(1) SFWA IN A TENT. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America had a tent at this year’s Baltimore Book Festival. Here’s some highlights.
"How to Come Across As A Pro Writer" panel at #bmorebookfest #sfwa tent now! pic.twitter.com/myowfArRQV
— Sarah Pinsker (@SarahPinsker) September 23, 2016
(2) OVERTIME. William Patrick Maynard tells how “Phileas Fogg Finds Immortality” at Black Gate.
When Jules Verne created gentleman adventurer Phileas Fogg in his 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, he had no way of imagining the bizarre turn his character’s chronicles would take a century later. When Philip Jose Farmer added The Other Log of Phileas Fogg to his Wold Newton Family series in 1973, he had no way of imagining that four decades later there would exist a Wold Newton specialty publisher to continue the esoteric literary exploits of some of the last two centuries’ most fantastic characters.
(3) HOW THIS YEAR’S HUGO BASES WERE MADE. Read artist Sara Felix’s Facebook post about creating the bases. And there’s an Instagram from the company that did the fabrication.
(4) HUGO LOSER DIFFERENT FROM JUST PLAIN LOSER. The Vancouver Sun ran an article on Sebastian de Castell, with a Puppyish spin on events, “The time George R.R. Martin called Vancouver writer Sebastien de Castell a loser”.
It was nothing personal, though. In fact, it had little to do with de Castell at all. De Castell was at the annual celebration of science fiction and fantasy writing/fandom because he had made the Hugo shortlist for best new writer. De Castell figured he would lose to Andy Weir of The Martian fame — he was correct in this prediction — and he assumed Martin believed the same thing.
But Martin was also reacting to the fact that de Castell had been nominated in part because of the efforts of two fan voting blocs: the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. The Puppies groups have caused chaos in the Hugo Awards and the broader sci-fi and fantasy communities lately by trying to fight what they see as the takeover of the awards by “social justice warriors” who vote for politically correct works at the expense of good writing and storytelling. Both the Sad Puppies, created by bestselling author Larry Correia, and the Rabid Puppies, launched by right-wing writer Vox Day, have put forward slates of suggested writers and works to vote for, and de Castell wound up on just such a list much to his surprise.
Sebastien de Castell elaborated in this Reddit thread: As Peter [reporter Peter Darbyshire] noted in the article, George R.R. Martin wasn’t being hurtful towards me at all–he was simply calling it as he saw it and, of course, was completely correct in his assessment. My mature, adult self understood that there was nothing ungracious on his part in our very brief encounter. My eight year-old inner self, of course, had quite reasonably been expecting his first words to me to be, “What? Sebastien de Castell? By Jove, chap, I’ve been looking all over for you in order to praise your works as the finest in a generation. Also, because I’d love your thoughts on the final books in A Song of Ice & Fire…I happen to have some early pages here if you’d like to read them?”
That’s what Peter and I were discussing in that portion of the interview–the gap for me between feeling like a “big time author” and coming face-to-face with the reality of being a guy who’s really still very much in the early stages of his career.
The most interesting thing about WorldCon (MidAmericon II) for me was how kind people were to me overall. I was very cognizant that my presence on the Campbell shortlist was controversial and likely painful to a lot of people within that community. They had every reason to suspicious and even dismissive of me, but in fact folks were generous and welcoming. David Gerrold gave me some excellent advice on completing the final book in the Greatcoats series, Alyssa Wong was terrific and fun to hang out with (we were the only two Campbell nominees in attendance so our official photos got pretty silly), and I got to spend some time chatting with the brilliant Michael Swanwick.
(5) DC EXPLORING 2024 WORLDCON BID. Their polished website suggests a group that is doing more than just thinking about it, however, they say DC in 2024 is still in the exploratory stage.
We are members of the Baltimore-Washington Area Worldcon Association, Inc. (BWAWA). In 2013, we launched DC17, a bid to host the 2017 Worldcon in Washington, DC at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel… but we lost to Worldcon 75.
We’re back to explore the possibility of hosting the 82nd Worldcon in 2024. Washington, DC is still a super location for a World Science Fiction Convention and we believe it’s time Worldcon returned to DC for the third time. The year 2024 will be the 50th anniversary of Discon II, the last DC Worldcon.
We are still very early in the planning stage. Please check back for information on supporting our bid and our future activities. Our social media links are also still under construction.
They’re exploring right now – but I expect they’ll find they’re bidding if they keeping looking.
(6) WEINBERG OBIT. SF Site News reports Robert Weinberg (1946-2016) passed away today.
Author Robert Weinberg (b.1946) died on September 25. Weinberg began publishing fiction in 1967 and from 1970 to 1981 edited the fanzine Pulp about pulp magazines. He wrote for Marvel Comics and was known for his art collection. Weinberg also ran a mail order book business until 1997. Weinberg received a special committee award at Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon.
Here is the citation that was read at Chicon 7 when Weinberg was presented with his Special Committee Award.
Each year, the Worldcon committee is entitled to recognize someone who has made a difference in our community. Someone who has made science fiction fandom a better place. This can be a fan, an author, a bookseller, a collector, a con-runner, or someone who fits into all those and more. This year, Chicon 7 is pleased to recognize someone who fits into all of those categories.
Robert Weinberg attended his first meeting of the Eastern SF Association in 1963, discovered the club offered something he liked, and became active, eventually becoming the club’s president in 1968. Maintaining an interest in the pulp magazines which formed so much of the basis for what we read today, Bob published fourteen issues of the fanzine, Pulp, from 1974 through 1980.
In 1968, Bob began publishing readers guides to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, eventually expanding both to book length and publishing additional guides and books about the pulp magazines and the authors who wrote for them. 1973 saw his publication of WT50, an anniversary tribute to Weird Tales, a magazine to which Bob would acquire the rights in 1979 and help revive.
Bob is a collector of science fiction and fantasy art from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, working to preserve art which otherwise might have been lost. His interest in art collection also led to him writing A Biographical Dictionary of SF & Fantasy Artists, which served as a basis for Chicon 7’s Guest of Honor Jane Frank’s own A Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.
Beginning in 1976, Bob began serving as the co-chairman of the Chicago Comicon, then the second largest comic book convention in the United States. He continued in that position for twenty years before it was sold to Wizard Entertainment. During that time, Bob also chaired the World Fantasy Convention when it came to Chicago on two different occasions and in 1978 he co-chaired the first major Doctor Who convention in the United States.
Bob has also written his own books, both non-fiction and fiction.. His first novel, The Devil’s Auction, was published in 1988 with more than a dozen novels and collections to follow. He worked with Martin H. Greenberg to edit and publish numerous anthologies beginning in the 1980s.
Not content to write his own books and monographs, run conventions, and collect art, Bob also, for several years, ran the mail-order Weinberg Books. Bob offered advice to Alice Bentley when she was setting up The Stars Our Destination, a science fiction specialty bookstore in Chicago from 1988 through 2003. In 1997, Bob sold his mail order business to Alice.
Bob’s long career as a fan, author, bookseller, collector, and con-runner has helped make science fiction the genre, and the community, it is today. Chicon 7 would like to recognize Robert Weinberg for his years of service and devotion given to advancing the field of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
(7) PETERSON OBIT. First Fandom member Robert C. Peterson (1921-2016) died August 15. John Coker III wrote the following appreciation:
Robert C. Peterson (May 30, 1921 – August 15, 2016)
Robert Constant Peterson passed away on August 15 after a brief illness. He is survived by his four sons, John, James, Alan, and Douglas, and his grandchildren, Katherine, Eric, Diana, and Jay.
Robert was preceded in death by his wife of over 50 years, Winifred.
Robert graduated in 1942 from the University of Wyoming and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was an avid hiker and was an active member of the Colorado Mountain Club. He led hikes for the club until just before he turned 80. He met his wife, Winifred, on a mountain club hike.
Robert was an early fan of science fiction. In 1994 he was elected to the First Fandom Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he received the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award in recognition of his SF collection.
Robert and Winifred were lifelong members of the Washington Park United Church of Christ and were strong supporters of social justice. They supported Winifred’s sister Gretchen in her work at the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in Japan. Robert and Winifred travelled extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world.
In lieu of flowers contributions can be made to the American Friends of the ARI (http://www.friends-ari.org/).
(8) GARMAN OBIT. Jack Garman (1944-2016), credited with a judgment call that saved the first moon landing, died September 20 at the age of 72.
On July 20, 1969, moments after mission control in Houston had given the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, the O.K. to begin its descent to the moon, a yellow warning light flashed on the cockpit instrument panel. “Program alarm,” the commander, Neil Armstrong, radioed. “It’s a 1202.”
The alarm appeared to indicate a computer systems overload, raising the specter of a breakdown. With only a few minutes left before touchdown on the moon, Steve Bales, the guidance officer in mission control, had to make a decision: Let the module continue to descend, or abort the mission and send the module rocketing back to the command ship, Columbia.
By intercom, Mr. Bales quickly consulted Jack Garman, a 24-year-old engineer who was overseeing the software support group from a back-room console. Mr. Garman had painstakingly prepared himself for just this contingency — the possibility of a false alarm.
“So I said,” he remembered, “on this backup room voice loop that no one can hear, ‘As long as it doesn’t reoccur, it’s fine.’”
At 4:18 p.m., with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining for the descent, Mr. Armstrong radioed: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
Mr. Garman, whose self-assurance and honed judgment effectively saved mankind’s first lunar landing, died on Tuesday outside Houston. He was 72. His wife, Susan, said the cause was complications of bone marrow cancer.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- September 25, 1959 — Hammer’s The Mummy, seen for the first time in the UK on this day.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born September 25, 1930 — Shel Silverstein
- Born September 25, 1951 – Mark Hamill
- Born September 25, 1952 — Christopher Reeve
(11) JUST BEFORE THE FINAL FRONTIER. Need an excuse to feel miserable? Read “Leonard Nimoy Died Hating William Shatner” at About Entertainment.
(12) CULTURAL APPROPRIATION DEBATE. Kaitlyn Greenidge makes some trenchant comments in “Who Gets To Write What?” for the New York Times.
…Claudia Rankine, when awarded the MacArthur genius grant this past week, noted that the prize was “the culture saying: We have an investment in dismantling white dominance in our culture. If you’re trying to do that, we’re going to help you.” For some, this sounds exciting. For others, this reads as a threat — at best, a suggestion to catch up and engage with a subject, race, that for a long time has been thought of as not “universal,” not “deep” enough for fiction. The panic around all of this is driving these outbursts.
It must feel like a reversal of fate to those who have not been paying attention. The other, who has been relegated to the background character, wise outcast, dash of magic, or terror or cool or symbolism, or more simply emotional or physical whore, is expected to be the main event, and some writers suspect that they may not be up for that challenge.
A writer has the right to inhabit any character she pleases — she’s always had it and will continue to have it. The complaint seems to be less that some people ask writers to think about cultural appropriation, and more that a writer wishes her work not to be critiqued for doing so, that instead she get a gold star for trying.
Whenever I hear this complaint, I am reminded of Toni Morrison’s cool assessment of “anti-P.C. backlash” more than 20 years ago: “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
This debate, or rather, this level of the debate, is had over and over again, primarily because of an unwillingness on one side to consider history or even entertain a long line of arguments in response. Instead, what often happens is a writer or artist acts as though she is taking some brave stand by declaring to be against political correctness. As if our entire culture is not already centered on a very particular version of whiteness that many white people don’t even inhabit anymore. And so, someone makes a comment or a statement without nuance or sense of history, only with an implicit insistence that writing and publishing magically exist outside the structures of power that dominate every other aspect of our daily lives.
Imagine the better, stronger fiction that could be produced if writers took this challenge to stretch and grow one’s imagination, to afford the same depth of humanity and interest and nuance to characters who look like them as characters who don’t, to take those stories seriously and actually think about power when writing — how much further fiction could go as an art.
(13) THE VOX DAY FASHION SHOW. Day spared no effort to fit into the theme of a 5K he ran — “The Color Run: a story of courage, endurance, and ninjas, part I”.
Spacebunny and Vox Day.
We got up very early, so early that it was pretty much a toss of the coin as to whether I’d just stay up all night or not, and made the drive to Lausanne, Switzerland, where we met our friends with whom we were doing the run. We changed in the parking lot, where it was much appreciated how my multicolored tutu nicely matched the colorful logo of the t-shirts we were provided. It was rather cold, which inspired Spacebunny to deliver an equally colorful soliloquy in appreciation for the generosity of the donors who were the reason she was wearing nothing but a bikini under her tutu.
Which, of course, was not as pretty as mine, as hers was only yellow. I pointed out that she would probably be glad to not be wearing very much in the way of clothing once we started running and the sun rose a bit higher in the sky, an intelligent observation that impressed her to such an extent that she expressed a keen wish to feel my teeth in her flesh, a sentiment that she managed to phrase in an admirably succinct manner. She was also delighted to discover that while there were people wearing everything from unicorn suits to dragon outfits, she was the only runner in a bikini.
The Color Run happens in hundreds of town internationally in the course of a year:
The Color Run is a five-kilometer, un-timed event in which thousands of participants, or “Color Runners”, are doused from head to toe in different colors at each kilometer. With only two rules, the idea is easy to follow:
1Wear white at the starting line!
2Finish plastered in color!
After Color Runners complete the race, the fun continues with an unforgettable Finish Festival. This larger than life party is equipped with music, dancing and massive color throws, which create millions of vivid color combinations. Trust us, this is the best post-5k party on the planet!
(14) REAL NEWS AND A FAKE TRAILER. From Den of Geek, “Doctor Who Spinoff: Class – Latest News”.
Peter Capaldi will be appearing in the first episode of Class! The show announced the good news via its social media accounts.
We also know that the show’s first two episodes will premiere in the UK on October 22nd. The Twitter account also announced the titles of the first two episodes: “For Tonight We Might Die” and “The Coach With the Dragon Tattoo.” Whoa. That first one is dark and that second one really does sound like it could be a Buffy episode….
Sadly, we don’t yet have an official trailer for Class, though we do have an amazing fanmade one that is pretty brilliant in showing a potential tone of the show and put it into context within the larger Doctor Who universe. It gives a sense of just how ingrained the Coal Hill School has been in the Doctor Who world.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver, Bartimaeus, Andrew Porter, JJ, Cat Rambo, A wee Green Man, and John King Tarpinian, for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor IanP.]
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By my figures, de Castell wouldn’t even have made the longlist without the slates, much less been a finalist.
You may wish to correct the date in the item 6 headline:
OBIT. SF Site News reports Robert Weinberg (1946-2012) passed away today.
Did I fall asleep in the time machine again? 2012 of which calendar? are we before or after the chinchilla uprising?
Michael Kennedy: Thanks for the save — fixed now. Appertain yourself the beverage of your choice!
@Greg: That matches my calculations as well.
@Aaron for a real challenge, try to compute how many Puppies defied Vox Day and refused to nominate File 770. (Hint: almost all of them.) Lots didn’t nominate Seveneves or Penric’s Demon, but File770 is the only place where most of them wouldn’t do it.
I recall several saying they wouldn’t vote for anything Tor related as well.
@Aaron, I tested that, but could find no evidence for it. I found the File 770 anomaly first and was disappointed that I didn’t find anything else quite like it. I tried dropping the hostages (and the Seveneves and Penric’s numbers are signficant), I tried dropping the lowest-scoring works, the works with the worst EPH deflators, the Tor works, etc., but never found anything else that amounted to over 10 votes.
Interesting. I noted last year that at least some Beale supporters demonstrated they would not support women. When Beale dropped off the ballot in long form editor in 2015 in the runoff voting, there were only three women left on the ballot. Fully half of Beale’s votes had no further choice, meaning they refused to vote for Weisskopf (or either of the other two women) even though Beale had recommended her as the first choice in that category.
To be honest, there is a Weisskopf drop, but only about 40 votes. (That is, if I divide the Rabids into two slates, where slate #2 doesn’t have Weisskopf in it, then it removes 40 votes from Weisskopf. I treated anything under 70 as insignificant, though)
I think I’m going to modify the code to let me subtract the main slates and then look for accidental slates in the remainder. I’m thinking of checking things like all-male or all-female lists, Rocket Stack Rank as a slate, the Nebulas as a slate, etc. However, I’m not expecting to find anything. When you look at the EPH data, the slates really jump off the page. Once I’ve removed them, only one or two items across all categories still look suspicious.
@Aaron, a lot of the folks who voted for Vox appear to have voted for no one else. I’ve been calling these “Lazy Puppies.” They don’t vote in all categories, and when they do, they just vote for one or two things. If you subtract those, I think it looks more like 20% to 25% of them won’t nominate a woman.
@Greg, if that’s supposed to be a link in your first comment, it’s not working.
(4) HUGO LOSER DIFFERENT FROM JUST PLAIN LOSER. – Huh. That Sun article…is that the fastest (2nd paragraph/ 3rd sentence) that an article points out the error in the headline?
@Bonnie McDaniel
Wonder what went wrong. Here’s the original link:
http://www.rocketstackrank.com/p/2016-hugo-nominations-organic-estimate.html
And here’s a link to the article that explains how I came up with the numbers:
http://www.rocketstackrank.com/2016/09/reanalysis-of-slate-voting-in-2016-hugo.html
Sorry about that!
Home and in my own bed, with my dogs. Listening to Arthur C. Clarke stories. Not happy to see all the obits.
Asleep soon.
Two Audible credits burning a virtual hole in my virtual pocket. Think about making recs, if you want to.
Good night.
(1) SFWA IN A TENT. Aw, I didn’t know about the Baltimore Book Festival or big SFWA presence. Shoot. I’d heard about the DC one, but it didn’t look interesting to me (barely any authors I recognized). If I’d known there was a Baltimore one at the same time! Well, who knows, but in Kendall Fantasy Land, I’d’ve camped out at the SFWA mini-SF con there. 😉 And grazed elsewhere, of course. Anyway, it looks like it was great!
(3) HOW THIS YEAR’S HUGO BASES WERE MADE. I’d like to see pictures from other angle, to see the rest of the base art. Or a picture of the base sans rocket.
(5) DC EXPLORING 2024 WORLDCON BID. They keep hoping/trying! I’d go (zero travel costs, yay!).
So the Teddy Boys don’t even want token women. Not surprised from the He-Man Woman-Haters Club.
(13) Teddy’s mighty chubby and balding for such an ubermensch as he claims to be. But he’s taking place in a rip-off of the Hindu festival Holi, so that makes him happy.
@lurkertype
I think they’re okay with women “in their place.” As a gay man, I’m not 100% sure what that really means, but I strongly suspect it rules out writing SFF. 🙂
(12)
Maybe it’s because I’m tired but her essay read like a mish-mash of thoughts she was trying to link together.
But her last couple of paragraphs did help me figure out that what I’ve been taking from the whole appropriation issue is that the underlying thread is “you’re not writing how I think you should”.
ObSFReading: I just finished Belt Three by John Ayliff, which is still $2.99 in the USA and £2.49 in the UK, at least in some stores. I liked this far future SF story of humanity near extinction thanks to destructo-machines of, well, not really uncertain origin. Interesting, dire future. The haves and have-nots are, respectively, “true-born” and clones (“tank-born”), plus some ancillary-like “servitors” (people mind-wiped and controlled like robots, their personalities gone; not really like ancillaries in that they’re not part of a larger whole). The human/clone issue was woven into the world-building and plotting nicely, I felt.
I had a few minor issues here and there, like the time scale of historical events was a bit confusing (and the reality seemed too short) and the masses apparently not knowing the real history. A longer time scale IMHO would’ve made the latter issue more realistic – a minor quibble, though.
BTW it’s (gasp) not part of a series! 😀 For some reason, I’m in an SF mood these days, leaning towards stand-alones/short series. So next up is probably Behind the Throne (#1 of 2, methinks), already on the shelf, sample previously enjoyed. 🙂
An advance comment on something likely to be slated by the Rabid Puppies next year (assuming they don’t decide to drop Jim Butcher)
There’s a new anthology coming out (Shadowed Souls) co-edited by Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes. Butcher’s novelette brings out the best parts of his storytelling and doesn’t require much setup of the story issues (although long time Dresden readers are familiar with the two characters the story focuses on). It also brings in some Cthulhu related stuff for the bad guys. Since Butcher won’t have a novel out this year, its likely this will get slated in the short fiction categories. It does also have a Seanan McGuire succubus story in it as well as a number of other authors.
Side note, the spell check on here does have Cthulhu in it…
12. (Harold Osler) But her last couple of paragraphs did help me figure out that what I’ve been taking from the whole appropriation issue is that the underlying thread is “you’re not writing how I think you should”.
Oddly not how I read it. She points out her own trouble in writing from the point of view of an old white woman, and how she had to empathize with the character before it seemed to work. If she’s telling us anything about writing, it’s to think harder when writing about a different character/culture.
I’m sure there are critics out there who want a kind of locked-down, cultural copyright, but Ms. Greenidge does not seem to be one of them.
No ticky. Sadness.
I liked reading (12) and have vague swirly thoughts that will not be grasped. Ah well.
Just finished Authority and am quite enjoying this creepy triptych by Jeff VanderMeer. Appectance will have to wait until I’ve finished at least one of my inter-library loan books.
Enjoyed a micro-short from Daily Science Fiction: “The Flock” by Melissa Mead.
4. is a pretty massive misunderstanding of the whole puppy/slating issue, the Hugo losers’ party and why Sebastien de Castell ended up under “No Award” through no real fault of his own. And BTW, I voted Sebastien de Castell above “No Award” and also above the eventual winner Andy Weir, though below Alyssa Wong.
Coincidentally, this reminds me that many years ago I read a good article about Jules Verne by someone with the surname Derbyshire. When I checked out what else Mr. Derbyshire had written, I found a lot of very rightwing stuff.
Speaking of the Southern Reach trilogy, sort of, I have a silly brain question. Does anyone else here find that their mind has— either for obvious reasons of two things being encountered at the same time, or for totally mysterious reasons, but in the absence of any explicit reference between the two— decided to permanently associate a book with some piece of music? Because this has happened to me with the Southern Reach books and the Tune-Yards album Nikki Nack. I can’t think about the one without remembering things from the other, even though (despite some thematic overlap here and there) the album is not really about cosmic horror.
In this case I can reconstruct what the chain of association probably was: 1. I happen to know that Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards attended Smith College in Northampton, Mass.; 2. I first read those books before and during a visit to Northampton. Simple as that, but once that association was made, it couldn’t be unmade. And I’m just curious if anyone else has developed particularly funny pairings like that.
(4) seems to me more clickbait-y than Puppy-ish.
The only thing it’s actually describing is this one bit:
…and spends the whole rest of the article dancing around the points that
1. This wasn’t mean-spirited or insulting on Martin’s side, and
2. de Castell must have been devastated, absolutely devastated, in some fannish 8-year old manner, or else we couldn’t justify this article.
tl;dr: “George R.R. Martin Called Somebody a Loser” gets more clicks than “De Castell is Unlikely Campbell Nominee; Has Nice Time.”
Standback: seems to me more clickbait-y …and spends the whole rest of the article dancing around the points that
1. This wasn’t mean-spirited or insulting on Martin’s side, and
2. de Castell must have been devastated, absolutely devastated, in some fannish 8-year old manner, or else we couldn’t justify this article.
Yeah, totally missing the fact that all of the Hugo winners, plus a whole lot of other people, are also invited to that party. I think GRRM said there were 450-some attendees. (envious??? you betcha)
Dawn Incognito: Just finished Authority and am quite enjoying this creepy triptych by Jeff VanderMeer. Appectance will have to wait until I’ve finished at least one of my inter-library loan books.
OMG, I can’t believe I missed that there’s another book in the series, in which the biologist is rushed to the hospital for a life-saving operation to remove an infected redundant body part! 😉
LOL! Excellent typo response, JJ. I thought there was something not quite right with it but what with phone typing/tired sad funk (the worst kind of funk! Give me funky Temptations or Parliament any day 😉 ) I completely missed it. Now to be rendered immortal in the Scroll.
I don’t know if I have the authority (hah) to instruct you to appertain yourself a beverage. If I do, appertain away!
(And now to bed. Nighty night.)
Dawn Incognito, the Southern Reach Trilogy is really not what I would call “my sort of thing” at all — and I would not be interested in reading books like that on a frequent basis.
Nevertheless, I found the imagination which went into making up the details of the three books really amazing. If you can handle not really getting any answers in the end (which I admit is a real challenge for me *cough*ThisCensusTaker*cough*), it is a really interesting read.
@Eli: It’s pretty common for me to end up with musical associations like that, yes.
@Lee Whiteside
A Butcher that stands alone fairly well sounds interesting, so if there are some other good names in the ToC then I may check it out.
I am suitably sceptical about Butcher getting the headline as editor – Hughes is the established editor of the pair. Probably inevitable from a marketing POV though.
I am glad SdC has a sense of perspective. He seems a decent bloke.
Quite enjoyed the first of his books. Flawed in parts, but that’s first novels for you.
@Eli: Not specifically with Southern Reach, but I do tend to find that if I over-listen to something as I’m reading a book (no matter how ill-suited they might be) every time I listen to the song I’m reminded of random scenes from the book I was reading at the time.
Gormenghast has become inextricably associated with “Familiar Light” by Asobi Seksu. I don’t really mind so much as I love both the book and the song, but they have very little in common.
Oryx & Crake has the same thing going on with a band called School Food Punishment. (I started listening to their EP on my commute right around the time I started reading the book and my obsession with it lasted just about as long as it took me to get through O&C)
Probably the best music/activity pairing I’ve ever had was when I would hear the Sonic boss battle theme every single time my phone rang at my first job. (I was terrified of speaking to customers on the phone as I’d had little-to-no training on the phones and how to do all the security questions etc that need to be asked of customers who phone a bank up for any reason)
I thought De Castell was a very deserving Campbell Nominee.
I thought de Castiel was still under seasoned – I put him under No Award, but I cast a vote for him, something the puppychow under No Award did not get.
(Neimmer can just sod off. No vote for him.)
12.) “It’s the wish not so much to be able to write a character of another race, but to do so without criticism.”
This is bullshit.
The problem is not wanting “no criticism.” What isn’t wanted is an angry mob on twitter and tumblr breaking out the torches and pitchforks every time someone writes something that deviates in the slightest degree from the very latest consensus in identity politics. Death threats and calls for boycotts of publishers and sponsors unless the writer is denounced. Demands that the author not only apologize for writing something that hurts their feelings, but that they apologize in the “right” way, with the proper amount of sincerity and heartfelt remorse (tears, while not strictly necessary, are a big plus.)
The problem is that every single molehill becomes the next mountain that those who center their lives around being offended and making the least charitable interpretation possible of someone’s meaning and their character, and that anyone in the public eye (or even with the potential of being in the public eye) is at risk of being the next target of the internet two-minute hate, to be called a racist, a misogynist, and more because you only achieved the good instead of the perfect. The Benjanun Sriduangkaew-type mobs on the left are every bit as vile, toxic, and destructive as the Vox Day and Milo Yiannopoulos-type mobs on the right.
And you can never be good enough for those who live and breathe identity politics. For example, don’t have enough positive female and POC characters in comics? Marvel works at creating some. Except–that won’t be good enough until the characters are wrested from the hands of the character’s creators and given to women and POC to write!
With identity politics, the only winning move is not to play.
…and that anyone in the public eye (or even with the potential of being in the public eye) is at risk of being the next target of the internet two-minute hate, to be called a racist, a misogynist, and more…
“It’s the wish not so much to be able to write a character of another race, but to do so without criticism. And at the heart of that rather ludicrous request is a question of power…”
I thought De Castell’s work in the Campbell packet was a creditable work by a new author (I had some minor issues with him taking the easy path ofyrg’f sevqtr gur CBI punenpgre’f jvsr gb cebivqr tevzqnex haraqvat zbgvingvba gung vf tevzqnex naq haraqvat, naq, bu, ol gur jnl, tevzqnex, but overall I thought he was not misplaced to be on the Campbell ballot, even if a puppy nominee. But I thought Wong and Weir were both better.
Fine. If an internet hate mob going out of their way to attempt to make someone’s life as miserable as possible over a disagreement over how a fictional character is written is mere “criticism”, then GamerGate really is “just about ethics in game journalism.” After all, Zoe Quinn is just getting some criticism. Same with Lesley Jones on Twitter. Just some criticism.
If you can lightly brush off mobs when they are on your own ideological side, then you have no right to complain about mobs that aren’t on your ideological side.
I thought De Castell was a very deserving Campbell Nominee.
That’s a different question from the question of whether he was on the final ballot solely due to Puppy slating. I don’t think there is any way to evaluate the Hugo nominations and come to any conclusion other than that he would not have been a Campbell finalist but for the Rabid Puppies putting him on their slate.
The question of deserving is a relative one. No one is deserving or undeserving in the abstract. One has to ask if de Castell was more deserving than writers like Kelly Robson or Becky Chambers. I think the answer to that question is no, but as quality assessments are inherently subjective to at least some extent opinions can vary.
Death threats and calls for boycotts of publishers and sponsors unless the writer is denounced.
Examples please. Your diatribe is long on assertions and short on evidence.
Look out everyone! The orcish horde of nithings are at the gates!
Today we’re gonna party like it’s 2009, apparently. 🙁
@Mark
I think Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes have coedited quite a few urban fantasy anthologies. Shadowed Souls also includes a story by Seanan McGuire, one by Rob Thurman, a fine and very underrated urban fantasy author, and one by Kevin J. Anderson. Looks like a very good line-up with the Anderson the most likely meh story.
I will report back once I’ve actually read the anthology, but it looks good.
Darren Garrison:
Is this where we tell you to go to hell because you complain about others writing? When you are so offended that one of the fans of Brian Michael Bendis actually dares to have opinions? Would everything be better if everyone here shut up if we didn’t heap praise on authors? Forbid any kind of critique? Because you are arguing against a very polite article as if it was the beginning of the apocalypse itself.
You really are getting ridiculous now.
Yay, didn’t know that existed as an english word! 😀
@Aaron
I would have preferred both Becky Chambers and Kelly Robson to Sebastien de Castell, but enjoyed de Castell’s book enough to place him well above “No Award”. Niemeier was the true puppy chow nominee in that category and while Pierce Brown may be popular beyond the puppy sphere, I just don’t get the appeal.
@Darren Garrison
You’re fixating on ‘criticism’. My point was that your anxieties demonstrate this is about power.
@Dawn Incognito – Enjoyed a micro-short from Daily Science Fiction: “The Flock” by Melissa Mead.
Oh, thank you. You know how sometimes just the right thing hits just the right internal spot at just the right time? Yeah, that’s what happened with this one.
I really liked the de Castell novel in the packet, enough to buy the second book in the series. I didn’t finish it, because the relationship of interested in what happens next and these characters are engaged in constant conflict for narrative reasons ended up not working for me, but I might pick up the next one when I’m in a more charitable mood. Which is the long way of saying he was third on my ballot, even though he was slated.
Question for those who admire Martha Wells’ Raksura books: I read and did not love The Cloud Roads. So much about the book was amazing, but the character interactions (because I am too lazy to rot-13) didn’t gel for me. Is that a continuing theme or does everyone attain adulthood at some point?
@Hampus Eckerman:
Oh, it doesn’t, but that word had a large role in the Great Racefail of Aught Nine. I’m out at the moment but will dig you up a link when I get home.