(1) ALWAYS TO CALL IT RESEARCH. An appeals court affirmed that Luc Besson’s Lockout plagiarized John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.
The French filmmaker will have to fork over nearly half a million dollars
An appeals court has ruled that French filmmaker Luc Besson is guilty of plagiarizing from John Carpenter’s 1981 classic “Escape From New York” and must now pay the fellow filmmaker nearly half a million dollars.
As Yahoo reports, Besson has long denied that his 2012 thriller, “Lockout,” was a copy of Carpenter’s Kurt Russell-starring actioner. In Carpenter’s film, Russell plays a former government agent who is tasked with retrieving the U.S. president from the island of Manhattan — which has been turned into a massive prison — after his plane crashes there (thanks, Air Force One, thanks a lot). In “Lockout,” Pearce is a convict sent to a giant space jail who is given the chance to win back his freedom if he can rescue the U.S. president’s daughter, who is trapped in said giant space jail.
The court ruled that Besson’s film had “massively borrowed key elements” of Carpenter’s feature…
[Via Ansible Links.]
(2) MIDAMERICON LOSES HOTEL. The MidAmeriCon II committee announced on Facebook that one of its hotels will be unavailable, and members who reserved there are being shifted elsewhere:
HOTEL UPDATE: The Courtyard/Residence Inn has let us know that their construction has run over schedule and they will not be open in time for MidAmeriCon II. We have been working with their staff and Passkey to contact those displaced to advise them of the situation and to find our members a hotel room with one of our other contracted properties. Please be aware that the new reservations will not be in the individual hotel systems until later this week. Once that occurs, the affected members will be contacted with information on where they have been relocated and provided new confirmations. Any questions can be sent to [email protected].
(3) FURNISHING THE NEXT STAR TREK. iDigital Times learned that “’Star Trek: Discovery’ Ship Has Its Captain’s Chair”.
Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Bryan Fuller revealed the captain’s chair aboard the starship U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031. It’s very much in line with classic captains’ seats, with the swept open armrests of Jean-Luc Picard’s luxurious, tan cathedra.
https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/755178837894270977
(4) THE PRICE OF FAME. Of course, by “the price of fame” we mean what price the fans will pay. CNN Money has the going rates: “Want a picture with Captain Kirk? That’ll be $100”.
Star Trek’s massive 50th anniversary convention starts next week in Las Vegas, and celebrities have posted their prices for photos with fans.
…Resistance is, of course, futile.
Older actors who starred in Star Trek: The Original Series from the 1960s charge higher prices. And the clairvoyant Whoopi Goldberg tops the charts.
(5) OWL SERVICE. A gig on Fiverr: “I will design a Harry Potter Hogwarts Personalized Acceptance Letter for $5”.
Have you been waiting forever for your special letter to come? OMG! Don’t wait anymore! You can receive your very own letter, stating that you’ve been accepted to Hogwarts and feel the magic! Makes the perfect Hogwarts gift for anyone of any age and it is fully personalised with their very own name and address.!
What you get is a PDF file – when you pay only $5, you have to provide your own bells and whistles….
(6) THE DISNEY-TOLKIEN INTERSECTION. The original story is on Cracked, but this Hello Giggles writer explains it more clearly. Maybe that’s because she’s sober. “This insane theory says ‘Snow White’ is a sequel to ‘Lord of the Rings’” —
While Snow White’s dwarfs seem pretty standard—they’re short, unsocial, and obsessed with treasure—Diplotti explains that Tolkien took many of the names of his dwarves from a centuries-old Norse epic called the Voluspa, which has a section devoted to dwarf names and their meanings. Durin? That’s “Sleepy,” thank you very much. Dwalin, or “Dvalinn” in the “Voluspa,” is torpid, lazy, or sleepy. Oin? That would be “shy,” a.k.a. “bashful.” Well, that’s creepy!
(7) LIFE IS NOT A REHEARSAL. As Kameron Hurley frees herself, she offers hope to other writers: “You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Time”.
Certainly one in a position of privilege does have a moral imperative to state, “This atrocity is wrong.” But when you buckle down to engage the haters on any issue, consider what your end goal is in having that conversation, and consider what other valuable work you could be doing with that time. I can pretty much guarantee you that, say, writing The Geek Feminist Revolution and getting it into people’s hands was worth about a billion times more than spending that time arguing with dudes on the internet who were just there to distract me. They aren’t here to change minds. They are here to keep us from doing the work that changes the world.
We all have a finite amount of time on this earth. Those of us with chronic illness or who have had near-death experiences appreciate that more than others. I feel that it’s my moral imperative to remind you that you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if you did, would you regret how you’d spend the hour, the day, the week, the month, the year before?
My goal is to live the sort of life where I won’t feel I’ve wasted my time if I die tomorrow. It has kept me on target through a lot of bullshit. The truth is that all this shit is made up, and because it’s made up, it can be remade. But only if we focus our efforts on creating the work that moves the conversation forward, instead of letting ourselves get caught up in the distraction.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 30, 1932 — Walt Disney released his first color cartoon, “Flowers and Trees,” made in three-color Technicolor.
- July 30, 1999 — Blair Witch Project released
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY TERMINATOR
- Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger
(10) BANG THE GAVEL SLOWLY. Frank Darabont is auctioning off rare Hollywood memorabilia. The Hollywood Reporter explains:
Frank Darabont, the filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption who helped launch The Walking Dead on AMC, is parting ways with some of his most prized possessions.
The director is putting more than two dozen rare items up for the gavel Saturday as part of Profiles in History’s art and movie memorabilia auction — including plenty of items that would make fanboys and fangirls weak in the knees.
“One thing I’ve always known is this amazing art wouldn’t be mine forever. It couldn’t be. We don’t own these things. We can only be their caretakers for a time, enjoying them as much as possible until inevitably they must pass on to the next caretaker” Darabont said in a statement. “For me, that time has come. I won’t lie to you and say that parting with these things is easy. Trust me, it really, really isn’t. But the time for everything passes, and so has my position as caretaker. I will be ever grateful for the joy these wonderful pieces of art have brought me. I can only hope that they will bring their next caretakers (and all caretakers after that, ad infinitum) equal or greater joy.”
And Art Daily has more details about the items going up for auction.
Following the hugely successful sale of Frank Frazetta art from the collection of Dave Winiewicz, this unique auction will be presented in two sessions. Session One, The Frank Darabont Collection, includes original works by master artists Bernie Wrightson, Mike Mignola, Sanjulian, Jack Davis, Will Eisner, Eric Powell, Bob Peak, Rich Corben, Vaughn Bode, a bronze of the “Cyclops” creature by Ray Harryhausen, and rare movie posters including the only known Frankenstein 1941 Italian 4-fogli, and much more.
Session Two comprises a superb collection of vintage comic and illustration artwork featuring the finest original oil paintings by Frank Frazetta ever offered at auction, including “Sea Witch” (pre-sale estimate of $1,000,000 – $1,500,000) and “Bran Mak Morn” (pre-sale estimate of ($450,000 – $550,000), the most expensive Frazetta paintings ever offered at auction. These two paintings have never been offered for sale. The sale also features a wealth of works by “The Studio” artists Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Jeffery Jones, and Barry Windsor-Smith, as well as Spider-Man art by John Romita, a Golden Age cover by Jack Kirby, horror and fantasy art by Richard Corben, an important work by John Buscema, among many other pieces by notable masters of the comic medium. Most of these works have been hidden away in private collections for decades, and this sale represents the first and likely only chance to obtain them.
(11) AUSTRALIA IS ON THE MOVE – LITERALLY. The BBC tells why “Australia plans new co-ordinates to fix sat-nav gap”
Because of the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates, these local co-ordinates drift apart from the Earth’s global co-ordinates over time.
“If you want to start using driverless cars, accurate map information is fundamental,” said Mr Jaksa.
“We have tractors in Australia starting to go around farms without a driver, and if the information about the farm doesn’t line up with the co-ordinates coming out of the navigation system there will be problems.”
The Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country’s local co-ordinate system, was last updated in 1994. Since then, Australia has moved about 1.5 metres north.
So on 1 January 2017, the country’s local co-ordinates will also be shifted further north – by 1.8m.
Chip Hitchcock commented, when he sent the link: “A fascinating reminder that the world we live on is still changing. (I’d love to see comparable numbers for the US, cf the Grand Canyon docent snarking ‘If you want to go to Europe this is the year, because it will never be any closer.’) The story also quotes a claim that this inaccuracy affects self-driving cars, but I’d hope such cars would rely on immediate observation rather than stored memories of coordinates of fixed objects like curbs.”
(12) THE SHARK, DEAR. The Wrap reviews the sequel a day before it airs on SyFy: “’Sharknado 4’ Review: This Joke Has No Teeth Anymore”.
A joke might be funny the first time, but by the fourth time you hear it, the punchline gets tired.
“Tired” is a good description for “Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens,” which premieres Sunday on Syfy. Although the parody movie is as absurd and silly as the first three installments were, this time around the whole thing feels forced.
On one hand, you can tell stars Ian Ziering, Tara Reid and David Hasselhoff are having fun. Ziering even manages to mock his stint as a Chippendales dancer. But the novelty of this campy killer-shark franchise has clearly worn off, and now the nudges and winks from the made-for-TV flick’s cast and writers border on punishing.
(13) SOUTH KOREA’S GAMERGATE? NPR raises the spectre that “South Korea Is Contending With A ‘Gamergate’ Of Its Own – Over A T-Shirt”.
An online controversy over a South Korean voice actress’s tweeted image of a T-shirt has escalated into what is now being called East Asia’s version of Gamergate — a reference to the vitriolic controversy that pitted gamers, largely men, against women in tech.
Twelve hours after posting a photo of a shirt reading “Girls Do Not Need A Prince,” Kim Jayeon — who had been providing a voice for the popular video game Closers — was out of her job.
Part of the problem was the source of the shirt. It’s put out by Megalia4, a South Korean feminist group.
When Kim’s tweet surfaced on July 18, scores of male gamers demanded that she apologize for supporting what they call a “anti-man hate group.” When Kim refused to budge, they bombarded Nexon, her employer and publisher of Closers, with complaints and refund requests, and soon, she was out.
“We have to be responsive to our customers’ opinions,” Nexon told The Hankyoreh, a South Korean news outlet. “The voice actress exacerbated the issue by posting inflammatory tweets such as ‘what’s wrong with supporting Megalia?'”
(14) HANDICAPPING THE HUGOS: This reader predicts Chuck Tingle will get a rocket.
Chuck Tingle is the fav for the Short Story category at the Hugo Awards this year. pic.twitter.com/2bQFowQLfz
— EscapeVelocity (@EscapeVelo) July 30, 2016
(15) MACII ONLINE PRE-REG ENDS AUGUST 5.
MidAmeriCon II will be closing online pre-registration for all classes of membership on Friday, August 5, 2016. Fans planning to attend the convention are encouraged to buy their membership before this date, both to take advantage of the best membership rates and for maximum convenience when they arrive at the convention. Full (five-day) Adult Attending Membership rates will increase from $210 now to $240 at the door, while Young Adult and Military Attending Membership rates will increase from $100 now to $120 at the door. Pre-registered members may collect their badges and other membership materials from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, August 15 and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 16. Members who can collect their materials on these days can expect to benefit from reduced waiting times.
Full details of all MidAmeriCon II membership categories and rates, as well as at-con opening hours, can be found on the convention website at http://midamericon2.org/home/registration-hotel-member-information/registration/.
(16) YELLOW F&SF DAYS. Paul Fraser at About SF Magazines provides a retro review of “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #5, December 1950”.
(17) TREK BREW. The Nerdist relays plans to “Celebrate 50 years of Star Trek with golden anniversary beer”.
A quote:
“Star Trek Golden Anniversary Ale: The Trouble With Tribbles” will debut at the premiere of Star Trek Beyond, at the IMAX Embarcadero Marina Park on July 20, and Comic-Con at the San Diego Convention Center on July 21 – 24. It will also available at the “Star Trek Las Vegas” convention at the Rio Hotel & Casino from August 3 – 7, 2016. Then in the fall, Shmaltz will bring Voyage to the Northeast Quadrant to the Mission New York Convention at the Javits Center from September 2 – 4, 2016.
(18) JULES VERNE MOVIE. The Galactic Journey crew was among the first to see what they dubbed “[July 30, 1961] 20,000 Leagues in a Balloon (Jules Vern’s Mysterious Island)”.
Perhaps the most famous of Verne’s protagonists is Captain Nemo, skipper of the magnificent submarine, the Nautilus. In 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, adapted to film in 1953, Nemo led a one-man crusade against war, sinking the world’s warships in the cause of pacifism.
My daughter and I just came back from the premiere of Mysterious Island, the latest translation of a Verne novel. It is a sequel of sorts to 20,000 Leagues, though this is not immediately apparent from the beginning. The initial setting is the siege of Richmond at the end of the American Civil War. Four Yankee prisoners make a daring escape in a balloon along with an initially wary, but ultimately game, Confederate prisoner. The film begins with no indication of where it’s going other than the title (and the mention of Nemo in the cast list – an unfortunate spoiler).
(19) APOLLO TREK. Space.com’s Leonard David has a piece about how George Takei and Buzz Aldrin got an assist from William Shatner to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing and the 50th anniversary of Star Trek at Cape Canaveral.
An audience of some 250 people took part in the evening event, which was dominated by a huge Saturn 5 moon rocket perched overhead. The occasion raised funds for Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring children to be passionate about science, technology, engineering, the arts and math.
The anniversary gala was hosted by George Takei, best known for his portrayal of Mr. Sulu in the original “Star Trek” TV series and movies….
Takei had a special surprise video beamed in from one of his “Star Trek” crewmates — William Shatner, who played USS Enterprise Capt. James T. Kirk.
Shatner said he wished he could be present at the Apollo 11 anniversary event. He was in Los Angeles, tied to a previous engagement with the other starship captains of “Star Trek” celebrating the past 50 years, Shatner said.
(20) UNSPARING CHANGE. Black Gate’s Derek Kunsken experiences “A Tremendously Disappointing Re-Read: The Soaked-in Misogyny of Piers Anthony’s Xanth”
How bad is the sexism and misogyny? I mean, can we cut it some slack because it was published in 1977?
Um. No. The 1970s were the 1970s, but there were still lots of remarkable writers creating compelling stories with well-rounded characters back then.
All the female characters in the first two novels occupy a narrow range of man-created stereotyped roles that were already fossils in the 1970s. Anthony has:
- the dumb love interest,
- the smart love interest,
- the nagging love interest, and
- the cautionary tales for Bink’s choice of love interest.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Keith Kato, Martin Morse Wooster, Dawn Incognito, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
20 The suck fairy really hits things like Xanth.
And, first?
By a coincidence, I read on Twitter that the big tree associated with THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION just blew down. Maybe too many people tied yellow ribbons around it. I think maybe I saw the movie, but don’t recall details.
Pre-fifth!
20) The suck fairy was infesting Xanth all along, and we knew it, but we put up with it for the puns, and the fact that it was original for back then.
Woohoo, all done with my Hugo homework! Here’s my ballot. Now I can read things just for the hell of it again. Currently trying to figure out a good restaurant to read Harry Potter in at brunchtime tomorrow.
Oh, Xanth. Oh, oh, oh, Xanth. It took me until The Color of Her Panties to realize something was wrong. In my defense, I was like sixteen.
Sacrificial fourth?
Fifth!
Never read Xanth, thank goodness, but reading Chthon at sixteen was enough for me and that one is supposedly good.
I was never motivated to investigate Anthony, and when they launched that absurd 1-900-HI-PIERS, I was pretty sure I’d done the right thing by default.
RE: Chuck Tingle. People like him. I can see his story winning a Hugo.
RE: Piers Anthony. I read some of his short stories when he was starting out and thought he had potential, but never liked his novels. I’m always in left field, though. Clearly my views about what should be popular are off base. Xanth is up to 28 books now and going strong, right?
(14) Oh my. That’s a candidate for the Darwin (or Darwin’s Future Offspring) Award.
(13) Entitled manbabies are the same across the globe, aren’t they?
@Lela E. Buis
Oh, hi! I notice you never answered our question about what constitutes “cloying sentimental” Hugo winners.
Eagle-eyed comment of the Ninth
Eleventh. Numerologically? That’s 1+1 = 2? And what are there two of? That’s right…
Tenth (third fifth?)
[godstalk]
Uh, yeah, I wanna scroll a pixel to go, and no anchovies.
::ticky::
I would like to dedicate this Contributing Editorship to Huey, Dewey and Louie from Silent Running.
Am LOVING this title. Unexpected, and yet “of course”!
(2) Whoops?
(5) A PDF? More of a ripoff than the prices in (4). Calligraphy or GTFO.
(6) Headcanon accepted — tho maybe not the Gandalf part.
(11) Had no idea “Advance Australia Fair” was to be taken literally.
(13) I see the 60’s have arrived in South Korea.
(14) I think he’ll finish second.
(20) Had we but known the true horror.
(20) I read Xanth for the first time a couple of years back, and it didn’t take me too long to start feeling uncomfortable. There’s this gem right on page 1:
Despite that, I kept reading because of how imaginative it all was. But after 2 books the creepiness and clumsy writing built up to breaking point and I gave up.
Yeah-h-h-h-h, the creepy sexism in Piers Anthony’s Xanth books, but…
…it was the Xanth books that got my son to become a reader. Chris had (and to a certain extent still does) dyslexia that made reading seriously difficult as a kid. Then Hilde and I brought back from an ABA convention (we were still selling books as a side-business then) an audiobook version of A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON given away there.
Turned out Chris lurv-v-v-v-v-ed the audio version, and played and replayed it so often Hilde and I got sick of it. (It was our pre-FROZEN version of FROZEN.) So Hilde got the 2nd book in the Xanth series, gave it to Chris, and told him “This is another story with the same characters, but it’s not available on tape, so if you want to know the story, you’ll have to read it.”
It took him six months to work thru that book. The book after that took him two months. The book after that… well, he has a decent speeding read now. (Tho’ he still listens to a lot of audiobooks, 30+ years later, and you’d probably have to pry his Audible account from his cold, dead fingers.)
So I have a personal soft spot for Piers Anthony, flaws (hoo-boy, flaws!) and all. Thanks, PA, for motivating my son to become a reader.
“fixed objects like curbs.”
Here in California they’re not all that fixed.
Chuck Tingle may be my fav author in that group, but No Award is still getting my vote.
Yeah, I think we can all agree the Xanth books start out skeevy, and only get creepier as they progress. I read the hell out of them when I was a kid, but even at 10 I could tell that there were some messed-up concepts behind them.
(11) AUSTRALIA IS ON THE MOVE – LITERALLY.
This is no doubt all due to a nefarious mastermind plot on the part of Timothy the Talking Cat to take over the world. I can’t wait for his Big Reveal.
Twitter thinks that captain’s chair image may be “sensitive content”. Well, it does look like an ergonomic nightmare.
(11) So what we have is a whole country full of leathal ecology under the thrall of evil despotic overlord
RupertTimothy inexorably advancing on South East Asia to begin the subjugation of the world?That’s not scary at all.
Because I would not scroll for pixel, he kindly scrolled for me.
If you’re in the UK and want something gorgeously hand-calligraphed, illuminated or similar, there’s a great Calligrapher: Nicholas Crook. On weekends, he runs at stall at London’s Jubilee Market at Covent Garden; he has pre-made items (poems, quotations) as well as cards that he will customize with name & date right there; and he does commissions – from small to absolutely huge: for the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, he did an absolutely gorgeous illumination of an English translation of the Magna Carta, which is now on permanent display at the UK Supreme Court, where you can also buy a print.
And to tie this back to the last couple of pixel scroll titles: I bought from him a lovely version of Robert Frosts’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Today’s read — If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, by Italo Calvino (not SFF)
You, the reader, begin reading a novel which you are unable to finish due to a printer’s error, and your quest for the ending leads you to yet more unfinished novels and ever unlikelier situations. This is a book about reading — the relationships between readers and books, readers and other readers, readers and authors, reading and society, and whether there is something ineffable that lurks behind reading or if it’s just a bunch of words. I liked this a lot, although sometimes I got a little lost when the language got overly conceptual. I had some dislike for the book’s portrayal of women as the Unknowable Other, although the book did make at least an attempt to sometimes put the shoe on the other foot. Oh, and props to a great translation by William Weaver — translations are important! For the most part, thumbs up.
I’ve never read Piers Anthony because of all the negative reviews, but was tempted when I listened to a This American Life segment about a troubled boy who decided to visit his idol, Piers Anthony. It’s a sweet story. Transcript is here, but the story is best listened to:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/transcript
Audio:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/show-me-the-way?act=1
In fact, from everything I have ever heard, Piers Anthony is a fine and good human being on a personal basis.
If true, it’s like the mirror inverse of the whole terrible-person-who-makes-sensitive-art thing.
I hit the Xanth books as a teen and they came close to driving me away from fantasy, because they were so unrelentingly insistent that women were things to be looked at, and certainly not readers. To compound things, our resident gamemaster loved the books and decided to run a campaign based on them. I think the book that convinced him maybe I had a point was The Color of Her Panties. By then I’d stopped reading, but I’m informed the title refers to the main hero’s quest.
But I had read Orn, Omnivore, and Ox before that, as well as Macroscope, and while they had a few sketchy details, they were terrific SF. Thank you for posting the NPR story about Anthony; it helps me reconcile some of my mixed feelings.
I always liked the afterwords of Anthonys books. He also had a nice website with advoce to other writers. And well, I liked some of his books for the same reason that some people here would hate them. :/
For Love of Evil was always my favourite of his.
As far as calligraphy goes, I’m a great admirer of the St. John’s Bible, which is a modern illuminated manuscript by Donald Jackson. I was able to see an exhibit of dozens of original illuminated pages on vellum at the Mobile Museum of Art a few years ago, and they are gorgeous — well worth seeing if one of the travelling exhibitions comes near you.
(1)
An odder instance of a French court case of plagiarism involving sf movies is the film of “The Running Man” (1987) based on Stephen King’s novel. Robert Sheckley’s short story “The Prize of Peril” has been adapted a number of times for film and TV. It was filmed as “La Prix du Danger” in 1983 by Yves Boisset. Various critics have seen a resemblance between Sheckley’s story and King’s novel. King, I think, has been quiet on the matter publically but Sheckley has said in several interviews that he contacted King and King said that any plagiarism was inadvertent. Boisset likewise saw a similarity but not between the two original stories but rather the two subsequent adaptations. So Boisset took the producers of “The Running Man” to court in France and won damages for plagiarism.
Kip W on July 30, 2016 at 9:49 pm said:
I’d say “I want a pixel to scroll, no shrimp or anchovies”.
“No anchovies? You’ve come to the wrong place. I spell my name … Pixel.”
(this obscure rejoinder brought to you by the Firesign Theater’s “Nick Danger, Third Eye”)
I remember early Piers Anthony stories fondly he had good ideas. And I suspect good intentions. Macroscope, In the Barn, Rings of Ice. but every work seemed worse than the last. I never read Xanth. I can well see how he could have slipped into “hinky”. even at the best he demonstrated sympathy rather than empathy. Having said that I think of him as one who strives to be a better person.
“No, Mr Pixel, I expect you to scroll!”
or perhaps
“No, Mr Pixel, I expect you to die!” – Scrollfinger
?
1) Besson has long denied that his 2012 thriller, “Lockout,” was a copy of Carpenter’s Kurt Russell-starring actioner.
Holy cats. What editor let THAT sentence get by?
@ Charon: I get really tired of hearing about all the “puns” in Xanth. Anthony doesn’t do puns; what he does is the literal interpretation of idiomatic expressions, i.e. “shoe tree” becomes a tree with shoes as fruit. That’s not a pun.. If you want puns, read Spider Robinson.
@ Kyra: Piers Anthony is what used to be called a “hack” — a writer who puts out hasty and inferior work because it sells. Given that he had kids to put through college, I’ve never condemned him for this — but that doesn’t mean I’m going to read it. In my early 20s I thought the first Xanth trilogy was okay, but after that it palled very quickly. And even those first 3 books didn’t make the cut during a cull somewhere between then and now.
I’ve nothing actually against Piers Anthony… but, well, I picked up a couple of his books at one time or another, and they all seemed to start well, and have exciting ideas… but I was always vaguely disappointed in the execution. (Sometimes not so vaguely, come to think of it.) So, well, after a couple of such disappointments, I went off to read stuff by other writers.
Like I say, I’ve nothing against him… and, clearly, he has his fans. But his stuff doesn’t do it for me.
(I posted my Hugo and Retro Hugo ballots on my journal. I’m not sure what it was about “vague disappointment” which reminded me of that.)
Oh, hi! I notice you never answered our question about what constitutes “cloying sentimental” Hugo winners.
I like works that are thought-provoking. Any work designed to just elicit emotion without much in the way of other redeeming qualities is pretty empty. I’m sure you can identify a few of these as past Hugo winners.
Haven’t read the transcript yet, but it brings to mind Letters to Jenny.
When I started reading Xanth novels (high school, late 80s) there were around a dozen already out. I finished the first trilogy and IIRC made it 1 and 1/2 books into the second trilogy before abandoning the series. I read several other of his series and stand-alones, though–Cluster, Tarot, Apprentice Adept, Bio of a Space Tyrant, etc. Looks like the most recent of his books that I read in print was Fractal Mode from 1992. (I did a few years back read Pornucopia as an ebook, though.)
@ Lela E. Buis – If I understand correctly, you are asking your questioners to dig up evidence for your argument and provide support for your assertions. That’s rather incredible!
I’ve come to chew pixels and kick scrolls. And I’m all out of pixels.
I like works that are thought-provoking. Any work designed to just elicit emotion without much in the way of other redeeming qualities is pretty empty. I’m sure you can identify a few of these as past Hugo winners.
That’s not actually an answer.
That actually seems a lot like the response of someone who doesn’t have an answer but was just throwing out a claim with no substance.
The t-shirt issue: I read about this when it was first mentioned at Rocket News 24 and a few days later at The Mary Sue. The conflict is happening across a language barrier for me so I can’t say how accurate any of this is, but there were some interesting comments from a poster called Jayson at TMS about this (who, I would guess judging from the blips in the English and knowledge of the subject, is Korean.) Here is a link to one of the comments:
http://www.themarysue.com/feminism-around-the-world-korean-voiceover-actress/#comment-2794234005
(And the text, in case the link doesn’t work–I’m not too sure about linking to individual Discus comments. Sorry about the length, but it seems to show that this is not a black and white issue.)
My impression of Piers Anthony is less that he’s a really nice guy and more that he’s a guy with some great points (his generous treatment of teenaged and pre-teen fans, especially those with health issues), bad points (the way he uses his actions towards those fans to justify the places he is a jerk, and a streak of egotism), and middling ones (His writing of hack works that are especially popular with those too young or un-woke to notice their skeevy elements, or too enthusiastic about the ideas to note the rough wordsmithery.) Basically, he’s a human being, good and bad. I don’t especially want to go near him or his writing, but I hold no resentment over those who disagree.
I think it’s OK to say ‘I don’t want to answer that question’. However, the question is out there now, running about with a life of its own, as questions do. So, the following is for a general audience and is not meant specifically to put you on the spot:
What was the most sentimental (cloying or otherwise) Hugo winner in recent years? Let’s say between 2010 to 2015 but feel free to range wider.
If I look at Best Novel, I note that I have a hole in my reading – I haven’t read Among Others by Jo Walton. The other books (or going further back this century), it is tough to judge as none seem particularly sentimental. The Graveyard Book (extending back to 2009)? An orphan making his way in the world with intentional parallels to Rudyard Kipling is somewhat sentimental (ignoring serial killer conspiracies, werewolves, ghouls and everything else).
Best Short Story: The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere has sentimental themes (family, ageing parents, the next step in a relationship) but I feel it is more about interpersonal conflict.
Novella? Maybe The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Working through the RetroHugo categories, it strikes me that the Frederik Pohl has now been shortlisted for Hugos both for 1941 and for 2010. (And deservedly: his nomination for 1941 is a real one, not an ‘Oh yes, he was there then’ one.) Does anyone have a greater interval between their first and last shortlistings? What about wins?
Prostho Plus by Anthony was perhaps the first SF novel Ive read. Make of that what you will …
He was always a Hit and Miss writer, i disliked Chton and Xanth, but there were some decent novels as well…
(4) Interesting that the TNG actors all charge 40 Dollars for a picture (except Goldberg) the lowest of the lot…
As someone who has the full shelf of Xanth novels (up to 38 now, plus oddities), I clearly have no taste. But in general I think he exhibits a fairly wide streak of misanthropy, rather than misogyny specifically – his male characters are certainly no more or less ideal than his female ones; indeed the example cited draws specific attention to the “male goggles” viewpoint without noting that this is kind of the point. It doesn’t excuse it, certainly, but I’m not sure it necessarily completely invalidates it either. (Then again, I like The Number of the Beast, so that clearly renders me unfit to pass any sort of critical judgement upon anything.)
But yes, I’m one of those who stayed for the ideas more than the wordcrafting; he plays enough clever narrative tricks to make me stick with it even as the deja vu becomes more intense (inevitable after 40 years.) And every so often he manages to exploit a pun better than almost anyone else.