59 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/12/18 Pleonasmatic”

1. First.

2. (1)
   Not walking under ladders makes perfect sense to me – you’re much less likely to have something fall on you if you don’t walk under one.

3. Post-first
   Pre-fifth

4. @6: well, that’s what happens in a CSA…. (Well, in most of them; somebody around here was advertising what they called a “chocolate CSA”, which I would have joined if I’d been in their delivery range.)

5. Click.

6. (6) It’s perfectly possible for one person to eat a head of cabbage in a week; I do so on a regular basis. I can also eat an entire head of roasted cauliflower with no side effect worse than guilt. (I always tell myself I’ll save some for lunch the next day and I never do.) If you regularly have a diet high in fruits and vegetables your digestive system adjusts to handle it.

7. 25) It doesn’t say so explicitly in the article (unless I missed it), but I assume the gallery was tied to the publication of the book Harryhausen: The Movie Posters.

   https://www.amazon.com/Harryhausen-Movie-Posters-Richard-Holliss/dp/1785656783/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536811951&sr=8-1&keywords=ray+harryhausen+poster+book&dpID=61oN3yIQ8dL&preST=_SX258_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

8. Clickity

9. Joe H. on September 12, 2018 at 9:13 pm said:

   25) It doesn’t say so explicitly in the article (unless I missed it), but I assume the gallery was tied to the publication of the book Harryhausen: The Movie Posters.

   oh…that looks very nice

10. Kal-El, would be an infant, according to DC lore.

    Has DC lore changed yet again? Supergirl’s spaceship traditionally didn’t arrive on Earth until he was an adult.

11. Mr del Arroz may find that insulting the magazine which just accepted his story may not lead to publication.

    This video would seem to be relevant to your interests:
    Release the Kraken!
    https://twitter.com/a_aphrodisia/status/1039290083113881601

12. 6) And that would be why we’ve never even considered a CSA subscription. There are just too many very popular vegetables that one or both of us won’t eat.

    8) Notice also the “rooms full of bric-a-brac” aesthetic. This is a style of decor that doesn’t mix well with cats, or with people who have respiratory issues (because it’s hard to keep the dust and mold spores down).

13. Supergirl’s spaceship traditionally didn’t arrive on Earth until he was an adult.

    I wonder if that statement combines some versions of her origin (the ones where she’s born before Superman, but remains in suspended animation to end up younger in the present) with stuff specific to the intended film. Or the journalist just got confused.

14. 3) It may be faulty memory but don’t think I’d call Bunch’s style or subject-matter unusual – at least, not in the context of the American-style New Wave. I have a copy of Moderan and would recommend it to others but it’s a bit unrelenting if you try to read it without breaks.

    8) Steampunk-as-style makes me faintly uncomfortable because it’s so heavily depoliticised. Victorian leather furniture is less troubling than pith helmets (look up Orwell on the significance of pith helmets) but it’s still worth taking a moment to think about what maps and anatomical diagrams would have signified in their original context.

    11) I think Lem deserves a bit better than that, even if we only count his translated works. (There are a number of film adaptions of his books too, though they suffer from Soviet-era scripting

15. 3) Hmm. Anyone know if this includes anything that wasn’t in the 1971 Moderan collection from Avon Books? (It wasn’t within arm’s reach of me, I had to stand up and get it off a shelf. Remiss of me.)

    I have to admit, I find Bunch’s work, umm, an acquired taste at best.

16. Anyone know if this includes anything that wasn’t in the 1971 Moderan collection from Avon Books?

    It does — if you do a “look inside the book” on this page, parts 1-3 match the 1971 version, but part 4 consists of later-written stories.

17. 10) Looks like a certain someone is gearing up to make an awfully big deal about a “Dear Sir, I’m afraid your story does not suit our needs at this time.”

18. 21) Maybe tools are harder to come by than food?

    From what I’ve learned, Bonobos (and chimpanzes) use tools almost exclusively to retrieve/prepare food. If you retain the tool but share the food, you’re really upping/maintaining your social cred.

    6) Maybe ship the excess kale to the Bonobos without tools? Disrupt the social order, see what happens….

19. 14)It never occurred to me to call out the connection between philosophy and science fiction. “Futurists” is just another term for philosophizing about the future of the human condition, no? Much of the better SF of the past century has been the posing of basic philosophical questions and their analysis, not? (Like Wells addressing colonialism in The War of the Worlds…)

20. Sophie Jane says I think Lem deserves a bit better than that, even if we only count his translated works. (There are a number of film adaptions of his books too, though they suffer from Soviet-era scripting

    Better in what sense? I’m certainly not pretending that these notes are intended to be complete looks at the the genre undertakings of the author but rather my take on them. Y’all are more than welcome to add to my admittedly biased, errr, subjective notes.

21. (13) Go bookmobiles go!

    (14) At a conference in 2001 or so, I saw a presentation that talked about using “The Matrix” as part of an ethics course for engineers.

22. @Sophie Jane, @Cat Eldridge
    For those interested in filmic adaptations of Stanislaw Lem novels, I have an article about an East German 1960 adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s Astronauts coming up at Galactic Journey.

    6) Kale is a winter vegetable. And it does not come in heads, but in stalks. It’s also perfectly possible for a single person to eat a head of cabbage in a week without any ill effects, but then I am used to it.

23. @Cat Eldridge Y’all are more than welcome to add to my admittedly biased, errr, subjective notes.

    That’s entirely fair. Then I’d add that (as far as I know) almost all his output was genre though he often wrote in philosophical and/or satirical modes, that he was widely read and celebrated in his native(*) Poland and in the Soviet Union, and that a number of Polish and Soviet films were made of his books, though Solaris is the only good one. The Cyberiad is probably his most successful work in the west, thanks in part to excellent translators, but the funny/absurdist/philosophical Ijon Tichy stories are also worth reading as are the Tales of Pirx the Pilot, which can be read either as Hard SF or subtle digs at Hard SF according to preference. Wikipedia shows more than a dozen other works published in the west but various combinations of leaden translation, heavy philosophical content, and Lem’s desire to distance himself from American genre SF means they’ve generally escaped notice.

    (*) Interwar Poland, soon occupied first by the Soviet Union, the Nazis, and then the Soviet Union again. Hence Lem’s pessimism about human nature and sense of the absurd.

24. For a kinda-sf dramatisation/discussion of classical philosophical problems/scenarios including the Trolley Problem, there’s Tom Stoppard’s 2013 radio play set to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Sun, though my recollection is that tonally it was more like a Firesign Theatre LP:

    https: //

25. (5) Further reporting states that despite rumors that Michael B. Jordan is under consideration to replace him, WB’s relationship with Cavill has not changed.

    As for the Supergirl movie: if it is to tie in with the DC EU, part of that story has already been told. A tie-in comic released alongside Man of Steel depicted Supergirl’s arrival on Earth; the open pod that Kal-El discovers in the movie was hers, so presumably she is conscious and wandering the planet by that time. This most likely indicates that she has been living “undercover” for some time and that an origin movie would either be a flashback to her days on Krypton or a modern-day story of her stepping up to become a superhero in the aftermath of Justice League. The latter bears a striking resemblance to the premise of the Arrowverse TV show, though, which brings its own problems…

    (16) I agree with Ann and Standback in that I do not expect PLA’s strategy of acceptance-via-threat to be a successful one. If he keeps trying these tactics, he may well manage to blacklist himself… if he has not already done so. (If I were reading slush or working on a concom and his name came up, I would immediately veto his inclusion based on his famously litigious nature. I doubt actual markets pay less attention to such hazards.)

    Seriously, one of the big rules of publishing is that, as an author, you want to be easy to work with. If the publisher has to choose between two works of roughly equivalent sales potential, they’re going to choose the one that will cause the fewest (and/or smallest) headaches. That can mean picking the author with the better record of hitting deadlines, but it can also mean picking the one who is better at handling criticism. PLA appears to be doing his level best to garner a reputation as a petulant diva, which is not desirable in this situation. He would be better off baking cookies than tossing threats and lawsuits around.

    Hell, I’m a freelance editor who badly needs more clients, but I’d probably turn him down at this point. That says a lot.

26. Ann Somerville: a nitpick. They haven’t accepted the story. It’s in submission limbo. All they did was not pre-reject it based on his name. Ie, they didn’t blacklist him.

    He’s mostly just set it up so that if they do reject the story he can claim victimhood over it, never mind that 95-99% of stories are rejected.

27. Nancy Sauer on September 12, 2018 at 8:20 pm said:

    I can also eat an entire head of roasted cauliflower with no side effect worse than guilt. (I always tell myself I’ll save some for lunch the next day and I never do.)

    …I thought I was the only one who did this.

28. Sophie Jane on September 13, 2018 at 2:08 am said:

    8) Steampunk-as-style makes me faintly uncomfortable because it’s so heavily depoliticised. Victorian leather furniture is less troubling than pith helmets (look up Orwell on the significance of pith helmets) but it’s still worth taking a moment to think about what maps and anatomical diagrams would have signified in their original context.

    Wait–we are supposed to be offended by old maps now? And studies of human anatomy? I’m preeeeety sure that the original context was “this is the geographical and political layout of the world” and “this is what we know about human anatomy.” (Although I can’t find any anotomical drawings in the photos, uless you mean the plant ones, which originally signified “this is what plants look like.”)

29. @Sophie Jane: I would add that Lem’s novel His Master’s Voice is a superb ‘first contact’ novel. (There’s a reason for those quotes.)

30. @Darren Garrison Wait–we are supposed to be offended by old maps now? And studies of human anatomy?

    I’m not asking anyone to be offended by anything. I’m suggesting it’s worth thinking critically about steampunk as an evocation of the age of empires. Some authors did, and now we have a new wave of postcolonial steampunk fiction that I think does a lot for the genre. Perhaps it would be a good thing to think about in the context of design and fashion too?

31. @Ann Somerville: Hahaha, great video, thanks! And it makes me hungry. 🙂

    @Lee: I am very tempted by CSA, but there are many vegetables (including unpopular ones) that I don’t like, plus our eating habits are a little irregular, so I’d be afraid of the kitchen overflowing with produce very quickly.

32. @Standback: I think you’ve nailed it. I feel bad for the Uncanny staff that will have to deal with his temper tantrum after his likely rejection.

33. CSA-related: I’ve been using Imperfect Produce, which is sort of like a CSA in that it’s a weekly box of produce, but which sells you produce deemed too ugly to sell to grocery store, and is a mix of organic and non-organic offerings.

    You get a chance to tailor the weekly box via a web-form a few days ahead of time and I take full advantage of that and also can plan a couple meals around it usually. It’s also very easy to skip weeks when you need to. Right now it’s only available in larger cities (like here in Seattle, where we have an abundance of CSAs as well) but I really like it a lot, and the prices are great. Would recommend.

34. @Sophie Jane:

    FYI, I blame you for the story seed I now have rattling around in my head. It concerns an inventor’s quest for ethically-sourced, renewable steam in the wake of a bloody revolt in one of the Empire’s key steam mines.

    On the bright side, maybe this’ll keep me from doing anything with that idea where an airborne Lovecraftian beastie appears at a music festival and devours a renowned folk duo right there on stage. (The rest of the performers escape, as its one massive eye is preoccupied with impaling one victim on its twisted horn while devouring the other. I’m not sure how the audience will respond to its unearthly wailing, but maybe a hero can subdue it with a few bottles of tequila.)

    In wholly unrelated news, I really ought to get more sleep…

35. This beastie wouldn’t happen to be purple, would it?

36. Rev. Bob,
    In today’s context, an “airborne Lovecraftian beastie” with “one massive eye” immediately suggests to me that a hurricane is the projection onto our universe of just such a critter with innumerable vaporous, spinning tendrils.

    Tim Powers’ Djinn maybe involved somehow, too.

37. @Rev Bob
    Obviously, dragons are the best source of renewable steam. The only trouble is, they want _all_ the gold in the country piled up somewhere they can sleep on it. This means abandoning the Gold Standard – unthinkable to the newly-rich Industrial Lords! War seems inevitable! Unless a plucky young dragon and her misfit human friends can find Adam Smith’s last unpublished manuscript…

38. 3)I checked the book MODERAN, and in the back, there is a listing of stories that did not make it into the first edition collection. It’s a bunch.

    The style is dense, yes, unrelenting in presentation. I shouldn’t be trying to read it before sleeping.

39. @Russell:

    Of course not, and ten points from whichever house you belong to.

    Perhaps you should try identifying the fallen performers instead,,,

40. I’ll warn y’all–I’ve seen some of the ‘Wheel of Time’ footage, and it’s massively disappointing. They really had to reduce the scope to get it into the budget, and a lot of the characters have changed to the point where they’re downright unrecognizable (the show actually put name tags on them so you could tell who the characters are, but they changed a lot of the names, too, so that doesn’t help).

    Their decision to represent magic as a form of unveiling of mystically significant phrases was really strange and off-putting, and although I did like Vanna White’s portrayal of the Aes Sedai, she really doesn’t do a whole lot to assist the heroes in a practical fashion. And the less said about Pat Sajak’s turn as the Dark One, the better. He’s got no menace at all. Honestly, the whole thing comes off as just a glorified game show more than an epic fantasy saga. Avoid avoid avoid.

41. Well, you know–one eye, one horn, flying, eating people. . . what’s a fella to think? (Especially one who grew up in the Fifties,)

42. @John Seavey — Well played, sir.

43. @John Seavey: Heh.

    Makes me suggest “Please Pixel your Scroll in the form of a question” (though we might have done that one already).

44. @John Seavey, applause!

45. John Seavey, <snork!> Now I have to clean soda out of my keyboard…

46. re: the JDA thing: I sort of thought that the standard practice these days was to slush read the stories without the author’s details being attached. Is that the case? So perhaps he’ll get into a reputable maagzine if the story is good enough.

47. If I were a magazine editor who got a story (that had made it thru the slush filter) from a known diva author, one of the questions I’d be asking would be “Would we buy this story if it wasn’t from Diva Author?” An emphatic “yes” means it’s worth thinking about despite the probable side effects. A qualified “yes” might mean “put it on the waiting list” — unless one of the things Diva Author is known for is having tantrums about editorial requests for changes, in which case probably not. Anything lower than that means “reject”.

    Also, I agree that attempted blackmail is not a good way to improve your chances of acceptance. I don’t know how many editors would have my reaction of “we don’t give in to threats”, but I’m betting it’s more than a few.

    I would be very interested in finding out how common blind submission readings are these days. Historically, that’s one of the best ways of reducing racial and sexual discrimination — look at the difference in the composition of symphony orchestras before and after blind auditions became the norm. But it also requires having someone in the pipeline ahead of the first-reader to anonymize the submissions, and for a magazine with a tight budget that may be difficult.

48. @nickpheas So he won’t be appearing in any reputable magazines anytime soon, then?

    They’ve since rejected his story, BTW.

    https://twitter.com/jondelarroz/status/1040292559644372992

49. They’ve since rejected his story, BTW.
    You know, it’s my own fault for following the link to see what his reaction was.
    It’s so funny that his ilk all carry on about politicizing SF and then you read the descriptions of the three stories he’s listed.
    Why do they have such trouble owning the fact that they are bringing back the pulps in digital form?

50. @Eric: I can’t tell whether his short story collection title is meant to be ironic. Based on the one line descriptions of the contents, none of those stories sound like they’d be fun to read.

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