Six stories, two advertisements disguised as news, and a charming science video make up today’s Scroll.
(1) What happens when you delegate your online transactions to a program that becomes annoyed by your laziness? Rudy Rucker provides an imaginative answer in “Like A Sea Cucumber”, a free read on Motherboard. [Via SF Signal.]
(2) Bill Willingham’s Fables is coming to an end reports Jim Vorel on Paste.com.
The closure of Fables with the Fables: Farewell trade paperback on July 22 will be the end of an era in the comics industry, the rightly deserved and satisfying conclusion to a singular, ongoing story rivaled by only a handful of other titles. Fables is retiring on par with say, Vertigo stablemate The Sandman in both critical adoration (a ridiculous 14 Eisner Awards) and commercial success, an immediate entrant into the comics hall of fame. Not bad for a series at least partially inspired by The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, by Willingham’s own admission.
(3) Frequent File 770 commenter Nicole LeBoeuf-Little educates Examiner.com readers about the Hugos in an article which includes a deep dive into the question “Why would anyone vote No Award? Isn’t that like nuking the Hugos or something?” Five reasons are given, one being a voter’s personal desire to overrule the Hugo Administrator —
Protest a finalist’s placement on the ballot due to eligibility. The award administrators do try to identify ineligible finalists and remove them from the ballot, but not every voter will agree with their assessment. For instance, two of this year’s finalists in the Novella category, “Big Boys Don’t Cry” by Tom Kratman and “One Bright Star to Guide Them” by John C. Wright, were actually first published earlier than 2014. However, the 2014 versions were considered to have been substantially revised and expanded from the originals and thus qualified as new works. A voter who disagrees with that assessment might well choose to rank No Award above those novellas. For another example: Last year, the 14-book Wheel of Time series was nominated in its entirety under “Best Novel,” having been ruled to be a multi-part serialized single work. A number of voters disagreed, and ranked No Award higher.
….Point is, No Award should not be considered a destructive option. It is a tool of dissent with which voters have been intentionally empowered. Use it, or not, as your conscience, heart, and/or whim dictates. The health of the Hugo Awards will be undiminished either way.
(4) Michael Z. Williamson, for one, will be exercising the nuclear option as he told his readers on July 13:
I have just voted NO AWARD across the board for the Hugo awards, including the category in which I am a finalist.
At one time, the Hugo WAS arguably the most significant award in SF, with the Nebula being the pro award with a different cachet.
The Nebula lost any credibility when it was awarded to If You Were An Alpha Male My Love, which was not only eyerollingly bad Mary Sue, but wasn’t SF nor even an actual story. If that’s what the pros consider to be worthy of note, it indicates a dysfunction at their level….
This was my choice. I am not telling my fans not to vote for me. If you feel my work is worthy, by all means vote for it. Just understand that if I win, it will be subject to the same scathing derision I give to any and all social and political issues. It deserves no less.
(5) Vox Day still opposes voting No Award in 2015 for tactical reasons:
Also, and more importantly, not voting No Award permits us to correctly gauge the full extent of the SJW influence in science fiction and see how it compares to the current strength of the Sad and Rabid Puppies. That’s my chief interest in this year’s vote, because it will inform the strategy that we pursue in the future. Remember, we haven’t even begun to finance “scholarships” in the way the other side has. Our 2015 numbers do not reflect the full extent of the force we can bring to bear.
(6) Alex, of Randomly Yours, Alex, the opposite of a no award voter, is struggling with a decision about ranking “Hugo Awards: the novellas” for reasons that may be completely unique:
“The Plural of Helen of Troy,” John C Wright: ready for me to get actually controversial? I’m not sure about this one.
That’s right. I actually liked this story and would consider putting this on my ballot. But it was published by Castalia House, and that sound you just heard? That was my politics running smack bang into my reading enjoyment.
The story is told backwards; another PI, this time working in a city outside of time somehow – I’m generally quite capable of reading time travel stories without the paradoxes doing too much to my brain, as a rule, although I know that’s not possible for many readers. (What can I say, it’s a gift. Like reading Greg Egan science.) He’s contracted to help a man whose girlfriend (?) is apparently going to be attacked by someone, and they have to stop it. Of course things get messier than that, and there are iterations and variations as the story progresses (…which means going backwards…). There are some neat moments – I was quite amused by the realisation of who the man and the ‘Helen’ were, and some funny enough moments of these people completely out of their times living together. Including Queequeg. QUEEQUEG LIVES.
Anyway. Now I have to figure out how to vote in the novellas and it HURTS. I’ve got a couple of weeks, right? I can figure it out in that time…
(7) Attendees at Pulpfest in August will receive The Pulpster, the con’s feature-laden program book.
The highlight of the issue will be a round-robin article on H. P. Lovecraft and WEIRD TALES. It will feature contributions from filmmaker Sean Branney; Marvin Kaye, the current editor of WEIRD TALES W. Paul Ganley, founder of WEIRDBOOK, and Derrick Hussey, the publisher at Hippocampus Press; authors Jason Brock, Ramsey Campbell, Cody Goodfellow, Nick Mamatas, Tim Powers, Wilum Pugmire, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Darrell Schweitzer, and Chet Williamson; poet Fred Phillips; pulp scholars and collectors John Haefele, Don Herron, Morgan Holmes, S. T. Joshi, Tom Krabacher, Rick Lai, Will Murray, and J. Barry Traylor.
Supporting members are also guaranteed a copy. Or following the convention, a limited number of copies of the program book will be available for purchase through Mike Chomko, Books which can be reached at [email protected].
Nick Mamatas would want you to!
(8) The Easton Press is taking orders for Douglas Adams’ The Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy —
Five complete novels and one story, together in one volume… “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.” With over 15 million copies sold, the Hitchhiker’s Series ranks among the best-loved works of science fiction. Features 5 specially commissioned original full-color illustrations!
All these gilt-edged editions remind me too much of the Bible…. A resemblance Douglas Adams would probably enjoy, in an ironic way.
(9) Finally, I enthusiastically recommend “The Scale of the Solar System,” linked in comments earlier today:
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Fascinating! Some of the foregoing makes little sense, but it’s fascinating nonsense!
Paradoxically Fables ending might make me start reading it again. I lost interest along the way but a definite end means I might check out the later volumes.
I’d say Bill Willingham has come pretty far since his days as an illustrator for early editions of the Champions RPG. Even pretty far since his days as creator of Elementals.
Also, and more importantly, not voting No Award permits us to correctly gauge the full extent of the SJW influence in science fiction and see how it compares to the current strength of the Sad and Rabid Puppies. That’s my chief interest in this year’s vote, because it will inform the strategy that we pursue in the future. Remember, we haven’t even begun to finance “scholarships” in the way the other side has. Our 2015 numbers do not reflect the full extent of the force we can bring to bear.
As I’ve stated before, the silly little [expletive deleted] is trying to position himself to claim that any vote not “No Award” is an endorsement of his agenda.
The only people likely to buy into this bullshit, however, already have their lips firmly attached to his ass.
Compare & contrast:
“Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa
“Damage” by David D. Levine
*waves* I’m done with my summer teaching, including grades turned in and the confused student who thought he had failed the class because he misread my email assuring him I would round up one point reassured that he need not challenge the passing grade, and have flown off for a visit to my Mom in the general vicinity of Puget Sound.
I should not be grumpy that her internet is slow, her computer old, and her house located in an area that doesn’t seem to be able to pick up my Verizon internet connection, but alas, unrepentant addict that I am, I am a bit grumpy.
Anyway, lack of internet means I’m making great strides in working on overdue essays in between talks with her. In the context of one essay, I was reminded that the 2014 Nebula awards had an historic first: all the fiction prizes went to women!.
And when I came over here to see this latest post, including Michael Z. Williamson’s lament, hat gave me the pefect excuse to post the above link, and note that one of the winners was Rachel Swirsky’s story which is the proximate cause of the
heat death of the universecomplete disintegration and destrution of all of Western Civilization and also fandom.But I just want to note all the other amazing women whose medusan machinations contributed to the angst and woes and whining of the small group of straight white men who feel their world is being destroyed.
Ugh, the Plural of Helen of Troy was so bad. A fictional character is used alongside historic ones, there’s things that contradict themselves all over in the text. The detective considers telling JFK how to hold a flintlock pistol correctly but then shortly after talks about how it’s a converted automatic on the inside making the first part pointless. Helen isn’t Helen of Troy she’s Monroe and says so but then references the battle of Troy like she was there. There’s a lot of that all over the story. There were interesting ideas in there but they were buried under a pile of word compost
And what a whiny puppy he is too. On the one hand after his disgraceful ‘joke’ about a mass shooting he was lecturing everybody on how they have to respect his right to offend. On the other, he posts that protracted whine about how people called the puppies mean names and that he can only cope by despairing and No Awarding all the things he liked.
http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml
Just sharing the moment where “The Plural of Helen of Troy” not only lost me, but sent me running for the toilet.
(Not literally.)
So Michael Z. Williamson is No-Awarding his own WISDOM FROM MY INTERNET as, in part, a protest that things that aren’t SF are getting awards.
The irony is so thick it’s amazing he can breathe.
McJulie –
Hell the crux of the story was that an older JFK didn’t have the will to stop himself from going back in time and raping Marilyn Monroe because she was just too hot when she was younger.
Well. It’s from the same writer who had a ghost sarcastically suggest he’d committed suicide, a claim his wife brushes aside by pointing out he was shot seven times in the chest, and the gun’s missing. Moments later she’s begging him to tell the police he didn’t commit suicide, because she needs the insurance money.
Lady, you’re the one who pointed out that he was shot seven times in the chest and the gun’s missing. Why on Earth would the police suspect suicide?
Wow. <i Damage is fantastic. Thanks, Soon Lee.
Fascinating video about how vast space really is. In Washington, DC, adjacent to the National Mall, there’s a 1 to 10 billion scale model of the solar system. The sun is about the size of a grapefruit. About twenty steps away is the earth, about the size of a pinhead. If you calculate the distance to Alpha Centauri at that scale, it would be located somewhere in California. Like Douglas Adams wrote, space is really big!
Jim Henley: I’d say Bill Willingham has come pretty far since his days as an illustrator for early editions of the Champions RPG.
Correction: It was “Villains & Vigilantes”, not “Champions”.
Camestros Felapton : And what a whiny puppy he is too. On the one hand after his disgraceful ‘joke’ about a mass shooting he was lecturing everybody on how they have to respect his right to offend. On the other, he posts that protracted whine about how people called the puppies mean names and that he can only cope by despairing and No Awarding all the things he liked.
His whine: “The sheer, frothing, irrational vitriol aimed at us makes it clear that content will not be considered. We are Unclean, and many have stated they will not even look at our works.”
A selection of twits from MZW – just from the first page of results.
– “Q. Why won’t Obama laugh at himself? A. Because it would be racist.”
– “It’s amazing that twittards continue to imagine I give a shit what they think, or even that I read their responses.”
– “Liberals have a rape culture; Conservatives have a “shoot the rapists” culture.”
– “The problem is consent can be withdrawn at any time. Which is why I endorse ball gags.”
– “If the “liberals” keep pushing, they’ll wind up in boxcars again.”.
Gosh, I have no idea why anyone would pick on such a sterling example of morally upright manhood as Williamson, and subject him to “sheer, frothing, irrational vitriol”. It’s a complete mystery.
Eh, I tend to vote something under No Award most years. There are a couple of reasons I might. The first is quality, be it the overall work or some technical problem which ruins the entire work. The other is if it doesn’t actually fit in the category. To pick an example, I was talking with Tedd Roberts the author of Why Science is Never Settled last weekend at Congregate. We’ve been been going to the same local cons for almost a decade. I enjoyed the piece, but I’m having to place it below No Award because it just isn’t related to science fiction. It’s a science 101 article. I told him as much, and wished him luck. Despite the speculation here, it is not some shadow anti-evolution or anti-climate change piece. It is a popular science article written by someone who makes their living as a laboratory scientist.
Kurt –
When in doubt, blame elf juice of forgetfulness.
You know what? Plural of Helen of Troy could’ve been great. Except it ended up feeling just like a normal story with the chapters reversed for no particular reason. And also Martin Amis (and probably many others who I haven’t read yet) did the whole “tell-the-story-backwards” thing to much greater effect in Time’s Arrow, and without bad clichés and excruciating dialogue.
If only she’d had some in the scant time between telling him suicide was not credible and begging him to tell the cops it wasn’t suicide…
I finally finished my Hugo reading. After reading most everything else it was amazing how refreshing it was to read TGE and AS*. TGE especially just flowed, and while I had more time to read(sick day) it was so refreshing to just be able to read without running into bad writing** or characterisation walls.
*I read TBP first and really liked it too.
**The word off was used instead of from in one place, but for such a small mistake(to my mind) to be noticable is remarkable in what it says about the rest of the writing.
Well I wouldn’t call it a ‘shadow’ when it comes to contrarian views on climate changes – it directly links to pseudo-scientist Lord Monckton. It also gets very confused whenever it veers onto religion.
It also has an interesting take on Galileo:
Which is an interesting take on having ones books banned and placed under house arrest for the rest of ones life.
Plural of Helen of Troy was the point I couldn’t drum up the strength to finish the story.
Soon Lee: Compare & contrast: “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa, “Damage” by David D. Levine
Oh, my. Rzasa’s story suffers terribly by comparison to Levine’s.
Levine has a novel coming out — early next year? — that’s quite a lot of fun.
IF MZW felt that way about the Hugo’s, why didn’t he just decline the nomination?
His comments above just seems like a setup for him to go “Oh I *wanted* that to happen” when his book inevitably winds up below No Award.
I hope MZW read all the nominees before voting No Award. That way he will have shared the pain.
Damage has the thing Turncoat competely lacked – motivation for the protagonist’s actions
the last line of this Onion story seems particularly relevant
Not all the pain given that he presumably was one of the two people who liked Wisdom from My Netherregions (although apparently Brad T liked it more).
Ted Roberts is an actual climate change denier (it’s all cycles, apparently!), although his essay merely dog whistles in that direction.
@Camestros
Then perhaps maybe we should make him read extra JCW to make up for it or something?
He should decode the decodable text of the yarnish tales of John C Wright even as he peruses the verbs and nouns and oh so many adjectives of the drama that are the very content of the text of those yarns in which the virtuous women are not robbed of their virtuous virtue as would occur in the leftish SJW stories that lack drama by virtue of their lack of virtue and which merely ape the robust stories of conservative writings by stealing the true conservative concept of the heroic hero or the sacrificing martyr and having been edified by the morally uplifiting ethics of the moral tale he would have certainly become more edified by the virtue of the virtuous.
@Soon Lee
Thank you for Damage, that was good. I found myself comparing it more to Big Boys Don’t Cry for the elements of creating an AI for combat.
@Camestros
Bravo!
Correction: It was “Villains & Vigilantes”, not “Champions”.
As I recall, he also had some illustrations in the 1st edition AD&D manuals.
All this talk of Bill Willingham leaves me wondering again, just why he wasn’t conservative enough for the puppies to have nominated him. OK, so he isn’t exactly overlooked, but given that they had four empty slots.
I find it hilarious that Williamson thinks “No Awarding” the complete crap the Puppies wedged onto the Hugo ballot will be regarded by anyone other than the Puppies as “nuking” the Hugos. No, voting to let the shitty Puppy works actually win would be “nuking” the Hugos.
It is also funny when he complains about If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, when that one story is better than everything the Puppies have nominated during the entire three-year existence of their silly campaign, combined.
All I think anyone needs to know about Michael Z. Williamson is that picture of himself in fascist black, holding a silenced pistol, looking especially smug. Overcompensation turned up to eleven.
As A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven put it:
“This is the Universe. Big, isn’t it?”
For all of the other things you can criticize Williamson for, he is not a fascist. Black is common enough that the association is a stretch at best. He is an actual ideological Libertarian (as opposed to a cryptofascist hiding behind the language of Libertarian), for all of the good and bad that brings with it.
He is an actual ideological Libertarian (as opposed to a cryptofascist hiding behind the language of Libertarian), for all of the good and bad that brings with it.
Sort of. Like most internet libertarians, MZW’s understanding of libertarianism is quite weak. He tends to veer towards fascism on a regular basis, mostly because he doesn’t understand the ideology he claims to espouse.
What’s the point of freedom if you can’t dress as a fascist and intimidate people with your penis substitute?
Kurt Busiek –
True she would’ve had to ingest it between breaths somehow. Both it and Plural of Helen were odd attempt at the noir style. Less neo-noir and more flatus-noir.
He has some interesting ideas trapped in his stories though. Like I want to know more about how a spirit could testify about the manner of his own death to the police, is this a routine thing in this world, what’s the legal recourse for a an undead spirit which I’d assume would no longer have rights once deceased, and so on. The idea of a spirit giving a deposition that he shot himself seven times is far more entertaining of an idea than anything else that occurs.
@NickPheas:
Nick. Nick, Nick, Nick. Nick!
Is Bill Willingham Brad Torgersen’s friend? Is he published by Castalia House? The answers are “Apparently no” and “No.” Your confusion may thus be easily resolved.
To be sure She-Hulk already covered legal testimony from ghosts in the Superhuman Law arc a few years ago. So John G, Wright was scooped by an SJW comic.
Ok, wow, Damage was incredible. I think I finally have a stick to measure Hugo nominees to. Actually, to beat them with this year, but hopefully, going forward, it will actually be a measuring stick. Also, it’s definitely going to be on my list of nominees next year. And then, as before, I attempted the slippery, crap covered slope of Turncoat. And again, I left. Life is too short to waste on garbage like that.
Also, that size of the solar system video was amazing. Thank you.
I think the MZW photo is his attempt to look like a James Bond type character. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even reach Maxwell Smart levels.
Aaron said
Indeed, it’s very weak. Most of what he’s learned of libertarianism has been from other folks at the Bar.
Willamson recently outed himself as a racist oaf.
Quite hard to square that with being a genuine libertarian.
Freedom of thought and autonomy for all ..but especially white people !
Actually, MZW’s racism dates back a lot further; it was blatantly displayed in November 2009, right after Barack Obama was first elected. Since it was only on the Bar, it was easier to overlook.
He’s a libertarian in the common Internet definition, a conservative who smokes pot and is not religious
American libertarianism is fundamentally not about human rights as most other people would use the concept – it’s about the rights of property-owning entities, and protecting the ability of property-owning entities to engage in potentially profitable activity is the heart of it.