(1) CLOTHING SHRINKS. NPR takes a psychological look at cosplay in “Cosplayers Use Costume To Unleash Their Superpowers”.
These cosplayers are invoking clothing’s subtle sway over us. People have used clothing to subdue, seduce and entertain for millennia. In some outfits, people not only look different, but they feel different. Psychologists are trying to figure out how clothes can change our cognition and by how much. Adam Galinsky, a psychologist at Columbia Business School, spoke with NPR’s Hanna Rosin for the podcast and show Invisibilia. Galinksy did a study where he asked participants to put on a white coat. He told some of the participants they were wearing a painter’s smock, and others that they were in a doctor’s coat.
Then he tested their attention and focus. The people who thought they were in the doctor’s coat were much more attentive and focused than the ones wearing the painter’s smock. On a detail-oriented test, the doctor’s coat-wearing participants made 50 percent fewer errors. Galinksy thinks this is happening because when people put on the doctor’s coat, they begin feeling more doctor-like. “They see doctors as being very careful, very detailed,” Galinksy says. “The mechanism is about symbolic association. By putting on the clothing, it becomes who you are.”
Almost any attire carrying some kind of significance seems to have this effect, tailored to the article as a symbol. In one study, people wearing counterfeit sunglasses were more likely lie and cheat than those wearing authentic brands, as if the fakes gave the wearers a plus to cunning. “If the object has been imbued with some meaning, we pick it up, we activate it. We wear it, and we get it on us,” says Abraham Rutchick, a psychologist at California State University Northridge.
(2) WOMAN OF MYSTERY. The LA Weekly claims to know “Why This Might be Elvira’s Last Comic-Con (as Elvira)”.
Cassandra Peterson has been playing Elvira, the self-proclaimed Mistress of the Dark and horror movie hostess, for 35 years, and she’s been attending Comic-Con as the character for longer than she can remember.
“I was going through my records trying to find the first Comic-Con I came to, and it was in the basement of some motel or hotel or something,” she says. She used to come almost every year, but this year will likely be her last, at least as Elvira. She’s here now to promote her upcoming coffee table book, which features commentary and photos spanning Elvira’s 35-year history (including a few behind-the-scenes shots, like one of her in full costume, seven months pregnant).
Reflecting on her years at the convention, she’s enjoyed meeting her idols, like Forrest Ackerman, a prominent figure in the sci-fi and fantasy scene, and running into colleagues. “I saw Gene Simmons last time I was here, a couple years ago, and that was awesome, because I don’t often run into him, and he was in his KISS drag, I was in my Elvira drag, kind of scary. We were both going, ‘How long are we going to be doing this?’”
But what sticks out the most is a memory of her first Comic-Con, where she was one of the only women in attendance. “When I was there, I was really the ‘odd man out,’ being a woman,” she says. “And now, I am positive that it’s at least 50 percent women [here] that are interested in the whole genre, whether it’s horror, fantasy, sci fi. And I’ve seen that, in my 35 years, just completely change.” She adds, “I was one of those geek girls who was into that stuff when I was a kid, so to see it catch on, for me, is pretty thrilling.”
(3) ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE. Trek Core relays word from SDCC: “The Roddenberry Vault Reveals Lost Star Trek Clips, New Blu-Ray Release Arriving in Late 2016”.
In a surprise reveal today at its own San Diego Comic Con panel, STAR TREK: THE RODDENBERRY VAULT, a years-long endeavor to recover lost and cut footage from the making of the original Star Trek series, debuted with never-before-seen clips from production of the series.
The source of the recovered material (to be released as part of an extended documentary) comes from hundreds of film reels of archived, unused Original Series footage – called the “Holy Grail” by Denise Okuda – which remained in Gene Roddenberry’s possession after the conclusion of filming on the classic series.
Mike and Denise Okuda spoke to the motivations behind the nine-year (!) project, starting from hints of cut scenes in the James Blish novelizations of the classic Trek episodes to occasional publicity photos that the pair had never seen before.
Producer Roger Lay, Jr., who worked on the Next Generation and Enterprise Blu-ray releases, also confirmed that a Blu-ray release of this recovered footage will be arriving before the end of 2016 – but the team has not yet finalized the documentary, and could not specify how many minutes of recovered footage will be included.
…We have no information yet on the timetable for release of this fantastic-sounding new Blu-ray, but as Lay reiterates at the end of the panel, this is a Fiftieth Anniversary production that WILL be out before the end of 2016.
Roger Lay Jr. and Ray Bradbury back in the day.
(4) YOU’RE THE CADET. Guelda Voien was at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum to see an exhibit celebrating 50 years of Star Trek, and pronounced it “Every Dork’s Wet Dream”.
…It is Career Day at the Academy, and you’re given a chance to try out all the different stations—tactical, medical, navigation, command and communications. You perform tasks, like a phaser exercise or choosing which planet to evacuate your crew to, and take a sort of quiz at the end. Your RFID bracelet tracks your progress. It’s like the part of the Museum of Tolerance where you track a Jewish child through the Holocaust, but less horrible.
I did all of them except for communications. No offense, Uhura, but I did not go to Starfleet Academy to talk (though your role got way better in the reboots, thanks, J.J.). No, I went to shoot stuff, try to heal a Klingon and try the fucking Kobayashi Maru.
And I got to do all that stuff. The assessments straddled the obvious and full-on dorkbait in a way that kept me pretty much giddily entertained for an hour (the ticketed show is intended to take about that long and costs $25 for an adult nonmember). At some point, I turned to Danny and asked, “Is Kronos in the Alpha Quadrant?” He thought about it for a second. “I don’t think it is.” I thought about it. “Well, Bajor, Earth and Cardassia definitely are, so it must be Kronos that isn’t.” But I was also thinking, “Hmm, wasn’t Kronos destroyed by the time TNG began?” And that’s why they just call the Klingon homeworld “the Klingon homeworld” later in the timeline, right? And I was happy. This is why I came.
(5) MARVEL AT DISNEY CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE. The Los Angeles Times says Marvel Studios has made official what fans have been speculating about for awhile — “Tower of Terror to get superhero makeover at Disney California Adventure Park”.
….Walt Disney Co. bought Marvel Entertainment Inc. in 2009 for $4 billion but had yet to inject many of the Marvel characters into the Anaheim theme parks. The ride will reopen next summer.
The move to re-create the Tower of Terror into a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction has been rumored on Disney fan blog sites for months but the Burbank-based entertainment giant has refused to comment on the speculation.
The announcement was made by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige at San Diego Comic-Con, the annual celebration of comics and pop culture.
“We are eager to present the attraction to the millions who visit Disney California Adventure and place them in the center of the action as they join in a mission alongside our audacious Guardians of the Galaxy team,” he said in a statement.
In the past, Disney has added new features to existing rides to renew interest among park visitors. Space Mountain, for example, became Hyperspace Mountain when the park added elements borrowed from the popular Star Wars franchise, now owned by Disney.
But Disney representatives say that the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride will keep the fast-dropping elevator from the Tower of Terror, but the rest of the attraction will be completely overhauled.
They declined to say how much Disney will spend on the project.
Disney fans have speculated that the overhauled attraction will stand at the entrance to a new Marvel land at the park.
(6) GONE. Variety reports “Popular Movie, TV Set Location Sable Ranch Destroyed in California Wildfire”. IMDB shows a number of sf TV episodes were shot there.
Sable Ranch, a location boasting Old West-style buildings that have been used for countless movies and TV shows, is one of the latest casualties of a Southern California wildfire that has nearly blocked out the sun in Los Angeles all weekend.
The ranch in Santa Clarita, Calif., was destroyed by the fire on Saturday despite the efforts of dozens of firefighters, according to the Los Angeles Times. Some offices were reportedly able to be salvaged, but the set is gone.
Sable Ranch served as host to such movies as horror film “Motel Hell” and Chevy Chase’s “The Invisible Man,” as well as classic Westerns like “The Bells of Coronado.” Television shows including “The A-Team,” “Maverick” and “24” also shot at the location.
(7) HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED? Caroline Yoachim says this was her way —
ZERO BRACKETS! No more <brackets> to fill in my novel revisions! I have <inserted all the scenes> and <added witty dialog>! ZERO BRACKETS!!!
— Caroline M. Yoachim (@CarolineYoachim) July 23, 2016
(8) SDCC AS SEEN FROM WILLIAM WU BOOKS. Sundays are less crowded than Saturdays in front of William Wu Books.
(9) I THINK HE LIKED IT. Ian Sales was surprised to be pleased by Station Eleven. By the end of his review I was convinced to add the book to my TBR list – something the thoroughly favorable reviews I read had never accomplished.
Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel (2014). This won the Clarke Award last year, and while I’d heard many good things about it, it’s a lit-fic post-apocalypse novel and I find post-apocalypse fiction banal at the best of times, and lit fic attempts at the genre all too often seem to think they’re doing something brand new and innovative, that no one has ever thought of before, and so the prose tends to reek of smugness. So my expectations were not especially high. Happily, Mandel proved a better writer than I’d expected, and I found myself enjoying reading Station Eleven. It’s still banal, of course; more so, in fact, because it trots out the Backwoods Messiah With The Persecution Complex plot, which should have been retired sometime around 37 CE. Anyway, a global flu epidemic wipes out most of humanity. Station Eleven opens in Toronto, when a famous actor has a heart attack on stage and dies. Then everyone else starts to die from the flu. The book jumps ahead twenty years to a post-apocalypse US, and a travelling orchestra/acting troupe, who travel the southern shores of the Great Lakes. And then there is a half-hearted attempt at a plot, which ties in with some of the flashback sections, which are about either the actor or the main character of the post-apocalypse story, a young actress in the travelling troupe. The writing was a great deal better than I’d expected, and so despite being post-apocalypse I came away from Station Eleven a little impressed. A worthy winner of the Clarke Award.
(10) AUTHOR EARNINGS. At Mad Genius Club, Fynbospress pointed out a new round of statistics has been posted:
Author Earnings just did an in-depth analysis of the romance genre, and presented it at the RWA (Romance Writers of America). …
2.) Down in the comments at the bottom, both of the report itself and in the comments at Passive Voice, Data Guy provides breakouts for SF&F, and for Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, too!
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 24, 1948 – Marvin the Martian (not yet given that name) appeared onscreen for the first time in the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Haredevil Hare”.
- July 24, 1969 — Apollo 11 returned to Earth, ending its historic moon-landing mission. After the spacecraft’s splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were flown by helicopter to the recovery ship USS Hornet.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS
- Born July 24, 1951 – Lynda Carter, called by some the Only and True Wonder Woman.
- Born July 24, 1982 — Anna Paquin
(13) THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. Neil Armstrong said the Apollo missions demonstrated that “humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.”
(14) SELDEN’S XANATOS PLAN. Vox Day teases “No one foresaw it” at Vox Popoli.
It’s no wonder the SF-SJWs are always a few steps behind.
It had been believed that the slaters would lose interest if they couldn’t sweep entire categories, since it that would mean that they could neither get awards for their own favorites (since fans would No Award them) nor “burn down” the awards, since fans would have at least a couple of organic works to give awards to. No one foresaw the “griefing” strategy of nominating works whose mere presence on the finalist list would cast the awards into disrepute. – Greg Hullender at File 770
They still don’t quite get it, do they? Rabid Puppies didn’t nominate “If You Were a Dinosaur My Love” or “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” for the Hugo Award. We didn’t give a Best Novel Nebula to The Quantum Rose (Book 6 in the Saga of the Skolian Empire) or a Best Novel Hugo to Redshirts. We’re not casting the awards into disrepute, we are highlighting the fact that the SJWs in science fiction have already made them disreputable. I wonder what they will fail to foresee next? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. I already know….
(15) A VOX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES. RameyLady doesn’t understand the impact of the Rabid Puppies slate on the finalists –
The nominees continue to suffer, in these shorter works, from poor selection but perhaps that’s as much a result of fan voting as it is the Puppies’ attempt at chaos and domination.
— but still writes a good overview of the Hugo-nominated novelettes.
In order of my appraisal:
- “Obits” by Stephen King is going to be my top pick in Novelette, though my #2 selection is within a hair’s breadth of taking my top vote. But it’s hard to deny the feel of sentences coming off the pen of a man as experienced and talented as King.
(16) BALLOT SNAPSHOT. Mark Ciocco says Lois McMaster Bujold gets his vote for Best Novella in his survey of all five nominees.
After last year’s train wreck of a Novella ballot, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this year’s finalists. But it seems my fears were misplaced, as this might be the most solid fiction category of the year. Novellas can be awkward and to be sure, a couple of these don’t entirely pull it off, but even those manage better than the other categories.
- Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold – No surprise here, as I was one of the many who nominated this in the first place. I’m a huge fan of Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga and it’s very much to her credit that I’ve followed her from my preferred SF genre to her fantasy worlds. This story takes place in her Chalion universe and tells the story of a young man who accidentally contracts a demon. This is both better and worse than you’d expect. Better, because in Chalion, demon possession can grant great powers. Worse, because with great power comes intrigue and scheming by those interested in your new powers. That’s all background though, and the story itself is well plotted and the character relationships, particularly between Penric and his demon, and extremely well done. Easily and clearly tops this list. (Also of note: the sequel to this story is out!)
(17) RESPIRE OR EXPIRE. Spacefaring Kitten tackles The Martian in “Aspiration Porn — Campbell Nominee Andy Weir”.
While watching The Martian, I remember enjoying the cosmic visuals, but the reader of the book doesn’t have that and she has to be kept in awe of the science. It was quite impressive, considering that the natural sciences interest me very little. Still, Weir was able to force me into the aspiration porn mindset — ISN’T IT GREAT THAT THE HUMAN RACE HAS DONE SUCH A WONDERFUL THING AS GOING TO SPACE (AND MOSTLY ALSO MAKING IT BACK ALIVE??!!). Yeah, it is. Little less bable about making water and oxygen wouldn’t have hurt, but I guess that really paying attention to these technical details was what Weir’s project was about.
(18) IT’S ALIVE! Bradley W. Schenck tells how he achieved “My successful human hybrid experiment” – which is a piece of digital artwork.
It’s with no small amount of pride that I can now reveal my second, and most successful, human hybrid experiment. I wish I knew exactly what it was; but, as you can see, it’s keeping an eye on us until I figure that out.
Over the past year or so I’ve learned some new tricks with my morph-targeted character heads, and the most interesting tricks are the ones I can play on characters that are already done. Some of this is due to Collapse to Morpher, a very useful 3DS Max script.
Morphs are terrific, but they rely on the source object and its morph targets sharing the exact same topology. That means they need to have the same number of vertices, and (importantly!) those vertices have to be numbered in the same order. If you’re not careful you can end up with two objects that used to share those properties but which now are subtly and fatally different. You just can’t morph them any more.
(19) ANOTHER MARVEL SUPERHERO HEARD FROM. Doctor Strange movie trailer #2 dropped at Comic-Con.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John King Tarpinian.]
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@Aaron
Also, his list of offending works is pretty small. Could he really only come up with four problem children spread out over two awards over fifteen years?
Well, since he bested that record in one fell swoop last year with all of John C Wright’s abominations, if he was in any way rational he would realize he has no talking points left.
Oh, wait…
How many Files must a Pixel Scroll down?
(770 of course, stupid question really…)
I’m onto Chapter 4 and I have encountered a certain number of clichés and some D&D campaign plotting. It’s a very comfortable read though.
I reread Dragonlance Chronicles a couple of years ago and they were not great, but made me happy in a kind of comfort food way — sort of like when I decide that what I really, really need for supper is a Totino’s frozen pizza because I used to love them when I was young and had no taste.
I do look forward to revisiting Legends at some point; I think it was a much more interesting story.
Sometimes I regret the timing of the big RPG tie-in boom of the 1980s & 1990s — if it would’ve started a few years earlier, or if I had been a few years younger, I would’ve been all over those books; as it was, I was just old enough to recognize that although they sounded like exactly like the sort of thing I wanted to read, they just really weren’t very good.
the game is available for download here
Some happy news out of the ComicCon weekend that I didn’t see mentioned in any of the Pixel Scrolls so far: Netflix picked up Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the wake of the crowdfunding campaign, and Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl, and Kevin Murphy will be guest starring (reprising their roles as Pearl Forrester, Observer and Professor Bobo). Bill has also joined the writing staff.
(5) Theme park fandom has not been terribly enthusiastic about this change. MousePlanet has some details.
I’m a little more optimistic than the writer about the effect on placemaking; the sightline problem already exists, and if they’re going for a Golden Age comic book look, then IMHO, that would actually mesh okay with its immediate surroundings, which are currently themed to 1930s Hollywood.
@JJ ETA: Oh, and I spent at least a whole day being really angry about all the time and effort I’d invested in slogging through Too Like the Lightning, because it doesn’t have an ending — it just STOPS. It’s not even pretending to be a whole book.
Thanks for the warning. I’m about 20% of the way through. It’s not as difficult as I was expecting but not as much fun either. I’ve enjoyed her music which set some expectations regarding storytelling. My third or fourth SFF book this year with math and elections. Is this a new trend or am I more aware of it due to #puppygate? Infomacracy by Malka Older and Plastic Smile by SL Huang. I feel like I’m forgetting one.
Sleeping Giants was originally self published in 2014 I believe, which means it may fall into the Martian/Long Way to a Small Angry Planet category of ineligibility due to previous less publicised release?
Saw Ghostbusters yesterday and can confirm: hell yeah.
In the Game Of Voxes you win or you get to try again until you win or get fed up and just say you won.
Maybe this has already been mentioned but in the current issue of Wired (August 2016) Chartgeist section, one of the charts is Telegenicity of Participants vs. Likelihood of Behind-The-Scenes Kerfuffle. One of the awards charted is the Hugos.
There’s also a one-page interview with N.K. Jemisin where one question she is asked is about the Hugo Awards (and the Pups.)
“Scroll Pixel vs. the World”
@rob_matic
I just re-read the first book for the first time in years this past October to see if the suck fairy’d been smacking it around. So far, I’d say we had similar reactions. I had no urge to continue to book 2 after the first one, though. I have many un-read books of much higher quality on my TBR list, and after a while the nostalgia of almost being able to hear the dice being thrown wore off.
In non-Hugo reading, lately, at the House of Kathodus:
Just finished The Riddle-Master of Hed. Loved it. The pacing felt very… mythological(?) to me. Reminded me of the Prydain Chronicles, particularly of Taran Wanderer, but the subject matter and the pacing. I was also somewhat reminded of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, an old favorite from my childhood. I’m going to move on to the next one once I’m done with Hugos reading.
I just started Ballard’s High-Rise after a couple strong recommendations, and realizing I hadn’t read anything by him other than short stories. The writing style is dated, but so far it’s not bad.
Hugos-related reading:
Bounced off Red Rising. It felt like nu-YA to me, and I just wasn’t in the mood to continue. It definitely didn’t feel like something worth continuing to the end.
Semi-bounced off Nethereal, though I’m going to try to go back to it.
My Campbell ballot currently has Brown and Niemeier below No Award (but on the ballot), with the rest of the finalists ranked above. I’m torn about it, though. Which reminds me, is there any Campbell review roundup out there? I’m interested in reading other people’s thoughts.
I got the wrong book by Brown – I felt that Golden Son sounded like the title of the first book, but I was wrong. But it didn’t seem worth it going back for the right one. I found it very dull, anyway.
I can see that Nethereal might be interesting. The setting is a striking one; it isn’t our future, or even an alternate history of our world; it is secondary world fantasy, magic all the way down, which happens to include space travel. But I wasn’t particularly engaged by it. One problem I had with both this and De Castell’s work is that they want to show Our Heroes overcoming impossible odds, but to do that they have to make the odds impossible, which leads to a loss of credibility.
I just realized that I’ve had a crush on Cassandra Peterson for close to thirty years now. Same for Sigourney Weaver. 🙂
#iamsoveryold
Uprooted, though, was the shocker for me. I loved it and can honestly say that I might’ve gotten choked up at the end, even though it was somewhat expected. I really loved that world.
I did like the world, but the plot left me cold: the too many twists and turns and “surprises” toward the end almost forced me to skim, instead of reading. I found the explanation of the motives of the Wood Queen a bit…contrived.
Characterization was excellent.
@Cat eldridge
Wait, Amazon sells epub now? Because they never used to carry that format; some of my acquaintances were really grumpy about that.
If they have taken to selling epubs I can buy gifts for my cousin in the Netherlands (without having to break the DRM and convert the file myself.)
The Stephanie Clarkson fundraiser raised enough to cover the cremation.
James Davis Nicoll on July 25, 2016 at 7:56 pm said:
Thank you!
I still wonder who died and made Vox Day arbiter of what is and isn’t proper SFF.
There have been Hugo and Nebula Award winners that I hated, works so awful I wonder how they could have been published at all, much less nominated for awards. There are authors who get nominated for awards again and again whose characters are so flat I privately wonder whether they are AIs pretending to be human. But guess what? In spite of IMO awful works getting nominated for and winning awards, I don’t attack the authors of those IMO unworthy works nor do I start a campaign to flood the Hugos with my preferred flavour of SFF, which would be a lot closer to romance in space (and likely a lot more readable) than what Vox Day considers good SFF. Because I understand that not everybody shares my tastes and that many people actually like works I consider awful.
BTW, Catherine Asaro writes some pretty good space opera with romance elements and she has all the hard science credentials certain people think are important for SFF writers. BTW, at least some of her novels are published by the puppies’ beloved Baen Books with the requisite awful covers.
None of the Campbell nominees except Wong impressed me. Brown and Niemeier impressed me the least.
@Cora: Indeed, I have one of Asaro’s books with the hideous Baen cover. It’s not as bad as a lot of them, so yay? I would put her worst book above all of the puppy crap for plot, characterization, science knowin’, rattling good plots with spaceships in, and grammar/spelling. Plus lack of hatefulness.
But I think Teddy’s thrown Baen under the bus for publishing Asaro, Bujold, Flint, and people who don’t pass the brown paper bag test. Real True Puppies are only allowed to buy stuff from Teddy’s vanity press now, lest they get exposed to crazy ideas about “all men are created equal” or some wacky brand new idea like that. They’re not allowed to even support the Sad Pups because… I dunno? Larry and Brad have stopped sucking up to Teddy? Brad’s married to a black woman? Larry doesn’t mind if Mrs. Larry votes? Kate and Hoyt don’t have Y chromosomes, and Kate went so far as to actually open this year’s Sad Pup suggestions to people Teddy didn’t hand-pick? It’s all part of the XanaD’OH Gambit.
The only Puppy nominee (as opposed to hostage) who deserves any attention at all is Chuck Tingle, for he knows love is real.
@lurkertype
The only Campbell nominees I placed above No Award are Alyssa Wong and Sebstien de Castell. Everybody else goes under “No Award”, including Weir (I find The Martian massively overrated) and Pierce Brown.
Regarding the Asaro book with the awful cover, is it this one? Because I picked that one up at Forbidden Planet last year and found myself assuring the friend who was with me, “Well, the cover is dreadful, but the author is really good.”
But come to think of it, Camestros reported a while ago that Teddy now seems to have lumped in Baen with the nasty SJW, since he wants to be the lone big fish in the small pool of really manly rightwing SF. Plus, Baen publishes Lois McMaster Bujold (though she was on his rabid puppy slate this year), Sharon Lee and Steve Miller with all their romance cooties, Catherine Asaro, P.C. Hodgell (God Stalk!) and Eric Flint (whom I find I cannot read because of the way he treats the history and geography of my country) and a couple of other pretty good works. Never mind that this whole puppy thing has always been promo for his publishing house for Teddy and started out, because Larry Correia really wanted a Hugo.
As for Chuck Tingle, I actually placed him above “No Award”, because he’s been the consistently most amusing thing about this year’s Hugo uproar. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chuck Tingle beat “No Award”, though I strongly suspect Naomi Kritzer will win short story, since she’s the only viable nominee.
The Pixels: No Different Flesh
The Band Played Scrolling Matilda
To Say Nothing of the Scrolls
The Pixel doesn’t fall far from the Scroll
Scrolldust
Secondhand Pixels
I am the Very Pixel of a Modern Scrolling General
ULTRAGOTHA: I forsee some of these adorning future scrolls — very good.
Not voting for Tingle this year — but he’s already on my longlist for 2017, for Best Related Work.
Kameron Hurley’s Geek Feminist Revolution is also on that longlist. I just finished it, and found it a solid, thoughtful read.
Mike, yeah!
I LIVE for Contributing Editor creds.
🙂
@Cora: No, it was “Undercity”. And gosh how could I have forgotten Lee & Miller? Probably because I started reading them years before they signed with Baen and haven’t come to accept the ugly covers yet. Although the last one I bought did accurately depict a scene in the book… just the layout and lettering was awful.
I put Chuck below No Award, but did not leave him off the ballot entirely, as a tribute to his counter-trolling. All other Puppy nominees got left off in the obscurity they so deserve and have earned. However, I am not opposed to putting Chuck on my ballot next year for… something.
@Cora:
One of the original claims from various Puppies was that they were merely rectifying the effects of similar cheating by Tor and its friends. This vaguely aligns with the SF they claim to like; older works commonly feature the lone individual heroically overcoming the results of group screwups (see: Dickson, Anderson, etc.), although usually without such blatant meanness/prejudice as the Puppy-specific nominees (that I’ve seen reported — I haven’t been willing to read any of them). I haven’t heard so much of this recently, possibly because it was self-evidently false (based on the number of nominations for Puppy candidates vs the rest of the field) or perhaps because I’ve been no more than skimming even Mike’s summaries of Puppy screeds.
@Jack Lint: are those Wired pieces only in the print magazine?
@steve davidson I believe so. At least I couldn’t find it online. I have to admit I almost never look at the Wired website. (Something perverse about only reading the hard copy of a magazine dedicated to our high tech future and all that.) If you find yourself near a copy of the magazine, the charts are on page 37.
ETA: However, the N.K. Jemisin interview is online and it’s longer than the print
http://www.wired.com/2016/06/wired-book-club-nk-jemisin/
From Camestros’ reports, the impression I got was that the immediate cause of the falling out between the SP and RP camps was Cruz versus Trump. But there was always a difference in outlook between them, despite their readiness to join together to combat the evil of TOR.
Pixels in the hands of an angry scroll.
My Mother, the scroll.
Scwoll the pixel!
Scwoll the pixel!
[A Pïxël once scrolled my sïstër… No realli!]
Kip W on July 26, 2016 at 8:12 am said:
I hope the pixels aren’t being held over a flame….
Hhmmm…
“Scroll me! Scroll me! I’ve been such a naughty pixel!”
I grow old, I grow old, I shall read my pixels scrolled.
I have promises to keep, and pixels to scroll before I sleep.
Just keep on scrolling me
Until you scroll me up.
No one foresaw the “griefing” strategy of nominating works whose mere presence on the finalist list would cast the awards into disrepute. – Greg Hullender at File 770
One thing about it, Vox Day has certainly demonstrated how easy it is to influence the results of the Hugo awards/awards nominations. One of his complaints is that commercial interests have been doing this for years, including various publishers, right?
I’ve reviewed all the Hugo finalists on my blog. They’re not in any particular order, but if anyone would like to read an opinion, just do a search.
I should have been a scroll of ragged pixels
@Lela E. Buis–
Yes, that’s what he says. Unfortunately for his credibility on the point, the data don’t support it. For instance, Tor is supposed to be a, or possibly the, bigood offender, and if true, they’ve been doing a terrible job at it. Beale has had to claim Orbit titles were Tor titles to get list that still wasn’t long enough to be even mildly odd.
And if the evil Tor and evil SJWs had been rigging it, slating wouldn’t have been effective. Certainly not THAT effective.
And we’ve been through this here at File 770, multiple times, in great detail, as well as other blogs and other online zines and LiveJournals and Facebook pages. So there’s no reason for you to be innocently asking the question as if it were a new and unexamined point.
And we’ve been through this here at File 770, multiple times, in great detail, as well as other blogs and other online zines and LiveJournals and Facebook pages. So there’s no reason for you to be innocently asking the question as if it were a new and unexamined point.
That doesn’t change the fact that he’s demonstrated how easy it is for any particular group that’s interested in pressing an agenda. The griefing strategy also indicates he’s not a safe victim to pick on.
Indeed. Just look at all the dreadful things that happened to Tor. And Scalzi. Oh, wait…
@Andrew M: Different how? Larry started it b/c he wanted a Hugo and to “make liberals’ heads explode”. Teddy wants a bunch of Hugos and hates “SJWs”. Same thing. Teddy was just better at cheating.
Teddy’s thrown the Sads under the bus because they’ve served their purpose as his useful idiots and he doesn’t need to pretend to care about them any more. Whether Larry, Brad, JCW, et al realize this or not is still a question. Whether they’ll ever admit it isn’t; nobody likes to publicly acknowledge they were played for fools. Plus then they might could admit that people here at 770 and other non-Pup places predicted that the bus-throwing-under would happen; even more mortifying.
The griefing strategy also indicates he’s not a safe victim to pick on.
Indeed. Just look at all the dreadful things that happened to Tor. And Scalzi. Oh, wait…
Um. Look what happened to the Hugo Awards.
Lela E. Buis, if you’re implying that there’s any way to placate griefers to stop continued griefing of the Hugo awards, I don’t think you’re correct. But surprise me; tell me your strategy.
You seem to be advocating a Neville Chamberlain approach. It didn’t work for him, either. Please, tell me how I’m wrong.
Ah, Lela, please tell me how poor Vox was ‘picked on’ by the Hugos till he sought his righteous revenge…a saga that no doubt sets many tens of his fans’ flanks aquiver with delicious fantasies of what a dangerous alpha male he is…
Lela E. Buis: That doesn’t change the fact that he’s demonstrated how easy it is for any particular group that’s interested in pressing an agenda.
No, actually what he’s demonstrated is that it is possible to organize a group of people to exploit a well-known vulnerability in the Hugo nominating process. This is hardly a revelation.
The difference is that up to now — with the exception of the Scientologists — no one has wanted to be “that asshole”.
And typical to your Troll form, you’re implying that the Hugo Awards did something to VD to deserve his attack. They didn’t.
@JJ
You forgot “…and that because he successfully slated the Hugos, this is somehow proof that Tor has previously been doing so”.
Regardless, as I know where this is going, I apologise to @Lela as disagreeing with her is tantamount to censorship/ circling the wagons/ bullying/ whatever her next blog post complaining about the mean people in F770 have done says.