(1) Ernie Hudson has filmed a cameo for the new Ghostbusters. All was forgiven sometime after gave this interview (quoted on The Mary Sue)….
Back in October of last year, Hudson told The Telegraph, “If it has nothing to do with the other two movies, and it’s all female, then why are you calling it Ghostbusters? I love females. I hope that if they go that way at least they’ll be funny, and if they’re not funny at least hopefully it’ll be sexy. I love the idea of including women, I think that’s great. But all-female I think would be a bad idea. I don’t think the fans want to see that.”.
Rumors r true. Was asked not to talk about it at all but when director @paulfeig tweets it himself… #Ghostbusters3 pic.twitter.com/pxEfk5G7YF
— Ernie Hudson (@Ernie_Hudson) September 20, 2015
(2) Mashable has the story – Astronauts on the International Space Station got an advance screening of The Martian.
Watched @MartianMovie on @Space_Station last night! Today working towards our #JourneyToMars during my #YearInSpace! pic.twitter.com/rIEBjFxRIr
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 20, 2015
Duncan Long asked, “Isn’t this a little like showing The Poseidon Adventure on a cruise ship?”
(3) Lincoln Michel in “Is It Time for Literary Magazines to Rethink the Slush” on Electric Literature.
Last month, I got entangled in a long twitter conversation about submission fees. The author Nick Mamatas took issue with The Offing magazine—an exciting new offshoot of the LA Review of Books focusing on promoting marginalized writers—deciding to charge a $3 fee for submissions. You can read Mamatas’s storify plus this follow-up blog post to see his side of things. Here’s a defense of fees from Nathaniel Tower for the other side. In general, the literary world is far too shy about talking about money, and publishing can be quite closed to marginalized voices who can’t afford unpaid internships, reading fees, and other entry barriers. This is a conversation we need to have.
Overall, I agree with Mamatas that there’s an ethical issue in charging submission fees. We never instituted them at Electric Literature for Recommended Reading, Gigantic, or any other magazine I’ve worked on. Plenty of journals barely take any work from the slush, but even a magazine that only publishes slush is likely only taking 1-2% of submissions. So the majority of unpublished writers are funding the minority of published, which isn’t a great foundation. Imagine if every worker had to pay to get a job interview? (Or, since most magazines don’t pay, maybe the analogy is paying to get an unpaid internship.) The defense of submission fees is that the fee is pretty small, perhaps only as costly as snail mail postage. But $3 adds up quickly. I’ve often heard the average story gets rejected twenty times before an acceptance. 21 x 3 = $63. The Offing pays $20-50, meaning you’d expect to lose between 13 and 43 bucks per story. Literary writers can’t expect to make much money from quiet short stories about cancer and obscure poems about birds, but surely we don’t need to actively lose money to get published!
I’d like to note here that The Offing is hardly the only magazine to charge a fee. Missouri Review, Sonora Review, Crazyhorse and so many others charge that when I asked about this on Twitter, I was told it would be easier to make a list of those who don’t. And the fact that The Offing pays $20-50 already puts them ahead of the vast majority of lit mags who pay nothing at all…
Could it be that The Singularity is not engaged in some kind of literary war crime but, in comparison to other magazines that don’t pay contributors, deserves to be commended for not charging a submission fee? (Rocks incoming in 5…4…3…)
(4) Yoon Ha Lee in “Outlining a Novel” —
[First 3 of 8 points.]
- I use parts of Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method for writing a novel. If you haven’t looked at this (I’ve mentioned it several times in the past), it’s worth a look–it probably takes only a few hours to figure out whether or not it’s something that’ll work for you.
The parts I use are the first few steps:
– The one-sentence summary of the novel. I want to nail the core conflict and the protagonist. Ingermanson suggests fewer than 15 words. I use that as a rough guideline–sometimes I have to go a little over because the plot needs some sf/f setting setup. But not much over.
– One-paragraph summary. You can use three-act structure or similar if you like that. Ingermanson suggests “three disasters plus an ending.” It’s not a bad starting place.
– One-page summary. At this point I’m just expanding things out. I sometimes skip this step.
- I write down an unsorted list of elements and events that I want to make sure to include. Key scenes, particular relationships, cool tech toys, whatever.
- Determination of POVs. Mostly I base this on:
– Characters who are going to have growth arcs.
– Coverage of plot events.
– Information control. For example, some characters can’t be POVs because they spoil the entire damn book to the reader.
There are other considerations that come into play sometimes but they tend to be edge cases.
(5) Michael Cavna of the Comic Riffs blog on the Washington Post reports women swept the Small Press Expo’s Ignatz Awards given for outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.
I JUST want to know, cartoonist C. Spike Trotman joked, how she’s going to get those three bricks through airport security.
Trotman, as emcee of the Small Press Expo’s Ignatz Awards ceremony Saturday night, was quickly finding the funny as Sophia Foster-Dimino hit the brick trifecta, picking up three trophies — which are an inspired nod to George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” — and leading the field for the esteemed indie award.
The night felt like a coronation for Foster-Dimino, who dazzled voters with her “Sex Fantasy” comic and was selected best Promising New Talent. At the lectern, the cartoonist looked genuinely moved by the moment. And how better to build a young career than brick by brick?
Sophie Goldstein also picked up multiple awards; her work “The Oven” was voted Outstanding Comic and Outstanding Graphic Novel. When Goldstein kept her remarks brief upon her second win, she warmly joked that she was following Foster-Dimino’s humbled lead.
And just two years after every presenter at the Ignatz ceremony was a woman, now, at this year’s event, every winner was a woman.
The voting deadline nears: The official @SPXcomics 2015 Ignatz ballot: #SPX2015 pic.twitter.com/M0gQYI9kpW
— comicriffs (@comicriffs) September 19, 2015
(6) Don’t miss out on the current membership rate for the Helsinki Worldcon!
42 is a magical number in #fandom! There are 42 days left before the 1st membership rate rise for our #Worldcon! Do you have a membership?
— Worldcon 75 (@worldcon75) September 20, 2015
(7) On Startalk Radio Neil deGrasse Tyson holds A Conversation with Edward Snowden (Part 1)
In this week’s episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with whistleblower Edward Snowden via robotic telepresence from Moscow. The two card-carrying members of the geek community discuss Isaac Newton, the difference between education and learning, and even how knowledge is created. They also dive into the Periodic Table and chemistry, before moving on to the more expected subjects of data compression, encryption and privacy. You’ll learn about the relationship between private contractors, the CIA, and the NSA, for whom Edward began working at only 16 years old. Edward explains why metadata tells the government much more about individuals than they claim, and why there’s a distinction between the voluntary disclosure of information and the involuntary subversion of individual intent. Part 1 ends with a conversation about Ben Franklin, the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the CIA’s oath of service, and government Standard Form 312, which is the agreement Snowden violated.
(8) David Gerrold wrote on Facebook
I’ve had the name “Noah Ward” registered as an official pseudonym with the Writers’ Guild since the late 70s. (I’ve actually used it twice.)
In the planning for the Hugo award ceremony, one of the gags in the script was that if No Award won, I would accept the trophy as “Noah Ward.” Tananarive would protest, and I would whip out the letter from the Writers’ Guild to demonstrate the official-ness of my pen name. Tananarive would then explain the difference between No and Noah and I would grumpily give up the trophy.
If a second category came in as No Award, I was prepared to do “You like me, you really like me.”
But …
As it became clear that we might be looking at as many as 5 categories with No Award and that the voters seemed to be heading toward a massive smackdown of the slates, that joke had to be jettisoned.
In retrospect, that was the right choice. No Award in any category is an uncomfortable moment, even if that’s the result you voted for. So any attempt to add a joke to the moment would have been in very bad taste. And as much as I love a tasteless joke, this wasn’t the place for it.
It was fun to think about, it was the kind of gallows humor that people indulge in to release energy and frustration, but when it came down to the final moments, it was obvious that it wouldn’t play.
Even when explained by somebody who thought the asterisks were a good idea, it’s impossible to see why it was a hard choice to cut this gag….
[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 would-be contributing editor of the day Nigel.]
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1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Abstain
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Camestros Felapton on September 21, 2015 at 4:56 pm
Seriously that was fantastic. Independent, of the substance, I have a weird fascination with some of the Puppy writing styles – I honestly find Hoyt’s and Freer’s to be very stream-of-consciousy, while Green, Sanderson (C) and Torgersen seem relatively well organised and structured. You’ve certainly pegged the former’s style quite effectively.
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
Ouch.
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Ouuch.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Close call, but only two forehead cloths needed.
Campbell qualifying faq
http://www.writertopia.com/awards/eligibility/campbell
Forehead cloths! Getcher bracket forehead cloths! Now, for a small additional fee, embroidered with a sledgehammer crushing a set of dice! Or the limited edition steamroller! Get yours today!
While I try to decide whether I want to read two books before voting closes or skip that category despite both of them being on TBR mountain, this film looks promising for Best Dramatic Presentation, the category I most wish had a different acronym so I didn’t have to type it out every time: http://www.themarysue.com/patricia-rozema-interview-tiff/
Near-future apocalypse where two sisters get stuck in their isolated home in the woods, stuff ensues. With Ellen Page! *quiet fangirling*
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
Oh bugger. I think Lies, on the basis that it’s led to one of my favourite fantasy series’.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Still only one tough choice! Not looking forward to the next round, though.
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
Kowal
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
Gladstone. Still don’t like the Mieville.
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Now this one is a very hard one. Tie?
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Declare, Tim Powers
Addison; still don’t like the Powers. (If only they were all this easy)
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
Lynch; still don’t like the Clarke.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Still haven’t read the Martin, but I love the Walton. Heck with it; I’ll vote Walton, to keep Meredith’s dread crutch away after my next vote….
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
Kushner (hides from the Crutch of Doom)
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
Pratchett
No: I really can’t face making my mind up; my only certainty is Pratchett’s ‘Night Watch’. Anything else is too hard to call.
Unless, of course, Kyra changes her mind about the acceptance of hedging transactions, so hope springs eternal…
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
This is a real toughie, but PoS has to be my choice.
Stevie: Hedgehog transactions!
You are right – it is mainly Freer and Hoyt who do that. The others get to their point quicker. It is sort of addictive though. You just write whatever you are doing while you think of something else.
While I am sitting here thinking about what I might eat, I can tell you all about what is in my pantry until something there triggers a memory of the past – a tin of baked beans. Back in England I used to eat baked beans…and then segue into something political, beans>Heinz>John Kerry>George Bush and then finally say something sage about how traditional publishing is dead just like John Kerry’s hopes of becoming President.
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Tough one I need forehead clothes. But Bujold by a hair.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
Need more cloths. Tie although if need a tie breaker Kushner.
That how-they-do-it of MGC posts suddenly makes me feel a lot better about the papers I’m copyediting these days, which (after an abstract that of course summarizes the work) consist of an introduction that explains what they’re going to be discussing and why it matters (sometimes actually saying “in section 2 we will do x, in section 3 we will do y, in section 4 we will do z, and section 5 is the conclusion”); then a discussion of methods, then results, then a conclusion that restates why this matters, the technique they used, and what they found.
Yes, it’s repetitive, and can be somewhat boring to edit, but by George the reader will know why it matters that the authors are studying how a frequency shift affects the properties of thiotimoline chips with star-shaped holes, even if this is the first time she ever heard of thiotimoline.
And, bracket votes:
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
[I think I read the Powers, before I decided that I didn’t care for his stuff, but have no real memory of it.]
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Kyra, you INVESTED in the forehead cloth business, didn’t you?
1. Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
Tie
3. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
But I hate your dice.
4. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7.The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
I think I’m going to commit sepeku. TIE, DAMNIT,
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
For Stevie.
Vickie, I thought that was resublimated thiotimaline?
Cally!
And on that happy note (4. 09 am on this side of the pond) I’m going to try sleeping. After all, it shouldn’t be that difficult; 7 billion people do it every day…
Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder) doesn’t actually work that way.
The person I know who has it is no better equipped–no matter which of their people are presenting at the time–to follow scattershot ramblings of the MGC kind. It would be awesome if they could, because then they could explain MGC posts to me, but, alas, they are just as confused by that crap as the rest of us.
(DID/MPD also doesn’t prevent those with it, and those who love them, from surfing the internet, participating in blog discussions, and tripping painfully over posts by clueless people who think it’s clever to use their very real condition as a casual joke. Same goes for just about any mental health condition, really.)
And most don’t have the advantage of reading my blog!
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Oh my, this is where I almost break my self-allowance for “to choose to read is to evaluate” and abstain, but instead I shall vote for the book that enticed me to read it and do pennace by adding the other to my iPad. (I estimate that I’m currently adding e-books at the rate of 4 per book read.)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Ok, I’m back from the iTunes store.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Declare, Tim Powers
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
Very very close to declaring a tie, except for the fact that TPOTS IS THE ONE TRUE ALMOST-PERFECT NOVEL-THAT-BROKE-MY-HEART AND THERE SHALL BE NO OTHER BEFORE IT.
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
He’s certainly trying to convince himself that he believes that when you call Worldcon volunteers “socialist-cock sucking whores,” what you’re doing is criticizing socialism, rather than Worldcon volunteers.
He’s also baffled as to why people don’t understand that the Puppies have been on the receiving end of nothing but hate for years, so everyone should be nice to him because being on the receiving end of hate is bad. The idea that the Puppies started all of this and have been spewing hate at everyone who isn’t them, to the point of coming up with new names and acronyms to express their hate — this doesn’t register with him at all.
In short, he wants an award that’s for all SF fans as long as those SF fans agree that the Puppies are and always were the victims, and everyone else is a big meanie for objecting to being called CHORFs and Puppy-kickers and socialist-cock sucking whores. Until they stop being hostile for no reason over those innocent responses to the hatred that flowed over the Puppies from before the Puppies even said anything or identified themselves, then his response to any less-than-complimentary comment on his ideas will be “But you were mean to me!”
In short, his award idea, no matter how he modifies it, will never get off the ground, because it can’t lift the weight of his grievance, and he won’t even entertain the idea that his Puppy leaders could have been wrong about anything.
Hampus already gave up on him. Everyone else will, too, because he wants to complain that people are mean to him more than he wants to do anything that’d help him get his idea to become reality.
So it goes.
Stevie : “This was not supposed to happen! It’s really very hurtful when I set up a horrendous pun and no-one even notices! ”
There are worse situations, Stevie. For example, I have a friend who trained for years to break into journalism and was offered a job on a major newspaper, only to find that she was fobbed off into the “women’s issues” and “entertainment” section, despite her willingness to tackle more substantial work. This went on for nearly half a decade as she got more and more depressed.
But she finally got her big break when she was assigned to cover a reality TV show which was set on a cruise liner. It was one of those cooking shows where they had six contestants in the finale, with each being given a chance to show what they could do in the ship’s restaurant each night. She was desperately bored of the entire tacky contest by the fifth day.
It turned out that the ship had an outbreak of swine flu, with three cases reported on one deck. The onboard doctor immediately quarantined that deck and the one below it, and despite the pleading of the TV producers refused to let anyone in those decks into the rest of the ship. The sixth and final contestant was on that bottom deck and they were unable to wrap up filming. They lost millions, and my friend had the story that set her off on a more substantial career.
You can still find it archived online under the headline “Swine Flu Over The Cook Who’s Next”.
1. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
The glee of voting down a few things I bounced off does NOT compensate for the pain of the other choices.
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
…
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
…
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
I gave up on him today. He’s bringing flashbacks of problems my husband and I had communicating where there used to be 3 different conversations going on:
1. The one happening out loud (least important)
2. The one happening in my head
3. The one happening in my husbands head
After reading tons of books on linguistics and men/women communications I decided my husband should write down critical parts of conversations (decisions/things tabled/misc thoughts). Then he could “clean it up”, email it to me, I could respond to each point, he/I could go “huh I misunderstood a lot of what you said”, and animosity went way down.
Too much of communicating with Jay is him listening to something else in his head rather than the words typed in the comments. He doesn’t seem interested in changing.
I may be bedridden and not have much of a life but I could be reading stuff eligible for a Hugo rather than dealing with someone who is finding offense when none is intended.
RDF: GAAAH! YOU HORRID, HORRID, BAD NASTY PERSON! That’s terrible! Awful! Abominable! Appalling!
I love it.
Couldn’t Hoyt and he just as easily be criticizing “socialist cocks,” like “Gustav the (Rhode Island) Red,” noted labor activist as well as the winner of 1932’s “Best of Show” at the Nebraska State Fair?
@LordMelvin
I concur. Bad @RDF, no cookie for you.
Do some more!
Is that who the whores are sucking?
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine AddisonDeclare, Tim Powers
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette KowalCoraline, Neil Gaiman
Still voting for Coraline without having read its opposite number.
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. JemisinPaladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Wait, weren’t these both seeded? Shouldn’t that mean they don’t meet each other until later?
Very very tough choice.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Declare, Tim Powers5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
This is obviously some strange usage of the word “rhyme” that I wasn’t previously aware of.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. MartinTooth and Claw, Jo Walton
I voted for Among Others over A Dance With Dragons….
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry PratchettThe Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
I know I’m in a minority, but the Laundry series speaks to me more than Discworld does.
andyl: Hoyt has written that she first came to the US as an exchange student for a year when she was 17. Which is firmly within the multi-party democracy timeline. In fact the centre-right AD won the 1979 election soon after Hoyt was in the US (and was reconfirmed in an election in 1980). She apparently came to the US full time when she married her husband (I presume she met him when she was an exchange-student) when she was 22.
Both La Resnick and another File770 commenter have said that they knew Hoyt way back when, and that all this “I was so oppressed by the horrible Fascists, and I’m a refugee who had to flee from terrible persecution, and I still suffer from terrible nightmares about this” schtick is merely revisionist history.
bloodstone75: Now David Gerrold has posted on FB in response to Mike an excuse he has used a number of times as his “defense” of the asterisks… I like Mr. Gerrold; I have little but contempt for the puppies. But please. You could have sold ANYTHING and probably raised money as a tribute to Sir Pterry and his favourite cause. If you had done something less yoked to this year’s Hugo malarkey, you might well have raised more money.
I think the world of Mr. Gerrold. And I personally think it was okay for him to have the wooden asterisks made and sold at his dealer’s table at Sasquan to raise money for charity. He got to talk about them at a couple of sessions during the con. That was sufficient.
But they shouldn’t have been dragged into the Hugo ceremony. Like I said — not fandom’s proudest moment.
lurkertype: The cautioning of the audience not to boo confused me. Because you couldn’t hear any booing on the live feed… So I had no idea there was booing, or what about, or who was being booed. Were the rank and file booing Teddy? Were Puppies booing SJW’s? I had no idea. It must have been a small number of boos, since all I heard from the audience was cheers, applause, and laughter. And a dead silence when the first NA was read.
It was the Puppies who booed the first “No Award”. They were all sitting together in a little group near the front. It was incredibly poor taste on their part to do so — but then, the raucous cheering of non-Puppies for “No Award” was over-the-top, too.
Camestros Felapton on September 21, 2015 at 4:56 pm said:
I can be MadGenius writer to! example of how to do it so that you can also be MadGenius for fun, profit and confusionification!…
This was absolutely brilliant. You have the Puppy blog post style down to a T.
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Ok, that was bad. The good news is that I got to sleep. The downright awful news is that I had a nightmare about Hoyt transforming to her Malazan self and attacking Mike. Fortunately I had my foil with me, since I’m not into hacking slices of flesh off people, even if they do belong to Hoyt, and therefore could do some impalement 101, which persuaded Hoyt dragon that if she valued her life she should be somewhere else.
I think, however, that Mike perhaps should stop slicing and dicing the woman; I’m not good at nightmares…
21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND THREE
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
Unless there is only one vote separating them and then I abstain, because I didn’t actually love either one.
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
This one was worth foregoing any sort of order in my TBR and even if I discount the “most recent well-loved book is the most well-loved book” phenomenon, A Storm of Swords was the beginning of my disenchantment with the series.
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
Last Call to vote on
The Alternate Universe 2015 Hugo Best Novel
Vote here
Note that in the Alternate Universe, Andy Weir’s The Martian is eligible.
I’ll be totalling the votes up sometime tomorrow.
Oh, and the organizer of the 2015 Hugo Longlist Anthology Kickstarter has added new stretch goals for an audiobook version. Please consider supporting this if you haven’t already done so.
1. SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. PHANTASMAGORIC CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
3. MANIPULATED BY THE GODS
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
4. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA, MEET DACH’OSMIN CSETHIRO CEREDIN
5. THEY ALMOST RHYME
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
Tie between two books I equally dislike.
6. TERRIBLY! VIOLENT! TITLES!
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
7. MORE THAN JUST A WEAPON
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
8. WHEN CONSTABULARY DUTY’S TO BE DONE
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
I’m so excited for audiobooks. This is a great Kickstarter. I really hope we reach the stretch goals. It’s a win-win. Authors get money and promotion and readers get “one place” to find and read/listen to all the shorter fiction on the long list.
To honor Sunshine’s loss, imaginary I will order a Death of Marat from the eponymous baker. And after imaginary I have finished the dessert, leaving large splatters of raspberry sauce on the plate, the tabletop, and across my shirt, it is time to submit my bracket.
1. Coraline.
I enjoyed both books very much, and both will be re-read, but somehow there is a heft to Other Mother missing from the glamourists.
2. Three Parts Dead
Both pushed the edges of genre and gave me fully-realized worlds I could never have have dreamt up myself, that weren’t a bit derivative. I give it to the Gladstone for the more disciplined story, and more importantly, for women characters with agency. I hated what Mieville did to Lin.
3. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
4. The Goblin Emperor
6. Tooth and Claw
. The downright awful news is that I had a nightmare about Hoyt transforming to her Malazan self and attacking Mike. Fortunately I had my foil with me, since I’m not into hacking slices of flesh off people, even if they do belong to Hoyt, and therefore could do some impalement 101, which persuaded Hoyt dragon that if she valued her life she should be somewhere else.
Her Malazan self eh? I would place her either as Letherii, for the love of lucre, or Tiste Edur, for the grievances based in a falsified history.
Now my mind is trying to come up with equivalents for the rest of the puppy crowd, stop that brain!
VD as the Errant?
This round really highlights Kyra’s tolerable speakable cruelty.
Requiring at least three warm cloths.
1. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
2. Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
And this was the first. As much as Perdido Street Station is clearly a work of vast imagination, I didn’t like it all that much as a novel. It was slow and precise in ways that were not necessary. Which gives Three Parts Dead the edge, here, for me.
3. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
4. Declare, Tim Powers
The second washcloth moment. The Goblin Emperor was a very good book as well. I will not begrudge its almost certain victory.
I fail to vote for dragons in the middle parts here, and continue to be on the lookout for Meredith. I’d best go read Shadow Scale to atone.
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Washcloth #3. Night Watch is certainly in my top five Discworld books. But The Laundry Files is so well-targeted that I might have commissioned the thing. *sigh*