(1) CASUALTY OF INTOLERANCE. Al Davison’s writeup about being harassed on the street in his hometown of Coventry comes recommended by James Bacon with the note: “New Britain — bigots empowered — comic artist and martial arts expert Al Davison racially abused. His view and experience must be read. A decent man doesn’t want to live here anymore and fears for those who are kind to him. It’s not good.”
WHY I DON’T WANT TO LIVE HERE: Sunday night I’m almost home, it’s started raining, I’m rushing because my immune system sucks, I only have to smell rain and I get ill. Two men on the other side of the road shout ‘Fu**in’ islamist cripple! One adds, ‘takin our fu**in’ benefits’, while the other shouts, ‘What happened, didn’t your fu**in’ suicide vest do the job properly?’
They get a bit ahead walking backwards so they can keep looking at me, the older of the two, puts his hand two his mouth and laughs ‘Sorry mate, thought you were a P*ki, Sorry, ‘And what if I was’, I shout’, still looking ahead, and not at them. The other responds with, ‘why you sayin’ sorry, he’s still a fu**in’ scroungin’ cripple.” They start chanting ‘scrounger’, and and literally dance off down the road, like a couple of teenagers, the youngest was in his thirties, the other around fifty. Morons. I have a beard and wear a hat, that makes me an islamist! I know I am more than capable of defending myself, I’ve survived numerous physical attacks, but many aren’t equiped to defend themselves the way I am. ‘WE SHOULDN’T FU**KING HAVE TOO! …
(2) PRIME TIME. The CBC has the story: “Justin Trudeau joins Canadian superheroes for Marvel Comics cover”.
Make way, Liberal cabinet: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have another all-Canadian crew in his corner as he suits up for his latest feature role — comic book character.
Trudeau will grace the variant cover of issue No. 5 of Marvel’s “Civil War II: Choosing Sides,” due out Aug. 31.
Trudeau is depicted smiling, sitting relaxed in the boxing ring sporting a Maple Leaf-emblazoned tank, black shorts and red boxing gloves. Standing behind him are Puck, Sasquatch and Aurora, who are members of Canadian superhero squad Alpha Flight. In the left corner, Iron Man is seen with his arms crossed.
“I didn’t want to do a stuffy cover — just like a suit and tie — put his likeness on the cover and call it a day,” said award-winning Toronto-based cartoonist Ramon Perez.
“I wanted to kind of evoke a little bit of what’s different about him than other people in power right now. You don’t see (U.S. President Barack) Obama strutting around in boxing gear, doing push-ups in commercials or whatnot. Just throwing him in his gear and making him almost like an everyday person was kind of fun.”
The variant cover featuring Trudeau will be an alternative to the main cover in circulation showcasing Aurora, Puck, Sasquatch and Nick Fury.
Trudeau follows in the prime ministerial footsteps of his late father, Pierre, who graced the pages of “Uncanny X-Men” in 1979. [Volume 120]
(3) VICE VERSA SQUAD. Camestros Felapton reviews “Batman versus Superman: Or Is it Vice Versa”.
I finally watched Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice. This was the Extended Cut and at least one review I’ve read suggest that the extra 30 minutes makes the film substantially better. Ah. Hmm. I didn’t see the theatrical version but either that was a huge mess of a film or the extra 30 minutes made the central problem far worse. This was a film that needed editing or some sort of substantial re-jigging. Perhaps what hit the theatres was a failed attempt at that?
Beyond this point there are spoilers aplenty – so don’t read on if you don’t want to discover who the alter-ego of Superman is or what house Batman lives in [HINT: its an anagram of Mayne Wanor].
(4) GAIMAN’S NEXT. “Neil Gaiman Delves Deep Into Norse Myths for New Book” announced the New York Times.
Mr. Gaiman’s forthcoming book “Norse Mythology,” which Norton will publish next February, is an almost novelistic retelling of famous myths about the gods of Asgard. The book will explore the nine Norse worlds, which are populated by elves, fire demons, the Vanir gods, humans, dwarves, giants and the dead. There are ice giants and elves, familiar deities like Thor, Odin (the wise and occasionally vengeful highest god) and Loki (the giant trickster), and a frightening doomsday scenario, Ragnarok, where the gods fight a fire giant with a flaming sword in an apocalyptic, world-ending battle.
Gaiman joked about his posed photo accompanying the article.
I look at the photo & see a really brilliant tree, with a decorative author, so noone knows the tree wrote the book: https://t.co/IuqOKcNyh0
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) June 29, 2016
The tree's prose is usually so wooden, though. Hopefully you got it it to branch out, and it will flower under your tutelage.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) June 29, 2016
(5) THE FIRST. Petréa Mitchell noted in comments that The Atlantic has an article on the adoption of word processors by writers which includes anecdotes about Jerry Pournelle and Isaac Asimov, and some general comments on the effect of word processors on sf writing.
Robinson Meyer: “Who was the first author to write a novel on a word processor?” You cast that question as what drove you to write this book. Is there something close to a definitive answer for it?
Matthew Kirschenbaum: We can’t know with absolute certainty, I don’t think, but there are a couple of different answers.
If we think of a word processor or a computer as something close to what we understand today—essentially a typewriter connected to a TV set—there are a couple of contenders from the mid- to late-1970s. Notably Jerry Pournelle, who was a science fiction author. He is probably the first person to sit and compose at a “typewriter” connected to a “TV screen”—to compose there, to edit, and revise there, and then to send copy to his publisher. That was probably a novella called Spirals.
If we move back a little bit further, there’s an interesting story about a writer named John Hersey, the novelist and journalist. He did the famous book Hiroshima. He was at Yale in the early 1970s, so maybe about five years before Pournelle, and he worked on one of the mainframe systems there. He didn’t compose the draft of the novel he was working on at the keyboard, but he did edit it, and use the computer to typeset camera-ready copy.
So those are two candidates.
And yet neither of them is Kirschenbaum’s choice…
(6) MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE 21ST CENTURY. Tobias Buckell has a post on “How to collaborate on fiction in 2016 using pair programming, Skype, and Google Docs”.
I just finished a new collaboration. It’s a short story of nearly 10,000 words that will be in Bridging Infinity (you can pre-order here), edited by Johnathan Strahan “The latest volume in the Hugo award-winning Infinity Project series, showcasing all-original hard science fiction stories from the leading voices in genre fiction.”
The writer I collaborated with was Karen Lord, who currently lives in Barbados (author of Galaxy Games, Redemption in Indigo, you’re reading her, right?).
(7) NO POWER. Kim Lao argues “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” at Lithub.
I asked her what her secret was, and she said something that would change my professional life as a writer: “Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.”
This small piece of advice struck a deep chord in my fragile creative ego. My vulnerable ego only wants to be loved and accepted, to have my words ring out from a loudspeaker in Times Square while a neon ticker scrolls the text across a skyscraper, but it’s a big old coward….
(8) LOST SERIES AND VANISHED VISUALIZATIONS. Suvudu will make you nostalgic for a TV show you likely have never heard of before: “’Out of the Unknown’: The BBC Sci-Fi Series Americans Should Have Seen”.
The Guardian’s Phelim O’Neill just published a rather nice review of the long gone BBC science-fiction and horror anthology program “Out of the Unknown”. While I’ve never seen it myself, from what O’Neill wrote, it sounds like it was a real doozy. Consisting of four seasons aired on BBC 2 from 1965 to 1971, “Out of the Unknown” adapted literary works by the likes of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and J.G. Ballard.
Out of the 49 episodes filmed, only around 20 or so remain. As “Doctor Who” fans are already aware, it was standard procedure for the BBC to delete old episodes of what was at one time deemed disposable entertainment. Coincidentally, one of the lost episodes of “Out of the Uknown” actually featured Doctor Who’s arch nemeses: The Daleks.
(9) ISHER IN AMERICA. Jeb Kinnison, who thinks File 770 readers will be intrigued by the sf aspects of this post, is honestly not optimistic very many will agree with his political comments — “The Justice is Too Damn High! – Gawker, The High Cost of Litigation, and The Weapons Shops of Isher”.
Gawker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying the bond which would otherwise be necessary to appeal the $140 million judgment against them in the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit. (It’s a good thing I don’t have to explain that sentence to a time traveler from the last century — would take a long time.) There have been plenty of stories and hot takes on it, so I’ll reach back to discuss what the real problem is — the cost of justice is too damn high. ….
Today’s United States resembles the Empire of Isher more than a little — a relatively prosperous population, but with layer upon layer of accreted law, regulation, and bureaucracy, with ideals of justice corrupted in practice so that only the wealthiest can afford government-sanctioned courts…. The impunity with which Gawker operated for years while stepping on the privacy rights of people for profit is just one symptom of the inability to get justice at a reasonable price. The simmering resentments of citizens made unknowing scofflaws while going about their lives and the increasing regulatory overhead to start and run a small business are slowing growth and damaging the careers of young people who have been trained to ask permission before trying anything new….
(10) KELLY OBIT. Peter David took note of the passing of a behind-the-scenes figure: Lorna Kelley, RIP.
The chances are spectacular that you have not heard of Lorna Kelly. For the vast majority of you, there is no reason that you would have. Lorna was an auctioneer who worked for Sotheby’s for a time–one of the first female fine arts auctioneers in the world–and she recently died of a stroke at the age of 70.
The reason that the David family knew her was because every year for over a decade, she was the auctioneer at the Broadway Bears charity auction sponsored by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Every year she would coax and cajole individuals into bidding ridiculous amounts of money for bears that had been lovingly costumed in exact replicas of Broadway character outfits. But that was hardly the extent of her life. She treated AIDS patients in Calcutta working with Mother Teresa. According to the NY Times, “She also traveled to Senegal, where she vaccinated thousands of children. In Cairo, she ministered to impoverished residents of a vast garbage dump; she likewise served the poor in Jordan, Gaza and the Bronx.” To say she led a well-rounded life is to understate it, and we were privileged to have met her and spent time with her.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born June 29, 1911 – Bernard Hermann
- Born June 29, 1920 – Ray Harryhausen
And did they ever work together? I’m glad you asked – Internet Movie Database shows Hermann did the music for Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts, two films for which Harryhausen created the special visual effects.
(12) GUILLERMO DEL TORO. Another film available to fans and collectors.
Criterion's Pan's Labyrinth 10th anniversary edition! And more news to come soon! pic.twitter.com/GWpToRoiqN
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) June 27, 2016
Slashfilm covers the news: “Pan’s Labyrinth Criterion Collection Release Announced”.
The 2006 film is often looked at as the filmmaker’s best work, and understandably so. Most of del Toro’s films have plenty of heart, horror, and beauty, but Pan’s Labyrinth, narratively and dramatically speaking, it is his most satisfying work. Good luck trying not to tear up during Ofelia’s (Ivana Baquero) heartbreaking journey.
(13) STRUGATSKY ADAPTATION. In the film of Roadside Picnic, Matthew Goode takes top billing.
The Good Wife and Downton Abbey alum Matthew Goode is set as the lead in WGN America’s alien saga pilot Roadside Picnic, based on the famous novel by top Soviet/Russian science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
Written by Transcendence scribe Jack Paglen, with Terminator Genisys and Game Of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor attached to direct and Neal Moritz producing, Roadside Picnic explores a near-future world where aliens have come and gone, leaving humankind to explore the wondrous and dangerous mysteries left behind. The story also explores the social ramifications of their visit, as seen through the eyes of Red (Goode), a veteran “stalker” who has made it his mission to illegally venture into the once inhabited zone and scavenge the abandoned remains of the alien culture.
(14) MST3K. Ceridwen Christensen may leave you green with envy: “I Attended the MST3K Reunion Show, and It Was Everything I Wanted It to Be” (B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.)
Last night at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, I had the absolute pleasure to experience the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunion show, hosted by Rifftrax, purveyors of downloadable movie-mocking commentary tracks, a company founded by several alums of the show. It also featured members of Cinematic Titanic, likewise the brainchild of ex-MST3K cast members. Last night, they got the band back together, uniting writers and actors from several eras of the show, both past and future. It was a celebration of the fact that Joel Hodgson, the original creator, recently wrapped the most successful film and video Kickstarter of all time: a successful bid to revive the show after more than 16 years off the air; squee. Hodgson riffed on a short with the new lead, Jonah Ray. I think I actually hurt my throat laughing….
(15) DAVID D. LEVINE COMING TO LA. Shades & Shadows 17 will be at Bearded Lady’s Mystic Museum in Burbank, CA on July 16. Doors at 7:30 p.m. Readings begin at 8:00 p.m. $10.
It’s summer. Everything is on fire, melting, or exploding. Everybody is one power outage away from convincing themselves we’ve entered the world of Mad Max.
Which, hey, isn’t far off from what we’re offering. Leave reality behind for a while. Come see what we have on tap as we bring in our mix of award winning authors and emerging voices in the literary scene! It’s a genre experience like no other!
Featuring: PAUL TREMBLAY, STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, VESTA VAINGLORIA, DAVID D. LEVINE, GLEN HIRSHBERG, +1 TBA!
(16) HELP FRAN EVANS. Karen Willson alerted me that contributions are requested to the Fran Evans Assistance Fund (on GoFundMe) to help a longtime LASFSian.
This fundraiser is for a friend of mine, Fran Evans. Fran just had brain surgery and can’t work.
She says that “the money would be used to “pay my bills/rent for the next couple of months while I recovery from having holes drilled in my head. Whatever moneys I normally get go to my rent, this would help pay the difference and other bills. Not many, I’m pretty frugal. I have no credit cards. If I can’t pay by check or debit – it doesn’t happen. Water, for the moment, is free.
“I don’t smoke or drink or go shopping. My idea of a big splurge is a used paperback on Amazon. I just want couple of months to heal without any worries about money. The doctors said about two months before my balance begins to come back online. I seem to spend a lot of time resting or sleeping. Gee, wonder why.
“I’d like to get $2,000. to $2,500. But whatever I can get would be nice.”
Fran has worked many years in the film industry and the Bob Burns Halloween show. Folks at conventions will remember her for her backstage help at many events.
Your assistance will mean a lot to Fran. Thank you for thinking about it!
(17) PROFESSIONAL PREFERENCES. Sarah A. Hoyt advocates for writing in “First Person, Singular”.
1- The main reason I like first person singular is that for a moment it tricks you into that space behind the eyes of another person, relieving the loneliness of that narrative voice that can only ever describe your own life.
This is a universal and enduring quality. I’ve had teachers tell me — and to an extent they’re right — that first person is “less believable” because you KNOW you haven’t done those things.
To which I counter that WELL done, with the right balance of external activity and internal dialogue, with just enough of a “touch of nature makes the whole world kin” i.e. of physical sensation that the readers, too, have experienced, it can make you feel it is happening/happened to you.
(18) TIME IN A BOTTLE. At Examined Worlds, Ethan Mills discusses the philosophical questions within the classic sf novel: “At War with Time: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman”.
In addition to the emotional scars of returning soldiers, the time dilation speaks to the feeling of aging while the world moves on around you. This is something I feel acutely as an aging college professor constantly encountering fresh crops of young whipper-snappers with their new fangled cultural references and ways of being! The time dilation reminds us that we are all at war with time, which is of course relative to the observer’s position. It’s also by far the most interesting aspect of the book and allows Haldeman to write the history of the next 1,000 years.
Suffice to say there are some ruminations on this war and war in general. Why are they fighting? Why can’t they learn more about the alien Taurans? How is the war the cornerstone of the economy? Does the war make it possible for the government to control most aspects of society?
The philosophical questions are more implied than pedantically presented. You don’t get anything quite like the classroom scenes of Starship Troopers. I honestly would have liked a little more explicit philosophy to chew on.
(19) YOUTH REACT. James Davis Nicoll tells me his second post on Young People Read Old SF goes live 9:00 a.m. Thursday.
(20) HUGO CONTENDER. Lisa Goldstein reviews “Short Story: ‘Space Raptor Butt Invasion’” for inferior4+1. The last line is the most surprising part of her post:
I have no idea why this story was on the Rabid Puppies’ slate.
I believe a lot of readers here could explain it.
(21) SUCCESSFUL COUP IN BRITAIN. The Evening Harold has scooped the mainstream media with its report “Lord Vetinari takes control of the UK” (via Ansible Links.):
The UK is under new leadership this morning following a coup by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Havelock Vetinari…..
[Thanks to Karen Willson, Petréa Mitchell, John King Tarpinian, Taral Wayne, and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bruce Baugh.]
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The first story I read that was completely in the second person was in a paperback, probably from the late 50s or early 60s. It may have been a “Boris Karloff’s Tales of the Frightened” collection. The narrator is telling the reader of incidents that the reader has forgotten. The title was something along the lines of “House of Blue Leaves,” but I may be tainting my recollection of it with a play of that name. (I look back on this with some annoyance at myself: a director wanted me to play the lead, and I just made excuses. What? Was I thinking?)
[added] One thing that seems to confuse the second person issue is that there is the word “you,” which means pretty much “the person I am talking to,” and then there is “you” (or maybe “ya”), the first-person you, where you say “you” when you mean yourself. You have to be careful about that; it’ll get you.
Jeb Kinnison started out another piece on SP3 like this
I’m not surprised. His analysis of the legal system is somewhat less than impressive in this piece, and his praise for The Weapon Shops of Isher overlooks some rather disturbing implications of the story, and solve all of the downsides of widespread firearm ownership with magical technology.
People have been complaining about the cost of litigation ever since litigation was invented. He says repeatedly that “only the wealthiest” have access to justice, but the case he chooses to highlight this is one that was full of rather complex Constitutional issues. This isn’t typical in most civil litigation.
He also never bothers to define who he means by “only the wealthiest”, since he discounts the possibility that Hogan is wealthy, but then talks about cases in which (for example) landlords are bringing actions against tenants. Most landlords aren’t poor, but most landlords also have less wealth then Hogan. He wanders about talking about arbitration clauses and class action suits, but he never actually deals with the day-to-day of civil litigation, which involves thousands of people every day filing mundane suits to resolve mundane disputes over mundane issues. He’d rather talk about gun regulations, which have nothing to do with the cost of civil litigation.
re: Beale and SRBI. I do think the good denizens of this blog are putting much more effort into determining VD’s motives for nominating SRBI than he himself did. I suspect his deliberation didn’t go much beyond “hur hur, look at the title, hur hur” and then putting it on the slate. Actually thinking that he read any of it is stretching credibility way to far.
Where VD is concerned, never attribute to genius anything that can be better explained by spitefull childish petulance.
@James David Nicoll
excellent job! Your readers are quite astute and, while I wish they were able to LOVE that story the way I do (and wish I had a device that could make it so), they’re being honest, forthright and – happy to say – liking what they’re reading.
There was some discussion of various aspects of “life in the 1930s” – I wrote quite extensively about AMO, addressing many of those issues, an thought your readers (and others here) might appreciate those pieces, as they directly address some of the points they’ve raised (and might help explain some of the questions asked).
part 1
part 2
part 3
The first 3 Barsoom books are first person. I read tham aged about 10, and they were my first introduction to an unreliable narrator.
John Carter is always talking about how he’s not bragging, it is just a simple, proven fact that he is the best swordsman on 2 worlds, but even at 10 I could tell he was a big muscly liar, and was totally bragging.
The word processing story is very interesting, but it contains a remark which would be slanderous, were its subject living:
Len Deighton is to Tom Clancy as Kaleidoscope Century is to A Princess of the Aerie, or as The End of the Affair is to Brighton Rock, or as Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell are to Noel Redding and Buddy Miles, or…well, you get the idea.
@John A. Arkensawyer
Beg pardon, but Billy Cox played with Buddy Miles and Redding with Mitchell, right?
[third godstalk from the sun!]
@Rob Thornton: The only combination that never cued up was Buddy Miles and Noel Redding. The original Experience rhythm section was Redding and Mitchell. The Band of Gypsies had Cox and Miles. But the last and best version, which had many names, was Cox and Mitchell. They were all good bands, but the last was the best.
It might’ve been a good place to deploy an ‘and/or’, but I didn’t.
P.S. There is a recently release I haven’t yet heard, but must, of Miles and Betty Davis jamming, which includes the Cox/Mitchell rhythm section.
Re: The young reading the old. The young people in Nicholl’s sample are clearly bright and responsive, but those responses have a lot in common with those of my wife’s (university) students as they navigate, say, All Quiet on the Western Front (to say nothing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or “The Dead”). It’s not just SF with which they are unfamiliar, but much literature and history that precedes, say, their parents’ youth. (And I recall, back in the late 1960s, some of my own students calling the WW2 period “the olden days.”)
@Russell Letson: I’ve noticed that also (but will forgive them because they’ve actually gone and read somethings that are really old…)
What you mention though does make me wonder: why does it seem that they are (incapable, unmotivated, uninterested) in looking up the things they are unfamiliar with? They’ve got research tools available to them the likes of which the world has never seen before, yet they seem not to utilize them. Forest for the trees?
We’ve run into this with the whole puppy thing as well (absolutely NOT equating James’ readers with pups): many, many, many claims, by self-confessed SF readers to have “never heard of the Hugo Awards” (before the whole kerfuffle), and yet, anyone engaged with SF on the web would have a great deal of difficulty NOT brushing across the Hugo. Many, many, many claims about wanting SF to get back to what it used to be, when I simple survey of readily available materials would reveal the ancient past was nothing like what they claim to remember.
Any number of internet trolls who make fools of themselves by making statements that would be easily negated had they done 1 simple search on google.
One always wants to try to avoid the Socrates factor (“kids these days” quote from 2,000 years ago), but sometimes folks complaining about the same thing can reveal something going on: I’d characterize it as a lack of interest and respect for the learning of history – almost as if nothing that took place before 2001 is worth considering because it is so unrelatable to today. (Which may be true…), but I’m only aware of TWO tools that allow us to get a handle on what may happen in the future – one is science fiction and the other is history.
8) One of the adaptations was “The Midas Plague” by Pohl. Exceptionally good. The adaptation of THE NAKED SUN was also done. You get to see some pictures of it, rather than any clips.
I didn’t get a blue ray of it. It being TV, you’re not going to have much improvement of the picture quality. I have an all regional player. And if you look at DVD player reviews on Amazon all players can be turned into all regional players with a programmable code.
A Merlin game – if you were born in the same year (1964 for me) but aged backwards through time instead of forward, what new book would you be reading?
I’d be in 1913, and picking up The Return of Tarzan (in magazine installments)
My thoughts on the short story and novelette finalists.
I was born in 1971, I am 44. So in 1927, I probably would be picking up The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by Lovecraft.
It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/ai-bests-air-force-combat-tactics-experts-in-simulated-dogfights/
Let’s see … 1919, so probably Dunsany’s Dreamer’s Tales, Merritt’s Moon Pool, Cabell’s Jurgen or any of a number of Burroughs Tarzan or Barsoom reprints. I could live with that.
(14) Her name is Ceridwen.
Oh, hell. I’ve already read Three Sisters.
1897. I’d have bogged down in the third act of Dracula and put it aside temporarily, before being chagrined to find that I’d waited too long and it had no longer been published.
My final thought as to why “SRBI” was included in the Rabid Puppy slate: they thought it would be funny to hear the word “butt” from the Hugo stage.
Childish doesn’t begin to cover it.
@John A. Arkensawyer
Yep, I heard about the Betty Davis Columbia sessions coming out on Light In the Attic. Sound like it’s going to be a real real hot recording.
BTW, Hendrix was a big SF reader. There is a picture out there of him reading a Penguin SF collection. Also, I have heard that Phillip Jose Farmer’s Night of Light had something to do with Purple Haze.
@CeeV
Recipes are probably the most significant genre where second-person narration works. In general, I think it’s a really bad idea to play games with pronouns because it pulls the reader out of the story over and over.
For example, I thought Fifth Season was great despite the second-person sections. Ditto Ancillary Justice using “she” for everyone, or any number of stories that try to use third-gender pronouns. A story almost always suffers when the prose attracts attention to itself.
The only real problem I can see with first person is that it limits the story to a single point of view. It’s certainly not unnatural or distracting. In fact, plenty of stories use first-person for some scenes and limited third-person for other scenes, so it’s not even that limiting.
I thought the ‘she’ in AJ worked well precisely because it did not draw attention to itself, as either ‘they’ (of named individuals) or a constructed pronoun would have done; we know this is a society that treats gender differently from ours, but we are not being constantly reminded of it in a way which would distract from other aspects of the story.
I also thought the ‘you’ in T5S was fine, once it turned out that gurer jnf na va-fgbel aneengbe, jub jnf npghnyyl nqqerffvat gur punenpgre.
1900, so probably reading whatever I chose by 1910, which would mean Munseys & Blue Book, so – Leinster, Burroughs, Wells, etc
I read THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. I was very bored with it. I picked it up in a yard sale. An Arkham House book. It was 50 cents. And when I think of HPL, I like to write short sentences.
“I don’t like the Hugos. I don’t like the people at File770. Look at this. This will really get their goats.”
I’m pretty sure that’s the sum total of motivation for Vox Day to nominated Space Raptor Butt Invasion.
1924 – The Shunned House by HP Lovecraft, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
@Darren Garrison: see Kornbluth’s short story “Virginia”, in which a bored multibillionaire is urged to buy and rename to Schmilton a town big enough to need a chain hotel.
@Niall McAuley: I’d be in 1891, so missing Wells but not quite old enough to be reading Looking Backward (however appropriate that might be)
Other amusing Hendrix note: his apartment in London was next door to where Handel had lived; according to the BBC writeup (~9 months ago, when Hendrix’s place was reopened as a museum) he was fascinated by the coincidence and dug up several Handel scores.
@ idontknow:
Don’t forget “I’d like to take another petty swipe at Rachel Swirsky.”
I was born in 67, am 48 (until July 13th), so I would be reading A Thin Ghost and Others by M.R. James.
@Andrew M
It’s clear that different people have a different level of tolerance to it. Suffice it to say that for some people, it makes the works unreadable, while others adjust to it very quickly. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. The second-person pronouns in Fifth Season I could handle, but I had to readjust every time I came to a new Essun section. Ancillary Justice‘s universal “she,” on the other hand, was something I never got used to–all the way to the end of the third book. It didn’t ruin the series for me, but it diminished my reading pleasure.
The point is, playing games like this comes with a cost. If your work is great enough, you can afford that cost.
Don’t forget “I’d like to take another petty swipe at Rachel Swirsky.”
And John Scalzi.
DMS: Thanks for the correction! Appertain yourself a beverage!
Muphry’s Law strikes again.
For the backwards-in-time thing, I think I’d be reading “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” published 1900.
1910 for me. Principia Mathematica came out that year, so I would be reading Tom Swift and his Motor Boat. I never said I was deep.
If you want a serious answer, a) there’s G.K. Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross, and b) what’s wrong with you?
addendum: yes, Wikipedia says Verne was still publishing then — but mostly (and specifically in my time frame) mimetic adventure novels; at a stretch, one might count Carpathian Castle (~”possibly the inspiration for Dracula, in which a dead woman the two principles were rivals over is simulated by photographs and a high-quality phonograph.
Aaron: More fan mail from Vox: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/06/dunning-kruger-gamma-aaron.html
He agrees men are allowed to admit when they’re wrong. If they ever are, that is.
On his blog, T. Beale claims that someone else’s words were an example of “Vox’s First Law in action.” He has his own laws now? Really?
13) Strugatsky Adaptation
Intriguing!
20) Hugo Contender
There’s nothing Beale hates more than dinosaurs. He rushed to use Space Raptor Butt Invasion to attack them and fell in a tar pit. Oh, the velociraptor, how it vexes him bloop blorp
He also didn’t define “justice”, given that one person’s justice is another person’s injustice. (Yes, “justice” is a subjective thing–or else you wouldn’t have debates like pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty, or conflicts at all when the actual facts of a case are known.) In America’s system, for instance, “justice” is predicated whichever of two professional liars manages to convince 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty that they are telling the truth.
I’ve been on two juries. Duhhhh!
1934: Probably I’m mostly reading short fiction, with subscriptions to Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, and Weird Tales, but welcoming P. G. Wodehouse’s switch over to novels, and checking out whether Mary Poppins has the potential to be the next The Wizard of Oz.
Like Chip Hitchcock, I’d be in 1891. My favorite authors would probably be Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and Ambrose Bierce. By the way, this little exercise really does put things in sharp perspective–from the Victorian period to my birth=My birth to now! Wow! Kudos to Niall!
On his blog, T. Beale claims that someone else’s words were an example of “Vox’s First Law in action.” He has his own laws now? Really?
He also attributes words to me that I never said. I, for example, have never posted a comment on Beale’s blog, but he assumes that I have. It seems to have escaped his notice that there might be more than one person in the world with the name “Aaron”. If he were the super-genius he claims he is, he might have bothered to check IP addresses to figure this out.
As a rule, I generally don’t bother reading his drivel, and its not worth my time to respond with comments on his blog.
1889 — I guess I’d be reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s THE WRONG BOX, since I just went ahead and downloaded a free ebook version. (Liked the 1966 movie, but always thought Hollywood must have taken a serious book and turned it into a comedy. Googling, it looks like the novel was always meant as a comedy — Rudyard Kipling reported LOLing at it — so I’ll give the original a shot.)
The backwards in time game: I’d probably be reading less and less, having grown bitter by the distressing drop in sophistication in SF books from one year to the previous. Also, I’d likely be greatly depressed, having just experienced the Great Depression.
It looks looks like I’d be spending my time catching up on 1887 and 1886 books, because here were a lot more interesting books published in those years than in 1888.
Bwahahahahahah.
Little Teddy Beale the projectionist:
Unlike the gamma, I don’t dwell upon past injuries and insults, licking my wounds and biding my time until an opportunity to lash back presents itself
One word : “Scalzi”.
I have been on one jury. So am only half as [Choose one from: STUPID/CIVIC-MINDED] as Kip W.