(1) TOP COMICS. NPR asked followers the name their favorite comics and graphic novels. Here are the results: “Let’s Get Graphic: 100 Favorite Comics And Graphic Novels”.
We assembled an amazing team of critics and creators to help winnow down more than 7,000 nominations to this final list of 100 great comics for all ages and tastes, from early readers to adults-only.
This isn’t meant as a comprehensive list of the “best” or “most important” or “most influential” comics, of course. It’s a lot more personal and idiosyncratic than that, because we asked folks to name the comics they loved. That means you’ll find enormously popular mainstays like Maus and Fun Home jostling for space alongside newer work that’s awaiting a wider audience (Check Please, anyone?).
Lots of good stuff on this list. Here’s an absolutely chosen-at-random example:
Astro City
by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson
At once a sprawling adventure anthology and a witty metariff on the long, whimsical history of the superhero genre, Astro City offers a bracingly bright rejoinder to “grim-and-gritty” superhero storytelling. Writer Kurt Busiek and artist Brent Anderson — with Alex Ross supplying character designs and painted covers — don’t merely people their fictional metropolis with analogues of notable heroes, though there are plenty of those on hand. The universe they’ve created pays loving homage to familiar characters and storylines even as it digs deep to continually invent new stories and feature new perspectives. Astro City is a hopeful place that dares to believe in heroes, sincerely and unabashedly; reading it, you will too.
(2) LAST YEAR’S HARDEST SF SHORT FICTION. Rocket Stack Rank has a new post surveying “Hard SF in 2016”.
Greg Hullender explains, “We’d have done this earlier in the year, but we were experimenting with new features like place and time, and we ended up gradually going back through all 814 stories annotating them. Still, I think the result is of interest.
It has been eighteen months since we explored the Health of Hard Science Fiction in 2015 (Short Fiction), so we’re overdue to take a look at 2016. This report divides into three sections:
- A selection of 42 of the best hard SF stories of 2016 together with links to the ones that are free online.
- A list of 21 controversial SF stories of 2016, where RSR disagreed with other reviewers.
- A detailed analysis of hard SF in 2016 with charts and graphs.
(3) TZ REBOOT. Can this writer bring The Twilight Zone back to life? “Christine Lavaf to Pen ‘The Twilight Zone’ Reboot”.
Screenwriter Christine Lavaf is working on a reboot of The Twilight Zone.
Warner Bros has been trying to develop the new movie version of the hit horror since 2009 and a number of directors were lined up to helm the production, but each left the project before shooting could begin.
However, Warner Bros has now announced Christine will be working on the script despite a director having not yet been found to oversee the production, according to Variety.
The original plan for the movie was for it to be inspired by the 1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie horror, which was produced by Steven Spielberg and John Landis and had four segments each with a different director. But the new movie will reportedly follow just one story, which will include elements of The Twilight Zone universe.
(4) DRAWING A BLANK. Australian artist Nick Stathopoulos told his Facebook readers “No Archibald joy this year.”
Last year his painting of Deng Adut was a runner-up for the Archibald Prize for portraits — awarded annually to the best portrait, “preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia” – and the winner of the Archibald Prize People’s Choice award.
Stathopoulos is a long-time fan, 10-time winner of the Australian NatCon’s Ditmar Award, and a past Hugo and Chesley Award nominee. He is frequently in contention for the annual Archibald awards.
(5) ARTISTS AT WORK. The Meow Wolf “art collective” in Santa Fe got their start with a $3.5 million investment from George R.R. Martin, and many of their “immersive installations” are sf related. Natalie Eggert’s article “This 140-Person Art Collective Is Pursuing An Alternative Model For Artists to Make A Living” for Artsy talks about how Meow Wolf has created 140 jobs with income coming from people who pay $20 to look at their “immersive installations.”
Since the Santa Fe-based art collective Meow Wolf opened its permanent installation, the House of Eternal Return, in March 2016, the project has been an unmitigated success in terms of viewership and profits. Housed in a 20,000-square-foot former bowling alley, the sprawling interactive artwork welcomed 400,000 visitors in its first year—nearly four times as many as expected—and brought in $6 million in revenue for the collective’s more than 100 members.
One of the most popular attractions in Santa Fe, the House of Eternal Return invites visitors into an elaborate Victorian house that is experiencing rifts in space-time. Open up the refrigerator or a closet door and get swept away into a new environment, each one designed by different artists of the Meow Wolf collective. There is no set route to follow and you can climb on, crawl through, and touch everything in sight. Tickets to enter the fun-house-like installation cost $20 for adults (on par with admission to a New York museum), with discounted rates available for New Mexico residents, children, senior citizens, and the military.
The installation’s sci-fi narrative, lawless abandon, and production quality have captured the imaginations of viewers, while its success has caught the art world’s attention. Could this be a sustainable, alternative avenue for artists to collaborate and make a living outside of traditional art world models?
(6) SENDAK BOOK MS. REDISCOVERED. Atlas Obscura reports: “Found: An Unpublished Manuscript by Maurice Sendak”.
Since the beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak died in 2012, the foundation set up in his name has been working to collect and sort through his artwork and the records of his life. While working through some old files, Lynn Caponera, the president of the foundation, found the typewritten manuscript for a book. When she looked more closely at it, she realized it was story she didn’t remember, reports Publishers Weekly.
What she had found was the story for Presto and Zesto in Limboland, a work that Sendak and collaborator Arthur Yorinks had worked on in the 1990s and never published. “In all honesty, we just forgot it,” Yorinks told Publishers Weekly.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 12, 2013 — Pacific Rim debuted.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born July 12, 1912 — Artist Joseph Mungaini, who illustrated the 1962 Oscar-nominated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright based on Ray Bradbury’s story.
(9) LUCY LIU. Rebecca Rubin in Variety says that Lucy Liu will direct the first episode of season 2 of Luke Cage coming in 2018. She previously directed four episodes of Elementary.
(10) STAND BY FOR A NEW THEORY. NPR’s Glen Weldon says new Spider-Man wins because we see learning rather than origin: “Origin-al Sin: What Hollywood Must Learn From ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming'”.
Spider-Man: Homecoming dispenses with his origin story completely, which is, at this point, a wise move. Given Spidey’s status as Marvel’s flagship character and his concurrent cultural saturation, it’s perhaps even inevitable, because: We know.
We get it. Spider-bite, spider powers, great responsibility. We’ve, all of us, been there.
And yet! Even without seeing precisely how and why Peter Parker gets from the here of normal life to the there of fantastic, thwippy powers, Tom Holland is eminently, achingly relatable. His Peter is someone in whom we easily see ourselves at our most excited and anxious. Which is the whole secret.
(11) THIS SUCKS. Using ROVs to scoop up invasive species: “Can a robot help solve the Atlantic’s lionfish problem?”. There’s a video report at the link.
Robots in Service of the Environment has designed an underwater robot to combat a growing problem in the Atlantic Ocean: the invasive lionfish.
(12) MAJOR DEVELOPMENT. A league of their own? Overwatch starts city-based videogaming league: “Overwatch: Bigger than the Premier League?”
Its developer Activision Blizzard has just announced the first seven team owners for a forthcoming league. It believes, in time, the tournament could prove more lucrative than the UK’s Premier League – football’s highest-earning competition.
Several of the successful bidders have made their mark with traditional sports teams, and the buy-in price has not been cheap.
The BBC understands the rights cost $20m (£15.5m) per squad. For that, owners get the promise of a 50% revenue split with the Overwatch League itself for future earnings.
The fast-paced cartoon-like shooter was designed to appeal to both players and spectators. It’s low on gore and features a racial mix of male and female heroes, including a gay character – a relative rarity in gaming.
(13) THEY’RE PINK. Adweek covers a parody of female-targeted products: “‘Cards Against Humanity for Her’ Is the Same Game, but the Box Is Pink and It Costs $5 More”.
In a savage parody of women-targeted products like Bic for Her pens, and Cosmo and Seat’s car for women, Cards Against Humanity has released Cards Against Humanity for Her. It’s the exact same game as the original, but comes in a pink box and costs $5 more.
The press release is a gold mine of hilarity.
“We crunched the numbers, and to our surprise, we found that women buy more than 50 percent of games,” said Cards Against Humanity community director Jenn Bane. “We decided that hey, it’s 2017, it’s time for women to have a spot at the table, and nevertheless, she persisted. That’s why we made Cards Against Humanity for Her. It’s trendy, stylish, and easy to understand. And it’s pink.”
Bane added: “Women love the color pink.”
The game is available for $30 on CardsAgainstHumanityForHer.com, which has all sorts of ridiculous photos and GIFs. The limited-edition version “is expected to sell out,” the brand said.
From the FAQ (where it’s in pink text).
When I inevitably purchase this without reading carefully and then find out it’s the same cards as the original Cards Against Humanity, can I return it and get my money back? That color looks great on you! No.
(14) SHARKE REPELLENT. Mark-kitteh sent these links (and the headline) to the latest posts by the Shadow Clarke jury. He adds, “Only two of these, but the Becky Chambers roundtable is likely to provide enough rises in blood-pressure on its own.”
- “‘We need to talk about COCOA’: A Shadow Clarke Discussion of Becky Chambers’s A Closed and Common Orbit” – Nick Hubble introduces the jury’s remarks.
The inclusion of A Closed and Common Orbit on this year’s Clarke shortlist follows hard on the heels of Chambers’s 2016 shortlisting for her debut novel, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. In a very short time, Chambers’s books have proven extraordinarily popular and drawn an enthusiastic fan response. Unsurprisingly, ACACO has also been shortlisted for the 2017 Hugo. The novel has also drawn praise from reviewers, such as Adam Roberts in the Guardian. However, despite the shadow Clarke jury being split fifty-fifty between those who found ACACO to be a compulsive read and those who struggled to find any interest in it whatsoever, this is also the novel that has come closest to unifying what is often a more diverse body of opinion than it might appear from the outside. We are unanimous in thinking that ACACO is not one of the six best SF novels of the year and, in contrast to the other five works on the list, there is nobody among us who would make any kind of case for its inclusion on the Clarke shortlist.
I am possibly not the right audience for this novel. I have read a number of stories by Yoon Ha Lee before this without being particularly impressed by any of them. The novel, Ninefox Gambit crystallized some of those discontents. In no particular order:
1: Yoon Ha Lee has read too much Iain M. Banks. The influence is everywhere and inescapable: the grotesque deaths, the over-elaborate weapons (including one I couldn’t help identifying as the Lazy Gun from Against a Dark Background), and, of course, the central conceit in which the mind of an ancient general is implanted in a younger person on a suicide mission is a straight lift from Look to Windward. But Banks’s humanity is missing. With Banks you always knew where the author stood, ethically and emotionally; not so with Lee, this is a cold book.
(15) FROM PERKY TO UNBEATABLE. Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter, in “Marvel’s New Warriors Sets Its Cast–Including Squirrel Girl”, says that the cast of this ten-episode series on Freeform has been set, and Milana Vayntrub, best known as the Perky Salesperson in 5,271,009 AT&T commercials, has been cast as Squirrel Girl.
Milana Vayntrub (This Is Us) has landed the breakout role of Squirrel Girl, while Baby Daddy grad Derek Theler will stay in business with Freeform after landing the role of Mister Immortal in Marvel’s first live-action scripted comedy.
The duo lead the ensemble cast in the 10-episode series about six young people learning to cope with their abilities in a world where bad guys can be as terrifying as bad dates. Joining Vayntrub and Theler are Jeremy Tardy as Night Thrasher, Calum Worthy as Speedball, Matthew Moy as Microbe and Kate Comer as Debrii.
(16) ETCHED IN STONE. It’s been awhile since I checked in on Declan Finn, and I found one of his posts on Superversive SF that could lead to lively discussion.
In “Pius Rules for Writers”, Declan Finn’s advice comes from his viewpoint as a reader.
I was recently asked what rules, as I reader, I wish writers would follow. I came up with a few.
Rule #1: Don’t preach at me. Tell the damn story…
I think this is self explanatory. Heck, even Star Trek IV, which is straight up “save the whales,” did a fairly good job of this. It was mostly a character driven comedy: let’s take all of our characters as fish and through them so far out of the water they’re in a different planet, and watch the fun start. Even the whales that must be saved for the sake of all of Earth are little more than MacGuffin devices, there for the story to happen.
But 2012? Or The Day After Tomorrow? Or Avatar? Kill me now.
Serious, I went out of my way to make A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller about the history of a Church, complete with philosophy, and it somehow still managed to be less preachy than any of these “climate change” films.
(17) NEWMAN’S NEXT. Joel Cunningham of the B&N Sci-FI & Fantasy Blog has great news for Planetfall fans (and a cover reveal) in “Return to Emma Newman’s Planetfall Universe in Before Mars”.
I still remember the feeling of closing the cover on a early, bound manuscript copy of Emma Newman’s Planetfall in 2015, sure I had read one of the finest science fiction novels of the year—even though it was only April (I wasn’t wrong).
Considering it’s a complete work, I was surprised—and very pleased—at the arrival of After Atlas, a standalone companion novel set in the same world—another book that, incidentally, turned out to rank with the best of its year (but don’t just take our word for it).
I just can quit being fascinated by this setting—a near future in which 3D printing technology has made resources plentiful, but post-scarcity living has not been evenly distributed, where missions to the stars only expose the dark secrets within the human heart—and it seems Newman can’t quite break away from it either: she’s writing at least two more books in the Planetfall series, and today,we’re showing off the cover of the third, Before Mars, arriving in April 2018 from Ace Books….
(18) NOT YOUR TYPICAL POLICE SHOOTING. Consenting cosplayers suffered a tragic interruption: “Police Shoot People Dressed As The Joker And Harley Quinn”.
Australian police shot a man and a woman dressed as comic book characters while they performed a sexual act at a nightclub early Saturday morning, news.com.au reported. The man and the woman were dressed as the Joker and Harley Quinn.
Dale Ewins, 35, was shot in the stomach by police. Authorities said they shot him because he pointed his toy gun at them and they believed it was a real weapon. However, club security said Ewins did not aim the gun at them.
Zita Sukys, 37, was shot in the leg. Both were attending the Saints & Sinners Ball, described as a party “for Australian swingers and those who are just curious.” Promotions for the party also said it has “a well-earned reputation as Australia’s, if not the world’s, raunchiest party.”
(19) FAN FASHION. The Dublin in 2019 bidders think you would look great in their logo shirt. Half-off sale!
(20 TOON FASHION. Why Cartoon Characters Wear Gloves is a video from Vox which goes back to 1900 to answer this question.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Greg Hullender, Chip Hitchcock, and Mark-kitteh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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Shadow Clarkies really digging in on the whole joyless pretentious asshole thing there.
Re: 14)
I don’t have a dog on either side of the fight because I haven’t read the story in question, but looking at it with my disinterested eye, if a jury composed of people of widely varying opinions are united in saying a story fails to meet their selection criteria, perhaps the STORY is at fault rather than the reviewers, Art.
I don’t know the reviewers, so maybe the “joyless pretentious asshole thing” does apply, but Occam’s Razor suggest the fault lies in the story. YMMV.
Ticky
1) TOP COMICS. Here’s an absolutely chosen-at-random example
*snort*
One Of Us!
(1) Well, duh.
(3) Meh.
(12) What’s that law that says if the headline ends in ? the answer is no. This is it.
(14) It’s a good thing these people aren’t actually in charge of judging anything. Unless the Pretentious Joyless Asshole Books Award exists.
(16) snort. chortle. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ooh, fifth!
Al — are the Shadow Clarkies a jury, or just a self-appointed group of deprecators of this year’s slate? I’ve lost track of how they came to be, but I don’t think they were picked for a range of opinions.
@18: I wonder whether attendees were allowed to use phones to shoot video; if so, the police story may be soundly tested.
Congrats Mr. Busiek!
[godstalk]
Al the Great and Powerful: if a jury composed of people of widely varying opinions are united in saying a story fails to meet their selection criteria, perhaps the STORY is at fault rather than the reviewers… Occam’s Razor suggest the fault lies in the story.
The Shadow Clarke jury: We are unanimous in thinking that ACACO is not one of the six best SF novels of the year and, in contrast to the other five works on the list, there is nobody among us who would make any kind of case for its inclusion on the Clarke shortlist.
There are lots of possible definitions for the word “best” (best at what? plotting, characterization, dialogue, world-building, realistic science, believable future tech, grimdark, horrifying, optimistic? some combination of these?).
Based on their reviews of other books, it’s clear that the Sharkes differ from each other on their definition of “best”. I happen to disagree with them on quite a few of the books which they said were great (Central Station is not a fucking novel! It’s a collection of barely-related stories with pasted-on links!), and I disagree that ACaCO does not meet anyone’s definition of “best”.
Occam’s Razor suggests that the Sharkes are all brilliantly intelligent and that I am a moron.
However, I choose to believe that the truth is merely that I have wildly differing tastes from most of the Sharkes, and while I find it interesting to read their opinions, I do not in any way consider them to be the designated arbiters of what is, or is not, “great SF”.
I mainly agree with the Sharke reviewers on the weaknesses of the Chambers book and its tv-like character. I also agree that it’s readable enough and a satisfying story. I don’t share their view that Clarke nominees must be of high literary quality and therefore it doesn’t belong on the list, because I’m not much invested in the Clarke award. It seems to me there’s a fair bit of popular sf out there that has similar weaknesses, and sometimes it’s on award ballots.
8): The dialogue in Icarus Montgolfier Wright is done by Ross Martin and James Whitmore.
14) I’m on the Pretentious Asshole side of the fence. The jury is past its sell-by date.
[tick]
The excellent Brian Kesinger, best known for his Otto and Victoria illustrations (and his Star Wars/Calvin and Hobbes fusion art), has launched a Kickstarter for his series of dragon drawings. I might possibly be a bit excited.
(1) TOP COMICS
Clearly the best possible example, too. 🙂
(6) SENDAK BOOK MS. REDISCOVERED
Where The Wild Things Are and (especially) In The Night Kitchen were favourites when my sisters and I were kidlets. I certainly wouldn’t mind a new/old Sendak book.
(9) LUCY LIU
Her episodes of Elementary have all been pretty good.
(12) MAJOR DEVELOPMENT
I don’t really do shooters but the style and lore of Overwatch appeals to me. I’ve been keeping an eye on it in the hopes that eventually they do something watchable or readable with it beyond little snippets. It’s been really nice to see Blizzard, which for a long time was utterly failing to do things like “implement female models for NPC races in WoW” (I counted once; it was depressing), put together a reasonably diverse cast.
(14) SHARKE REPELLENT
Hmm, did I spy a dig at the Hugo Awards?
I don’t think they’re entirely wrong about ACaCO. I also think they’re being a bit condescending.
Something can be important for being the literary equivalent of a warm mug of cocoa, depending on context and content. It might or might not have the longevity of importance one might hope for as an award winner, but I think it fits quite nicely into 2017 as an award nominee.
(13) THEY’RE PINK.
This is PRICELESS. The animated butterflies are a great finishing touch, too.
The Cards Against Humanity expansion decks are hilarious, too, especially The Period Pack.
Robert Reynolds: Thanks! Everybody belly up to the appertainment bar, the drinks are on the Wikipedia.
Nope. That sentence still doesn’t make sense but it seems to be grammatically correct.
@Camestros Felapton,
I’ll concede that it’s grammatically correct.
(1) I was looking through the graphic novels, pleased to find so many that evoked fond memories. Elfquest! Usagi Yojimbo! The kind of material cold and snotty folks are forever telling me aren’t REAL comics because there aren’t enough superheroes, which are the comics I SHOULD be reading.
Then a little lower down, in (14), I found the cold and snotty folks! I made the agonizing decision last night that ACaCO was my pick for the top of the heap because it had that emotional warmth, in stark contrast to the other entries. If none of these other books made me think, at least this one made me feel. It reminded me of Enemy Mine, which won a Hugo in its shorter form even though it didn’t have any earthshattering new SFnal truths – just a warm story about a friendship. In my mind, sometimes “emotionally affecting” can be a story’s main draw, if it’s done well. And despite all that, here are some stop-having-fun guys, eager to tell the wrongfans they’re not only getting wrongfun out of reading a wrongbook, it may not even be a book! It may not even be made of words! It may not even be insultable!
Even despite all that, I do kind of agree about Chambers’ first book not being something that pulled me in, even though I’d probably try to say it in less of a derogatory way, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s a warm book for warm people, and the cold people despise it accordingly, and are reacting with coldness because that’s what they do.
@Lurkertype – let me know if you find out where they post the finalists for the PJAB Awards. I want to avoid reading any of them to the extent possible.
(1) Interesting list. I won’t quibble with it, although there’s plenty there to quibble about. At least most of my favorites made it, including Astro City, Usagi Yojimbo and Castle Waiting. My list, if I could stand to compile one, would be considerably different, of course. But then, that’s the fun of these lists.
I don’t have a great grasp of the Clarke Awards, but I’ve been following the Shadow Clarkes just enough to not need Occam’s Razor to dissect this question. They’ve been proudly owning the Pretentious Git title from the git-go.
@Mike Glyer: My pleasure to be of service. I feel almost guilty pointing out that Wikipedia was also wrong in saying IMW won the Academy Award that year. That honor went to The Hole by John and Faith Hubley, which is also of genre interest.
I’ll go back to the corner now.
I’m up to Best Related Work in my Hugo roundups.
Really? I’ve been watching TZ for a very long time (off and on), sampled both TV revival series, saw the early ’80s movie, even reviewed the book about the aftermath of the John Landis segment (Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, & the Twilight Zone Case) for my university newspaper, and I simply cannot see how the episodes or any grouping of them can possibly constitute a “universe.”
In The Naked Gun 2 1/2, some unnamed character in one scene near the end is holding a large copy of “To Serve Man” and warning people “It’s a cookbook! It’s a cookbook!” (Just learned it was an actor from the TZ episode.) A total non sequitur, and funny as hell. I can imagine the proposed TZ movie as full of borrowed moments like that – but with all of them falling flat.
Robert Reynolds: We’ll get it right yet. Another round for everyone!
@Art @lurkertype: Guess what? Other people have different opinions from you. That doesn’t make them pretentious assholes. For my money** the Sharkes have excellent taste.
@JJ: I disagree that ACaCO does not meet anyone’s definition of “best”. But they didn’t say that – they said that it didn’t meet the definition of “best” of any of the Sharke jurors.
However, I choose to believe that the truth is merely that I have wildly differing tastes from most of the Sharkes, and while I find it interesting to read their opinions, I do not in any way consider them to be the designated arbiters of what is, or is not, “great SF”.
I doubt any of the Sharkes would disagree with that assertion.
**Literally – I’ve purchased several novels because of Sharke reviews.
PhilRM: I doubt any of the Sharkes would disagree with that assertion.
Based on things they’ve said, I do not doubt it a bit. They’ve already made it quite clear that they consider themselves arbiters of what constitutes “great SF”.
14)
I honestly wonder what Becky Chambers has done to make the Sharkes (and a certain blend of overwhelmingly British critic in general) despise her so. I mean, has she peed on the grave of Iain Banks or something? I understand that Becky Chambers’ books or not for everybody (though I like them quite a bit), but the sheer amount of vitriol hurled at Chambers from certain corners of the British SFF community (not just the Sharkes either, I saw a multiple Hugo nominated author bitch about Chambers’ Hugo nomination at Metafilter) is stunning and I’m not quite sure why they hate her books so much.
I also wonder if the Sharkes have even read the book? “Everybody is white”- Uhm, no, actually every human is some shade of brown, as The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit exhaustively explain.
Maybe there is exactly the right amount of Iain M Banks to be read. Not enough and you commit the sins of Becky Chambers, too much and you commit the heresies of Yoon Ha Lee. We all walk a tricky line. You pick up State of the Art thinking “Oh I’ll just read a couple of extra short stories – that won’t do any harm” but BLAM like a knife missile to the brain you are suddenly peppering your writing with sarcastic planetary superstructures with whimsically violent names or riting awl foneticalee lik ur a lidl kid but sooper smart for no gud reeson. Know your limits people! Small doses, carefully prescribed by your doctor, taken in moderation with food and under the observation of a capable adult.
I swear I never had any bad effects from reading Iain Banks till I got to the stuff with the “M” in the middle of his name.
What an excellently-randomly-chosen example. Thank you, sir, for that complete stroke of chance.
And it’s a darn good list, too.
I think what the Sharke jury is doing is really worthwhile – generating discussion of and engaging with current work. I doubt that I will pay too much attention to them as their tastes are definitely less mainstream than mine, but I’m happy for there to be a group of different fans having different fun.
(1) The NPR list of 100 favorite comics looks like quite the decent list, though I do note it’s heavily slanted towards US-published works. The French-Belgian comic tradition seems to be entirely missing, and the only British comics creators I found were Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (with Watchmen).
Yes, I get that the list was supposed to be “more personal and idiosyncratic”, but that still doesn’t exclude diversity in traditions and origins; rather the opposite, I’d say.
(14) I’ve been having trouble with the entire premise of the shadow Clarke jury from the beginning. No matter how you roll it, the setup will be an implied criticism of the real Clarke jury, sent to the entire world and played out over months (unlike the Not the Arthur C Clarke panels which used to be a staple of Eastercons, which were largely done for fun, by fans for fans, and were over in an hour). If they wanted to draw attention to the Clarke award itself, all they’ve done has been to make me wish the final announcement will come so their endless updates and overwrought complaining can end.
Right now, they are similar to the Puppies in that they are set and determined to set their mark on something which is fundamentally not theirs alone. If they wanted to do a public critique and overview of the state of science fiction in 2016, they could do so without tying themselves to the Clarke or any other award.
@Cora: I looked up that Metafilter thread, and must say that that was not one of Stross’s greater moments. I agree with lots of his criticism (though I don’t view it as deal-breaking), but it’s criticism of “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet”, not “A Closed and Common Orbit”.
(18) Cosplayers are the new furries? I do note that the swingers are considered less notable than cosplayers too.
The “M” is there as a warning 🙂
16: I’m just dropping by to post this excerpt from Finn’s vampire novel Honor at Stake without personal comment.
—
“You’re looking at intercepts going to Kojo Annan,” Demers answered him.
“Son of former Secretary-General Ko? Annan? Of the UN?”
“The same. He ran the old oil-for-food program‘ You’ve heard of it?”
“It always sounded like a nice little racket to me, even before there were questions about the project. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was theoretically limited to selling oil that would generate enough revenue to feed the populace of Iran. Though when I last heard the numbers, there were about eighty-thousand a year starving to death in Saddam’s little hellhole. Between everything we heard before and after Saddam fell, my bet is it was really an oil-for-money program. Considering that Saddam provided suicide bomber life insurance – $20,000 to the families of suicide bombers – as well as built himself multiple palaces designed on those ofJoseph Stalin, I never thought it took a genius to ?gure out where the cash was going. Given the ‘success’ of the program, you’re looking at Kojo Annan because he’s incompetent?”
“Look at the cover sheet for the wire taps.”
Merle leaned forward, grabbed the thick ?le in front of him, and ?ipped open to the raw data page. The dates went back a decade The incoming calls seems to indicate that there was one man who was a frequent caller to Kojo Annan, someone named Marc Rich.
Merle frowned “Marc Rich? Don’t I know him?”
“White collar criminal?” she supplied “Stole a few billion? Lived with the Swiss? Died a few years ago?”
“Oh, him. The last time I heard of that twit, he was getting a pardon from Bill Clinton. Aside from that, I’ve not heard much news coming out of Switzerland since that business with the Nazi bankers.”
[…]
Merle gave Demers an inscrutable little smile “So, you want me to look into Kujo while I’m at this?”
“One thing at a time. Find who took out my guy first, and we can get to the Annan family later. And his name’s Kojo, not Kujo.”
“Oh, like Kojo the Executioner from Star Trek?”
She shook her head “That was Cronos the Executioner.”
Merle shrugged “Whatever. I at least got you to admit you know Star Trek.”
Doris V. Sutherland: I’m just dropping by to post this excerpt from Finn’s vampire novel Honor at Stake without personal comment.
After reading the blog post linked in #16 and the excerpt you’ve posted, I have 4 things to say:
1) I hope Finn does a better copyediting job on his books than he does on his blog posts;
2) It’s interesting to note that the message he got from Star Trek IV was “save the whales!” since that was not really the message of that film;
3) Finn needs to start applying his own rules to his own writing; and
4) The SFF world would have been a lot better off if Honor At Stake really had been a new Harrington novel by David Weber (yes, I’m still bitter about that). 😀
In his defence “Ko? Annan” isn’t his fault, it’s an artefact from the image-to-text converter I used, and I failed to catch it in time…
1) Nope, not my list at all. Missing out on lots if the classics, missing out on most of the international comics. No Modesty Blaise, Lonewolf and Cub, Uzumaki, Corto Maltese, Tintin? Bah.
But by coincidence, I finished Astrocity for yet another time yesterday.
They do have Lone Wolf and Cub, but Tintin is a substantial omission imho
Can I make my The Astrocity Exhibition joke again now? I mean I would, if I could remember what it was.
14) I find it very disappointing that the attempts of the Sharke group to bring real literary criticism to appraise the Clarke nominees gets them dismissed as pretentious assholes. I don’t object to light-weight space opera, but surely some of the more ambitious and challenging works are more deserving of awards.
My views are about as far from the Puppies as it is possible to be, but I have not been impressed by most of recent Hugo winners because so many have been light-weight crowd-pleasers, so it is good to see an award that does aim for more intellectually stimulating work.
For the record, my taste runs to Chris Priest, Adam Roberts, Gwyneth Jones and Nina Allan, none of whom are very popular in the US. Maybe that makes me a pretentious asshole as well.
If he’s read 11 or more Culture novels, that’s too much Iain M. Banks.
Allan Lloyd: For the record, my taste runs to Chris Priest…
And this is one of the things that I find so bizarre, that the Sharkes (Nina Allan aside) are so enamored of Priest. The two books I’ve read by him are what I would call SF-Lite.
In that case, please please please give me too much Iain M. Banks! I want to live in a timeline that’s got 11 or more Culture books.
‘I want to live in a timeline that’s got 11 or more Culture books.’
‘So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the Banks that have been given to us.’
(I do miss him so.)
1) It’s nice to see Zita the Spacegirl getting some love, but I was bemused to see not one underground cartoonist on the list. You’d think at least Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby would’ve made an NPR-oriented list. But no. Not a one of them. It’s a list of its time, I suppose. Aren’t they all?
I’ve read some of the Sharke reviews, including the stuff about ACaCO, and found them, well, interesting but not always convincing… especially when it comes to that particular book.
I’ve said it before, but it seems it will bear repeating: light does not necessarily mean lightweight, and just because Chambers is not all obviously-dark-and-gritty-and-deadly-serious, that does not mean she is not quietly making points and raising questions that deserve serious consideration. The light tone, in fact, makes it easier to slip these points into the reader’s mind (or this reader’s mind, anyway.)
I didn’t much care for The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – I thought it was too loose and too unstructured. But ACaCO is a much tighter, better shaped book, and it’s a much better book (in my opinion) than its predecessor as a result.
Now, nobody’s obliged to like a particular book, and nobody’s required to agree with me about it… but the Sharke reviews of this one have not just been negative, they’ve been openly dismissive, and that seems to me to be a vice, in a critic. You can’t just look at it and say eh, this is feel-good and not-serious, the people who like it are all probably Farscape fans like the writer, it’s not worth serious consideration. Every time I’ve seen criticism along those lines, I’ve gone back to the book and looked at it, and thought to myself, “no, this thing actually does have serious things to say, and it manages to say them effectively, at least for me.”
Obviously, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But the Sharkes are, I think, positioning themselves as people who want to be taken seriously – they are saying, in effect, “look at us, we are bright and informed enough to second-guess the judges of a significant literary award, we are ‘proper’ critics with the critical and academic chops to do this.” They’re not like me, an aimless person bloviating quietly on a virtually unread personal blog. So, well, I feel it’s right to make my assessment of them in their capacity as critics.
And I think they’re falling down, at least on this one. Not because they don’t like ACaCO – as I said, they’re not required to – but because they don’t seem to be giving it sufficient thought and consideration. I would expect better from people who are setting themselves up as serious critics.
… Oh, well. Turning to other matters: that Declan Finn sample is an entertainment in its own right, isn’t it? Has anyone told him that Star Trek character’s name was Kodos?
Steve Wright: Has anyone told him that Star Trek character’s name was Kodos?
I assure you that you must be wrong, sir. As Finn will tell you himself, he does his research.
@ Steve Wright
Very well said. “What is a person” is one of the best questions literature can pursue.
(16) Ah, so DF dislikes books and movies that have messages that he dislikes. Glad to have that clear. I think I take LeGuin a lot more seriously in a discussion of “message fiction”.
10)
And of course I see this a day after I see a rumor that the standalone Batman movie will be an origin story.
As I have said on twitter, I’m not precisely sick of superhero origin stories–but I am sick of the same ones over and over. Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Unless you are going to do something interesting (c.f. Red Son), why do we need a whole movie talking about the origin of the hero yet again.
@JJ re Priest: I definitely think of him as very much in the literary end of the SF pool.
“which will include elements of The Twilight Zone universe.”
Twilight Zone universe?
I remember there was a New Outer Limits episode, near the end of its run, where they had tried to knit together a bunch of previous episodes into being in a common history, so that this capstone episode was a bit of a clip show. (googling: Final Appeal). Some further googling suggests that other Outer Limits episodes tried to do the same thing.
@Steve Wright: Oddly enough, the “Cronos the Executioner” exchange turns up again later on in the book:
“Lemme guess, food-for-oil?”
Merle Kraft smiled. “Wow, that wasn’t even hard, was it?”
“Hell no, that’s the only thing Kujo did that’s worth mentioning to a man like Rich.”
“His name’s Kojo, not Kujo.”
“Oh, like Kojo the Executioner from Star Trek?”
“That was Cronos the Executioner.”
She smiled. “Whatever.”
These are the days when Merle remembered why they got married.
(I’m honestly unsure if this was a deliberate running gag or if he just forgot that he’d already written that piece of dialogue.)