(1) James H. Burns recalls the effects of 9/11 on Broadway in “Delphinus, in the Northern Sky” (posted in 2012).
It’s eleven years later, and we’re still here. Still able to perform, or write, or otherwise create, or, also wonderful, to be able to embrace those passions.
I was just thinking of the guts it took for the actors who resumed their places on the stage so soon after that day in September.
Remember the courage it took, for some of us, just to walk down the street. And these folks were resuming one of the toughest challenges, in the arts.
(2) Melbourne has a website that maps every one of its city trees. Citizens can report a particular tree’s condition and get the city to attend to it. The website has a button “Email this tree,” short for “Email the city about this tree.”
Except, as fans will do, many take the label literally, and email the tree about life, the universe, and everything.
People around the world have been e-mailing trees in Melbourne to confess their love.
As part of the Urban Forest Strategy — implemented to combat the steady decline of trees following a 13 year drought — the city assigned all of the Melbourne’s 77000 trees individual emails.
The idea was residents could use these emails to report trees that had been vandalised or were in a severe state of decline.
Only, people decided to make another use for the email and began writing love letters to their favourite trees….
Weeping Myrtle, Tree ID 1494392
Hello Weeping Myrtle,
I’m sitting inside near you and I noticed on the urban tree map you don’t have many friends nearby. I think that’s sad so I want you to know I’m thinking of you.
I also want to thank you for providing oxygen for us to breath in the hustle and bustle of the city.
Best Regards,
N …
Variegated Elm, Tree ID 1033102
Dear Elm, I was delighted to find you alive and flourishing, because a lot of your family used to live in the UK, but they all caught a terrible infection and died.
Do be very careful, and if you notice any unfamiliar insects e-mail an arboriculturist at once.
I miss your characteristic silhouettes and beautifully shaped branches — used to be one of the glories of the English landscape — more than I can say.
Melbourne must be a beautiful city.
Sincere good wishes
D
The Urban Forest Strategy will see 3000 new trees planted in Melbourne each year and since its implementation in 2012, 12000 new trees have been added to the city’s urban landscape.
(3) Step inside Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft designed to carry humans to the International Space Station and other destinations.
(4) Major league baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates welcomed back devoted Batman fan A.J. Burnett by sending up the Bat-Signal.
(5) Need a little adventure in your life? Tor.com is seeking an in-house publicity coordinator.
This person will work with publicity and editorial departments and contacts throughout all of genre publishing, developing plans for comprehensive book coverage on Tor.com and assisting with publisher and author outreach. They will also be responsible for encouraging and moderating conversation between readers on the site and on social media.
This is a full-time position working in our New York office. Ideally, we are looking for a candidate with at least 2 years of publishing experience, who is outgoing, extremely organized, and detail-oriented. Applicants should be both highly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about science fiction and fantasy across a range of media….
(6) Did I forget to mention – issue 24 of Hugo-winning fanzine Journey Planet, the Richard III theme issue, is available online. This issue contains a series of articles by Steven H Silver, Joan Szechtman, Chuck Serface, K.A. Laity, Ruth Pe Palileo and Pixie P.as welll as pieces by editors James Bacon and Chris Garcia. The cover, some interior and technical art work was provided by Autun Purser, a full-time deep sea ecologist, who has created a series of travel posters, advertising travel to destinations from unusual fiction – the “Fantastic Travel Destinations.”
(7) Kevin Standlee shares several examples that show why Hugo Administrators aren’t activists.
- 1989 and A Brief History of Time (Scroll down and click “further detail” for a bit more information.) In 1989, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had sufficient nominations to make the final ballot. The Administrator ruled it ineligible, as the definition of Best Non-Fiction Book (the title of the category now known as Best Related Work) at that time said that the book had to be about “science fiction, fantasy, or fandom,” and thus the Administrator ruled that science books weren’t eligible. This decision was controversial. There were attempted changes to the WSFS Constitution that year that were eventually rejected, IMO mainly because nobody could agree on a consistent proposal. It took several years of argument, but eventually the 1996 WSFS Business Meeting passed (and the 1997 meeting ratified) the change of the category from “Best Non-Fiction Book” to “Best Related Book,” thus:
Any work whose subject is related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time in book form during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.
Note that ABHOT would have been eligible under this wording.
(8) Naturellement !
For the record, I've always pronounced "Voldemort" correctly.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 11, 2015
(9) These Black Mouse Printing Titanium Steel His and Hers Band Couple Rings are cute as the dickens and go for only $59.
(10) Cat Valente in a comment on Jay Maynard’s award proposal at Black Gate
…Because it’s simply not right to say a good story has no message. Story and message are not separable, hostile camps demanding loyalty only to one or the other. A good story has themes. A good story is about something. A good story is not only about things that happen one after the other, but about why they happen, and how, and to whom, and how all those things interconnect. And all that can happen WITH ray guns and explosions and buxom princesses. It happens literally all the time. One does not kick the other out of bed for eating crackers.
The author always, ALWAYS, communicates their own culture and experience through their fiction. There is no writing without that cultural electricity animating it. It’s not good or bad. It just is. We cannot help it, we are human. To say that Ancillary Justice is message fiction and undeserving but Time Enough for Love is not is to say that some of those communicated experiences are good and should be promulgated and some are worthless and should be cast aside. And I don’t think there’s anything in the world that should be cast aside and never written about.
However, no one, not even the terrible, no good, very bad SJWs, has ever said that the best stories are ones where the “message” overrides the good story. Everyone wants a good story. Everyone wants to sink into a novel and get totally wrapped up in the tale. There is no need to split into camps on this topic because there is literally no argument. Everyone wants the same thing.
The difference lies in the fact that for some people, a story that communicates an experience that they are unfamiliar with, whether a gendered one, or racial, or sexual, or even literary, jars them out of the story and makes it harder to get wrapped up in it. I can even use my powers of empathy to understand that, because it jars me out of a story when I come across a message about how shitty and/or unnecessary women are, because I am a woman and I like to not feel like I am shitty and unnecessary. But unfortunately, for some people, me just writing a story that draws on my life experience IS political, because my experience isn’t theirs, and the central presence of women in a story is, for them, a political act….
(11) Ruth A. Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance, was interviewed by L. Jagi Lamplighter at Superversive SF about her interpretation of the Hugo kerfuffle. It’s part of a series – later installments will apply her theory to characters in John C. Wright’s Night Land stories, and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” as well as the larger Hugo/culture war picture.
Part One: What Forces Drive the SciFi Culture Wars?
Q: In the Afterword to your new book, you suggest that ideas about personality might help us understand “culture wars” by showing how the sides just see the world differently. What do you mean by “personality-based worldviews”?
A: The thesis of Re-Modeling the Mind is that our brains can’t process all of the information that comes at us constantly, so each brain organizes itself around more limited options, depending on the neural strengths it already has. When we talk about “personality” we mean these limitations and abilities, which are usually clearly visible when we watch each other. We know ourselves this way, too. We know there are things we simply can’t take in, or if we can take in the facts, we can’t manage them to make decisions. There are things we pay close attention to, and other things we just can’t be bothered with. Personality is this very real neural patterning that filters the world so that it’s manageable.
But this means that our personalities also limit and even blind us to things other people can perceive and manage. We’re all in the same physical world, in the sense that we agree on where the objects are, so that we can avoid running into them. But at a more complex level, we really don’t all live in the same world. Our personalities can have such root-level different views of the world that we can barely have conversations. This is what I’d call a personality-based worldview.
I’m not a science-fiction reader, and I’d never heard of the Hugos until this year. But watching the ferocity of the battles made me feel convinced that at least some of this culture war is provoked by a clash of personality-based worldviews. In other words, probably the leaders and many supporters of each faction share some personality traits so that they all “live” in a similar world. In each faction’s “world,” its values are not only sensible but the only possible ones. Or if not the only possible ones, the only morally right or safe ones. This is why it’s so hard to have a conversation. It’s self-evident to each faction that its values are right, and the arguments offered by the other faction hold no water in their worldview. A lot of people on both sides feel that if So and So wins a prize, moral right or wrong will be rewarded.
(12) David Gerrold on Facebook is working out his own communication theory to explain “the recent squabble in SF fandom.”
…We now live in a world of self-organizing subcultures. Some of them are positive — organizing around the desire to address various challenges. Some of the clusters are negative, organizing around cult-like behaviors. Some are in the business of disseminating valuable information — some are in the business of misinformation and propaganda.
There’s a psychological phenomenon about new media — we give it gravitas. The first decade of any medium is the decade of education and assimilation. ie. We have to learn how to filter the information, we have to learn how to recognize that it is not an access to truth, merely one more way to be massaged. Example: The 1938 Orson Wells “War of the World” broadcast and panic. That happened while radio was still in its infancy for most listeners.
The internet is experiencing a prolonged childhood — most of us are still somewhere on the learning curve. We still trust too much of what we’re seeing on our computer screens, because we haven’t learned how to distrust it yet.
That’s the context in which we’re all operating. We’re being assaulted by an avalanche of data — we have to figure out how to mine it for actual information.
We have built the kind of technology that gives every person on the planet access to vast libraries of information and the ability to communicate with people all over the globe. But even if we’ve built a global village, we haven’t yet learned how to live in it. We’ve brought our prejudices and our beliefs and our parochial world-views.
Here, on this continent, we’ve built a cultural monomyth that carries within it the seeds of our own destruction — the mythic hero. We believe in John Wayne, the strong man who comes to rescue us. It’s a variation on the Christ myth. Or Superman. Or Batman. We’re incapable of being responsible, we need a daddy figure to sort things out for us. (The savage deconstruction of this monomyth is a movie called “High Noon.” It’s worth a look.)
Belief in superheros is an adolescent fantasy — it’s a way of abnegating personal responsibility. Whatever is wrong with the world, the Justice League, the Avengers, SHIELD will fix it.
The counterpoint is that whatever is wrong with the world — it’s not us. It’s THRUSH or SPECTRE or HYDRA or some other unnamed conspiracy. It’s always a conspiracy. …
(13) Steve Davidson has an advanced scouting report on next year’s Retro Hugos, which will be voted by members of MidAmeriCon II for eligible work from 1940.
But when it comes to the editor’s categories, we’re going to be restricted to one, that for Short Form.
Of course Campbell is the natural choice here, but take a minute to consider everyone who is eligible:
Mary Gnaedinger – Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels (reprints)
Raymond A. Palmer – Amazing Stories, Amazing Stories Quarterly (reprint), Fantastic Adventures
Mort Weisinger – Captain Future, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories
Frederik Pohl – Astonishing, Super Science Stories
F. Orlin Tremaine – Comet
Charles D. Hornig – Future Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly
Martin Goodman – Marvel Tales/Marvel Stories
Malcolm Reiss -Planet Stories
John W. Campbell Jr. – Astounding Science Fiction, Unknown
Farnsworth Wright – Weird Tales
None of the other editors had anything approaching the budget that Campbell had, yet Pohl, Hornig and Weisinger managed to put together some very fine issues from time to time (often relying on friends for copy at cut-rates), while Malcolm Reiss practically gave birth to the sword and planet sub-genre (not to mention introducing us all to Leigh Brackett!) with Planet Stories and several of the other magazines had a material impact on the field – if only by keeping certain authors and artists barely fed.
[Thanks to Mark (wait, not that one, the other one), L. Jagi Lamplighter, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian. Title credit to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Torg said that Ancillary Justice won because people voted for it without reading it, and that they did so because Ancillary Justice was written by a woman and did interesting things with language.
But… but… how does somebody recognize that it does interesting things with language without reading it? *headsplode*
[Arguments against Ancillary Justice make me very cranky because while I was reading it I kept looking up from the page and remarking to the cats “omigod this is SO GOOD!” It made my brain work in really rewarding ways. If somebody’s read it and disliked it, okay, let’s talk about that. If they haven’t read it… bah. I have better things to do with my time! Like reading more of the titles you all have recommended.]
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Something from the Nightside, Simon R. Green
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Bold As Love, Gwyneth Jones
Abstain
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Abstain
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford
Declare, Tim Powers
Abstain
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Galveston, Sean Stewart
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei LukyanenkoNight Watch, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
His sister is the singer Poe. She wrote a quasi tie-in album (much of which was used in the Blair Witch 2 soundtrack).
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
Tithe, Holly Black
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
Abstain
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Abstain
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Pass
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Nick: But I’d be a misacroatirist myself to try to coin and deploy such a word. Why on earth is this in the subjunctive?
🙂
Ok, then.
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Something from the Nightside, Simon R. Green
Abstain, haven’t read either, not likely to read either.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
Abstain, haven’t read either, not likely to read either.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Bold As Love, Gwyneth Jones
Oh, my god, Bold as Love, so many, many many times. I want everyone I know to read it so I can talk to them about it and no one has read it and why won’t they read it? *wail*
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
Abstain
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Abstain
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford
Declare, Tim Powers
Abstain, haven’t read either, not likely to read either.
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Galveston, Sean Stewart
Abstain
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Abstain
One of these days, I’ll try Pratchett again.
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Can I just vote against The Eyre Affair, which I truly hated? I couldn’t finish it. I haven’t read the other, though.
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
Tithe, Holly Black
Abstain
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
Abstain
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Abstain
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Bitten, Kelley Armstrong
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Arghhh, I join the club of dice hating. I’ve read Kushiels Dart more often because it suits my kinks and because it’s part of a series, and I tend to start at the beginning when there’s a new book out, but Tooth and Claw is a much, much better book.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Oh yes: I strongly suspect that the people Mamatas is parodying regard the subjunctive as created for the sole purpose of confusing good, honest, meat and two veg people with newfangled ideas. After all, something either is or isn’t, and they will have no truck with cats belonging to people with fancy names.
Also, it is 7.56 am in England, and by long custom Sunday morning is when you don’t wake before 10 am unless there are small people who need to be fed and watered. It is, therefore, a breach of longstanding tradition for Morpheus to eject me at this godless hour, and to do so with an accompanying chunk of VD’s prose should be prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
Brackets are interesting, and I certainly see why Mike would wish to edge slowly away from the precipice; it’s not as if we’re going to find something interesting like the Courts of Chaos. On the other hand I haven’t even had a cup of tea so I have nothing resembling thought to offer…
Stevie has:
no tea
😉
‘As You Know’ Bob on September 12, 2015 at 5:46 pm said:
Thus does Real Life™ (you should pardon the expression) imitate art. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra…”
One of us! One of us!
Mislexical.
Just sounds like a bowl of miso soup….
I’m going to toss in my own votes for a couple of personal faves that aren’t going to win (Bold As Love, Tithe, and ties on 10 and 15), and tally things up …
Ann Leckie is really just a pen name for John Scalzi, designed to persuade those stupid SJW to vote for him. Ditto for Rachel Swirsky, John Chu, Liu Cixin and Saladin Ahmed. It’s all SCALZI!
Now let’s see how long until this shows up as fact on the puppy blogs.
OK, in this round we had some extremely close matches and some … not so close. The results are:
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
WINNER (seeded): Perdido Street Station, China Mieville – 41 votes
Something from the Nightside, Simon R. Green – 7 votes
There are always some lopsided battles, and this turned out to be one of them. There was a bit of spirited debate as to whether or not Perdido Street Station is actually Mieville’s best, but the cynical, genre-mixing fantasy novel nonetheless won over the … other cynical, genre-mixing fantasy novel.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling – 15 votes
WINNER: The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip – 17 votes
Much love was expressed for both of these works, and this contest was about as close as you can get without actually being a tie. But the McKillip is the one that will move on to subsequent rounds.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
WINNER: Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle – 23 votes
Bold As Love, Gwyneth Jones – 3 votes
The originally-mislabeled Ash generates a lot of enthusiasm, and easily defeated Jones’ wild musical riff on Arthurian legends. Ash got fewer votes than some of the heavy hitters in this round, but that might be due to the relative obscurity of Bold As Love, as there are those who don’t vote if they haven’t read both works.
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson – 13 votes
WINNER: Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb – 22 votes
A relatively close contest, with just 9 votes separating the two. Both had enthusiastic supporters, but it’s the Hobb that will be moving forward.
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson – 17 votes
WINNER (seeded): A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin – 32 votes
Two works of the grim and gritty school go to war. Both had their detractors and their supporters, but when the votes were counted, Martin was the clear winner. Might have gone differently if we were counting bodies rather than votes.
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford – 1 votes
WINNER (seeded): Declare, Tim Powers – 27 votes
I suspect that both the popularity of the Powers and the obscurity of the Ford were at play here, but whatever the reason this was as close to a shutout as the brackets have yet seen. Declare will move on to the Big Round, where I predict it will do well.
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
WINNER: Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett – 15 votes
Galveston, Sean Stewart – 13 votes
Another extremely close match with strong adherents to both books. By just two votes, Scott and Barnett move on to the next round, and Galveston will join the crowd in a strange, eternal Mardi Gras.
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko – 4 votes
WINNER (seeded): Night Watch, Terry Pratchett – 56 votes
As could easily have been predicted before the brackets began, Night Watch handily establishes itself as one of the 800 pound gorillas in the room; in all honesty, Day Watch put up a reasonable fight here for a heat round against it just by getting a few votes. Night Watch seems likely to stomp through the first few rounds, but there will eventually be other gorillas, including ones from this heat alone …
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
WINNER (seeded): The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde – 34 votes
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon – 5 votes
Fforde’s popular, light-hearted look at literature handily beats Zafon. Some argued Zafon wasn’t truly fantasy, but it still had its stalwart supporters in the ranks.
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
WINNER (seeded): Coraline, Neil Gaiman – 41 votes
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski – 11 votes
The enigmatic House of Leaves made it to the double digits against Gaiman, but Coraline’s popularity, coupled with an established preference on this site for genre fantasy over lit fantasy, made this an uneven contest.
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
WINNER: Summer Knight, Jim Butcher – 25 votes
Tithe, Holly Black – 12 votes
A solid win for Harry Dresden here against another popular urban fantasy title (and a one-vote suggestion for Black’s White Cat.) But there are already murmured doubts that Summer Knight has the legs to go the distance. Will the best-selling Butcher pull off some surprises in coming rounds?
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
WINNER (tie): Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks – 8 votes
WINNER (tie): White Apples, Jonathan Carroll – 8 votes
An exact tie, and both of these book will go on to the Big Round! But a low scoring round in a heat generally indicates that neither book has been widely read, which might give them trouble as they move forward.
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
WINNER: Abhorsen, Garth Nix – 22 votes
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold – 7 votes
Some people really, really don’t like The Lovely Bones. And some people really, really love Abhorsen. And even though the reverse could also be said, that carried the day.
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
WINNER: Sunshine, Robin McKinley – 27 votes
Bitten, Kelley Armstrong – 9 votes
Sunshine seems to be establishing its place in the canon as the vampire novel beloved by people who hate vampire novels. And also by people who love vampire novels. While many people are very fond of Bitten, it couldn’t compete against a book many see as McKinley at top of her form.
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
WINNER (seeded): Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton – 32 votes
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey – 23 votes
This was reasonably close, again with only 9 votes separating the two, and a high vote count for both; both works are quite popular here. But Jo Walton’s proper dragons eventually won out over Carey’s sexy heroics.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner – 7 votes
WINNER (seeded): Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold – 44 votes
The Queen of Attolia is a much-loved book. Paladin of Souls, however, is widely adored (even though there were two votes for Curse of Chalion as a replacement.) It has firmly established itself as another 800 pound gorilla in the room. Many are eying it as one that will go far.
(It’s going to be a while before the next heat is posted, as I’ve got a pretty packed day … I’d estimate around 12 hours from now. I’ll figure out where I’m posting it depending on what the site looks like around then.)
@Cubist:
“Larry at Reno.” — to have a good time, but have the memory slowly rot and twist.
“Brad, his vote open.” — to stuff a ballot with your friends’ work
“Brad at the place of George.” — to advance weak arguments, get your ass kicked, and flounce in the face of pointed questions
“Wright at Spokane.” — to be a sacrificial lamb
“Wright, his heart open, his arms wide.” — to extend forgiveness provided the other person completely capitulates, while you insult them
“Lamplighter at Spokane.” — to pester
“Wright and Lamplighter at Spokane.” — to enrage through efforts to mollify
“Wright, when the rockets launched.” — to be left behind
I think Declare and Ash were the ones I was the most eager to see go forward. I’ve just found out there’s a new Powers coming in January as well….
(Kyra, I think the opinions on where to run the brackets were pretty inconclusive, so I would say to just use your best judgement.)
And I forgot to vote. But my vote wouldn’t have changed anything, so that’s good…
“Wright, his sales untwirled.” — to propose a boycott of one’s own writing, just prior to realising the massive logic failure inherent in such a strategy.
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@bloodstone75 I don’t speak Klingon or any Star Trek related language, but Lamplighter at Spokane is too funny and sounds too beautiful not to become part of my English vocabulary.
Sigh … I might not have filled in the bracket at all except that I saw Deadhouse Gates and needed to vote for it.
MDW
Fret not! I am embarking on the first novel in that series on the basis that people really love it so it’s worth a try. I just hope that the series is finished somewhere down the line…
@Stevie, Iif you’re talking about the Malazan Books of the Fallen, that series is already complete. There are some side stories/ prequel in progress, but the main sequence is over.
I’ve added the Bold as Love series to my To Read Mountain because of the brackets. Also, I went to check out House of Leaves from my library, only to find out that someone else had ILLed it. You Know Who You Are [glare].
Snowcrash
Thank you! I’m a bit twitchy about unfinished series, given the possibility of them extending ad infinitum; Janni Wurts ‘Wars of Light and Shadow’ got off to an excellent start but has, in my view, jumped the shark on the endless angst. The hero has become impossibly heroic, ditto the heroine, and there’s another person currently a villain but not really to blame due to a curse, who needs to be redeemed, and the language has become more and more ornate, sometimes to the point of near incomprehensibility.
Incidentally, a writer who makes up new words which her readers have to learn in order to read her spiel about writers abusing readers needs to adjust her brain…
I’m pleased to report that my library says the inter-library-loan of House of Leaves will arrive within the week.
@Cally, why are you glaring at me….?
NNggh. House of Leaves. I can count the number of books on one hand that I’ve started and deliberately decided not to finish, and that’s one of them. I simply could not stand the narrative voice of either of the two nested protagonists outside the Navidson record. Fingernails-on-a-blackboard level could not stand. It may be a great book, but it’s being narrated by two narcissistic and boring assholes as far as I’m concerned. (And while I could forgive the former, the latter is a mortal sin.)
John, that strikes me as one of the great complaints about House of Leaves. Johnny Truant in particular is just…not very engaging. He has his moments, particularly the sequence about getting his act together in another part of the country and what happens after that, but overall, I’d have been fine seeing a lot less of him. I found the old guy interesting, but can see how he’d grate a lot, too. No argument at all that the Navison Record itself is by far the most interesting layer of narrative.
1. Perdido Street Station, even though I spent much of the first half wondering if the book was a travel guide for the extremely offbeat tourist or a novel.
2. The Tower at Stony Wood. I am sorry about this, since Bone Doll’s Twin is also a great read and does some fascinating examinations of gender, but McKillip is a genius, dangit.
6. Declare,
10. Coraline
11. Tithe
14. Sunshine. Refreshingly unclichéd vampires, descriptions if baked goods that will leave you drooling, world building that left me craving more stories in this setting…
15. Kushiel’s Dart. But that was very difficult!
@Bruce Baugh: And yet, I admire the heck out of Danielewski for refusing to cut those parts out of the book. I can’t stand reading it, I will never be able to get through it and I’ve given up trying, but he considers those elements to be crucial to his vision of the story and he’s turned down pretty massive sums of money from people who want to adapt the book but aren’t interested in keeping the nested narrative structure. He’s made something that works for him, and more power to him.
I just won’t be reading it, is all.
The next heat has been post in the 9/12 thread:
https://file770.com/?p=24891&cpage=4#comment-341835
> “… world building that left me craving more stories in this setting…”
She had another one set in that world planned at one point (tentatively called Albion, I think?), but nothing seems to have come of it. I’ve come around to being kind of glad that Sunshine exists by itself in perfection, though.
@Jay
What you did there, I see it! *golf clap*
@Bob Roehm, close, but it was “…All You Zombies”
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
-Never read the other, but Ash was amazing!
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
-They write a mean fantasy rpg sourcebook disguised as a novel, but GRRM all the way.
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
-Never read the Ford, but Declare!
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
-I really enjoyed Lukyanenko, but up against one of the top three Pratchett’s? No contest.
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
-Yay, Jim!
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
-Another favorite that my daughter loves as well
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
-Tempted to say we should just skip to the end of the bracket, between Sunshine and Curse of Chalion
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
-Can I give a negative vote to Kushiel?
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
-Paladin of Souls!!!!!! But surely you meant Curse of Chalion?
@Snowcrash – They finally finished the Malazan series?
Cool! I gave up about ~5,000 pages in, when I despaired of ever finding a plot connectung the various books. Did they ever find a way to tie things together?
*ticky*
Stevie, that’s cool! And the main storyline is complete. Be sure to double check the bracing on your TBR pile before adding all 10!
I believe Ian Cameron Esslemont’s shared world novels are also complete as of #6, Assail. Both Erikson and Esslemont are working on trilogies set before the time of the already published works now.
@Maximilian
They did bring all three storylines together in the last three books, as well as revealing what certain characters had been planning since the beginning.
Mostly together anyway, there are so many persons running around that some of them headed off to ICE’s novels instead.
Cally, ping me once you finish Bold as Love. I so need new people to talk to about this book!
ETA: seriously, not just Cally. I just know her in real life.
Hi all. Have been lurking and waaaaaay behind, so no recent commenting. I’m 2 days behind on this thread and don’t know if the voting is closed or not. Regardless, here are my votes…with many abstentions from lack of reading, but sure am adding to the TBRL That Ate the Universe!!
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Abstain
4. EPIC STORIES
Abstain
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Abstain
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Abstain
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
Abstain
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Abstain
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Abstain
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abstain
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
::god stalk in the 21st century::
Lydy, I’m about 30 or 40 pages into Bold As Love. There’s been a seduction and a rock concert and a government meeting with rock star heckling, and I don’t care about any of these people. Should I? All I’m getting is loads of people’s names and band names and more names and more band names and this band is feuding with that band and that other band is breaking up and so-and-so’s girlfriend is sleeping with somebody who’s name is vaguely familiar but do I even need to keep track? Or what?
Yes, it’s a huge data dump at the beginning. You don’t care, now, but you will, if you continue. I had trouble keeping the cast of characters straight at the beginning. The ones to really watch are Ax, Sage, and Fiorindai, as they are Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenevere. It’s not obvious, just at the moment. It will be.
The thing I found astounding about these books is the breadth of human behavior on display. There’s both the depth of brutality and the heights of humanity, and lots of stuff in between. Also, you will start to note that the characters are demonstrably different in different contexts, without stopping being themselves. I liked that a lot, too, as it’s very like real life. How we present ourselves depends a lot on context. This is a book about how and why context matters, and how we can change it.
It’s also gobsmackingly weird, You have only touched on its true weirdness. There’s an obvious event which hasn’t happened yet where everything changes. You will know it when you read it. Get that far. Then check back with me.
Ok, so there’s been the spoiler-free big violent event. And there’s been the Dissolution. Am I supposed to care about any of these characters yet?
I’m going to weigh in as another fan of Bold As Love and say, at that point, the characters and point had not yet really come into focus for me, and I do tend to think about the Big Violent Event as just about where things started to get much more interesting for me.
On the other hand, I was definitely already interested enough in where it was heading by that point to keep happily reading without any thought of giving up, so your mileage may definitely vary. I can see Bold As Love not being to everyone’s tastes, absolutely.
@Cally: Well, I cared about them at this point. Mostly Fiorinda, who was odd and sharp and set apart. And watching the rock stars try to deal with the violent event, and watching the way it changes them, interested me a lot. I was also fascinated by the concept of the Dissolution, and the weird take on it that what we really need to save the world are rock concerts, like it was 1968 again. (That it works, kind of, is for me wonderfully weird and weirdly plausible.) Fiorinda’s back story is going to start mattering a lot more, too, it’s not a gratuitous exploited girl backstory. I was also intrigued and stunned by the sudden change in tone when the violent event took place. I wasn’t ready for it, didn’t see it foreshadowed, and it almost felt like it came from another book. So watching her weave that into the fabric of her world fascinated me. Lots of books do grim dark. Few of them do it with weirdassed bureaucracy and quiet moments that may save the world. And I can’t think of any that do it to a rock beat.
So, if it’s not the book for you, I’m sorry. But it was so very the book for me.
It’s possible that the reason it’s not clicking for me is that I’ve never really been a rock-and-roll person; I just don’t connect to these people. And I don’t much like any of them.
Sorry.
For what it’s worth, Jonathan Strange didn’t click for me, either, though lots and lots of people regard it very highly. I’m just weird.
It’s also a wonderful polyamorous romance, complete with steep learning curve, stupidity cubed, and transcendent affection. Which, again, scratches my kinks but probably not yours. Oh, well, not every book is for everyone.
Oh, and I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, although for very different reasons. In JS&MN, I loved the language. In BaL, I loved the world.
Still on about Bold as Love, in a place where few are still reading.
In my late teens and early twenties, that is to say, the early eighties, I read a lot of primary accounts of the counter culture. Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, Do It by Jerry Rubin, With The Weathermen by Susan Stern, She Comes in Colors by Timothy Leary, a weird little brown book I’ve never found again by a Brit who came to the US to do acid with Leary, a wonderfully odd book by the one of the guys who put on Woodstock, and a bunch of interesting secondary sources including Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, of course, which is terribly interesting, but, um, let us say limited. I don’t remember what alll else.
One of the things that kept on coming up over and over was that people said, and apparently believed, that somehow rock and roll was going to save them, save the world. The music, itself, would somehow transform reality. And I kept on thinking, “How did you think that was going to work, exactly?” I mean, it was the eighties, Ronald Reagan was president, so it was pretty clear that it hadn’t worked, but I was never sure exactly why anyone thought that it would.
Bold As Love plays with that. Turns out, to make it work, you need not just the music, but magic, technology, politics, sex, economics, charisma, and an incredible amount of strangeness. And infrastructure. Lots of infrastructure. (I love that so much. I wish someone would write a romance to infrastructure.) These things mix together in very strange ways, and the politics are personal and national and international, and people play multiple, intertwining roles, political, religious, romantic, and personal. It’s a nuanced look at the weird, febrile optimism of the sixties.
There’s another thing going on that I”m not quite sure about, and I wish someone (Kyra?) could talk to me about it. Jones is doing something very odd with the reveals. They don’t happen in the right places, I think, maybe. And I think that maybe she is doing backshadowing, instead of foreshadowing. A hugely important thing happens without warning, is not noted, and takes on resonance and importance as events build from it. Which is oddly like real life, where so many of the most powerful things that happen to us are understood, if at all, in retrospect. It’s a very, very odd way to structure a novel, if I’m right and she’s doing that.