(1) Why is Stieg Larsson’s fourth Millennium novel a news item for the scroll? Well, it is a book a lot of us will read, but that’s not the reason. Sweden’s Ahrvid Engholm supplies the connection in his coverage “From the Biggest Book Release of 2015: ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’” on Europa SF.
There were big news and no news at the Stockholm press conference (August 26th) for the fourth Millennium novel, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” by David Lagercrantz. Big news because of all the speculations and hysteria around this book, in the international bestseller (80+ million copies world-wide) series created and written by Stieg Larsson….
Stieg Larsson was one of Sweden’s top science-fiction fans throughout the 1970’s, as fanzine publisher (titles like Fijagh, SFären, Långfredagsnatt) board member and later chairman of the Scandinavian SF Association (where Yours Truly met him every week for several years), for which he and Eva Gabrielsson also edited the memberzine. He then turned to nonfannish journalism, covering neonazi and racist movements, and became quite well-known, writing books and appearing on TV talking about that field. When he died in a heart attack 2004, the first volumne in the Millennium saga was just about to be published. He never lived to see his huge success.
(2) The SFEditors (Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Paula Guran, Rich Horton, and Jonathan Strahan) are practically machine-gunning out short fiction recommendations.
The best core SF novella of 2015 is @AquilaRift’s Slow Bullets (Tachyon) about a failing starship far from home. Powerful and moving. – JS
— SFEditorsPicks (@SFEditorsPicks) September 13, 2015
(3) io9 lists “11 Science Fiction Books That Are Regularly Taught in College Classes”.
“But where is Fahrenheit 451?” demands John King Tarpinian.
(4) Lock your doors!
This actually happened. https://t.co/aV2HNGLt3F
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 13, 2015
(5) Lee Hutchinson’s review of The Martian on Ars Technica focuses on whether it got the science right.
Fortunately, The Martian, is a good blind date. Screenwriter Drew Goddard has translated Andy Weir’s novel into a script that keeps almost all of the science and humor intact, and director Ridley Scott allows the vast emptiness of Mars to speak for itself, while keeping the gimmicks to a minimum.
And, of course, Matt Damon does wonders for the role of Mark Watney—the best botanist on the planet. The planet of Mars.
(6) Tom Knighton reviews Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and concludes:
Absolutely amazing book. I now find myself eagerly awaiting the next book. I only wish Stephenson had a tip jar on his website. I’d easily kick him whatever his percentage should be, because he easily deserves it.
(7) The oft-interviewed Samuel R. Delany answers questions, this time in The Nation:
CD: What other writers were doing this kind of work in ways that resonated with you?
SD: The first white writer who wrote a black character I personally found believable—and I read lots and lots, both inside and outside science fiction—was Thomas M. Disch, in his 1968 New Wave novel Camp Concentration, first serialized in the British science-fiction magazine New Worlds, whose first installment appeared in its first tabloid-style issue. The presentation of Mordecai is one reason I think it’s such an important book in science fiction’s history. Yes, that book passed my own Turing test in a way that, for me, Faulkner’s black characters did not—as, indeed, many of his white characters failed to do for me as well, though I always found his language exacting, when it wasn’t exhausting. Tom told me later that he’d modeled Mordecai on a black classmate of his in the Midwest. But, boy, did I recognize him from my memories of myself and my black friends on the Harlem streets.
(8) Forry Ackerman wrote a fan letter to Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1931 — and got an answer. Read both on Letters of Note.
(9) Just found out somebody was selling these in 2009. (“See The World Through The Eyes of MST3K”.)
And somebody else 3-D printed a version that glows in the dark.
(10) Here’s a random connection. Batman creator Bob Kane is buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.
Cartoonist. Born in New York City, he was a comic book artist and writer, credited as the creator of the DC Comic’s superhero “Batman” character. He was a trainee animator when he entered the comic book field in 1936. Merging with DC Comics action series in 1938, editors were in a scramble for more heroes such as Superman. It was then when Kane who had influences from film actor action characters, conceived “Batman” as a superhero. Writer Bill Finger joined artist Kane and the “Batman” character debuted in DC’s Detective Comics series in May 1939, and was a breakout hit… (bio by: John “J-Cat” Griffith)
Who is Kane’s nearest neighbor? Stan Laurel.
Burial: Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Los Angeles
Los Angeles County
California,
USA Plot: Court of Liberty, Lot #1310 (behind Stan Laurel).
(11) Jonathan Kay reports how he was sheared at Fan Expo Canada.
On Sunday, I took two of my daughters to the 2015 instalment of Fan Expo Canada, billed as “the largest Comics, Sci-fi, Horror, Anime, and Gaming event in Canada.” More than 100,000 fans show up annually for the four-day exhibition, which now sprawls over both buildings of the massive Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Under one roof, I was able to meet a life-size My Little Pony, compete in a Catan tournament, playtest emerging console video games, commission custom panels from famous cartoonists, pose with life-size Futurama characters, buy a fully functional 3D-chess set, and generally revel in all the various subcultures that the rest of society stigmatizes as dorky and juvenile. My girls and I have been to Fan Expo Canada three years in a row, and we always have a good time….
In fact, the best way to describe Fan Expo’s celebrity protocol is as a sort of Chicago Mercantile Exchange for human beings. Instead of live cattle, lean hogs, skimmed milk powder, cash-settled butter, and softwood pulp, this big board (displayed above) lists prices for Billy Dee Williams, Gillian Anderson, Danny Trejo, Neve Campbell, Norman Reedus, Skeet Ulrich, Zach Galligan, and fifty other stars and quasi-stars. The precision of the numbers suggests a fine-tuned demand-driven adjustment process that any commodities trader would recognize. Williams (Lando Calrissian from Star Wars, but you knew that) was listed at $57. Anderson (X-Files): $91. Danny Trejo (Machete): $74. Neve Campbell (Scream): $97. Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead): $130. Skeet Ulrich (Jericho): $68. Zach Galligan (Gremlins): $63. Just my luck: Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley, Harry Potter’s red-haired sidekick) was listed at $142—highest on the board. I wanted to bail out. But having made the mistake of getting dragged this far, turning back wasn’t going to be a good-dad move.
And it got worse. Fan Expo also sells “Team Ups”: Photo-ops that allow big spenders to pose with multiple cast members from the same show or movie. In the case of Potter fans, $260 gets you the “Weasley family”—featuring not only Grint, but the two actors who play his fictional twin brothers Fred (James Phelps) and George (Oliver Phelps). The twins alone could be had for a mere $102, but my daughters convinced me that the family plan offered “the best value.” A second print: another $10. Digital copy: That was extra, too. With frames and tax, I was in for well over $300….
“Fleeced,” “Rip-off,” “Sucker”—I’ve used some strong language here. But in fact, Fan Expo and the Weasleys were scrupulously honest. They promised me a photo for a printed price. And that’s exactly what they delivered. And it’s a great shot: Everyone’s beaming. We look like fast friends. Perfect for generating social media likes and green-envy emoticons.
(12) You probably haven’t read enough tortured reasoning about the Hugos and Sasquan lately and will be thrilled that a lawyer has been studying the possibilities of suing about the asterisks.
Hugo "Asterisk Awards": Legal Analysis Complete #SadPuppies
Read: http://t.co/nJvbF9peyW
— Pointed Commentary (@RoyCalbeck) September 13, 2015
More here.
Asterisking the Hugo Nominations is therefore perfectly legal, UNLESS the presentation was unofficial… which WorldCon can deny at the drop of a formal filing. All three lawyers were convinced that the second WorldCon obtained legal representation, they’d be advised to throw their Hugo Committee Chair (and all of his emails to me) under the biggest bus they could find. While this would essentially invalidate the 2015 Hugos entirely, it was pointed out that the organization’s alternatives would be far more disastrous.
Why?
Because WorldCon had complete control of the venue and process, but did nothing to prevent (or even denounce) any illegal use of its trademarks therein. Failure to defend a trademark against known infringement endangers the trademark.
That’s entirely aside from the issue of fraud, which comes in under the heading of deliberate misrepresentation. WorldCon’s Hugo Chair isn’t saying that they are invalidating the Asterisks after the fact… instead, he’s saying the Asterisks were never legitimate to begin with. Yet at the actual event, they were publicly represented as THE official Nominee awards. Rather than treated as jokes, they were lionized by those on stage as representative of SF/F fandom as a whole.
The denial itself is an act of fraud, affecting all 2015 Hugo Voters, but in terms of public record the World Science Fiction Society has given every appearance of endorsing the Asterisk Awards as official. Were I to file action, they’d only need to respond with verification of their existing public position. That would invalidate any claim of damages I could make. Only if they formally back up their Hugo Chair do they risk anything.
As none of the lawyers I spoke to believe they’ll be that stupid, none want to accept the case at this point.
‘Tis clear as is the summer sun.
(13) Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best was published July 7. An anonymous contributor sent me this report on how the 2015 Hugo nominees fared.
But yesterday, I did compare the ballots to Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Table of Contents and Honorable mention list and came across something I find interesting…
Of all the nominees, both on the final ballot and those who dropped off the ballot, none of the stories made the table of contents and only two authors made the Honorable Mention list.
Given the positive comments about Annie Bellet and Kary English, it would be natural to think they might have made Gardner’s Honorable Mention list, but they didn’t.
The only Hugo nominated story to make Gardner’s honorable mention list was Michael Flynn’s “The Journeyman: In the Stone House,” which many of non-puppies complained was not a complete story since it is a part of a larger work.
The only other Hugo nominated author to make the list, amazingly enough for a non-Hugo related story, was John C. Wright, for “Idle Thoughts.”
(14) John Scalzi would do it this way – “My Almost Certainly Ill-Advised Proposed Award Voting Process”.
- How the vote works: There are three voting rounds: Nomination, long list, and finalist.
Nomination: Everyone votes for one and only one work (or person, if it’s that sort of category) in the category. The top ten or twelve vote-getters are sent to the long list stage (ties, etc are fine but the goal would be to get number of long list nominees as close to the ideal long list number as possible).
Long List: Everyone votes for up to three works on the long list, none of which can be the single work they originally nominated. That’s right! You have to choose something else in this stage, and hope enough other people like the work you originally nominated to include it among their own selections!
But what if people choose not to make selections in the stage in the hope that their lack of selection of other work will bump up the chances of their preferred work? Well, I would consider making a rule that says failure to participate in this round counts as a point against your original choice’s score in this round — which is to say if you don’t vote in this round, a point is deducted for your original choice’s score in this round (presuming it made the long list at all). You’re better off voting if you want your original selection to make it to the final round.
In this round, the top five or six vote-getters graduate to the final round. Hope your original choice made it!
Finalist: This vote is done “Australian Rules” style, where each voter ranks the works from first to last choice. “No Award” is an option in this round, so if you hated everything in the long list round, this is where you may register your disapproval. The winner is the one which collects the majority of votes, in either the first or subsequent balloting rounds.
(15) The Sci-Fi Air Show is an incredible bit of imaginative work.
What if instead of using sets, models and special effects, the producers of science fiction films and television shows constructed full sized flying spaceships? That is the premise of the Sci-Fi Air Show.
In a similar story arc to the Batmobile and the Aries 1B miniature from 2001: A Space Odyssey, these ships would have likely been sold off, traded, hidden away in basements and eventually rescued, restored and put on public display.
The images you see here on the site are photographs of practical miniature spaceships digitally blended with actual air show backgrounds. It is a fantasy air show that only exists on line, but appeals to many of us who, at one time, believed that these ships of fantasy really could fly.
(16) If somebody wanted to run real museum like that, they could begin by gathering up this abandoned wooden space shuttle.
While exploring an abandoned corner of the Zhukovsky airfield (Ramenskoye Airport) in Moscow two years ago, aviation photographer Aleksander Markin stumbled onto a forgotten relic of Russia’s Buran Space Program. This decaying wooden spacecraft was used as a wind tunnel model in the 1980s for the VKK Space Orbiter, the largest and most expensive Soviet space exploration program conceived as a response to the United States’ Space Shuttle. Despite its scientific purposes the wooden ship has the appearance of a fantastic children’s playground feature.
According to Urban Ghosts, this 1:3 scale replica was just one of 85 wind tunnel models used to test various aerodynamic properties of the orbiter. The testing would eventually reveal that NASA’s prototype for the Enterprise was ideal for spaceflight and the VKK Space Orbiter would take a similar design as a result.
(17) Huffington Post helped an astronaut take down a tabloid story in “The UFOs Didn’t Come In Peace! Astronaut Sets Record Straight on ET Nuclear War”.
Few people are surprised by the eye-popping headlines in The Mirror. But when the infamous British tabloid quoted astronaut Edgar Mitchell as saying that “UFOs came in peace” to “save America from nuclear war,” it shocked everybody — including Mitchell.
“I don’t know where The Mirror got the story,” Mitchell, 84, said in an email to The Huffington Post, accusing the paper of fabricating his quotes and denying that an interview for this story ever took place.
The sixth man to walk on the moon has been outspoken over the years in his belief that extraterrestrials have visited the Earth and the moon — and that the government is withholding vital information about UFOs. Still, Mitchell insists the Aug. 11 Mirror story has no basis in the truth and disavows the information in it.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Will R., Ed, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Cassy B –
The Night Circus if you’re feeling like something with a bit of romance to it, it’s a good book. The Way of Kings is badass fantasy. Zoo City is a really interesting take on the whole Urban Fantasy/mystery genre.
Forget Jerry Pournelle. Byte had Hugh Kenner as a columnist – one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th Century. That is mind-blowing.
Ray: About 25 years ago, I visited my brother the CPA so he could tutor me on my accounting coursework. He is/was a nonfan, a computer hobbyist, and that day I saw he had a copy of BYTE. I asked him about the Chaos Manor column, because (as I explained) Jerry and I are both active LASFS members. My brother’s next statement was, “You know Jerry Pournelle? He’s like a god to me!” As you can see, he did have satisfied customers…. 😉
Ok. Commented too fast and didn’t read the entire article. Mea culpa. I’m too exhausted to go into too much detail but Worldcon would be the only injured party by virtue of misuse of its trademark, not the nominees or the nominators. The author eventually acknowledged as much.
Eh, kinda. Not all of them. But some were wonderful. The thing is though…
…well, look at Mote. It’s brilliant. The worldbuilding, the detail in the characters, for it’s day that was excellent, genuinely so. And the idea behind the novel was the kind of thing you keep coming back to and turning over in your mind. I’d recommend Mote to anyone, it’s just a genuinely excellent book and one of my all-time favourites.
Pournelle and Niven just worked well together, their skillsets complemented one another and their resulting work was better because of that. But go read Janissaries and Ringworld; and it becomes obvious that Niven without Pournelle is doing a lot better than Pournelle without Niven. You can take the fine detail out of the characters and lose all the military knowledge and still get a great science fiction novel with the ideas; but take out the ideas and you don’t really have a science fiction novel anymore.
And yeah, Chaos Manor was fun… if, like me at the time, you were 14. Re-reading it now, as a software engineer, it’s rather cringetastic in places.
Despite all that, seeing him do this is terribly sad.
1. WE ARE AT THEIR MERCY
pass
2. WILL MAGIC GET YOU WHAT YOU WANT?
pass
3. NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS
Liar, Justine Larbalestier
4. SUCCEED OR DIE
pass
5. WAR IS COMING
pass
6. ACHIEVING YOUR POTENTIAL
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
7. IT’S A ROUGH LIFE
pass
8. THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
9. I’M BAAAAACK
Sandman Slim, Richard Kadry
10. LET’S TALK ABOUT TRADING ECONOMICS
pass
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
pass
12. GET STEAMPUNK
pass
13. INHERITING THE FAMILY BUSINESS
pass
14. ENOUGH ABOUT MEDIEVAL EUROPE ALREADY
Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
15. ANGELS AND DEMONS
pass
16. THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Matt Y, thanks; noted. I’ll see what my library has…
The Kenners became friends of the family on the rare occasions when he came back up to Peterborough (his father had been the principal of my high school, though well before my time). I later spent a couple of years at Hopkins as a graduate student with him as head of department. I remember seeing his hobbyist-kit computer (this was pre-IBM PC) at his house.
Kenner was one of the few people I knew with really strong mathematical skills in addition to first-rate humanities skills. His columns in Byte were an outgrowth of that, as was his book on Bucky Fuller.
I think as far as criticism of Pournelle goes, well, this is the man who turned gunning down the vile villainous poors in a soccer stadium into a supreme act of Manly Virtue. I think some people have pointed to that story – Hadley is the name of it – as the precursor of the whole 47% meme Governor Romney repeated last election. It’s useful, when VD and buwayaha and the rest talk about Pournelle as the “good old nuggety nuggets” just what kind of politics they have no objection at all to seeing in their sci-fi.
AS for any other criticism I could make, it would not rise to the level of James Davis Nichols reviews of Dr. Pournelle’s work. Click on his name in the comments he leaves here, and scroll on down. Worth a read.
1. The Painted Man (AKA The Warded Man), Peter V. Brett
2. The Magicians, Lev Grossman
6. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
7. Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
11. Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
14. Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord
Not NEARLY enough.
well, my earlier lament was pig-headed – serves me right for reading and commenting while also working, of course a used copy of mote is the thing
and, i think i may just grab an easton press one from ebay – never bought one of those beasts before, but maybe mote, and my youthful fondness and memories of it, justify a garish leatherbound edition
agree completely on the niven/pournelle dichotomy – i found a used copy of janissaries not long after i first read mote, and within a couple pages i wondered where that guy who wrote mote went, then i found ringworld, and i figured it out
i really dont like to think about larry’s politics or position in this whole mess, id rather just remember my first ‘favorite science fiction writer’ in the rosy tones of memory
@Lenora Rose: We can only hope that the books we have read survive and meet in later rounds.
I’ve mostly read 1 each of the brackets, but in the one case I’ve read both:
16
Mechanique
PJ Evans
A lot LESS fun to read when you knew who the characters should have been. They set the book in Chicago and in the Twin Cities, both of which had large and thriving fan populations, and populated it almost entirely with LA fans. And they had Midwesterners freezing to death when the weather was in the ’40s. Because we don’t, apparently, have any winter clothes. AND they had ice forming on water when the temperature was above freezing.
The fact that they called the Museum of Science and Industry the Museum of Science and Technology was just one of the places the book hit the wall.
Oh yes, and there was the implication that glaciers had moved so quickly as to trap people inside cars.
Dude. We’re Midwesterners. We know about winter. Last year it was well below 0F in Chicago for multiple days, and colder than that in the Twin Cities. And to a first approximation, the only people who froze to death were the drunks and the homeless.
You know what we call it when the weather is in the ’40s in December? A nice warm day.
Now it’s true I’ve not read it in years, so I may be misremembering parts, but my sheer dumbfoundedness at the native Midwesterners idiocy about cold weather is something I’ll not forget in a long time.
I had a similar reaction. I loved the beginning, but when it became, as you put it, “doomed angel crap” — and worse, what felt like a big summary of doomed angel crap — I felt like that first world was lost, revealed to be a mystery that backed up on answers that just weren’t as interesting as the mysteries had been.
I want the same opening, but with a different answer to all the hints and portents…
Again, I have read surprisingly few of these. So:
10. LET’S TALK ABOUT TRADING ECONOMICS
A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
16. THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
@ Cassy B – Arrgh, Cassy, that sounds awful. I’m sorry teenage you got yelled at like that.
There’s a store of…not-great…stories I’ve heard second-hand about con behavior, when I sought them out, but none of them are my tales to tell. Still, I do know at least one person who’s had very positive interactions with him, and rumor is he was by far the most generous person dispersing aid from the SFWA Medical fund.
People are complicated. (And yes, because I personally dislike him, I am bending over backwards to be fair here, because I fear I am an unreliable narrator.)
Aaaaand… I have read another whopping 4/32 in this bracket, for 11/96 so far.
I know I’m going to be able to participate in the next round! I’m sure* of it!
* for values of “sure” ranging from “hopeful” to “dammit, maybe the round after that”
My husband had a fairly serious stroke a bit more than 18 months ago and has recovered 95%+ of function. Nevertheless, it has affected his mental processes in subtle and sometimes startling ways. The effects depend on what brain cells die, how much the brain can rewire around the damage, genetics, medical care, etc.
I, of course, have no knowledge about Pournelle’s medical issues. I’m just offering a data point that a person may be mostly recovered, but may make somewhat atypical decisions and have slightly skewed thought trains from what was typical for them before the injury.
My husband is completely in his right mind and rational, he just chops his logic a bit oddly now and then. ?
7. Erin Bow, but for Sorrow’s Knot
14. Under Heaven
I also had an encounter with Pournelle in the Green Room at Worldcon in ’82. He backed me into a corner and told me, at length, about all the guns he owned. And showed me the one in his shoulder holster. I don’t know if he was trying to impress me, or what; frankly, all it did was scare me.
I think the backing-into-a-corner thing was a personal space thing. As in, he didn’t seem to have any. And the yelling was probably because he’s half-deaf. Still, not what I’d call a positive encounter.
1. WE ARE AT THEIR MERCY
The Painted Man (AKA The Warded Man), Peter V. Brett
I really expected to like the Morgan more, as I loved his Takeshi Kovacs books, but the Painted Man just grew on me
2. WILL MAGIC GET YOU WHAT YOU WANT?
Abstain. Havent read the Lanagan, wasn’t that blown away by The Magicians
5. WAR IS COMING
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
I feel like such an idiot for getting sucked into another unfinished series of doorstopper novels. But WoK is just *so* good.
6. ACHIEVING YOUR POTENTIAL
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Haven’t read the other, but the Jemisin was just fantastic. Personally, her Dreamblood Duology is still her best, but since that’s not here…
8. THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!
Abstain. Havent read the Stover, and “…Shades”, while good, wasn’t as strong as the later Glamourist books.
9. I’M BAAAAACK
Abstain, didn’t care for both
10. LET’S TALK ABOUT TRADING ECONOMICS
A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham
OMG SO MUCH THIS BOOK AND SERIES! Read this and immediately hunted down the remaining books. I like to call it the anti-grimdark series – it’s a great big Screw You to all those who think that being serious and gritty is regulalrly throwing in rape and other brutalities. Plus, the Epilogue is one of the most emotionally satisfying and reflective pieces I’ve ever read.
14. ENOUGH ABOUT MEDIEVAL EUROPE ALREADY
Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
I re-read some of Lucifer’s Hammer…what, ten years or so ago, and was completely horrified. You have to understand that it came out when I was growing up in southern California but was a bit young to work out just who all these fictional characters were riffs on. By by the early ’00s, I realized that among these cannibal hordes were folks like Mayor Tom Bradley, and I was deeply, thoroughly offended. Pretty much all the tropes of would-be intellectual racism were there, from the rendering of class and subculture tropes as admirable in whites and loathsome in blacks to the token black guy who’s just great precisely because he acts as white as can. It was largely responsible for a period of introspection on my part for the rest of that year, to see what other crap I needed to weed out of my subconscious.
(And that’s without even getting to the equally vile sexism, periodically drifting into outright misogyny.)
You know what we call it when the weather is in the ’40s in December? A nice warm day.
After four years in west Texas, where it hardly ever gets below 0F, my personal thermostat was reset. I put on a light overshirt around 60, and a jacket around 50. I haven’t had my winter coat (down and feathers) out in years. (I think the last time I wore it was on a day when it was 35 with a 30mph breeze. There was windchill involved.)
I don’t think they’ve spent much time outside SoCal in years, and that’s the set of fans they know – although there was amusement in having them in places where some of them wouldn’t want to live. Being caught dead there, on the other hand….
The effects depend on what brain cells die, how much the brain can rewire around the damage, genetics, medical care, etc.
Or someone like my father, where the damage was in the brainstem, so his thinking was fine, but he had other problems, some of which were weird. (He described cereal boxes as looking twice as wide at the top as at the bottom.)
HEAT THREE – THE DANCERS AT THE END OF THE DECADE
1. WE ARE AT THEIR MERCY
The Steel Remains, Richard K. Morgan
The Painted Man (AKA The Warded Man), Peter V. Brett
Abstain. Read neither.
2. WILL MAGIC GET YOU WHAT YOU WANT?
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
The Brides of Rollrock Island (AKA Sea Hearts), Margo Lanagan
Abstain. The Grossman is on my to-read mountain; never heard of the Lanagan.
3. NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS
Liar, Justine Larbalestier
Finch, Jeff VanderMeer
Abstain. Read neither.
4. SUCCEED OR DIE
Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire
Retribution Falls, Chris Wooding
Abstain. I like the McGuire, but I’ve not read the Wooding.
5. WAR IS COMING
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
Empire in Black and Gold, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Abstain; read neither.
6. ACHIEVING YOUR POTENTIAL
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Haven, Joel Shepherd
Man, I want to vote for the Jemison, but I’ve not read the Shepherd. Abstain.
7. IT’S A ROUGH LIFE
Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
Plain Kate, Erin Bow
Abstain. Read neither.
8. THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Caine Black Knife, Matthew Woodring Stover
Ooh, one I’ve read both of! Gotta go with the Kowal here, though I did like the Stover, dark as it is.
9. I’M BAAAAACK
The Midnight Mayor, Kate Griffin
Sandman Slim, Richard Kadry
Abstain. The Kadry is on my to-read mountain, never heard of the Griffin.
10. LET’S TALK ABOUT TRADING ECONOMICS
The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells
A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham
Ooh, I want to vote for the Wells, but I’ve not read the Abraham. Abstain. Dammit.
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
Child of Fire, Harry Connolly
I want to vote for the Aaronovitch, but I’ve not read the Connolly. Abstain.
12. GET STEAMPUNK
The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia
Blood of Ambrose, James Enge
Abstain. Read neither.
13. INHERITING THE FAMILY BUSINESS
The Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff
Shadowbridge, Gregory Frost
Abstain; I’ve only read the Huff.
14. ENOUGH ABOUT MEDIEVAL EUROPE ALREADY
Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord
Abstain; not read the Lord.
15. ANGELS AND DEMONS
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor
Miserere, Teresa Frohock
Abstain; read neither.
16. THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN
Mechanique, Genevieve Valentine
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Abstain; read neither.
It’s worse than “just” a stroke for Jerry Pournelle — he is a survivor of brain cancer and the resultant radiation therapy to treat it. He goes on at length about it on his web site.
OTOH, his politics are pretty much the same as they have always been. I still don’t get why Baen, to pick a publisher, wouldn’t have picked him up. I’m pretty sure they are reissuing his backlist right now. Or is this some vile Teddy ploy to steal authors from Toni W., and if so, when will she get annoyed about it?
Better than me in this bracket: I’ve read exactly zero. But a number of them are either on the TBR pile or on reserve at the library so that should count for something!
Well, not to put too fine a point upon it, it might not make Baen enough money to be worth their while. We’re assuming that of course Baen would take it, but are we sure that’s a warranted assumption?
Anthologies have always sold less than novels. Pournelle’s a big name, but an older one, and it’s been a long time since he put out new content. His backlist with Niven makes money, I’m sure, but how well do his anthologies do?
(They may make zillions, of course, I have no data at all. But I know a couple small press owners who have taken a bath on anthologies at various occasions, so I’m wondering if the assumption that of course Baen would take him on is a good one.)
I think Baen is not stupid and not gonna walk away from cash, I don’t think Pournelle is stupid, so I’m thinking economies of scale may come into play here.
Pournelle used to drive me nuts in Byte. He couldn’t review a monitor without talking about his home, wife, recent books and the goofy pet names of every PC in his house. His ability to turn easy computer tasks into laborious ones that required outside help from experts was legendary.
When I was in high school I butted heads with Pournelle on his GEnie forum when he moderated comments I posted in an area devoted to political discussion. He had rules against discussion of some hot-button topics such as abortion. I said this was “censorship!”
I got so pissed about receiving a moderation dressing-down from a big-name writer that it contributed to my extremely liberal attitude about discussion moderation. For years all my websites had low- to no-moderation policies on comments. As the web became more troll-infested with each passing year, managing my sites became an enormous pain in the ass.
It took me a long time to learn the lesson Anil Dash describes in the essay If your site is full of assholes, it’s your fault. You set the tone for the sites you run by how stringently you police offensive and inappropriate content from day one. Let that stuff slide and you’ll have a troll orgy on your hands that’s impossible to fully eradicate.
snowcrash: I’ve added the Daniel Abraham books to my to-read mountain thanks to your enthusiasm
[looks sadly at stacks of un-needed forehead cloths] And to think I stocked up.
10. The Cloud Roads.
I’ve never played classic Traveller. I’ve played the New Era* with a GM and players who did classic as well, and everything I heard about it convinced me I just wasn’t that interested in doing that much math during my fun time.
*Take galaxy-spanning empires, plural. Blow up. No, worse than that. No, worse than that. Have about 10 star systems of those hundreds/thousands reach a point, in some cases with alien help, where they can meet up again and see what they can make. Still a bulky unwieldy system, though softened by some house rules, and still theoretically possible to have a character die in creation, though less so AIUI, but massively compelling for character development and game Moments. Honestly 2 of my best games and favourite characters, period.
of course, there were still players who spent their every spare moment designing new ships and doing all that math, but it wasn’t *necessary*.
HEAT THREE – THE DANCERS AT THE END OF THE DECADE
1. WE ARE AT THEIR MERCY
The Painted Man (AKA The Warded Man), Peter V. Brett
Not the best fantasy ever, but fairly interesting I guess.
4. SUCCEED OR DIE
Retribution Falls, Chris Wooding
Pretty much just don’t like McGuire’s writing, and Retribution Falls was fun as hell, so…
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
16. THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN
Mechanique, Genevieve Valentine
I think more than anything you can consider this a vote against The Night Circus. Started out great, and then the story proper started and… Meh.
Yeah! My vote can count cause I’m almost caught up!
Haven’t read most of these, so will only list those that I can have an opinion about. All others are “abstain” unless otherwise noted.
HEAT THREE – THE DANCERS AT THE END OF THE DECADE
5. WAR IS COMING
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
6. ACHIEVING YOUR POTENTIAL
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Jemisin is on auto-buy for me. I really enjoy her storytelling, descriptive prose and worldbuilding. I care for her characters, even the ‘villians’. I liked this first book of the trilogy better than the other two, but still loved the whole thing.
8. THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Have always loved Heyer and Austen. This was a wonderful homage to both with a unique magic system added.
10. LET’S TALK ABOUT TRADING ECONOMICS
The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells
I think this could be classified as SF instead of Fantasy. There aren’t any undeniable fantasy elements…no magic, no supernatural, no ‘powers’. This could be interpretted as a different planet with a unique biosphere. Nevertheless, this gets my vote as a great story, wonderful worldbuilding, fascinating characters, exciting plot.
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
rcade,
Ooc, so would you say then in hindsight that Pournelle was correct in his moderation at his time at the dawn of the Internet?
The saying of Ch’ing-yüan Wei-hsin (Seigen Ishin) regarding mountains are mountains comes to mind:
“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.”
Or to restate a common saying, “if you’re young and haven’t gotten into a flame war on the Internet, you have no heart. If you’re old, and still doing so, then you have no mind.”
Silly but True
The only pairing I can vote in in the brackets is #4.
#4: SUCCEED OR DIE
Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire
Retribution Falls, Chris Wooding
This despite the fact that Ms. McGuire had me eaten by corn, and I am now deceased as a result (see twitter feed from a couple of weeks ago.)
Q: Greg, how are you still posting on File770 if you’re dead?
A: The corn periodically resurrects me for precisely these purposes.
Q: Uh, that’s convenient.
A: I HAVE TO GO THE CORN IS DRAGGING MY CONVENIENT CORPSE DOWN INTO A CONVENIENT UNDERGROUND CORN-TUNNEL.
I would say it.
But then I would deny I said it.
@rcade,
Fair enough, lol.
*whimper*
I could have voted happily and with confidence in the previous heat, if I hadn’t been Deathly Ill. In this heat, I haven’t read enough to bother thinking about is anything other than a possible reading list.
I loved Mote. I enjoyed Lucifer’s Hammer, despite some parts seeming deeply problematic even in my relatively young and innocent state.
I tried Footfall, and stopped quickly.
2. WILL MAGIC GET YOU WHAT YOU WANT?
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
11. MURDER MOST MAGICAL
Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot), Ben Aaronovitch
I forget who upthread asked, but the next Rivers of London book is The Hanging Tree. According to Goodreads, the expected publication date is the middle of November this year.
5. The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
6. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
7. Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
8. Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
10. A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham
It’s scary to realize how profoundly a few damaged brain cells can change both physical and mental functioning.
The hub’s biggest remaining issue is called ‘left-side neglect’. His brain refuses to process some physical stimuli from the left side of his body. (Although his is a mild case, thankfully.) The worst is that his vision in both eyes is cut in half. His eyes see, but his brain won’t accept the info from the left side. Also affects his hearing, touch, etc. He’s learned to adjust and there is continued incremental healing/rewiring.
Hope your father is doing well.
Re Byte column –
The funny part about it was that he was always trying to:
a – Get different companies things to work with each other. This is not a job for software engineers, because one goes in not knowing enough about the problem for an elegant solution. So its all frustrating trial and error, test and try. Guess what ? That’s a huge part of the system integrators life, and that’s a big part of modern engineers jobs. It’s like Dilbert on another level.
b – Getting companies products to work as advertised – oops, sorry, turns out you need the new patch, or thats not the right cable, or component a was shipped defective, new one will get there in a week – frustrationville. That’s life in the trenches too.
1. The Painted Man. I love this book, and Peat is a hell of a guy too
2. The Magicians, Lev Grossman
6. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
9. Sandman Slim, RIchard Kadrey
16. The NIght Circus, Erin Morgenstern. The wife and I both loved it, though I thought the world building was incredible and the story barely there.
The thing to keep in mind about The Mote in God’s Eye is that, unlike the other Niven/Pournelle collaborations, it was in some sense a Niven/Pournelle/Heinlein collaboration. RAH wrote a long critique of the first draft, which resulted in a number of changes (including the removal of an entire early scene, later published in one of the There Will Be War anthologies). According to Niven, RAH did another editing pass before publication.
Unfortunately, none of their other collaborations had that level of involvement from Heinlein.
Hope your father is doing well.
I think the medical school finished with him quite a while back. (He’s been dead for more than 20 years: donated his body to the school which I think made him a working stiff.)
rcade: If your site is full of assholes, it’s your fault. You set the tone for the sites you run by how stringently you police offensive and inappropriate content from day one. Let that stuff slide and you’ll have a troll orgy on your hands that’s impossible to fully eradicate.
As Torgersen, Corriea, and the Mad Genius Club have so aptly demonstrated.
Re the soccer stadium massacre – that whole thing is taken from the Nika riots – such a well known event that its got its own Wiki with a list of works inspired by it. Besides Pournelle Drake and Flint (once with Drake) also used it, and others too more recently it seems. I guess Flint and Drake fit in pretty well with Pournelle. If it matters I liked Drakes (a Hammers Slammers one).
History is weirder than fiction, there is so much odd stuff to copy that its easy to avoid the obvious.