(1) Curbed LA is not alone in thinking “The New Look of the Petersen Automotive Museum is Really Really Bad”.
Shawn Crosby hit the nail on the head – “It looks as if the Petersen had skinned Disney Concert Hall Buffalo Bill style and is wearing its bloody outsides like a dress.”
(2) A critical headline also provides the first clue that Io9’s Germain Lussier is down on another project — “The Latest Stephen King Book To Become a Fatally Disappointing TV Show Is…”
The Mist is about how a group of citizens react when—you guessed it—a mysterious mist takes over their town, filled with horrible monsters. Both the movie and novella mostly take place in a isolated supermarket but the TV show will only use that as inspiration, and will have a larger scope.
(3) Anne and Wil Wheaton are hosting “Fancy Dinner: Burgers, Beer, and a Book” on October 20 from 6:30-9 p.m. at Crossings restaurant in South Pasadena. Admission is $100 per person. Click on the link for menu and other details.
At the end of the evening, you will get your own, autographed, advance copy of our book “A Guide To Being A Dog by Seamus Wheaton.” Proceeds from this event will be donated by Crossings to the Pasadena Humane Society to support our participation in the Wiggle Waggle Walk.
(4) This is a good example of what people look to SFWA for — Jennifer Brozek discusses “How Do You Ask For A Blurb?” on the SFWA Blog.
How do you ask for these blurbs without making a nuisance of yourself? You do your research. Many professional authors have “blurb and review” policies in place on their websites, mostly out of self-defense. An author can read only so many books when they are not writing or doing their own story research. Some of these policies may be “No. I will not blurb your book.” Some of them may be “Talk to my agent.” Whatever the posted blurb policy is… follow it. That’s the polite and correct thing to do.
If you have an agent, you can talk to them about talking to the agent of the author you’d like a blurb from. Your agent should have a decent handle on who can be approached and who should be avoided. If you don’t have an agent, you need to do things the old fashioned way: ask.
(5) Steve Davidson harkens back to his Crotchety Old Fan days with “The Things Robert Heinlein Taught Me” at Amazing Stories —
What this little episode did remind me of is the fact that, in many ways, Bob served as a surrogate grandfather for me. Both of mine passed before I’d been on this planet five years, and as anyone who has read Time Enough For Love can tell you, a rascally, unrepentant and self-assured grandfather is a must have in the proper development of the creatures we euphemistically call little boys.
And of course it then occurred to me that there were quite a few humorous (and not so humorous) lessons to be had from all of Heinlein’s books and, lacking the kind of social restraint that would undoubtedly have been passed on to me by a real-life grandfather, I have decided to share some of them with you.
(6) “The Cold Publishing Equations: Books Sold + Marketability + Love” is Kameron Hurley’s latest autobiographical post based on her royalty statements.
Being above average is important, because being average sucks —
The average book sells 3000 copies in its lifetime (Publishers Weekly, 2006).
Yes. It’s not missing a zero.
Take a breath and read that again.
But wait, there’s more!
The average traditionally published book which sells 3,000 in its entire lifetime in print only sells about 250-300 copies its first year.
But I’m going indie! you say. My odds are better!
No, grasshopper. Your odds are worse.
(7) Wallpaper Direct has a fun infographic about Doctor Who villains through time.
The role of The Doctor has been assumed by 12 respected actors, each bringing their own quirks and characteristics to the programme. Along with his Mark I Type 40 TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), the time travelling rogue has blasted his way across space, but not without gaining some enemies in the process.
From the Daleks to the Cybermen, we take a look at the most notable enemies from the Dr. Who franchise.
And they’d be thrilled to see you some wall covering from their Dr. Who Wall Mural collection.
Officially licensed wallpaper murals based on the latest BBC series with Doctor Who starring Matt Smith as the Time Lord – from the company Black Dog Murals. The mural is easy to hang – paste the wall product and each is supplied in a box, with full hanging instructions. Please read the hanging instructions carefully. The mural is supplied in pre-cut lengths. The lengths are sometimes reverse rolled due to the manufacturing process. If you are in any doubt regarding direction of pattern please refer to website.
(8) Steve Davidson is back with another installment of what’s eligible for the Retro Hugos that will be voted on by next year’s Worldcon members – Part 4 – Media, specifically, the Long Form category.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, is well served in 1940. Not necessarily because there were a lot of worthy films, but only in comparison to Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, which has to settle for serial episodes and cartoons. Television shows were still almost a decade away.
However, when it comes to film there are a few interesting contenders, and, fortunately, the vast majority of eligible works are known and viewable, thanks largely to the Internet Archive, Youtube and copyright law.
I’m looking forward to short form, where there should be a trove of radio shows and phonograph records, too.
(9) Steven H Silver saw this today on Jeopardy!
Category: “E” Readers
Daily Double Answer: This novel by Sinclair Lewis caused and uproar for its satiric indictment of fundamentalist religion
Question from returning champ: What is Ender’s Game?
Lost $2000.
(10) Francis Hamit’s new book Security Matters: Essays On Industrial Security is available in a Kindle edition from Amazon. Says Francis:
It’s hard reality actually from the security industry; the experiences that inform some of my fiction. There are some dramatic moments and instances recounted and the writing is some of my best. If it were a poetry book you’d at least look at the sample.
The volume is edited by Leigh Strother-Vien and Gavin Claypool.
A collection of “Security Counterpoint” columns that originally appeared in Security Technology & Design Magazine between 1993 and 2001 about problems and concerns that are still relevant today. Francis Hamit spent 21 years in that industry in operational, sales and consulting positions.
(11) A tough day for the let’s-you-and-him-fight crowd – because John Scalzi begins “How Many Books You Should Write In a Year” with this preamble:
Folks have pointed me toward this Huffington Post piece, begging self-published authors not to write four books a year, because the author (Lorraine Devon Wilke) maintains that no mere human can write four books a year and have them be any good. This has apparently earned her the wrath of a number of people, including writer Larry Correia, who snarks apart the piece here and whose position is that a) the premise of the article is crap, and b) authors should get paid, and if four books a year gets you paid, then rock on with your bad self. I suspect people may be wanting to have me comment on the piece so I can take punches at either or both Wilke or Correia, and are waiting, popcorn at ready.
If so, you may be disappointed. With regard to Correia’s piece, Larry and I disagree on a number of issues unrelated to writing craft, but we align fairly well here, and to the extent that I’m accurately condensing his points here, we don’t really disagree.
(12) “Here’s how the first humans will live on Mars –and why traveling the 140 million miles to get there will be the easy part” – despite the headline, it’s not a story about The Martian. It’s a pointer to an eye-grabbing infographic based on TED speaker and technologist Stephen Petranek’s book on How We’ll Live on Mars.
[Thanks to Mark, Francis Hamit, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Iphinome.]
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First from the year 6458!
I don’t know who designed the Petersen museum, but it’s worse even than the Broad. (I don’t think much of Disney Hall, but I worked just down the street and had sun reflected in my eyes a few times more than necessary.)
But from here in 7049, it’s all water under the bridge.
Firstyness grob dudnud 7331!
Yea, yea all past-peopleskinds. I having the learnings of the pastpeoplekinds speech. Ask me muchness if 7331.
Fifth?
ETA: The pre-Fifth!
(From 7711, where fans are still disagreeing on the definition of Science Fiction.)
5
Is it strange that the returning champ got the initials right?
Svsgu!
It’s the year 8349 here. We still don’t live on Mars. We can’t quite believe any of you ever thought that was a serious possibility. We have, however, honeycombed Earth to a fare-thee-well and built the most amazing environments. Needless to say, though, home printers still don’t really work.
Ha! I’m sure you all know the story that Steven Silver himself won a Final Jeopardy *because* of knowledge he had gotten from reading Science Fiction (J. Gregory Keyes and his Newton’s Cannon series, in fact)
Here in the year 9286, the Hyperspace Bypass through the Tau Ceti System is nearly done. There’s an inhabited planet in the way, but they ignored the fact that we’ve had plans for the bypass on the Planning Commission office at Alpha Centauri for 50 years.
9364 here. Sad to hear from The Age of Mars Denial. A terrible time when the Earthmites simply pretended the Martians did not exist. We live in more enlightend times now.
Contributing editor of the day, does it come with headgear and the right to grant knighthoods?
*whispers to Mike* There’s only one h in Iphinome.
Here just to click the little box right now.
It’s 1150, and the batteries I smuggled back here won’t last long if I use them too freely.
Iphinome: Contributing editor of the day, does it come with headgear and the right to grant knighthoods?
Sorry, no — you’ll have to be appurtaining your own headgear and beverages. And I’m pretty sure that granting knighthoods is Right Out.
Here in 1388 we have good strong Indian batteries, but lack the Vimana Force necessary to colonize Mars.
3 * 5!!
@JJ hmmm you sure you don’t want to change your opinion on that? There might be a knighthood in it for you.
Even in 1996, that’s one ugly building!
You can write one book of unreadable prose in seven years. You can write four entertaining and enjoyable books in a year-and vice versa. The whole argument is rather silly.
Iphinome: hmmm you sure you don’t want to change your opinion on that? There might be a knighthood in it for you.
Not my rules, or I’d certainly be willing to oblige. But hey, I’m happy to appurtain a beverage for you while I’m getting one for myself. What’s your poison?
Nora Roberts has written four books in the time it took me to write this sentence. No, five. I made a typo and had to go back.
In the year 2595, we have changed our years to the number of books Nora Roberts has written. Next year it will be 2675. That’s how fast she is.
Re #1, it could be worse. The most common off-color comment when the EMP appeared in Seattle had to do with the aftermath of a dinosaur eating a paint factory.
That building is super ugly. I mean ugly.
I think authors should write the number of books they can write/edit a year. Why do writers keep thinking there is only one way to write & everyone should do it their way? Can’t we all just get along?
In 2922 life hasn’t changed much. The world is a bit warmer. Dang we shoulda been doing more stuff about alternative energy way back when.
°•??°?`~\\\\\\….lapsed the quantum wave enough to bleed into reality “blue prime”.
We purchased this knowledge from the invaders with the blood of many mimes – I hope this message gets through:
TRUMP-BOT 7 may have fled into “blue prime”. While teal is still imprisoned, beware orange. Even at 50% power, tyranny can still overwhelm cinema.
End tran????•°~“???¤?
I’d always heard it as the Weedle on the Needle ate too much and threw up. The EMP is … um… an interesting design. Almost as strange on the inside as the out.
Museum buildings tend to be really ugly these days and often unusable, too. Almost as if the architects don’t get that the museum is merely intended to display the art, but that the building isn’t actually supposed to be a sculpture itself.
Posting from the year 2806, where we have colonised Mars and even began terraforming it, at least until the sand creatures appeared and began to swallow colonists and undermine habitation domes and forced us to retreat back to Earth.
Damn it, they told us this place was uninhabited.
Paul-The knowledge was fresh in my mind because of Greg’s books, but I knew it before that. In fact, Greg’s book almost lost me that game because when Alex asked me what alternate history was during the interview, I almost used Greg’s book as an example (which would have changed things considerably). However, since I had eaten dinner with Harry Turtledove the night before, I decided to give him the plug instead.
Well, it’s like the old poem: “There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, but sixty-eight of them are dead wrong and will get you stabbed.”
…I think that was Kipling.
I may be misremembering, but here in 4063, after the terrible infestation of the GMO silverfish, we have been forced to recreate the classics of literature entirely from quotes in .sig files.
@JJ Since I’m in the year 4154, this is after the cyber revolution. In Cyberland we only drink Diet Coke.
Here in 4329, we’ve conquered the Mars sand creatures and returned to the Red Planet. Someone wanted to make a war memorial that looked just like this auto museum from 2015, and we fed him to the remaining sand creature.
[ticky]
In the Year of His Noodly Appendage 4525, the Pastafarians have successfully colonized the solar system.
I have a certain amount of affection for zebra patterns, so I don’t mind the building. It isn’t beautiful though, that’s for sure.
(People with my thing have taken on zebras as a nickname and symbol, because of that doctors training saying that goes something like: If it sounds like a horse, it probably isn’t a zebra – intended to stop young doctor’s from getting all excitable about diagnosing rare things. Not so helpful when you have the rare thing. At any rate: Bendies are Zebras.)
Rick K: The most common off-color comment when the EMP appeared in Seattle had to do with the aftermath of a dinosaur eating a paint factory.
Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag: I’d always heard it as the Weedle on the Needle ate too much and threw up. The EMP is … um… an interesting design. Almost as strange on the inside as the out.
I don’t care what any of you say, I absolutely adore the EMP.
I think they were trying to go for a dazzle camouflage effect with that museum.
It certainly is disconcerting.
It’s bad when doctors don’t use their brains and common sense when diagnosing patients so they either over-diagnose or skip-diagnose. I think part of doctor training should include listen to your patient and use critical thinking skills in diagnosing patients.
Here in 5806 we’ve learned an educated population is good for everyone regardless of race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, or solar system you come from.
Meredith: People with my thing have taken on zebras as a nickname and symbol, because of that doctors training saying
Wikipedia: It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”.
This is Occam’s razor, re-worded. This saying is really important when training doctors, because they get exposed to all kinds of zebras in their training, and zebras are far more interesting than horses, and the human tendency is to want things to be more interesting, rather than less so. It’s important that doctors first rule out all the simplest, most likely causes before getting down into the weeds with bizarre diagnoses.
But yes, for those of you who have zebras, that training means that doctors often will not arrive at the correct diagnosis in a timely fashion, or even at all.
@Tasha Turner
Definitely, only in a more sensible way than the current ‘patient-lead care’ in the UK, which was come up with by a complete blithering idiot.
@JJ
Oh, yes, I think the teaching is roughly correct, I just wish they tagged something on the end along the lines of “… But once you’ve ruled out horses, definitely check for zebras”, which is a stage some doctors are not so good at.
Ah, the EMP. I honestly like adventurous architecture, and I tried diligently for years to like the EMP. Didn’t work. The thing looks like it needs to be lanced, and badly.
(This comment coming to you in the year 7218, from New Cairo, Antarctica, where the 52nd Dynasty’s 5%-for-Art program is funding a retrospective of “Larger Than My Beak: The chromatophoric operas of the dada era in cephalopod art.”)
@JJ —
I respect your differing opinion on this issue because you expressed my opinion about Redshirts on Whatever much more eloquently than I did in an aborted comment.
Here in the year 7296, Seattle has been underwater for millennia after global warming caused the waters to rise and the Big Cascadia Quake of 2510 dropped the remaining islands beneath Puget Sound. The remains of the EMP still stand on a small island though, because there are some things the very earth refuses to swallow.
Rick K: you expressed my opinion about Redshirts on Whatever much more eloquently than I did in an aborted comment.
Oh! I went over there just now and saw your comment. It’s not abortive; you expressed quite well the way that I felt after reading Redshirts.
I also agree with your perspective on cheeseburgers. 😀
@Tasha : “Here in 5806 we’ve learned an educated population is good for everyone regardless of race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, or solar system you come from.”
Tasha is lying. We really learned that back here in 5775. But we know better than to pretend it applies to people with Type B blood, useless social parasites that they are. Tasha’s probably a Type B herself.
Disintegration is too good for them, I say!
@JJ —
I was talking about a comment from earlier today that didn’t get posted due to an auth problem. You said what I was trying to say in that first comment, except that yours was more insightful and more direct.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about the EMP. Taking the monorail through it during construction was a trip though.
As far as doctor training, I think some things can only be learned through experience, and one of them is the judgment to know when you do need to look for zebras. It’s why my perfectly real preference for a female doctor gives way, when it’s a choice, to the preference for a doctor older than I am, regardless of gender, every time.
You have to check for lupus, even though it’s never lupus?
Jamoche: You have to check for lupus, even though it’s never lupus?
If the symptoms are all indicative of lupus, of course you do. That’s really the heart of Occam’s razor, isn’t it?
Sadly, there aren’t many doctors older than me any more, at least ones I can visit.
However, back in the day, an old country doctor type diagnosed a thing I had just from my description, as his wife had had it when he was an intern. Said it was harmless, gave me a week’s worth of pills and said if it cleared up before that, don’t bother finishing them. And then later after struggling with a thing for decades, an old guy who was at the top of his specialty and so was free to do whatever, gave me the best prescription for the thing ever.
Of course, it’s 5743 now… so either it’s in far the future, or it’s 33 years ago, depending on your choice of calendar. Lemme ask my zebra.
Well if four books a year is too much I am glad the writing binge Sherri S Tepper went on in the eatly 80s priduced only ~3 a year.
I love the True Game, Mavin, Jinnian,and Marianne stories anf re-read them often. I would hate not to be “correct” in thinking they are good books.
In the year 4652 we have been waiting a thousand years for Mars to finish seeling down in its new orbit after we redirected all the Asteroid Belt rocks into a collision course with it in a weird terra-forming experiment.
In the year 7254 I’m still feeling mighty uncomfortable from that one time I ate way too much Thai food, back in September of 2015.
Here in year 666 I just remembered that I had totally forgotten to post this wonderful video of a girl and her demon. This has been my favourite for a long time and all the Vile Filers should have a chance to appreciate it.
I hadn’t heard that before, but I didn’t realize I actually was a Bendie until it started crippling me in my late 40s. Up til then I was just “double-jointed”. Nothing ever completely dislocated, but my back was subluxing constantly, doing permanent nerve damage eventually. Doctors in the US are pretty ignorant about E-D. I’ll have to use the zebra thing on the next one that looks at me like I’m crazy when I explain that I have this weird condition they maybe got 10 minutes of exposure to in med school. Sometimes it really IS a zebra!
(6) and (11) As a data point for the 4 books problem, Hurley mentions that she delivered 3 books this year. I think the writer of the article being fisked into the ground has been a bit poorly served, though. She appears to have been (over)reacting to someone claiming that the only way to make it big was to churn out something approaching the controversial 4 books a year, and her article was a bad approach to pushing back against it.
(8) Retro Hugo movies – I suspect Fantasia might be a popular choice here, but I’m clearly going to have to go watch One Million BC on YouTube as well. Unfortunately, I suspect it would have been better if they’d had the foresight to call it “One Million Years B.C.” and cast Rachel Welch…
(X) I picked up the latest tor.com novella Sunset Mantle, which actually appears to be a novel by strict Hugo wordcount (although within the 5k/20% discretion boundary). It’s a straight-up heroic fantasy with a wandering warrior hero stepping up to help defend a doomed frontier town. There’s some interesting politicking and betrayals to enliven the fights, and more attention to the characters than you’d get in some other treatments of this story, but I’d put it at “good solid work” rather than something as ambitious as Sorceror of the Wildeeps was.
(Y) I spotted this poll on the best cover for a debut author, which sounds like a bit of a niche category to me but they get 17 entries out of it. I’d go with Three Days in April or The Machinery for “arresting cover I’d pick up”
Fiftieth!