Pixel Scroll 9/21 For the Scroll is Hollow and I have touched the Pixel

Posted on by

(1) Today’s birthday boys:

Born 1866: H.G. Wells

H. G. Wells in 1943.

H. G. Wells in 1943.

Born 1912: Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Born 1947: Stephen King

StephenKing_0 COMP

Born 1950: Bill Murray

Bill Murray

Bill Murray

And as a bonus, also on This Day in History:

1937: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit published

(2) Grotesque parody news story of the day: “Game of Thrones Cast Murdered Following Emmy Victory”.

FANS of popular HBO fantasy series Game Of Thrones were this morning trying to get over last night’s shocking post-Emmy massacre, where virtually the entire cast and creative team were brutally murdered in cold blood.

… “One minute Peter Dinklage was standing with his Emmy and a big smile on his face, the next minute his head went sailing through the air,” said one eyewitness to what is now being referred to as the ‘Red Emmys’.

“Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner were stabbed through the heart, and the big lad who plays Sam got it in the neck. Even by Game of Thrones standards, it was fairly over the top”.

With so many members of the cast and crew slaughtered, fans are now fearing that next year’s season will focus mainly on Bran Stark as there’s basically nobody left at this stage.

(3) Constructed languages are the topic of a forthcoming documentary, Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues .

Featuring an overview of the history of constructed languages up to and through the amazing creations and initiatives of those who actively invent new tongues today, this film tells the rich story that has expanded far beyond Tolkien’s “secret vice.” It’s being made by the people who know the craft intimately for language lovers and a general audience alike.

 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/130812323?color=faa302&byline=0&portrait=0

And All Things Linguistic has an interview with the creators of the documentary in the Conlangery #112 podcast.

(4) Add this to the list of “Han Solo in Carbonite” products — a huge vinyl sticker for your door.

61zhoplVxSL__SY355_

 

(5) This year Gen Con featured another official beer, Drink Up and Prosper, from Sun King Brewing. According to the Indianapolis Star, not only was the brew available at the con, but it was put in cans and sold in stores.

sunking-genconcan

This will be the fourth year the brewery has partnered with the world’s largest gaming convention, and the fourth beer brewed specifically for the event….

Previous beers included Froth of Khan (2014), Flagon Slayer (2013) and Ale of Destiny (2012).

(6) The Pittsburgh Pirates major league baseball team recently dressed up as superheroes “in the greatest baseball-themed comic book crossover of all-time.”

After the Pirates defeated the Dodgers, 4-3, the team dressed up as superheroes before boarding their flight to Colorado — like, for example, Superman with an expert hair curl hanging out with Bane that came complete with appropriate Zack Snyder lighting.

A squadron of Marvel’s cinematic heroes hung out with either a Na’vi or a really off-brand Nightcrawler: …

 

(7) The Tor boycott continues to fade to invisibility as a news story. Here’s what I found searching Twitter for “Tor boycott” today.

It was the hyphenated “Doc-Tor” that triggered the result.

(8) And by strange coincidence, Adam-Troy Castro has written some good advice in his new blog post, “Writers: The Long-Term Benefits of Not Being An Ass”.

For the vast majority of artists, being an asshole to the people who give you money is not a good career move. You are not indispensable unless you’re an eminence of such towering fame that they are willing to bend heaven and Earth to keep you. And sometimes not even then. Fame is fleeting.

So one guy I’m thinking of, who has come out and described himself as one of the greatest writers of his generation, who says that his work is reeking with literary virtues that any number of others would give their left tits to be even shelved next to, who has been abusing his publisher in public and attacking his editors as people and in general making himself a horse pill – I think he’s in for a surprise, sooner or later, probably sooner. Writers who can sell the number of copies he sells, or more, are not exactly thin on the ground, and the vast majority of them will not be rallying their readers to send hate mail.

But this is not about him. This is about you, the struggling artist. And to you I have some strong advice.

Be a sweetheart.

Be the kind of artist who, when dropping by the publishing house, brings cookies. Or if not cookies, then at least a warm smile and a gracious manner.

(9) The Clarion Foundation has received a $100,000 donation from a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous. Clarion will use the donation to launch an endowment fund in support of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, held annually at UC San Diego.

Karen Joy Fowler, president of the Clarion Foundation, expressed profound appreciation for this generous gift. “This is tremendously important to all of us who have worked with, for, and on behalf of Clarion over the years. For us, the workshop is a labor of love. Having these funds in hand allows us to plan for the future in a way we’ve never been able to before. This gift provides a solid foundation on which we can build.”

“Our global civilization is now embarked on an unconstrained experiment in long-term sustainability, which we have to get right for the sake of the generations to come,” says Clarion Foundation Vice President Kim Stanley Robinson. “Science fiction stories, ranging from utopian to dystopian, are what we do now to imagine outcomes that help us evaluate our present practices. The Clarion workshop nurtures and trains writers to change the ways we think about the future, and it helps to connect the sciences and the arts at UC San Diego and around the world. We’re thrilled with this gift, which enables us to continue that crucial work.”

The Clarion Foundation partners with UCSD in the delivery of the workshop, with the foundation managing faculty selection and the admissions process and UCSD managing the six-week summer workshop. The foundation has annually conducted fundraising campaigns that allow it to provide about $12,000 in scholarships each year and to cover expenses.

(10) Aaron French compares horror traditions in “Past and Future: Esoteric and Exoteric Philosophy in Weird Fiction” on Nameless Digest.

As with everything else, the philosophy behind dark, weird, and horrific fiction has evolved over time. This philosophical evolution of horror fiction arguably began in earnest with Edgar Allan Poe – though Poe also nurtured a sense of romantic love, which conquers, as well as defeats, his harshest poetry, e.g. “Alone.” Bleaker still, and more callous in disregard of the human race, is H. P. Lovecraft, grandfather of the grim, who described his philosophical position as the following: “…by nature a skeptic and analyst… [I] settled early into my present general attitude of cynical materialism.”

….But if we turn our attention to the postmodern, a new speciation occurs in the writings of Thomas Ligotti, representing a philosophy so hopeless, malicious, and unorthodox that it gives readers pause, unintentionally flipping mental levers and bringing about unwelcome psychological changes.

(11) Here’s somebody else who has definitely flipped his mental levers — “Man angers neighbors by shining ‘alien’ fighting spotlights”:

Neighbors in the Virginia Road area of Hermitage said Arthur Brown, 78, shines the spotlights outside his foil-wrapped house at all hours of the day and night because he is afraid of extra-terrestrial attacks.

(12) From June of 1992, a YouTube clip from Arsenio Hall with guests William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, who are too funny. Shatner enters using a walker and a nurse pushes Nimoy in a wheelchair.

James H. Burns further comments:

Shatner and Nimoy even pitch their convention appearances at the Creation cons of my old pals, Gary Bermand and Adam Malin–

And most amazingly, Shatner talks about his hopes for Star Trek Seven, which he later helped turn into a pretty good Trek novel!

 

[Thanks to James H. Burns, Will R., Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rose Embolism.]

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

387 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/21 For the Scroll is Hollow and I have touched the Pixel”

  2. 1. Perdido Street Station
    For sheer exuberance of imagination. (Not Exuberance of Imam Nation, which would be an excellent cover band name, if you never wanted to fly in the US again.)

    2. Abstain.
    Haven’t read the Bujold and am not passionate enough about Privilege of the Sword to vote for it blind.

    3. The Goblin Emperor
    But only by a hair, and my answer might be different if the cat in my lap were facing the other way. I need a handful of forehead cloths, please.

    4. Tooth and Claw

  3. 1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  4. Lunar G, if you haven’t read Bujold’s Chalion books, oh, do, do, do! They are at the pinnacle of peerless Fantasy. Start with Curse of Chalion.

  5. Update on Kickstarter Long List Anthology
    New stretch goals for audiobook version (3 stretch goals). Approximately $500 away from the first audiobook goal.

    There are new rewards available. Are you an author considering adding audiobooks to your offerings? Check out the new rewards.

    If your a fan of Women Destroy Science Fiction – audiobooks rewards available.

    Sharing and/or pledging just $1 can really help a Kickstarter due to their algorithms.

  6. Ultragotha –
    Because you say so, along with so many other 770ers, I will put it on my virtual stack. I haven’t up until now because… Promise not to kick me off the island?… I didn’t really like the Miles Vorkosigan books that I have read. Really enjoyed the Cordelia books, but did not consider them genre shaping, then started the first omnibus of Miles stories, and got distracted… I have gone back a time or two for Hugo reading (Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance), and it has felt kinda fun, but not quite my cuppa. I know this is heresy.

  7. Scans bracket, prepares for difficult choices ahead

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  8. 21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    Oh. Ouch. Mieville, but only by a nose. Or a tentacle. Y’know, whatever.

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    Abstain, haven’t read the Kushner. But it’s now on the TBR pile from seeing all the love.

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    Another really close one, but I love love love the creepiness of Coraline.

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  9. 21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    You are history’s greatest monster.

  10. @LunarG the Chalion books are very different from the Miles books. It’s ok to not like the Milesverse. Here we don’t throw people out of the clubhouse for having different taste.

  11. @LunarG:

    I would like to subscribe to your heretical newsletter. I really enjoyed Falling Free, which I understand is in the Miles Universe, but the Cordelia and Miles books have just never connected with me. I deeply love Bujold’s Chalion books, though.

  12. Thanks, Meredith and Ultragotha for the info on JJ’s list. I didn’t have the mental energy to vote, but will be interested in the results.

  13. 1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    This wasn’t so bad, but next round….

    ::runs off to buy forehead cloth futures::

  14. LunarG ~~~edges cautiously away~~~

    Chalion is very different than Miles. Very, very different. And Paladin is different from Curse, though both are excellent.

    If you like Cordelia, Bujold is coming out with Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen in February. It’s set 3 years after Cryoburn and evidently concentrates on Cordelia (the Red Queen).

    You might enjoy her Sharing Knife books, too. Much slower paced and intimate than Vorkosigan or Chalion.

    If you haven’t read Ethan of Athos, I recommend that, too. No Miles.

  15. Thanks, Tasha Turner and Dawn Incognito! I did like Falling Free, too, so maybe it’s just Miles as a viewpoint character that doesn’t work for me. It is good to have assurances that her fantasy worlds have a different feel; I will certainly give them a try.

    The Miles books seem to inspire a very passionate fandom. Maybe if I had read them at a different stage in my life, they would clicked that way emotionally for me? But they were handed to me by someone who had set them up as the best books ever, and, well… That was too much hype.

  16. So if people were wondering, “What will Brian Z. troll the site about once the Hugo furor dies down?”, the answer turns out to be “Anything. Anything at all.”

    Today it was fairly easy to distract filers from playing with the troll. I doubt the trick will work twice. Although no one said “I saw what you did there”.

  17. @Will R, I can’t give you a whole essay on Orwell right now, but remember that final scene in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. The old song comes on: “Under the spreading Chesnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.” (The words of course actually go “I kissed you and you kissed me.”) His tears well up, the waiter brings more gin unasked. He imagines being sent back to the Ministry, being in the dock, making a public confession, and being executed with a bullet to his brain.

    That’s not about meeting Julia:

    Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses… He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike.

    What happened in the Chestnut Tree Cafe was a reprise of Chapter 7, which began:

    If there was hope, it MUST lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.

    Winston’s hopes were raised and then dashed when the crowd of hundreds he saw gathered in a market turned out to be a fight over saucepans.

    He remembered seeing Rutherford at the Chestnut Tree Cafe 19 years earlier, with two other original leaders of the Revolution, crying into his unordered gin when the Chestnut tree song came on. Then the three had appeared in the dock, confessed their “crimes,” and bullets entered their brains. Then Winston found a photograph proving it was all lies.

    Today, probably, he would have kept that photograph.

    And then he wrote:

    Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

    Orwell wanted us to remember that the next line after “under the spreading Chestnut tree,” should be Longfellow’s: “the village smithy stands.”

    Winston’s tears proved that he’d won.

  18. Ultragotha, truly, I am very well domesticated and almost entirely harmless. I am sure someone around here could vouch for me. Someone? Anyone?

    It’s just occasionally I hit a book or a series at an odd angle, and I go flying off all meh on Miles or gushing about Guu Gabriel Kay. Can’t be helped. 😉

    I may well give Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen a try. I have a fondness for Red Queens.

  19. @Mike Glyer

    I have parsed no Hoyts today…;

    Now I have this mental image of Johnny Cash singing:

    I Hoyt myself today
    To see if I still feel…

  21. @ Lis Carey — I wish my books were out in audio form! There is some peculiar and unknowable formula by which certain select books from my publisher are produced by Audible. I suspect that asking Audible about the availability of specific titles might possibly influence that formula.

    21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Abstain

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN

    You are evil, Evil EVIL! But there is one true nearly-perfect heartbreaker of a book and it is…

    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  22. 2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner

    It is the only one of those left that I’ve read and cared for. My favourites have a tendency to loose in the first round.

  23. 21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    Hmm. Both? 🙂

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  24. 21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    My favorite author in the bracket up against my least favorite book in the bracket.
    This is Perdido Street Station: _____
    This is me: BOING BOING BOING BOING

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    Abstain, not having read either, and unfair to vote down one based only on amazon previews.

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman
    NO FAIR. Both were visceral, wonderful books. No wait, perfectly fair. American Gods would’ve made this harder, but I’m okay with Coraline taking a hit.

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    Both very well done. Particularly the meat in Tooth & Claw (rimshot. Here all evening.) But Jonathan Strange set itself a much higher degree of difficulty and succeeded.

  25. LunarG: The Miles books seem to inspire a very passionate fandom. Maybe if I had read them at a different stage in my life, they would clicked that way emotionally for me? But they were handed to me by someone who had set them up as the best books ever, and, well… That was too much hype.

    For me, one of the refreshing things about Miles is that he started life with congenital alterations to the typical human form (from an attack on his pregnant mother). In other words, instead of the usual handsome, dashing hero, he’s short and twisted and not particularly attractive. But he succeeds at many things because he’s incredibly intelligent and a quick thinker, and he genuinely cares about other people, which tends to win him lots of loyalty.

    I think that really resonates with a lot of smart SFF fans who spent their school years — and perhaps much of their lives — being denigrated for their appearance.

    And his mother, Cordelia, is a fantastic female protagonist in the books which feature her, again for the same qualities exhibited by her son.

    Plus, even though the books all take place in a shared universe, each of them tends to feature a different theme, so they aren’t just re-treads of the last novel.

  26. 1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    3. Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  27. @ULTRAGOTHA: “RedWombat – Wait, isn’t Bob the sourdough?”

    No, I’m the sourpuss. Marlene’s boy Bob has the unicorn thing happening.

    @Tasha Turner: “Here we don’t throw people out of the clubhouse for having different taste.”

    True. We might give ’em some side-eye if they taste funny, but that’s about all.

    @Greg: “BOING BOING BOING BOING”

    Oh, dear. Greg’s gone Wakko again. Somebody catch him before he gives another belching recital… 🙂

  29. 1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

    Historical fact, you say?

  30. Greg: Abstain, not having read either, and unfair to vote down one based only on amazon previews.

    Don’t see why you can’t — after all, Aviation Muso does it all the time. 😉

  31. Two easy, two Freaking impossible.

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    TIE. These are both on the desert island stack. In fact, as I look at it, they’re literally one on top of the other.

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    (And the Goblin Emperor is on top of TPoTS. Coraline is merely behind me on the shelves. Though I’m tempted to pet it and tell it I still love it, too.)

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  32. Now the way becomes narrow and perilous, Kyra brackets will crush our hearts and push our favorites to the side.

    To vote !

    21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    Its the wrong Night Watch. I choose the New Weird. Perdido Street Station.

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    Krya’s brackets are CRUSHING MY SOUL … the Paladin of Souls had a deeper emotional tug. Bujold by a hair but only because it’s an even numbered day.

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    I stick with my Hugo vote. Mannerspunk for the win.

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    Gahhhhhhh. Clarke because I am also watching the BBC production.

  33. I wish more ebooks were being released in the UK. I’m tired of trying to Amazon wishlist/iBooks sample books I see people recommending only to find out they either aren’t available at all or only in dead tree form.

    The Privilege of the Sword must be really something to beat Temeraire DRAGONS but it is not for me, it seems.

  34. 1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    2. Haven’t read either, but plainly need to! No vote.

    3. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    4. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

    This is getting painful!

  35. @Rev Bob

    True. We might give ’em some side-eye if they taste funny, but that’s about all.

    I’m not tasting anyone. I’m not a canibal. Did you mean:

    True. We might give ’em some side-eye if they have funny taste, but that’s about all.

    I can agree with that.

  36. @Tasha

    No, no, the initiation rite is a regular licks you, and then if you taste funny you’re considered suspect. Duh.

  37. @Meredith

    I wish more ebooks were being released in the UK. I’m tired of trying to Amazon wishlist/iBooks sample books I see people recommending only to find out they either aren’t available at all or only in dead tree form.

    No good library by you? Have you tried Kobo or Shmaswords? Do you have Overdrive over there? Look into Scribd. If you do book reviews on a blog/Amazon/Goodreads have you joined Netgalley?

    The Trad publishing licensing stuff is really confusing. I’m not sure there is any way to encourage publishers to pick up/exercise foreign rights to books. I doubt dog piling on an author that you want the ebook available in the UK would be appreciated. On the US Amazon website they have a “thing” to click saying “I want this in kindle”. I’m not sure how it works exactly. I’m always afraid for older books/backlist I’m screwing the author over on getting their ebook rights if I click the thing.

    If I stop making sense it’s because it’s 4am and my sleeping meds aren’t working.

    Edited to add: you can always ask authors for copies of their books if they are members here or if you “know them”. When I started doing book reviews 60% of the authors I knew sent me copies of their books to read for review. Many continue to do so even though I haven’t kept up my blog in over a year.

  38. @Meredith

    No, no, the initiation rite is a regular licks you, and then if you taste funny you’re considered suspect. Duh.

    Eww showers, sanitizing wipes, and toothbrushing and still grossss

  39. @Tasha Turner

    My local library service just had the funding cut out from underneath them, and I doubt they’d have access to ebooks I couldn’t find online. I’m not even sure they lend ebooks…

    Things just don’t seem to get the rights sorted over here. I assume there are reasons for it, but it is annoying.

  40. 1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    2. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    3. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    At this rate I’m going to want Mieville vs Clarke in the final.

  41. In the final chapter, as Winston sat in the Chestnut Tree and listened to the latest propaganda about war with Eurasia,

    Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:
    2+2=5

    Still fighting, right up to the end, he hallucinated hearing on the telescreen the song that had made Rutherford cry. The actual song that played in 1965 went “I kissed you and you kissed me,” but years later, Winston had discovered and destroyed out of fear a photograph that could have taken Big Brother down by proving to the world that Rutherford was not a spy. That we have not always been at war with Eastasia. Once Winston realized that his real crime had been to betray society by dropping the evidence down the Memory Hole, those lyrics were transformed in his memory: “I sold you and you sold me.” As he imagined hearing that song play, he was holding onto his memory of the photograph, and to some part of his dignity.

    Then everything changed:

    A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! … He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy’s rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: ‘Vast strategic manoeuvre — perfect co-ordination — utter rout — half a million prisoners — complete demoralization — control of the whole of Africa — bring the war within measurable distance of its end — victory — greatest victory in human history — victory, victory, victory!’

    …He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago — yes, only ten minutes — there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

    On hearing this final piece of blatant, ludicrous, absurd propaganda, Winston realized, even if only unconsciously, that Big Brother would lose. Big Brother had told yet another huge, glaring, transparent lie, and there would be still more evidence, and sooner or later they would fail. Winston was finally ready to let go, and stop blaming himself for his failure to be Longfellow’s Smith, after having at least a glimpse of absolution.

  42. > “Ultragotha, truly, I am very well domesticated and almost entirely harmless. I am sure someone around here could vouch for me. Someone? Anyone?”

    I will vouch that LunarG has never once bitten me.

  43. So, if I had predicted the Final Eight based on performance in the heats, it would have looked like this:

    The Goblin Emperor, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, His Majesty’s Dragon, Perdido Street Station, Night Watch, Coraline, Paladin of Souls

    So, similar, but definitely not exact. Both Tooth and Claw and The Privilege of the Sword have been much more successful than their heat scores might have indicated. And it’s not an anomaly caused by accidental easy matchups; The Privilege of the Sword, for example, is the work that knocked His Majesty’s Dragon out of the Final Eight, and Tooth and Claw has definitely not been going up against lightweights (and it’s as of this moment tied with JS&MN in the current round.) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had slightly bad luck last round, missed being seeded by one vote, and went up against Paladin of Souls; on the other hand, it’s hard to say how it would have done against any of the other seven works currently up there; there is, after all, only room for eight. So, I’d say performance in the Heats is indicative, but can’t be used as an absolute guide to what’s going to make it.

  44. Delurking to vote:
    21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FOUR

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Abstain.

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    Coraline, Neil Gaiman

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  45. Bracket! I hope I’m on time for this one.

    1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    Ouch. And also: huh. I wouldn’t even have guessed this would be my choice. But after much wringing out of cloths, there it is.

    2. Paladin of Souls, and good grief, dice.

    3. Coraline, a surprisingly easy one.

    4. Noooooooooo. No. No. Tie.

  47. Hooo boy….

    1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

    2. THE SWORDSWOMAN AND THE PALADIN
    The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    4. STORIES OF HISTORICAL FACT
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

  48. 1. EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY
    Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

    3. MOVING HOUSE
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    Because I like doomed causes, apparently.

  49. I had forgotten that Winston sheds a tear when he hears the song. Truly, that must be the thinnest possible argument for the indefatigable human spirit, but I must admit an argument can be made. I disagree (I think he’s mourning his own failure rather than continuing to long for her) but I see it could be argued.

    Still, methinks this is not the thrust of Hoyt. If an ultraliberal socialist can fashion a grimdark messagehammer of misery like 1984, then what wouldn’t be OK for Human Wave? Examples, please, for Confused Reader is Confused. Why isn’t AJ OK? It’s a similar story in many ways.

    Short of a cardboard Winston actively joining Big Brother, donning a brown shirt and enthusiastically stamping out wrongthink well before forced to, how could the story have had any less faith in the ultimate triumph of humanity? Orwell would have made it darker if he could have.

Comments are closed.