(1) THE LEMONADE IS READY. Rachel Swirsky’s Patreon donors are enjoying the squozen fruits of victory.
I have released "If You Were a Butt, My Butt," which turned out to be a spy-hunting story on the Orient Express!
— Rachel Swirsky (@rachelswirsky) June 21, 2016
One of those donors tells me the story has two Chapter Fives.
(2) AXANAR TEASERS. Space.com ran an exclusive story, “Trailer for ‘Star Trek: Axanar’ Unveiled Amid Lawsuit”, about the filmmaker’s unexpected decision:
A second teaser trailer for a fan-made “Star Trek” movie was released this week, despite an ongoing lawsuit over the film.
The new teaser trailer for “Star Trek: Axanar” was released by the filmmakers yesterday (June 22). Called “Honor Through Victory,” the trailer shows Klingon ships flying through a planetary ring system and features an intense voice-over that sounds like a prebattle pep talk. This is the second of three teaser trailers set to be released this week. The first, titled “Stands United,” also appeared online yesterday. The “Honor Through Victory” teaser trailer was shared exclusively with Space.com.
(3) VINTAGE TV. Echo Ishii is tracking down antique sf shows in “SF Obscure: The wishlist Roundup” for Smart Girls Love Sci-Fi Romance.
Since it’s summer once again, it’s time to I hunt down the really obscure classics or try to sample B/C list shows and see how many episodes I can survive. This time around I decided to make a list of those shows which I have not seen, but added to my wishlist. Most are only on limited DVD runs. Based on cloudy memories jarred by the vast world of YouTube, I tracked down a stray episodes, or a set of clips, or an old commercial to remind me of their existence. Here are a select few.
The post discusses Mercy Point, Birds of Prey, Starhunter, and Space Rangers.
(4) JIM CARREY TURNS TO HORROR. Variety reports “Jim Carrey, Eli Roth Team on Horror Film ‘Aleister Arcane’”.
Jim Carrey will star in and executive produce while Eli Roth directs the long-in-development horror movie “Aleister Arcane” for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.
“Aleister Aracane,” written by Steven Niles, was first published in 2004 by IDW Comics. Jon Croker will adapt for the screen.
Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will produce along with Michael Aguilar.
The story centers on a group of children who befriend a bitter old man ruined and shunned by their parents. After his death, only they have the power to thwart the curse he has laid upon their town.
(5) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 23, 1976 – Logan’s Run (the movie) was released.
- June 23, 1989 — Tim Burton’s noir spin on the well-known story of the DC Comics hero Batman is released in theaters.
- June 23, 2016 – Today is National Pink Flamingo Day.
(6) FIRST PAST THE POST. Rachel Neumeier tells how she surprised herself in “Hugo Voting: at last, the novels”:
Okay, now, listen. I went in knowing, just *knowing* that I was either going to put Ancillary Mercy or Uprooted in the top spot, the other one second. I hadn’t read the other three nominees at the time. I was happy to try The Fifth Season, unhappy about being forced to try Seveneves, and okay if not enthusiastic with trying The Aeronaut’s Windlass.
That’s how I started out.
I have seldom been more surprised in my life as to find myself putting Seveneves in the top spot….
I guess I’d better read it after all. 😉
(7) PUPPY CHOW. Lisa Goldstein continues her reviews of Hugo nominated work with “Short Story: ‘If You Were an Award, My Love’”. About the review she promises: “It’s a bit intemperate.”
“If You Were an Award, My Love” is not so much a story as a group of schoolkids drawing dirty pictures in their textbooks and snickering.
(8) JUSTICE IS NOT BLIND. Joe Sherry continues his series at Nerds of a Feather with “Reading the Hugos: Short Story”, in which No Award does not finish last….
While I am clearly not blind to the controversy surrounding this year’s Hugo Awards (nor is The G, for that matter), I have mostly chosen to cover each category on the relative subjective merits of the nominated works. I understand that this is something that not everyone can or will choose to do, but it is the way that I have elected to engage with the Hugo Awards. While the result of the Hugo Awards short list is not significantly different in regards to the Rabid Puppies straight up dominating most of the categories / finalists with their slate, the difference is that this year they have selected to bulk nominate a group that includes more works that might have otherwise had a reasonable chance of making the ballot and also that meets my subjective definition of “quality”. That slate from the Rabid Puppies also includes a number of works that come across as little more than an extended middle finger to the people who care about the Hugo Awards. Feel free to argue with any or all of my opinions here.
(9) FEELING COLD. Not that Kate Paulk liked any of these Hugo nominees, but in her pass through the Best Semiprozine category she delivered the least condemnation to Sci Phi Journal:
Sci Phi Journal edited by Jason Rennie – Sci Phi was the only finalist with any content that drew me in, and honestly, not all of it. I could have done without the philosophical questions at the end of each fiction piece, although that is the journal’s signature, so I guess it’s required. I’d rather ponder the questions the stories in questions raised without the explicit pointers – although I will say they weren’t as heavy-handed as they could have been, and they did highlight the issues quite well. I’m just fussy, I guess.
(10) AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GRAPHIC NOVEL. Paul Dini signs at Vromans Bookstore in Pasadena on Friday, June 24 at 7:00.
This is a Batman story like no other the harrowing and eloquent autobiographical tale of writer Paul Dini’s courageous struggle to overcome a desperate situation.
The Caped Crusader has been the all-abiding icon of justice and authority for generations. But in this surprising original graphic novel, we see Batman in a new light as the savior who helps a discouraged man recover from a brutal attack that left him unable to face the world. In the 1990s, legendary writer Paul Dini had a flourishing career writing the hugely popular “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Tiny Toon Adventures.” Walking home one evening, he was jumped and viciously beaten within an inch of his life. His recovery process was arduous, hampered by the imagined antics of the villains he was writing for television including the Joker, Harley Quinn and the Penguin. But despite how bleak his circumstances were, or perhaps because of it, Dini also always imagined the Batman at his side, chivvying him along during his darkest moments. A gripping graphic memoir of one writer’s traumatic experience and his deep connection with his creative material, Dark Night: A True Batman Story is an original graphic novel that will resonate profoundly with fans. Art by the incredible and talented Eduardo Risso…
(11) WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER. Jesse Hudson reviews Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria at Speculiction.
If it isn’t obvious, A Stranger in Olondria is one of those novels where the road beneath the feet only reveals itself after the reader has taken the step—what the foot lands so rich and engaging as to compel the next step. The novel a journey of discovery, there are elements of Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle as much as Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan. A coming of age via a very personal quest, Samatar unleashes all her skill as a storyteller in relating Jevick’s tale.
But the novel’s heart is nicely summed up by Amel El-Mohtar: it is about the human “vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day LunarG.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@5: ah yes, the movie that Cinefantastique headlined as “The SF Boom Starts With a Bomb”.
I think Gibraltar is the strongest stalwart. Almost 95% voted remain!
Gibraltar, shortly to become the southernmost tip of Scotland?
Ach aye!
SEVENESEVES (whatever) , seems to have fallen down onto the joke II made a while back. Neal Stephenson now writes while he uses a treadmill. His prose has gotten pedestrian.
No real characters in it for me either.
“If you were a hand, my glove”.
Logan’s Run. Oy.
I’ve got the entire press packet (somewhere), but that doesn’t remove the sting. One of the first films I ever reviewed.
I recall everyone was excited as we had been hearing stuff about “The Star Wars” and it did seem as if Hollywood was on a “sci-fi” kick (if not an SF kick): the year would see Man Who Fell to Earth, a couple of cheapies (Earth’s Core, Futureworld), Missouri Breaks, Embryo, King Kong), but boy did it disappoint.
FutureWorld – meh; Missouri Breaks – meh; At the Earth’s Core, meh, Food of the Gods, meh, King Kong, mmmm, ok; Embryo – meh, Man Who Fell to Earth – good, but too cerebral for general audience (stupid general audience),
Logan’s Run – OMG! Run! Sanitize your brain! the stupid, it hurts!
I do remember wondering if The Star Wars was going to be more of the same – directors playing with tropes they had little to no understanding of, turning all tech into Universal Monsters…
That year in “SF” film is best forgotten (for the most part)
@Lorcan Nagle
Crivens! They’ll have to start making Monkey Haggis…
If you were a Brexit, by Gove.
I saw LOGAN’S RUN a few years ago, and didn’t like it. I am still puzzled by the adulatory references to it. I had read the novel a long time ago, thought it was a story the held onto its concept, but once you stopped reading it, it made no sense beyond its own pages.
But people do love the men who wrote it.
@Robert – the authors behind the story was played up big during promo…dn’t know how happy the were with the result (the check was good, I’m sure).
The crowd I hung with universally reviled the film
The two are liked for other things and not just this pile of Hollywoood hype.
I remember seeing commercials for Mercy Point and wanting to give it a try, but somehow I missed that any of the episodes actually aired. ( The Sector General series is my favorite class SF. Yes, above Asimov, Clarke, etc.)
If You Were a WW1 Flying Ace, Charlie Brown
If You Were an Oscar Meyer, My Wiener
If You Were a Carpenter, My Walrus
If You Were a Particle, My Pixel
Mercy Point just made me think of Mercy Heights, a short-lived 2000AD strip with a very similar premise. It was touted as Babylon 5 but a hospital
Reading, now halfway through Reynolds’ Terminal World, which has more airships than I was expecting.
And carnivorous cyborgs, though that’s more what I’d expect from Al.
Swedish midsummer ongoing. Pickled herring, hedonism and gratuitous nudity. Skål everyone.
Hampus, sounds lovely. Have some pickled herring for me, too, please?
Worst. Haiku. Ever.
Worst. Haiku. Ever.
If you were a haiku, my
Butt, that’s what you’d be.
I forget. Is “pickled herring” a summer kigo?
Prefer my herring in oatmeal, though rollmops are good too.
Lutefisk. It’s pickled in lye. It removed the stains from your teeth, and the teeth too. You colon will be clean as hell.
Tasha Turner asked:
Bad science, flimsy characterization, terrible science, Real Person slash, really amazingly dreadful science. Oh, and the death of most of the human race.
Where have I been the last few days? Rushing to make a big deadline at the day job, and making a list of sf shows coming up in the summer anime season.
You wrote “death to most of the human race” like it was a bad thing.
@Petréa Mitchell
LOL on the trigger warnings. Most of the time I wouldn’t know bad science from good plus I expect SF to be full of bad science so it’s not something I worry about – well depends on the science. Real person slash if by chance I recognized the person would upset me but I tend to miss these unless spelled out or someone points it out to me – not something I approve of though – want to tell me who? Death to the human race is a fairly typical plot in science fiction – is it graphic in how it’s portrayed?
—-
Current reading Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines – I’d misremembered this as middle grade – got to get better at using book descriptions and not covers and memory when picking what to read next. I’m enjoying the humor and adventure but the book includes bullying and a fair amount of violence. About 30% into it.
If Seveneves had ended shortly after White Sky, it would have been my number one pic. He really should have published this as three separate books. He starts rushing the narrative from that point so none of the decisions the characters make from that moment forward make any sense. The last section of the book doesn’t even have characters. He built an interesting world though.
ETA I don’t think that the people who liked it better than me are wrong. I just think that they are more forgiving of bad endings. For me, a great ending saves a mediocre book and a poor ending brings it down. I can’t forgive Stephenson for squandering the great beginning.
New Bujold novella! Penric and the Shaman (Kindle link), the sequel to Penric’s Demon, is out.
Bujold’s blog has links to other vendors.
@Robert Whitaker Sirignano – to be fair, death is preferable than being trapped in Seveneves.
Well, not quite, if you’re allergic to bad science it is likely to provoke a fatal reaction.
Bartimaeus on June 24, 2016 at 11:14 am said:
And once again, she locks out Kobo users.
Where the Filed Things Are
Bartimaeus: I dashed off to buy….
Tasha Turner said:
Neil deGrasse Tyson. Under an alias, but it’ll be pretty obvious who he is.
Not at all. Nor is there even much portrayal of negative emotions associated with it. Most everyone in the world apparently just takes it in stride and politely keeps to their regular routine until the end shows up. (There is a mention of a useless political initiative where, to demonstrate how useless and political it is, the author notes that it at least managed to get some cheap T-shirts made in Bangladesh with its logo. And I’m thinking, with less than two years until the world ends, how the hell are the Bangladeshi sweatshops and the international supply chain still even functioning??)
Much sadness in our part of London, which voted 75% for remain, amid talk of a new country drawn from Dave Hutchison’s Europe novels, ScotLond, with an M25-surrounded enclave linked to its northern half via a sovereign rail line.
Split like the original Pakistan?
@steve davidson: what, no Carrie? 40 years ago psi powers, (whether or not induced by stress) were definitely science fiction. (I don’t see them as much these days.) And I’m surprised you even gave King Kong a “meh”; at the time it was being ripped as unnecessary, with a bad script and bad effects.
Plenty of left-leaning EU-scepticism in the UK. I’ve never been a great fan of the EU myself for various reasons but…that vote was like opening some sort of Lovecraftian portal to appallingness. The nuance of balancing the problematic governance of EU institutions versus the benefits of transnational cooperation was overwhelmed by the gibbering squamousness of beings from non-euclidean angles of eldritch dimensions, as if H.P.L himself had been plugged into the Krell machine from Forbidden Planet*.
My current theory is that somehow the script for standard UK politics was swapped for some sort of lost script by Grant Morrison (hence the Scottish result).
*[the move obviously but maybe somebody check the comic shop just in case]
@ PJ, and Ita: re: The Fifth Season
PJ said: There are signs of things like Omelas.
I adore it: have taught it once (graduate course, marginalized literatures) and will teach next fall in undergrad Afrofuturism class. But my current pithy statement about the book is that it’s like a brilliantly hybridized Omelas (LeGuin), “Harlem” (Hughes, the stanza about “what happens to a dream deferred”), and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
The characters enthrall me (and I care deeply about a number of them); the worldbuilding is incredible, and yes, it is deeply grimly dystopic (and ends on a cliffhanger to end all all cliffhangers.
ETA: And I totally agree with Camestros: Better described as an angry book rather than a sad book..
It is an angry book, but one in which the anger is completely justified (more than justified).
Liverpool and Manchester also.
Brexit has…..inspired the Texas nationalists:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/texas-secessionists-inspired-by-brexit-if-trump-fails-texit-seems-to-be-our-best-remedy/
Not that it takes much to get their secession juices bubbling away……
I definitely think Texas should leave the European Union.
Just in case anyone is confused by this, Seveneves does not contain real person slash in the sense of ‘slash’ normal in the fanfic community, i.e same-gender pairings. (Why ‘slash’ as a noun means this when the slash symbol is used for all pairings is a bit of a mystery; nevertheless that is the standard usage.)
World Weary on June 24, 2016 at 10:15 am said:
I differ with you somewhat on the details of what’s good and what’s bad, but either way the problems are exacerbated by it being a single volume. It’s just jarring.
Sigh. Seveneves is really parts 1, 2, and 5 of what could have been a much better story. Part 2 ends at a nadir that, given the actions of the characters, make it seem highly unlikely they’ll get their shit together enough to survive. That story – the first generation after the crunch – would be fascinating to read, and should have been part 3. Part 4 would be the story of the inter-gens struggle that got them to cold war-ish situation at the start of part 5.
And as for part 5 . . . horrible. Both of the legacy reveals were so implausible as to be impossible. Both times I damned near pitched the book at the wall. Both times Stephenson had members of the group tell us about their past rather than Stephenson showing us. Unfortunately those stories wouldn’t have worked as parts 4A and 4B, because they’ve have been even more unbelievable if done by thinking creatures. So even if you did give us the parts 3 and 4 I suggested, part 5 would still have stunk on ice.
Here’s a hint about the infodumps, Neal: they usually worked in your earlier books because you were dumping science, math, and social data at us. The ones in the last part of Seveneves failed because they were dumping three major plot lines, two of which were so implausible as to constitute deus ex machina. For the future, try to keep it straight: data talks, plot walks.
Aside from that, I have no strong opinion on the book.
@Simon/@Camestros (re which areas voted Remain): I’ve heard a summary that it was city vs countryside; whether this accounts for Wales voting to leave (despite benefiting hugely in cash) is unclear, but I find this a plausible division. In my home state (Massachusetts) we got stuck with an empty-suit Republican in place of Teddy Kennedy, because the … individual … standing on the Democratic ticket didn’t get down and campaign in the cities, resulting in an unusually high fraction of votes coming from the suburbs.
Camestros (re Left Eurosceptics): the BBC wrapup suggested that Remain was not helped by Corbyn sitting on his hands. I find this amusing in a very sick way, like the Sanders supporters saying they’ll sit out rather than vote for Clinton.
@Andrew M: the most common explanation of “slash” that I’ve heard is that it was originally “K/S”, fan fiction in which Kirk and Spock had it off. The meaning gradually broadened; I’ve heard it applied to any fanfic taking someone else’s characters beyond whichever (sexual) base the author did, or even to any fanfic using someone else’s characters.
The rest of us should be so lucky.
Plausible but not true. City? Mainly – although Birmingham voted leave, Manchester, Cardiff, Liverpool, Leeds and of course London voted remain. Countryside? Ignoring Scotland, yes voted leave but not enough to offset the remain vote. The big decider was what you could call the ‘towns’.
So in the North west of England, Liverpool and Manchester voted Remain but industrial (or rather post-industrial) towns like Wigan* and St Helens voted Leave. These are Labour heartland areas and normally in UK political demographics, you might even see that whole corridor between Liverpool and Manchester as being part of the same dynamic. That it wasn’t, shows how unlike most British elections this voting was.
*[I haven’t confirmed the details but I believe Wallace voted leave, Gromit voted stay and Shaun the Sheep voted leave. Britain was split at all levels even in the claymation demographic.]
Scroll me the way to go home…
Better described as an angry book rather than a sad book.
Yes, that’s a good description.
That ending raises the hairs on the back of my neck. That’s serious revenge.
Impala hasn’t been phoning it in. She’s been texting it in. Much less effort, thought, or contact with people.
I normally hate books wot have such darkness as Fifth Season, but instead I loved it. And I didn’t care for Jemisin’s previous work at all.
ScotLond/M25: reminds me of my parents’ tales of driving out of West Berlin, through GDR territory, into West Germany. It’s a country I’d visit.
Also I would vote for a Texit. Oh hell yes. Take Mississippi and Alabama with you. Heck, let’s just go ahead and let the Confederacy leave. But they don’t get to keep the military assets.
@AndrewM: Agreed. It’s RPF (Real Person Fiction), but not slash.
I don’t think Corbyn is a particularly effective leader (although my politics are pretty similar to his) but I think he tried to manage the contradictions as well as he could.
Think about it this way: the variable polls and the close(ish) results aren’t so much an actual sharp divide as it is indicating a bigger majority that is broadly dissatisfied with the EU. Some of those dissatisfied voted Remain and some voted Leave because of the nature of the poll. The Tories had no option to polarise themselves into sharp Leave and Remain camps because the whole stoush was basically an internal party squabble played out on a national stage.
However, Labour really needed to try and find a way of getting through this without tearing itself apart (and it is very good at tearing itself apart) and without alienating disaffected voters in its own heartland. It failed to do that but it is hard to see how it could have managed it.
The right used immigration as a wedge issue – both in terms of the Islamophobic scare campaigns but also in the long-running economic fears of wage depression because of East European workers. In an actual election, Labour could respond to those economic fears with alternative policies (for example raising minimum wages etc, better resources to services etc).
On top of that, any Labour leader would be stuck with having to back the position of the leader of the Conservative Party – in a vote where the impact of said Conservative has led to the cuts in services that the Leave campaign could then blame on immigrants.
Now I feel I need to go and watch Doctor Who: The Zygon Invasion/Inversion again.