A Hollywood bomb that made money, a cable hit with a future, and the perpetual love feast that is the Worldcon, all in today’s Scroll.
(1) James Earl Jones played B-52 bombardier Lt. Lothar Zogg in Dr. Strangelove.
It was his seventh professional credit. In five of his first 10 roles he was cast as a doctor. That early typecasting wasn’t enough to get him the part of Dr. Strangelove himself, though… Jones first appears in this YouTube clip at :40.
James Earl Jones would establish his greatness as an actor a few years afterwards on Broadway, earning a Tony as the lead in The Great White Hope, and an Academy Award nomination in the film version of the play. Because of his prominence in mainstream entertainment, gigs like voicing Darth Vader or Mufasa in The Lion King seem like sidelines, however, Jones has often worked in genre, fantasy and offbeat productions.
He played alien abductee Barney Hill in a 1975 TV movie, Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian, the warrior Umslopogaas in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), reclusive author Terence Mann in Field of Dreams (1989), and also has been in many obscure genre and animated productions.
(2) J. Michael Straczynski, interviewed by Comic Book Resources, is cautiously optimistic about a second season of Sense8.
While the streaming service hasn’t officially given the green light to second season, a promising gesture occurred when Netflix hosted a “Sense8″ panel during the Television Critics Association summer press tour with cast and creators in attendance, including Straczynski who updated the status of a possible renewal. “We’re still awaiting word,” he said on stage. “We’re in the process. We’re waiting for a final determination. We’re cautiously optimistic, but ultimately it’s Netflix’s call.”
If the call does come, Straczynski said he and the Wachowskis have already given plenty of thought to the next phase of the “Sense8” universe. “We’re looking at expanding that as far as logic goes,” he said. “What’s kind of fun about the characters is that what they’re sharing are not necessarily [powered] – like, in other concepts, which might be superpowers, flight. They have ordinary abilities, and we’re trying to say that there is value and merit and power in [that] – whether you’re an actor or you are a martial arts person or a bus driver, you have something to contribute.”
(3) You have til tomorrow to bid on a copy of the American first edition of Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Currently up to $2,400.
(4) “7 Science Fiction Publishers that Pay $750+ for Short Stories” seems to have valid info (I checked the Analog entry and it is good) even if the page itself is an ad for writing jobs.
(5) Today’s birthday boy – Clifford D. Simak, three-time Hugo winner, for “The Big Front Yard” (1959), “Grotto of the Dancing Deer” (1981), and one of my very favorite sf novels, Way Station (1964). He was named a SFWA Grand Master, received a Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement, and won the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award.
After the original Dean of Science Fiction, Murray Leinster, passed away, Isaac Asimov considered only two writers had earned the right to succeed to the unofficial title, saying in The Hugo Winners: 1980-1982 (1986) “the only writer who can possibly compete with [Clifford D. Simak] as ‘dean of science fiction’ is Jack Williamson, who is four years younger than Cliff but has been publishing three years longer.”
Clifford Simak
(6) Artist Bob Eggleton predicts the demise of the Worldcon art show in “We LOVE Worldcon….but here’s what happened…”
Back in the 1980s, it was commonplace for us Pro Artists to schlep or ship our work to the convention. The 80s was a great time, SF looked good, major authors were doing major works, the covers were the best they’d ever been. Costs were low. Even in the 90s it was still viable. I can remember in 1996 shipping 3 large boxes of artwork to the LACon of that year in Anaheim. It was a lot of fun, I won a Hugo in fact. The boxes cost me something like $300.00 each way for a total of $600 and change. I made something like $4500 in the show, so including everything, I still made money.
….It’s the shipping costs that it all comes down to vs the return in sales that are not always congruent. So while people ask “What happened to all the name artists?”….it’s simply cost that we can’t do this anymore. My personal view is also that, Worldcon has changed and few people are interested in the physical art like they used to be, with all the interest in digital media. And it has become a lot of work to prepare for these events. My memories are long and I will always remember the good times, but, they’ve passed. I see a future of an artshow-less Worldcon, due to insurance costs and lack of manpower and, as digital art becomes the mainstay, a lack of physical art.
(7) Dave Freer’s “Show me” at Mad Genius Club is a one-man roundup post.
In this case I’m talking about all those folk who have been telling us ‘we’re doing it wrong’. You know precisely the sort of individuals I’m talking about. They’ll tell me I’m an evil cruel man for killing a chicken or a wallaby… but they have never done it. They’ve never been faced with a choice of that, or no food (let alone meat). They buy a product in the supermarket… which magically makes it appear in the freezer. They’ll tell you that you did your book all wrong and that it is terrible and full of typos… but they haven’t written one. Or if they have, they didn’t have to survive the mill of the slush-pile as I did (or self-pub), but thanks to their ‘disadvantages’ and connections had a publisher pay an editor to help, and proof reader to clear some of those typos. They’ll tell you that the puppies efforts are dragging sf back in time (yes, JUST in time), yet they’ve done nothing to alter the catastrophic plunge of sf/fantasy sales from traditional publishers. If you force them to confront the figures showing they’ve been part of excluding anyone to the right of Lenin from traditional publishing and the various awards (which, it seems extremely likely, downgraded the sale-value of those awards, and the popularity of the genre… they’ll tell you there might be a problem (but of course nothing like as bad as you make it out to be) and we, the puppies just did it wrong.
(8) But never let it be said the Puppies haven’t left their noseprint on the field. Dave Hicks’s cover art for Novacon 45’s progress reports is themed for GoH Stan Nicholls’s Orcs fantasies. Here’s the topical #2.
Art by Dave Hicks.
[Thanks to David Langford and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Snowcrash.]
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@Laura Resnick: there are bits that I really enjoy, but there are other bits that are so very Wachowski… and not in a good way. I feel like they’re relying a little too much on the fancy editing tricks they picked up filming [ruining] Cloud Atlas. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, because a couple of the characters could be really great (looking at you, Sun!) but so far… meh.
That seems to indicate that he got lost in the Outback, which is a thing that happens to tourists who think the Outback is just the backyard of the settled parts of the Australian coast and ignore all the safety advice about having adequate food and water and survival equipment and telling people where you’re going and when you’re expecting to be back, and just wander off for a day trip into a freaking desert inadequately prepared!
So much for doughty white
settlersexplorerstourists, steely-eyed and square of jaw, who can rebuild the whole of Western civilisation from the contents of their fanny pack to keep themselves alive in hellish conditions where no-one (important) has lived before.The greatest corridor fight scene is clearly from The Raid.
I liked Daredevil, but have yet to get to Sense8. I’ll be giving it a go soon.
I’m also excited for The Man in the High Castle, as the pilot was really good.
The Last Wallaby – a giant ferocious red Dave Freer hunts the last of her kind as she is befriended by a plainspoken feminist and an inept SJW called Schmerlock.
The Greatest Corridor Fight Scene (besides the upcoming LeGuin/Tolkien one, which will be a doozy) is surely the one in Old Boy.
He can write a gripping action sequence. Much as I disagree with Correia on a lot of his other points, him write good fight scene.
I had the opposite experience. I found his fight scenes to be tedious and dull. I was reading the Grimnoir books and not the Monster Hunter series, so maybe he is better when he’s doing the whole monster fighting thing.
@Mark – Oldboy?
Penultimate Bracket Forehead Cloths Caseload Sale! All-Natural and Organic! Certified Pesticide Free! We stocked too many, and Pass the Savings to You! Now with Commemorative um Cardboard Box! And remember, a portion of all proceeds goes to the Kyra Dice Sledgehammer Fund, so buy early and buy often!
1. Small Gods (grabs a cloth out of stock and goes for a lie-down)
I’m not sure what Freer is on about, does he need someone to show him how to handle criticism well?
David Pascoe’s piece at Sarah Hoyt’s blog. Strawman city.
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/08/04/trekking-with-the-green-eyed-monster-david-pascoe/
“And why? So “those kind of people” can’t get awards that are meant for our kind of people. Dress it up how you will, the Puppy Kickers so strongly identify with owning the rocket award that they’re willing to see it sink into the realm of ridicule – and ultimately complete obscurity – in order to prevent the wrong sort from even being involved in the process. And that will somehow increase diversity in scifi.”
One of my favourite Corridor Fight Scenes is in Kick Ass, with Hit Girl making the frontal assault on the mobster’s penthouse while KA gets the secret weapon ready.
Scarlett Johanson as the Black Widow trying to do the same scene in Iron Man 2, out the following week, was just painfully dull by comparison.
As manga it was Old Boy. The movies were both Oldboy.
David Pascoe’s piece at Sarah Hoyt’s blog.
Paul, why do you do this to yourself? You already know before you torture yourself with their drivel that they aren’t going to say anything that actually makes sense.
NelC –
I gotta go with Mark on this, The Raid has a much better corridor fight scene. As for a fight in small spaces I’d go with Merantau’s elevator fight scene. Daredevil’s fight is impressive from the use of one take, and a fantastic scene, but for one-take scenes The Protector has it beat.
obSF: The corridor fight scene in Dredd was pretty awesome.
@aaron. Masochism, quite possibly. And the mistaken belief that somehow I can square the circle with straight edge and compass
@Paul
Stop, you’re killing me here.
At least his claim that a proposal to restrict voting rights to Attending members is on the agenda gets swiftly shot down in the comments.
Corridor fight scenes: do we have enough contenders for a bracket yet?
ETA: @Nigel, close, but I’ve got to stick with the Raid. There’s a bit involving the remains of a door that makes me wince every time. ObSF: Dredd treads similar ground in a fairly effective manner.
@Paul, now that is a tragic comment.
Nothing has stopped these people from joining and voting. Nothing.
These people are beyond the pale, apparently they can even blame their own apathy on a leftwing conspiracy.
@Simon Bisson
I see “Deep time” is book 6 in a series. Is this a good jumping in point?
@Mark @Simon, et al – I wouldn’t even argue. They’re all damn fine.
(I do love Dredd, though. How great was it to get that after the Stallone thing?)
I see Airbus is patenting what is clearly the semi-ballistic from Robert Heinlein’s Friday:
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/faster-than-the-concorde-airbus-patents-ultra-rapid-aircraft-that-can-fly-nyc-to-london-in-1-hour/
“Real magic can never be made by commenting on someone else’s blog. You must tear out your own comment section and not go back to check it repeatedly, either.”
@eve I found the whole Star Carrier series fun bath/plane/coffeeshop reading…
LeGuin.
RedWombat:
No, Bookscan has been repeatedly pilloried at MGC, primarily for not including Amazon, and therefore not illuminating the alleged enormous wave of self-published sales that is overwhelming the puny traditional publishers.
Small Gods.
As for Dave Freer, he lives on Flinders Island, off the coast, so there are no koalas for sustenance. He did blog extensively about subsisting on fish and wallaby.
Pratchett.
You all realize that the appearance of item (8) here is going to be headlining the next Puppy post about how all the SJW puppy-kickers clearly endorse threats and violence against Puppy proponents?
No, I’m serious.
With 45 votes in, Small Gods has inched just far enough ahead of the others that it can reasonably be said to be leading.
@ Dredd was terrific shame we never got a sequel. Loved Lena Heady in it.
@Simon Bisson so start at the beginning of the series? A not-too-demanding read is exactly what I need right now as I’m up to my eyeballs in demanding academic writing (on my vacation, whine).
And for those of you who are pessimistic/sceptical that humanities’ destiny is the stars, go read Robinson’s Aurora to find this view demonstrated in tremendous fictional detail. I found this a moving if at times depressing read. I did get bogged down a bit by the omniscient narrative parts – though the AI’s struggles with narrative and analogy are also pretty funny.
Dare you enter …
1. THE TOMBS OF THE LAST SMALL UNICORN GODS
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Oh, yes, it’s all fun and games up to this point. They pull you in, those dark mysterious figures lurking in the shadows, an occasional *ting* as the flickering gold of distant streetlights wandering lost in the alleys reflects off the seductive smiles.
*Hey, there! I got some good stuff. We can talk about your favorite books. It’ll be fun. Just a little recreational voting. You can stop whever you want. Here, try this bracket.*
And you try it.
And the next one.
And then, drawn further and deeper into the labrynth, following the scrolls, pixels flickering just ahead of every step, hearing the others calling out the names of their favorite writers, there is nothing but you and the brackets branching off.
And somewhere in the dark, Someone is Smiling and strange seeds are budding.
And you realize that you are on the brink, teetering at the penultimate bracket, and the next step will be banishment to a desert island with only ONE BOOK.
Is it too late to step back, to reclaim your lost innocence……..
Also, let me just put a word in for the granddaddy of corridor fights in A Better Tomorrow. Not for the fight, but for the prep.
Furthermore, The Last Unicorn.
@eve Yup. Ian Douglas is a pen name of the prolific William H Keith Jr, who I first came across writing Battletech novels for FASA in the late 80s. Knowing that is a good level set 🙂
Life is too short to read KSR for free. Possible for fee as well.
Oh well, Kyra, I have to select LeGuin. Hopefully she’ll be able to face down the Twee Lord of Fantasy.
@Cassy B
Witchking of Endor: “No man can slay me!”
Ged: “I know your name, Yevaud.”
Note there’s a crossover for you.
I’m going to make the radical move of acknowledging that I often am voting the body of work rather than the single book (though I’ve loved many of the single books). And looking at these last three, and knowing what Lies Ahead (*smiles int he dark, glinting teeth*), I think I’m going to say that LeGuin and Pratchett are two authors whose body of work and influence I think are close to Tolkien’s — and that they don’t match Tolkien’s is due primarily to time, i.e. being born decades after him. And gazing into the flickering pixels of the future (what the hell Tom Shippey predicted that 100 years from now Tolkien and the other authors who came out of WWI to write sff would be considered The Great Authors of the 20th century canon), I predict that on one of the multiverse timelines where we don’t manage our own extinction event, their work will be considered equivalent to his in the sense of one of many of the branches of Literature that supports many other branches, leaves, and seeds………
And, abstain!
Yeah the Dredd movie was awesome, and just *so* well done.
Suggested thread title (in honour of Dave Freer’s blatherations):
Dingoes Ate My Spellchecker
Yobbo-Sothoth
Skippy the Bushed Kangaroo
Tie Me Wallaby Down, Sport
That seems to indicate that he got lost in the Outback, which is a thing that happens to tourists
Back when I was on Emergency Preparedness Canada’s mailing list, one of the little factoids tossed out for discussion was that Nova Scotia was Canada’s People Getting Lost in the Woods hotspot. EPC could offer no explanation as to what factors made it easier to get lost in NS than anywhere else in Canada. On the up side, NS had a really good system for search and rescue thanks to all the practice they got.
Shorter Dave Pascoe: Sad Puppies was motivated by SJWs’ insane jealousy over not owning the Hugoes like the Puppies do.
*applauds Abi*
@James Nicholl I worked on The Rock for a while, and the impression I was given was that the forests were all tractless boggy wastes with very similar trees. Which makes it very difficult for the non-islander to navigate.
“Don’t go into the forests,” I was warned. “And don’t drive into a moose, or you will die.”
@NickPheas
And is there anything reliable[1] to support Freer’s idea that the market for SFF is drying up?
Your point about proliferating short fiction markets is well taken. A lot of Puppy talking points seem to fixate on dwindling book sales (even as Brad carries on about the huge mass public appetitite out there for stfnal stuff, Larry brags about being a bestseller and they all say Baen is the only publisher out their getting a boost in their sales volume).
SFF book sales might have been expected to decline as a share of dwindling book sales overall (although Nielsen BookScan reported physical book sales actually rose in 2014, albeit e-books and mass market paperbacks continued to decline). And indeed, in 2014 the only Adult Fiction categories showing any increase in sales were Westerns and Graphic Novels.
But as far as science fiction goes, it depends on your definition. In adult fiction, science fiction sales showed a 7% dip in 2014. But in Juvenile Fiction, the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Magic category was the most robust of them all, with a 38% increase. Considering the 13% decline in Adult Fantasy sales is matched by that 13% increase in Adult Graphic Novel sales…a portion of whose titles might reasonably be described as falling somewhere within the SFF realm….the health of SFF overall doesn’t seem so grim.
(The two categories that include “Games” also posted increases but I don’t know how many of those were catering to our lot.)
Sucks not to be writing YA or comics, I guess.
@Alain
I guess one of my main beefs with the puppies aside from the whole slate thing is that they seem to be under the impression that their “genre” of SF doesn’t exist
Puppies are capable of simultaneously arguing that conservative authors are shut out of the field by the liberal SJW publishing establishment and that they’re the best-selling segment of the market.
@Kevin hogan
That was one of the things that struck me most when I was reading his Campbell packet from years ago. He can write a gripping action sequence. Much as I disagree with Correia on a lot of his other points, him write good fight scene.
Maybe, but I only had to read one of his characters trying to be a smartass once to get my fill.
@Nicholas Whyte: Well said. I agree — emphatically.
It has struck me many times throughout this process that the puppy mainstays are extraordinarily poor ambassadors for their cause — no matter which permutation is currently on offer. I have yet to read a puppy manifesto that was at all convincing and that didn’t ultimately descend into what honestly seems like revenge fantasy: either laughing off the puny blows of their “enemies” or paying back grievous insult/injury (dealt from the shadows, of course).
Having just reread BT getting his ass handed to him by GRRM (and others) in an attempt at a comments “debate” really emphasized this. Their rationales just turn into name calling and a nebulous “they started it” (with unclear definitions of “they,” “started,” and “it”).
I have a shelf full of MilSF and pulpy fantasy — and no great love for identity politics — but I was inspired to vote in the Hugos for the first time by a visceral need to oppose the slate(s). I was mad; their stance seemed nonsensical and the result was absurd. I’m (a bit) less mad now, but their argument hasn’t gained any coherence and the final result will likely be an award show with a lot of unfortunate gaps (I think I no awarded six categories). In the end, having read their work, as well as their blogs and comments, the slaters (not the apolitical slatees) have lost me, probably for good.
Now, much like the Tor boycott, the impact won’t be too great. Practically speaking, the only immediate loss is my vague intention to buy Monster Hunter International someday; but whatever theoretical future sales, votes, etc. are gone, too. And my “word of mouth” isn’t going to do them any favours.
Absent any semblance of late-blooming self-awareness or reflection (or dare I say it, humility) on their part, I just don’t want to read them. My TBR stack is a mile high as it is.
Zeroth, in case Kyra wouldn’t have noticed a vote if I’d put it last, Small Gods. The pain will diminish eventually, I hope.
First, Witch-King of Angmar, though if anyone wants to film a scene of the Lord of the Nazgul being taken down by Ewoks during a sylvan lunar excursion, I’ll probably watch it.
Second, The Raid overall deserves its accolades but I think the multi-assailant corridor fight scene including the rather gruesome event involving a shattered door suffers from it being overly obvious that individual assailants are oh so conveniently taking just long enough to recover from their last interaction with the protagonist to not attack him again until he can handle it. Over and over and over again, beyond the point my suspension of disbelief can stretch to.
Last, not strictly a corridor fight scene, but thinking of movie fights in long narrow spaces, the one in Romeo Must Die in which Jet Li leaving a building walks through an areaway full of opponents doing various creative things to tangle them up in their own belts, clothing and each other while hardly breaking stride comes to mind. Also, as part of an annual Hong Kong film festival, I recently saw an 80s Shaw Brothers picture, Martial Club, with a final fight scene involving only two fighters in a progressively narrower and narrower alley between two high stone walls. Highly recommended.
@Richard.
The argument, as far as I can make it out is this:
The Puppies once owned the Hugos and SF
The SJWs used marxist/alinsky tactics to take over the Hugos and fill it with their evil, dreadful stuff (e.g. Scalzi, Swirsky)
The Puppies are fighting back but the SJWs are destroying everything to avoid having to give it back to the rightful owners of real SF
@Nicholas Whyte
The actual Hugo results, in which they will be comprehensively defeated, will provoke anger and threats of vengeance. But what can they do, really?
This is such a widely-expected result that I feel it incumbent to mention the Wild Cards that leave me with troubling doubts that they won’t still manage to ruin the punch for everyone:
(1) Beale could have recruited far many voters than any of us expected
(2) I’ve seen even knowledgeable long-time fans willing to rank “Totaled” and even “Turncoat” (!) above No Award in the short story category, others felt “Flow” wasn’t entirely horrible, and so on
(3) I have no idea how many Worldcon voters are somehow blissfully unaware of this whole controversy, are going to assume the oddly lackluster fiction categories are business as usual, and will vote for whatever they figured was the best of the lot
Richard Brandt beat me to it.
Honestly,at this point all that’s left is for someone to complain that the SJWs have an evil plan to start a Happy Kittens group next year, because naming themselves after cute animals is just the kind of duplicitous behaviour you can expect from Marxists, straight out of the Alinsky playbook.
Saw this lovely little video out as part of The Martian’s promo. Man, they’re really making me look forward to it.
https://youtu.be/Wygmxzp6VzY