(1) DIAGNOSIS: SFWA. Two SFWA presidents resigning this month provoked widespread interest in learning about the organization’s problems. What File 770 shares what we have been able to find out in “SFWA: In My House There Are Many Issues”.
(2) BULWER-LYTTON CONTEST. The annual tourney to produce the worst opening line to a novel has been won this year by sf writer Lawrence Person of Austin, TX: “2024 Bulwer-Lytton Contest Winners”.
She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.
(3) BAD VIBRATIONS. Since 2023, Readers for Accountability has been trying to drive a boycott against St. Martin’s Press “regarding statements made by an employee in their marketing department [on their personal social media] and their failure to respond to concerns about systemic racism and influencer safety within the department. Among other demands, they have called on the publisher to “Address how, moving forward, they will support and protect their Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to their BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.” “#SpeakUpSMP”.
Their protests were re-energized this month when the publisher sent influencers an unsolicited PR box for Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing with some remarkable contents:
In August 2024, Readers for Accountability discovered that influencers had received a PR box from St. Martin’s Press containing a vibrator, lube, and honey. Surprisingly, numerous influencers seemed completely unaware that they would receive these particular items, or even receive the box itself. This incident brought forth questions of influencer safety and consent that were addressed by R4A through this statement. St. Martin’s Press released their first public statement on 8/16/24 in response to #SpeakUpSMP, denying the accusations, stating they responded to influencer emails, and claiming to have conducted an internal investigation finding no wrongdoing.
Today, Publishers Weekly reported: “St. Martin’s Press Responds to Marketing Controversy”.
…The McQuiston controversy comes months after Readers for Accountability began a “marketing boycott” of SMP titles to protest what the group called racist, Islamaphobic, and anti-Palestinian sentiments sent by an SMP marketing department employee. The group said it first raised concerns to SMP in December 2023, but was not satisfied with the publisher’s response, and launched the #SpeakUpSMP marketing boycott, through which the group is refusing to support SMP titles until their concerns are addressed….
…On Friday, SMP posted a comment to its “publishing community,” though it did not specifically cite the comments it was responding to. The post reads in part: “The St. Martin’s Publishing Group is committed to publishing a wide variety of books from many viewpoints and perspectives. We condemn racism in all forms, including Islamophobia and antisemitism. This is a value of our company, and one that we hold ourselves accountable to every day.”…
(4) ESFS AWARDS. The European Science Fiction Society presented the “2024 ESFS Awards” today at Erasmuscon, the 2024 Eurocon in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
(5) ADEYEMI, BUTLER AND JEMISIN. The Week explores “How Black female science fiction and fantasy writers are upending the narrative”.
…Tomi Adeyemi: the fresh storyteller
The final installment of Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orisha” trilogy, “Children of Anguish and Anarchy,” was released on June 25, 2024 and leapt to the top of the New York Times Children’s and Young Adult bestsellers list. The previous two titles in the series did the same when released. “There is something about reading when you’re young that is so different from reading when you’re an adult,” Adeyemi said when interviewed in SBJCT. “Books have the opportunity to bury themselves in your heart and shape the way you think about the world.” …
(6) ANALOG AWARD FOR EMERGING BLACK VOICES DEADLINE EXTENDED. The submission window for The Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices has reopened with a new deadline of August 31. Eligible to enter are “Any writer over 18 years of age who customarily identifies as Black, has not published nor is under contract for a book, and has three or less paid fiction publications is eligible.”
Here is what the award winner receives:
With editorial guidance, Analog editors commit to purchasing and publishing the winning story in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, with the intent of creating a lasting relationship, including one year of monthly mentorship sessions. These sessions will be opportunities to discuss new writing, story ideas, the industry, and to receive general support from the Analog editors and award judges.
Last year’s winner was Sakinah Hofler, whose acceptance speech is at the link.
(7) STARVING INTERFERES WITH WRITING. In “Neuromancer: the birth of an SF classic” at BookBrunch, “author William Gibson and his editor, Malcolm Edwards, recall how a seminal SF work came to publication.”
…In 1983, completing Neuromancer was proving a challenge. The paltry advance paid for the book was not enough to live on, and payments from Omni were essential.
10 March 1983
‘I still haven’t turned Neuromancer in and that makes Martha Millard [his agent] nervous. Just now I’m revising 18 pages of Skull Wars for Ellen Datlow [Omni fiction editor], at a hundred a page, I figure the delay on the novel is worth it. Boy’s gotta eat, right? I’m not all that sure of Neuro‘s alleged hotness, but then I’m never very keen on my own work.‘Glad you liked “[Burning] Chrome”. It’s probably my best story to date for what that’s worth. Got a lot of Nebula taps, which surprised me. I don’t know about that kind of sentimentalism, though. Kind of like Leonard Cohen writing The Stainless Steel Rat.’*…
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Brewster Rockit missed a step in his literary career.
- F Minus comments on designers.
- Off the Mark has a useful tool for credential owners
- Wumo cares for a famous pack
- Tom Gauld diagrams a cocktail party.
(9) FAN FUND WINNERS ASSEMBLE. TAFF, DUFF and GUFF, present and past: TAFF co-administrator Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey sent along the group photo taken at the Glasgow Worldcon. “It was suggested at the shoot that this may have been the largest gathering of fan-fund delegates in the history of fan-fundery,” says Mike. (Photos courtesy of Mike Beneviste’s Worldcon Flickr feed). Click for larger image.
(10) BOX OFFICE REPORT. Fede Álvarez’s “’Alien: Romulus’ Tops Busy Box Office With $41.5M Opening” calculates The Hollywood Reporter.
Alien: Romulus scared up strong business in its box-office debut as it sets out to revive the classic franchise. The 20th Century and Disney movie topped the domestic weekend chart with $45.1 million, well ahead of a projected debut in the high-$20 million range and the second-best opening of the franchise, not adjusted for inflation.
Overseas, Romulus opened to a better-than-expected $66.7 million for worldwide start of $108.2 million….
…Disney’s Inside Out 2 remains the biggest hero of summer, with a global tally of $1.626 billion, the best showing ever for an animated pic. Over the weekend, it also became the top-grossing animated film at the international box office….
(11) CAMERON Q&A. In a wide-ranging interview, James Cameron tells the Guardian: “‘It’s harder to write sci-fi because we’re living in a sci-fi world’”. The Terminator, Alien, and his new OceanXplorers franchises are all discussed.
…October will mark the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will one day save mankind from being destroyed by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence. (Cameron rejected a producer’s suggestion that he cast OJ Simpson in the Terminator role.)
“People pay the compliment, ‘Oh, it still holds up’,” he reflects. “I actually think that’s true of Terminator 2 qualitatively. I think Terminator 1 qualitatively is pretty obsolete, although story-wise it’s still pretty intriguing. There’s some interest around this idea that it was a bit prescient on certain things, like the emergence of AI, the potential existential threat of AI, which is transforming our world before our eyes.
“We’re at a point right now where it gets it gets harder and harder to write science fiction because we’re living in a science fiction world on a day to day basis. I’m working through some of the themes that I want to bring into a new Terminator film or possibly even a kind of a reboot of a larger story framework and it’s difficult right now because I want to let the smoke clear on the whole thing. That’s going to be a ride that we’re going to be watching for probably the rest of human history but certainly the next few years are going to be quite telling.”
If AI does come to pose an extinction-level threat, as some experts warn, Cameron’s Terminator films may be seen as a prophecy that humanity was heading as inexorably as the Titanic towards an iceberg of its own making. He adds: “As I jokingly said once in an interview, ‘I warned you guys in 1984 but you didn’t listen!’
(12) LUNAR CIRCUS. [Item by Tom Becker.] Performance artist Bastien Dausse created a simple device, called “the scale”, that counter-balances 5/6 of his weight, so he can perform acrobatics in the equivalent of lunar gravity. There are some limitations, so it is not a fully accurate simulation of lunar gravity, and he plays with the device’s limitations to artistic effect. It is beautiful. It is a tantalizing hint of the ways acrobats and dancers will find to move on the moon. “MOON – Compagnie Barks”.
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended has a strange mashup: Inside Deadpool.
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Tom Becker, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day P J Evans.]
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9 I took some other pictures of the Fan Fund delegates when I wasn’t in the shot, but this is the shot that includes me. (holding a camera, naturally)
The Lord Kelvin bag was a friend’s, they bought it at the Kelvingrove.
(3) Wow. Just wow.
(2) I like that one.
(3) This whole “vibe” situation has been crazy. Most people pointed out the problems with the lack of consent in this mailing (and mentioned the boycott). But a number of people started calling the critics “prudes” and “puritans” for being upset that SMP sent a vibe in the mail.
Critics of this PR box pointed out that SMP did not know the ages of the people on the list they used. That some states (and countries) regulate the sale of sex toys. That people with past trauma might not react well to the unwanted gift. That people in domestic violence situations might be attacked if their partners saw them get a sex toy in the mail. But to some people, none of that mattered because “free sex toy!” was more important to them.
And the response from SMP was ridiculous. They investigated themselves. I’m so shocked they found out that they did nothing wrong.
(3) What an appalling and idiotic thing for SMP to do. And yes, it will have been potentially traumatic and even potentially dangerous for some of them.
Whatever “Islamophobia” is, it’s not a form of racism. Religion is not a racial characteristic, and Muslims include members of many diverse ethnic groups. It’s a word sometimes used to mean criticism of Islam as a set of ideas, sometimes hostility to Muslims as people, sometimes lack of compliance with Islamic law by non-Muslims.
There’s plenty of anti-Muslim bigotry, but it should be called simply anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s not really about the tenets of Islam but about stereotypes and being “different from us.”
2) How dare they complain about receiving such graphic content? Are they prudes!!? Any normal person would be thrilled to receive such a promotional…package.
[/sarc] for those who need it.
11) Indeed. Every time I think up some “near future” technological exploit that would be interesting to explore, it turns out to have happened about 6 months ago.
Separately, I finished reading the recent SPFBO winner “Murder at Spindle Manor” by Morgan Stang — a delightful confluence of Agatha Christie, HP Lovecraft, steam-punk, and Monty Python. Well worth your time.
@Gary McGath
Are non-Muslims obligated to comply with Islamic law? Are there any legitimate means for resisting the imposition of Islamic law? Should they be the same means for resisting the imposition of Christian faith on a broader population?
FWIW, I suspect we largely agree, but the line above raised questions.
Regards,
Dann
Jesus wasn’t a socialist. He actually fed people. – random
I like Dann’s sig line. Of course, Jesus also told rich people that they were headed for the Bad Place unless they gave the less fortunate a LOT more support than the rich were, and are, wont to do.
(1) Signed he anti-NDA petition
(3) Perhaps Ilm naieve, but I have real difficulty in believing a major press would send something like that.
(7) Yep, for some reason, writers do actually have ordinary humanneeds, like eating, and a roof over their head…
(10) Speaking of Disney, weren’t they going to release an animated movie set in Nigeria?
3) Sounds like several people, not just one marketer needs a clue. Of course they might not like the 2×4 I normally think will be needed. And I am not a violent person.
5) Now I need to add more books to my TBR list. I have several necklaces to Orisha’s I wore today as I walked around the town.
Mark and I have been trying to catch up on posts, when we are back in our b&b rooms before we go to sleep.
(3) I’m reminded of the fake love letters sent to reviewers described here https://www.thisamericanlife.org/288/transcript which looked quite real
3) I was skeptical about the St. Martins Press boycott, because no one seemed to be able to point at what the employee in question actually said. But mailing out sex toys without consent or warning is definitely not okay.
If we’re doing Bradbury now: “Something pixel this way scrolls.”
Gary, Whatever you think about the specific term ‘Islamophobia’, it’s common usage tends to focus on what you call ‘anti-Muslim bigotry.’ Your representation of the term doesn’t engage with that usage. There are certainly Islamists who use the term as a way of avoiding any criticism of their own religious practices, but they aren’t particularly significant voices in the United States.
Also, while Islam is practiced by a diverse group of individuals in a diverse variety of institutions, it’s also hard to avoid noticing that ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ in the United States is a framed by a set of what can only be considered racist assumptions on the part of those who hold those positions. (This is why, for instance, we saw killings of Sikhs because they were assumed to be Muslim.)
Finally, I am not aware of any meaningful attempt to ‘impose Islamic law” on anyone who is not Muslim in the United States or in Europe. I am however aware of the invocation of a threat of such an imposition in the name of racist political practices in both the United States and Europe.
(7) “… like Leonard Cohen writing The Stainless Steel Rat”.
The man is a genius with metaphors.
And of course, how come this part has not been shared with the F770 readers?
” I am not aware of any meaningful attempt to ‘impose Islamic law” on anyone who is not Muslim in the United States or in Europe.”
I should hope that Islamic law isn’t being imposed on anyone, Muslim or not, in the United States or Europe, given that Western governments for the most part observe some degree of separation of church and state.
Jon Meltzer: By the Scrolling of My Thumbs, Something Pixel(l?)y This Way Comes.
@Robert Wood
Courtesy of various social media streams, I occasionally come across videos from memri.org of individuals proclaiming a desire to turn the US and/or Europe into Muslim states or to at least make them subservient to religiosity found in the Middle East. Those individuals/sources are most frequently somewhere in the Middle East and very infrequently in the US or Europe.
Is there a “meaningful attempt”? Probably not much.
Is there a desire? Absolutely.
@Patrick McGuire
Thanks. Full disclosure – while I was raised in a church, I am a religious skeptic. FWIW.
Regards,
Dann
Me on Goodreads.
@Dann665, and courtesy of various social media streams and news reports, I more-than-occasionally come across posts and videos from individuals (including government authorities) wanting to turn the USA into a Christian theocratic state. If you’re going to acknowledge the one, I think perhaps you should acknowledge the other, as the goal seems somewhat more entrenched in this country.
A Muslim city council in Hamtramck Mich. banned gay pride flags.
@bill, and the Republicans in the House spearheaded a measure to forbid gay pride flags over US embassies. LINK Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.
@bill-Fundie Christians in the US routinely have meltdowns of Pride flags, Pride parades, books for children that acknowledge that some of them have two moms or two dads rather than a mom and a dad, and/or acknowledge that teenagers may come out as gay without being sick menaces or part of or victims of An Evil Plot. And what was that “Christian” church in Kansas, that used to travel the country picketing the funerals of US soldiers because the US military was too pro-gay?
I disapprove of the Muslim city council in Hamtramck, Michigan, but they honestly don’t present nearly the same practical threat to my freedoms, including freedom of religion, as these fundie fanatics who claim to be Christians, though I have difficulty recognizing them as such.
@Lis — if you don’t recognize them as Christians, why are you referring to them that way? Cognitive dissonance much?
@bill–
Because they call themselves Christians, and media call them Christians, and not acknowledging that that’s how they call themselves and are referred to, would be an obstacle to actual communication. Cognitive dissonance much, bill, that you apparently need that explained to you?
@Lis “Cognitive dissonance much, bill, that you apparently need that explained to you?”
I’m not the one being hypocritcal here.
In 2022, Hamline University fired art history professor Erika Prater for showing an image of Muhammad as part of a survey of Islamic art, because it violated the Muslim ban on displaying images of Muhammad.
Denmark passed a law last year to ban the burning of the Koran. (It was pitched as a general blasphemy law, but was directly in response to Koran protests — no one is worried about backlash from burning the Bhagavad Gita).
An egregious imposition of Islamic law on non-Muslims was response to the the depictions of Muhammad in cartoons in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Many Muslims called for the deaths of those involved, and eventually French journalist Stéphane Charbonnier and 11 colleagues at Charlie Hebdo, Swedish artist Lars Vilks, and French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty were all killed in the fallout of the events. In 2021, a British teacher showed one of the images while discussing the controversy, and was suspended for doing so.
That’s enough of the Lis and bill show.
Has anyone read a good book lately?
@Cassy B
If that was part of that discussion, then I would have mentioned it.
FTR, I’m opposed to theocracies of any flavor.
But Mike’s got the right idea!
I finished the recent SPFBO winner, Murder at Spindle Manor. Despite it having many features that aren’t in my wheelhouse, it turns out that the book was entirely in my wheelhouse. A delightful and entertaining read.
Cyberpunk author T.R. Napper’s Ghost of the Neon God was also entertaining and thought-provoking. How much of your mind do you want to withhold from a networked world?
The second book in Mark Lawrence’s Library trilogy was also a fine bit of reading. But I recommend starting with the first book as the second book definitely continues the tale. Mark is a mastercraftsman storyteller and it shows.
I also caught up on John Van Stry’s Wolfhounds series reading books 3 and 4 back-to-back. This is grade A MilSF with an undertone of how technological adeptness might influence class development as well as reasons for constraining AI.
Lastly, tried to read Tom Kratman’s Dirty Water. Unlike his other works that I found impressive, this one just didn’t cut the mustard. It got the putative Dorothy Parker treatment.
Regards,
Dann
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians. – George Lucas to the Congress March 3, 1988.
@Mike Glyer “Has anyone read a good book lately?”
I read Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove’s “Household Gods” on a flight back from Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. I liked it fine. (I had started on the free chapters of S. M. Stirling’s “To Turn the Tide” that are available online, and am now waiting on a copy to show up at the library, or to get by a bookstore so I can finish it. While stuck in the middle, I read a review that said that a character from “Household Gods” makes an appearance, so I picked it up via download. And now I’m seeing references to the 2nd century Roman Empire all over.)
I’ve been reading through Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Diving Universe” series and enjoying it. Good solid space opera.
The SPSFC 3 winner Kenai by Dave Dobson was a good read. It’s about a disgraced soldier assigned to an easy gig babysitting a small research project “at the ass-end of Council space.” Dobson’s a funny writer with a deft style who finds a lot of character humor in his protagonists. This was his second book I’ve read as a contest judge and he’s becoming more ambitious as a writer, as I noted in my review.