(1) READING SERIES CROWDFUNDING. Less than two days to go in the Fantastic Fiction Kickstarter at KGB and Matthew Kressel says they’re still about $1500 shy of what they need to run for six years.
Here are a few of the clever Facebook appeals made by the Kindling Kris Dikeman to encourage people to squeeze out a few more bucks for the series.
- Sick of how things are going? Hoping the singularity hits soon? You can make things better right now by supporting the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Pay tribute to our future robot overlords and receive cool stuff at http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
- Has the state of our world got you wishing the zombie apocalypse would just start already? You can make the world a better place without the rotting undead’s help by supporting the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Plus, you’re going to need stuff to read while you’re cowering in the dark. Check it out: http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
- Considering a move to the Shire to escape the current state of the world? Put down that second breakfast and shuffle your hairy little feet on over to the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series Kickstarter. The Fantastic Fiction reading series helps writers promote their work and creates a community for genre artists. Galadriel sez: do it for me, hafling: http://kck.st/2rq5KFA
(2) DISAPPOINTMENT. Mari Ness sent a series of tweets discussing why she isn’t on Worldcon 75 programming.
There's a reason: the deadline for volunteering on panels was March 30.
As of March 30, I did not have a confirmed accessible room.
— Mari Ness, still masked (@mari_ness) June 12, 2017
(3) WILD CARDS. In “Something Old, Something New…” George R.R. Martin refutes an old complaint, then explains why readers will have no grounds for it in the Wild Cards book coming out tomorrow.
I’ve had some readers complain about my name being featured on the covers of the Wild Cards books because I “didn’t write them.” That’s a bullshit complaint, IMSHO. No, I am not the sole author of the Wild Cards stories, I am only one of… ah, lemme see, I believe it was forty-one writers at last count.
I am, however, the editor of every single one of the twenty-three volumes published to date, and the new ones in the pipeline as well… the guy who recruits all those writers, determines the ‘overplots’ of the triads, solicits proposals, accepts and rejects, and gives extensive notes on rewrites. (And there’s a LOT of rewriting in Wild Cards, to make all the bits fit together so the whole will be more than the sum of its parts). It’s a lot more work than any other sort of anthology, believe me… though I love it, so I don’t complain… too much. I earn those credits, and to suggest that my name is just being ‘slapped on’ the covers while someone else does the work is as ignorant as it is offensive.
(4) BIRD IS THE WORD. At Tor.com, Aidan Moher makes Yoon Ha Lee’s Raven Stratagem sound irresistible.
Unlike its predecessor, Raven Stratagem requires no warming up period. Very little of the narrative in Raven Stratagem is bogged-down by incomprehensible infodumps about “calendrical rot.” In comparison, it feels open and airy. Through Cheris and Jedao, Lee proved his ability to create complex and interesting characters, and this time around he throws the doors open by introducing several new point-of-view characters, all of whom are engaging in their own way. From the crashhawk Brezan, who’s on a mission to take Jedao down, to General Kel Khiruev, who is reluctantly beholden to the undead general after he commandeers her swarm, to Shuos Mikodez, leader of a faction of assassins, each of the major players has their own well-defined and compelling part to play in Raven Stratagem’s overall narrative. They’re all damaged and dangerous, full of regrets, but they are also vulnerable and likeable in a way that allows readers to connect with them on the right emotional level.
(5) FOOLPROOF WISDOM. Timothy the Talking Cat continues to dispense advice to writers in “More Mentoring from Tim” on Camestros Felapton’s site. It’s all one graphic, so we’ll have to do without an excerpt. But I’m sure knowing Timothy’s track record you have already clicked through before reaching the end of this paragraph.
(6) AUSTIN OBIT. UK comics fan Alan Austin died May 9.
Alan Austin, pioneer of UK comics fandom and a long-time friend of 30th Century Comics, passed away yesterday morning after a long struggle with cancer.
Beginning in the 1970’s, Alan published the long-running fanzine Fantasy Unlimited (later Comics Unlimited), which drew together comics enthusiasts from all over the UK, and indeed, all over the world. He also published Whiz Kids, Golden Age Fanzine, and the Marvel Super-Hero Index, as well as being a co-publisher of the very first Comics Price Guide for Great Britain. For many years, he ran the shop Heroes, in Islington, London, and in later years was a regular feature at UK comic marts.
Neil Gaiman purchased his first Spirit comic book from Austin’s shop in 1975.
(7) VERDUGO OBIT. Actress Elena Verdugo died May 30. Her radio, movie and TV career spanned six decades. Although she was best known for her TV role in Marcus Welby, M.D., her genre work included horror movies like The Frozen Ghost (1945). Here’s an excerpt from her New York Times obituary,
… Because she had a Hispanic surname, Hollywood mostly typecast her in horror movies and comedies as Gypsy girls, Indian maidens, Mexican peasants, harem handmaidens and South Sea islanders. “With that name, they don’t call you up to do little American parts,” she was quoted as saying in “Women in Horror Films, 1940s” (1999) by Gregory William Mank. “They think you’re a black-eyed, dark-haired señorita” and I’m blond. So I put on my wig and tried to live up to what they thought ‘Spanish’ to be or ‘Gypsy,’ or ‘native,’ or something.”
She later played opposite Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff in Universal’s “House of Frankenstein” (1944), in which a trio of movie monsters collaborate against their makers’ enemies, and in “The Frozen Ghost” (1945), also opposite Chaney.
(8) TODAY’S DAY
Superman Day
What’s that?! There in the sky? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s the Man of Tomorrow! Superman has gone by many names over the years, but one thing has remained the same. He has always stood for what’s best about humanity, all of our potential for terrible destructive acts, but also our choice to not act on the level of destruction we could wreak. Superman was first created in 1933 by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the writer and artist respectively. His first appearance was in Action Comics #1, and that was the beginning of a long and illustrious career for the Man of Steel. In his unmistakable blue suit with red cape, and the stylized red S on his chest, the figure of Superman has become one of the most recognizable in the world.
Mark Seifert at Bleeding Cool News has more:
In 2013, DC Entertainment declared June 12 as Man of Steel day “in celebration of the summer’s most eagerly anticipated film”. The date seems to have stuck, with a name change to “Superman Day” because I’ve seen a whole lot of #supermanday hashtags in my twitter feed this morning. I know that Metropolis, IL just held their Superman Celebration over the past 4 days€¦
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 12, 1968 — Rosemary’s Baby first seen this day.
- June 12, 1987 — Predator first played to audiences.
- June 12, 2015 — Jurassic World debuted.
(10) PAST TENSE. ComicsBeat tees up an unusual WW2-era critique, “Bennett and Savuage take on Japanese Internment in new BOMBSHELLS UNITED series”.
It was important to Bennett to make her takes on DC’s greatest heroines less inherently perfect and to provide them with the opportunity for improvement and redemption. “I’m very into fallible heroines,” Bennett explained. “I understand why so many inspirational characters are given to girls, whether it’s to make up for the years that their weren’t any or that there were so many damsels in distress, but there’s a degree at which when we only give children– but little girls especially– aspirational heroines, we’re denying them the ability to screw up. To have a complete human experience. Being a child and seeing these role models, I knew that I could never possibly compete or live up, so when I screwed up it was horrible. These characters weren’t afforded the opportunity to fail and come back from it.”
Indeed, the first arc of Bombshells United is all about failure– in particular, America’s failure to protect the rights of up to 120,000 Japanese Americans when the national government imprisoned them in internment camps for the duration of World War II. In Bennett’s exploration of Japanese American internment, she casts Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy, two characters who have carried the Wonder Girl moniker, as second generation Japanese Americans whose friends and family are being held against their will. While Cassie and Donna are not Japanese in the mainstream DC Universe, according to Bennett, these are her universe’s “definitive versions” of the characters.
(11) POSTSCRIPT. Abigail Nussbaum has more to say — “Five (Additional) Comments on Wonder Woman”.
My problem, however, with talking about Wonder Woman as a feminist work is that most of that feminism is external to the film. That is, Wonder Woman is feminist because of what it is, not because of what it does. To be clear, I absolutely agree with the statement that being the first movie about a female superhero in the current, mega-successful iteration of superhero movies (and one of only a small number before that) is a feminist act in its own right. But there’s only so much that you can say about that, and that’s a problem that is exacerbated by Wonder Woman herself. More than almost any other character in pop culture, Diana exists outside of patriarchy. And while it’s powerful to see a woman who brushes aside the assumption that she’s not as good as a man because the very idea that this might be true is completely foreign to her heritage and upbringing, what this also means is that a lot of the central questions of feminism are equally foreign to her. I’m not as down on Wonder Woman as Jill Lepore, writing in The New Yorker, but she’s not wrong when she says that “Gadot’s Wonder Woman doesn’t fight for rights because she transcends that fight; she is unfettered by it and insensible to it, an implausible post-feminist hero.” Diana’s journey over the course of the movie involves learning to see humanity–or, as she puts it, “men”–for what it is, with all its strengths and flaws. But left completely unacknowledged is the degree to which the cruelty of men is often visited upon women. How does Diana’s bemusement at the concept of marriage face up to the discovery that almost all of the people she meets in 1918 would consider it acceptable for a man to beat his wife? How does her decision to engage in heterosexual intercourse change in light of the fact that she is moving through a rape culture? How does her joy at seeing a baby withstand the knowledge that most women in that period have no choice in when or whether to have children, and that many of them die in childbirth?
(12) WONDER WHY. Meanwhile, Stephanie Abraham clearly feels there’s no pop culture victory that can’t be pictured as a defeat with a little effort — “When Will Wonder Woman Be a Fat, Femme Woman of Color?”
Why couldn’t Wonder Woman be a woman of color? When it was announced that Gadot would play Wonder Woman, audiences went wild body shaming her for not having large enough breasts. One can only imagine the white supremacy that would have emerged had the announcement said instead that she would be played by a Black woman. On Paradise Island, there are Black warriors in addition to white ones, which is a good start, but other women of color are missing. Also, while the female warriors are strong and ass-kicking, they all have tall, thin body types and they all could be models on a runway. In fact, in a pivotal battle scene, Wonder Woman struts across the battlefield as if on a catwalk. As a result, their physical strength plays second fiddle to their beauty, upholding the notion that in order to access power women must be beautiful in a traditional way. Especially with the body positivity movement gaining steam, the film could have spotlighted female warriors with fat, thick and short body types. While people have said that warriors can’t be fat, some of our best paid male athletes are, particularly linebackers on the football field, and no one doubts their physical strength.
Another problem is that the story’s overt queerness gets sublimated by heteronormativity. Diana comes from a separatist commune of women who have intentionally chosen to live without men. In one of the first scenes between Diana and Steve, she explains that she read 12 volumes of a series on sex that concluded that while men are required for reproduction, when it comes to female pleasure, they’re unnecessary. While a love story develops between them, a requirement in superhero stories, Diana thankfully doesn’t compromise her integrity for him.
(13) GENRE MOVIE POSTERS. Bill recommends Posteritati —
Hundreds of SF movie posters: https://posteritati.com/genre/sci-fi?page=1
Hundreds more Fantasy movie posters: https://posteritati.com/genre/fantasy?page=1
Note: click “In Stock Only” to “off” to maximize browsing.
(14) BIONIC HANDS. Click on “3D printed bionic hands trial begins in Bristol” to see the video report.
The world’s first clinical trial of 3D printed bionic hands for child amputees starts this week in Bristol.
They are made by a South Gloucestershire company which only launched four years ago.
If the trial is successful the hands will become available on the NHS, bringing life-changing improvements for patients.
(15) PROSPECTIVE ASTRONAUTS. NPR’s story “Meet Your Lucky Stars: NASA Announces A New Class Of Astronaut Candidates” comes with pictures and short interviews.
Jasmin Moghbeli, one of the dozen candidates, spoke with NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro from Houston’s Johnson Space Center, where she’ll undertake the training program starting in August.
Moghbeli, who says she’s wanted to be an astronaut since the sixth grade, talked about what kind of candidate it takes to earn the coveted spot.
“Start looking into science, technology, engineering, math, those kinds of fields,” the German-born, New York native says. But whatever you do, she says, love it.
“There were many other applicants that applied who were extremely qualified for this position that aren’t lucky enough to be sitting up here like I am,” she adds. “So make sure you’re doing what you love. If I did not get the call saying, ‘Hey can you join us here at NASA?’ I still would’ve been extremely happy in the career that I was in.”
The seven men and five women of the class bring an impressive resume to NASA: The astronaut candidates are an athletic crew and include former SpaceX employees, a marine biologist and half of them are military officers.
(16) CAPED CLAPTRAP. Glen Weldon claims “Adam West Saved Batman. And Me.” If only by reaction — the author argues that the show was so silly it revived interest in the One True Dark Knight.
In my book, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, I attempt to unpack how the show, and West’s performance in particular, are the reason anyone’s talking about the character of Batman today.
Batman comics had languished near the bottom of the sales charts — the publisher even made (likely disingenuous) threats to cancel them outright — before West took the hero into the mainstream. The mainstream embraced him, and — after a brief Batmania fad gripped the country in 1966 — swiftly tired of all things Bat. Batman comics sales plummeted again.
Comics creators and fans resented the clownish version of their hero who’d spent time in the cultural spotlight, and reacted against it by engineering a version of the character who was — specifically and intentionally — everything West’s Batman wasn’t: dark, haunted, gothic, brooding. Obsessed.
A new generation of comics readers — who knew a little something about obsession — saw themselves in this new, grim, self-serious Batman. For better or worse, he’s been DC Comics’ top-selling hero ever since.
(17) NOT FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON. Whenever Larry Correia blows his stack at me, once he finally runs out of obscene things to say, which takes awhile, the next thing he does (like today) is tell people I keep linking to his blog to get pingbacks that will lure traffic from his popular site. Which is not only a lie – I link whenever I have an interest in an item – but is absurd on its face. Below are the Alexa rankings for our two sites. And the fact is that although Correia has repeated this claim several times since 2014, at no time then or now was his site ranked above mine, or anywhere close to it.
(Bear in mind that 1 would be the highest ranking, so the site with the most traffic has the lower rank numbers.)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Bill, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
First!
Ticky
Disappointed that “3D Printed Bionic Hands Trial in Bristol” wasn’t a sensational murder inquest.
@Kip W
Thank you Thing.
Thing?
Thing what are you doing?
No, please. Thing! No!
Arrrrghhh *choking sounds*
Oh what the heck…random fifth!
(16) Correia really is a special, delicate, fragile little flower.
@Aaron – Trying to figure out the proper notation for that particular 16 (a “second sixteenth” I believe is the vernacular). Maybe (16)[2]?
I just realized I had two #16s… so I renumbered the last one 17.
(3) Even though I have not read any of Game of Thrones (I’ve bought the books when they were on sale, I’m waiting for the series to be finished), nor have I watched any of the HBO series, I think that most GoT fans are probably thinking “What (the bleep) is GRRM doing editing some stupid series that he started 30 years ago, when he could be finishing GoT!”
Bruce A: I think that most GoT fans are probably thinking “What (the bleep) is GRRM doing editing some stupid series that he started 30 years ago, when he could be finishing GoT!”
A lot of them are, and they harass GRRM about it on Twitter and his blog on a daily basis — and have been doing so for many years now.
Which is why Neil Gaiman finally pointed out, 8 years ago:
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
(4) Oh mannnnn Raven Stratagem downloaded to my Kindle last night, but I’m 50% of the way through Four Roads Cross so I can’t start it just yet 🙁 I am so excited to read it though. Like, I’ve been looking forward to this more than almost any other book this year.
Tossing this out there because I know someone will know the answer:
There used to be a huge bookstore in San Jose, a little north of the airport if I am recalling correctly. It was the largest bookstore I had ever seen with the best selection of science, math, and technical books. I THINK they got bought out by Barnes and Noble maybe …. 20 years ago? But I cannot for the life of me remember the original store name.
Searching google maps isn’t helping, because apparently there isn’t a B&N where I remember this bookstore being.
Also too, a large bookstore near Winchester House that had a YUGE selection of sf&f?
I haven’t been to the Bay Area in 20 years, and may not get back, but …
@JJ: Yep, I read it back then, and I’m still thinking the GoT fans are all a bunch of impatient cry-babies. After all, many SF fans are still waiting for the Last Dangerous Visions, Gerrold’s War Against The Chtorr, and many other series that have been unfinished far longer (and in some cases like Gerrold, have been promising the next volume will be out Real Soon Now for years).
@oneiros: I feel your pain. I got that, plus “Down Among the Sticks and Bones”. I really feel I need to re-read Ninefox Gambit first, too, but I have a whole bunch of Hugo reading left to do. And when am I going to get to The Incrementalists and The Skill of Their Hands?
Bruce A: Yep, I read it back then, and I’m still thinking the GoT fans are all a bunch of impatient cry-babies.
When I think of how, between all the fantastic SFF works coming out on an annual basis, and all the fantastic SFF works from past years which I’m still trying to get caught up on (ha), and how they’re all wasting time with their continual posts on blogs and forums and Twitter complaining that The Winds of Winter still isn’t done, instead of reading as much as they can, I just want to shake them and say:
I have so many books on my TBR list on my Kobo, I know I’ll never finish them all. I still have the desire to see various series completed, even though I know some of the authors died, some of them got stuck, some of them just didn’t sell enough of the last published book for the publisher to commit to the next or final book of the series, and all of the many other reasons why they still aren’t done yet. Sadly, some of those series may have even been finished, but I’ve moved on, and I’ve probably forgotten about them and will never even think to go look them up again.
(17) is LC mad about something in particular?
@Oneiros and David Goldfarb Me three on Raven Stratagem – partway through Cibola Burn and A Daughter of No Nation and feeling like I really need to start on another October Daye. I wish Amazon sent pre-order notification messages a week before so all these things I have virtuously preordered months in advance to support the author don’t then take me completely by surprise when they turn up…
(2) Gaaahhh, that sucks. Mari can never catch a break, and it’s because of dumbass things that are both the law and easily done. I have been seriously unimpressed with Helsinki’s handling of accessibility issues. FFS, it’s an EU member, not some poverty-stricken, war-ridden hellhole that has good reasons for that kind of thing.
(4) SO looking forward to it. I’d put off “Ninefox Gambit” till it made the Hugo list b/c everyone kept talking about how weird and confusing the calendar stuff was, and I didn’t find it so at all. Less confusing and less of a big deal than the pronoun stuff in “Ancillary” was, and a straightforward doddle compared to, say, Chip Delany. It was a space opera, fit for yesterday’s bingo card!
(5) Tim’s summed it up nicely. He really is a student of the field.
(8) Up, up, and away!
(11-12) Oh FFS, take the win and wait for the female warriors of “Black Panther”. One movie can’t erase decades or centuries of oppression.
(16) I can’t remember the music to any of the grimdark versions of Bats. But everyone knows “Na na na na…”
(17) Let’s try an experiment: stop linking to him and then check the numbers! Science! (Or at least math)
@techgrrl: Books Inc.? And no, there hasn’t been a B&N north of the airport ever. Kepler’s has a lot of sciencey stuff but is in Menlo Park. There was a Computer Literacy a bit north of the airport, but they just went away.
Msb: is LC mad about something in particular?
I suspect it’s because of the June 8 Pixel Scroll, when Mike generously gifted Correia with some backlinks to his blog, which refute (#20) Chris Chan’s ridiculous and pathetic attempt to retcon the Puppy campaigns as a noble endeavor to save SF.
But I couldn’t find where Correia was whining about File 770 this time around (though all of his previous whining certainly shows up in a Google search).
Oh, gah, Raven Strategem dropped today? Noooo! I still have to finish the Related Work! And brush up on Series even though I’ve read them all!
@JJ: The two characters in that freeze-frame weren’t just generic Trek dorks, they were based on two specific NYC Trek dorks. They got all het up about this sketch and were threatening to sue SNL/NBC until literally everyone else in NYC-area Trekdom pointed out that that would be publicly admitting they were, in fact, Those Guys (Source: IRL friend from da Bronx at the time).
Maybe all Puppy links should be through the Do Not Link or whatever it’s called? I mean, if they’re gonna whine and cuss at Mike, why should he give them any traffic?
There must have been some sort of inflection point where they went from “pay more attention to us” to “stop paying attention to us”.
(17) But why does Alexa say that 92% of File770’s traffic comes from China? Is that some strange artifact of load balancing or something, or does Mike have lots and lots of Chinese lurkers? And does Correia have sort-of-a-point, in that his site is more popular in the US (which, to him, is probably all that counts?)
@Cam: I’m happy to comply with the latter. Wonder when that point was?
@Johan P: Of course the US is all that matters to him. And, really, only the red states count fully. Cuz despite being an ever-shrinking minority of the population, increasingly dependent upon handouts from blue states, they’re somehow “real ‘Murica”.
But he did say more popular in absolute terms, which is wrong. I’m sure he’ll clarify it to correct… any minute now…
JJ: JDAFB
@lurkertype
Or, as I’m currently calling it, Tenfox Gambit 🙂
I thought it was out on Thursday for some reason and just started something yesterday in the belief that it would fit nicely into the gap. Ooops.
(12) I can no longer find the link but I remember a prose-poem called something like “The Strong Woman Character” that finished with “I have to be all these things because there’s only one of me”.
Re: Martin. Geeze, do people not understand that editors typically put their names on anthologies, whether or not they’ve contributed stories themselves? That’s been standard for forever.
As for Correia, to paraphrase Stand on Zanzibar–geeze, what an imagination he’s got. (Which would be a good thing for a writer, if he, like, applied it to writing instead of to being a dick online.)
@techgrrl1972: Oh god, I know exactly the place you’re talking about. I used to go there pretty regularly. But I’m honestly not able to come up with the name, and I’m finding it very frustrating. So at least your misery now has company. 🙂
I think there was more than one of them, but the one near the airport is the one I went to. And the only local book chains I can think of now are Books Inc. (which is still around, though much reduced) and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books (which I believe is defunct). And I’m fairly certain it wasn’t either of them.
edit: oh, but the one near the Winchester House was Books Inc., I’m pretty sure.
@lurkertype:
I can whistle the Elfman theme from the Burton Batman. But that’s probably because it’s used in the Lego Batman video games to good effect.
But yeah, I think that anyone over a certain age can do “dinner dinner dinner”
Raven Stratagem dropped onto my Kindle this morning… I’ve barely had time to start it, though: by the page I’m on currently, the body count isn’t even in double figures.
Buy Pixels at half price at Filedepository.SF !
When I was young, I discovered Stephen R. Donaldson and blew through the first Thomas Covenant trilogy in a matter of days — maybe a week or so. Then I went to the library and found that he was in the midst of publishing a second trilogy, but it was not yet complete. So I waited at least a year or two until White Gold Wielder was available so that I could read the entire second trilogy straight through.
These days, though, I’ve decided life is too short not to read unfinished series. I’ll be very happy to pick up Winds of Winter whenever it does appear, but it’s not like I lack for other options in the meantime.
(And I think my own personal record for lengthy delay is the 20+ years I waited for Glen Cook to write A Path to the Coldness of Heart, the final volume in his Dread Empire series.)
16) They had to destroy The Batman to save it? That worked out well in Vietnam.
Oddly, the first time I heard about the whole grimdark Batman was in one of the Swords of Cerebus where Dave Sim was talking about the Cockroach. Sim had heard a notable someone’s theory of Batman’s psyche and had adapted it to the Roach. This was years before the Tim Burton Batman. At the time I was mainly reading non-DC/Marvel comics, so it might have been similar to the mainstream Batman of the time, but I only had the Adam West Batman to compare it to.
I read about Larry C. here in FILE770, but have never linked to his site, because I can only take in so much stupid at any one time. I get a lot of that on Facebook. I don’t require any additional input.
5) As someone who has been on a concom for some years, I particularly like Timothy’s point #3: Conventions are a great place to promote your work. Remember that conventions are usually run by volunteers, so make loud demands and treat the staff like they should be grateful you even thought about turning up. Keep that publishing advise coming, Timothy!
(Fortunately, with very few exceptions, the SF professionals I’ve encountered have been very gracious people. The notable exception was the time I got cornered in a Worldcon Green Room by a Big Name Author and harangued at; BNA didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t carry a bag into the Art Show. “Don’t they know who I *am*?!?”…. (The actual Guest of Honor, in contrast, cheerfully surrendered his bag at bag-check at the Art Show and didn’t seem to be bothered by the inconvenience at all.))
All Quiet on the Western Pup
I’m going to start a band called Triggered Puppy. We will play kazoo covers of Wagner operas.
John: and not “dead puppies”?
[popcorn ticky]
The pixels are always greener on the other side of the scroll
[tick]
Alexa.com is pretty flakey, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in the numbers–especially at lower ranks. However, the difference between File770 and MonsterHunterNation is so huge that it probably is real.
One of the best things about reading on a Kindle is that it makes it a lot easier to get back up-to-speed on a series (assuming you have all the earlier volumes on your device). Just press on the name of a person, place, or thing that you think you ought to remember and choose “search in all text.” Presto! It’ll give you links to all the books that name appeared in and then to the places in each book. Often I don’t need more than the dozen words around the first mention of a name for it to trigger my memory, and then I’m good to go.
Unfortunately, all the volumes I have for Game of Thrones were purchased before I got a Kindle, and I think some of them were purchased before there was an Amazon.com.
JJ: Thanks for posting that link to Neil Gaiman’s blog, which I hadn’t seen. Of course Gaiman is right, and fans should stop haranguing Martin and get a life.
Lurkertype-
Not even the Batman: The Animated Series opening? Na na na na na na na na Batman certainly is catchier though.
JJ
As a fan who started reading GoT in 1999 I have been reading as much as I can. But then again I’m not posting about how he should use his time, instead I’ve given up on the GoT books completely. While I agree that the tantrums thrown at him are over the top I also think that having a hugely popular series to the point that fans are begging for the next one might be the best kind of curse to have. I can sympathize with those waiting, especially with the number of shifting books and release dates.
But those same fans have something that most long delayed books don’t, a TV series. Anyone not wanting to wait doesn’t have to.
The Mari Ness situation is disappointing on many levels.
Abigail Nussbaum raises some interesting points.
Stephanie Abraham leaves me scratching my head. On her minor point about Gadot’s breasts, I remember plenty of fan complaints about Gadot being too thin to believe that she could lift a sword and shield, let alone wield them effectively. I am sure there were trolls who complained specifically about breast size, but I am not sorry to have missed those. Aren’t 70’s beauty queens considered fat by today’s standards? They had hips as well as boobs. In those days, plastic surgery disqualified women from competition so they were all a bit rounder of body type than today.
Cassy B: “How dare you question me? Don’t you know who I am?” is a bad way to deal with other people. I found the more talented a writer is, the less likely they are to pull rank. Gene Wolfe is a great writer and a very nice guy.
Martin Wooster: My favorite story along those lines ends with the dissatisfied customer demanding, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Mrs. Moe Howard!”
@Kip W: riiiight. Are you imagining a modern version of “Bianca’s Hands”?
@JJ: transcript or other link? I get ~”not available in your country” on that video clip.
Xtifr: (re LC): nice. I’ve heard (about a relatively harmless loon) “They live in a much more interesting world than we do”, but being compact and a reference wins.
@Joe H: you finished a Covenant trilogy? “Me ‘at’s off to the Duke!”; I gave up halfway through #2 even though I was snowbound. I hear you on incompletions — I’ve got a TBR shelf specifically for sets that haven’t been completely published — but I’ve been reading more starts recently simply because so many have so much good buzz.
@Arkansawyer: *snark*. But there’s a difference between thinking that’s a working strategy and taking the recoil from a mistake.
@lurkertype
(16) I can’t remember the music to any of the grimdark versions of Bats. But everyone knows “Na na na na…”
My wife has the theme to the animated “Batman Brave and the Bold” as a ringtone on her phone.
@Chip — I finished not one but two Covenant trilogies! In my defense, I was in high school at the time, and some of the more objectionable aspects just kind of glided past me. (And when, when the new Covenant books started coming out, I went back to the first two trilogies, I saw a lot more of the warts, but I was also surprised at how much of what was in those books I had internalized; and I still think the second trilogy in particular has some fascinating worldbuilding. Having said which, I still haven’t been able to finish the final Covenant series yet.)