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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I shouted at the bit where they were able to extract enough “anti-serum” from *one* monkey to cure a whole population *and* they did it overnight. Truly my suspension of disbelief was fatally unsuspended.
@Jon: 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.
Without commenting on tactical accuracy: my impression of Gladiator was that it was a cool opening scene followed by a terrible movie full of tedious cliché.
But I would have loved to see that opening scene turned into a full movie. Basically, what I want is the first ten minutes of Gladiator crossed with Saving Private Ryan, based around the last stand of the Varian legions. Now that would make for a good Rome movie.
As a born New Englander, I had a tendency to yell “That’s not New England!” at every episode of “Murder, She Wrote”.
The cliffs of California do not look much like the rocky beaches of Massachusetts and Maine.
Sure, Hoyt. You can be Daniel Keyes tomorrow if you wanted to, but you’d rather be a low selling jingoist writing derivative tripe because that’s where the money is.
I quit reading John Grisham, forever, in the middle of one of his early books (The Pelican Brief, as I recall) when he had the main character walk into the Cafe du Monde and order a bagel and a club soda.
Because NO.
Because you can order four things at the Cafe du Monde, as everyone from New Orleans knows: coffee, milk, (plain) water, and beignets. That’s it. The end.
Not the place ain’t famous, either.
Jack Lint said
OMG so much THIS. Between the CSI shows and the 24/7 “nonfiction” crime shows on channels like Discovery, criminals know too much about how we work and juries think they do, but really don’t. When I was a detective I worked mainly fraud cases and once had a grand juror ask me if we had tested a forged check for DNA. In a case where we had the suspect on video passing the forged check, and later caught him with the fraudulent ID on his person. And he admitted the whole thing in a recorded video.
Peace Is My Middle Name: 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.
Nah, this was supposedly in the city proper, sort of north of the Loop–the protagonist also somehow managed to get there from O’Hare without using an expressway. In about 20 minutes by taxi. (Actually, I have heard of the neighborhood called the East Side of Chicago–but you are right, it’s awfully obscure and I’m not sure I would have made the connection even if that had been the area that the author of this book was referring to. Among other things, it’s a lot more “south” than “east” of the rest of the city.) And yes, people who don’t understand the ethnic realities of Chicago’s neighborhoods can also be extremely irritating . . .
@Kyra: (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
YES! Thank you! (Not my main area of expertise, but I fell in love with a playwriting class and did some graduate coursework in playwriting until I told the Graduate Director/playwriting prof off for sexism).
I saw SiL with a medievalist (late 14th C England but she taught Renaissance and Reformation) and an 18th C. Americanist and had dual muttering going on at the end along the lines of: “Virginia wasn’t a colony then!,” and “If Elizabeth thought that about marriage/divorce, she wouldn’t be Queen!”
And I was like, guys, it’s TOM STOPPARD! This isn’t about Shakespeare, it’s about THEATRE!
Muttering continued nonetheless (I forget the other stuff).
All the historians I know feel obliged to see all these historical films, esp. in their specialities, so they’ll know what (many of their) students will be thinking, snicker.
OK, this is pet peeve for everything, but it’s why people LIKE fiction, etc.
Nobody’s phone or anything else ever runs out of charge.
(Waits eagerly for exceptions!)
@Aaron:
Oh come on, Aaron. You can totally run down into what is obviously the Baltimore subway system in downtown DC and come up into the nonexistent Georgetown Park Mall station, then hop a wall just outside the mall and be in suburbia.
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.
Plus, there’s the fact that he broke his arm because he blocked the attack in a a way that anyone who has ever studied martial arts will tell you to never use.
Oh come on, Aaron. You can totally run down into what is obviously the Baltimore subway system in downtown DC and come up into the nonexistent Georgetown Park Mall station, then hop a wall just outside the mall and be in suburbia.
After running on foot from the Pentagon, across the Key Bridge (I think it was the Key Bridge) into D.C., all while being chased by a car.
Incidentally, I’ve broken bones twice in my life. In both cases, I didn’t realise that the bone was broken until after I hit someone with it (rugby and martial arts, not brawling). Major league ouch.
Jamoche on August 17, 2015 at 4:35 pm said:
My band conductor does on occasion tend towards vague handwaving for emotion and general feeling, beating one beat per measure in a slow 4/4 section, BUT: he does this when he can tell that we have the tempo solidly, and as a group, we’ve been playing together for a long time, and with him for almost 10 years, so he knows when he can get away with it, and will go back to beating strict tempo if it becomes necessary.
On the southern part of Route 128, the highway that surrounds Boston, there used to be a section where, when traveling due east, one was going “South” on state route 128 and simultaneously “North” on Interstate 93. That’s no longer the case, because they’ve mucked around with road numbering so that 128 suddenly ends just west of that section, but locals (including radio traffic reporters) still speak as if that part of the road were still Route 128. There are still parts of 128 where “South” is west (and maybe even slightly north of west) and “North” is east, which is because “North” is really clockwise, and “South” is widdershins.
I get peeved whenever a show or movie gets the NYC Subway system wrong. I have yelled at the TV when that happens. Is it so difficult for LA TV writers to look at the map?
Reading: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. I’m on a Tam Lin kick. Just finished Fire and Hemlock. My copy of Tam Lin is falling apart!
In other news, I have a job interview! So we shall see if this temp job turns into something permanent, or I get the other job, or something in between. Fingers crossed that *something* becomes permanent!
I’m a bit further in Uprooted than I was this afternoon. It’s pleasantly subverting its Beauty and the Beast roots, and it looks like it has some interesting themes about leaving and coming back home that are resonating with me even in its early stages, so I’m already glad I purchased it.
I’ve heard good things about The Mechanical. Alternate history with what looks like lots of politics and spycraft? That sounds like something I could get into.
That one has always confused me, since presumably TV writers include at least a few people who are from or have visited New York.
Even more irritating is 98% White People NYC.
I live in central New York State; generally no one sets books here unless they really do know the area. However, one exception was a novel set at a Chinese restaurant, said to be famous for its chicken balls. I said, what are those? I’ve never seen them on a menu. Turns out they are a specialty of Toronto (and other parts of Canada) and every Chinese restaurant there does have them, just not south of the border. The author is Canadian; why she chose my area for her setting I’ve no idea.
@Beth: if you’re liking Tam Lin, I’d strongly recommend hunting up Mary Gentle’s Thomas the Rhymer. Fantastically well done.
Current reads:
–Uncanny issue 2 (just read “Folding Beijing” aloud to my partner and we both enjoyed it quite a bit.)
–The Martian-Very good, enjoying it bite by bite instead of gulping the whole thing.
–Berlin Diary by William Shirer
–The Pickwick Papers – very slow re read.
–Heat Wave: a Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago by Eric Linenberg — my current dead tree book. dense but fascinating; for a reworked dissertation it’s very readable.
–The Water Room by Christopher Fowler – current audiobook.
–A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – current audiobook for when I’m having trouble settling down and going to sleep. like all Bryson it’s well written and interesting but the reader’s mellow British voice puts me out in 10-15 minutes. Since I always have to back up 5 or 10 minutes to get back to the part before I fell asleep, progress is very very slow. I’ve been listening to it since late last fall and I’m only on Chapter 5 of 15. Something about non fiction read by Brits–when I worked overnights for 5 years I used the audiobooks to wind down and worked my way through several Simon Winchesters.
On the other hand, I’ve given up being annoyed at people on tv, movies, music videos, paintings, etc., who don’t know how to properly hold the musical instrument they’re supposedly playing, or if they do know how to hold it convincingly are not doing anything remotely related to the music we’re hearing. Although I’m primarily a woodwind player, I’ve played a few string instruments, and can get scales out of some brass, enough to be able to tell when what the fingers are doing has anything to do with what the ears are hearing. This makes it more impressive when someone bothers to get it right: in the Broadway production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, I was convinced through much of the play that the actors were actually playing their instruments (they weren’t), and also in a touring production of “The Music Man” 12 years ago, when in the finale the chorus was pretending to be a marching band. In a local production of a play about a string quartet, we were talking with the cast after the show, and they explained that they had soaped their bows so that they could appear to be playing while not actually having any sound coming from the instruments.
It was probably 25 years ago at this point, but in
Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn take the ferry from Detroit to Racine and then get in a chase in Racine’s famous Chinatown.
Maybe if I’d just assumed it was set in some alternate universe I’ve have enjoyed the movie.
Wanderfound, are you sure you mean “Mary Gentle’s Thomas the Rhymer“, and not Ellen Kushner’s Thomas, the Rhymer? Neither the Wikipedia nor isfdb entries for Gentle mention a Thomas by her.
BTW, speakng of expertise interfering with SFF appreciation: there’s a line in Tam Lin that nearly made me hurl the book across the room.
There’s a bit where the protagonist’s clinical psych professor complains about the research psychs “taking his best analysts and turning them into rat-runners” (positioned in a way that makes it clear that the author endorses the statement).
To someone familiar with evidence-based psychology, this translates as “they took my best faith healers and turned them into scientists”.
The thing Hoyt gets wrong is that we have literary SF and it’s Gene Wolfe, and was Banks when he was alive. And they got nominated, but never won a Hugo for best novel. And yet they both made a living writing it.
Also, Gene Wolfe the leftist darling of the SF literati? No.
@Wanderfound: Do you mean A Hawk in Silver by Mary Gentle? Because Ellen Kushner wrote Thomas the Rymer. Personally I think Patricia McKillip’s Winter Rose is very good in that genre.
Gah, yes: Ellen Kushner, not Mary Gentle.
(although, while we’re here, Gentle’s Ash is my favourite SFF book of all time)
@L @Redwombat
In the miniseries _Rome_ there’s a scene where two old friends meet in the Egyptian (I think) desert at sunset. It’s rather a solemn scene.
In the middle of it I burst out laughing. Nearly fell off my chair. Kip is like “what? What?”
To emphasize the utter loneliness of the desert night the sound engineer had dubbed in…
a loon.
My suspension of disbelief had gone “proingggg!” and flown away into the night. It was quite some time before I could find it again. Downsides to studying bird calls they don’t warn you about on the CD packaging.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why these people don’t think you can’t have the “literary quality” AND the fun romp all in the same book.
Tanith Lee did it. The Silver Metal Lover is my favorite book of hers, and I just bought the 40th-anniversary reissue of The Birthgrave. Both are beautifully written, with lush, rich prose. I don’t know if you could characterize either one as “fun,” but the latter, especially, is a mind-bending romp. Ann Leckie isn’t quite the stylist Tanith Lee was, but if Ancillary Justice isn’t space opera, that term has no meaning. It’s written pretty damn well, too. (Sword is better, in my opinion.)
You can have both, if you set your head to it. It’s a worthy goal for any writer.
Cat:
My lol moment in Rome was when the two soldier characters were talking out in the desert somewhere and you can clearly hear a car horn honk offscreen.
Blackout/All Clear made me absolutely crazy. In the time that the characters spent discussing and worrying and vexing about catching the tube or a bus they could have *walked* to their destination twice over. Willis also completely does not understand just how deep some of those tube stops are. We ended up taking the stairs at Covent Gardens a couple of times 192 steps !!! Not fun and not fast. Ugh!
Bird on a Wire was just a terrible movie.
eselle28-
It’s all that. I’m not a steampunk fan but this is clockworkpunk, with heavy doses of exploration of Free Will, Calvinism vs Catholicism, the nature of the soul, and more. But any Puppy reading this should know to not worry, if you don’t want to stress your mind thinking about that stuff there’s a bunch of cool fucking robots doing cool shit and sometimes fighting. But the other stuff is there too.
As far as Ann’s question about what nits you pick when you notice them in stuff, through various geekery: medical stuff (HIPAA violations everywhere in fiction), fight scenes where there’s no way that’d work physically, and guns. Which is why I like Correia’s Monster Hunter series, as a gun shop owner he doesn’t do the stupid little inaccuracies and does gun porn right. Even Louis L’Amour, Western author, has a ton of mistakes there as much as I enjoy his work. As a fan of Samurai stuff one of the Hugo nominees completely baffled me.
Re: Suspension of disbelief hung by the neck until dead — there’s a scene in one of the earlier Butcher “Dresden” books, can’t remember which one, which has a magical duel happen in Wrigley Field, but no mundane notices it because of the vast parking lots that surround the ballpark….
Wait, WHAT? Wrigley Field has apartment buildings so close that the owners built bleachers on the roof so that people can watch the game; people rent out parking in their alleys and garages; there IS no “vast parking lot” (would that there were….) I had to retcon it in my head to Soldier Field for it to make sense.
Speaking of specialized knowledge that bounces you out of a book when authors get it wrong, it’s funny somoene should mention Tam Lin, because that was a prime example or wrongety-wrongness for me. I have no doubt her description of being a student at a small mid-western liberal arts college in the 70s was dead on, as it seems to have been drawn from the author’s own experiences, but her description of what it was like to be a faculty brat who grew up in the town was so far off it pretty much ruined the whole book for me.
But then not too many people grew up in a such a college town in the 70s with professor parents, so I can see that it would be the sort of stuff that would slide right by most people.
Also, I find that I can suspend disbelief for big errors (FTL travel? Critters that “evolve” into a new life form? Space stations with artificial gravity? No problem!) but it’s the small errors that break me out my enjoyment. For example, I really hate it when characters who have nothing to do with acting or screenwriting use jargon that has so permeated that field that writers don’t even realize it is a specialized term. Most of the rest of the world gets feedback on their work products, they aren’t “given notes” and while the general public may take a break or take five, I’ve only ever heard actors use the term “take a beat”.
On the other hand, I read a whole article once by a guy who was really into bird calls who was railing about how movies and tv would use totally inappropriate bird sounds (wrong species for the environment, nocturnal birds in the day, diurnal birds at night, etc) for background noise setting a scene and I must admit my attitude by the end was, “Dude! Get over yourself! It’s really not that big a deal!”
[Edit to add: oops! Cat, I really didn’t mean you when I was mentioning the bird call guy. I typed this before I saw your post. I’m sure it was really disconcerting and no insult intended.]
Me, I’d like to know what special knowledge everyone has, that makes you cringe while watching SFF.
I cut my teeth on the rocket equations, and have reread the Atomic Rockets site several times. Don’t talk talk to me about space travel. I grit my teeth and accept it, because frankly, accurate depictions of space explorations would involve no human crewed space ships or space colonies.
As for obscure knowledge that ruins films and T.V.? My knowledge of Southern Californian beaches, particularly Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
See, when I lived in the area, that’s where Hollywood film companies, modeling agencies, etc. would come to film women in swim suits playing in the water and sand, under the clear blue sky.
But the thing is, in summer we don’t have clear blue skies- we get fog. So those shoots were all done in the winter. And the water is right off the Alaska current. So my mom and I would put on a sweaters or jackets, go have brunch, and watch the swimsuit models frolic…and in between the short scenes, would dash for the thick robes, sun lamps and hot beverages.
I’d try that, except my brain will decide that anyone who’d put big parking lots around Wrigley would spell it “Soldier’s Field” and that’s nearly as bad.
On the birdcall front, the thing is….I mean, you get resigned to it, but it’s basically just an audio version of having the wrong animal in a scene. Like if somebody saw elephants in Chicago or hyenas in Detroit or penguins marching by outside of Paris and nobody in the movie noticed at all.
You’d be standing there going “Dude! Why were there penguins? What’s happening?” but if anybody even notices, it’s to say “My, the penguins are lovely this time of year!”
I realize it’s a weird hobby–believe me, I realize!–but when there’s a whippoorwill in Hudson Hawk in…Spain or Tuscany or whatever it was supposed to be…and it’s a fricking whippoorwill calling in the middle of the day, it’d be like they ran a giant panda through the background as a bit of local color and expected no one to notice.
Butcher supposedly admits that he set these books in a city that he invented, and then retroactively named it “Chicago”, making no attempt to make it conform to the real Chicago in our world.
(ObSF: Everyone should read R.A.Lafferty’s short story “What Was the Name of that Town?”)
@Richard Brant: Yes, I remember that one, and the one where Hutch becomes a junkie (he stayed up over 24 hours straight to get that strung out effect). They also did an homage to “DOA” which was lovely, and if you catch the episodes in re-run somewhere, the ones where Glaser was director are a real treat.
Nitpicks: I’m getting used to the redtail hawk scream doing a stand-in for an eagle. Failure to notice reflective surfaces that then give your audience a glimpse of the camera crew.
But… anyone who’s seen the Blues Brothers ought to know that!
when traveling due east, one was going “South” on state route 128 and simultaneously “North” on Interstate 93
I’ve seen some stuff like that – you can get some odd spots around LA as well as in the Bay Area. (West on I-80 and east on I-580 at the same time – and you’re going physically south.)
It’s not just in SF, but it happens a hell of a lot in fantasy-oriented stuff, and ESPECIALLY horror, in addition to modern media…
Rats.
I love rats. Owned them since I was 17, bred them for the last 21 years. I have had literally hundreds of rats (yes, ACTUALLY literally! 😉 ) in my home in the last couple of decades (but not all at once, yeesh!) and every time I see one on screen, I just can’t.
They don’t make noise. Really, they don’t. If a rat is making noise it’s either 1. very sick, 2. injured or 3. fighting with another animal. That’s it. They are very silent animals. Yet every single time you see a rat there’s this ridiculous squeaky/squealing noise that isn’t even one of the sounds they make.
They also don’t hang out in empty ventilation ductwork, they don’t run around in large open tunnels, and they don’t run AT people. They also aren’t usually in a big squirming pile. Just… no, man. No.
Also the ones on TV usually have white bellies, which makes me laugh and laugh.
just how deep some of those tube stops are
I think it was Green Park where we felt the station was deep enough it should have had Roman soldiers at platform level.
@Gabriel F – My father raised rats for pet stores and zoos for awhile, had a whole operation. I have stood in a facility with over three thousand rats in it and you hear rustling and eating noises and that is all.
Every now and then a squeal as somebody pisses somebody else off, but mostly just quiet things-are-alive chittery noises.
(I also notice that they must be hosing the rats down so they look properly “dirty” on camera. They’re very clean little animals left to their own devices.)
To be fair, rats do make quite a bit of noise…but the vast majority of it is hypersonic (they can hear it, we can’t). Ratlabs use bat detectors to monitor for non-human-detectable background noise that might upset the critters.
Currently reading The Drowning Girl from my “File770 TBR Pile” but I have to admit that I’m not digging it. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I’m trying to force myself to finish it. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but mostly I just find it impossible to actually like the protagonist because there isn’t enough “her” to hang liking on. And a bit of discomfort because I’m mentally ill and sometimes the text feels a bit like the inside of my head has been on bad days. Mostly just not feeling it.
Think I’m going to head back into Deverry for some comfort reading before I grab another new book though.
New York city rats roam around in the tunnels and the streets and are definitely dirty. And they’ll probably run at you, being New Yorkers after all.
Someone mentioned the TV show “24?”
Where they always managed to drive from one place to another in 4-5 minutes, instead of the 40-50-90 minutes the trip would actually take.
And where Jack Bauer, a middle-aged person, could be tortured 2 or 3 or even 4 times in the space of 24 hours, get no sleep, and still function swiftly and well whenever not actually tied up and being tortured.
@ Wanderfound
Yeah, we bought a bat detector once to have in the rat room. Took that thing back the next day, thanking the gods that I can’t hear in that register all the time!
The only rats that are really noisy are actually the babies. The little “nest full of baby birds” racket they make when nursing is nuts. You’d think that prey-animal babies would be a bit more discreet!
@ Red
Moe DiSesso (used to be pretty much the #1 Hollywood animal trainer, no idea if he still is) rubbed their fur backwards with vegetable oil for the gross look. Rats chill easily if they get wet!
@ Amina
Large, open tunnels I said. Rats do not like to be in the open. They hug walls and stay in shadows whenever possible. Also they’re extremely unaggressive, generally speaking. It’s why they make “good” live food, they very rarely attack the animals they’re being fed to.
Of course I’m speaking mostly about domesticated rats, which are the ones who show up onscreen.
My favorite bit of inappropriate bird soundtrack sweetening was when experienced birders caught CBS doing that in golf tournaments, with birds that could not possibly be where the tournament was being held.