The future is almost here, in today’s Scroll.
(1) SFWA will be selling fame at Sasquan.
If you've ever wanted to be Tuckerized, the SFWA auction at Sasquan is going to have some amazing opportunities.
— Cat Rambo (@Catrambo) August 7, 2015
(2) It’s not the accuracy that counts, it’s mainly Jim C. Hines having the idea to cast his thoughts in the form of 10 Hugo Predictions that’s genius.
- At least three puppy nominees won Hugo awards.
Congratulations to the winners, including those who were on the puppy slates. While most of the puppy nominees failed to take home a rocket, I imagine there will be at least three. I’m predicting one will go to my own editor, Sheila Gilbert, who’s made the ballot on her own in previous years, and is (in my biased opinion) utterly deserving of the award. I’m not as sure who the second will be, but I’m guessing Kary English in the short story category. One of the movies on the puppy ballots will also win. Finally, I think there’s a good shot of either Resnick or Brozek taking home a short-form editor Hugo.
- At least one category went to No Award.
No Award didn’t sweep the ballot like some people hoped/feared. It did take the Novella category, though. I think it will probably take Best Related Work as well.
(3) Jason Sanford seems to be expecting a much stronger showing by No Award than Hines, judging by this eulogy for the Puppies.
The problem for the puppies is they miscalculated about the outrage arising from their actions. As record numbers of people turned out to vote in the Hugos, the pups realized they’d overreached. It’s one thing to organize block voting on a preliminary ballot which few people actually take part in. But not being humiliated by a vote of “No Award” when thousands of people are taking part — that’s a much harder accomplishment.
(4) Alex Shvartsman tells how Unidentified Funny Objects got started on the SFWA Blog.
When I thought of the concept of a non-themed humor anthology, I was certain someone must have produced one before. But my research showed that no such thing existed. There were plenty of humor anthologies available: Chicks in Chainmail and Deals with the Devil to name a few, but those were all themed projects. No one seemed to be creating anthologies that would offer a wide variety of humorous voices and styles. It was the sort of book I would want to read, and I was confident many others would like it too. Thus, Unidentified Funny Objects and its parent micro-press, UFO Publishing, were born.
(5) Brad R. Torgersen has a horseshoe theory. No, I’m not cleaning up my language. His theory is completely horseshoe.
At one end of the horseshoe you have the “pulpy” stuff: visceral, action-packed, perhaps even hard-boiled? Emphasis on “doing” versus thinking.
At the other end you have the “literary” stuff: cerebral, theme-intensive, and sometimes abstract. Emphasis on “thinking” versus doing.
There are audiences waiting for you — the author — at both ends of the horseshoe. But there is nothing to say that you can’t combine both. Too much action and not enough contemplation, and your story becomes the tale of the idiot: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Too much contemplation and not enough action, and your story becomes the prototypical MFA piece: your main character does very little, thinks about a great deal, and again your story signifies nothing.
In order to hit the “sweet spot” you need to aim for the zone at the top of the horseshoe.
(6) A lawyer defending his client in a lawsuit is demanding trial by combat:
Richard Luthmann, a Staten Island attorney, is demanding that one of the plaintiffs (or their “champion”) in the suit against him face him in a literal battle to the death unless the case is dismissed. He claims that the practice has not been outlawed in the U.S. or New York state and is suggesting it to point out the absurdity of the plaintiffs’ allegations.
He’s gotten the idea from Game of Thrones – although Mack Reynolds wrote a series of stories in the 1960s for Analog about a mercenary who participated in settling corporate disputes by combat.
Here’s the lawyer’s argument why trial by combat can be permitted:
A Staten Island lawyer with a penchant for bowties and closely-cut beards is apparently channeling his inner “Games of Thrones” by asking a judge to sanction a trial by combat to resolve a civil suit in which he’s accused of helping a client commit fraud.
“The allegations made by plaintiffs, aided and abetted by their counsel, border upon the criminal,” Richard A. Luthmann wrote in a brief recently filed in state Supreme Court, St. George. “As such, the undersigned (Luthmann) respectfully requests that the court permit the undersigned to dispatch plaintiffs and their counsel to the Divine Providence of the Maker for Him to exact His divine judgment once the undersigned has released the souls of the plaintiffs and their counsel from their corporeal bodies, personally and or by way of a champion.”
…Over the course of 10 pages, Luthmann discusses the history of trial by combat from Middle-Age England to the founding of the Thirteen Colonies. (Fun fact: One British bishop in 1276 paid a champion an annual retainer fee, with additional stipends and expenses for each fight. Luthmann doesn’t say how much.)
More to the point, an attempt to abolish the practice in the Thirteen Colonies was blocked by Parliament in 1774, nor was it subsequently banned by the Constitution in the United States or by the state of New York, Luthmann contends.
(7) This day in history, courtesy of Phil Nichols and the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies’ Facebook page.
Fifty-eight years ago today, Oliver Hardy died, bringing an end to the decades-long comedy partnership of Laurel and Hardy.
Ray Bradbury adored Laurel and Hardy. When he went to Ireland in the 1950s to write the screenplay for Moby Dick with John Huston, he discovered that they were making a personal appearance in Dublin, so he went to see them on stage.
Later, he wrote three short stories inspired by the duo. “The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” is probably the best of these, and can be found in Ray’s book The Toynbee Convector. “Another Fine Mess” is in his book Quicker Than The Eye. “The Laurel and Hardy Alpha Centauri Farewell Tour” is in One More For The Road.
Laurel and Hardy
(8) Major League Baseball is getting more eyeballs on its website by speculating “What would the Marvel Cinematic University’s baseball time look like?”
Ant-Man would play shortstop.
Hear us out. With a slick glove and an army of ants ensuring that any grounder would hop into his grasp for an easy out, Ant-Man would also offer surprising pop for the position. Plus, he would enrage pitchers with his ability to get on base thanks to his Pym Particles allowing his strike zone to shrink 12.7x its normal size, rendering him impossible to strike out.
From Ant-Man to Iron Man, these are Earth’s Mightiest Ballplayers.
(9) The Book Wars’ “Top Ten Tuesday” recommendations amount to around 50 titles, lots of YA and fantasy – and also, the reason I’m mentioning the post, one lists includes The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Pavlac Glyer.
(10) Mr. Sci FI, Marc Scott Zicree, visits the space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center.
(11) It’s 2015, and Marty McFly’s hoverboard is here:
[Thanks to Morris Keesan, John King Tarpinian and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Richard Brandt .]
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Dare I hope to place numerically?
Uh, I mean, first!
I think bringing back trial by combat would be cool. We could build stadia, import lions (Cecil’s Revenge!) sell sausages inna bun … think of the economic stimulus!
It’s nice to see that Torgersen’s deployment is keeping him too busy for further bloviating nonsense about the Hugos… oh. Never mind.
I’m reasonably sure that I don’t understand baseball, but wouldn’t Quicksilver excel at all the roles/ positions?
“Action and contemplation are like two stools. It’s possible to sit down exactly between them, with hilarious results.” –Another theory.
“Action and contemplation are like two sides of the same coin. It’s possible to bury down into the coin – never mind how, I’m an ideas guy – so you’re exactly between the two faces, because coins have thickness. Then when someone flips it, no matter which side comes up, nobody can see you in there, because coins are opaque.” — Another theory.
“Action is like a fish and contemplation is like a fowl. It’s possible to combine them so that you have either very wet feathers or completely dessicated gills. But also frogwings. So — DAMMIT BOB! STOP DOING THAT!!”
I know there was at least one previous humor/SF anthology, because I read it in junior high school. It was called COSMIC LAUGHTER, which I immediately anagrammed into COMIC SLAUGHTER, to my early-teen amusement. But perhaps he means an ongoing series.
snowcrash:
Quicksilver has no patience for your tedious American sports! For him it shall be the circus — or nothing!
Sadly, Quicksilver would be an utter failure on the Marvel Cinematic Universe baseball team, since he died (oh, right, retroactive spoiler warning…). But, considering it’s a comic book universe, I expect he’ll be up and running in a few movies.
Run-by rec (because I’m gonna go read some more): N. K. Jemisin’s just-released The Fifth Season (first of trilogy, The Broken Earth) is SUPERFANTASTIC.
Fifth Season review, NY Times, some specific plot points but none are spoilers as far as I can see.
Having read Buck Turgidson’s horseshoe theory, I’m a bit puzzled as to what the “sweet spot” is for and why it’s a writer’s “job” to aim for it.
Yes, it’s the point on the curve evenly between all-action and all-contemplation, but what’s the value of being evenly in the middle?
Is he saying it’s the place to be for big-ass sales? I doubt it is. There are writers who make mucho bank with heavy-action work, and there are writers who do phenomenally well with quiet, literary stuff. And there are writers who balance the two and don’t sell all that much, I’m sure. I doubt the zone-of-balance is something that’ll satisfy either literary readers or action readers — they want what they want, not a compromise. And people who want lots of action, some theme but not too much, or people who want big literary taste with a little bit of action…they want what they want, too. Certainly, there are readers who want a balance, but are they the largest group of readers?
Used to be, American manufacturers thought that way — that the key to success was making things that hit the “average” spot between extremes, until an enterprising food-industry consultant was asked to reformulate a product (Pepsi, I think), did tests and discovered that there wasn’t just one “sweet spot,” there were several. And that started the process by which variantly-flavored products became the way of food manufacturing, because they reach more customers with variety than with a single sweet spot. [The prime exception to this is ketchup, because apparently, Heinz ketchup is a precise five-flavor balance no one else can quite compete with.]
Think about it this way: Coca-Cola sells a lot of Coke and they sell a lot of Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Would they make a lot of money by splitting the difference and selling Half-Coke, that has half the calories of regular Coke, but not zero? I don’t think so. There’s no real market for that particular balance.
So as far as sales go, it’s not about balance; there’s no single “sweet spot” in a range of flavors (unless you’re selling ketchup). I can only imagine that that’s even more pronounced in the book business, and that PORTNOY’S KILLING MISSION would not do better than either PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT or a Jack Reacher novel alone.
Does he, perhaps, mean that the “sweet spot” is about quality? That a balance between artiness and gut thrills is where you’ll find the best work? Again, I don’t think that’s so, much as I like the Hong Kong films of John Woo. Same basic reason — what people find to be “good” is about what they like, or what they recognize as quality, and not the ideal compromise between extremes.
In the end, he says there’s a sweet spot and it’s everyone’s job to hit it, but he doesn’t say why, or what the value of that sweet spot is. Just that it’s a balance, and the automatic assumption is that balance is good. But is it?
I know I’ve had my biggest successes when I did something distinctive, something memorably different, rather than something that hit the mass audience smack in the comfort zone. Sometimes it’s been something the audience didn’t know they wanted until they read it and got excited. But I don’t think it’s ever really been due to being the mid-range between extremes.
Maybe this is something Brian Z will tell us is another olive branch — he’s describing the middle ground between the Puppies and the CHORFs. But I don’t think he’s doing that, either, particularly not when he then points out that he’s not an all-action guy, and stakes out the middle ground as What He Does. So apparently all that dinosaur-loving gay-water-falling stuff is all out on the far end of the horseshoe, not in the middle like THE CHAPLAIN’S WAR.
I’m being kinda snotty there, and I’m sure he’d describe it differently, so I wouldn’t put much weight on that.
I did like the comment on his essay about how JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL is an example of the blue end of the horseshoe, being literary and all. But JS/MN is flowery-prose genre fiction, not FINNEGANS WAKE. It’s got literary elements, but it’s nowhere near the end of the horseshoe.
Still, wherever it is on the horseshoe, I think most people would agree that it’s not in the sweet spot. It’s down the arc to some extent or another, even if it’s not near the highfalutin end.
But if so…would it have been a better work if it had more action and visceral thrill? Would it have sold better? I doubt it in both cases.
So what’s the value of the “sweet spot”? Why should Susanna Clarke have aimed for it, rather than where she did? Why should Lee Child aim for the same spot, rather than where he aims?
If people can hit a spot (or a range) and gather an audience by doing so, why not just do that? What’s the value in everyone aiming at the same spot? I think we get more variety, and please more audiences, if people aim all kindsa places.
My main take-away from Torgersen’s “Horseshoe Theory” is that John Scalzi must be his favorite author.
(also, given the quality of his discussion of action vs. contemplation, today’s title is especially apt)
@Shao Ping
(also, given the quality of his discussion of action vs. contemplation, today’s title is especially apt)
Whee!
Somewhere between six Hugos for John C. Wright and No Award…there is a Sweet Spot.
Brad T’s piece is interesting in so far as to watch him grapple with the ideas he should have been thinking about long before now. Still good luck to him on his journey – he is at least, once again, showing more reflection than he does whenever he tries to justify Sad Puppies.
Laurel and Hardy: I tried to make my kids watch Way Out West but they didn’t get it 🙁
“All the two-fisted action of I, the Jury! All the auctorial angst of Look Homeward, Angel!“
I don’t think it’s fair to come down too hard on Brad for his horseshoey thoughts or to expect a lot out of him about the craft of writing. Most aspiring writers are told to blog their thoughts and they often blog their thoughts about writing. Those thoughts aren’t nearly as interesting or enlightening as, say, Le Guin’s writing thoughts but I don’t think they need to be thoroughly dissected. They are what they are. The musings of inexperienced writers on their craft.
I think it’s going to be a close call on what Noah Ward walks away with. The dramatic category is probably safe from him. I think everything else is at least in play and things like fan writer are pretty much a lock.
On pixel 8 – They have Black Widow at 2B and Ant Man at SS – yet the pictures are reversed in the “lead image” at the top of the article.
Oh, MLB.
As far as books, I’ve been on an Ellen Kushner kick (possibly inspired at least in part by the Bracketening). Reread Swordspoint for the first time in something embarrassingly close to 20 years (even better than I remembered!) and followed up with Privilege of the Sword and Fall of the Sword, which were both excellent. And now it’s on to Thomas the Rhymer which is, alas!, her only other novel.
And then there’s the side of the horseshoe that has hit the ground, and everything you find on the ground around horses – and that’s the side where the slate works live.
apparently, Heinz ketchup is a precise five-flavor balance no one else can quite compete with
I grew up on Hunt’s, which was the dominant catsup in California (Heinz hadn’t quite gotten here), and which has beaten Heinz in taste tests.
Like many British people, it was something of a shock to discover as I grew older that Heinz was American. In Australia Heinz markets a variety of its Baked Beans as “English Recipe” baked beans – just so that expatriate Brits can have the exact style they like.
I am also a Heinz ketchup partisan. I think it is the opium that they add to it.*
[*disclaimer: they don’t actually add opium]
I’m not fond of ketchup, but when ketchup is the right choice, Heinz is the only possible ketchup.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, and was, in fact, a resident when John Heinz bought his senate seat, fair and square, with his own money. Buying a senate seat was slightly unusual, back then, and it was only $2 million, as I recall. He made a very good senator. And he won my heart forever during the school lunch kerfuffle, when Reagan was trying to cut back on the cost of school lunches for poor people by claiming that ketchup was a vegetable, and therefore no additional vegetable was required. John Heinz, my senator, stood on the floor of the senate and said, “Ketchup is not a vegetable. If anyone would know, it would be me.” I loved him forever.
Yeah, ketchup’s a fruit! Everybody knows that!
The problem is, anything Brad T has to say about fiction post-slate is going to sound like yet another hollow attempt at self-justification, no matter what his real intent is.
In the hands of a different writer, I might be interested in reading observations about trade-offs between literariness and pulpiness — Stephen King, say, might have something worthwhile to say on the topic. But I would be interested in an approach that was “if you want this effect, do this” without any assumptions about what you ought to want.
Brad’s take is like those Kate Paulk essays from back in May — completely didactic, as if there is one (and only one) correct way to write a science fiction story, and he is here to explain it to you.
The pulp/literary dichotomy doesn’t divide all that neatly anyway. Thinking vs. doing — where would you place Lovecraft on that horseshoe?
I don’t like the horseshoe thing because it’s looking at writing as a consumer product rather than an artistic endeavor. Aim for the sweet spot and that’s where you’ll get your audience! How about write what you like and want to write and hope there is an audience for your work. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing specifically to make money versus craft, but in that case you’d be better studying James Patterson so that you too might be able to ghost write under his name.
I mean I did not like what I read of JCW for the Hugo awards, but you can’t say that he’s trying to do anything except follow his own style and voice regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Heresy! Ketchup is a marsupial.
If you haven’t added curry to ketchup, you haven’t lived.
So, I just went and read Torgersen’s piece and what I took from it is that we all should be trying to write “Heart of Darkness”? Or maybe Moby-Dick? I’m honestly not being snarky; I just can’t quite figure out what he means by the “sweet spot.” He says that if a writer consistently hits the green zone/sweet spot in a book, or across a series of books, he will “earn and keep an audience”–that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a large audience, so I don’t think he’s automatically talking about commercial success. But given that he also specifically refers to “literary critics and tastemakers” as preferring the “blue” (contemplative) end of the horseshoe over the “red” (pulp action) end, OR the “green” (sweet spot; both thought and action) in the middle. (I can’t resist saying that I’d have gone with purple for my color coding, but that’s just me being silly) he is explicitly not talking about critical success. So . . . maybe he’s just trying to describe “good writing”? If so, that’s fine, but his extremes don’t seem to me to be particularly helpful.
Or maybe it’s just that I kind of think that most literary critics I know value good writing, too, and really privilege works that try to engage the reader in both thinking and feeling at the same time (that is, “hit the sweet spot”–maybe). It also seems to me that while inexperienced readers can have a fairly good grasp of what constitutes quality in writing, that grasp (oddly) often agrees with the judgement of more experienced readers. But that might be my personal experience speaking: I’ve been a teacher for a lot of years, and one of the joys of teaching literature is watching students’ amazement when they read something new and realize that, hey, this is good stuff! Even if I am reading it in English class . . .
I suppose I should go ask Torgersen for clarification, but I really don’t want to post on his blog, mostly due to some of the comments I’ve read over there. But I am a bit puzzled.
So, I just went and read Torgersen’s piece and what I took from it is that we all should be trying to write “Heart of Darkness”? Or maybe Moby-Dick? I’m honestly not being snarky; I just can’t quite figure out what he means by the “sweet spot.” He says that if a writer consistently hits the green zone/sweet spot in a book, or across a series of books, he will “earn and keep an audience”–that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a large audience, so I don’t think he’s automatically talking about commercial success. But given that he also specifically refers to “literary critics and tastemakers” as preferring the “blue” (contemplative) end of the horseshoe over the “red” (pulp action) end, OR the “green” (sweet spot; both thought and action) in the middle (I can’t resist saying that I’d have gone with purple for my color coding, but that’s just me being silly), he is explicitly not talking about critical success. So . . . maybe he’s just trying to describe “good writing” again? If so, that’s fine, but his extremes don’t seem to me to be particularly helpful.
Or maybe it’s just that I kind of think that most literary critics I know value good writing, too, and really privilege works that try to engage the reader in both thinking and feeling at the same time (that is, “hit the sweet spot”–maybe). It also seems to me that inexperienced readers can have a fairly good grasp of what constitutes quality in writing, too, and that that grasp (oddly) often agrees with the judgement of more experienced readers. But that might be my personal experience speaking: I’ve been a teacher for a lot of years, and one of the joys of teaching literature is watching students’ amazement when they read something new and realize that, hey, this is good stuff! Even if I am reading it in English class . . .
Good grief, how did that double post happen? I swear, I was just editing! Mike, I think the first version is the final (edited) version, if you feeling like cutting one–
In addition to everything else that’s wrong with Brad Torgersen’s observations, his horseshoe is upside down. He is certainly suggesting that we should be aiming for the ‘bottom’ of the shoe.
Oh come on! That’s like saying there is only one wine that hits the “sweet” spot. But some people prefer red wine, some prefer white. Some like Chardonnay, some Riesling, some Sauvignon blanc, or all three. Still vs sparkling, dry vs varying degrees of sweetness. Doesn’t mean they are wrong in their preferences.
It’s nutty nuggets all over again. Torgersen displays a staggering degree of narrow thinking. But that’s not news.
@Mary Frances:
BT must be spending a lot of time with his computer lately, if he’s putting green between red and blue. (That, or he’s rooting for Nader, which I find unlikely.)
My recipe for good fiction is pretty simple. Put compelling characters in a challenging situation and see what they do. Write it down clearly, spelling words correctly and putting punctuation in the right places. Have at least a couple of people look over it, in case they spot flaws you didn’t see. Listen to what they tell you, but don’t let them dictate the content. Get someone to proofread the final draft before you submit or publish.
I think that pretty well covers it.
In that article Brad has a pet theory that people become literary blues by overexposure
And yet interesting, accessible and enjoyable would describe exactly what I’m looking for. “Interesting” can come from a great SFnal idea, or a character that you want to see more of. I don’t really see a spectrum of different types of “interesting”, there’s just its presence or lack. In contrast, I can see a spectrum of “accessible” – you can write more or less densely, for example, but you can also write a single character vs a cast, or write in the recognisable modern day vs an invented secondary world or a future culture, requiring reader concentration to grok the details. However, I don’t see how that maps to literary v pulp – a lot of what Brad would condemn as literary takes a single character and develops them, and a lot of what he would call pulp tries to follow far more characters than the plot needs (Dark Between the Stars, I’m looking at you). Not to mention the plague of “twenty names with apostrophes and an appendix” that afflicts all parts of the fantasy spectrum.
And as for “enjoyable”, if I enjoy the story, characters, and writing, then that’s enjoyable. Apart from differences of taste (I like werewolves, you like vampires), why should enjoyment map to a spectrum?
It seems to me that Torgersen is stuck in a false dichotomy anyway, since he’s previously claimed that “good” “literary” fiction is not “enjoyable” fiction (and, presumably, vice versa?) If he’s starting from premises as badly broken as that, I don’t see how his reasoning is going to go anywhere worthwhile.
(I’ve read and enjoyed, among other, E. E. “Doc” Smith and Lawrence Durrell, albeit at different times, and for different reasons…. And now I’m wondering what a Smith/Durrell collaboration would look like. Interesting thought. Not necessarily a nice one, but an interesting one.)
Been offline: burying (or in my case, cremating) one’s father will do that. It was a good send-off; small, short & uncomplicated, the way he would have liked it. Such an experience has a powerful effect on those left behind, putting everything in stark perspective.
The Puppies really are pathetic whining vandals.
I note that not much has changed in my absence: Brian is still Brianing & Torgersen is still Toring.
Kurt Busiek wrote:
Google Coca-Cola Life and Pepsi True. They are exactly the “Half-Coke” in your example. Which just goes to show that the most absurd thing you can think of is probably already in development at several multi-national corporations. (And future generations will consider some of those absurdities absolutely essential to their daily lives.)
As for writing, I know what works for me, what I enjoy writing, and what I enjoy reading. I don’t care if someone else holds differing opinions, since tastes are so very subjective. That’s why a story everyone loves has never been written and will never be written.
…Boring…
Actually the flying frog describes the literary optimum far better than a horseshoe. On the one end of the FFrog is it´s distinctive blue crest, which (being over the brain) represents the literary aspect, it’s tail nubbin at the other end is action. In between is it’s green body, the virtuous mean.
But the flying frog also has wings, which represent the message of the story. At the extreme tip of one wing is nihilism, at the other is pure messagefic about gender and society. The virtuous mean is a story that isn’t overtly preachy, but does have a chaplain as it’s protagonist.
Now you might ask, why not use a square or a graph with four axes as your metaphor? First of all that would be a diagram, not a metaphor. Secondly because of YA books. Let me explain:
As you are probably aware the juvenile of the flying frog is a free-swimming tadpole, and it’s differences with the adult are instructive. The tadpole has a sizeable tail, so your Young Adult book should feature lots of action. It has yet to develop a headcrest, so you should probably cool it with the literary language. And it’s wings are rudimentary, meaning the message of your story should be simplified (racism is bad, it’s ok to be different) and almost explicitly spelled out.
RE: Trial by combat
I was reminded of William F Wu’s stories, where disputes are settled by wargamers fighting classic battles in video game simulations. I remember reading a couple of those in the old THERE WILL BE WAR anthologies.
Re: Ketchup. Heinz. Hunts is way too sweet for me
RE: Horseshoes. Is this another way to say that the Puppies are the real moderate mainstream
@Soon Lee, condolences
I tend to think of Brad as someone living an unexamined life, which is why he will never change. Look at his discourse at GRRMs (not a) blog, and with the exception of fine-tuning of the Puppy motivation from Conservatives can’t win to Outspoken Conservatives can’t win, there’s *nothing* there that he wouldn’t (and didn’t!) have posted 4 months ago
As such, expecting him to be nuanced in understanding subjective preferences is an exercise in futility. At the end of the day, his problem is that people refuse to (dis)like what he thinks they should (dis)like,
Trial by combat to win a Hugo might be interesting.
My memory cannot connect to the recollection of titles of old books that were humorous and filled with those kinds of stories. But they have existed, and a few names like William Tenn surface easily enough.
I got my son to like Laural and Hardy as a kid. I showed him the silents, and I showed him that particular one about trying to sell Christmas Trees in Hollywood (“Big Business”), and it clicked for him. WAY OUT WEST was one of the later entries, and some of them were no damn good. The kid watched BABES IN TOYLAND many times, and when he was much much younger, he listened to the songs, and as he got older, he watched for Laurel and Hardy.
Authors writing about aesthetic theory are always discussing their own work. What Brad is really saying : he, Brad, aims for a balance of action and ideas.
Soon Lee, condolences and sympathy. A suitable bit of ceremony really does help a lot with that, or so I found. The ceremony for Dad’s interrment at the military cemetery in Oregon was remarkably…I’m not sure the right word. “Clear”, almost: a moment where no authorities wondered or questioned about anything, because they knew that Dad was 100% eligible thanks to his World War II service and gave his remains 100% of the respectful care they gave every other urn being interred that day, and they gave Mom in particular 100% respectful care, too. The ceremony was an occasion for us to set aside planning and deciding, to take part in something that required nothing of us but following simple directions, and yet in that moment was for us entirely about him and us anyway.
What Brad is really saying : he, Brad, aims for a balance of action and ideas.
Having read a reasonable amount of fiction by Torgersen, all I can say is that my impression is that his aim isn’t very good.
Ketchup is not a vegetable. Pizza is.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45306416/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-yes/
Horseshoe sounds too close to another word, and I really cannot take the analogy too seriously.
I have made attempts over the years to read E.E.Smith, but always gave up over his style of writing, which causes me to look at the ceiling a lot. This was the response I got for a few books and a few writers. When the ceiling takes your interest, the book you’re looking at is not in your interest.
Even with Ketchup, Heinz is realizing there is no sweet spot. They’ve been marketing jalapeño ketchup, balsamic ketchup, sriracha ketchup, no sugar ketchup, low sodium ketchup, unleaded ketchup etc. The days when your choices were Heinz, Hunt’s, or the crappy store brand that someone bought once because it was cheaper are long gone.
Depending on the choice of arms, I think that might give Neal Stephenson an unfair advantage…. Isn’t he some sort of a swordfighting enthusiast?
@Snowcrash: oh reeeally? I like the sound of this Stephenson fella. I’ve managed to avoid buying his books thus far (they look like weighty tomes indeed – who needs a sword when you could just bash someone’s brains out with Seveneves?) – is there a good place to start?