant in the room.

Actually, it was more like a snake in the room. A Cottonmouth to be specific.

Coker, a director, writer and producer who can frequently be found on social media answering both positive and negative questions and comments from viewers of his works, had frequently seen comments online saying that the killing of Season 1 villain Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali) was a huge mistake.

There was a method to Coker’s perceived madness. One reason he gleefully accepted working on “Luke Cage” in the first place was his love of superhero comics. Coker still remembers vividly how he felt the moment he read the 12th issue of “Alpha Flight” (published by Marvel Comics in 1983), when legendary comics scribe and artist John Byrne killed the character Guardian.

“When (Bryne) killed Guardian I was verklempt,” Coker told The Washington Post. “I wanted to bring that kind of thing to Marvel television. I wanted to kind of do what Hitchcock did with ‘Psycho,’ because it was a big deal to kill Janet Leigh. And so, that was the thing. Cottomouth in that structure was always going to die. Even though people liked him a lot.”

(17) NIGHTFLYERS. Syfy Wire was terrified: “Nightflyers: George R.R. Martin goes ‘Psycho’ in new teaser”.

In the latest intense and unnerving teaser for George R.R. Martin’s upcoming sci-fi/horror series, Nightflyers, a young girl seems to recite some sort of incantation while we’re treated (if that’s the right word) to brief flashes of the rest of the cast in tight, dark spaces looking concerned, being set on fire, being dragged across the floor by some unseen force, and running for their lives. It’s all pretty terrifying, to tell the truth.

 

[Thanks to Jim Meadows, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, JJ, IanP, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, Rev. Bob, Nickpheas, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

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119 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/27/18 What Has It Got In Its Retro Packet?”

  2. (5) TRAVEL BAN CONSEQUENCES URGED.

    I agree with this, but I also think that these people are forgetting that there are a significant number of Worldcon members in the U.S. who are afraid to leave in case they will not be allowed back in.

    Bogi Takács @bogiperson Jun 26

    Re the where to hold conventions discussion –

    Reminder that many people cannot cross ANY border safely, in this political climate.

    Hold cons all over the globe. And also invest in telepresence, videoconferencing, etc.

    I said this before and will continue to say it.

     
    It seems reasonable for Worldcon members to continue trying to encourage and assist with international bids as much as possible, while still holding some Worldcons in the U.S.

  3. (17) NIGHTFLYERS.

    Since this series is coming out soon, and 3 of the 6 stories are Hugo finalists/winners, I got this collection from my library and read it this week. And I’m pretty much meh on all of the stories. GRRM’s science fiction is horror fiction, and that’s mostly not my cup of tea. A Song for Lya, which won both Hugo and Nebula Best Novella, is the best of the bunch, in my opinion.

    I’m not sure how they’re going to manage a series based on the titular story. I expect it will have to have a wildly divergent plot from the novella.

  4. 4) That was interesting, listening to all the seasonal themes in sequence — variations on a theme, as it were. I look forward to hearing what the new composer is going to do with it.

    5) I’ll sign on with that too. It’s not right to ask some of our community’s brightest lights to risk their freedom and possibly their lives to attend a convention.

  5. @JJ: I borrowed a copy of the Nightflyers collection from the local library myself last week, and it sounds as though I liked it a bit more than you did. I’ve found myself (a bit surprisingly, as it happens) developing more of a taste for horror over the last handful of years, though, so that might account for it. I do think that the title story and A Song for Lya were the standouts, though none of them blew my mind.

    What I found hilarious, though, was that I happened to get a tie-in MMPB that touted itself as “The basis for the hit TV series.” The hit TV series that hasn’t even aired yet.

  6. William R.: What I found hilarious, though, was that I happened to get a tie-in MMPB that touted itself as “The basis for the hit TV series.” The hit TV series that hasn’t even aired yet.

    That was the same edition I got, and I had a good long laugh about it. 😀

  8. William R. Notes What I found hilarious, though, was that I happened to get a tie-in MMPB that touted itself as “The basis for the hit TV series.” The hit TV series that hasn’t even aired yet.

    Even more odd given that the series is listed I’m several places as being based on the 1980s film, not the later expanded work written off of the source material that may or may not be what you picked up.

  9. @JJ – That’s an important point from Bogi. The travel ban and the general increase of anti-immigration action at the borders of many countries will make travel increasingly difficult for some fans regardless of where the con is held.

  10. (12) Not only did I know the BBC sold computers, I once owned one.

    The machines were made by Acorn, and were Very Good in their day.

  11. Hopefully you Americans can sort your situation out in 2020. 2019 is Dublin and in 2020 NZ is the only bid. So the situation may well be in the process of improving significantly by the time we come to 2021 – which unless a competing bid springs up, is likely to be in the US.

  12. Perhaps there is an alternate Universe into which SS Trump and all who sail in it can be sucked, never to be seen or heard from again. Reading ‘Dark State’ now, so hope springs eternal.

    On a break from Hugo reading. Finished ;New York 2140′ and found it to be OK but flawed.I plan to dive back into the shorter forms next. Ballot firming up nicely.

  13. 5) @JJ Yeah, there is that issue, too. If you follow the tangle of threads, my tweet, which Patrick and Adam both responded to and made that welter of threads, my tweet was a high level symbolic thing…a Worldcon where the World cannot come to the US is not really a Worldcon in the symbolic sense. Both Adam and Patrick went for a nuts and bolts approach. Your point ALSO applies.

  14. 14) the “Agenda of masculine inferiority” point tells me all I need to know about this crew.

  15. As @Niall notes the BBC micro was an Acorn design, and when designing successor systems they decided the then current processors weren’t good enough. In a fit of “how hard can it be” optimism they set out to design their own using the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) model. This became the Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM, architecture. Decadents of which are practically ubiquitous in the mobile arena.

  17. (12) HISTORY ONLINE. Did you know the BBC once sold a home computer?

    Ditto @Niall. I had the BBC and also the BBC Master computer.

    If I remember, the BBC Computer was the computer that the space game Elite came out. Great game. Recently got crowdfunded for a modern upgrade but sponsors let down by the programmers who made it so that it only worked if you were logged on to internet. Doh!
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141210/09281829380/elite-dangerous-deletes-promised-offline-mode-just-before-release-non-committal-kickstarterbeta-refunds.shtml

  18. First computer was an Acorn Atom, had access to one of the first production BBC Micros while working for the BBC because a housemate was in the Studios and Capital Projects Department and they were given some in a “see what you can do with this” manner, went through my own BBC B, BBC Master and Archimedes A440 and landed up getting staff discount on a Risc PC because by that time I was working for Acorn.

    I’ll have a browse through the releases over the weekend and see if there’s anything of mine included!

    Oh, and had a job offer from Frontier (makers of the current Elite) that they had to pull due to a console manufacturer postponing a new machine and cancelling the contracts for the launch games.

  20. Paul Weimer notes aptly 14) the “Agenda of masculine inferiority” point tells me all I need to know about this crew.

    Do they even have the slightest clue that these films are mainstream undertakings that’d fail miserably at the box office if they were the only folks that went to see them? This isn’t like sales of genre books where the usual novel can sell largely with the communities of genre readers and do well.

    Now listening to: Bryan Camp’s City of Lost Fortunes, and reading Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall along with David Peterson’s The Art of Mouse Guard.

  22. (14) I really, really disliked The Last Jedi, but my complaints were mostly that it was a terrible movie rather than a terrible Star Wars movie. And why complain that the Extended Universe is better now? That ship sailed with The Force Awakens.

  23. 14) FWIW, I was a huge Star Wars fan and still am a moderate fan, but even when I was reading the books and comics, buying and playing the RPG, I never felt like it was part of my identity or the sense of ownership/entitlement these people do.

    In short, I just don’t get it.

  25. 14) I loved about two-thirds of The Last Jedi (the Casino Planet bit was sluggish and didn’t fit in with the rest of the plot). The Expanded Universe was just so overwhelming and not that well written, so I kept tabs on it but stayed away from the actual books. As for all those babybird “feed me” wails from those rabid fans, I would tell them: “Entitlement much?”

  27. Feeling doomed.

    There is heavy rain.

    No therapist today because she’s on vacation.

    Hard to argue in favor of a WorldCom in the US right now.

    Sick of being asked to care about the tender feelings of assholes who feel threatened by any female who isn’t properly subordinate.

    Incompetent conrunners are incompetent.

    Staying in going down the ConCarolinas route, with far less excuse. Featuring abusive, right-wing assigned and telling their targets to be nice about it isn’t politically neutral.

    Not in a good place today.

  28. Those people who don’t think there should be any US Worldcons have a duty to organize non-US Worldcon bids. Nobody is going to do it for them. The only way to win a Worldcon is to bid for it.

    There were people in that thread who seemed to think that all it would take is for the Strong Man to order Worldcons out of the USA, and one of them seemed to think that me declaring it would make it happen. This annoys me, because it strikes me that there are people on the ideological left who want things to be just as authoritarian as the US government seems to be trying to do on the right, as long as it is Their Guy calling the shots. As with the Hugo farrago a few years ago, there are people who seem to be calling for Action This Instant By the Boss Man and who are really unhappy that WSFS runs as a direct-democracy Town Meeting. (Although it has some firewalls built in to prevent a “runaway” meeting, and that slows action down in a way that makes the Action This Instant crowd even less happy.)

    I’m Chair of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee, and consequently the elected leader of the corporate entity that holds title of the WSFS service marks in the EU as well. But even I don’t have the authority to unilaterally declare where Worldcons can or cannot be held.

    And the person calling for this year’s Worldcon to be immediately relocated to Vancouver, BC was just being silly, or otherwise has absolutely no idea how Worldcons are run.

  29. 5) I’m okay with this, but crossing the US border has been fraught for many years now, and I cancelled all US travel plans for the foreseeable future the minute Trump was elected. I’m a cis hetero white dude from Canada who has recently arrived in the middle class, and crossing the US border terrifies *me*. I can’t imagine what it’s like for more vulnerable people.

    14) These are bad people and they should feel bad.

    16) I don’t think people were upset just because they liked the character, but because Ali was far and away the best actor on the show. The man’s Oscar is well-deserved. Alfre Woodard is extremely strong on her own, but she and Theo Rossi have less onscreen chemistry than any couple I’ve ever seen.

  30. 16 – It was a shock and would’ve likely worked better if Cottonmouth hadn’t been so charismatic while Diamondback was not. It ended up taking some of the air out of the sails, though on paper Diamondback has the more personal background and was a bigger threat for Luke Cage it just didn’t click as well. Plus his suit at the end looked goofy.

    However Cottonmouth’s death reverberates through season 2 so as a focal point remains important.

  31. 5) I did my own small thread on this.

    Next year’s Worldcon is in Ireland, and 2020 will almost certainly be in New Zealand.

    The next US Bid for a Worldcon is Washington, DC in 2021.

    Fans have until March of 2019 to organize a bid outside the US for 2021. If that doesn’t happen, then the fallback position would be to get enough WSFS members to vote “none of the above” at Site Selection in Dublin.

    Otherwise 2021 will be in DC.

    There’s more time to organize a bid to compete against Chicago in 2022.

    Even without our hateful Muslim ban, live streaming parts of the con would be a good thing. There’s always people who can’t go and it would be a nice value-add for Supporting members.

  32. Kevin Standlee:

    “Those people who don’t think there should be any US Worldcons have a duty to organize non-US Worldcon bids.”

    No, they do not. Their only duty is to vote on non-US Worldcon bids. Just as people voting for a US Worldcon don’t have to take part and organize it.

  33. #5 – Excellent start! But don’t stop there.

    To protest political decisions in the USA there should also be some real teeth in the decision. A better plan would be:
    a] Year 1 – No US Worldcons for at least 10 years!
    b] Year 2 – No US Hugo nominees from the USA in any editorial category!
    c] Year 3 – No US Hugo nominees from the USA in any TV/Film category!
    d] Year 4 – No US Hugo nominees from the USA in any category!
    e] Year 5 – No US Hugo voting allowed from anyone in the USA!

    From “USA” can be easily defined as having US citizenship, green card or work permit!

    After Year 5, the remaining Hugo people can vote off the island citizens of other nations with politics that offend!

  34. (14) Any SWEU fan with functioning brain cells should have deduced, from the moment the Disney acquisition happened, that at least large chunks of the EU would have to be jettisoned for any post-Jedi films to be feasible. There was just far too much material, and no places for films that (a) include the original heroes at their current age and (b) don’t require gigantic heaps of explanation for people who know nothing about the EU.

    For example, the Del Rey “New Jedi Order” storyline kicked off about 25 years post-Yavin and ran for several years – the plan was five, but I think it ran longer, and the timeline after it definitely ran longer. NJO completely changed the face of the EU, by design; one of the first things they did was kill Chewbacca (by literally dropping a moon on him). To make an EU-compatible movie with the original actors would’ve required either adapting those novels or setting the new movies after them. As it happens, there is an EU series which would fit the latter option: Legacy of the Force, which starts about 40 years post-Yavin – perfect for a new trilogy hitting theaters forty years after the original movie, right?

    Legacy of the Force is about Han and Leia’s oldest son deliberately becoming a Sith Lord, taking Luke’s son as his apprentice, and being hunted down by his twin sister. It took nine fairly thick novels to tell that story, and as it features the Main Original Cast, its events would influence any other story set in that same time frame. There’s that huge expository burden I was talking about.

    What the diehard original-EU fans demand was never possible. Further, if they really know the material they have such praise for, they don’t need the above explanation to spell that out for them. They already know they could never have gotten what they demand.

    There is literally no way to give these “fans” what they want. Not even if Disney were to reverse course immediately, cast TFA and TLJ out of the canon along with their tie-in “new EU” material, recanonize the old EU, and hatch a plan to work around the absences of Leia (RIP Fisher), Han (Ford only did TFA on the condition they’d kill him off), and Chewie (squished by moon). That basically leaves Luke, Lando, and the droids to build a movie around, while explaining to the audience that the New Republic has gone fascist under Jacen Solo’s Sith influence, as detailed in these nine books, so please read those and the about two dozen NJO books first…

    Not. Gonna. Happen.

    Ever.

    Not even if Episode 9 flops hard. Too much old-EU material, too tightly woven, which already stars the Main Cast, has already been published, and is still in print for anyone who wants to read it. Going that route would focus on a tiny audience while alienating the people who’ve already spent billions to watch and read the new continuity.

    How can these “hardcore Legends-continuity fans” not know this?

  35. Hampus: I agree that Kevin somewhat overstated it, but he is correct that there does tend to be this assumption at times that WSFS can operate like a dictatorship (and that it would be a good thing for it to do so) which needs to be debunked.

    It is also true we don’t want 29 different competing bids, many from insufficiently experienced people.

    It is ALSO true though that it’s not up to WSFS to come up with an appropriate bid, or unilaterally change a bid.

  36. @1: sounds like another person who had no idea how much work it is to put on a convention — flavored in this case by raw ego(*) rather than just “WIBNI we had a convention!” I wonder whether the conglomerate that now owns an outsize share of the US hotel function space will start vetting more carefully (since conrunners won’t have the option to go elsewhere) or figure that it has so much in reserve that chancing on unknowns is its form of venture-capital investment — possibly with even less downside if the rooms and space wouldn’t have been rented to someone else. Getting shut down for overcrowding is at least not grossly overestimating the market (which is how noobs usually fail) — but ISTM that it takes even more raw stupidity.

    (*) judging by OGH’s summary — I do not have the patience for a 78-minute video and the fact-checking that would be needed to go with it.

    @6: “brought literary depth”? Puh-leeze. I liked Stasheff’s early books (and find the personal details fascinating), but most of his work struck me as just-for-fun — or, when it tried for something more, tending to fall flat on its face. And the later work seemed to be so much grinding-out (cf, e.g., the many sequels to The Dragon and the George) that I gave up on it — not dreadful or bigoted, just very extruded.

    @12: ho-hum, another “majority” heard from. I’d say DNFTT, but ISTM that troll-feeding is a feature of Twitter.

    @Kevin: the relocator may have been thinking of professional cases; e.g., back when I was still a member of the American Chemical Society an early-1980’s annual meeting was relocated (on much less notice) from San Francisco to Las Vegas due to a hotel-worker strike (which ironically was settled before the convention). I suspect Vancouver’s facilities now are better than those used by the infamous Westercon 44 (“Westercon 40 + 10% GST”), but don’t know whether they could support a Worldcon even if Worldcon had a full-time professional staff to move it, enough cash to fund both the Vancouver site and the penalty clauses for an unprovoked breach of contract, and probably several other needs I’m not thinking of quickly.

    Meanwhile, CAMRA and SPBW are probably on their second tub of popcorn as British pubs are running low on fizzy keg beer due to the continuing shortage of CO2; vegetarians might also be being amused.

  37. @Chip: Wasn’t “The Dragon and the George” Gordon Dickson’s series, not Stasheff?

  39. @Lenora Rose: +1. Hampus conveniently ignores years for which there are no US bids, and the fact that a win for “None of the Above” doesn’t cancel the Worldcon; all it does is leave the choice up to whoever shows up for the post-voting business meeting. The constitution also provides for a way to replace a collapsed concom, but AFAICT doesn’t have any provisions for completely skipping a year; in 14 months we may find out whether the business meeting prefers this to a US Worldcon, and if so what it thinks should be done with the advance membership fees. (Yes, “refund them all” is an obvious solution — just not simple, and arguably ultra vires.)

  40. Chip, if we “none of the Above’d” a Worldcon bid I’d hope a lot of people would show up to that Business Meeting with a non-US plan. The only things *required* after all are the Business Meeting, Site Selection, and administering the Hugos. All else is gravy (albeit gravy seeped in many traditions). It would be an odd Worldcon in that instance, anyway.

    Alternatively, perhaps DC could come up with some viable ideas around live streaming content to Supporters.

  41. @ ULTRAGOTHA: Even without our hateful Muslim ban, live streaming parts of the con would be a good thing. There’s always people who can’t go and it would be a nice value-add for Supporting members.

    I’d get behind that if it could be done, even if just for the Hugos and the Masquerade.

  42. @Robert Reynolds: Seems legit.

    By the by, if anyone feels like sharing my Star Wars rant around, a version of it is public on Facebook. I’d actually like to see how some of those “fans” react to it.

  43. @Andrew: I was analogizing, not specifying; Dickson had one story that was fun, interesting, and short — then wrote bigger and bigger books with less and less in them. IMO Stasheff didn’t fall off nearly as quickly (possibly because he didn’t have a background of ~pomposity to trip him up), but he did fade.

    @ULTRAGOTHA: “show[ing] up with a plan” may be easier than the many-year slog public bidding has become — but it still requires getting together a plausible site and concom, which is the first requirement for most bids. (Yes, I know some bids have stood up without facilities or a good-sized committee; I don’t know how many made it to the ballot, let alone won.)

    Meanwhile, @1 was noticed by the BBC

  44. @Chip: Sorry for my mis-reading (I missed the “c.f. e.g”). I can think of other series with the same problem, now that you mention it.

  45. The WSFS Constitution allows for a collapsed concom, but it assumes that somehow, someway, a Worldcon would happen, and that it would administer the Hugos. So the idea that membership would prefer not to have a Worldcon at all, rather than let it happen in the United States under a travel ban, is something that the Constitution doesn’t accommodate very well.

    So some interesting hypotheticals can come out of such a situation:
    1. Can there be a NASFIC in a year when there is no Worldcon? The Constitution says NASFIC happens in years when Worldcon is outside North America — to what extent does “not existing at all” overlap with “not in North America”?
    2. Assume there is no Worldcon, and there is a NASFIC. One of the functions of WSFS is “To choose the recipients of the annual Hugo Awards”. Note key word “annual”. So even without a Worldcon, WSFS still has a mission to pick Hugo winners — can it delegate this job to a NASFIC in lieu of a Worldcon?

    I don’t really envision these happening. If there are bona fide US bids, the only way for them to be “no awarded” is if a Worldcon membership votes so, that con’s business meeting punts its responsibility, and the successive Worldcon business meeting does likewise. I doubt that would ever happen.

    And even if it does, a year without a Worldcon may trigger the dissolution of the WSFS, as alluded to in sect. 1.3. Which would be a very strong reason to make sure that there is always a Worldcon.

    (Nitpicking/flyspecking comment for Kevin: Usually, it is “NASFiC” [lower case “i”] in the Constitution. In 1.8.1(2), the second occurrence has an upper case “I”, as well as in 2.1(2), and in 2.2 first occurrence.)

  47. I can absolutely see why people wouldn’t want to visit the US – it’s a crap shoot with CBP, one agent decides to make you have a bad day and you’re completely stuffed – you’ve no rights (as a non-citizen) at the border if they just decide to deport you. For the USAins, the border people you deal with are the nice ones compared to the non-citizens/green card holders.

    Having said that, it’s up to non-US concoms to bid to provide a non-US option. The current lunacy may wane after Trump’s second term ends.

  48. Bill–for more jollies, a minimum viable Worldcon was a scroll item a while ago. My Google-fu FUBARed and I can’t find it now. It’s a joke bid, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if that might not be a do-able alternative.

  50. No, this was more recent. A joke bid to hold only Site Selection, the Business Meeting, and administer the Hugos. I laughed, but it got a cool reception here.

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