Pixel Scroll 7/18/20 Scrollhenge, Where The Pixels Dwell, Where The Filers Live, And We Do Live Well

(1) CLARION ZOOMS THROUGH THE SUMMER. Join the Clarion Conversations, a series of Zoom-based conversations about writing speculative fiction “with a just tiny fraction of the amazingly talented Clarion alumni, instructor, and broader community.” RSVP each conversation via the links below:

Editing Speculative Fiction and Poetry – July 22, 5pm PT / 8pm ET (register here)

This week, our guests are John Joseph Adams, Ruoxi Chen, and Brandon O’Brien, moderated by Theodore McCombs. We’ll be discussing the state of publishing speculative fiction and poetry and how these three editors approach their work.

Holly Black and Kelly Link in Conversation – July 29, 5pm PT / 8pm ET (register here)

For our final week, we’re thrilled to have the incredible Holly Black and Kelly Link in conversation about craft, community, surviving as a writer, and what Clarion has meant to them.

(2) GIBSON Q&A. CNET has questions: “Future shocks past and present: William Gibson on fiction’s fear of tech”.

…”In my early teens, I assumed science fiction was about the future,” Gibson says of his days reading writers like Robert Heinlein. “But it was about how the future looked to Robert Heinlein in 1942, which was very different to how the future looked to him in 1960. By the time I began to write science fiction, I took it for granted that what I was doing was writing about the present.”

(3) FROG FLAVORED CANDY? “A ‘Mandalorian’ PEZ Dispenser Gift Set Is Coming And It Will Be An Instant Collectable”Delish heralds the news.

…The Baby Yoda dispenser comes in a set along with a Mandalorian dispenser and grape, lemon, and strawberry PEZ candy. The new Harry Potter dispensers are already available on the PEZ site, but the Mandalorian candy set is not, so it’s unclear when exactly these will be available online or if they’ll be available in stores as well.

(4) MUSLIM SFF WRITERS PROFILED. Aysha Kahn of the Religion News Service has a piece about the rising number of Muslims writing sf and fantasy, citing the works of G. Willow Wilson, Saladin Ahmed, and S.A. Chakraborty. “Through sci-fi and fantasy, Muslim women authors are building new worlds”.

In the past few years, Muslim women have quietly taken the speculative fiction publishing industry by storm, earning rave reviews with fantasy and science fiction narratives that upend both the genre’s historic lack of diversity and popular depictions of women and Islam.

Last year alone, mainstream publishing houses released at least 13 fantasy and sci-fi books written by Muslim women in English, from Farah Naz Rishi’s debut “I Hope You Get This Message” to Karuna Riazi’s middle-grade novel “The Gauntlet.”

At least another dozen, including sequels to Hafsah Faizal’s instant New York Times bestseller “We Hunt the Flame” and Somaiya Daud’s award-winning “Mirage,” are in the works….

(5) LEADING WITH A TRAILER. Yahoo! Entertainment says a new series scored a two-fer: “The New Mutants gets a new trailer and a virtual Comic-Con panel”.

(6) LEWIS OBIT. Civil Rights legend Rep. John Lewis died died July 17 of cancer.

…His passion for equal rights was backed by a long record of action that included dozens of arrests during protests against racial and social injustice.

A follower and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., he participated in lunch counter sit-ins, joined the Freedom Riders in challenging segregated buses and — at the age of 23 — was a keynote speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington.

When Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin wrote a graphic novel trilogy March about the Civil Rights Movement, Lewis went to Comic-Con to promote it.

All three March books were Eisner Award nominees — the second and third volumes won the award (2016, 2017). Lewis received San Diego Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award in 2017.

(7) SUSAN SHAW OBIT. The Guardian profiled technology preservationist Susan Shaw, who died June 13 at age 88.

Founder of the Type Archive dedicated to rescuing the remains of the letterpress printing industry

In 1970 the price of lead went through the roof, and the art, craft and industry of letterpress printing, essentially unchanged for five centuries, became suddenly vulnerable. Property speculators, rival technologies and alternative media all threatened a world dependent on precision engineering and subtle manual skill. To Susan Shaw, who has died aged 87, this was a challenge to which she devoted the rest of her life, and in 1992 she founded the Type Museum (now the Type Archive) in Stockwell, south London, to rescue the remains of the dying industry.

In that year, the Monotype Corporation, pioneers of the leading type-composition system, went into liquidation. Susan went to Salfords, near Redhill, Surrey, where the Monotype factory was, saw the size of the plant, and planned to take it over. She chatted up the owners of a 1900 industrial complex near her home in Stockwell, and persuaded them to sell it to a trust set up for the purpose, borrowing the money.

The main building had been a veterinary hospital, with floors solid enough to support circus elephants, and now heavier stuff. She next organised the transport of plant, keyboards, casting machines and associated equipment, together with all the records of the corporation worldwide, altogether several hundred tons. She called its transport and reinstallation Operation Hannibal, and an elephant became her trademark.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • July 18, 2006 Eureka premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel. In syndication, it was renamed A Town Called Eureka. It was created by Andrew Cosby who was responsible for the rebooted Hellboy film and Jaime Paglia who’s executive producer of the current Flash series. No, it doesn’t tie into the CW continuity but it did tie-in to the Warehouse 13 reality. It would last six seasons and seventy episodes with an additional eight web episodes forming the “Hide and Seek” story as well. The large ensemble cast included Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Debrah Farentino, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Erica Cerra, Neil Grayston, Niall Matter, Matt Frewer, Tembi Locke and James Callis. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born July 18, 1896 – Otto Gail (rhymes with “pile”).  Science journalist and author; among the most popular German 1920s SF authors.  Member of the German Interplanetary Society, knew Oberth and Valier.  Five technologically realistic novels for us including juveniles, five nonfiction including a 20-booklet series.  (Died 1956) [JH]
  • Born July 18, 1913 Red Skelton. Comedian of the first order. The Red Skelton Hour ran for three hundred and thirty-eight episodes.  He’s here because ISFDB says he wrote A Red Skelton in Your Closet which was also called Red Skelton’s Favorite Ghost Stories. He also has cameos in Around the World in Eighty Days and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, both of which I consider genre adjacent. (Died 1997.) (CE)
  • Born July 18, 1913 Marvin Miller. He is remembered for being the voice of Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet. He would reprise that role myriad times in the next few decades in such films and series as The Invisible Boy, the Lost in Space series and Gremlins. (Died 1985.) (CE) 
  • Born July 18, 1921 – John Glenn.  In fact he never liked science fiction, or what he knew of it, perhaps thinking, in a reverse of James Bond, “It lives better than it reads”.  First-rate US Marines pilot (6 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 18 Air Medals); first supersonic flight across the US; only person to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs; six terms as US Senator (Democrat – Ohio); flew on the Discovery at age 77 to help study Space and human age.  NASA Distinguished Service Medal, US Astronaut Hall of Fame, Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Memoir, John Glenn.  (Died 2016) [JH]
  • Born July 18, 1938 Paul Verhoeven, 82. Responsible for Starship TroopersTotal Recall, Hollow Man and Robocop. He’s made the short list for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation three times (Starship TroopersTotal Recall and Robocop) but was not won it. (CE)
  • Born July 18, 1943 Charles G. Waugh, 77. Anthologist who is amazingly prolific. I count over two hundred anthologies, most done with co-anthologists, and many done with Martin Greenberg. Oft times a third anthologist would be listed, i.e. Poul Anderson for Terrorists of Tomorrow, or Isaac Asimov for Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series. (CE)
  • Born July 18, 1950 – Jay Kinney, 70.  Bijou Funnies with R. Crumb, Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson.  Hasn’t published his fanzine in a while, but here is a cover for Chunga (L to R, Hooper, Byers, juarez); here is a wise comment; here is his Clinic of Cultural Collison (noting Vaughan Bodé, who died on this day, 1975; name shared by Tex Jarman’s Uncle Bodie); here is “Welcome to the Late Show” for the Eagles.  Letters in Banana WingsRaucous Caucus (Relapse has, alas, relapsed).  [JH]
  • Born July 18, 1963 – Sue Mason, 57.  Standing for TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) she called herself “gamer, filker, costumer, dealer, apahack” modestly omitting she’s among our best fanartists.  She won; we must’ve forgiven her.  Ten covers, two hundred interiors, for AttitudeBanana WingsBentoChallengerIdeaQuasiQuoteTwink.  Eight Nova Awards as Best Fanartist, two Hugos. Part of the PLOKTA Cabal (PLOKTA = Press Lots Of Keys To Abort, the Journal of Superfluous Technology).  Guest of Honor at Eastercon 55 (British nat’l convention), Minicon 38.  MC’d the Masquerade costume competition at Intersection the 53rd Worldcon.  Artwork for Aussiecon 4 the 68th Worldcon.  Doc Weir service award.  Rotsler Award, later judge.  [JH]
  • Born July 18, 1966 Paul Cornell, 54. Author of both the Shadow Police series and the Witches of Lychford novella series which are quite excellent as well as writing a lot of television scripts for Doctor Who, Primeval and Robin Hood. He was part of the regular panel of the SF Squeecast podcast which won two Hugo Awards for Best Fancast. And he scripted quite a bit of the Captain Britain and MI: 13 comic series as well — very good stuff indeed. (CE)
  • Born July 18, 1972 – Eve Marie Mont, 48.  Time-travel tales send highschooler Emma Townsend into worlds she met in fiction, A Breath of EyreA Touch of ScarletA Phantom Enchantment.  “I shouldn’t love Rochester [in Jane Eyre]… dark, arrogant, moody, mistakes in his life that are seriously hard to overlook….  I teach high school, and the teens I know are a far cry from the ones portrayed in the media….  It’s that sense of wonder and possibility in YA literature that really excites me.”  Sponsors her school’s literary magazine.  [JH]
  • Born July 18, 1982 Priyanka Chopra, 38. As Alex Parrish in Quantico, she became the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Is it genre? Maybe, maybe not, though it could fit into a Strossian Dark State. Some of her work in her native India such as The Legend of Drona and Love Story 2050 is genre as Krrish 3, an Indian SF film she was in. She’s got a major role in the forthcoming Matrix 4 film. (CE)
  • Born July 18, 1990 – Kyle Muntz, 30.  Five novels, poetry (is poetry fiction?), two shorter stories, dark-fantasy game The Pale City (also the name of his Website).  Sparks Prize.  Interviewed in Lightspeed.  Has read two translations of Tu Fu (or, if you prefer, Du Fu), ranks them well above Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  By turns impish and sinister.  [JH]

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SUMMERTIME. Six critics lavish affection on “My Favorite Summer Blockbuster” in the New York Times. Lots of genre – you’re not surprised, are you? And it’s not all Marvel – though I was less impressed to see someone reach back in time for this film once I saw the call-out for its availability on the new Disney+ service.

Monica Castillo: ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’

Little was conventional about Robert Zemeckis’s 1988 film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which helped make it the highest-grossing film that summer and the year’s second top box office draw (behind “Rain Man”). This seedy drawing of Tinseltown took inspiration from film noir, and its story was set in the golden age of Hollywood studios, many of which were then in decline….

(12) COMPLAINT DEPT. But meanwhile, back in the U.K. — “‘Joker’ Tops U.K. List of Most Complained About Films in 2019, but Can’t Beat ‘The Dark Knight’”.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has confirmed Todd Phillips’ R-rated comic book drama “Joker” was the most complained about movie in the United Kingdom last year. The BBFC’s annual report has “Joker” topping the list of most complained about films with 20 complaints filed in regards to the movie’s age 15 classification.

The majority of complaints against “Joker” argued the film should’ve received an age 18 rating due to “violence and tone,” while a select few said the BBFC should’ve banned the movie altogether. The BBFC defended the age 15 rating for “Joker” because the film “doesn’t dwell on the infliction of pain or injury in a manner that requires an 18.”…

(13) SPEAK, MEMORY. In “Sleeping Next To An Elephant”, The Hugo Book Club Blog weighs in on a Best Novel finalist.

It’s often said in Canada that living next to the United States is like sleeping with an elephant:  affected by every twitch and grunt. It’s a phrase that came to mind when reading Arkady Martine’s debut A Memory Called Empire, a sprawling and richly imagined novel about hegemony and loss of culture.

Set in the capital city of the vast Teixcalaanli interstellar empire, A Memory Called Empire follows Mahit Dzmare the new ambassador from the much smaller Lsel Stationer Republic as she investigates the murder of her predecessor and navigates a political crisis that could spell disaster for both nations.

Martine has delivered one of the most Asimovian science fiction novels we’ve read in recent memory, while making the narrative uniquely her own. 

(14) VIRTUAL STAGE PLAY. Otherworld Theatre, Chicago’s premier science fiction and fantasy theatre will present Of Dice And Men – A Play about Dungeons and Dragons on their YouTube page on July 31 and will remain available for free until August 14, at which point it will move to Otherworld’s Patreon page. Tickets are FREE and can be obtained from Eventbrite or by subscribing to Otherworld’s YouTube page here.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Let’s Work Together” on YouTube is a new collaboration between William Shatner and Canned Heat, which will be one track on a new blues album Shatner will release this fall.

[Thanks to JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Olav Rokne, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

93 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/18/20 Scrollhenge, Where The Pixels Dwell, Where The Filers Live, And We Do Live Well

  1. Martin Wooster, although not specifically a science fiction theater, Chicago’s Lifeline Theater usually has a genre play among its 3 main plays each year. They specialize in adapting books to the stage, in the last 10 years I have seen Gaiman’s Neverwhere (twice), China Mieville’s The City & the City, Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment (I laughed until I cried through that play), as well as Watership Down and The Man Who Was Thursday. Always wonderfully written, staged and acted. I usually drive from Detroit once a year to stay with a friend and we go to Lifeline. Sadly, don’t know the next time that will be possible (and safe).

  2. Cassy B. on July 19, 2020 at 4:31 pm said:
    Am I the only one who didn’t like The City In the Middle of the Night? At ALL? Orgjrra gur Rvtug Qrnqyl jbeqf naq n uryy bs n ybg bs unaqjnivat bs culfvpf naq zrgrbebybtl va n obbx gung cerfragrq vgfrys nf n uneq FS abiry, V unq gb sbepr zlfrys gb trg gb gur raq va ubcrf gung vg vzcebirq… naq gura V sbhaq bhg gung vg qbrfa’g rira unir na raqvat.

    Can someone explain to me how to read this?

  3. Open rot13.com in another tab and copy/paste the coded text into the upper window

  4. Andrew on July 19, 2020 at 5:22 pm said:
    Open rot13.com in another tab and copy/paste the coded text into the upper window

    thx

  5. OlavRockne, as Andrew said, it’s Rot13 (which means it’s a simple cipher; every letter is exactly 13 letters ahead/behind the actual letter). It’s a way to post spoilers without actually, well, SPOILING anything. Although, to be fair, my post had very mild spoilers indeed.

    Rot13.com is an excellent resource to decode this cipher. There are also assorted browser plugins, I’m told, although I don’t use any of them.

  6. Cassy B. on July 19, 2020 at 5:30 pm said:
    OlavRockne…

    Does the cypher also add the letter “c” into my name? 😀

    ((Not taking umbrage … just making a joke))

  7. Ehh. Just because McGuire has a(n inexplicable, given the general positivity re: her and her work hosted around here) thing about us doesn’t preclude the possibility that she also has a thing about an entirely different genre site. Or just saw a single story somewhere, or something. It isn’t like it took much to start the thing, after all, no reason to believe it would take more to start another one.

    OTOH, if it is us, then we have apparently been shifted from the File770 specific hivemind to the Hugo voters everywhere hivemind, so that’s… interesting.

    I really hate the hivemind thing. So much.

    (My running theory is a not very nice “friend” of hers goes running over to shove every plausibly critical comment or sentence fragment in her face but none of the positive ones and none of the context. But anxiety can be a right jerk, so it might just be her brainweasels distorting things while she lurks.)

  8. @OlavRokne Oops; sorry. Given that I don’t like it when folks misspell my name (it’s a Y, damnitall, not an IE) I do try to spell other peope’s names correctly. Sincere apologies.

  9. I really enjoyed The City in the Middle of the Night, and wouldn’t remotely regard it as hard sf.

    The one I didn’t like that apparently everyone likes for the reasons I hate it, is Gideon the Ninth. I confidently expect that that’s going to be the winner, not because not enough people like Middlegame, but because it’s the only one that I’ll be unhappy if it wins.

  10. @BGrandrath: I’m also a serious Cherryh fan; there are similarities between the Foreigner books and …Empire, particularly in the intensity/focus, but I don’t recall Cherryh ever featuring such a decadent force (where the atevi are very much on the way up) or pushing the reader’s sympathies quite so thoroughly in one direction.

    @JJ: I like that version of the 8 Words.

  11. OlavRokne: Can someone explain to me how to read this?

    You can also make a rot13 shortcut for your browser by creating a shortcut in your Bookmarks/Favorites bar, and then editing it to replace that URL with the text string found here.

    You can then highlight / select the rot13’ed text and click the shortcut, which will change the highlighted text in your browser display back to its unencrypted form.

  12. Meredith: My running theory is a not very nice “friend” of hers goes running over to shove every plausibly critical comment or sentence fragment in her face but none of the positive ones and none of the context.

    I’ve been wondering that, too, whether someone has been selecting only the non-positive comments and running back to her with a “See how awful File 770 is???”

    I’ve posted raves about some of her works here, as have a lot of other people. It’s strange that she doesn’t seem to be seeing those.

  13. @Cassy

    No. I didn’t care for it either. I wanted to shove Ovnapn out into the boiling ocean, and I hated the ending–or rather, the “ending.”

    I suspect the voting is going to come down to Gideon or Memory. I would be far happier with the latter than the former. But what I really wish is that The Light Brigade sneaks past both those, because it strikes me (and Abigail Nussbaum also made this point) that Kameron Hurley has really captured the moment with this book.

  14. I wonder what Christopher Chupik is up to these days — he’s the one who used to drop into Correia’s blog anything from 770 that could get him going. (Not that it took much.)

  15. Lis Carey on July 19, 2020 at 6:45 pm said:
    … I confidently expect that that’s going to be the winner, not because not enough people like Middlegame, but because it’s the only one that I’ll be unhappy if it wins.

    HAHA! I also always expect to be disappointed! 😀

    But Gt9th isn’t the book that I would find disappointing if it won. I put it in third on my ballot.

  16. @ Olav Rokne. I agree with Lightning Brigade being Dicksenian in the way you have described. But that comparison works because PDK had a fairly specific style. Asimov really didn’t. He wrote different types of stories – if I was to describe something as being his style it would be a funny clever twist ending. Not because he used it exclusively but because it’s something different that a lot of others didn’t use.

  17. I have a bookmarklet like that in my browser, and not only can I select enciphered text and use it to decipher, I can click it to get a window into which I can type text that will then be enciphered for me. Comes in handy once in a while.

    I’m rooting for Middlegame but wouldn’t be unhappy about Memory or Gideon. I found both Light Brigade and City to be rather unpleasant experiences. (Doors I enjoyed, but didn’t find all that memorable — though I have pre-ordered Alix Harrow’s next book. That and Harrow the Ninth, so if anyone’s keeping score on the Hugo packet as advertising, they can chalk that one up as a win.)

  18. Just finished voting in the last category I had left. I’d wanted to read the whole Jones book on Russ rather than the excerpt provided and my library didn’t have an ebook version of it. Covid-19 had prevented me from getting the physical book back when the finalists were announced so I’m very relieved that my library has figured out a safe way to reopen checking out physical books.

    Count me in the group that had a hard time with City. It’s bottom of my ballot but defintely not below No Award. I think all the finalists this year are pretty good and although I have favorites I won’t be upset at any of them winning.

    I’ve noticed before that McGuire’s impression of comments here on File 770 doesn’t match my experience of those comments but I’ve never been able to figure out why. I read Middlegame last year because of the positive comments made here and I really enjoyed it.

  19. The only serious grump I have with the Hugo ballot this year is that Alliance/Union didn’t even make the Best Series finalist list! I’ve got no real complaints in any other category, and expect to be at least moderately satisfied with the results no matter what wins.

    Considering everything else about this year, I’m pretty happy to be able to say something like that. (Although I suppose one could count this year’s Hugos as being more about last year than this one.)

  20. @Chip, figured you for a fan when I saw you moderate the Cherryh panel at Sasquan. You led a great discussion letting the other panelists finish their thoughts but not letting the conversation drag.

    @Xtifr, I was also hoping Alliance/Union would make the ballot this year. When Best Series started I thought it was perfect for Foreigner. There is always next year.

  21. BGrandrath: When Best Series started I thought it was perfect for Foreigner. There is always next year.

    Foreigner has 2 eligible books out this year, Resurgence and Divergence, and it sure as hell is going to be on my Hugo Best Series ballot next year.

  22. @BGrandrath —

    @Xtifr, I was also hoping Alliance/Union would make the ballot this year. When Best Series started I thought it was perfect for Foreigner. There is always next year.

    I’m kind of glad it didn’t this year. This is the year for Expanse. Next year, Foreigner!

    Oooooo, waitaminit — Next year, Dresden! Oh, no, decisions, decisions, decisions!

  23. @Bgrandrath — thank you! I was seriously nervous going into that panel (my first moderation anywhere) and limp coming out, so I’m glad it looked good from the other side of the table. It was no doubt helped by having one of the most distinguished sets of panelists-other-than-the-moderator that I found in the program.

    Something I hope will be a non-issue for nominators: when is the next Alliance/Union novel out? (I haven’t read the last one due to an impression that it’s not a complete story — corrections welcomed.) It would be a shame for the two threads to split nominations. Some time ago she said that everything was part of the same universe, just going in different directions from Earth — but IIRC that was before the Foreigner books, which have at least one major mechanical difference (the star drive is not as hard on passengers) and are listed separately in the bibliography on her website.

  24. CassyB- no, not just you. I read the sample available at Amazon and noped out right there.

    Re: Seanan McGuire.
    I started her Parasitology trilogy and thought it OK, but had questions about the world building. Mainly, why the various powers that be handled the biotech company with kid gloves over the potential for a greatly extended lifespan and higher quality of life. That’s the sort of thing where people get irrational about it and laws would look more like guidelines. Plus, the FDA would have kittens over the symbiotes.
    So, I thought to ask the author herself.
    The response was strong enough I didn’t go back after that, finish the trilogy or follow up on her work.

  25. JJ – thank you! All my ROT13 plug ins had stopped working. That really helped.

  26. @Chip Hitchcock: Alliance Rising is somewhat cliff-hangerish, yes, although not as much so as some. A couple of things got wrapped up, so it didn’t feel like nothing but intro. Also, we kinda know how it’s going to end: the merchanters will form an alliance to maintain their independence from both Earth and Union, and the Company Wars will start. We’ve known that since 1981. 🙂

    But yeah, I can see holding off for now if you have any sort of distaste for cliff-hangers. Fortunately, the series is large enough that you should be able to judge its merits without reading every single book. (Assuming it does make a future ballot.)

  27. @Chip, yeah more story to come but Alliance Rising ends with Our Protagonist right where I want to be. So I say happy ending!

    @JJ, I get to nominate next year so Foreigner will be on my ballot too. Per Cherryh’s blog they are working on the next Alliance book, if it’s out before the end of the year A/U will also get a spot on my ballot.

    And Chip, I seem to remember Cherryh saying the publisher wanted the different drive system to put Foreigner in its own universe. But I think in Cherryh’s mind all her books are in the same future history. Even if it takes some squinting.

  28. The next one out is Divergence (atevi), in September. There’s nothing scheduled between then and the end of the year…. (There’s supposed to be an Alliance-Union history in her web store, but it isn’t there yet, either – I think they’ve been busy.)

  29. The following intended only for humorous purposes…

    OlavRokne quoted Cassy B. who typoed: “OlavRockne…” and asked, “Does the cypher also add the letter “c” into my name? ?”

    No, but it just might turn you into a Knute.

    Never fear — you’ll get better.

  30. @Heather
    That reminds me of when we had a pet-store type newt, and it got named “Rockne”. (The other newt was “Jack”.)

  31. BravoLimaPoppa on July 20, 2020 at 9:50 am said:

    JJ – thank you! All my ROT13 plug ins had stopped working. That really helped.

    Same here, or almost – Leetkey stopped working for me, possibly because I use an older version of Firefox in order to hold onto Legacy plugin Session Manager. I found a new plug-in, but 1. it didn’t give me a keyboard shortcut option to avoid drilling down a big long menu each time, and 2. it obliterates paragraph breaks.

    This bookmarklet is the best thing that’s happened to my fandom web browsing at least since yesterday! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    edit: Ooh! And editing the bookmarklet’s “keyword” is almost as good as a keyboard shortcut – F6 to get to the address bar, type in my chosen keyword, hit enter: voila, ROT3 rotated.

  32. BGrandrath: @JJ, well speak of the Div…ergence

    Sorry, too busy reading Cherryh to respond 😛

  33. (Joins Xtifr in glaring jealously at JJ)

    On the other hand, I now have Oor Wombat’s A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, which offsets my jealousy somewhat…. (happily diving into to book)

  34. @Cassy B – Oor Wombat has a new book? Races off, finds book.
    Looks at fun money budget and sighs. Next month then.

  35. Y’all will be glad (I expect) to hear that preorders for Ursula’s book have far exceeded Swordheart and are more than sufficient to require her to both kiss an Ox and ride on said Ox.

  36. @Heather Rose Jones: AAUUGGHH!!

    I would be jealous of JJ except that (a) I’ve lost track of which books go together (and as I’ve said previously, I hate reading half a story) and (b) my library has started to do ~curbside service, which means all the books that I reserved in hardcopy because there weren’t e-books are suddenly appearing — so I’m a little oversupplied right now…

    @BGrandrath: I don’t remember hearing about the publisher asking for a new drive for Foreigner, but it certainly seems plausible. I know she made everything before part of the same universe, but I wonder what handwaving she’d do to get these sets together.

  37. @sundry! I have no special insight as to whether Cherryh envisions the Foreigner books as being in the Alliance/Union/Compact verse (my intuition: ‘of course not, don’t be silly’), but at a talk I attended around the book’s launch, she said that what happened to Phoenix was so catastrophic that none of its crew’s descendants will ever, ever see Earth again.

  38. John A Arkansawyer on July 20, 2020 at 7:33 pm said:
    @OlavRokne: It’s possible you don’t know about Knute Rockne, an athlete and coach still remembered nearly a hundred years after his death. I’m guessing it changed from Rokne to Rockne when he emigrated.

    Well aware of him. Knute Rockne was my grandfather’s cousin.

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