(1) WHO NEXT. From The Guardian, “Doctor Who showrunner says there was going to be a black Doctor”.
The starring role in BBC1’s Doctor Who was offered to a black actor but it “didn’t work out” according to the series showrunner, Steven Moffat.
Moffat said it would be “amazing” to have two non-white leads after Pearl Mackie, whose father is from the West Indies, was cast as the Doctor’s companion earlier this year.
He said the producers took a conscious decision to cast a non-white actor as the companion “because we need to do better on that. We just have to”.
Moffat said the show had tried to go one further by casting the first non-white Doctor, but the choice later fell through….
Moffat said Doctor Who had “no excuse” not to feature a diverse cast of black, Asian and minority ethnic actors. “Sometimes the nature of a particular show – historical dramas, for instance – makes diversity more of a challenge, but Doctor Who has absolutely nowhere to hide on this,” he said.
“Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future. That really matters. You have to care profoundly what children’s shows in particular say about where you’re going to be.
“And we’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’
“And, outside of the fiction, it’s about anyone feeling that they can be involved in this industry as an actor, a director, a writer … It’s hugely important, and it’s not good when we fail on that. We must do better.”
(2) ‘MASS EFFECT. Mark-kitteh is excited that “Quatermass will return to television in a new series on BBC America”.
Quatermass is returning to television – over a decade since the character last visited the small-screen.
Created by legendary writer Nigel Kneale, Professor Bernard Quatermass is a genius scientist who battles alien forces.
First appearing in the BBC’s 1953 serial The Quatermass Experiment, the character has gone on to feature in numerous TV and film projects.
Now, BBC America is revisiting the character for a new series written by The League of Gentlemen‘s Jeremy Dyson, reports Variety.
(3) TEA AND JOCULARITY. Rachel Swirsky did an interview with Ann Leckie, or rather a “Silly Interview with Anncillary Leckie, Yes I said That, I’ll Be Here All Night”. Includes photos of Leckie’s bead jewelry.
RS: I’ve been reading your Raadchai stories for eleven years now (Yeah, eleven years. Let that sink in.) and I know the gloves and tea were in them by the time I started reading. Were they part of the initial germ of the Raadch, or if not, how did they evolve?
They weren’t part of the initial germ, but they got into the mix pretty soon after that. And I’m not sure where they came from or why they stuck–it just kind of worked for me somehow.
Which is how a lot of things are when I’m writing. Sometimes I’ll see someone say, like, “Oh, and this detail here, this is obviously Leckie doing this profound intentional thematic thing” and I’m like, no, actually, it was shiny, or else it made the story work the way I wanted it to, but I am not going to speak up and spoil the impression that I was actually doing this very sophisticated thing!
(4) SILLY SYMPHONIES. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra features LACO @ the Movies, an evening of Disney Silly Symphonies on Saturday, June 4 @ 7 pm The Orpheum Theatre.
Experience movie magic! Conducted by six-time Emmy® Award-winning conductor and composer Mark Watters, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performs the score live for an evening of Disney Silly Symphonies. These classic shorts, Walt Disney’s earliest experiments in animation, set timeless fables and fantastical scenes against a backdrop of lively classical music. With LACO providing the accompaniment live in the theatre, it’s an evening that’s sure to exhilarate your senses!
There’s no better setting for this night of classic cartoons than The Orpheum Theatre, one of LA’s most opulent and lovingly restored movie palaces in the historic downtown Broadway District. Bring the whole family and enjoy the show.
projecting on the silver screen a curated selection of landmark animated shorts including the first commercial short produced in Technicolor and five Academy Award winners!
- The Skeleton Dance (1929)
- Flowers and Trees (1932)
- Three Little Pigs (1933)
- The Old Mill (1937)
- The Ugly Duckling (1939)
- The Country Cousin (1936)
- Music Land (1935)
(5) A SPAGHETTI EASTERN. Aaron Pound reports on Balticon 50 in The Tale of the Good, the Bad, and the Shoe-Cop.
The Good: There was a lot that went right at Balticon 50. This was a unique event, as Balticon invited all of its previous guests of honor back to celebrate the fiftieth time this convention had been held. As a result, the lineup of guests was quite impressive for a relatively small regional convention, and a similar event is probably not going to happen outside of a Worldcon for at least a few years….
The Bad: Balticon 50 had a lot of issues. Some were beyond the control of the convention staff. The following problems, however, are pretty much squarely on them.
One glaring problem was that programming was a mess, and apparently so from the beginning of the convention. Balticon provided both a large convention book containing a schedule and a pocket guide that also had a schedule. The first problem was that these schedules were incompatible with one another, each listing events at different times – they diverged by a half an hour, which unsurprisingly served to make it difficult to figure out when an event was supposed to take place. The second problem was that many program participants had schedules that were, as Mur Lafferty described it, “temporally impossible”, with many participants double-booked for two events at one time, or booked with back-to-back events separated by several hotel floors…..
And the Shoe-Cop story? I musn’t lift all of Aaron’s material. Go read the post.
(6) LAW WEST OF THE AMAZON. “Amazon sues sellers for buying fake reviews”: TechCrunch has the story.
As part of its effort to combat fake reviews on its platform, Amazon sued three of its sellers today for using sock puppet accounts to post fake reviews about their products. Amazon has been aggressively pursuing reviewers it does not consider genuine over the last year, often using lawsuits to discourage the buying and selling of reviews, but this is the first time it has sued the sellers themselves.
Today’s suits are against sellers who Amazon claims used fake accounts to leave positive reviews on their own products. The fake reviews spanned from 30 to 45 percent of the sellers’ total reviews. The defendants are Michael Abbara of California, Kurt Bauer of Pennsylvania, and a Chinese company called CCBetter Direct.
(7) BYRON PREISS BACK IN THE NEWS. The late publisher’s clues have yet to be fully deciphered, as Vice explains in “The 35-Year Long Hunt to Find a Fantasy Author’s Hidden Treasure”.
There is a treasure buried somewhere in Milwaukee. Not just in Milwaukee, but in nine other North American locations, including (possibly) New York, San Francisco, and Montreal. And it’s not so much “treasure” as hunks of ceramic encased in Plexiglas. But one man’s trash is another man’s marketing strategy.
The treasures were hidden in 1981 by publisher Byron Preiss, as part of his plan to promote his new book, The Secret. Preiss’s fantasy paperback (which predated the identically titled self-help book by a quarter of a century) included a series of puzzles in the form of cryptic verses with matching images. If solved, they’d lead readers to a real-life ceramic bin, or “casque,” containing a key to a safe-deposit box, which held a gem worth roughly $1,000….
The next puzzle wasn’t solved until 2004, when an attorney named Brian Zinn tracked down a casque in Cleveland from a verse that mentioned Socrates, Pindar, and Apelles (all three names are etched into a pylon at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens). After four hours of digging holes, he found the casque buried next to a wall marking the perimeter of the gardens.
To date, the Cleveland casque is the last known resolved puzzle. “Byron Preiss, according to family and friends, figured all of them would be found upon publication. I don’t think he realized how difficult the poems were,” said James Renner, an author and filmmaker who’s working on a documentary about the book.
Preiss died in a 2005 car crash at age 52, and never disclosed the locations of the remaining casques. His publishing house went bankrupt and was acquired by a rival press. Many people viewed the sale as the last chance to redeem the gems, suggesting now, there may only be empty bins.
But 35 years later, people are still searching….
As for the gems, which were believed to be confiscated in bankruptcy proceeding after Preiss’s death, Preiss’s widow Sandi Mendelson told VICE they’re safely in her possession and will be available to the first people to recover the remaining casques.
“If somebody would find something, yes,” said Mendelson. “I haven’t done anything with them, so they’re still around.”
(8) FAN WRITER. Kate Paulk resumes her study – “Hugo Awards – The Nominee Highlights – Best Fan Writer”. She frankly concludes, “At least one of the nominees probably should be there…”
(9) HEMSTREET’S WAVE. Ray McKenzie reviews The God Wave at Fantasy Literature.
Like The Martian before it, it is the science in The God Wave that makes for such an engrossing and convincing tale. The story feels utterly believable and meticulously researched, whilst not being overbearing; the novel will please hard- and soft-sci-fi fans alike. Hemstreet uses plenty of familiar tropes throughout, and you’ll recognise scenes reminiscent of Alien and Star Trek.
(10) VICTORIAN GAZING DRAGON. Hampus Eckerman said, “Seeing the nice posable dragon in the last pixel scroll reminded me of this dragon illusion.”
Ever seen those illusions where there is a face that seems to turn toward you? I’ve seen it in theme parks and museums like the Exploratorium, and the Disneyland Haunted House thing. But, now you can make your own. All you need is a printer and some scissors!
(11) SEEING REALITY. Kameron Hurley asks “Is Living Worth It?”.
Being that close to death all the time changes the way you think about life. It’s why I feel such an affinity for other people who’ve been through it, or who are going through it. My spouse is a cancer survivor. He had just finished the last of his radiation a few months before we met. We understood life in a way that only people who’ve stared at death really do. You appreciate the little things a lot more. You constantly feel like you’re running on borrowed time.
Most of all, you get how precious life is, and you do your damnedest to hold onto it.
In reading this post from Steven Spohn over at Wendig’s site, I was reminded of this again. I may have all the appearances of being able-bodied, but when people talk about tossing out people for being defective, I can tell you that somewhere on there, no matter how far down, I am on that list. I know that because before I got sick, I put people like me on that list. I believed in “survival of the fittest.” What I didn’t realize is that “fittest” is a lie. The “fittest” don’t survive. There are some truly ridiculous animals out there (pandas??? Narwhales??). Those who survive are the most adapted to their particular niche. That is all. They are not stronger or smarter or cooler or better built or more logical.
(12) THE DARK SIDE. Smash Dragons interviews horror writer Hank Schwaeble.
What is it about horror and dark fiction that appeals to you the most?
The peek behind the curtain. Not necessarily a peek at something real, but a peek at the sort of things that we might wonder about that we don’t understand. Few of us believe there really are goblins in the shadows, but what if there were? That’s the nature of shadows—you don’t really know what’s in there. What we do know, however, is that there is a dark side to life, to human nature. Horrors and atrocities are real, so exploring them in fictional ways allows us to deal with them intellectually and philosophically. I don’t believe it’s just morbid curiosity, either. Our brains are wired to sense things about the world, about our environment. We are driven to explore, to discover, to learn. We enjoy so many creature comforts, so many sources of entertainment, so many colors and sights and recreations, I think many of us are drawn to seek out the opposite as a way of reminding ourselves of how good things can be. It’s like listening to the blues. People don’t play Muddy Waters to be depressed, they listen to him to be reminded of struggles, of adversity, of our common humanity. People like me, I believe, like dark fiction because a part of ourselves like to swim in deep waters, to be reminded that we can be afraid, intrigued, mystified. When we lift ourselves from the pages, the world seems a much brighter place.
(13) SPEND MORE MONEY. Disney and Lucasfilm are getting their prop makers into the retail business.
Kylo Ren’s most prized possession is now an ultimate work of art: https://t.co/XVlhkzzrCXhttps://t.co/dN3Kubg9nR
— Star Wars (@starwars) June 1, 2016
Propshop, in collaboration with Lucasfilm, is now making official prop replicas of its work from The Force Awakens available to collectors in a new line called Star Wars Collectibles: Ultimate Studio Edition. Wave one is a treasure trove of memorable gear from the film: FN-2187 (i.e., Finn) Stormtrooper Helmet (with blood streaks!), Kylo Ren Helmet, Poe Dameron X-wing Helmet, Darth Vader Helmet (Melted), Rey Staff, Chewbacca Bowcaster, Kylo Ren Lightsaber Hilt, and Rey Lightsaber Hilt. Propshop is making them the same exact way it made the original props: 3D prints of the final output made for the film, all hand-painted by the original prop makers.
For example, the melted Darth Vader helmet (a limited edition of 500) goes for $3,750.
(14) IS LONGER BETTER? There will be an R-rated extended edition of Batman v. Superman available for digital purchase on June 28 and on disc July 19 says CinemaBlend.
Although Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was especially intense for a PG-13 movie, the “Ultimate Edition” is including extended or brand new action scenes that are more comfortable nestled in rated-R territory. So if you liked the original version’s fights, get ready for even more bombastic throw-downs. Along with these sequences, this cut is also including 30 minutes worth of scenes cut from the theatrical release, taking the runtime to over three hours. This includes one (or several) featuring Hunger Games star Jena Malone. Several months ago, it was rumored that she was playing Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl/Oracle. However, in this trailer, she’s seen with blonde hair and looks like she’s working at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean she’s still not Barbara. Maybe this version dyed her hair and took a job at the Planet to separate herself from the Bat-Family. Still, this is peculiar.
(15) HOWDY STRANGER. The Space Between Us comes to theaters August 19.
In this interplanetary adventure, a space shuttle embarks on the first mission to colonize Mars, only to discover after takeoff that one of the astronauts is pregnant. Shortly after landing, she dies from complications while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet – never revealing who the father is. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot – an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only met 14 people in his very unconventional upbringing.
While searching for clues about his father, and the home planet he’s never known, Gardner begins an online friendship with a street smart girl in Colorado named Tulsa. When he finally gets a chance to go to Earth, he’s eager to experience all of the wonders he could only read about on Mars – from the most simple to the extraordinary. But once his explorations begin, scientists discover that Gardner’s organs can’t withstand Earth’s atmosphere.
Eager to find his father, Gardner escapes the team of scientists and joins with Tulsa on a race against time to unravel the mysteries of how he came to be, and where he belongs in the universe.
[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Doctor Science.]
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There we go again. Paraphrasing = Aristotle. It is impressive how stupid things you can say.
No, that one was a rebuttal.
Nobody’s been put in charge to dictate what’s cheating and what’s garbage or to police the awards shortlist. My objection was that you fell back on “it’s all relative” only when convenient. We’re clearly not going to reach agreement anytime soon, Hampus, but some of the things you seem to find self-evident look like a slippery slope from here.
And then the mandatory argle bargle.
Aaron thinks that trying to figure out who Ellison and Cherryh were unhappy with by starting with the eight writers and two editors named in the segments means that you are a moron.
This is more of your “paraphrasing”, because that’s not what I said, and not close to what Ellison and Cherryh were saying. This is why you have a reputation for dishonesty. The range of books that Ellison was talking about in his video is, as I said, undefined, as you now say, because you have to “figure out” who they were talking about. He was clearly not talking just about the set of books whose covers “flashed up on the screen” (in part because he clearly wasn’t talking about one of the books that was put on screen), but was talking about some books not referenced. So it is an open-ended list of books.
If you think it isn’t, list all of the books covered by Ellison’s criticism. Every single one. If you can’t, then you’ve been lying with your “paraphrasing”.
As I said, Cherryh and Ellison were criticizing an undefined set of books a few decades ago (that were not books that were nominated for awards). That is completely irrelevant to a discussion concerning a specific set of books in the recent past. Your attempts to conflate two very different conversations is fundamentally dishonest of you.
@Brian Z
I happened to agree with TYP that C.J. Cherryh criticized a tendency in some unnamed novels in the 90’s that her current Foreigner series DOES suffer from…a tendency that increasingly annoyed me the further I read the series, hence my joining the criticism.
I don’t think that TYP pointing out C. J. Cherryh’s contradiction in any way paralells Puppy slating choices to make people’s head explode. Yes, C. J. Cherryh is a Grandmaster. Yes, she has written many landmark masterpieces of science fiction. It doesn’t make her an infallible literary critic, nor does it make TYP a villain or a knucklehead for daring to point out her contradictions. She is great, she contains multitudes, she can stand to have it pointed out by an individual with a different opinion that she’s contradicting herself now and then without diminishing her in any way.
To make myself absolutely crystal clear, I also don’t think that C. J. Cherryh, with her grumpy critique of unnamed novels as historically illiterate and ‘politically correct’ parallels Puppy actions in any way either. She is as free to have her individual opinion and to express it as any other, and to have that opinion be given as much weight as her listening audience cares to give it as a Grandmaster’s. She still might be wrong. One Grandmaster giving one (fallible) opinion about certain novels – that she doesn’t even NAME – is not the same as marshalling a pack to vote a slate instead of their individual preferences, so that they as a minority can fill the ballots with the stated end of making the heads explode of people they dislike.
And if you’re saying that C. J. Cherryh is attacking certain novels by NAME as politically incorrect and historically illiterate, to be therefore anathematized – and therefore a Grandmaster is doing exactly what Puppies are doing, which makes what Puppies are doing Totes Okay!!!...well, basically, you’re saying that Cherryh (offscreen!) told Ellison the names of the novels that she carefully avoided saying onscreen when she criticized them in an apparently off-the-cuff remark. You’re saying she gave them to Ellison – who’s a notoriously cranky and volatile pursuer of fifty year grudges – so that he could set her up for an intra-author feud by naming the names she didn’t give on camera.
If you really think that, you’re either wildly uninformed and naive, or you’re being deliberately disingenuous. Given that you don’t seem markedly ignorant or stupid, I’m going for the latter interpretation.
Dammit, I shouldn’t engage, but I am deeply curious what these supposed books are. However, I do not want to watch Unca Harlan’s Ranty Time to see what covers are shown. Can anyone help me out?
(Stupid tasty bait.)
Oh, just give Brian Z some time and I’m sure he’ll save you the trouble by “paraphrasing” C. J. Cherryh. “Cherryh said novels W and X by authors Y and Z were politically correct and historically illiterate!”
@Dawn
The books whose covered are “flashed onscreen” during Ellison’s video are:
The Ship Who Searched by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey
Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon
Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon
Castle of Deception by Mercedes Lackey and Jospeha Sherman
Wing Commander: Freedom Flight by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon
Fortress of Frost and Fire by Mercedes Lackey and Ru Emerson
When the Bough Breaks by Mercedes Lackey and Holly Lisle
An eighth, Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler, is also put up on screen, but Harlan is pretty clearly not talking about this one as being a bad book – because he specifically goes out of his way to describe Fowler (and Pamela Sargent and Connie Willis) as the ‘exception” to his criticism.
One might also note that he’s only kind of calling these books bad. His primary criticism is that they aren’t better than the stuff that has gone before: His line is “they are the kind of books anyone could have written, male, female, neuter, alien, me”. The thrust of his complaint is that he expected women to bring something new and different when they broke into science fiction writing, and he’s disappointed that many (mostly Mercedes Lackey apparently) women are just writing the same quality of material that had previously been produced by men.
Thank you Aaron!
@jayn, I’ve been on this roller-coaster long enough to doubt anything referenced by Brian Z. without checking the source. I was unwilling to check the source in this case because Harlan Ellison makes me angry. I’ve enjoyed some of his stories, but what a hateful man he is.
@Aaron
So this would be the old canard: a woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be considered as good as one & even then the menz find fault. At least one of the women he thinks is a better writer was sexually harassed by him. What a guy.
He is still on the convention circuit because being banned by one convention and his problematic behavior being general knowledge doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be allowed to continue it elsewhere… I mean be a GoH in 2015 and his right to a place in-person fandom.
@Tasha and @Dawn: The irony is that Ellison doesn’t seem to realize that the alleged mediocrity of the books he is discussing is evidence of greater equality, and something that should be expected as a result of greater equality.
Looking through the award nominees over the years, I noticed that books and stories by women seemed to win a lot when they were nominated, and their winning books and stories are, by and large, regarded as classics now. The implication was pretty clear: To be nominated, a woman had to write a story that was really good, whereas men just had to write a pretty good story. This seems to have been replicated across the book publishing industry: Men could get away with being middle-of-the-pack talent and still get published, while women had to be decidedly superior to receive the same attention.
When women achieve equality, they will be able to publish just as many mediocre books as men can. The fact that the 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of average books published by women is a sign of progress, and Ellison missed that entirely.
It’s very weird to criticize Mercedes Lackey books for quality when she’s been pretty clear over time that a number of books she wrote were mainly to make money to live on, not that she was trying to write the Great American Novel or whatever we are calling it these days. She has a number of author’s notes and stuff on her website that talks frankly about this stuff, and while her books have always had what some might call “politically correct” elements, the obvious demographic she was aiming for in the books whose titles were flashed was the same stuff Puppies would say they enjoy: secretly-hot lady ships in space, fast cars, cool dudes doing magic, hot elves, hot karate-doing witches and the like. She gave people what she had observed professionally that they wanted, and it seemed to have worked for her, more power to her. Not that every book or story was done for that reason, but I’m also cool with doing what you need to make ends meet.
@Aaron
I’m not sure Ellison was/is interested in equality of the sexes. Better things to read maybe but that’s not an equality thing that’s an entertain me thing. @_@
I notice Brian ignored the point that blatant commercial work has been with us always and it’s always been possible to find the quality alongside it. CHerryh’s comment proves nothing about the quality of the day, any more than the latest gripes about disprespectful teenagers prove anything but that teenagers are teenagers.
And I do think there is something about the “Damn, we actually let women in and the quality hasn’t improved” canard which implies that if women are merely equal to men (With a handful of higher quality standouts, just like men) then there’s no point in bothering to let them in. And that is a great deal more significant a thought than anything about “Look, Cherryh griped that Baen was crass checkboxing once, just like the Baen-fans gripe about SJWs now. In other news, old man Harlan is yelling at clouds.”
I’m not sure Ellison was/is interested in equality of the sexes.
He kind of was in the video. He starts off by talking about how the number of women nominated for the Nebula that year was equal to the number of men, and said this was a good development. He talked about how science fiction publishing had traditionally had a handful of women (Le Guin, McCaffrey, Wilhelm, and so on), but only a handful, and that things were getting better for women in the field.
He then veered off into his discussion about how he had expected that women would bring a new and fresh perspective and write great stuff and how he was disappointed that some chose instead to produce books he thought were mediocre (which basically turns out to be “books that are commercial fiction”).
@Lenora:
“I Have No Mouth and I Must Yell at Clouds.” 😉
@Brian Z
As always, you show that your are just a shitposting troll that is here to waste everyone’s time. I find it especially ironic that once a substantive discussion started over something you’d tossed into to stir the pot, you had to derail by posting falsehoods about what was being said. This kind of compulsive behavior may be limited to your online life, but I somehow doubt it. Seek help.
I said nothing of the sort of the paperbacks of the 80’s and 90’s, you damaged fabulist. I mentioned that the initially interesting worldbuilding of an alien psychology seemed to degenerate, as the series continued, into the standard praise for the strong man on horseback (or mechita-back) that characterizes the preferred sci-fi of various weak minds. Such as yours.
@Jayn
You’ve put even more thought into my discomfort and disappointment with parts of the Foreigner series than I had; but I think I like most of your critiques. After a certain point, I was even imagining the atevi holds as samurai-era castles, so I don’t think your the only person was getting into the “for ‘atevi’ substitute ’19th-Century Japan'” mindset. Though considering the series started in the 90s, I’m not entirely surprised that “everything Asian is awesome” flavored the theming at some level. I do miss the first book though, when the atevi were considerably more alien. Even the second book could emphasize that for all her greatness, Sidi-ji could be utterly off the rails alien at times. By three and four, it feels mostly gone.
But you see why when Brian Z accidentally starts a conversation of real worth, it can be best to ignore him from there on out. Theres is quite literally no post he makes that doesn’t have at its heart an attempt to distract the time of other, better, people.
For anyone who has an Attending, Young Adult, Supporting or Military membership for MidAmeriCon II who is having problems obtaining their Hugo Voting PIN, they say you can e-mail [email protected] if the automatic PIN lookup isn’t working for you.
If you don’t have a membership to MidAmeriCon II you won’t be able to vote in the Hugos unless you purchase one.
Wow. I’m starting to feel concerned that some of the commenters here might still be allowed to go to conventions.
For those not behaving like animals:
@jayn,
I saw things a little differently: that Ellison’s complaints were directed at the industry as much as at individual writers. Note that he took pains to emphasize that he was criticizing the work and not the person.
If you think about it from that perspective, five established women writers agreed with him that publishers – and he singled out Baen Books as an egregious offender – were putting out way too much politically correct garbage. Ellison felt appalled at the way money was being squeezed from that next generation of women writers like they were so much commercial product, and at the way, at least as he saw it, they were encouraged to make a quick buck producing trash without getting much support to develop their artistic talents.
Maybe it is harder to wrap our heads around that mentality today, now that any author can run a spell check, slap together a crappy cover in Photoshop, and send it straight to your Kindle. At that time, I think those established writers felt real disappointment that a new generation of men and women were not trying to challenge themselves and produce great work. Although the established women felt reluctant to be critical of the next generation of women, particularly in public, they did still feel the need to say something.
Your discussion of the problems in Cherryh’s series is fascinating and as I indicated I don’t disagree with your conclusion. But it’s tangential to the point those authors were making, unless someone wants to argue that Cherryh’s books are the same kind of junk-food fiction as the books by those teams of Baen writers Ellison called out by name, and I didn’t think that was what you were saying at all.
As for how this relates to the Puppies: if they want to complain that there is too much politically correct garbage today, they could admit that Baen had a hand in it too.
@Lenora Rose,
Ellison’s rants are out of fashion now, maybe it can be hard to see what he wants to say behind all that bluster, and it is certainly true that he felt the need to revisit the topic several times to clarify – see video #16, #18 and #27 – but I found the message to be the exact opposite.
@Brian Z
Go jump in a cold lake. Maybe that will help clear your head.
Brian you delicate cinnamon roll too pure for this world, if you think that it’s somehow noteworthy that some artists turn their noses up at other artists for being successful in making money at their art and try to make it into a “they aren’t doing it for the ~LOOOOVE OF ART~!!” type of resentful snobbery with a side helping of Only I Am A True Artist Who Understands What Makes Art Great, boy do I have an oceanside resort timeshare in Saskatoon that I would like to sell to you.
Sunhawk, if you thought that Cherryh was displaying resentful snobbery, you’re going to love this from one of the women who remained anonymous:
The sheep and the goats is Matthew 25:31-46.
Someone rails against commercial fiction. News at 11.
Brian, this is false equivalency at work. Anyone can complain about the quality or political content of literature without rigging the Hugo awards for their own benefit. There is disagreement and there is dishonest behavior. They are not the same.
Mokoto, you seem to think I’m a puppy? The Incident of the Baen PC Garbage doesn’t do a whole lot to support their case.
Someone rails against commercial fiction. News at 11.
Whoa now, pardner! What kind of Consie talk is that? Ain’t nothing wrong with some commercials in your fiction. Sounds like someone needs to relax and have a Coffiest(tm) and a Starr(tm).
@Brian Z: Mokoto, you seem to think I’m a puppy?
A professional octopus.
Brian are you new? Harlan Ellison is a well-known bigoted jerk, an ~edgelord~ before the term even existed, none of this is new to anyone but you apparently, I guess his jerkiness is enthralling to you as a new and improved model for your own jerkiness. And you sure do sound like a Puppy when you quote that asshole as if there’s nothing wrong with what he’s saying. Troll harder dude, this is so incredibly dull and repetitive.
I know he marched with all those puppy edgelord bigoted jerks in Selma. He was enough of an edgelord to sleep in a borrowed RV while Worldcon GOH because he refused to spend a single penny in any state which had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.
But that wasn’t a quote from Harlan. That was an award-winning woman writer.
Brian, what does all of this have to do with puppies rigging the Hugo awards for their own benefit?
I also know that he grabbed a supposed respected colleague’s breast on stage at an award ceremony as a “joke” or howeverthefuck he tried to handwave it away.
(I was so proud of myself for not making any cracks about HE’s height earlier. Then I realized that most of the jokes I’ve seen came from Isaac Asimov. Do I want to take my social cues from Dr. Gropesalot? No. No I do not.)
Brian, what does all of this have to do with puppies rigging the Hugo awards for their own benefit?
Brian seems to think it is news to people that there have been criticisms of popular fiction in the past.
Sunhawk: The pages in the calendar fall, so it’s understandable many today did not experience either Ellison as a progressive force, or the person who set the model for how writers of his generation did business.
This means something personally to me. When he used his 1978 Worldcon GoHship as a platform to protest Arizona’s nonratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, he changed my views. (I started out thinking the existing laws were adequate to lead to that result.)
And a lesser but easily understood example of his impact on other writers: He refused a nomination for the 1968 Best Fan Writer Hugo, because in his view that wasn’t something a self-respecting pro writer should be competing for. He set that standard by personal example, it’s obviously never been a rule, and people followed it for a long time.
@Aaron: Brian seems to think it is news to people that there have been criticisms of popular fiction in the past.
More to the point, he’s Cherryh-picking.
@Mokoto: “he’s Cherryh-picking”
Well played!
Thanks for the links, Mike. I had forgotten about his involvement in those issues but it’s hard to reconcile those facts with my memories of the more recent stuff such as the groping incident Dawn Incognito mentioned, his support of this “anti-politcally-correct” petition:
http://www.tangentonline.com/news-mainmenu-158/2333-sfwa-president-endorses-bulletin-censorship
as well as incidents like this: http://fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=418
I hope you can understand it’s difficult for me to give him a pass because he at other times has done the right thing, in fact I would generally say I am tougher on those who ARE committed to acting as allies to social justice, he SHOULD know better than to behave like a old man yelling at a cloud about social justice or disrespecting/mistreating women like that. He should get it, not be going out of his way to support the status quo by belittling others because the issues involved don’t personally bother HIM so they shouldn’t bother anyone else.
Being an ally to social justice is not a badge you get once and then get to keep forever. It is an ongoing series of actions, a daily effort. I’m not seeing that effort from Ellison these days, sadly.
Sunhawk on June 7, 2016 at 8:06 am said:
But apparently beloved of some strain of Puppies. When I tried to point out (again) in a different place than here that I’m a former Hugo Award Administrator (three times, once with John Lorentz) who got to watch ballots coming in and who saw no sign of any of the widespread bloc voting of the Evil Tor Cabal that is still an article of faith among some Puppies, one of the people there insisted (more or less) that Harlan Ellison said there was lots of backroom deal making and cabals and so it must be true. When I persisted, I was told that I’m nobody whereas H*A*R*L*A*N E*L*L*I*S*O*N knows much more about the field than I do. I said that Harlan is a multiple-award-winning author with enormous writing talent. His practical experience of convention running, if he has much of it, probably was last refreshed in the 1960s. I have one semi-professional fiction sale (a short story in one of Mike Resnick’s Alternate Worldcons collections. I’m a former Worldcon chair, former Hugo Award Administrator, current Chairman of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee, an active member of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee (most of what you see written at the Hugo Awards web site these days is coming from my keyboard), and so forth. Conclusion: Harlan knows about as much about how Worldcons and the Hugo Awards work these days as I do about writing SF/F professionally for a living. That’s not meant to be a criticism of either of us! As it happens, we both hold one particular thing in common: we were both Guests of Honor at BayCon 1993 — him as Author and me as Fan. I have no personal beef with him.
Harlan has many things about which to legitimately criticize, as do I. But expertise in one area doesn’t translate to other areas, even with in the same general field, in this case SF/F literature.
@ Kevin Standlee – But apparently beloved of some strain of Puppies. When I tried to point out (again) in a different place than here that I’m a former Hugo Award Administrator (three times, once with John Lorentz) who got to watch ballots coming in and who saw no sign of any of the widespread bloc voting of the Evil Tor Cabal that is still an article of faith among some Puppies, one of the people there insisted (more or less) that Harlan Ellison said there was lots of backroom deal making and cabals and so it must be true. When I persisted, I was told that I’m nobody whereas H*A*R*L*A*N E*L*L*I*S*O*N knows much more about the field than I do.
Oh good lord lol Yeah that’s definitely… something lol
Ellison is one of those who was impressively progressive once; but rather than try and continue to progress and adapt to the times, he started to coast on that reputation and use it to deflect criticism of his present actions. I respect what he was and did; it doesn’t mean I have to respect what he is and does now that he has fallen behind.
And aside from the temporal shift of the decades, he is ALSO not the first, or last, person to sincerely fight for women’s rights and sexually harass women both simultaneously.
Each person is legion. Some of them have legions crossing more controversial terrain than others. Ellison’s legions seem to want to do a solo reenactment of all sides of the Battle of Five Armies.
Well said Lenora, much better than what I wrote!
(I blame my listeria preoccupation, apparently last night I drank some now-recalled chocolate milk eep lol apparently it can take up to two months to show symptoms? argh)
one of the people there insisted (more or less) that Harlan Ellison said there was lots of backroom deal making and cabals and so it must be true.
There’s also the fact that, as I recollect, Ellison’s claims concerning deal making and cabals was in reference to the Nebulas, and not the Hugos. Then again, the Pups have difficulty distinguishing between the WSFS and SFWA, so their confusing is only to be expected.
I don’t think anybody gets that kind of free pass. In fact, you’re not obligated to like the guy at all. I simply feel obligated to speak up and provide balance when I see you burying someone under a heap of one-sided rhetoric.
@Sunhawk: re Mercedes Lackey
It’s very weird to criticize Mercedes Lackey books for quality when she’s been pretty clear over time that a number of books she wrote were mainly to make money to live on, not that she was trying to write the Great American Novel or whatever we are calling it these days. She has a number of author’s notes and stuff on her website that talks frankly about this stuff, and while her books have always had what some might call “politically correct” elements, the obvious demographic she was aiming for in the books whose titles were flashed was the same stuff Puppies would say they enjoy: secretly-hot lady ships in space, fast cars, cool dudes doing magic, hot elves, hot karate-doing witches and the like.
I picked up the first book in the Arrows of the Queen trilogy when it was newly published, in 1987, and I experienced it as pretty mind-bendingly DIFFERENT at the time in her focus on the female protagonist, acknowledgement of class issues, and some of the backstory about the founding of Valdemar. I still have a number of feet of Lackey books on my bookcase (I should measure someday!). Certainly Vanyel was one of the first gay protagonists I remember seeing in a fantasy novel (and if nowadays I can see some fairly problematic stereotypes playing out in his narrative arc, still, for that time, it was original), and there were lesbian charcters as well. I’d be a bit surprised if her work did appeal to Sad Puppies, but maybe. I’m not reading most of her current stuff. She wasn’t doing anything original stylistically or narratively speaking (and Ellison back in the New Wave days was all about those sort of innovations), but I found her work compulsively readable (despite the formulas).
From a later comment: Have to say I lOVE this turn of phrase: it’s pure ART! you delicate cinnamon roll too pure for this world. And the point you make in this post is also right on!
@Lenora Rose: re commercialism vs. art
I notice Brian ignored the point that blatant commercial work has been with us always and it’s always been possible to find the quality alongside it.
Theodore Sturgeon’s law about 90% of everything being crap/mediocre (the actual percentages can differ) is I think fairly universally applicable, but arguably, the more that’s being done, the more quality work also occurs (with the caveat that what contemporaries see as quality is not always that which survives into a canon). Writers in Shakespeare’s time sought patrons for support (read all his blatant suck-ups to the nobles, heh); after the patronage system (read: nobility) sort of gave up on that, commercial writers came into being. The idea of artists starving nobly in a garret (have the people who buy into this myth ever tried to write anything after missing three meals) is a pretty modern attitude and would have been disdained by a whole lot of “canonical” authors. I also think there’s additional hostility toward women making money by writing (perhaps because that’s on field where a lot of women have actually done so)—look at all the insults lobbed at romance (which outsells sf by huge leaps and bounds).
I also read a great essay one time (I don’t recall author or title) about a archive in England devoted to collecting all the works by women authors that Jane Austin read and loved and wrote about as inspiration for her work: none of the authors she talked about were known/canonical (in fact, were dismissed as writing trashy popular novels for women), but as the essayist said, if Austin saw something in them of value, it might be worth taking another look at them.
@Aaron: re Ellison.
He then veered off into his discussion about how he had expected that women would bring a new and fresh perspective and write great stuff and how he was disappointed that some chose instead to produce books he thought were mediocre (which basically turns out to be “books that are commercial fiction”).
*sigh* I was a huge fan of Ellison for years (starting about the time I picked up the first _Dangerous Visions_ when I was thirteen or fourteen (for one thing, I found Joanna Russ in one of his anthologies), and lasting until…..well, into my early thirties. As Mike talks about below, Harlan did promote equality for women (and the public debate about his support of the ERA and how he handled being the GOH at the Worldcon in Arizona, was one of the earliest times a social justice issue became a big thing in sf fandom—which I was in at the time). But this idea, that women had to achieve all sorts of things men did not is a major problem, one he clearly never thought through.
@Mike Glyer: re Ellison
Sunhawk: The pages in the calendar fall, so it’s understandable many today did not experience either Ellison as a progressive force, or the person who set the model for how writers of his generation did business.
I remember—even before his boycott, and the attention that got in the sff community, I first found DV when I was thirteen or fourteen, and it was this amazing new way to see the world not only politically but also aesthetically—I have said that Ellison introduced me to the concept of “voice” in a writer’s style—his words flew off the page and grabbed me and didn’t let me go.
I remember in a college poetry class where we were assigned a journal quoting excerpts from some of his stories and writing impassioned lengthy rants about the transcendent quality of his language, and how he showed science fiction could darned well be LITERATURE (being in an English department in the late 1970s meant a lot of people sneering at sf, both faculty and my fellow students—thank goodness for my Shakespeare teacher and mentor whose son loved sff, and was willing to let me babble about it). My poetry prof told me later that my journal was just what he wanted to see (though he didn’t like/read sf)—someone writing about language and style that she loved.
And I know from reading lots of tributes from other writers how important a role he played in helping and mentoring a whole new generation, or two, of writers, growing out of the New Wave.
And since I found Joanna Russ in his anthology (“When it Changed”), that too was a life-changing experience. I considered myself a huge fan for years—although that hasn’t been true for some time now.
Sunhawk is right—Ellison has not maintained the efforts (I know his health has been very bad for a long time although that is not an excuse).
@Sunhawk: It is an ongoing series of actions, a daily effort.
Yep—and even when one is actively engaged with trying to be a good ally it is possible at the same time to totally screw things up.
Mike I understand why you felt my label was too simplistic and unfair/in ignorance of his past efforts. But what heap of one-sided rhetoric do you mean?
Sunhawk: I’m going to leave it at having struck a balance — I don’t want to oversell my point by acting as if you shouldn’t have a negative opinion about some things he’s done that I dislike as well.
@Sunhawk, @Mike: I think one interesting note here is that liking an author (or editor or publisher) for some things and still being critical of them for others is a very unPuppyish position to take. I have loved a lot of Ellison’s work, and think he has insightful and biting commentary on a wide range of issues. I also think he has blind spots and has been dead wrong on others. That’s normal for humans, even very smart humans. I don’t think that many of the Pups quite understand this and think that if they show that authors people like have said “wrong” things, that means they somehow win some imaginary contest when all it really means is that Cherryh, or Ellison, or Heinlein, or whoever was wrong about something.
@Aaron: Yep, and I can agree with Mike AND Sunhawk (and you)!
Complexity and ambiguity is apparently hard.
(And I have to grit my teeth every time I see somebody take ONE quote out of context and wave it around like it proves ANYTHING…..)
@Lenora Rose: And aside from the temporal shift of the decades, he is ALSO not the first, or last, person to sincerely fight for women’s rights and sexually harass women both simultaneously.
*winces* Yeah, and even worse behavior including rape (not Ellison but other men involved in feminist activities).
*mutter mutter* damn you, Jian Ghomeshi…
Kevin Standlee, you don’t really do justice to Ellison’s comments on the Hugos, which I assume were the ones he made in 1996. Have you seen them?
Many people tried to buy or lobby for a Hugo over the years, he said, and failed. He named an obvious case or two, then also said that the Cyberpunks had tried it – I don’t think I know that story.
He took to the airwaves to declare that someone had successfully “bought” (that is, lobbied for) a Nebula someone else had gone on the internet (was it rec.arts.sf?) to beg for votes for a Hugo.
As a result, the awards were going to be a bit less valuable than they once were.
He was spot on. And the only chance to get the rockets their lustre back now is to behave with that kind of integrity – voluntarily standing down from all the internet campaigns.
If it’s too late for that, then it’s probably too late.