(1) WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS. Adam-Troy Castro links to his post “This Community We Love is Infested With Toxic Spoiled Brats” with this comment: “The object of a fandom you don’t care about is not a deadly infection to be wiped out on general principle. Fandoms can cross-pollinate. Interests can cross-pollinate.The things you ‘don’t give a shit about’ are not invaders you need to exterminate. Most to the point, you can get through your day without being a dick.”
Ed Sheeran, who is a fan of Game of Thrones, who got cast because he openly begged the producers to give him a bit part and had a nice little scene written for him, a scene that added texture to the story and even you hated it took up only three minutes of your life, has had to shut down his twitter feed because Game of Thrones fans have invaded in force, showering him with abuse because they are irate that the focus of another fandom has invaded theirs. They accuse him of ruining the show and stress that they don’t give a shit about his music, which sucks anyway.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
This community we love is infested with toxic, spoiled brats.
(2) CLARKE ALLEGATIONS. Jason Sanford and Paul Cornell are among those tweeting a link to Vice’s article “We Asked People What Childhood Moment Shaped Them the Most” which contains a first-hand account of abuse by an unnamed science fiction writer in Sri Lanka who they (logically) identify as Clarke.
The teller of the story, Peter Troyer, today is a performer with Tinder Tales in Toronto. His section of the Vice article begins —
I grew up in Sri Lanka. My dad was doing some work for the Canadian government. There were a lot of expat kids in my area and we had free reign of the neighbourhood. Our parents mostly let us do what we wanted, but we were told to stay away—never go near—a large property that bordered my house. When we asked why the reasons were always vague.
There were some rumors that someone very famous or maybe powerful lived there. We all got the sense that he was …a danger in some way. One day I was home sick from school. My grandfather was visiting from Canada and he was assigned to watch me. I remember that I was in pajamas. We were in the backyard and my grandfather was painting peacocks. Out of our hedges this man appeared and approached us. I instantly knew it was the man from the property. …
(3) TWO OR MORE. Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison include several “dream teams” among the authors of “Five SFF Books Written Collaboratively”, discussed at Tor.com.
The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson
What happens when two masters of the cyberpunk genre put their heads together? Surprisingly, not more cyberpunk. Instead, what emerged was this unusual novel that posited an alternate version of Victorian England. Here, experiments by Charles Babbage resulted in a successful early mechanical computer and a very different industrial revolution. Starring airships, spies, courtesans and even Ada Lovelace, the dense and complex story revolves around the search for a set of powerful computer punch cards.
Sound familiar? Not surprising: this collaboration helped bring the relatively obscure steampunk genre to wider popular notice and launched a thousand steam-powered airships and clockwork monsters.
(4) WHO KNEW? Apparently “ruining” Doctor Who is actually part of the show’s long and respected tradition. Steve J. Wright explains in “Writ in Water, not Set in Stone: Doctor Who backstory”.
…Then William Hartnell became too infirm to continue with the series, and the big change happened, at the end of “The Tenth Planet”. An exhausted First Doctor is found lying on the floor of the TARDIS, and when his companions flip him over onto his back (instead of sensibly leaving him in the recovery position), the TARDIS dematerialization SFX plays, and the Doctor’s face seems to brighten and glow… and the screen whites out, and instead of William Hartnell, there’s Patrick Troughton.
The regeneration is not really explained, at this point. “It’s part of the TARDIS; without it, I couldn’t go on.” The first Doctor’s ring with the blue stone no longer fits; is it some sort of prop that the Doctor no longer needs? The Doctor initially appears confused and disoriented, but when he’s settled down, it’s apparent that this is not just a younger version, this is a whole different personality – more impish, more madcap, but also capable of great passion and commitment; the Second Doctor throws himself into situations with much more zeal and energy than the austere First.
He also becomes more obviously different.…
(5) CENTS AND SENSIBILITY. Don’t tell John C. Wright — “Author Jane Austen featured on new British 10-pound note”.
Two hundred years to the day after Jane Austen died, a new 10-pound note featuring an image of one of England’s most revered authors has been unveiled – right where she was buried.
At the unveiling Tuesday of the new “tenner” at Winchester Cathedral in southern England, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the new note celebrates the “universal appeal” of Austen’s work.
Austen, whose novels include “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma” and “Sense and Sensibility,” is considered one of the most perceptive chroniclers of English country life and mores in the Georgian era. Combining wit, romance and social commentary, her books have been adapted countless times for television and film.
The new note, which is due to go into circulation on Sept. 14, is printed on polymer, not paper.
(6) SHADOW CLARKE PROCEEDINGS. Mark-kitteh sent these links with a note, “The essay by Kincaid (the second one) asks some genuinely interesting questions about the purpose of awards and the meaning of ‘best’, although he does feel the need to end it with the now-traditional bashing of Becky Chambers.”
Of all the novels on my personal Shadow Clarke shortlist, Martin MacInnes’s Infinite Ground was the one I anticipated having most difficulty in writing about, partly because of its incredibly complex structure, but mostly because I wasn’t at all sure I actually had a critical language I could bring to bear on it in a way that might make sense to a reader. Back when I was compiling my personal shortlist of Shadow Clarke books, ploughing through the opening sections of each title on the submissions list, of all of the eighty-odd titles this was the one that felt ‘right’ to me. That is, this is the one that immediately held my attention, the one I would have sat down and read cover to cover right there and then if I had not had to send away for a copy.
I have been associated with science fiction awards ever since I was approached to administer the Hugo Awards for the 1987 Worldcon. In the years since then I have won and lost awards, I have administered them, judged them, handed them out, written about them, and even (in the case of the Clarke Award) helped to create them. Now, another first, I have taken part in a shadow jury. And the result of all that: I probably know less now about the purpose and function and value of awards than I ever did.
Well that’s not quite true. There are some awards, like the Tiptree which I helped to judge in 2009, that have a very specific remit: in the case of the Tiptree it is the exploration of issues of gender. I find it instructive that the Tiptree Award often identifies novels and stories that I, personally, consider to be among the best in the year; but choosing the best, as such, is not what the Tiptree Award is about.
For the vast majority of awards, however, that one word, “best”, explains all and explains nothing. “Best” is the prison cell that most awards have entered knowingly and from which they cannot escape.
In terms of a reading experience, the past six months has been unusual, to say the least. Between the publication of the Clarke submissions list in mid February, and the imminent announcement of the winner in late July, I have read and reviewed not only the titles on my personal shortlist and the official Clarke shortlist, but also as many of other Sharkes’ personal choices and interesting outliers as time has allowed. I don’t think I’ve ever consumed so much science fiction in a single stretch – a chastening experience in and of itself – and I have learned plenty along the way, not least how misguided some of my own initial choices turned out to be, how much we all – as readers, writers and critics – tend to fall back on untested assumptions. I have learned more than a little about the difficulties and compromises involved in serving on an award jury, how every argument provides a counter-argument, how every book selected will point to three that are lost, how it is impossible to arrive at a meaningful decision without reading or at least sampling every submission.
Most of all, I have been reminded of how multifarious and diverse is the art of criticism. When it comes to assessing works of literature, there is no universal standard for excellence, no unified ideological approach, no such thing as objectivity. We each come to the process heavily laden with baggage, some of which we cannot set aside because it is enshrined in who we are and where we come from, some of which we cling to out of habit. Part of our job as critics lies not so much in relinquishing our baggage but in acknowledging that it exists.
(7) THE EARLY NERD GETS THE WORM. Wil Wheaton is interviewed by Kevin Smith on a piece in IMDB called “How Wil Wheaton’s Star Trek Fandom Impacted The Next Generation”. Wheaton, interviewed by Kevin Smith, talks about how he was a Star Trek nerd on the set of TNG and was ready to answer Trek questions on the set if cast members didn’t know what was going on.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Mark-kitteh, Adam-Troy Castro, ULTRAGOTHA, Cat Eldridge, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]
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A short Scroll today — but substantial.
I have to leave for an engagement right about now.
[Blogstalk!]
The Austen note is on polymer rather than paper? Fascinating!
Here in 1101, I’m trying to avoid being “conscripted” into the Crusade.
You know, whatever else you may think about Castro, he’s not wrong about the overreaction from GoT fans.
The Churchill £5 note, issued last September, is also a polymer note. Can’t say I really like it, but I rarely handle fivers these days – you only get them from my local ATM if you ask for £5 or £10, otherwise they dispense twenties and a couple of tenners. I either use my phone or coins for small purchases – the only problem being that my office’s snack vending machine still doesn’t take the new £1 coin, and the old ones are being withdrawn in October!
I’m seeing comments suggesting the time machine is working again…Yes! It is! I’m posting from 2777, where Becky Chambers’s oeuvre is properly valued for its excellence, and no longer a favorite literary punching bag.
1) I really can’t understand the mindset of these people, how does this ruin the show?
In 3449, we still don’t know what awards are for but we keep having them anyway.
I’m posting from the alternate timeline where Ada Palmer found a British publisher and in which the Sharke jury is too busy discussing TLTL to do more than briefly and dismissivly mention Chambers.
Back in the days when the accusations against Clarke were being vehemently denied, I met a friend of a friend at a birthday party in a pub. I don’t remember his name but I do remember that he had witnessed some clearly and grossly inappropriate behavior during a signing session. I listened to his story and I believed him (he sounded genuinely horrified), but I also knew how problematic it is to refer to second hand testimony. I was and remain heartbroken.
Attempt 2:
(1) WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
I haven’t watched the episode yet (so no spoilers please), but good grief, the world is full of immature people. Can people please grow up?
(3) TWO OR MORE.
“Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett was only added as a bonus extra? I would have put it at (near) the top. (But I’m not going to call Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison jerks just because I disagree with them. [See (1)])
(4) WHO KNEW?
Good article Steve.
(OK, I just revealed the word that got my previous attempt held in moderation. Will be more careful in future. Apparently in the year 7731 4##&@/3 is still a swearword.)
Brendan: You know, whatever else you may think about Castro, he’s not wrong about the overreaction from GoT fans.
Castro’s very strongly opinionated and every once in a while he goes slightly over the top, but in my opinion, he’s almost always right whenever he comments on things.
Your comment sure makes me wonder about you, though. 🙄
6) Well, that certainly has relieved me from having to pay attention to anything Paul Kincaid writes or says going forward.
Just found out elseweb that Jordin didn’t make it. Left us this afternoon.
My sympathy to Mary Kay.
@Jeff R Too Like the Lightning got a UK release earlier this month from Head of Zeus! I’m not sure I need any Sharke discussion of it in this timeline, however.
In the year 81, we know all about Zeus bringing the lightning.
(6) We could change it to “Outstanding Achievement in”.
I’d kinda like the Hugos to do that.
All the supportive thoughts to Mary Kay.
Here in 1206, we’re all getting pretty excited about this “sugar” thing that’s just been imported.
(1) WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS
I thought it was a very sweet thing to do for Maisie Williams, and it sounded like it was a nice touch of not-endless-misery-and-stress in Arya’s storyline. (Although I haven’t seen the episode. Or any other episode. I have an excellent streak of not-watching-GoT and I’m not breaking it now.)
I share the suspicion that it might be to do with the disproportionate dislike that gets aimed at artists and media that are popular with girls and young women.
(2) CLARKE ALLEGATIONS
I hadn’t heard the rumours. At this point, after the results of Operation Yewtree, I really wonder what on earth was going on with people at the top of British society for decades… And whether it still is. I hope not.
I almost went on a recommendation spree for British children’s lit during the Blyton discussion (on the basis that there is so much stuff that is way better and deserves the recognition) and screeched to an abrupt halt when I remembered that William Mayne’s The Grass Rope featured pretty highly in small-me’s critical estimation, and I didn’t really think recommending him would be appropriate, considering.
(3) TWO OR MORE
My personal wish (maybe in an alternate timeline?) would be that Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson would have collaborated a few more times before his death. Definitely a power couple of children’s lit.
(Did Peter Dickinson make it over to North America?)
(4) WHO KNEW?
Oh, excellent and thorough post.
(5) CENTS AND SENSIBILITY
Apparently a few people are miffed about the choice of quote, due to the context in which it appears in the book, but I like the quote’s content enough to overlook it. 🙂 Anyway, given how prominent satire and cynicism are in her work, it seems quite appropriate to use a line which flaunts it in context.
It’s also got a new feature for blind people, according to the Beeb:
I haven’t witnessed a rehash of the ‘but the Queen is on all of them! It would be unfair not to have a man on all the notes too!’ argument yet, which I’m grateful for. Especially since I never got the impression that any of the people making it would be happy to change all the notes to have significant women on once Prince Charles (or William) ascends to the throne.
(6) SHADOW CLARKE PROCEEDINGS
I missed the start of the Sharke stuff – I hadn’t realised that they all chose their shortlists after reading only excerpts of most of the works. I’m not sure I could confidently judge much beyond writing style from a string of excerpts. Perhaps that’s a flaw in me, but given that they seem to have changed their minds after actually reading them..? Still, it wasn’t an official jury.
I’ll have to do some thinking on what criteria I use to define ‘best’, or possibly whether I think that’s a useful thing to define or simply a way of fooling yourself into thinking it can be done purely objectively. I could make a stab at what I prioritise (character development; story; ideas), but whether the same aspects of those priorities would match up to anyone else’s ‘best’ I have no idea. Certainly my least favourite Hugo nominees (that aren’t Puppies) have won Best Novel since I started voting. 🙂
Chambers didn’t knock my socks off, but she seems to have removed a fair number of socks belonging to other people. Subjective opinions are subjective. At this point her work has spent enough time as a punching bag that I’d be more interested in hearing about what exactly about it removed those socks.
(7) THE EARLY NERD GETS THE WORM
Oh man, I can relate. I was extreeemely touchy about canon changes in my mid- to late-teens.
Paul Kincaid – Wow, I lead a sheltered life. I had not known that Becky Chambers bashing was such a thing. And to confirm the Puppy complaints to write you picked your four “best” and then decided you needed women writers and added two you hadn’t read…
1) I don’t like Rihanna, but I’m not going to have a fit, because she allegedly puts in an appearance in Valérian and the City of the Thousand Planets. Besides, Ed Sheeran isn’t even the first pop star to get a bit part in Game of Thrones. One of the musicians/archers during the Red Wedding was someone from Cold Play, for example.
I also don’t get the Ed Sheeran hate in general. His music is completely inoffensive, so why hate him?
2) Ugh.
6) The Sharkes really can’t get over their hatred for Becky Chambers, can they? Judging by their reactions, you’d think the official Clarke jury had nominated JCW.
Here in 4605, we’re convinced that Becky Chambers was one of the great literary geniuses of the early 21st century, have no idea who the Sharkes even were and why we should care and are currently debating whether a cyborg horse is an appropriate choice to play the 47th Doctor.
@Meredith:
I’ve never had any problems finding Peter Dickinson’s work here in the US and I’ve enjoyed it for many years.
Here in 6069, we still enjoy this remarkable thing called “chocolate” which, combined with “sugar”, is quite a treat!
On Short Story Squee and Snark, we’re discussing Kelly Robson’s “We Who Live in the Heart,” an SF story whose society lives inside space whales. Should be an interesting one – come share your thoughts with us!
1) It’s not just that a lot of fans are awful, it’s that major social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have no workable moderation policy to limit trolls and harassers. They give pretty much free reign to neo-Nazis and Internet stalkers, while suspending victims when they snap and cuss out their harassers. It is in short, an environment tailor made to be toxic.
@Easter Lemming: Wow, I lead a sheltered life. I had not known that Becky Chambers bashing was such a thing.
Admittedly I’m biased because I work with the neuro-atypical, but I really liked how Chambers handled the AI’s process of discovery and difficulties. I also thought it was tightly and expertly written. Claity and simplicity can also require its own talent.
I also think certain critics get too enamored of complexity and subtlety to the point of obfuscation. Naming no names.
(6) and @Mark:
Chambers-bashing aside, Kincaid’s approach to “best” is alien to my own. Statements like “I thought they were best without having to ask myself what I meant by best” seem self-contradictory to me; you can’t say “this book is good” without saying good at what.
I firmly believe that any judgement of a book or a story needs to ask “What is this book attempting to achieve?”. And once it’s able to answer that, the follow-up questions are “How well does it succeed at its goal?” and “How does that goal and achievement stack up against other goals and achievements?”. Of course you aren’t comparing apples to apples; stories can do any of a million different things, and being able to identify and delineate what it is that you’re judging is the fundamental job of a fiction reviewer.
(As such, the repeated inability to comprehend the popularity of A Close and Common Orbit is something I see as an admission of failure, not a profession of high standards. “I hated it, for excellent reasons” could be high standards; “I don’t understand how anybody could possibly consider this notable although empirically a whole lot of other people do” is a personal failure.)
I really like Nina Allen’s piece, though. “How every argument provides a counter-argument, how every book selected will point to three that are lost.” Lines like “This book has never been top of my list of favourites, but that doesn’t prevent me from appreciating it for what it did do” represent exactly the approach that’s Kincaid seems not to be aware he’s missing. And her references to “the Atwood spot” and “the tech-y, slightly gonzo one (on the shortlist)” give a clear picture of what Allen is looking for in a “good” shortlist — not the six “best” by some clear yardstick, but rather a spread of notable, laudable works in different areas, that succeed at different things.
She also mentions a Clarke-shortlisted book which “although most of us found it to be an enjoyable reading experience, we can’t understand what led the Clarke jury to single it out for special attention”. Which I feel is very telling, and goes back to the idea of “enjoyable” vs. “award-worthy” — if ten different books are popular and successful and good and enjoyable in pretty much the same way, I think there’s a good argument to be made that none of them are award-worthy. Firstly, because while they did things well (and perhaps very very well indeed), it seems they didn’t do something unusual, unfamiliar, exceptional — doing familiar things well is fantastic but not (YMMV…) what an award is attempting to highlight. And secondly, if you do consider them award-worthy — that would seem that you consider all ten award-worthy, and if they’re indeed all pretty much comparable, choosing a meaningful winner would be impossible.
I think part of the Sharke conceptual struggle they are having, is that they want to see a direction for SF aesthetically – less trivial than what is the fashion but a similar sense of the genre moving on and hence on to somewhere. I.e. a view that fits the way of describing the history of creative discipline in terms of movements. If you shoe-horn current SF into that view than Chambers either doesn’t fit at all or would seem frightening if you aren’t enamoured to her style.*
I think that is an error. There isn’t a ‘movement’, there isn’t a common set of aesthetics** to what is new and interesting in SF right now. There is an expansion instead – change on multiple fronts and multiple directions, particularly in the who & where of SF writing.
What have Too Like the Lightning and a Close and Common Orbit got in common other than overly long titles? Not much.
*[which I’m not but it doesn’t alarm me either]
**[maybe at the broadest level, e.g. more fantasy, more multi-volume works but even then I’m not so sure]
I probably voted for the Chambers book at least partially in backlash against the bashing.
The main reason I voted for it was that I hate bodyswapping stories (traumatized as a child by Jack Chalker’s Well World series?) because they treat mind and body as separate components that can be swapped around, and I think that’s closer to religion than science fiction. Just a personal opinion, but a strong one. And this was an AI-gets-a-body story, ugh. I almost wasn’t going to read it at all due to that, but it was reasonably priced, and once I got started I liked the counterpart story of little clone Jane growing up with Owl the screenbound AI.
Then I got to the tattoo scene, where the embodied AI actually addresses the whole mind-body dichotomy thing, while making a symbolic comment about tattoos being the space where they intersect. Coincidentally, I was having a tattoo adventure right at that moment, involving covering up a tattoo with another tattoo, and I had that brief cosmic flash of entering a different mind that happens to be pondering the same subject.
And since I always do what the synchronicity tells me to do, I voted for Chambers. And yeah, there was backlash too, so I guess we can start the counter backlash any time.
@Standback
Allen’s account of her shortlist having “spots” is a bit at odds with her earlier talk about a shortlist needing a cohesive theme, isn’t it? (Something that Kincaid also touches on) I do think “spots” is a bit more realistic and in line with what might actually happen in a juried award – a jury can decide that two books effectively fill the same space and there’s no need to list them both, whereas a voted system will end up with both if they’re popular. And similarly a jury can decide they ought to hold one or two spots for the unusual or experimental works that might not otherwise get looked at – again, a laudable thing for a juried award to do IMO. She’s yet to develop any argument about why the Clarke Award ought to do any of those things, but it’s at least an interesting POV.
I thought that Kincaid kicked off an interesting question – what is “best”? I’m not sure there’s a definition available that isn’t individual and personal, but I did find something resonated with my own approach as he talked about looking for the “new”. I think that all other things being equal, the book that pushes at a boundary or two and leaves me thinking is the book that I’d choose as “best”. However, it seems like Kincaid takes it further than I would, as he then says “newness is always disturbing”, develops that into “challenging” and then basically concludes that popular genre books like Chambers therefore can’t be “best”, at which point I sigh.
I’d hew much closer to what you say – look at what a book is trying to achieve and how well it does so – does it do something fresh and interesting within its goals?
(Random musing – would “stands out” be a more interesting term to use than “best” in these discussions?)
I am so sorry to hear that Jordin is gone. May his memory be a blessing to Mary Kay.
I knew nothing about Ed Sheehan, but I saw the episode just a few hours ago, so I was aware of the controversy while watching it.
Really, it seems to me that after the singing, he mostly has a non speaking role, and I’m utterly unable to understand what is the problem.
4) Fandom classic: The 45 Deaths Of Doctor Who
(I hope it wasn’t posted in comments of an earlier Pixel Scroll already =))
OLeg89: The 45 Deaths Of Doctor Who
People have suggested it be updated, but I’ll leave that task to someone else.
I sense a project for Steve J. Wright here. 😀
(2) CLARKE ALLEGATIONS
It’s a day since I originally saw this, and I still don’t have any coherent reaction beyond a sense of great sadness.
(3) TWO OR MORE
Sometimes collaborations really get a “more than the sum of their parts” effect. One that sticks in my mind for some reason is Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts from when I read a whole lot of epic fantasy. Feist was a good storyteller but clunky writer, and Wurts had the craft but nothing of hers I tried really stuck with me.
That particular book seemed to combine only their good qualities, and it was a real favourite of mine. I hesitate to revisit it though, as the suck fairy is likely to have visited since then.
(4) WHO KNEW?
This is a great piece by Steve.
(5) CENTS AND SENSIBILITY
These new style notes – the £5 is already in circulation – are a great example of how getting people to accept change in something ubiquitous is a fraught process and yet always the same – there was much complaining when they went to coins for £1, and complaining when they slimmed down the 10p/5p coins, and so on. (No doubt I could find evidence for complaints about the abolition of the groat if I looked hard enough)
ETA (1) WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
If I hadn’t been primed that he was appearing I wouldn’t even have realised. He just sang a bit, and there’s a small tradition of songs in GoT anyway. Sigur Ros were on the show singing The Rains of Castamere IIRC. Jerome Finn has sung, etc.
I cringed a little bit when the Ed Sheeran scene started, but it quickly turned into a Thomas Turgoose scene and that was fine by me. He’s a fantastic young actor.
3) The Difference Engine is really post-singularity fiction, of course. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise it because I wasn’t familiar with the relevant bits of Singularitarian thought.)
Although on the other hand, so many of the apparently-outlandish details turn out to have been lifted direct from primary sources that I’m halfway inclined to argue it’s a historical novel.
2) Yep, read that from Jason’s twitter feed…and my heart sank. I had years ago heard about these allegations from the mother of a friend who had done some editing for Gentry Lee back in the nineties and had picked up on it all somehow. I brushed it off, locked it away as homophobia.
1) RE: Sheeran. I didn’t know who he was and the fact that he is a musician…I could care less. I can’t understand why people hate the idea. I mean, Kylie Minogue guested on Doctor Who, for crying out loud. This is not exactly a new idea even in genre fiction and movies…
Here in 3075, the caffeine drip is not working, though. “Even in the future, nothing works!”
4) Blimey. I’m news? Must be a slow day…. Thank you very much, Mike, and everyone else who’s said kind things!
1) I will admit to being, occasionally, irritated by the prevalence of celebrity culture – the idea that, because someone can sing, or act, or tweet pictures of their bum, they are automatically more interesting than the rest of us mortals when they’re dating or baking cakes or something. (And I am convinced that someone’s actual cultural importance is inversely proportional to the number of autobiographies they’ve written.) But this occasional irritation is no good reason to tear people down, or begrudge them their moments in the sun.
2) I remember hearing some allegations made about Clarke, round about the time he was knighted… I thought they’d been investigated and found to be baseless. But I may be misremembering, or these might be other allegations entirely.
@Steve Wright: “slow news day”
Maybe this year, but 48 years ago was a very different story. (But then, I’m of the opinion that July 20 should be a national holiday in the U.S.)
He was the one that suggested the actual knighting was delayed until an investigation was carried out when things kicked off. At the time it was a story run by a tabloid with little corroborating evidence.
@Steve Wright re 4):
I think that works for non-zero values but fails if zero is included: Ulysses S. Grant is much more interesting than I am. (An exercise for the reader: Consider fractional values for people who had something to do with their autobiography short of actually writing it. Can this still be made to work? Or do we just go by book count?)
@Meredith: If you meant “Did Peter Dickinson’s children’s books make it to American?”, yes, they did. I checked out The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil’s Children a lot when I was a kid.
@P J Evans: Oh no! My condolences to Mary Kay.
If a Pixel Meet a Pixel Scrolling Through the File
Jordin’s loss is a great shock. All my sympathy to Mary Kay.
(6) It seems increasingly clear that am or nontrivial number of people including Kinkaid, find A Closed and Common Orbit very disturbing.
@Standback: As such, the repeated inability to comprehend the popularity of A Close and Common Orbit is something I see as an admission of failure, not a profession of high standards.
It’s not the popularity of ACaCO that the Sharkes don’t understand, it’s the belief that it’s award-worthy. Those are two entirely different things.
“I don’t understand how anybody could possibly consider this notable although empirically a whole lot of other people do” is a personal failure.
I don’t understand that argument at all.
@Mark: Sometimes collaborations really get a “more than the sum of their parts” effect. One that sticks in my mind for some reason is Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts from when I read a whole lot of epic fantasy.
They also had the advantage of a third unasked contributor: Profesaor M. A. R. Barker provided the setting of the novel from his RPG setting Tekumel.
@Rose I did NOT know that! The Empire felt like Feist and Wurts had read Tekumel but I had not realized it was an explicit connection.
@PhilRM: Good points, and well-put. Just to be clear, I’ve been in the “WHY IS THIS GETTING SO MUCH ATTENTION” camp any number of times. I just, well, try not to bludgeon people over the head with it. But I sure sympathize 😛
What I’m trying to point out is the difference between “I don’t consider this award-worthy” and “I don’t understand how you can consider this award-worthy.”
That may well be true; I may not understand how you consider a book award-worthy. But since the fact is that you do consider it so, saying “I don’t understand you” is pretty much the least helpful form of criticism.
“I don’t understand this other guy’s argument, therefore he is wrong” is very bad arguing. “I understand this other guy’s argument, and I disagree, for the following reasons” is A-OK, in my book.
(For the record, today’s scroll prompted me to go back and read Nina Allen’s piece on ACaCO, and I thought it was a very good one. She does, well, exactly what I advocate as good criticism — surveys the work, acknowledges its strengths, lays out her criticisms, and draws her conclusions. You can disagree with her review, sure, but that’s beside the point – a review’s quality isn’t measured by whether you agree with it, but in whether it makes a solid case and explains the reviewers’ reasoning.)
@ Rose Embolism
No wai! I love those Empire books. Obviously, Barker’s Man Of Gold has been in Mount TBR for far too long.
@Rose Embolism
I knew Feist had based his Riftwar books off a d&d campaign but I didn’t realise Tekumel been quite so explicitly, ahem, “borrowed” from.
The interesting culture was one of the best bits of those books IMO. When I read them I was tending to pick up big doorstop fantasies based in “Europe with the serial numbers filed off” so it was a bit of a breath of fresh air.
“That’s one small (god)Stalk for (a) man, one giant Scroll for Pixelkind”
Thank you for telling us about Jordin. He’s part of the community here in Seattle and we will miss him very much.
It’s not hard to understand that different people can find different works to be award-worthy. The thing that strains credulity is when a work seems so flawed that you can’t see how it got published in the first place and yet some people put it forward for an award.
This was the case with most of the Puppy nominees in 2015, for example. Stories that are plagued by awkward narration, unnatural dialogue, disbelief-busting plot elements, Mary-Sue protagonists, and have no beginning and/or no end really have no place on award ballots–particularly if they’re only there because of who the author was, not what he/she actually wrote.