When I came home last night my place had no power because a fuse had blown. I waited til this morning to be able to find the fusebox in daylight. Here’s as far as I got with yesterday’s Pixel Scroll, which in Wikipedia parlance is more of a Pixel Stub..
(1) Greg Machlin has finalized the File 770 meetup location at Sasquan.
The Worldcon File770 meetup, Thursday, Aug. 20, at 530 PM, will be at SARANAC PUBLIC HOUSE, 21 West Main Avenue, a very short (2 block) walk from the Convention Center.
They have food, drink, vegan and vegetarian food, and affordable prices:
SO MANY OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUN with that prior sentence, people. DO NOT DISAPPOINT.
They know to expect at least 25, and not to expect us all at once. There’s a bar, so milling is a definite possibility.
Morris Keesan made an interesting discovery:
… and on the Google map, it appears to be next door to the Justice League.
(2) Courtesy of Geekcrafts, socks to wear on your next Trek.
Linda Jo Park, of BeadKnitter Patterns, has created some out-of-this-world socks in honor of Captain Picard from Star Trek. You can find her pattern here.
She also suggests that the pattern could be easily adapted to reference other characters:
There’s no reason why a person couldn’t do them in Captain Kirk gold, Spock blue (you get two choices there), or even Deanna Trois lavender. Or perhaps you’d rather have Gorn green.
(3) Footage of Mark Twain shot by Thomas Edison in 1909, from Mental Floss.
Edison and Twain were close friends. In 1909, Edison visited Twain’s estate in Redding, CT and filmed the famous author. The silent footage is the only known recording of Twain in existence. It first appeared in a 1909 production of Twain’s “The Prince and Pauper,” and it shows Twain wearing his trademark white suit, puffing a cigar. Twain would die one year later.
(4) Sarah A. Hoyt is warming up for Sad Puppies 4 in “It’s All About the Bling”.
When we set out on this, back in the dim days of our first discussions of Sad Puppies (I object, of course. I have cats) the goal was to make the Hugo worth something again. Granted, we can’t cater for everyone’s taste. If you’re a heavy mil-sf guy and the prize goes to hard sci fi it won’t be to your taste. BUT to cater to the “literary” crowd is to cater to the tiniest fandom in SF. (I found this out in sincere arguments with agents while looking for one between my third and fourth. They all wanted me to write literary sf — because I CAN do it — because it would win awards and increase THEIR prestige (and make me slit my wrists in a warm bath if I had to write much more of it. It was no fun.) But they all candidly informed me that it sold almost nothing and so I should try to get a job teaching or write for literary journals or something. Why do you think they kept telling us that Ancillary Justice as a “fun space opera” — because no one buys “literary”. Or yeah, some people do, but not enough to keep you in writer kibble.
Our idea, goofy as it sounds was to get some good books/good names associated with the Hugo, so Hugo would mean a boost in print run again.
[Thanks to Will R., Michael J. Walsh and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of yesterday Will R.]
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When watching action movies, I always think that they have their hero points they use to escape damage. They make much more sense as live action role playing games.
I’m bouncing between various nonfiction books at the moment, so everything is a muddle of arsenic in green paint, cattail harvesting, soil microbes and seed catalog design.
I go in jags of fiction, fiction, non-fiction. When I’m writing intensely toward deadline, I gravitate toward non-fiction because if it breaks into the book I’m writing, it’s less likely to matter.
Well, speaking of geography, there’s a Jodie Foster movie (I think it’s LITTLE MAN TATE?) that takes place in “South Cincinnati.”
As everyone kept pointing out here (Cincinnati) when the movie was released, there is no such place. If you were in “South Cincinnati,” you’d be in the middle of the Ohio River.
One of my favorite Hollywood-stupid geographical absurdities is some old action/thriller with Tom Berenger and Debra Winger in which, on a road trip, they reach a fork in the road, and the sign for one fork is “Denver” and the other is “Chicago.” Which are 900 miles (over 1300 kms) apart.
I always giggle when Hollywood has the Golden Gate bridge taking people to the East Bay. Or when someone drives the top deck of the Bay Bridge to get to the East Bay. Or, no matter where you are in San Francisco, you can hear a cable car bell being rung.
@Lori Coulson
I loved Starsky and Hutch (the TV series NOT the movie) because whenever one of them was hurt, they acted like it.
I liked the episode where Starsky got shot, looked like hell and was clearly going to die if he didn’t get some medical attention soon. His response: “Don’t let this fool you. I played Camille in high school.”
Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.
Art history, particularly Medieval/Renaissance Italian. One of these days I’m going to challenge Dan Brown to a duel-with-squids, or something equally ridiculous.
Peace Is My Middle Name: I’ve lived in Chicago, and anyone getting the geography dead wrong (I’m looking at you, Dresden Files) bugs me no end.
Me, too! Did you ever run across the mystery novel with the protagonist who once lived “in a wooden rowhouse” on the far south side? It’s only a throwaway, I know I’m being unfair, but it stopped me cold when I read the line. Or the romance writer who casually set an important scene on Chicago’s “East” Side? (And no, the characters weren’t freshwater merpeople.) (As I recall, in that particular instance it might have been a better book if they had been . . . )
Of the ANALOG issues with the sequel to EMERGENCE?
Those, probably not. I was passing the copies on to friends at that time. The sequel wasn’t nearly as good as the original; I can just remember some bit of it.
@ RedWombat It’s a good thing I had finished dinner. Keyboard was saved.
Special knowledge that makes me cringe:
1) apparently understanding that it is a very bad idea to carry accident victims in your arms is special knowledge. I have been known to leap out of my chair shouting “don’t–!” helplessly.
2) Biology. For example, I understand the basics about how evolution works. When someone talks about someone else “evolving” it makes me cringe. Or one of the Godzilla movies discovered that Godzilla laid eggs and all the characters kept right on referring to Godzilla as “he”; that made me cringe. Or one of the Warbound prequels had a supposed “quote” from Darwin about how non-super humans were certainly going to go extinct.
So yeah, those are my bugbears.
Just finished _Castle Hangnail_ and before that the Touchstone trilogy; currently reading _Disappearing Nightly_ and _Wee Free Men_ which I need to go translate a page and a half more of, so I’ll be “offskis!”
What am I reading?
Hominids by Sawyer. Only just started, ask me again in a few days.
As a Minnesotan, I always sorta snicker when a scene is set in a wild jungle or rainforest type place, and what crazy wild bird sound does one hear? A loon.
Special knowledge that makes me cringe: seeing hollywood amnesia, often cured by second blow to head. Also, Schizophrenia meaning a split personality. Also Witty erudite genius sociopathic killers. ESPECIALLY also Wacky/deeply wise chronic schizophrenics as the new magical negro.
I could go on if you want- bring a lunch.
Guess what my degree is in?
I’m currently reading Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman, and Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett.
The first two are both really good in their own way – Tchaikovsky’s world-building is fantastic and very original, and Ryman’s prose is incredible. I’ve been reading it out loud to myself.
Mother of Eden is a mixed bag. A lot of the stuff I liked about Dark Eden is gone, and once you get to the part where the main character SPOILER is going around denouncing her adopted society’s sexism and classism, it gets very awkward very fast.
And there are my mini-reviews of books I haven’t finished reading yet.
Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.
Like most lawyers, I cringe at almost all fictional depictions of legal work. I also find most fictional economics to be pretty cringe-worthy. Any time someone tries to depict how the U.S. federal government works it generally sets me off too – almost no one gets any of it correct.
I have been reading “Tom Jones” for the last 2 weeks. Great stuff, but 980 pages in my Modern Library trade paperback. I took a couple of breaks and read a Robert B. Parker “Spenser” novel, and Abercrombie’s “Half A King”.
I recently read “A Clubbable Woman” by Reginald Hill, published around 1970, first of his popular Dalziel and Pascoe detective stories. The initial situation involves a rugby player who suffers a concussion and groggily makes his way home. I’m no expert but I’ve read about hockey players with concussions (a fairly well publicized subject in today’s pro sports world) and I thought the concussion was well and credibly handled. I enjoyed the book though it’s of its time and dated in some ways.
The library came through with my reserved copy of “Aurora” on the weekend, so that’s next up.
What I’m reading now:
Vermillion by Molly Tanzer. I won’t try to describe it but I’m enjoying it.
I’m also listening to the audio version of The Martian by Andy Weir, a book I missed last year. I wanted to be sure to read it (or, in this case, listen to it) before the movie comes out.
Anyone else love audiobooks? One of my favorites is the full cast edition of World War Z by Max Brooks.
BDSM-scenes in movies. It always make me wince when they look so serious and angry. For some reason it seems mandatory to be a fetishist if you are into BDSM. And they hit like idiots. On kidneys, on places where it just plain hurts without the nice feeling to it. They tie each other up in ways that are directly dangerous where damage could take months to heal. Or they are just totally ridiculous as mega masters.
> “Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.”
My sweetie is an astrophysicist, and bad space science in SFF drives her nuts. I have been treated to extensive and entertaining rants about why using a bomb to restart the sun in “Sunshine” would work about as well as throwing matches at it, why Ryan Stone would pretty much just be dead if what happened in “Gravity” actually happened except it wouldn’t have happened so she wouldn’t be, and why everyone in “Interstellar” was an idiot.
My favourite geographical gaffe in cinema in Ireland is in Once. Early on Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s characters are sitting in a café that’s attached to a shopping arcade in Dublin. They leave the café, walk the length of the arcade and then walk out the entrance beside the café.
Also, in the Commitments, the “hotel” Wilson Pickett is staying in is actually the mayor’s residence.
Bothered by inaccuracies in: Conducting and/or string instrument playing; my dad is a (now retired) choir conductor, and I played cello for nine years. Most conductors do not wave their arms around fluidly without keeping a clear, precise beat like they do in movies/TV (it’s hugely important for a conductor to keep a clear beat, in case any of the players gets off track), and movies never show a conductor getting ready to cue a section–another huge part of conducting. A conductor’s score is going to be visibly marked up like nobody’s business.
And in most string instrument playing, you can clearly see the bows not touching the strings and not moving in time to the music.
Just finished reading: NEUROMANCER (for the first time) and Judd Apatow’s set of interviews, SICK IN THE HEAD. 120 pages into Terry Pratchett’s MORT. Still working on 48 LAWS OF POWER and JONATHAN STRANGE.
@RichardBrandt: Oooh! Does this mean I’m now part of a new secret club? Will The Beast help get my novel published?
(My main field of expertise is theatrical, so I can tell you that “Shakespeare in Love” is a pretty accurate depiction of the process of putting on a play and “Birdman” is a ridiculously inaccurate one.)
@Ann: Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.
I used to be a neuroscience/psychopharmacology researcher. So, just about every fictional presentation of a rodent lab sends me batty. As well as most portrayals of drug use, intoxication, addiction (Doc Smith was a notable offender on that one), etc.
Oh, and motorcycles. I can generally pick the approximate size, number of cylinders, cylinder arrangement (parallel vs V-twin etc), country of origin and extent of exhaust modification of a motorcycle within a second of hearing it. Shows in which the sound effects come anywhere near matching the motorcycle pictured are very, very much the minority.
Missed the edit, but one anecdote on geography:
My favorite boss was originally from Chicago but I worked for him in Los Angeles. His adult son, raised in L.A., used to call his dad for directions. I was working with him one afternoon when his son called and (since I knew him) he put him on speaker:
Son: I’m lost.
Dad: Where are you now?
Son: I’m travelling west on _________ street {can’t remember the name – I’ve never been to Chicago}.
Dad: Why do you think you’re travelling west?
Son: I’m getting closer to the water.
In L.A., the only big body of water is west – the Pacific. In Chicago, the big body of water is east – Lake Michigan. Being from L.A., he just KNEW that if he was getting closer to the water, he must be travelling west. I find this story amusing, but I wouldn’t have done any better…
Say what you will about Rome, at least they did try to be realistic about the fighting.
Most on screen hacking is woeful especially the “they’re nearly through the firewall” cries an flashing red screens. You can get some surprising aversions though, Wargames and Sneakers are both much more accurate (if dated) featuring such things as war dialing and social engineering attacks.
Remember the MST3K mantra…
I’ve lived in Chicago, and anyone getting the geography dead wrong (I’m looking at you, Dresden Files) bugs me no end.
I am the same way, but for the geography of the University of Virginia (hey, you, over there, yes you True Colors, you’ve got some explaining to do), and the geography of Washington D.C. (No Way Out is a particularly notable offender).
I am also always pretty unimpressed by fight scenes in movies. Years of TKD will tell you that most of the things used to make fights look dramatic on screen are pretty stupid, and the fight is probably going to be over with the first really solid kick anyway.
RedWombat on August 17, 2015 at 3:22 pm said:
Those transbooks must really confuse him.
Not sure I’ll be able to stop by, but the Saranac is an excellent choice. If you’re inclined to drinking beer, they always have a number of local microbrews on tap. Also, just east of the Saranac is Merlyn’s, our big downtown comic and game shop, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Currently halfway through Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor, which barring some terrible disappointment in the second half, may well be my favorite graphic novel this year. Also, The Fifth Season, which I just barely began last night but I’ve heard good things about.
Sneakers did the smart thing of ignoring the details and going for the feeling instead. The characters spend at least as much time engaged in social engineering as they do actual technical work. There’s a reason it’s the movie actually beloved of hackers.
@RedWombat
Duh, guys, he knows they’re man or woman books by lifting the back cover and checking the book’s genitals, obviously.
Those transbooks must really confuse him.
You think he’s confused, I thought I was looking at an appendix.
It occurs to me that one sees only the eyes of the hunting crocodile. From there, I get an image of a clutch of pups crammed into a small, rough, greenish submersible just off the coast of File 770. Much giggling is heard from near the periscope as they vie for turns at the microphone, for the losers must Google the research for the next response and watch the radar for the Rabidonian subs that are known to patrol the waters and to fire on unknown vessels without warning.
As a life-long New Englander, I’ve done this in the opposite direction. My first time in California, my hosts and I were planning a car trip somewhere, and I was looking at the map with them and saying “west” every time I meant “away from the ocean”.
Yeah, I’ve long listed WarGames as possibly the most accurate description of hacking Hollywood has ever done. Lots of research into ‘what would this person have likely used as a password, anyway?’
Of course, that’s mostly because Hollywood so rarely does anything even close to accurate, and at the time ‘hacking’ was such an unknown thing nobody expected it to look fascinating.
Current reads: Scalzi’s The End of All Things, audiobook edition — I waited specifically for William Dufris’ narration, and was sorely disappointed by Tavia Gilbert, who reads the middle two novellas — though it’s not her fault that she’s not Dufris.
Robin Stevens’ Wells & Wong #3, First-Class Murder — not SFF, but there are a number of mystery fans here, and it’s a fabulous third to the series
Seanan McGuire’s upcoming Toby Daye, thanks to an ARC, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, both for visiting new locales, and featuring May and Walther prominently.
Area of expertise that prompts cringing at inaccuracy: things related to academia, specifically bureacracy, and how thesis research works (though this is a pop-culture thing, not specifically an SFF thing.
> “Currently halfway through Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor, which barring some terrible disappointment in the second half, may well be my favorite graphic novel this year.”
*head pops out of hole in the ground like a prairie dog*
Scott McCloud has a new graphic novel out?
“BUT to cater to the “literary” crowd is to cater to the tiniest fandom in SF. (I found this out in sincere arguments with agents while looking for one between my third and fourth. They all wanted me to write literary sf — because I CAN do it — because it would win awards and increase THEIR prestige (and make me slit my wrists in a warm bath if I had to write much more of it. It was no fun.) But they all candidly informed me that it sold almost nothing and so I should try to get a job teaching or write for literary journals or something. Why do you think they kept telling us that Ancillary Justice as a “fun space opera” — because no one buys “literary”.”
About that. It won the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Somebody must like something a little more challenging then simple minded SF.
What they really object to, is that Fans voted for something other than their message fiction. Larry Correia writes right wing message fiction. It is just they think Woldcon members are Wrong Fans having Wrong Fun by reading SFF with a Wrong message. They freeped the WorldCom vote because the wanted to stick it to liberals they call SJW – which is wrong politics. And because they could.
If members don’t pass something to stop the freeping, they will do it again. Tea puppies are easily stirred up.
“Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.”
Not just SFF (although I’ve seen it there too — I vaguely recall some examples from Buffy), but any show in which a person sits down at a computer and finds everything they ever needed to know about a subject on their first search.
It’s sort of the librarian version of the CSI effect. I’ve had a number of library patrons frustrated that I can’t Google up the answer to their arcane query at a moment’s notice.
I fondly remember the corn palms of Des Moines, Iowa that were shot in Fresno as a location shot in the movie adaptation of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. I have no special expertise about that, other than growing up in Iowa.
Yes! It’s quite a tome for a graphic novel, nearly five hundred pages. And as far as I can tell, it was first published in February this year, so it should be eligible for the 2016 Hugo nominations.
And now there’s CSI:Cyber to take its place, hacking into traffic systems to get RFID info that, if they actually kept it as long as the show said, would make companies that sell disk space very very happy.
Not to mention the way they track IP addresses even faster and more reliably than traditional CSI tracked phone numbers, when even non-techy non-US Game of Thrones fans know how to spoof them.
Most, but not all. I was in a choir conducted by someone who just sort of vaguely waved his hands in our general direction. He was, apparently, one of the world’s leading experts on that sub-sub-genre of choir music, but if you didn’t already know what you were supposed to be doing, you were lost. Being in his choir was like being taught by a prof who has no clue it’s a 101-level class so he’s teaching as if you’re a grad student in the subject (he was also a music professor…). And meanwhile all the grad students are just so jealous that you’ve got him for a prof.
The SF Bay Area is L-shaped, so that what’s marked as an “east-west” road on the map might well be “north-south” where you’re on it – and cross another “east-west” road. I gave my kid brother directions that were “hillward” or “bayward” because he wasn’t sure where he was well enough for my saying “east” or “south” to be useful.
I went to Cheyenne Mountain with a group of OS/2 developers. You could tell the NORAD programmers had heard too many WarGames questions – they perked up noticeably when we started asking what OS and languages they used.
Injuries: In the Jim Butcher novel up for the Hugo, Harry breaks his arm, but because he’s protected from feeling pain he gets a cast and goes right back into the fray, and he continues to fight all through the book. Yeah, okay, he doesn’t feel pain, but I wouldn’t want to be the doctor looking at that arm after he’s done.
Laura:
“Daddy was a cop
On the East Side of Chicago
Back in the USA
Back in the bad old days…”
World Weary:
When I moved from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, I did the same thing. Took a long time to get past the instinctual idea that toward-the-ocean is east.
Brian V:
Woot!
I haven’t read the final version yet — way behind on everything comicswise — but I’ve read so many drafts of it. Thrilled it’s going over so well.
@DavidW–“I fondly remember the corn palms of Des Moines, Iowa that were shot in Fresno as a location shot in the movie adaptation of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. I have no special expertise about that, other than growing up in Iowa.”
That’s on my list. As well as the beginning of “Twister” where the family is running for the storm cellar at night and have to go through a flock of chickens who are apparently just hanging out in the yard. At night with a storm raging all around. Not to mention the Star Trek movie where Kirk runs a car into that big-assed hole.
@ L — The loon! The freakin’ loon! I’ve given up on the kookaburra and the red-tailed hawk scream, but must we also sacrifice the loon to Hollywood?
I’m a fairly well-informed layman on astronomy and astrophysics, and I cringe a lot when reading most space-based SF, to say nothing of watching movies and TV. Space really doesn’t work the way a lot of creators think it does.
Same with ancient history, and the way Hollywood in particular treats period pieces. It’s so rare to see a film that actually gets the material culture right, to say nothing of (e.g.) battlefield tactics. I remember watching the otherwise mediocre film Troy and wanting to stand up and cheer because for a few minutes on the big screen, they actually gave us a good portrayal of ancient warfare.
I don’t mind what I call plot-expedient inaccuracy in a TV show – DNA tests that get results in hours at most, computer searches that get first-google results, characters that never have to repeat or double-check the spelling or pronunciation of a name (was that Thomson or Thompson? Yan or Yang? It doesn’t have to be Chmilowski or Niji Makhwa for some life-threatening secretarial error to be possible) or a street address, or people who write nothing down and remember it all. Mostly because these sorts of things, if shown realistically, will slow the plot.
I’m less forgiving of the same things in books – though I still let a lot of it slide. Mostly because it’s easier to sum up the aggravations in a pithy phrase than it is to film them.
The one in a book that annoyed me was Rick Riordan getting everything about central Rome wrong (in many of the same ways I understand Connie Willis got London wrong in Blackout/All Clear – assuming things are well far apart that are within easy reach and that ilk) — AND being convinced Italy either didn’t have pizza or had bad pizza (there’s a number of ways he could have played realistic culture shock about American Teen assumptions about said pizza, but what he described isn’t any of those, it was bad American pizza gotten at the wrong kind of restaurant – with a scenic view of the river…) — all in ways someone who was in Rome ***for a handful of days on her Honeymoon*** could see plain. He managed to at least realise this and vagued Malta in the next book enough that, while I’m still convinced he was never there, there wasn’t anything to point to as explicitly wrong.
Technically there is an East Side, or at least so they say in Indiana, which lays claim to it. I never met anyone in Chicago who knew about it; as far as they were concerned all that was down there was Gary.
I can still recall a cop drama where the director seemed unaware that you would not be likely to find white people living in a nice little bungalow right on Cottage Grove Avenue.
@Mary Frances
Theoretical mathematician.
Almost every time I see “chaos theory” get used as a plot device, I want to put my head in my hands and weep.
On the other hand, I absolutely adore the movie “Sneakers,” in part because the math in it is good math.
Yep, Sculptor is excellent and is indeed eligible for the 2016 Hugos. It’s definitely on my list of Graphic Story nominees so far. The other one is The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage; I’ve decided that while there’s a fair amount of pure text in it, the graphic story content is sufficient in both size and quality to warrant a nomination.
@Fugue – I love the movie “Sneakers” more than is healthy.
Then there is “When Harry Met Sally”, where the two of them clearly drive north out of Chicago to get to New York, apparently taking the scenic route through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Canada north of the Great Lakes to get there.