(1) KLAATU BARADA UFO. The Independent celebrates World UFO Day with a roll-call of alien encounter films: “World UFO Day 2018: Top 10 alien encounter B-movies from the golden age of schlock sci-fi”.
World UFO Day is being observed around the galaxy on Monday.
The occasion is held on 2 July in memory of the US Army Air Forces weather balloon crash in Roswell, New Mexico, that many believe was really a flying saucer landing covered up by the Pentagon.
It is marked by sky-watching parties as keen ufologists survey the heavens in search of fresh evidence of alien life.
Others prefer to mark the day on 24 June, the date on which American aviator Kenneth Arnold reported spotting a fleet of nine spaceships over Mount Rainier, Washington, in 1947….
(2) HOT READS. The Verge’s Andrew Liptak says these are “12 fantastic science fiction and fantasy novels that you should check out this July”.
July 10th
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik earned a Nebula Award for her fairy tale-inspired novel Uprooted. She’s back with an new book that similarly delves into folklore, Spinning Silver. In this book, a girl named Miryem is the daughter of moneylenders, but her family has fallen onto hard times. She takes their predicament into her own hands, turning silver into gold. Her abilities attract the attention of the Fey king of the Staryk, who gives her an impossible challenge, and accidentally spins a web that draws in the daughter of a local lord, angering the Tsar who had pledged to wed her.
Read an excerpt here.
Game of the Gods by Jay Schiffman
Set in the future, Jay Schiffman’s debut novel Game of the Gods follows a Federacy military commander named Max Cone, who just wants to be left alone. When war breaks out, he becomes an unwitting pawn in a global game to try to get him into the fight once again. He’s given a device that allows him to predict the future, and when his wife and children are kidnapped, he’s drawn in to rescue them, aided by a band of unlikely allies — a 13-year old girl with special abilities, a mathematician, a religious zealot, and a drug addict who was once a revolutionary
(3) SUPERHERO, SUPER REVIEWER. Luke Cage is back, and so is Abigail Nussbaum: “Five Comments on Luke Cage, Season 2”.
I don’t have that much to say about the second season of Luke Cage. Which is actually a shame, because despite some problems, I’d say that it’s the strongest and most consistently entertaining season of television the Netflix MCU has produced since the first season of Jessica Jones. It’s just that the things I’d have to say about it are basically a combination of my review of the first season, and my review of the second season of Jessica Jones. The stuff that worked in season one is back here, but better–the strong visuals, the amazing music, the thrilling fight scenes, the palpable sense of place. And like Jessica Jones, coming back for a second season seems to have freed Luke Cage from the burden of having to justify its own existence as a superhero show about X (a woman, a black man), and allowed it to simply tell a story in which most of the characters are people of color (and some of them have superpowers). At the same time, a lot of the problems that plagued the first season, and suggested that the Luke Cage concept might not be as durable as we could hope, are back in force here, with little indication that the show is interested in addressing them. Here are a few thoughts I had at the end of the season, though the bottom line is that it is definitely worth watching….
(4) TAFF RINGS THE REGISTER. Jim Mowatt has enriched the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund by completing his trip report Wherever I Lay My Hat!
I have recently sent copies of my 2013 TAFF report to SCIFI and FANAC and both happily paid 500 dollars each into the TAFF coffers, so helping us to keep sending more delegates across the ocean to strengthen the science fictional bonds that enhance our community. Many thanks to both these fine organisations for their encouragement and support for the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund
Find out how to get a copy here.
(5) HE’S NOT BUGGED. NPR’s Glen Weldon says you won’t demand your 2 hours back: “Flyweight: Wee, The People: ‘Ant-Man And The Wasp'”.
It’s fine.
Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to 2015’s feather-light and perfectly forgettable Ant-Man, is just fine.
It does what it sets out to do, which, by all readily legible indicators, is to be … fine. Agreeable. Inoffensive. A good way to pass a couple of hours in air-conditioned darkness. Jokes. Car chases. Fight scenes. Michelle Pfeiffer, briefly, in a hoodie and a chalk-white wig and, for some reason, fingerless gloves. A gruff Michael Douglas, less briefly, as the resident goateed genius of this particular corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Tony Stark and Doctor Strange having their attentions turned elsewhere).
Also: Evangeline Lilly as badass superhero The Wasp, kickin’ thoraxes and takin’ names and even crackin’ the occasional joke, thank God. The always-winning Michael Peña as voluble sidekick Luis, whose presence in any given scene amps up its charm factor. Phrases like “We have to adjust the refractors on the regulator!” (LOTS of those.)…
(6) ADAMS OBIT.
Constance Adams, Architect of Space Habitats, Is Dead at 53 https://t.co/jnqY9C1jN2 She helped design the TransHab, a 3-level inflatable module to be attached to the space station, to expand astronauts’ live/work space (also en future route to Mars) pic.twitter.com/oXo2PizHgG
— Paola Antonelli (@curiousoctopus) July 1, 2018
(7) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
The original time machine from the 1960 movie was sold at the MGM studio auction in 1971, the same auction that originally sold the Ruby Slippers (The Wizard of Oz (1939)). The winner of the auction was the owner of a traveling show. Five years later the prop was found in a thrift store in Orange, CA. Film historian Bob Burns purchased it for $1,000. Using blueprints his friend George Pal had given him years earlier, he and a crew of friends restored it. The restoration crew included D.C. Fontana script consultant and writer on Star Trek (1966) and Michael Minor art director on Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
- Born July 2 – Margot Robbie, 28. The Legend of Tarzan was her first genre film (maybe) followed by Suicide Squad, Goodbye Christopher Robin, an animated Peter Rabbit, more DCU announced films than bear thinking about and intriguingly she’s announced to be Marian in Marian, a telling of her life after the death of Robin.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- John King Tarpinian was surprised to see who is the pitchman for retirement plans in the Star Trek universe: Brevity.
- Chip Hitchcock calls this one Arctic Circle meets Connie Willis.
(10) SUPERHERO CHOW. The Marina Bay Sands in Singapore boasts a ”DC Comics Superhero Café”. Here’s the real menu [PDF file.]
Dine in, take-away, save the day – at this immersive café-retail experience, home to the DC Comics universe.
Find apparel, accessories and gifts to unleash the DC super hero within you. Chill out at the Superman-inspired café; sip the Batman’s Late Night Summer Latte or get buzzed from The Flash’s Espresso. Grab a Green Lantern pizza to go.
At our Justice League tribute diner – eat-in for a serious scoffing of Batman’s epic Dark Knight charcoal-brioche-bun burger or battle out with The Flash Mushroom Linguine. Feeling villainous? Get your “just desserts” from the Joker.
(11) SEQUEL SUCCESS. Camestros Felapton finds time to “Review: The Incredibles 2”.
…At the time Pixar eschewed sequels (with the exception of Toy Story) and despite the implications of the end of the film, a second Incredibles movie seemed unlikely. Time moves on and Disney-Pixar is keen to capitalise on the IP it owns. Could a sequel possibly manage that same balance of action and character?
Absolutely….
(12) YOU HAVE TO WONDER. Given the 80’s setting of the upcoming Wonder Woman film, digital artist Bosslogic has populated his Instagram feed with reimaginings of the alter egos fo other superheroes as they might have looked if they were in 1984 continuity. Take a look for the “WW84” posts scattered among the entries at Bosslogic. Here, for instance, is Henry Cavill as Clark Kent — if he were plopped down in 1984…
Credit to SYFY Wire for tipping us to this art with their story “B-Boy Batman Meets Superman’s Sweet Mullet in Awesome ’80S Fan Art for Wonder Woman 2”.
(13) INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS. This job is not that f**king easy!
Here's a question I've gotten like 5 times this year. "I haven't read your books yet. Are they any good?" No, I only write shitty books. I love to spend a lot of time writing intricately shitty books and then being painfully truthful about the crapulous product of my shitty labor
— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) July 2, 2018
(14) FUTURE STUNTS. TechCrunch goes behind the scenes: “Disney Imagineering has created autonomous robot stunt doubles”.
Disney it taking their robotics to new heights… at least for a few seconds. Born out of an experiment called Stickman, the new development “Stuntronics” can fling articulated robot figures into the air. The bots control their orientation and poses to nail the same tricks — such as a superhero pose — time after time after time. According to project personnel Tony Dohi (Principal R&D Imagineer) and Morgan Pope (Associate Research Scientist):
“So what this is about is the realization we came to after seeing where our characters are going on screen,” says Dohi, “whether they be Star Wars characters, or Pixar characters, or Marvel characters or our own animation characters, is that they’re doing all these things that are really, really active. And so that becomes the expectation our park guests have that our characters are doing all these things on screen — but when it comes to our attractions, what are our animatronic figures doing? We realized we have kind of a disconnect here.”
…“So often our robots are in the uncanny valley where you got a lot of function, but it still doesn’t look quite right. And I think here the opposite is true,” says Pope. “When you’re flying through the air, you can have a little bit of function and you can produce a lot of stuff that looks pretty good, because of this really neat physics opportunity — you’ve got these beautiful kinds of parabolas and sine waves that just kind of fall out of rotating and spinning through the air in ways that are hard for people to predict, but that look fantastic.”
…“One of our goals of Stuntronics is to see if we can leap across the uncanny valley.”
(15) EVIL DEAD AUCTION. Bloody Disgusting points the way: “The “Ash vs. Evil Dead” Prop and Costume Auction is the Coolest, Most Gruesome Auction We’ve Ever Seen”.
…A final attempt to make some money off the show, the official “Ash vs. Evil Dead” Series Finale Auction just launched this week, and it’s continuing through August 17. Don’t worry about showing up anywhere in person to get in on the bidding, as it’s taking place entirely online.
Modern technology, am I right?!
The auction features over 1,000 screen-used costumes, props, prosthetics and set decorations from all three seasons, all of them direct from the studio and coming with Certificates of Authenticity. If you saw it on the show, it’s probably up for grabs, with the auction including Ash’s chainsaw, the Season 3 demon baby, Ash’s wardrobe and TONS of gory practical effects.
Check out some highlights below and head over to VIP Fan Auctions to see more!
(16) FIRMIN RESUME. When SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie learned that Peter Firmin died, he rounded up some links to help me appreciate the loss: “His co-creations (with Oliver Postgate) of The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine wowed generations of Brits. Arguably worth checking out and if fans have young kids then sharing.”
- The Clangers were an alien race who live on the Moon.
The Clangers are peacefully building a house. We hear a whistling sound and down comes something. The Clangers run for cover. The thing is a terrestrial space-probe vehicle with large initials on it.
- Noggin the Nog was a fantasy series set in Viking times with dragons etc. (eat your heart out Martin).
- Ivor the Engine was an almost living steam locomotive.
“Wonderful stuff,” Jonathan concludes.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Jonathan Cowie, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]
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(16) Ivor the Engine *also* had dragons. I don’t think Bagpuss had dragons but The Clangers, Noggin and Ivor the Engine: dragons 🙂
Ivor the Engine also had an episode with a dragon in it. Did none of those shows get broadcast in the USA? They’re all lovely, and I loved watching them when I was a child.
ETA oh yes the Soup Dragon! The Soup Dragon on The Clangers was the best character.
ETA2 Possibly I can point to these shows as my earliest pro-dragon influence.
yay,. Scroll title Credit!
(As a Zelazny fan, how did I not think of it sooner?)
Scroll down Moses
Let my Pixels go…..
[click]
[click]
I don’t know what to make of @2; it starts with four books that look good (plot and author’s track record) and/or have already been recommended, but with a Zahn SW novel in the mix I don’t know what to think of the ones I don’t recognize — any thoughts on the rest of the list?
Clickity?
Stranded here in 3568, I’m no longer sure.
(1) Around here , UFO Day is Little Green Men Day, August 21. There is a big festival in Kelly, Kentucky (north of Hopkinsville) on the weekend nearest that day, celebrating the anniversary.
It would have made for an interesting NASFiC bid.
(7) Where is the Time Machine now?
Chip Hitchcock: any thoughts on the rest of the list?
I am already on my library’s waiting list for The Calculating Stars, and its sequel, The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal; these are expansions on her Lady Astronaut novelette.
Ditto for Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, which is not a sequel to Uprooted, but rather a subversion of a different folktale, done in a similar vein as the previous book. I’m not really into reimaginings of folktales and fairytales, and did not expect to enjoy the first but was really impressed by it, so I suspect this new one will be really well done, too.
Ditto for The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn, which is set in the same universe as the Bannerless novelette and novel (which are two different stories that happen to have the same name, and both of which I really enjoyed).
Ditto for Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers, which is a standalone set in the same universe as her two previous novels, which I greatly enjoyed.
I do have to say that the synopsis for Condomnauts sounds really stupid, and that I will almost certainly not be picking it up.
I’ve been working my way through the Retro Hugo nominees, some of which have been visited HARD by the Suck Fairy. e.g. I couldn’t do more than a page of “Star Mouse” because of the “cute” German-esque accent.
It’s striking to see these writers trying so hard to imagine the future–without ever being able to imagine a world without tobacco. And this was before the great tobacco epidemic from the War and after. Notably, even in Asimov’s stories–though Asimov himself was a non-smoker WAY before it was cool.
I was very lucky, for a kid born in the 50s, that my parents were non-smokers and (where possible) anti-smoking before it was cool. Lucky because Every. Single. Smoker. in either side of my family tree died of it. And more–my non-smoking paternal grandmother died of lung cancer, probably a combination of the cloud of second-hand smoke she lived in plus moving to LA in the late 40s, to get the full effect of pre-Clean Air Act smog.
Luke Cage season 2 was great and I want a season 3 if only so we can get the remaining 36 Chambers tracks on screen. We’re close!
1) About UFOs, I stand with Clarke: if you’re insisting that it was an alien spacecraft, then it’s not “unidentified” at all, now is it? I’m glad to see The Independent correctly classifying the conspiracists’ identification as a flying saucer.
Tangentially related: has anyone else ever had someone act surprised when you express skepticism about flying saucers and say “but don’t you read science fiction?” My response when this happened to me was, “Yes, I do. And that means I understand the difference between science fiction and fantasy.”
2) The new Novik looks good! So does the Chambers. I’ll be getting both of these from the library at the very least.
8) [Margot Robbie is] announced to be Marian in Marian, a telling of her life after the death of Robin.
Now that I’d actually go see in the theater.
@Lee, I have had that experience around flying saucers as well. Speaks poorly for a lot of people’s attitudes to science.
My final 2017 Novel Reading wrap-up:
2017 Novel Reading Part 6
(Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5)
Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines
[Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse #1]
Synopsis: Centuries ago, a plague nearly wiped out most of the humans on Earth, with the remainder losing most of their sentience. They were saved by an alien race, which cured their feral condition and gave them back at least some semblance of sentience. Now humans serve the aliens on their starships and space stations, in menial maintenance and housekeeping roles. When a bioweapon attack from another race of aliens wipes out the alien crew of their own spaceship, the team leader of the human janitorial staff must try to learn how to run the ship and save their benefactor race from further attack. But of course, nothing is as simple as it seems at first.
What I thought: I really enjoyed this book. It employs some great humor and explores the role of support staff (which is largely ignored in most science fiction and fantasy) while still dealing with serious themes, and manages to avoid the annoying “tryhard” humor phenomenon. The sequel, Terminal Uprising, will be out in February 2019.
Transformation by James Gunn
[The Transcendental Machine #3]
Synopsis: Riley and Asha have traveled across the galaxy, found the Transcendental Machine, and been translated into something more than human. They’ve returned to Earth and won over the artificial intelligence which once tried to destroy the Transcendental Machine. Now they must save the fringes of the Federation. Planets at the edge of the Federation have fallen silent. The arrogant Federation bureaucracy grudgingly send Riley and Asha to investigate. They join forces with a planetary A.I., a paranoid Federation watchdog, and a member of a splinter group who vows to destroy the A.I. No one trusts anyone or their motives. They need to find common ground and the answer in order to confront an enemy more ancient and powerful than the Transcendentals.
What I thought: I thought the first two novels in this series, Transcendental and Transgalactic, were fantastically imaginative, and the trilogy wrap-up does not disappoint. I strongly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys boundary-stretching science fiction with big concepts, epic storytelling, and truly alien species.
The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
[Rivers of London / Peter Grant #6]
Synopsis: Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of Police Constable Peter Grant or the Folly — London’s police department for supernatural cases — even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the flats of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But the daughter of Lady Ty, influential goddess of the Tyburn river, was there, and as he owes Lady Ty a favor, Grant is plunged into the alien world of the super-rich, where the basements are bigger than the houses, and the law is something bought and sold on the open market.
What I thought: This is probably not a good entry point for someone who has not read the rest of the books in the series, but for those who have, it is an excellent addition. With the protagonist’s annoying laddishness having been (thankfully) left pretty much behind after the third book, I am really enjoying these novels, which have enough snark to be amusing without becoming obnoxious
The Fortress in Orion (2014), The Prison in Antares (2015), and The Castle in Cassiopeia by Mike Resnick
[Dead Enders #1, #2, #3]
Synopsis: The human intergalactic Democracy is at war with the alien empire. War hero Colonel Nathan Pretorius has a record of success on dangerous behind-enemy-lines missions — missions which usually leave him in the hospital — has been recruited for a near-impossible assignment that may well leave him dead. At the cost of many lives, the Democracy has managed to clone and train one of the aliens’ master strategists. The Colonel and a hand-picked team must infiltrate the Fortress in Orion, kidnap or assassinate the real General, and put the clone in his place, where he will misdirect the enemy’s forces and funnel vital information to the Democracy.
What I thought: This trilogy is a fast-paced, fun military science fiction adventure with an wildly-diverse, morally-ambiguous Magnificent Seven-ish squad undertaking daring missions. These novels are good beach reading, with a high body count and not an excessive amount of thinking required.
The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt
[Axiom #1]
Synopsis: The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials… and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.
What I thought: This Philip K. Dick Award finalist is a really enjoyable and imaginative space adventure, with a likeable but motley crew who is faced with a mystery and a formidable enemy of which the rest of humanity is not even aware. The sequel, The Dreaming Stars, will be out in September 2018.
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Synopsis: In a climate-changed world where the polar ice has melted and the sea level has risen by 50 feet, the remaining denizens of New York City have adapted to life in a semi-submerged city of canals, where people occupy the upper stories of skyscrapers in resource-sharing cooperatives. Two crack financial programmers squatting on the roof of one such building disappear during the mysterious CCTV outage, and the co-op manager and a police detective try to find out what happened to them. Meanwhile, a bunch of other people do other things.
What I thought: This is my third experience of bouncing hard off a KSR book, and I will not be attempting any further books by the author, unless forced to do so by the appearance of another one on the Hugo ballot. (the rest of my assessment was posted separately here)
Ninefox Gambit (2016) and Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee
[Machineries of Empire #1-2]
Synopsis: Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods to win a battle against heretics, but Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking a star fortress which has recently been captured by the rebels. Her career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next. Cheris’s best hope is to meld with the centuries-old disembodied psyche of a notorious war tactician. The good news is that he has never lost a battle, and may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that he went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust him — because she might be his next victim.
What I thought: I am pleased to report that after DNF-ing the first novel a year ago after 100+ pages, this time around the book worked for me. I suspect that having gotten a basic grounding in the worldbuilding from the short fiction stories “The Battle of Candle Arc” and “Extracurricular Activities” helped a great deal, as did the advice to not try to understand how the technology actually works and just go for an understanding of its results. While I may not have the overwhelming enthusiasm for this series of some of its more ardent fans, I can say that it’s very good, I found it really enjoyable, and am looking forward to the third novel, Revenant Gun, which came out in June.
2017 Novel Ranking
Outstanding
City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Noumenon by Marina Lostetter
Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
Provenance by Ann Leckie
Retrograde by Peter Cawdron
Great
Beyond the Empire by K.B. Wagers
Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon
Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel
Forgotten Worlds and Forbidden Suns by D. Nolan Clark
Kangaroo Too by Curtis C. Chen
The Gates of Tagmeth by P.C. Hodgell
Artemis by Andy Weir
The Bronze Skies by Catherine Asaro
Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey
Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
A Red Peace and Shadow Sun Seven by Spencer Ellsworth
In Evil Times by Melinda M. Snodgrass
The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
All Good Things by Emma Newman
Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines
From Darkest Skies by Sam Peters
The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells
Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan
Transformation by James Gunn
Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee
Good
The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman
Corpselight by Angela Slatter
The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross
The Genius Plague by David Walton
The Last Good Man by Linda Nagata
Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel
Archangel by Margaret Fortune
And the Rest is History by Jodi Taylor
The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear
The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt
Okay
To Guard Against the Dark by Julie E. Czerneda
Tomorrow’s Kin by Nancy Kress
Cormorant Run by Lilith Saintcrow
The Caledonian Gambit by Dan Moren
The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein
The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts
The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
The Castle in Cassiopeia by Mike Resnick
Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland
Meh
Empire Games by Charles Stross
The Skill of our Hands by Steven Brust and Skyler White
The Fortress at the End of Time by Joe M. McDonald
The End of the Day by Claire North
The “Strike Three, You’re Out” Award
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Gradual “Call Me When You Decide To Put Some Science Fiction In Your Fiction” Award
The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
The Rift by Nina Allan
The Ice by Laline Paull
The Seveneves and Crosstalk “Let Us Forget That This Abomination Ever Existed, And Never Speak Of It Again” Award
Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar
Steal the Stars by Nat Cassidy
The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker
(2) Already down for many of these… must double-check the others I care about. Kowal, Emrys, Vaughn, and Chambers are the ones I really must read ASAP.
Not rushing into “Spinning Silver” — not only was I Greatly Displeased by a few things in “Uprooted”, that wasn’t even the best “Beauty and the Beast” re-telling I read that year! (Oor Wombat’s “Bryony and Roses” is better in just about every way possible). And “Condomnauts” sounds dumb in any language.
(7) Currently, the Time Machine is owned by our shoggoth and it’s left me in 9510.
(9) I understood those references!
(12) And these. Heh.
I gotta say, the Retro-Hugo stories are a LOT better when they don’t have any women in them. Because when they do, the women are too often clinically immature, emotionally unstable, weak-willed or pointlessly bitchy at best. These were from the middle of WWII — were the ladies holding down the homefront, running businesses and farms, being Rosie the Riveters, and sending packages to Our Brave Boys Overseas such blubbering wimps free of common sense? I think not.
The men who were smoking in spaceships were lacking in common sense, though. You’d think the writers could have extrapolated from airplanes and submarines.
Meanwhile, this will be my first night attempting to sleep in the same room as a cone-wearing credential. He likes to snuggle when there’s a sleeping human available and he’s never too sure where his cone extends to. Whee.
@JJ
The Hanging Tree – I’m glad that Peter has grown (up) on you.
The Wrong Stars – I really enjoyed this too, lots of fun there. Looking forward to the sequel.
(2) The books from Novik, Chambers and Kowal all look very promising. But I think the book I look most forward to in July is Latchkey by Nicole Kornher-Stace
https://weightlessbooks.com/format/latchkey/
Archivist Wasp was in many ways a brutal and violent read, but I think it’s also hopeful in weird ways and Wasp herself is a tremendous heroine.
(8) I’m not dead yet!
(11) “Some of the stay-at-home-dad jokes feel like they are from an older decade”
Well, The Incredibles is set in the 1960s, so that makes sense. (It’s not obviously stated in the movie, but there is a bit where a newspaper is dated… 1964, if I remember correctly. That also fits very well with the retro styles, allowing for some degree of superscience flux.)
(13) This reminds me of a discussion I’ve been having elsewhere about Harlan Ellison, talent, and skill. Many people have been saying that he was an amazingly talented writer. The man himself stressed the importance of butt-in-chair Doing The Work, and was known to write in public specifically to demolish the mystique that has grown up around the profession of writing, emphasizing that it is a job like any other.
I believe that both positions sell the man short, in one way or another. Attributing his success to talent disregards the work he spent honing and refining his skills, while claiming that anybody could do it if they expend the effort denies that he did have an innate flair and unique perspective. I think he was a highly-skilled and highly-talented author, and that both aspects deserve recognition.
As to the tweet itself, VanderMeer is quite right to call out the boorishness of such a question, which is kind of a trap anyway. If the author says that yes, his books are quite good, he can easily come off as an egotistic braggart. If he says no, he looks like he doesn’t have confidence in his own work. The best answer really is to call foul on the question itself, or else to redirect the response (“they sell well,” “my fans seem to like them,” etc.).
“Trigger Scrollfile – Pixelman”
By the by, a Meredith Moment I’ve meant to mention: all five volumes of the “Infinity Project” anthology series are on sale for 99 cents each at Amazon US. I’ve been watching as different volumes each went on sale, one by one, and finally all five are marked down at the same time. If you’re interested, I’d pounce sooner rather than later; the gradual rollout implies that all the deals may not end at the same time, and some may end soon. (Book three was the last to join the party.)
“File us a Scroll you’re the Pixel man, File us a Scroll tonight”
Well we’re all in the mood for some genre news
And you’ve got us reading your site…
@Rev Bob
Also 99p on Amazon UK – thanks!
Rev Bob, thanks! Snapped them up.
Interestingly, the Kindle version of the 6th book in the Infinity series, Infinity Wars, has been removed from Amazon’s catalog. I wonder why.
16) If I may offer a small correction? The Clangers live on a “small blue planet”; it’s not the Moon. (Though it’s apparently close enough to Earth for a joint US/Soviet mission to land a solo astronaut on it, at one point.)
It’s important to get the facts right about Clangers, because (as I once pointed out in a lengthy essay on a now defunct message board) they are not much smaller than a human being, are considerably broader and bulkier – and I suspect, given the burrowing lifestyle, most of it’s solid muscle – they can tolerate hard vacuum for indefinite periods, they have a high level of apparently intuitive engineering skill…. They are not a species you want to get on the wrong side of, is what I’m saying.
JJ:
I get that book up, and at the same reduced price as the first five.
(However, the link Rev. Bob posted goes to a page title “The Infinity Project (5 Book Series)” and the list doesn’t include the sixth book.)
Johan P: Interestingly, the Kindle version of the 6th book in the Infinity series, Infinity Wars, has been removed from Amazon’s catalog. I wonder why.
I get that book up, and at the same reduced price as the first five.
So it’s available outside the U.S., but not inside it? How strange. I wonder if Marvel served them some sort of cease-and-desist.
JJ, it seems to still be available in paperback and audio book, oddly, but not ebook.
Edited to add that book 7, Infinity’s End, is available for pre-order for the same $.99.
UFO day?
Roll the theme music
@Lurkertype:
That’s not how it strikes me, at this point. I just finished “Nerves” (I’d never read the original version before), and Nursing Doctor Brown is both crucial and super-competent. Indeed, her nerves are steadier than the male characters’.
And in “Jonathan Hoag” the wife (who I keep thinking of as “Pinky”, because she calls her husband “Brain”) is quite capable & insightful, as well as being more prudent than her husband. I don’t know if I’ll finish the story, though, because I’m reminded that I Don’t Like Horror and this one always gave me the jim-jams.
Johan P, JJ, Barnes and Noble has book 6 at the $.99 price.
Strahan’s earlier anthology series, Eclipse books 1-4, are also going for $.99 each at the usual suspects.
Oho! There’s a 7th Infinity anthology coming out in a week, and it’s 99c right now on preorder!
@Doctor Science: I haven’t reread Hoag yet, but I recall that an independent observer in that story assessed the wife as the leader of the couple.
@Lurkertype: Smoking was allowed (and pervasive) on US submarines until less than 10 years ago.
I can also get Infinity Wars in the UK. Given that Amazon listings do sometimes go a bit…funny…I’d not start guessing legal issues until Weird Tech Problems have been ruled out.
@JJ That’s a very detailed list. Thank you!
I just finished listening to LOVECRAFT COUNTRY by Matt Ruff…and oof, that was a punch to the gut. I had heard in the reviews that the lived Jim Crow experience was harsher than any of the supernatural; elements, and hoo boy, were they right.
Heinlein wrote women differently when he was with Leslyn than when he was with Virginia. I suspect he used them as life models, and I know he used them as sounding boards and more. We’ll never know how much of his work was actually theirs, or how much of that change was him changing and how much was them.
It’s the same old story / it’s the same old game / Pixelman, Pixelman, scrolling me insane
Given that Clangers can live in vacuum I imagine their whistling to actually be some kind of beat frequency and they communicate with radio waves.
Well, there is some atmosphere on their small blue planet – there’s one solitary cloud, after all – but Clangers routinely venture further afield into space, aboard the music boat for example.
My own hypothesis is that the Clangers’ planet has been devastated by nanotechnology run amok – the cloud is the last remnant of a planetary weather control system, I think, and there are other hints (like the way nuts and bolts just grow under the surface sand, like tubers). I also conjecture that this was no accident – when it looks like the planet’s going to get its vegetation back, the Iron Chicken calls in the Sky-Moos to eat it all. Someone wants that planet to be a desolate cratered wasteland. It might be something to do with the Clangers or their ancestors messing with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know – the Froglets, who go around bending gravity and space-time all out of shape, are quite clearly minions of Yog-Sothoth, and….
(It is just barely conceivable that I may have been over-thinking this.)
@Andrew: re: smoking on subs:
Ho-lee shit. I’m astonished. Is that like how (in NJ at least) there were still smoking lounges in mental hospitals and rehab clinics when forbidden in other hospitals, because patients are under such strain you don’t want to change too many things at once?
But are these also Things Clanger Was Not Meant To Know?
3) I mostly agree with this assessment, although I think the difficulty they have pinning Cage down across shows comes from the fact that he’s just as poorly-defined in the comics. He’s a character who works best when he has another major character to bounce off, which is why he can even make Danny Rand look interesting. I have seen some valid criticism of how the Jamaican characters were handled in S2 — very few of the actors were Jamaican, leading to some truly terrible accents, and there was a pretty heavy reliance on cultural stereotypes that I know some members of the Jamaican-American community were not happy about.
JJ, I know you’re being funny, but sometimes you’re a bit mean with your bad categories and having been the target once, I will say your zingers can hurt pretty bad.
I read the Novik book, got it in my Nebulas bag, and it’s terrific. Another book that I REALLY liked lately is Rachel Fellman’s THE BREATH OF THE SUN, which I recommend highly.
Well, we’re big book readers
We got calloused fingers
And we extol to everyone we know
We read about dinos and we read about space
At ten-thousand words a go
We get our silly thrills from kitty-cat stills.
But the thrill we’ve rarely known
Is the thrill that’ll gitcha when you get your pixel
In the title of a Pixel Scroll
(Pixel Scroll) Wanna see my pixels in the title
(Pixel Scroll) Want the fen to know it’s rightful
(Pixel Scroll) Wanna see em in place
In the title of a Pixel Scroll
@Lurkertype (re female characters in retro-Hugo works): authors and editors probably felt that an overwhelmingly male audience would rather see women as ignorable — and if you read non-fiction about the time (e.g., the two recent books about the women who broke codes) it’s obvious that many people couldn’t cope with competent women and had to find some man to attribute their work to. I suspect a lot of men of the time realized the behind-the-lines work had to be done by someone but figured it would have been done better if men had been available to do it — and others never even thought about who was doing the work.
JDA has published an Open Letter to Kevin Roche of Worldcon.
Not gonna link it.
Basically Jon describes a dream where he has rapprochment with Kevin Roche, Worldcon, and so everything came together in a heartwarming moment worthy of a ABC Afterschool Special.
He is asking Kevin to call him and make that dream a reality even as he says stuff like:
” I know you’re in a tough position. You have several folk attending your con who are just hateful, angry people, and you’ve made this a very public mess that if you even talked to me, you’d be seen as a traitor to your political team”
Jon, for the 5280th time, you were not banned from Worldcon due to your politics. It’s about you acting like a troll and harassing people.
@Paul Weimer — [throws up in mouth just a little bit]
@Paul
Wait, he’s sending messages, thinly veiled as “dreams”, to someone he’s suing when they’re both repped by counsel? Is this amateur hour or something?
(No need to answer that, of course it’s amateur hour)
Yo, Jon – writing open letters to people you are in the process of suing is…
Sorry, nothing, don’t mind me!
Carry on.