(1) OUT OF STEAM. Southern California will be without one of its Halloween traditions this year, and probably for the future. “Ghost Train Cancelled by Los Angeles Live Steamers Board of Directors”. The Griffith Park model steam railroad center will not be giving rides or decorating for Halloween. Jay Carsman, a members of LA Live Steamers, told the Theme Park Adventure blog the reasons.
“The LA Live Steamers Ghost Train’s popularity finally outgrew our volunteer club’s ability to manage it,” said Carsman. “Of course, there were other issues too. For 2015 [sic], we really did not plan to have a Ghost Train at all because of the water pipeline project underway on Zoo Drive. The pipe was huge and due to the tunnel boring and the collapse of part of the old pipe, a fairly long stretch of our railroad began to sink in the ground. Just a few weeks before Halloween 2015 [sic], the city’s contractor for the pipe project shored up the mess and injected cement into the ground to stop the sinking. We went ahead and did the Ghost Train but everything was very rushed and stressful. We managed to do it, but the small group of volunteers who really made it happen were exhausted.
“Compounding the problem for future Halloween Ghost Trains were some financial issues, the city advising that our Ghost Train had become a major safety issue for the park due to the crowds, traffic on Zoo Drive, and parking issues,” stated Carsman. Last, they said absolutely no more flames, torches, and exposed hazardous electrical wiring. Then there was the continuing problem of the scale-model railroad is just not designed for such concentrated heavy use. The trains are models, not amusement park machines and the track is a very small scaled-down version of real train track. Carrying ten or fifteen thousand people on the little railroad during a 10-day period is just brutal for such small machines….”
(2) MIDAMERICON II PHOTOS AT FANAC.ORG. They’ve started a photo album for MidAmericon 2 at Fanac.org. “So far there are 42 photos up, most of them courtesy of Frank Olynyk.”
Shots of the Guests of Honor and Toastmaster are here.
(3) AWARD PHOTO. This year Orbital Comics in London beat off fierce competition to win the Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. James Bacon who seems to collect opinions on good comic shops around the world took the photo and said; “First time at Orbital Comics since the win. The shop embodies an awful lot of what I consider to be just right in comic shops. Huge amount of small press, great events and a gallery, with a lovely attitude, and Karl and his team really deserve it.”
Spirit of Comics Retailer Award
(4) FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T HEARD ENOUGH. Dave Truesdale appeared on the SuperversiveSF podcast today. He gives his version of the notorious MAC II panel beginning immediately after the intros.
“[The] theme of my opening remarks….was that science fiction is not for snowflakes, those people who are perpetually offended or microaggressed at every turn, these people are nothing but, they are intellectually shallow emotionally stunted thumb-sucking crybabies who are given validation by such organisations or platforms as the Incident Report Team at Worldcon, or places they can go such as safe rooms at WisCon or other safe places around the internet or social media. Science fiction is not the place for these people because SF is part of the arts and the arts should be always one of the most freeform places for expression and thought and instances of being provocative and controversial there should be. They have invaded science fiction to the point where we are not seeing the sort of fiction,, short fiction at least, any more that we used to, we are not seeing the provocative controversial stuff…”
A bit later he comments on the specifics of his expulsion
“…95% of the audience were probably somewhere along the snowflake spectrum and it was just anathema to them so they went crying to the IRT (the Incident Reporting Team) and a one-sided version of what happened got me expelled from the convention and I think it was a travesty that I never got to give my side and it was more or less just a kangaroo court and I think it was just abominable and set a very bad precedent for future Worldcons and just fandom at conventions in general”
(5) EXPULSIONS THROUGHOUT FANHISTORY. Alec Nevala-Lee, in “The Past Through Tomorrow”, discusses Dave Truesdale’s conduct at MidAmeriCon II, and ends by comparing it with the “Great Exclusion Act” at the first Worldcon.
Afterward, one of the other participants shook my hand, saying that he thought that I did a good job, and essentially apologized for taking over the discussion. “I don’t usually talk much,” he told me, “but when I’m on a panel like this, I just can’t stop myself.”
And this turned out to be a prophetic remark. The next day, the very same participant was expelled from the convention for hijacking another panel that he was moderating, using his position to indulge in a ten-minute speech on how political correctness was destroying science fiction and fantasy. I wasn’t there, but I later spoke to another member of that panel, who noted dryly that it was the first time she had ever found herself on the most controversial event of the weekend. Based on other accounts of the incident, the speaker—who, again, had been nothing but polite to me the day before—said that the fear of giving offense had made it hard for writers to write the same kinds of innovative, challenging stories that they had in the past. Inevitably, there are those who believe that his expulsion simply proved his point, and that he was cast out by the convention’s thought police for expressing an unpopular opinion. But that isn’t really what happened. As another blogger correctly observes, the participant wasn’t expelled for his words, but for his actions: he deliberately derailed a panel that he was supposed to moderate, recorded it without the consent of the other panelists, and planned the whole thing in advance, complete with props and a prepared statement. He came into the event with the intention of disrupting any real conversation, rather than facilitating it, and the result was an act of massive discourtesy. For a supposed champion of free speech, he didn’t seem very interested in encouraging it. As a result, he was clearly in violation of the convention’s code of conduct, and his removal was justified.
(6) BAD WOLF. Bertie MacAvoy had a science fictional encounter this weekend.
Seeing the Tardis is always unexpected:
This weekend I drove to the nearest town for some Thai take-out. As I passed down the aisle of cars I saw a dark blue van on the other side of the row. It had decals on the top of its windows. They read: POLICE CALL BOX. Carrying my tubs of soup and cardboard boxes of food, I crossed over. Each rear door had a magnetic sticker on it, such as are used by people to signify that theirs is a company car. These said SAINT JOHN’S AMBULANCE SERVICE and all the rest of the usual Tardis markings. On the rearmost window had been scrawled in white paint: BAD WOLF….
(7) INFLUENTIAL BOOKS. The Washington Posts’s Nora Krug, getting ready for the Library of Congress National Book Festival next weekend, asked writers “What book–or books–influenced you most?” Here is Kelly Link’s response:
Kelly Link’ s books include “ Stranger Things Happen ” and “ Pretty Monsters .” Her latest collection, “ Get in Trouble: Stories ,” was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist:
The short-story collection “Not What You Expected,” by Joan Aiken, is one of the most magical of all the books I found at the Coral Gables public library during one of my many childhood moves. I checked it out on my library card over and over. In it were stories about dog ghosts, unusual harps, curses and phones that could connect you to the past. Aiken could put a whole world into a 10-page story, and she was funny as well as terrifying. She made the act of storytelling feel limitless, liberating, joyful.
(8) LOSE THESE TROPES. Fond as we are of the number five, consider “Marc Turner with Five Fantasy Tropes That Should Be Consigned To History” for The Speculative Herald.
…Having said that, here are five tropes that I’d be happy never to see again. (Please note, I’m not suggesting that any book that contains these tropes is “bad” or “unimaginative”; I’m simply saying that I would be less inclined to read it.)
- Prophecies
When I was a teen, it seemed every other fantasy book I read featured a prophecy. You know the sort of thing: “The Chosen One will claim the Sword of Light and defeat the Dark Lord”, or “Upon the death of three kings, the world will be plunged into Chaos”. Now maybe it’s just me, but if I foresaw the precise set of circumstances that would bring about the end of all things, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to share it with the world. You can guarantee that somewhere a Dark Lord is listening in and saying, “Well, that is interesting.”
And why is it that whoever makes these prophecies never sees clearly enough to be able to provide a complete picture? It’s never an entirely useful prophecy. There’s always room for misinterpretation so the author can throw in a twist at the end.
Plus, there’s so much scope for abuse. It’s a wonder the bad guys don’t have fun with prophecies more often. “Ah, yes, paradise on earth is just one step away. All you have to do is destroy that kingdom over there. What’s that you say? If you attack, you’ll leave your border with my Evil Empire undefended? Purely a coincidence, I assure you.” *Whistles innocently*
(9) GRAVELINE OBIT. Duane E. Graveline (1931-2016), a doctor who did pioneering research in space medicine, and was briefly a NASA astronaut, died September 5. According to the New York Times:
In 1965, Duane E. Graveline, a doctor who did pioneering research in space medicine, was awarded one of the most coveted jobs the government can bestow: astronaut. But he resigned less than two months later without ever being fitted for a spacesuit, let alone riding a rocket into space. His tenure is believed to be the shortest of anyone in the astronaut program, a NASA spokeswoman said.
Dr. Graveline cited “personal reasons” for his resignation. In fact, NASA officials later said, he had been forced out because his marriage was coming apart and the agency, worried about tarnishing its image at a time when divorce was stigmatized, wanted to avoid embarrassment.
Dr. Graveline, who married five more times and became a prolific author but whose later career as a doctor was marred by scandal, died on Sept. 5 at 85 in a hospital near his home in Merritt Island, Fla.
In later years, Dr. Graveline continued to consult with NASA and wrote 15 books, including memoirs, science fiction novels and works detailing his research into side effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, which he blamed for his own medical decline.
Graveline also was a self-published science fiction author with numerous works available through his website.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- September 19, 1961 — On a return trip from Canada, while in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted for two hours by a UFO. After going public with their story, the two gained worldwide notoriety. The incident is the first fully documented case of an alleged alien abduction.
- September 19, 2000 — The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel by Michael Chabon about the glory years of the American comic book, is published on this day in 2000. The book went on to win the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
(11) TODAY IN PIRACY. It’s “Talk Like Pirate Day” and if you show up at Krispy Kreme and talk or dress like a pirate you can get a dozen free doughnuts.
Customers who do their best pirate voice get a free glazed donut. Dress like a pirate and you get a free dozen glazed donuts.
To qualify for the free dozen, customers must wear three pirate items like a bandana or eye patch.
If you’re not willing to go that far, but still want to get the free dozen, there is another option: Customers can digitally dress like a pirate through Krispy Kreme Snapchat pirate filter. Just be sure to show the photo to a team member
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born September 19, 1928 — Adam West
- Born September 19, 1933 — David McCallum in 1933. His was in arguably the best Outer Limits episode, The Sixth Finger. And then, of course, he was in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
(13) READING WITHOUT TURNING A PAGE. M.I.T. uses radiation to read closed books reports Engadget.
There are some books that are simply too delicate to crack open — the last thing you want to do is destroy an ornate medieval Bible simply because you’re curious about its contents. If MIT has its way, though, you won’t have to stay away. Its scientists have crafted a computational imaging system that can read the individual pages of a book while it’s closed. Their technology scans a book using terahertz radiation, and relies on the tiny, 20-micrometer air gaps between pages to identify and scan those pages one by one. A letter interpretation algorithm (of the sort that can defeat captchas) helps make sense of any distorted or incomplete text.
(14) EMMY NOTES. Steven H Silver lists all the Emmy Award winners of genre interest at SF Site News. And he sent along this summary to File 770:
As I noted in my coverage of the Emmy Awards, with their nine wins earlier this week and their three wins last night, Game of Thrones now has the record for the most Emmy wins for a scripted prime time series with 38 (it took the record from Frasier, which has 37). The record for most Emmys of any type seems to be Saturday Night Live, with 43 (including Kate McKinnon’s win this year). It took GOT only six seasons to rack up that total, Frasier took 11, and SNL took 41 years.
(15) ALAN MOORE TALKS TO NPR ABOUT HIS NEW PROJECT. The writer of Watchmen is writing a book (without pictures) based on his hometown: “In ‘Jerusalem,’ Nothing You’ve Ever Lost Is Truly Gone”.
Recently, Moore said he’s stepping back from comics to focus on other projects — like his epic new novel, Jerusalem. It’s full of angels, devils, saints and sinners and visionaries, ghost children and wandering writers, all circling his home town of Northampton, England.
Moore still lives in Northampton, about an hour north of London. He rarely leaves, so I went there to meet him.
“This is holy ground for me,” he told me as we stood on a neglected grassy strip by a busy road. It doesn’t look like holy ground — nothing’s here now except a few trees, and a solitary house on the corner. But it wasn’t always this way.
“This is it,” Moore says, pointing to the grown-over remains of a little path behind the corner house. “This is the alley that used to run behind our terrace. This is where I was born.”
(16) OWN HARRY POTTER’S CUBBYHOLE. The house used to stand in for the Dursleys’ house in the Harry Potter films is on the market.
Until he went to Hogwarts, Harry was forced to live there with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and his cousin Dudley, and returned there every summer.
The house in Bracknell, Berkshire, rather than the fictive Little Whinging dreamt up by J. K. Rowling, but is otherwise as it appeared in the films.
On the market for £475,000, it has three bedrooms, enough for a married couple, their over-indulged son, and their over-indulged son’s second bedroom. Whether there is room for a child to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs is unclear.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Mark-kitteh, Martin Morse Wooster, Steven H Silver, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint and Cadbury Moose.]
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Surely not first . . .
Definitely not first
8) I’ve always found the “no man can/ I’m a woman” line annoying. Also, you’re still born of a woman if you are a c-section.
But sometimes prophecies can add to a book, eg Game of Thrones – the way the prophecy is influencing Cersei decisions is great.
(4) Good heavens, the more Dave Truesdale talks, the worse he sounds.
Call the WAAAAAHHHmbulance……..
On (4):
Snarky reply: What about “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love?” That seemed pretty controversial…
Non-snarky reply because I haven’t listened to the podcast and don’t plan to: Has he given any examples of this supposed neutered short fiction? I’m not super up on recent short work, for years mostly getting my reads from the annual Dozois collection. I’ve been trying to catch up this year, and have read some extremely unsettling and provocative stories.
Or is this an extension of the cultural appropriation discussion from a few days ago, where people are really upset about complaints about inaccurate or insulting representation of different races, or blatant sexism, etc.? And then blaming the “snowflakes” or “SJWs” for daring to make their voices heard and possibly influence the market?
4) [The] theme of my opening remarks….was that science fiction is not for snowflakes, those people who are perpetually offended or microaggressed at every turn, these people are nothing but, they are intellectually shallow emotionally stunted thumb-sucking crybabies…
…95% of the audience were probably somewhere along the snowflake spectrum…
That’s just the kind of calm, reasoned discussion that’s earned Truesdale the reputation he has today.
Well, Truesdale is certainly bent on making it clear that Worldcon was right to bounce him, and succeeding in convincing me.
There are groups within the sf world that appeal to me as little as his chosen targets do to him…but I pretty much shut up about them, refrain from engaging with them, and focus on what I dig.
Safe art is dead art.
Mr. Truesdale, you aren’t provocative or controversial. I don’t even want your newsletter.
[snowflake-stalk]
Truesdale apparently has never heard of the first rule of holes.
::ticky::
4) I see only one pearl-clutching special snowflake here and that’s Dave Truesdale.
6) There still are a handful of police call boxes in Scotland and of course I had to take a photo posing next to one of them. I also have one next to a full-size Dalek as well as a photo of Bessie, the Third Doctor’s yellow oldtimer, which is on display in Blackpool.
After I took the first photo of a real life police call box in Glasgow, I came across a second police call box on a busy street I had walked along earlier the same day. And I could have sworn the box wasn’t there the first time I walked past. So either my attention was elsewhere or it really was the TARDIS.
(3) “conic ships”? I see the upgrade came with funnier typos!
(4) Dave is sure not winning hearts and minds with this kind of posting, nor with putting up the audio of the whole panel. Which is good for everyone; he gets to be a big deal virtue-signaling martyr in the safe spaces of his people, and the rest of us don’t have to listen to him take over more panels. We want to hear everyone, regardless of the topic. And of course he has no examples of the “thrilling” work that’s supposedly being ignored thanks to more diverse authors and topics.
But mostly he’s an idiot for not realizing that he was booted for taking over the panel and not moderating, instead of his opinions. I guess it’s much easier on the ego to whip up some evul librul conspiracy than to admit you’re a blowhard and a big mouth who doesn’t know when to let other people talk.
(6) Awww, this is delightful. I hope they noticed. Bertie is so charming.
(9) Married 5 more times?! Then a drug scandal, then accusations of child molestation, and wandering into woo-woo “medicine”.
(11) I deliberately did not do this (even though I have the whole outfit) because the last thing my waistline needs is a dozen Krispy Kremes. They need to have some way for you to get one or two and donate the rest to someone else.
lurkertype: Yep, I must be just about all the way back. This is the fifth copyediting mistake people have pointed out to me since I posted the Scroll….
Drink appertainment is on the house!
(11) TODAY IN PIRACY.
As it’s “Talk Like Pirate Day”, here’s my geeky contribution:
What goes, “Pieces of Seven! Pieces of Seven!” ?
A parroty error.
(I’ll see myself out, arrrr!!!)
Whee! Appertained File 770 drinks have no calories!
Snowflake spectrum interests me because I want to know the specifics of this spectrum. Snowflakes are unique but the spectrum suggests a measurable scale, is this construction paper snowflakes versus beaded versus made of snow? As Dave appears to be Prime Minister of Snowflakes I look forward to his scale. Until then I imagine it’s a range of Zero to Full Truesdale.
“There is a heppy lend, fur fur away…”
(10a): James Macdonal did one of the more extensive … discussions … of the Hills’ “abduction” some years ago. I drove near area recently and can see the case for his explanation, especially on a couple that was driving in a lonely area while short of sleep.
(15): NPR also has a glancing review of Jerusalem; from the description it may be too weird for me, but the idea is interesting enough I’m going to try it anyway.
Shades of Inherit the Stars.
Snowflake-stalk?
If hijacking a panel is a ban-able offense, I would suspect that there are many others besides Truesdale who would be at risk.
The rest of Truesdale’s barking is the biggest yawn to me, but I’m also very interested in hearing more about this snowflake spectrum…
Got an unexpectedly free evening when my language class got cancelled yesterday and finished Two Serpents Rise – I failed to be charmed by the MPDG driven plot or Pouty Cardsharp Anakin but I did fall in love with the worldbuilding all over again.
@Rich, calling it merely hijacking, or (as I’ve heard elsewhere) a panel that got out of hand is somewhat inaccurate IMO.
I find Alec Nevala-Lee’s summary above useful and concise:
Exactly what I was thinking. Now, if NASA hires them to ‘autopsy’ a 50,000 year old corpse in a spacesuit …
(4),(5) Honestly, I don’t think Truesdale should have been kicked out, just fired for all future moderator jobs and an apology posted to those who showed up expecting a well-run panel. Not everyone makes a good MC. Some people can’t hold back their opinions — and they don’t even try. The first time I did a panel, at VCon in Vancouver, the moderator commented more than questioned and (I kid you not) had a pet mouse that made a surprise appearance from within the depths of her bosom half way through the panel.
Almost put me off panels.
If it’s a spectrum it must have rainbows.
4/5) I’m a little unclear about the difference between hijacking and derailing.
No one one either side seems to have done the most obvious thing–which I am too audio/video allergic to do myself–of timing the total time in the panel taken up by each participant. If anyone has, I haven’t seen it. I realize that’s not the only measure one could apply. It still seems relevant.
This whole thing doesn’t seem to me to reflect well on anyone involved. Truesdale’s literary argument sounds bogus to me and the reaction to it sounds disproportionate. From the outside looking in, the whole thing looks very petty all around.
ETA: I would be thrilled and enchanted if there were a pet mouse involved. I would not care where or from what it emerged.
Hijacking is dominating the panel, taking it over so that it’s about you and your opinions, and not letting other panelists have a fair turn.
Derailing is driving the panel off-topic, like a train leaping the tracks, so that it’s no longer about what it’s meant to be about.
Moderators are supposed to prevent both. Unless, perhaps, the panel subject is boring the panel and the audience, and derailing it is an improvement — but even in those cases one should try to be on topic to start, and only abandon it if it’s clearly failing to hold anyone’s interest or the panelists have little/nothing to say about it.
Puppies and Truesdale seems to have one thing in common. They want to force themselves upon people who aren’t interested in what they have to sell and get stomping mad when rejected.
Also: Arrrrrrr!
I remember a day around 25 years ago when I went to our liquorstore to buy some wine. 17:30 on a friday, queues from one end of the store to another. When it was my turn, my pet rat Thursday had grown tired, jumped out of my sleeve onto the counter and set off on a mighty speed.
Thankfully, I managed to grab her and put her inside my sweater. I think only 1-2 screams where heard. And my reputation got slightly enhanced.
(15) I’ll read Jerusalem until the first sexual assault scene, and then throw it against the wall. I’m guessing it’ll be maybe 80, 90 pages?
@Arifel
Two Serpents Rise didn’t quite hit the spot for me, but Last First Snow was back to form IMHO.
@Dawn Incognito
Truesdale doesn’t give any examples of stories in the opening segment where he gets to put his POV. He does spend some time expanding on examples of what he thinks is going wrong though e.g. SFWA bulletin, Wiscon/Moon, an old story about his F&SF column offending people, etc. I only listened to the opening segment on the topic of him and Worldcon though, so he could have spoken more on the subject later.
—
Filers may be interested in the start of a new Wombat story.
I mean, if Dave hates the con-goers as much as his words indicate he does, he ought to be grateful for being kicked out. He may not have had the willpower to remove himself from an event populated by people he despises, but luckily his willpower wasn’t a limiting factor and the con removed him from an environment he found toxic.
Everybody wins. Well, aside from those who were interested in the doomed panel.
I don’t like prophecies as plot devices, but the supposed disadvantages described above strike me as potentially interesting story possibilities rather than inherent problems.
Matt Y: a range of Zero to Full Truesdale
I believe that is what Tesla refers to as “Ludicrous Mode”.
John A Arkansawyer: No one one either side seems to have done the most obvious thing–which I am too audio/video allergic to do myself–of timing the total time in the panel taken up by each participant. If anyone has, I haven’t seen it. I realize that’s not the only measure one could apply. It still seems relevant.
I seem to recall that someone did, and that Truesdale’s OT rants ended up being over 20 minutes total of the panel.
But bear in mind that a lot of the other time panelists were talking was trying to shut Truesdale’s rants down and get the panel back on topic — rather than saying what they would have ordinarily been saying in the course of the panel if it had gone as intended.
I am reminded of a rather lovely story in the second Temps collection about scientists investigating the Oedipus Effect, that property of prophecies to come true only because people are trying to avoid their coming true. Brian Stableford I think.
Truesdale is boring. Let’s give him and his cronies the attention they deserve.
I’m in agreement that Last First Snow is a much better book.
I’m midway through Four Roads Cross right now. Book report to come …
@bookworm1398: I recently read a book with that trope in it, and like you I don’t particularly like it all that much. It was done as well as it could be in Half the World though, I thought.
[re-click]
I am now not receiving any comment notifications for any File770 threads, even though I was previously receiving them for the same threads which now have new comments on them. So if you’re not getting them, it’s probably not because you forgot to godstalk the ticky box.
Mini Book Reviews
After thoroughly enjoying James E. Gunn’s Transcendental and Transgalactic series, I hunted down several of his earlier novels. I talked about Star Bridge (1955) and The Magicians (1976) prior to Worldcon (sorry, but I was unable to find that post despite intensive searching).
The Joy Makers, by James E. Gunn (1961) – This is the story of a near-future Earth, where the company Hedonics, Inc. perfects the art of providing customers with true, lasting happiness via mental stimulation on pleasure centers, and the effect that this has on the future of the human race. This “novel” was originally a serial of 3 somewhat related parts. Gunn appears to not only be taking a satirical dig at companies/theologies such as Scientology, which promise individual transformation — but asking the question as to whether an essential part of the human existence is not the striving for happiness, rather than the having of it.
This is an excellent review of the book, by Joachim Boaz.
The Joy Machine, by James E. Gunn (1996) – This is a novelization of Theodore Sturgeon’s un-filmed Star Trek script. It is apparent that Gunn was asked to write it because it shares so many elements in common with The Joy Makers. I strongly suspect that much of this unproduced episode was used as a basis for the Next Generation episode The Game — where people become so addicted to having their pleasure centers stimulated and rewarded, that they cease to care about anything else. On its own, this book would be a pretty good read. But having just read The Joy Makers, which contains a more complete evolution of such a society, and having seen TNG’s The Game numerous times in the past, it seemed too much of a rehash to me (albeit redeemed somewhat by featuring much-beloved TOS characters).
The Listeners (1968), by James E. Gunn – When I read this, I knew where Carl Sagan had gotten the genesis for Contact — his novel is in many ways a close retelling of this one, which is a very interesting story of the first SETI researchers and what happens when they actually identify signals from an alien culture. (But since Sagan blurbed this book for Gunn, I’m guessing that Gunn would have considered Contact an homage, rather than plagiarism.) This is not so much a novel as a series of interrelated chapters narrated by various personalities, liberally peppered with relevant historical and literary quotations; it is definitely worth the read.
2016 Reading
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North (2016) – I’ve decided to consider this the third in what I would call North’s “Ouroboros Trilogy” (preceded by The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and Touch). As with the other two novels, the protagonist of this one is the unwitting possessor of a bizarre special ability/curse, causing their life to be one which is out of phase with most other human beings. What made this one especially interesting to me was its secondary storyline of a sinister mobile application called “Perfection”, which accumulates millions of minute behavioral, financial, and relationship data points about its users and trains them to modify their behavior — to the extent of becoming a completely different person — in the pursuit of personal perfection (in addition to making referrals to other businesses for a kickback, and selling all of that information to other companies for a profit). Having just read Gunn’s two “Joy” novels, the similarity was striking: how much of their humanity will people be willing to give up in the pursuit of perfect happiness?
If you enjoyed August or Touch, you will likely enjoy this one. If you really disliked either one of those, this one’s probably not for you, either.
More Classic SFF Reading
The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford (1983)
It’s probably been a couple of decades since I’ve done any reading about the historical characters featured in this book (the Plantagenets and the Medicis, especially Richard III). If I had brushed up first, I might have found this alt-history book, in a world which contains magical realism and vampires, more compelling. As it was, I don’t think it really “did it” for me (although I think quite highly of Ford’s two Star Trek novels).
I’d be delighted to have Filers share with me their insights on this book which might enhance my appreciation of it (as you did with Lord of Light).
Halfway Human, by Carolyn Ives Gilman (1998)
This is an absolutely amazing and powerful SF novel which presents a fascinating story of a world where population and power are controlled by separating the population into gendered masters and non-gendered slaves — and the culture clash which occurs when individuals in positions of power choose to violate that status quo. I don’t want to say too much — but this story ripped my heart out and simultaneously put it back.
Dark Water’s Embrace (1998) and Speaking Stones (1999), by Stephen Leigh
I got onto these books because the first was excerpted at the end of Halfway Human. This is a story of an interstellar expedition which visits, and then gets stranded on, a world on which a formerly sophisticated civilization thrived for millennia and then mysteriously became extinct. These books (in my opinion) do a masterful job of examining issues of gender and gender roles, fear of change, conquest, colonialism, and cultural appropriation in juxtaposition with the harsh reality that once cultures clash, there is often no good resolution possible. I really recommend these to anyone who read and liked Halfway Human.
Recent SF Reading
Ian Sales’ Apollo Quartet
This set of loosely-interrelated alt-future stories consists of 3 novellas, around 70 pages each, followed by a short novel of about 140 pages, all of which posit an Earth where NASA’s Apollo Program went on longer than it did in ours. I give the first 3 in the series a very solid 4 stars. The fourth, which tells the story of a science-fiction writer who is also the wife of an astronaut on an Earth where science fiction writing and reading is chiefly the domain of women, is unfortunately frequently disrupted by authorly inserts which (IMO) break the flow and the readability of the story, and I would say that 3.5 stars is generous — but the story is still worth reading. The novellas include “appendices” which contain some fact and some alt-future fiction, and should not be ignored. One novella has an important coda following the appendix which might be easily missed.
Adrift on the Sea of Rains (2012) (BSFA Short Fiction Winner)
The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (2013)
Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (2013)
All That Outer Space Allows (2015) (Tiptree Honor list)
Salvage and Demolition, by Tim Powers (2013)
Although Declare and The Anubis Gates are on Mount Tsundoku, this was the first Powers I’ve read — and I loved it. A rare-book dealer receives a consignment box which contains items from the estate of a woman science-fiction author, and he is drawn into a time-travel mystery with her and other shady characters. I loved this. I’m sure that the novella length was just right for the scope of this story — but wow, did I really want more after it was over.
More Classic SFF Reading
When The King Comes Home, by Caroline Stevermer (2000)
This was, I believe, one of ULTRAGOTHA’s recommendations of SFF books featuring artists and their methodologies. It’s not a momentous story, but is just a very quietly wonderful telling of a world where magical realism infuses power into works of art, in a kingdom which has been struggling and failing ever since a much-loved King disappeared (rumored, but not known for sure, to have died), and the people who try to bring him back or take power through the use of magic.
I enjoyed the first of Ian Sales’ Apollo stories, really should read the rest.
Re (4)
The people who threw a tantrum about Dinisaur and hid under the bed from Ancillary’s pronoun choice are saying what now? “Safe art may be dead art” – but I think I’ll still occasionally give Jim Butcher a shot….
My God, Truesdale is a special, special person, isn’t he?
@JJ re. Ian Sales
Interesting, thanks for the review. I was looking at these recently but picked up his A Prospect of War instead because I could use my Amazon Prime membership to borrow it.
Incidentally, does anyone use Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Prime to borrow books? I struggle to find stuff which is actually decent. I’m keen to try new writers but keep on bouncing off stuff due to writing quality issues.